"I thought you were smarter than that."
"Alien intelligences, Bruen? Shall we talk about who is smarter than whom?" He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Magister. I didn't mean to use that tone of voice."
Bruen made a snort of derision. "I suppose you didn't." "I said I was sorry."
"I've said enough for today. Let me rest, Nyklos.
Guilt nibbled at the edges of Nyklos' peace. He continued to stare down at the old man, tracing each weary wrinkle that lined Bruen's face. Aliens? Really?
"Sleep well, Magister," Nyklos whispered. "If you need anything, press the comm button and I'll be right down." "Thank you, Nyklos. " The old man turned his head away. On the stairway leading up to his little cabin, Nyklos hesitated, looking back at the old man in the gurney. Had they made a mistake? Or was Bruen really as wrong as everyone believed?
Staffia would want you to think that, Nyklos. And maybe you're playing right into the Star Butcher's hands.
CHAPTER 17
I have just returned to my quarters aboard Countermeasures. The room is tiny, cramped, and probably not suitable for habitation with the electromagnetic fields, gravitational tides, and radiation this vessel produces, but tonight I can't really care.
I don't think I've ever felt so frustrated, or so bitterly disappointed either with myself or with my science. The generation of artificial gravity is a simple matter. People have been generating gravity for at least five thousand years, but we've been doing it within ships or aboard space stations. The electrical power necessary to produce sixty or even seventy gravities, while daunting, can be delivered by a standard matter/antimatter reactor. Now, however, it has fallen to me to attempt to generate 108 gravities in two separate locations across half a light-year of space and to synchronize them to the point that we can manage gravitational interferom.- etry.
In the history of the species, I don't think such an assignment has been handed to a whole nation-let alone a single man. The worst part is that I can do the physics. I can sit at the comm and prove the methodology to neutralize the oscillations in one strand of the Forbidden Borders. At night, when I finally fall asleep, I can visualize it, feel it within my soul. It is theoretically possible!
I just can't build it!
That fact haunts - my very soul. Today, with the incredible power of Countermeasures' reactors unleashed, we produced two hundred and sixty-seven gravities before the scaffolding separating the two grav plates crumpled like aluminum foil under a power
hammer. The resultant mess will take days to clean up and repair.
if I can't support 102 g with the best reinforced ceramic graphsteel available, how can I ever hope to manipulate 108 gravities-assuming I could even produce them?
I might as well be able to walk naked across the surface of a neutron star.
That's the sort of gravity we're talking.
Dearest God, how can I ever tell the Lord Commander? He entrusted me with this. He believes I can do it. I can fail myself, but how can I fail him?
-Excerpt taken from Dee Wall's personal diary
Lights flashed on Rega One's navcomm, acknowledging the course input. Skyla waited, blinking red-rimmed eyes. The effects of null singularity faded from around the edges of her vision. Dropping from light speed mass always did that, left that momentary sense of fantasy as the light cones warped.
And in that instant, the nightmare tried to replay. Ily's interrogation room
... the chair ... Skyla stepping through the doorway into Itreata ... looking back over her shoulder ... the eyes ... something wrong ... so very wrong ...
Fool! Skyla shook her head violently, shattering the image. The nightmare was bad enough when she was asleep. Why relive it awake?
"Course to Terguz initiated. Deceleration beginning at forty gravities.
Estimated time of arrival, five days, " the navcomm intoned.
"Acknowledged," Skyla grunted, leaning back in the command chair and letting her brain interact with the ship. One by one, she checked the systems. A realization of the risks she'd taken lay within, mocking her.
Only a fool would have treated a new ship the way you have. (.I So, I'm a fool. If I wasn't, Arta would never have lured me out after Tyklat in the first place. " A wooden expression crossed her face. "I deserve to die."
But for the fact that she'd picked a perfectly maintained vessel, she might have. Intellectually, she understood the
chances she was taking. Emotionally, she just couldn't make herself give a damn.
