Crucible

  “What did you say?” Karim demanded.

  “I said a crystallization of a new—”

  “Before that!”

  Jon stared at Karim in the gloom. “Why?”

  “Tell me again about the biomass.”

  Jon did. Lucy and Karim looked at each other. Finally Karim s’

  “I need to see that pit, Jon.”

  “It’s not an open pit, it’s a hidden biomass two clicks down that—why?”

  “I’m not sure,” Karim said slowly, “but it may be that the signal repetition isn’t crystallization. It may be that it’s communication.”

  “Communication? From what, for God’s sake?”

  Carefully, trying to control his own wild surmises, Karim told him.

  23

  MIRA CITY

  When Alex woke in Julian’s apartment, he was still not there. He hadn’t returned at all during the night. That was unusual but not unprecedented; he was often away from Mira City on inspection of other defenses. Still, it was disappointing. Her body ached for him.

  She padded to the bathroom, washed and dressed, and headed for a commissary. Julian never had anything to eat in his apartment. Food didn’t interest him, except as a necessary fuel.

  The morning was clear and fresh, a perfect purple Mira day. Dew still clung to the bright yellow petals on temlillies planted around the foamcast commissary. Inside, cheerful clatter and the scents of hot food met Alex. She showed her Mira Corp card, selected her breakfast, and sat alone at a table against the far wall, pondering why Hope of Heaven had armed the wild Furs against the Cheyenne.

  “Hello, Alex,” a Mira maintenance crew called, on their way out after breakfast. “Beautiful day.” She waved at them.

  Hope of Heaven would have nothing to gain from arming the wild Furs.

  “Alex, maybe you could comb your hair one of these mornings,” called an old school friend, also on her way out. She smiled and waved.

  In fact, no one had anything to gain from arming wild Furs. Except, perhaps, Nan Frayne. Had that passionate and enigmatic old woman succeeded in an underhanded deal of some sort? But last evening Alex had talked to the gun manufacturer, Michael Lin, for a long time, and she believed him innocent. They’d gone to the warehouse and his inventory sheets tallied with both her inspection and the reports she had from his raw-material suppliers; no weapons were unaccounted for. Besides, what could Nan Frayne possibly offer in return?

  A commotion arose beside the door. It spread from table to table. People gasped, rose, rushed out. Siddalee Brown pushed her way in and ran ponderously to Alex.

  “Where’ve you been? There’s another ship!”

  “Another ship? A third ship?”

  “Yes! Probes picked it up. Where’s your comlink?”

  Alex had forgotten it in Julian’s bed, a measure of how disappointed she’d been by his absence. She stood unsteadily.

  “Siddalee … where’s Julian?”

  Siddalee said accusingly, “He’s giving the evacuation signal for Mira, since you weren’t around to do it.”

  The siren started then, in blasting waves.

  They won’t go a third time, Alex thought with despairing clarity, People got tired of alarms, especially alarms that had so far resulted in no damage to Mira City except that caused by leaving it.

  She pushed past Siddalee and dashed for the door. Outside, her fears were confirmed. Many people rushed for their designated transport to the end points, carrying ready-go bundles and children. But many people did not. These stood in small angry knots, gesticulating wildly. Over the sirens Alex couldn’t hear what anyone said.

  Her Terran bodyguard materialized beside her.

  “I don’t need—oh, fuck it!” Julian’s apartment was nowhere near as close to the Mausoleum as her own. Alex was panting by the time she reached the huge ugly building. The Terran, damn him, wasn’t even sweating. Alex thought of checking on Jake; her place was only a few steps away. But there was no time. And Jake had probably already left with Cal Johnson for his evac transport.

  This time, the rover, her designated transport, was still housed in its inflatable. Her two techs, Natalie and Ben, waited impatiently inside. “Alex, where were you? We were just about to leave!”

  “I’m here now. Ben, you drive. And give me your comlink… Julian?”

