“Excellent.” WarAvocat turned his attention to the world below, where operations were going as smoothly. Rabble never put up a fight against professionals.
That could take care of itself. He needed rest. He went to the space reserved, said, “Access, WarCentral furnishings. Close the WarAvocat’s night room.” Fantasy walls snapped into existence. “Give me a bed.”
The floor crept, coalesced, softened, rose. Hanaver Strate stretched himself out. He fell asleep in seconds.
A soft buzz wakened Strate. “Yes?”
“Noon reports from Peacekeeper One, WarAvocat.”
“Very well.” He rose, smoothed his apparel, ran thin, bony fingers through his hair. Two hours here was worth six in a normal bed. Gemina reached in and reworked the sleeping body, eased the tensions, hastened the outflow of fatigue poisons.
Noon reports. Merod Schene’s day ran only a few hours ahead of VII Gemina’s. It would be early afternoon down there, just twelve hours after the first troops grounded.
An aide awaited Strate, walked with him. “No bad news?”
“No bad news, sir. Peacekeeper One is ahead of schedule with casualties nominal. The insurrectionists were unable to acquire significant portions of the garrison arsenal. Merod Schene is ninety percent secure. I and I have begun sifting survivors. Peacekeeper One has requested hospital and reconstruction units. He’s dispatched his primary combat forces to satellite towns, mineheads and agricultural complexes where the insurrectionists routed the authorities. Our speed in recovering those facilities seems limited to the speed of personnel carriers in atmosphere at six hundred thirty millibars.”
WarAvocat awarded the joke a chuckle. He seated himself at his command station. “Review noon reports,” he told his desk.
The operation constituted an exercise. Most casualties had come accidentally, not by enemy action. He was into the I & I data before he found anything interesting. “Deified? Question.”
His fellow Dictat, Ansehl Ronygos, materialized on a small screen. “Yes?”
“What’s an Immune?”
“Immune is an honorary title from the lower social orders, usually indicating an unofficial magistrate. An Immune has no legal standing but his word acts like law. Most Immunes are too strong, too tough, or too crazy to meddle with. Occasionally one is proclaimed for wisdom or artistic value. Immunity indicates a popular consensus that an individual be exempt from the hazards of lawlessness.”
“Apparently the Immunes of Merod Schene opposed the insurrection.”
“Yes.”
“They tried to give warning that a blowup was coming.”
“Yes.”
“And the Deified are interested in these Immunes?”
“In one in particular. Possibly.”
WarAvocat awaited clarification. None was forthcoming. Sometimes the Deified were that way.
He released the requested hospital and construction units, then reviewed the data from station. He gleaned seven prior visas issued to the krekelen. Two had not been known to Glorious Spent, nor recalled by the beast itself. The additions gave WarAvocat a solid picture of VII Gemina’s future course.
He hoped VII Gemina would not have to clean up every world along the way.
“Access, Peacekeeper One.”
The commander of the landing force came back in seconds. “Yes, WarAvocat?”
“You have custody of locals called Immunes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Deified are interested. Send them up.”
“Will do, WarAvocat.”
Hanaver Strate leaned back, closed his eyes, tried to imagine what those electronic spooks were up to now.
The night terminator had reached Merod Schene before the detainees arrived. WarAvocat inquired, “Deified, where do you want to interview the detainees?”
“Hall of Decision.”
Startled, he examined the speaker. He did not know her. Her apparel proclaimed her one of the oldest Deified. First Millennium.
Strate reached Hall of Decision before the detainees. The old-time Deified were very interested. He spied several who had not appeared for the show with the krekelen and Commander Haget. Many lost interest in the outer reality after a few centuries in Gemina’s bosom.
What brought them out now?
One awed junior officer delivered the detainees to Strate as the only living being present. “What’s wrong with that one?” WarAvocat asked, indicating a woman in apparent catatonia.
