“An understandable aversion,” Tuf safd. “I shall initiate immediate implementation of departure programming. One small difficulty remains, however.”
“What?” she said, all wire-edged impatience.
“Havoc remains in your custody. I cannot leave S’uthlam until she has been returned safely to me.”
“Forget the puling cat!”
“A selective memory is not among my capabilities,” Tuf said. “I have fulfilled my portion of our understanding. You must return Havoc or be in breach of contract.”
“I can’t,” Tolly Mune said angrily. “Every fly, worm, and spinneret in the station knows that damned cat is our hostage. If I jump on a train with Havoc under my arm, it will be noticed, and someone is going to ask questions. Wait for that cat, and you’re risking everything. “
“Nonetheless,” said Haviland Tuf, “I fear I must insist.”
“Goddamn you,” swore the Portmaster. She wiped out his image with a single furious snap of her fingers.
When she reached the Worldview’s lofty atrium, the host greeted her with a brilliant smile. “Portmaster!” he said happily. “How good to see you. You’re being paged, you know. If you’d care to take the call in my private office . . . ”
“Sorry,” she said, “pressing business. I’ll check in from the room.” She rushed past him to the elevators.
Outside the door were the guards she had posted. “Portmaster Mune,” the left one said. “We were notified to watch for you. You’re to call in to the security office at once.”
“Certainly,” she said. “You two, get down to the atrium, and fast.”
“Is there a problem?”
“A big one. A brawl. I don’t think the staff can handle it alone.”
“We’ll take care of it, Ma.” They ran off together.
Tolly Mune went inside. The room was a relief; only a quarter gee, compared to the full gravity of the corridors and atrium. It was a tower suite. Beyond a triple-thick window of transparent plasteel was the vast globe of S’uthlam, the rocky surface of Spiderhome, and the brilliance of the web. She could even see the bright line that was the Ark, shining in the yellow light of S’ulstar.
Havoc was curled up asleep on the floater cushion in front of the window, but the cat hopped down when she entered and came bounding across the carpet, purring loudly. “I’m glad to see you, too,” Tolly Mune said, scooping up the creature. “But now I have to get you out of here.” She looked around for something large enough to hide her hostage.
The comm unit began to scream at her. She ignored it and continued to search. “Goddamn it,” she said furiously. She had to hide the puling cat, but how? She tried wrapping her up in a towel, but Havoc didn’t like that idea at all.
The comm unit cleared—a security override. The head of port security was staring at her. “Portmaster Mune,” he said, deferential for the moment, though she wondered how long that would last once the situation became clear to him. “There you are. The First Councillor seems to believe you have some difficulty. Is there a problem?”
“None at all,” she said. “Is there any reason for intruding on my privacy, Danja?”
He looked abashed. “My apologies, Ma. Orders. We were instructed to locate you immediately and report on your whereabouts.”
“Do that,” she said.
He apologized again and the screen blanked. Obviously, no one had yet informed him that the Ark was being cleared. Good, that bought her a bit more cushion. She moved methodically through the suite one final time, taking a good ten minutes to search everywhere and anywhere for something to stash Havoc in, before she finally gave it up as a lost cause. She’d just have to brazen it out, stride to the docks and requisition vacuum sled, skinthins, and a carrier for the cat. She moved toward the door, opened it, stepped out . . . and saw the guards running toward her. She darted back inside. Havoc yowled in protest. Tolly Mune triple-locked the door and raised the privacy shield. That didn’t stop them from banging. “Portmaster Mune,” one of them called through the door, “there was no brawl. Open please, we need to talk.”
“Go away,” she snapped. “Orders.”
“Sorry, Ma,” he replied, “they want us to take that cat downstairs. That’s right from the council, they say.”
Behind her, the comm unit came on once more. This time it was the councillor for internal security herself. “Tolly Mune,” the woman said, “you are wanted for questioning. Surrender yourself immediately.”
“I’m right here,” Tolly Mune snapped back. “Ask your goddamned questions.” The guards kept pounding on the door.
“Explain your return to port,” the woman said.
“I work here,” Tolly Mune said sweetly.
“Your actions are not in accord with policy. They have not been approved by High Council.”
“High Council’s actions haven’t been approved by me,” the Portmaster said. Havoc hissed at the screen.
“Place yourself under arrest, if you please.”
“I’d rather not.” She lifted a small, thick table—it was easy under a quarter gee—and sent it sailing into the vidscreen. The councillor’s square features disintegrated in a shower of glass and sparks.
At the door, the guards had coded in a security override. She countermanded it, using Portmaster’s priority, and heard one of them swearing. “Ma,” the other one said, “that won’t do any good. Open up, now. You can’t get by us and it won’t take them more than ten, twenty minutes to cancel your priority.”
He was right, Tolly Mune realized. She was trapped, and once they unsealed the door it was all over. She looked around helplessly, searching for a weapon, a way out, anything. There was nothing.
Far away at the end of the web the Ark shone with reflected sunlight. It ought to be clear by now. She hoped Tuf had had the sense to seal up tight when the last spinneret had departed. But would he leave without Havoc? She looked down, stroked the cat’s fur. “All this trouble for you,” she said. Havoc purred. She looked back at the Ark, then at the door.