  “Where were you?” his cool voice asked. “You didn’t answer. And where are you now?”

  “I’m on my way to my bunker. What do we know?”

  “Is Captain Lewis with you?”

  “Yes! What do we know?”

  “Another McAndrew Drive ship, picked up by a probe beyond Cap. The probe stopped signaling seconds later, so I presume they destroyed it.”

  Now she heard something in his voice: too much coolness. He was shaken. He hadn’t expected this.

  None of them had expected this.

  She said, “Why didn’t this Fur ship arrive together with the first one? An armada?”

  “I don’t know. We have less than an hour.”

  Ashraf’s voice said, “Alex, a lot of people in the medina aren’t leaving. They just don’t…” He couldn’t find the right word.

  Alex said grimly, “A lot of people outside the medina aren’t leaving either, from what I saw. I’m going to use MiraNet to try to persuade them.”

  “Don’t let it interfere with your primary duties of securing the infrastructure,” Julian said.

  Ashraf said, with the only malice Alex had ever heard from him, “This time we don’t have an expendable warship to fight with.”

  “No,” Julian said, so calmly that Alex thought perhaps Ashraf’s comment hadn’t been malicious after all. She had just heard it that way.

  No one came near Jake during the chill hours before dawn.

  He sat in his chair in the bedroom, afraid to move because he couldn’t tell if Julian’s men had all left. The darkness stretched on and on, and Jake drowned in his thoughts. It felt like that—as if every sentence of Duncan’s that Jake remembered was a fresh flood, smothering him.

  “Because I have seen it all before. ”

  “He was that hated. His Third Life Alliance did things to stay in power—”

  “When your Chinese consul’s body turned up tortured…” And then, mixed in with Duncan’s words to Jake, Duncan’i words on the stage in his resonant actor’s voice:

  “ ‘And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

  The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

  Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

  In deepest consequence.’”

  Jake, no less than Alex and Ashraf, had believed everything Julian told them. Jake, who had also seen it all before on Terra, and who should have known better. Jake had let that instrument of darkness tell Greentrees truths about her shoddy defenses, in order to win Greentrees to betrayal. And Greentrees had responded. “‘In deepest consequence.’”

  Jake, sitting in the theater, had thought at the time that Duncan was playing his Macbeth directly to Julian, wanting to impress his powerful brother. Now he realized that it had been Alex that Duncan played to. Warning her. Futile as warning a falling rock about gravity.

  But he, Jake, should have seen. ” ‘In deepest consequence.’”

  When pale light finally fell into the window, he decided that Julian’s men must have gone. Painfully Jake rolled his chair to the bedroom door, opened it, and peered out.

  Nothing.

  His bread and jam still sat on the table. The knife lay where he’d put it down when Duncan Martin had come in. Katous sat preening himself in the middle of the table. Alex’s jacket was flung over a chair. The cot where Cal Johnson had snored stood empty, the bedclothes rumpled.

  Jake leaned forward and peered past his own knees. No stains of any kind on the floor to show where two bodies had lain.

  Had it all really happened?

  He closed his eyes, made himself breathe steadily. Should he open the outer door? If Julian had left a guar
d, Jake’s cover of stroke-induced imbecility would be gone. But why would Julian live a guard? He believed Jake no threat, and Alex was with him.

  At the thought of Alex in the bed of that bastard Jake felt red fury pulse through his brain. He fought it back. He needed to think as clearly as he could.

  He would risk the door.

  He got it open, struggling with his weak arms. Finally flinging the damn door wide, he inched his chair outside. Later than he thought; the sun had risen in a clear sky. People walked past on the way to the day’s work.

  “Help!” Jake cried as loud as he could. “Help—“A siren drowned him out.

  The evacuation siren.