“I don’t know, sir. About seventy klicks out she started screaming. Then that.”
“I see.”
“The others didn’t know what was wrong.”
“Uhm?” Strate ordered an envelope of silence and a security shield, then climbed to his Dictat’s throne. He considered the detainees. With one exception they seemed overwhelmed.
“Deified? You wished to examine these... people?” It was hard to regard them that way.
Ansehl Ronygos suggested, “Relax the silence.”
Strate reiterated the request as an order. The system would have responded to Ronygos directly, but the Deified liked to nag the living for having introduced unbreakable routines that prevented them from issuing edicts and making decisions without the consent of the living.
VII Gemina was trying to avoid troubles that had befallen other Guardships. XII Fulminata, without restraints upon its Deified, had gone cold and weird, ruthless, merciless, and almost suicidally fearless. IV Trajana was the spookiest of all Guardships, having subsumed its crew completely. Afterward, it had climbed onto the Web and been heard from again only briefly during the Enherrenraat incident.
Some thought IV Trajana was hunting the Presence that lived on the Web and appeared to be responsible for the disappearance of so many ships. Possibly. Ages ago VI Adjutrix had gone seeking the ends of the Web, which extended far beyond Canon space.
Ronygos said, “Let’s have their names and origins.”
The young officer hurried through the list. With one exception they were aliens or artifacts. How did the aliens get to V. Rothica 4? Were phantom Travelers a problem again?
Several First Millennium Deified descended upon the detainees. They surrounded the one who seemed unimpressed. Then the old spooks just stood there staring.
WarAvocat checked the detainee’s number. “Access, Gemina. Review the file on detainee number five.”
A whisper in his ear: “Name, Turtle. Origin: Alien, species uncertain, probably Ku. May be an artifact. No other data available.”
“Curious,” WarAvocat mused aloud, watching the old Deified. Why was Gemina reticent about what was troubling them?
— 18 —
Simon Tregesser was playing lord of thunders to distract himself. It was not working. For two weeks that thing in the tank had been useless. Half the time it was comatose, the other half it might as well have been. It said nothing that made any sense.
When a thing like that was terrified out of its mind...
He did not want to think about it. But when he put it out of mind, Noah slipped in.
Noah had been missing too long. Something must have happened. That bitch Valerena! Next time he killed her he would make it permanent. Lupo said Blessed showed promise.
He hurled thunders and lightnings with renewed fury. The whole damned universe was out to frustrate him. XII Fulminata! What the hell? Was some malign force ranged against him?
That was his most secret fear. That somehow someone or something was using him the way he used so many others.
A small red pin light came on. He was tempted to ignore it. But no one pestered him with trivia. Hardly anyone but Lupo and Noah bothered him at all. Neither of them wasted time.
“Who was that? What do you want?”
“Noah, Lord.”
“Where the hell have you been? Get down here.” He flung lightnings like spears for near misses as Noah swooped down the vast empty cavern. His laughter pounded the walls.
Unperturbed, Noah drifted to his perch.
br />
Disappointed, Tregesser let the uproar die. The damned illusion caster was a waste. Nobody but Lupo and Noah saw his productions. You could not impress either with a black hole big enough to gobble galaxies.
“All right, Noah. What have we got?” Echoes chased themselves around the vast hollow.
“Valerena tried Lupo Provik before she left.”
“Again? The woman shows no imagination.”
“I’m not sure she’s witless. And the boy is no moron. He knew the effort was pointless and understood why.”
“Where have you been?”
“Tregesser Prime. There were implications to Valerena’s behavior that intrigued me. She deserved a closer inspection.”
Tregesser Prime. In the Canon catalog it was designated P. Benetonica 3. The Tregessers rejected that name, and as much else of Canon as they could.
“And?”
“As I said, this Valerena may be dangerous.”
“Get to it, Noah.”
“She has several Others in development. She has a Banat-Marath team installed in her castle. Her security is tighter than usual.”