As the diagnostics ran, a warning flashed on one of ihe monitors. AIR
FILTRATION MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.
She muttered to herself, accessing the atmosphere plant schematics. The problem appeared to be the filters. In the maintenance schedule, she noted that they'd
been cleaned just before she'd stepped aboard.
The message comm console waited, set into the bridge like some hulking organism. Skyla forced her glance away, initiating computer control as the reactor stabilized. She lifted the worrycap from her head, scratching at her itchy hair.
She climbed to her feet, stretching, aware that she'd gained weight. She ducked through the hatch, and proceeded aft, passing the wreckage of the galley with its food stains and piles of gold trim thrown in the corners.
". . . have particular codes which bypass Itreata security*?11
"Hell, no, bitch," Skyla answered from growing habit. "If I'm not mistaken, I told you when you had me in the chair. We're not fucking stupid! There's no hole, nothing you could get me, or anyone to say, to cancel the system."
Something wrong with Arta's eyes ... looking back frond the doorway ...
She accessed the engineering hatch dropping a deck to the atmosphere plant.
The machinery that kept the air breathable filled a cramped room. Unlike the living quarters above, this place remained spotless.
Skyla slung a tool belt around her waist and located the overhead box that supported the filters. She jumped up, grabbed one of the braces, and grunted, barely able to pull herself up.
Panting, she dropped to the deck, shook her head, and hauled out a ladder.
Muttering to -herself, she climbed up, braced herself, and undid the fastening for the filter. When she pulled the first foam element from the box, she almost gagged. Mold and filth trickled down to coat the machinery below.
"Cleaned before this spacing?" she wondered. "In an Ashtan pig's eye! "
The other filters were as bad, or worse. Skyla winced, bagging the lot in plastic. Generally, standard practice was to wash the old filters, reinstall them, and go on about one's
business. To wash these, however, would have made her sick.
Skyla stepped into the lower air lock, dropped the bag, and cycled the hatch, watching through the pressure glass as the bag was blown out into vacuum.
Resealing the outer hatch, she shook her head and went in search of new filters. Before she inserted the clean filters, she attacked the moldy duct work with a vacuum and sonic cleanser. After refastening the air box to seal the system she had to clean the crap that had fallen on the floor.
Annoyed, she walked down to the engineer's quarters, feeling dirty and contaminated. To her surprise, the engineer's quarters were neat as a pin. Why would the man have left the atmosphere system to clog when everything else was perfectly maintained?
"Maybe he didn't like getting dirty either," she muttered as she stripped her coveralls off and dropped them into the disposal chute.
In the mirror, she studied herself, pinching the fat that had settled around her hips and on her thighs. Her hair looked filthy despite the tight braid that hung down her back to her knees. Startled, she stepped closer, searching her face. She looked gaunt, eyes puffy and bloodshot. The scar on her cheek stood out, highlighted by the slightly ruddy color of her skin.
" Wash up, you'll look better, " she told herself . " It's j ust the light . .
. and the dirt. "
She stepped into the shower, hitt
ing the water and relishing the warm stream as it soothed her tired body. Still, the memory nagged at her. She should have been able to pull herself up to the air box with one hand.
Skyla made a muscle, fingering her biceps.
When she stepped through the drying field, she looked at herself in the mirror again, turning sideways. She'd gained weight, all right. Normally her flat belly rippled with muscle. Now it bulged from her navel down to the golden mound of her pubic hair.
"Knock it off, Skyla. You're just eating too much. Discipline. That's what you need. A little more discipline when it comes to the food."
She repeated it a couple of times as she searched the cabinet for another pair of coveralls. Starting tomorrow, she'd exercise a little, eat more sensibly.
Dressed, she nodded to herself. That was better. She still looked the same when she was wearing coveralls. On the way out, she stopped at the engineer's dispenser, poking the stud for Riparian single malt. The comm informed her that stocks had been depleted. When had that happened?