“We could pump some gas in,” one of the guards was saying. “The room’s not airtight, after all.”
Tolly Mune smiled.
She placed Havoc back on the floater cushion, climbed up on a chair, and pulled the cover off the emergency sensor box. It had been a long time since she’d done any mech work. It took her a few moments to trace the circuits, and a few more moments to puzzle out how to make the sensors think the airseal had been broken. When she did, an alarm claxon began to shrill hideously in her ear. There was a sudden hissing and foaming around the edges of the door as the airseal was activated. The gravity went out, the air stopped circulating, and on the far side of the room, a panel slid open on the cache of emergency vacuum gear.
Tolly Mune moved to it quickly. Inside were breather-pacs, airjets, a half dozen sets of skinthins. She dressed and sealed herself up. “Come here,” she said to Havoc. The cat didn’t like all the noise. “Careful now, don’t claw the fabric.” She shoved Havoc inside a bubble helmet, attached it to a limp set of skinthins, clipped on a breather pac and turned it all the way up, way past the recommended pressure. The skinthins inflated like a balloon. The cat tried her claws against the inside of the plasteel helmet and yowled piteously. “I’m sorry,” said Tolly Mune. She let Havoc float in mid-room while she removed the laser torch from its brackets.
“Who said it was a puling false alarm?” she said as she kicked herself toward the window, torch in hand.
“Perhaps you would care for some mulled mushroom wine,” said Haviland Tuf. Havoc was rubbing up against his leg. Chaos was up his shoulder, long gray tail twitching, peering down at the black-and-white cat as if he were trying to remember just who that was. “You appear to be tired.”
“Tired?” Tolly Mune said. She laughed. “I just burned my way out of a starclass hotel and crossed kilometers of open space, flying on nothing but airjets and using my feet to tug along a cat in an over-inflated pair of skinthins. I ha
d to outdistance the first security squad they scrambled from the dockside ready-room, and use a laser torch to cripple the sled the second bunch came cruising up on, dodging their snares the whole time, still pulling your damned cat. Then I got to spend a half-hour crawling around on the outside of the Ark, knocking on the hull like a brain-damage case, all the time watching my port go insane with activity. I lost the cat twice and had to chase her down again before she floated off to S’uthlam, and whenever I misjudged an airblast, off we went. Then a puling dreadnought came heaving up at me. I got to enjoy the suspense of wondering when the hell you’d raise your defense sphere, and got to relish the exciting pyrotechnics when the flotilla decided to test your screens. I had a nice long time to ponder whether they’d see me, crawling around like so much vermin on the skin of some damned animal, and Havoc and I had this great conversation about what we’d do when it occurred to them to send in a wave of security on sleds. We decided I’d speak sternly to them and she’d scratch their eyes out. And then you finally notice us and drag us inside just as the goddamned flotilla is opening up with plasma torpedoes. And you think I might be tired?”
“There is no call for sarcasm,” said Haviland Tuf.
Tolly Mune snorted. “Do you have a vacuum sled?”
“Your crew abandoned four in their haste to depart.”
“Good. I’ll take one with me.” A glance at the instruments told her that Tuf finally had the seedship under way. “What’s happening out there?”
“The flotilla continues to hound me,” said Tuf. “The dreadnaughts Double Helix and Charles Darwin pursue, with their protector escorts close astern, and a cacophony of commanders clamor at me, making rude threats, stern martial pronouncements, and insincere entreaties. Their efforts are to no avail. My defensive screens, now that your spinnerets have so excellently restored them to full function, are more than equal to any weaponry in the S’uthlamese armory.”
“Don’t test it,” Tolly Mune said sourly. “Just get into drive as soon as I’m gone, and get the hell out of here.”
“This is sound advice,” Haviland Tuf agreed.
Tolly Mune looked at the banks of vidscreens along both walls of the long, narrow communications room that they had refitted as Tuf’s control center. Slumped in her chair and crumpled under the gravity, she suddenly looked and felt her age.
“What will become of you?” Tuf asked.
She looked at him. “Oh, that’s a choice question. Disgrace. Arrest. Removal from office—maybe trial for high treason. Don’t worry, they won’t execute me. Execution is anti-life. A penal farm on the Larders, I suppose.” She sighed.
“I see,” said Haviland Tuf. “Perhaps you might wish to reconsider my offer to furnish you with transportation out of the S’uthlamese system. I would be only too glad to take you to Skrymir or Henry’s World. If you wished to remove yourself further from the site of your infamy, I understand that Vagabond is quite pleasant during its Long Springs.”
“You’d sentence me to a life under gravity,” she said. “No thanks. This is my world, Tuf. Those are my own puling people. I’ll go back and take what comes. Besides, you’re not getting off the hook that easily.” She pointed. “You owe me, Tuf.”
“Thirty-four million standards, as I recall,” Tuf said.
She grinned.
“Madam,” said Tuf, “if I might so bold as to ask—”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she said quickly.
Haviland Tuf blinked. “My pardon if I seem to be prying into your motives. Such is not my intent. I fear curiosity will be my downfall someday, but for the nonce I must inquire—why did you do it?”