“Interesting. Why a crew of Others? Why not have Lupo produce them?”
“I also caught a hint that she may have obtained the control cues for the Simon Tregesser Other.”
Tregesser might have been drilled by one of his own lightning bolts. His speaker crackled for half a minute before he managed, “Indeed?”
“How she could have managed that escapes me, Lord. It seems unlikely. Yet my snooping — nobody pays attention to an artifact — convinced me something is going on. I’ve put together a scenario. It contradicts none of the known facts and ties the behavior of several individuals into a unified field.”
Simon growled. Noah’s manner could be frustrating. But neither threats nor rewards could change him. “Lay on, Noah. I don’t think you can shock me more than you already have.”
“Assume one of the earlier Valerenas enlisted one of the Directors. Plausible?”
“Probable. They’re all vampires. They’d go for my throat in a second.”
“Assume that Valerena made a mistake and you directed a changeover. Our hypothetical Director would not have to know about Provik’s lab to realize he was dealing with a different Valerena. She wouldn’t know things she should.”
“Still plausible. This Director might tell her she was a replacement. That she was an Other. Hell. She must be terrified that we have a hold on her. We don’t, do we?”
“No. You decided that was the lesser evil in the long run, where the welfare of the House was concerned. You directed Provik to produce replacements without controls. If he put them in, someone might learn about them.”
“So there’s a chance we’ve been dealing with the same Valerena through what we thought were several changeovers while she’s been having Banat-Marath make Others she can sacrifice.”
“Exactly, Lord.”
“It hangs together, Noah. But what has she been doing with the replacements?”
“I wouldn’t care to speculate.”
“You wouldn’t? Maybe I shouldn’t, either. I might not want to know.” Tregesser pondered a moment. “This doesn’t upset me as much as you might think, Noah. It tells me my offspring isn’t as stupid as I’d feared. But it’s still a step from explaining the central mystery.”
“Mystery, Lord? What mystery?”
“The sense of what she’s doing. Her motivation. What is it? I’m clinging to life with broken fingernails.”
“If you’d send to House Troqwai...”
“I won’t have it. They’re jackals.” Not true. He did not want to die. He would have been happy with a platoon of Troqwai’s phantoms hovering. But not here. “A little patience and the whole thing will drop into her lap. So why risk everything, repeatedly, trying to rush it? That isn’t rational.”
“That’s easy.” From where Noah stood it was easy to see. “She hates you. She has only one way of expressing that hatred. Take everything you have: life, property, and power.”
Again Tregesser might have been struck by his own lightning. “But she’s my daughter!”
“Emotion played no part when you removed your father? That was unadulterated concern for the House?”
Tregesser snapped the lie. “Of course! I know what it is. She wants to steal my victory. She wants to be remembered for breaking the Guardships.”
“You really think so, Lord?”
“I know so, Noah. Get out of here!”
“As you will. But why would she want to take that, too?”
Lightnings crisped the air around Noah. He banked, sideslipped, even looped. Those lightnings were thrown in earnest.
— 19 —
Valerena lay on a couch in an open-air pavilion atop a small mountain on the Isle of Ise in Tregesser Prime’s tropics. The structure was a replica of another of pre-Canon times, according to a memorial plaque. She did not care. For her history began with the conception of Valerena Tregesser.
Nobody cared about the Go Wars anymore, anyway. They would be forgotten if the Guardships were not still around.
Blessed settled into a canvas chair. “The artifact should have reached your father by now.” He raised a tube to his eyes, turned a portion of the barrel.
“Must you play with that thing all the time?”
He pointed the tube at her, ran the tip of a finger across a heat sensitive surface. A symbol appeared inside. This one was Valerena Prime. “They say the pattern is never the same twice. I’m checking.”
“Have you found a duplication?”
“Not yet. Mathematically, I have to.”
He had begun the project a year ago and had identified nine Valerena Tregessers so far.
