Torch of Freedom

  "But when I really considered it, I realized it wasn't Zilwicki's style. He could have achieved the same diversionary effect with an explosion that wouldn't have killed a fraction of as many people as this bomb killed. Not only that, but we know from his record that he had a soft spot a kilometer-wide where kids were concerned. Just look at the two he carted home with him from Old Chicago!" Collin shook his head again, harder. "No way would that man have signed off on detonating a nuke in the middle of a frigging park on a Saturday morning. Cachat, now—he was cold enough he could have done it if he decided he had no choice, but I don't see even him going along with something like this purely for the sake of a diversion."

  "Do you have any theory at all that might explain it?"

  "The best one I've been able to come up with, and it's no more than my own personal hypothesis, you understand, is that some Ballroom associate or sympathizer here on Mesa who was at least peripherally aware of Zilwicki and Cachat's presence, did it on his own. Given the fact that we know from Irvine that they clearly had an emergency fall-back plan—the one that, unfortunately for them, took them too close to Jack's little surprise at Buenaventura—I think they may have intended for the Park Valley nuke to go off somewhere else, somewhere with a lot less people around. Somewhere it would have made a diversion but not killed so many people. But once Jack took them out at Buenaventura, whoever was in charge . . . changed his mind. In other words, the charge itself probably was part of Zilwicki and Cachat's escape plan, but I doubt very much that its location was."

  Albrecht leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his chest, and spent the next several minutes looking out the window at white beaches and dark blue water while he thought it all through.

  "Well," he said finally, grimacing a little. "I'd be happier if there weren't so many loose ends. But"—he brought his eyes back to his two sons—"the bottom line is that the one thing that does seem to be definitely established is that all four of the really dangerous people involved are dead. McBryde himself, Simões, Cachat, and Zilwicki. And, of course," his eyes hardened slightly, "the one ultimately responsible for this debacle."

  Collin faced his father squarely.

  "I assume you mean Isabel," he said. His father gave a small nod, and Collin grimaced. "I think that's an unfair assessment, Father. Quite unfair, in fact. I don't think anyone could have foreseen that Jack McBryde was going to turn traitor. I can tell you that I didn't finally accept the truth for almost two full days, and I had the advantage of a lot of data Isabel never got a chance to see. She reacted as quickly as anyone could have asked when she found out he was behaving . . . erratically. And, in my opinion, she acted appropriately, given what she could have known or understood at the time. There'd been absolutely no earlier indication that Jack, of all people, could have become a security risk. And don't forget, we didn't identify Zilwicki from Irvine's bugs' imagery until after the smoke had cleared. There's no evidence that Isabel imagined for one moment that Jack had been talking to Anton Zilwicki. Or that she had any reason to suspect anything of the sort, for that matter! All she knew at that point was that one of our most senior security officers, with a faultless record, in charge of one of the three most important installations on Mesa itself, had apparently decided to follow up Irvine's reports on his own.

  "After the fact, knowing what we know now, it's obvious to us that she should've ordered his immediate arrest and launched a full bore investigation. But that's being wise after the fact, Father. No, it didn't immediately cross her mind that he was planning on betraying the entire Alignment, and maybe it should have. But given what she knew, she reacted immediately, and, frankly, she did exactly what I would have done in her place.

  "The truth is, Father, that if Isabel were still alive and you were proposing to punish her, I'd be pointing out that by any logic and reason, you ought to be punishing me at the same time."

  For a moment, father and son locked gazes. Then Albrecht looked away. A little smile came to his face, and he might have murmured, "Like father, like son," but neither Collin nor Benjamin knew for sure.

  When his gaze came back, though, it was still hard, still purposeful.

  "Am I right in assuming that you don't propose to punish McBryde's family?" he asked.

  "No. We have no reason to think any of them were involved. None. Oh, we've questioned them, of course, thoroughly, and it's obvious they're deeply distraught and grieving. Defensive, too. I think they're in denial, to some extent, but I also think that's inevitable. What I haven't seen is any evidence that any of them knew a thing about Jack's plans. And, frankly, I'm positive Jack would never have involved them. Not in something like this, whatever his own motives may have been, he'd never have put his parents, Zachariah, or his sisters at risk. Not in a million years."

  "Lathorous?"

  "Steve doesn't seem to have been involved either, except by accident. And even then, only tangentially. It's true he was Jack's friend, but so are a lot of people." Collin grimaced. "Hell, Father, I liked Jack McBryde—a lot. Most people did."

  "So you propose no punishment?"

  "I'll give him a reprimand of some sort. But even that won't be very severe. Enough to make him walk on eggshells for a couple of years, but not enough to wreck his career."

  "And Irvine?"

  "You know, Father," Collin smiled crookedly, "he's actually the one bright spot in all this. He was completely loyal, start to finish, he was smart enough to realize something was happening that shouldn't have been, even if he didn't have a clue what that 'something' really was, and he's the only one involved who did his job properly."

  "So your thoughts are—?"