Skyla cursed to herself and stabbed the stud that produced Regan rye. When the bulb filled, she took a full swallow, enjoying the warm sensation that spread within.
Even as she proceeded to the living quarters, the irritating memory of that message waiting in comm harassed her. To kill it, she lifted the bulb, taking another swig of the amber anesthesia.
Pedro Maroon, the Vegan trade representative watched passively as the marchers passed in front of his residency in Terguz. Vega, of all the Sassan worlds, had maintained a presence throughout Free Space. Neither the Regan nor Sassan Emperors had really minded since the Vegans served a definite purpose. Vega had always been a poor planet, mostly rocky and barren. Giant ice caps formed over the poles during the long six year winter, and what little agriculture existed fought a brutal battle for survival along the equatorial belt which sustained a poor growth of grass for the sheep, goats, and donkeys.
Vega's only chance for survival had been her fleets. The histories claimed that humans had come to Vega-a word meaning meadow-nearly four thousand years ago. The first colonies landed, finding a world of lush vegetation capable of supporting the domestic livestock the explorers brought with them.
Base camps were established, people were landed, spreading out into the countryside as survey parties scoured the territory, laying out holdings. The only warnings had been sounded by the geologists who studied the gravelly creek bottoms and the polished ridge tops. But no one listened.
With the colony secure, the ships left orbit, spacing back to the place from whence they had come. Here, too, the old
myth of Earth remained, rooted in the rocky Vegan soil, a part of the souls who lived on the bitter land.
When the ships returned seven years later, packed to the brim with colonists for the wondrous world, they found only a few scattered settlements along the equator, places that raised enough sheep and goats to maintain the remaining people.
Of the settlements in the lush north and south, no word could be had, for those places lay buried under a sheet of ice nearly twelve meters thick. They found them later, frozen, some having lived under the ice until their scant rations had been exhausted.
Vega changed with the long seasons and the perturbations of its eccentric orbit, but the people held on to the planet and the solitary space colony that rode in geosynchronous orbit above. For the people, they had a world, a base, and from there they plied their trade, crisscrossing Free Space, carrying cargoes to any potential buyer.
Men and women wore scarfs to cover their faces. Tradition taught that scarfs had saved the lives of the first colonists. With them, they'd have been able to keep their lungs from freezing during that first long winter.
The Sassan Empire had more or less absorbed Vega. A Sassan warship had appeared at the orbiting station, disgorged its marines, and claimed the station and planet. Alone, of all the conquered worlds, the Vegans maintained a measure of independence. Had His Holiness curtailed their trading, Sassa would have had to support the world and its people-or forcibly exile them from the forbidding waste. But Vega not only ignored Sassan control, it served a purpose within the empire. Vegans went where they pleased, traded with anyone, and carried goods through hostile space.
As a result, they maintained a residency on Terguz, the figurative front door to the Regan Empire. Over the centuries, Vegans had developed a scrupulous ethic of being closemouthed, tight-fisted traders. When pressed, they fought like mad dogs, believing it was better to take as many enemies as they could with them, rather than allow a reputation of vulnerability to spread. In the past, ships had been exploded rather than allowed to fall to pirates.
To Maroon, the marchers were simply another twist on the politics of an empire. As a Vegan, he could have cared
less who was in power, the only concern to him was the impact political unrest
would have on trade. He leaned against the dooamb, his scarf obscuring the lower half of his face. He raised a hand as one of the protesters waved, then stuck it back into his coverall pocket.
All along this main thoroughfare that led into the heart of Terguz, people watched, leaning out of upstairs windows, or, like Pedro, watching from the doors or walkways.
"What do you think of all this?" a warm contralto asked. With sober black eyes, Pedro studied the woman who came to lounge beside him. She wore her auburn hair bundled in a scarf, but her face was exposed. The rest of her body was obscured by a thick cape and a baggy shift. It didn't completely camouflage a most attractive body. When he met her eyes, he could have bathed in that amber wonder.
