By the time his eyes came back into focus, the Tandesko was practically on top of him, hands outstretched. Ruskin had fallen against a seat and could not roll away, but his fingertip was pointed at the killer, and it was throbbing.
For an instant, their eyes met. Ruskin felt something queer happening inside himself; a long, terrible moment passed as he reflected upon his chances of survival, as he waited for Dax to fire the laser.
A metallic voice startled him: "GANZ—DO NOT! WILLARD—WAIT!"
He didn't move; couldn't move. Space-time itself might have frozen; nothing could happen; nothing could move, except the fast-running stream of his memory sluicing by him with images of the last few moments. Dax was causing some incredible acceleration of his thoughts.
((You recognize that voice?))
And then he knew who—or what—had called out. The gray-cased box. The copy of his shipboard thinktank.
"TRUCE!" said the gray box. "TALK AND REASON."
Ruskin's immediate reaction was incredulity. But the assassin, after a moment, took a step backward. Ruskin noticed that its right hand was damaged from their previous encounter—it did not possess instant healing, then—but the hand also looked functional enough to kill. "I can wait," stated the assassin. It stared at Ruskin for a few seconds before saying, "How did you get there?" Ruskin was puzzled, until he realized that the "you" being addressed was the gray box. The Tandesko, without waiting for an answer from the box, asked Ruskin in a voice that was smooth but with a trace of a lisp, "And you—do you withhold your fire, for the moment?"
Ruskin didn't answer. It was the first time he had gotten such a close look at the assassin: the ridged cheekbones, the deep-set, narrowly slitted eyes, the protruding bone structure where eyebrows would have been on a Human. This Tandesko was of a very special breed—more than an illusionist, a hrisi assassin, the best of the killers. It—or hir, since it was gendered, but its gender had no correlate in Human terms—wore a loose-fitting jumpsuit, perhaps one-piece, perhaps two, which seemed to hint at all colors while actually displaying none. One of its two eyes remained fixed on Ruskin while the other shifted, scanning the interior of the car.
Ruskin felt a faint vibration, reminding him that they were moving at a speed he could only guess at down a tube of n-space toward Room Zeta.
((He's asking for a truce.))
Dax's words stirred him from his reverie. He rose slowly from his awkward position, and lowered his laser-weaponed right hand. (Just you keep that laser charged,) he warned Dax. Without taking his eyes off the Tandesko, he called out, "Ali'Maksam!"
"I'm here," Max said, from behind him. "I'm unhurt."
Nodding, Ruskin spoke to the Tandesko. "Since it is in my interests to live, I will hold my fire—for the moment. Agreed?"
"Agreed," said the Tandesko.
Ruskin drew a breath. "What shall we do, then? Gain a mutual understanding before you try to kill me again?"
The Tandesko turned its head slightly. It might have been grinning; it was hard to tell. "That depends upon you—and upon our friend." It nodded toward the compact data-module lying on the floor.
Ruskin pursed his lips. Making no sudden moves, he crouched and picked up the box and placed it on a nearby seat. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Max still half hiding behind another seat. And at the end of the car: a forward view, arrowing down a long, glowing tube of light, an ethereal subway that looked as though it could go on forever. He was aware that they were deep in the body of the sun now, and diving deeper. Only the n-space field protected them from instant death.
((Willard, don't be distracted!))
His eyes flashed back to the Tandesko, his heart thumping. But the assassin had not moved, not even its eyes. Ruskin grunted and spoke to the thinktank unit. "I didn't know you were turned on."
"There was no need to speak of it before," the voice said.
(Why is that voice familiar?) Ruskin took a breath, trying to make his thoughts clear. "You seem to know this Tandesko," he said. "What did you call—" and he glanced at the assassin—"hir?"
"Hir name is Ganz," the box replied. "Yes, we are acquainted."
"I see. Then—" and Ruskin hesitated again, not wanting to voice his fears; he had trusted his shipboard system. "Then there is more to you than I might have guessed."
"A fair statement. You knew me once, by a proper name."
Familiar voice. Ruskin glanced at the box, glanced at Ali'Maksam. (Dax, when—?)
And a memory suddenly unfolded:
As they boarded Enigma, the Yonupian advised them of a software upload, ostensibly from Ruskin's employer . . . yet neither he nor Ali'Maksam could find a trace of it in the ship's cogitative system as they left Kantano's World light-years behind . . .