  "Well, he wants a field assignment, but, frankly, I don't think that's going to be possible any time soon." Collin shook his head. "He knows too much about what happened—especially now, after all the interrogations. We can't put him out, use him for a deep-penetration agent, with all of that rattling around inside his head. By the same token, his genotype doesn't really lend itself well to any other assignment. So, what I've been thinking, is that we might bring him all the way inside."

  "All the way?" Albrecht's surprise was obvious, and Collin shrugged.

  "I think it makes sense, Father. We can run him through the standard briefing program, see how he reacts. He's already halfway inside the onion, and as I just said, he's demonstrated loyalty and intelligence—and initiative, for that. If he can handle what's really going on, I think he could be very useful to us in Darius now that we're in the final runup to Prometheus."

  "Um." Albrecht considered for several moments, then nodded. "All right, I can see that. Go ahead."

  "Of course. And now," Collin pushed himself up out of his chair, "if you'll excuse me, there's a memorial being planned for all the people killed at Pine Valley Park. They'll be unveiling the sketch for it in a public meeting where the Children's Pavilion used to be this afternoon, and"—his face tightened with something that had absolutely no relationship to the physical discomfort of his still healing body—"I promised the kids we'd go."

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  April, 1922 PD

  Brice brought the cab to a halt at the very apex of Andrew's Curve. "Well, here we are."

  Nancy Becker got up from the seat and went to stand with her face almost pressed against the observation window. That wasn't as foolish as it seemed, because that was a real window, not a vid screen. Allowing for the various protective shields, she was looking at the vista beyond with her own eyes, not something relayed electronically.

  Brice had thought she'd like that. He'd timed the trip so that they'd be in shade when they arrived. Ameta, along with its various moons (the smallest and certainly the most recent of which was Parmley Station), revolved around an F5 subgiant star, which was half again as massive as Old Earth's sun, had twice the diameter, and was almost eight times more luminous. Had the roller coaster cab been perched in direct sunlight, Brice would have had no choice but to use the vid screens. Even wit
h the protective shields—which were cut-rate quality, forget state of the art—it would have been too risky to look at the vista directly.

  But they'd be able to do so for at least two hours before the station's revolution around Ameta brought this portion of it back out of the shade.

  Brice came to stand next to her. Ameta was on full display, with all of its cloud bands and rings. There seemed to be every shade of blue and green there, along with enough white bands to set them off perfectly. As a bonus—this was rather unusual—the moon Hainuwele was just peeking around the curve of the giant planet below. Most of the time, Brice wasn't fond of the moon. It was close enough to Ameta to be subject to pronounced tidal heating, and its blotchy red, yellow and orange surface was usually sick-looking. In its current location, however, it was far enough away for the ugly details to be unnoticeable. At that distance, its bright colors made a striking contrast to the much cooler shades of its mother planet.

  Even Yamato's Nebula was on its best behavior at the moment. It was as if the entire sidereal universe had decided to give its full support to Brice's bold and risky endeavor. He knew that was a fantasy, of course. But it ought to be true.

  "It's beautiful," Nancy said softly.

  "Told you," said Brice. Then, spent a minute or so silently berating himself for being less suave than any human male since the extinction of Homo erectus.

  But he did not concede defeat. Quaked, but did not lose heart. He'd been planning this campaign for months, and had warned himself over and over that there would be setbacks. Most of them caused by his clumsy tongue.

  This was the first time the two of them had ever been alone, since they met on the tarmac of the spaceport. The months they'd spent since their escape from Mesa drifting on the Hali Sowle had been the equivalent of months spent in the most densely populated apartment in creation. You'd think that a freighter massing slightly over a million tons would have enormous empty reaches, but . . . it didn't. Or, rather, it did . . . but it was a working commercial vessel, nothing more. Despite the capaciousness of its huge cargo holds, the living quarters were small and Spartan. Neither Ganny nor Uncle Andrew would have reacted kindly if Brice had proposed that time be taken from the repair work needed to get the ship's drive working again to turn some of the freight compartments into additional living quarters so that he might have a chance to spend some time alone with Nancy, either. It was best not to even think how Zilwicki or Cachat would have reacted to that suggestion, and, just to complete the unfairness of the universe, there'd been the minor fact that every square meter of every cargo hold was covered by the bridge security and monitoring cameras. So even though there were all those vast stretches of space, Brice had been gloomily certain that any effort on his part to inveigle Nancy out into them would have been instantly discovered. Even if it would never have happened to anyone else, it would definitely—inevitably!—have happened to him. At which point his supposed best friends and the loving members of his family, with that dubious quality which supposedly served them—ha!—as a sense of humor would have made his life a living hell.

  To be sure, had Brice and Nancy already established a clear relationship, they could have figured out a thousand ways to elude the informal chaperonage provided by Ganny and Nancy's mother . . . and those damned cameras! But that was precisely the task at hand. And while there were undoubtedly some fifteen-year-old boys somewhere in the galaxy who'd have the sheer nerve to try to start a romance by immediately proposing that the two of them disappear somewhere so they could . . .

  Well. Brice was not one of them. His isolated upbringing as a member of the Butry clan had made him very self-confident in some situations, but very shy in others.