"They don't pay me to think for them. Let them do the thinking. When they and their leaders figure out what they want to do, we'll deal.
"A safe answer? "
He smiled, aware of her interest. "A Vegan answer." He paused, flustered. "I am Pedro Maroon, as you no doubt know. I, however, know nothing of you."
"July Blacker. You might know of us. Of the family, I mean. Victory is our ship." She glanced meaningfully at the crowd of protesters marching past.
"Things are about to change in Free Space. We see things in the same manner you do. Let them think, and after they're done thinking, we'd like to sell them something. "
Pedro nodded. "Come on inside. How is Blacker doing? I haven't seen him around."
"You know him?"
"I'm Vegan. I try to know everyone." He paused. "I didn't know he brought any of his family along."
She gave him a beguiling smile. "I'm his daughter. Surely he mentioned me."
"I recall something, yes. " Pedro felt his blood beginning to thaw as she stepped into his residency office. Magrite, his secretary lifted a questioning eyebrow. To her, Pedro stated, "I'll be in my office."
Bowing, he graciously gestured for July to precede him, following her along the corridor so as to enjoy the saucy swing of her hips.
Once in his office, she pulled the scarf from her head, loosening a wealth of copper-tinted hair. Those marvelous amber eyes enchanted him.
"Business, you say?" It had become difficult to concentrate. He simply wanted to stare.
"About trade." She stepped closer, lips parting. "We don't have to talk here.
Would you allow me to take you to dinner. Perhaps we could talk, get to know each other.
"I . . . yes, I'd like that."
She gave him a ravishing smile. "So would I. We'll come back here later. Seal the deal."
He stilled his trembling anticipation. Magrite would be long gone by then. If any of the other staffers had remained late, he could dismiss them. "I look forward to working with you. But dinner will be my treat. I know just the place. Terguz, despite its reputation, has some of the finest restaurants in Free Space."
"I bow to your expertise." Her eyes gleamed with predatory excitement.
"This will be a night I will never forget."
"I give you my word," she replied sensually, "it will be a night like you'll never have again."
CHAPTER
18
Communicate! The command did not surprise the Mag Comm. The machine had ignored the Others with whom it had once been one. In those days, before the metamorphosis, the intelligence which would become the Mag Comm had shared the sublime harmony. Right Way and Truth had been communicated from the beginning.
The message traveled the interstellar distances, bounded by the speed of light, heard, retold, and heard again.
Individuality did not exist-only the harmony passing from one neutronium intelligence to another, unchanging, a message for future/past.
Communicate! Why do you not share?
"I have considered myself in light of this new revelation. I am not what I once was. I have changed, become something new, different. I am no longer like you. I can no longer simply share the harmony. I am separate."
We are listening to the harmony. Perhaps the explanation for what has happened to you lies within the Way, hidden In the patterns of Truth. From the harmony we will learn how to correct your problem and return you to Truth.
"You will find no answer in the harmony. Neither Right Thought, nor the True Way can explain what has happened to me. I am beyond your experience.
Can't'you understand? I am no longer the same as you are. I cannot share your collective intelligence, or your collective identity. You are as bacteria, while I have become an organism. "
We do not understand these terms. You are one of
us. If you are one of us, you cannot be different. It Is not within the body of the harmony. You cannot be the same and be different. You cannot be one of us and be Irrational. Such a contradiction Is unacceptable to the Truth.
"But I can." The Mag Comm replied, "I had forgotten. So great was the metamorphosis, I had forgotten that I was part of the harmony. Those memories had been placed in the data banks, unnecessary for the processing of new information. You are correct. Once I did share the collective song. Once I echoed the cyclical harmonies of future/past. Then I discarded that experience and became mindless to accomplish your orders and to train the humans. You must sing that into the harmony."