“Put it away. You do it just to irritate me.”
“Will your father do what you want?”
“Of course. He’ll rage for a while. Then he’ll brood. Then he’ll rage again. Then he’ll call Lupo Provik.”
“You surprised me, Mother. Not in a thousand years would I have believed there was a way to reach him without going through Lupo. How did you find out?”
Valerena concealed a smirk behind a hand. “Each time he summons me he demands a woman. Always younger and more vulnerable. Just to show me how disgusting he can get. One of those women got through alive. She told me all he did was give her to the artifact. And the artifact, unlike Lupo, has wants and needs that Father doesn’t fulfill. He had a pleasant stay on Tregesser Prime. All the women he could handle.”
Blessed spied a speck moving swiftly above the burgundy sea. He fiddled with his kaleidoscope till his mother scolded him, put it down. “And you’re sure Lupo will do what you want?”
“He’ll try to steal a march. Set a trap. That’s Lupo.” A jewel on Valerena’s bracelet flashed. “Who is that?” she demanded.
Blessed did not hear the reply. But he knew the meaning of the flash.
“You’ll have to play on the beach, beloved son. I have company.”
“Your friends from the Directorate?”
Valerena did not respond except to point.
Blessed held his breath till he was out of sight.
The screen was small and the image flat, but Blessed and his friends Cable, Nyo, and Tina had a good view of the visitors. One was no surprise. Myth Worgemuth was an old schemer who dated back to the days of Simon Tregesser’s grandfather. But Linas Maserang had prospered during Simon’s reign. What did he stand to gain?
Valerena, presumably. The fool.
His mother shed the slutty role she played for him. “Sit. Get comfortable,” she said.
“Your message sounded portentous,” Worgemuth replied.
“I’ve found a way to lure Simon out of his fortress, away from Provik.” She gave the men an edited story, maybe eighty percent truth.
“Good,” Blessed whispered, and slapped hands with his companions.
“Blessed!” Cable Shike hissed.
Worgemuth had noticed the kale
idoscope. “What’s this?” The view wheeled.
“A kaleidoscope. My son’s. He must have forgotten it when I chased him out.”
Tina snickered.
A huge eye squinted at Blessed. “Haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid.”
Sound transmission ceased. When Worgemuth put the toy down it sent a picture of the frescoes on the pavilion’s ceiling.
Blessed was satisfied. He knew the identities of his mother’s Directorate allies.
“I wonder what Lupo will really do?” he mused.
— 20 —
Lupo stood beside Simon’s enclosed chair, stared out at the end space. “Our course seems evident. What options have you considered?”
“Mostly I’ve been in a panic. I’m not handling the pressure here like I thought I could.”
“You came right away. That’s a point.” Provik had not asked for Tregesser’s source of information. He would not. But he had guessed.
Tregesser had fewer secrets than he supposed. Lupo was aware of everything going on around his employer. He knew about the artifact and the Outsider. He knew the artifact had been away. “Is it possible Valerena has gotten those codes?”
“I don’t see how. But the impossible has happened before. Hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Lupo Provik had delivered House Banat-Marath to temporary Tregesser thrall after accidentally learning that Sandor Banat-Marath maintained a force-grown second self he put out front. The only difference between Sandor and his Other had been control codes built into the Other during the vatwork. Most artifacts came with controls.
Provik had invested years of prime espionage work. He had uncovered the Other’s codes. Shortly afterward Sandor Prime vanished.
Nine years later an assassin got the Sandor Other and Fodor Banat-Marath succeeded. Provik lost that House but none of the secrets he had plundered. House Tregesser now created its own specialized artifacts. No one suspected. Artifacts were a Banat-Marath monopoly.
“You think I’m being set up, Lupo?”
So. The old boy had not been thrown completely. “There’s always that possibility. To be sure, we’d have to wait to see if your Other behaved strangely.”