  This was one of the others.

  Nancy's head turned, her attention drawn by the sight of a shuttle heading toward the Hali Sowle.

  "How soon are they going to be leaving, do you know?"

  Brice shook his head. "I haven't heard anything definite yet. Uncle Andrew says they're still waiting for the proper replacement parts to arrive." He laughed suddenly. "I think he's a bit pissed off that they don't trust his repairs to get them there, but I sure don't blame them. 'Course part of the reason he's pissed is because he already had all the parts he needed, before we dumped 'em out to squeeze you and your mom in. Way he sees it, it was all their fault to start with, so they don't have any business turning their noses up at his custom-built parts."

  Nancy returned his grin, and he shrugged.

  "Anyway, the guys on the Custis"—EMS Custis was the Erewhonese repair ship which had been at the station as part of the ongoing work to turn Parmley Station into something that still looked like a decrepit and mostly abandoned amusement park but was actually quite a powerful fortress—"agreed to make a quick hop to get replacements for us. I think their skipper probably works for the people we got Hali Sowle from in the first place. Anyway, he obviously thinks we should use real parts to fix the hyper generator."

  "How about us? How soon will we be going to Beowulf?" Nancy asked.

  "I'm not sure about that either. I know Ganny wants us to go as soon as possible. Well, given the space available and where we are in the rotation."

  That had been part of the deal. Every member of the clan still young enough was being transported to Beowulf in order to begin prolong treatments. The order in which they'd go was determined by their age. Those like Sarah Armstrong and Michael Alsobrook who were getting close to the limit would be sent first, of course. Brice and Ed and James were not at the top of the list, but he figured they'd be going pretty soon.

  Best of all, Nancy would be going with them. It was too late for her mother Steph to undergo prolong, but not for Nancy herself.

  Zilwicki had been as good as his word. Better, actually. The expense of paying for a complete suite of prolong treatments for her daughter was going to be at least as high as the expense of setting up Steph Turner in a new restaurant. But Anton hadn't blinked. "I'll cover the cost if Beowulf gets sticky about it."

  From something Cachat had said, though, Brice thought Beowulf would probably just handle Nancy's treatments as part of the general arrangement they'd made with Ganny. When Brice had once expressed his concern over the issue to Victor, the Havenite had gotten a very cold smile on his face.

  "I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, Brice. It's going to be a while yet—there are some other people we have to talk to first, for several reasons—but unless I miss my guess, you're going to see the rage of Beowulf unleashed in the universe sometime pretty damned soon now. They're not going to quibble over the cost of an extra prolong treatment while they're sinking a fortune into forging the weapons to finally take down Grendel. Which they surely will, once they learn the monster has a mother after all."

  The last part of that hadn't meant anything to Brice, but the gist of it was clear enough.

  Nancy went back to looking at Ameta. "It's so beautiful."

  The moment had come. He was sure of it. Months of planning—he'd even practiced in a mirror—enabled him to slide his arm around Nancy's waist with no more clumsiness than a walrus calf taking its first waddle across the ice.

  He held his breath, waiting for an explosion.

  But she said nothing. Just continued to look at Ameta's glory, with a smile on her face. And about a minute later, nestled her head onto his shoulder.

  Brice was utterly thrilled. This was, for sure and certain, the greatest exploit in his life. The greatest thus far, rather—in a life that would now last for centuries.

  * * *

  "I'm going to Torch, Andrew," Steph Turner said. "That's just the way it is." She leaned back from the table in the clan's mess hall on the station, setting her shoulders stubbornly. "And quit trying to claim you're doing anything but guessing. Me, I don't see any way this place is ever going to sustain enough of a clientele to keep a restaurant going."

  His own shoulders were set almost as stubbornly as hers. Not quite.

  "I don't know if I can get any
work on Torch," he whined.

  "Are you kidding? It won't be all that long, you numbskull, before the whole damn galaxy knows that Andrew Artlett is the mechanical wizard—the jackleg mechanic of all time—who got the Hali Sowle through on its desperate mission. Your problem won't be finding work, it'll be dodging Mesan assassination squads."

  She got that twisted little smile on her face that Andrew found just as hard to resist now as he had the first time he'd seen it, less than a day after the Hali Sowle left orbit from Mesa. "And what better place to stay safe from those bastards than a Ballroom planet?"

  "Well . . ."

  "Make up your mind. I'm going to Torch. Are you coming with me or not?"

  "I guess."

  * * *

  "I think the Republic owes us a stipend too, Victor. 'Course, I don't expect one as big as Beowulf's, much less as big as the one I figure I'll be squeezing out of the Star Kingdom." Friede Butry gave Victor Cachat a twisted smile of her own. "I realize you Havenites are the poor cousins in this part of the galaxy."

  "I told you, you're just wasting your time. Sure, I'll put in a word for you. Be glad to. But after that, it'll work its way up the ladder until—don't hold your breath—it finally reaches Those Who Decide Such Things." Cachat shrugged. "After that . . . ? You've been around a lot longer than I have, Ganny. You know what bureaucrats are like."