  Now fury did take him. What was that fucking monster Julian doing now? Not for a minute did Jake believe that another ship had appeared in the Greentrees star system. It was a trick, a ruse like all Julian’s others, to gain power and—

  The siren went on and on, coming from the Mausoleum a few buildings away. Jake clapped his hands over his ears. Everything in hin quivered with sensitivity, with age, with achiness. He had to get to Alex—

  “Mr. Holman!” a large woman cried, halting in front of him. “Where’s your nurse?” Siddalee Brown, Alex’s assistant.

  He couldn’t make himself heard over the siren. Siddalee dashed inside, returned a minute later, and screamed, “Where’s your nurse? You—”

  The siren ceased. There would be thirty seconds of silence before it began again. Siddalee grabbed the arm of a teenage girl rushing past. “You! Get this man to the Sector Six tram and go with him to the end point!”

  “But I—”

  “I don’t care where you’re assigned! Now you’re going with Holman!”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “Is that really Mr. Holman? All righ!”

  Siddalee rushed off. Jake grabbed the girl’s arm. “Listen, I must find Alex Cutler. She—”

  The siren started again.

  The girl rushed into the apartment and appeared a moment later with Jake’s ready bundle and Katous. She dumped both on Jake’s lap, along with her own ready bundle. “Can’t leave your pe!” she yelled cheerfully and set off pushing his chair at nearly a run. Jake clung desperately to the arm’s chair. Katous leaped off. A brief stop while the girl scooped him up and dumped him into her bundle sack, loosely knotting the ends. Katous yowled and clawed.

  “Stop!” Jake cried. It did no good. The girl, her eyes bright with excitement, was determined to rescue him and the cat. They sped toward his designated transport and the hospital cave.

  The siren screamed.

  The first hour in her command bunker passed so swiftly that to Alex it seemed like a few minutes. She gave dozens of orders, starting on Ben’s comlink during the top-speed trip in the rover. She received dozens of reports, formulated instant strategies, squeezed in two MiraNet pleas to evacuate. Once they arrived at the bunker her techs worked frantically to monitor and verify. And all the while at the side of her mind Ashraf’s words crouched like a patient predator: This time we don’t have an expendable warship.

  Julian’s ship, the Crucible, had no McAndrew Drive. If it came out of hiding on the other side of the planet, it would be destroyed long before it could get close enough to fire. Would the defenses that Greentrees did have be enough?

  Her tech said, “All research stations reported in except Jon McBain’s, at the Avery Mountains. I can’t comlink them at all.”

  “Keep trying,” Alex said.

  “Enemy vessel four hundred thousand clicks out, sir, and decelerating,” said the expressionless voice of Julian’s lieutenant, on audio in Alex’s bunker.

  “Continue monitoring.”

  “Two hundred thousand clicks out, decelerating.”

  “Continue monitoring.”

  “One hundred thousand clicks … fifty thousand clicks … thirty-five point three thousand clicks out, deceleration complete, vessel in stable Greentrees orbit.”

  Then a suspended time, not long enough.

  “Enemy shuttle launched, sir.”

  “Standby to fire EMP.”

  “Standing by to fire EMP … sir, shuttle trajectory mapped. It will not land within EMP target zone.”

  Alex’s gaze flew to the graphic display. The tiny dot representing the shuttle was not headed for Mira City but for the high Avery Mountains, far to the southwest.

  Ashraf cried, “What are they doing?”

  “Avoiding us,” Julian said. “They don’t know what weapons we’ve got now.”

  “Sir, second shuttle launched … trajectory for Mira City… wait, it’s too fast to be a shuttle …”

  “Focus solar array!” Julian said. “Focus all ground missiles… Code twenty-two! Repeat, code twenty-two! Fire as possible!”

  Alex’s graphic display, slaved to Julian’s, erupted. Yellow lines run from the solar display to a point that intersected with the projected “shuttle” trajectory. More dots launched themselves from the ground. When had Julian put ground missiles taken off the Crucible—they had to be off the Crucible, Mira had nothing like that!—onto Greentrees? And why hadn’t Alex known about it?