Portmaster Tolly Mune shrugged. “Believe it or not, I did it for Josen Rael.”
“The First Councillor?” Tuf blinked again.
“Him, and the others. I knew Josen when he was just starting out. He’s not a bad man, Tuf. He’s not evil. None of them are evil. They’re decent men and women, doing their best. All they want to do is to feed their children.”
“I do not understand your logic,” said Haviland Tuf.
“I sat at that meeting, Tuf. I sat there and listened to them talk, and I heard what the Ark had done to them. They were honest, honorable, ethical people, and the Ark had already turned them into cheats and liars. They believe in peace, and they were talking about the war they might have to fight to keep this puling ship of yours. Their entire creed is based on the holy sanctity of human life, and they were blithely discussing how much killing might be necessary—starting with yours. You ever study history, Tuf?”
“I make no special claims to expertise, but neither am I entirely ignorant of what has gone before.”
“There’s an ancient saying, Tuf. Came out of Old Earth. Power corrupts, it went, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Haviland Tuf said nothing. Havoc bounded onto his knees and settled down. He began to stroke her with a huge pale hand.
“The dream of the Ark had already begun to corrupt my world,” Tolly Mune told him. “What the hell would the reality of possession have done to us? I didn’t want to find out.”
“Indeed,” said Tuf. “A further question suggests itself.”
“What’s that?”
“I now control the Ark,” Tuf said, “and therefore wield near absolute power.”
“Oh, yes,” Tolly Mune said.
Tuf waited, saying nothing.
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I didn’t think things through. Maybe I was just making it up as I went along. Maybe I’m the biggest damned fool you’ll find for light-years.”
“You do not seriously believe this,” said Tuf.
“Maybe I just figured it was better you got corrupted than my own people. Maybe I think you’re naive and harmless. Or maybe it was instinct.” She sighed. “I don’t know if there is such a thing as an incorruptible man, but if there is, you’re the one, Tuf. The last goddamned innocent. You were willing to lose the whole thing for her.” She pointed at Havoc. “For a cat. Damned puling vermin.” But she smiled as she said it.
“I see,” said Haviland Tuf.
The Portmaster pulled herself wearily to her feet. “Now it’s time to go back and make that speech to a less appreciative audience,” she said. “Point me to the sleds and tell them that I’m coming out.”
“Very well,” said Tuf. He raised a finger. “One further point remains to be clarified. As your crews did not complete all of the agreed-upon work, I do not think it equitable to charge me the full price of thirty-four million standards. I suggest an adjustment. Would thirty-three million five-hundred thousand standards be acceptable to you?”
She stared at him. “What difference does it make?” she asked. “You’re never coming back.”
“I beg to differ,” said Haviland Tuf.
“We tried to steal your ship,” she said.
“True. Perhaps thirty-three million would be fair, the rest being considered a penalty of sorts.”
“You’re really planning to return?” Tolly Mune said.
“In five years,” said Tuf, “the first payment on the loan will be due. By that time, moreover, we will be able to judge what effect, if any, my small contributions have had upon your food crisis. Perhaps more ecological engineering will be necessary.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said, astonished.
Haviland Tuf reached up to his shoulder and scratched Chaos behind the ear. “Why,” he asked reproachfully, “are we always doubted?”
The cat did not reply.
3: GUARDIANS
Haviland Tuf thought the Six Worlds Bio-Agricultural Exhibition a great disappointment.
He had spent a long wearying day on Brazelourn, trooping through the cavernous exhibition halls, pausing now and then to give a cursory inspection to a new grain hybrid or a genetically improved insect. Although the Ark’s cell library held cloning material for literally millions of plant and animal species from an uncounted number of worlds, Havil
and Tuf was nonetheless always alert for any opportunity to expand his stock-in-trade.
But few of the displays on Brazelourn seemed especially promising, and as the hours passed Tuf grew bored and uncomfortable in the jostling, indifferent crowds. People swarmed everywhere—Vagabonder tunnel-farmers in deep maroon furs, plumed and perfumed Areeni landlords, somber nightsiders and brightly garbed evernoons from New Janus, and a plethora of the native Brazeleen. All of them made excessive noise and favored Tuf with curious stares as he passed among them. Some even brushed up against him, bringing a frown to his long face.
Ultimately, seeking escape from the throngs, Tuf decided he was hungry. He pressed his way through the fairgoers with dignified distaste, and emerged from the vaulting five-story Ptolan Exhibit Hall. Outside, hundreds of vendors had set up booths between the great buildings. The man selling pop-onion pies seemed least busy of those nearby, and Tuf determined that a pop-onion pie was the very thing he craved.
“Sir,” he said to the vendor, “I would have a pie.”
The pieman was round and pink and wore a greasy apron. He opened his hotbox, reached in with a gloved hand, and extracted a hot pie. When he pushed it across the counter at Tuf, he stared. “Oh,” he said, “you’re a big one.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Haviland Tuf. He picked up the pie and bit into it impassively.
“You’re an offworlder,” the pieman observed. “Not from no place nearby, neither.”