  The nonshuttle moved too fast. The solar array yellow lines never intersected with it. A bewildering pattern of lines appeared on the display, while data flashed past. All Alex could see was that some of the lines connected to the ground patch that was Mira.

  A second later a missile line connected with the nonshuttle. Both disappeared.

  “What happened?” Alex cried. “What was that?”

  The lieutenant’s voice said, “Unmanned enemy launch destroyed, sir. Enemy beams, unknown type, made hits on Mira Cily prior to destruction. All our ground missile sites nonoperable. Enemy shuttle landed high in the mountains, coordinates to follow. Enemy vessel maintaining orbit.”

  There was more, terse communications back and forth between Julian and others, but Alex didn’t hear it. Enemy beams, unknown type, made hits on Mira City prior to destruction.

  Mira City…

  All those people who didn’t leave …

  All those people…

  “Alex. Alex.”

  She was pulled out of her temporary paralysis by the insistence of Julian’s voice.

  “Alex, stay with me. Make sure all end points slated to move into the wilderness are doing it, and allow any others who want to go to also do so. When shielded facilities report in, advise each of the situation and tell them to keep shields in place. I may still need to EMP.”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “All right.”

  All those people. Her people.

  She set to work numbly, focusing on a few clear facts. The Furs were here. This time there was no doubt it was Furs. They’d destroyed much of Mira City. How much? Julian’s security force in Mira would tell him. Her job was the people who had evacuated.

  All those people.

  24

  THE AVERY MOUNTAINS

  Karim and Jon McBain couldn’t get near the biomass pole. The Cheyenne took them for their daily exercise to a different part of the upland meadow, standing guard as the captives, wrists still bound but ankles free, were permitted to walk or run in circles. Jon sped around at top speed, usually until he exhausted himself. Lucy, Karim, and Kent jogged, Karim feeling like a fool in the Cheyenne animal pelt that was still his only clothing. Kueilan didn’t run. Instead she used her brief freedom to go through graceful yogalike contortions, her slim body bending so far backward that her long, filty braid lay in loops on the ground. All of them smelled horrible, although it was only after the exercise period in the clean outside air that Karim really noticed their collective reek.

  One day Jon took off toward the biomass pole at a dead run. He was easily, contemptuously caught, and all five captives were dumped back inside their inflatable.

  “That was stupid,” complained Kent. “I wanted to run more!”

  “And what could you have accomplished anyway, Jon?” asked Kueilan reasonably. “The Cheyenne took away the computer. There’s nothing but t
he pole sticking up from the ground.”

  “I don’t know,” Jon admitted sheepishly. “I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Why are they even holding us here anyway? If we’re hostages, for what and from who?”

  “Well, I wish that brave hadn’t been so rough,” Kueilan said, rubbing her arm. “I’m going to have a bruise where they grabbed me.”

  Lucy said thoughtfully, “They’re not usually rough. In fact, they usually don’t touch us at all.”

  “They usually don’t have some idiot like Jon making a break for it toward a pole,” Kueilan replied crossly.

  “No,” Lucy said. “I think it’s more than that. The Cheyenm seemed … not agitated, because they’re never that, but somehow more uneasy. And last night there was a different quality to that drumming and dancing, more—I don’t know—more urgent.”

  “I didn’t notice it,” Kent said.

  “You were asleep,” Kueilan said. “And snoring.”

  Karim respected Lucy’s human antennae. “What do you think it meant, Lucy?”

  “I don’t know. Bad news of some sort for the Cheyenne.”

  Jon said, “Maybe the war with the wild Furs is going badly for them.”

  “It could be.”

  Kent said, “Let’s just hope they don’t take it out on us.”

  Karim said, for perhaps the hundredth time, “I’ve got to get to Mira City and warn them that the ship upstairs is Vine, not Fur.”

  No one said aloud that by this time, with Julian Martin in charge, the ship upstairs might no longer be anything.

  “Wake up!” Lucy cried. “Everybody wake up!”