He blinked, as that memory faded and another one opened, this one farther back:
Walking through the lodge, he spoke with a black-and-chrome robot, which they had agreed would perform the hypnotic implanting . . .
"Jeaves!" he whispered.
"At your service, sir," the box answered.
He was so stunned that he almost forgot Ganz as he stared at the box; but he caught a slight movement from Ganz and his eyes flicked back defensively.
The Tandesko hrisi had shifted its own stare to the gray box. "So, Jeaves-copy," it said. "You are at Mr. Ruskin's service. Whom, then, do you truly serve?" There was a warning edge to its voice, and Ruskin tensed, thinking of their fragile truce. The truce was at Jeaves's suggestion. If Jeaves discredited itself with Ganz . . .
The robot's voice was unperturbed. "Don't we all work for the same cause?"
Ganz's expression seemed to darken, the eyes drawing inward slightly.
Ruskin glanced back at Ali'Maksam. The Logothian's eyes were faint, motionless diamonds behind his visor; there was no telling what Max thought. Ruskin backed a step or two away from the Tandesko and stole another glimpse forward, to their streaming motion through the n-space tube. He thought he saw something bright in the distance: the endpoint, Zeta station, deep in the heart of the star. He was reminded that time was passing. What was Ganz planning? And how long before Stage Four initiation and the beginning of the end?
((I estimate seventeen minutes to Stage Four. . . .))
The hyperstring was fast approaching its closest point to the star, the loop narrowing to a sharp cusp . . . and in seventeen minutes the final sprint to the core collapse would begin, the gensat power increasing at the very end. He needed time to prepare the mapping, to make his fine-tuning changes in the strengths of the fields, in the rates of temperature modulation, in the shape of the collapse and the moment of black hole formation: tiny changes that could affect the way the string was caught, the vibrations that would ring down its length when it was snagged and anchored in the singularity. . . .
He realized that Ganz was again watching him. Trying to decide what to do with him, now that matters were no longer so clear? What would I do with myself? Unable to think of an answer, he deliberately turned his back on the Tandesko and watched as the transport car arrowed toward a jewel-like bull's-eye at the end of the tube.
The destination grew with dramatic speed. The car slowed as it approached the station, and with barely a vibration, slipped into its dock. A small sign lit up: Arrival, Room Zeta. Then the viewing section went blank gray, and a portal irised open at the front of the car. An empty room beckoned.
Ruskin glanced uneasily at the Tandesko, who had not moved. He shrugged, picked up the case containing Jeaves, and said to Max, "After you." They stepped out into Room Zeta, Ganz close behind. A short passageway; beyond it was a small, unoccupied control room—a miniature version of central control, with two work stations. The room was brightly lit but windowless. They might have been deep underground; there was little to suggest that all around them, just angstroms beyond the boundary of the n-space field, were the fierce fires and crushing pressures of a living sun.
Most of the encircling wall was a smooth pearly surface. "Viewscreen?" Max suggested.
Ruskin glanced at the controls with a frown. He moved his hand over the center console. The wall blazed to life with orange light. He fiddled a bit more, toned down the intensity, and broke the display into a variety of perspectives and wavelengths. Everything was coming in from satellite remotes, over n-thread data channels. He spent a few minutes looking over the readings.
"Mind what you do." Ganz enunciated hir words with great care. The assassin had taken up a position near the wall, just behind Ruskin, where it could observe in relative safety.
Ruskin answered with mock cheer: "Feel free, everyone, to say what's on your mind." A light was flashing on the com-circuit; he activated the channel. "Ruskin here. We're at Zeta."
The voice that answered seemed a lifetime away. It was Thalia's. "Willard, is that you?"
He cleared his throat. "That's affirmative."
"You arrived safely? Did you see any sign of the Tandesko?"
Ganz's eyes locked with his and his voice caught in his throat. "No . . . sign. Does this station have control now?" The words, Keep control there and cut us loose, formed in his throat and died there. Even now, he wasn't willing to give up the chance for control.
"Fine-control and mapping are yours, and locked in," Thalia answered. "Stage Four activation will start in thirteen minutes. After that, your telemetry will be more reliable than ours. We're commencing shift of this station out of four-space now."
"Good. Cut us loose. Protect the station."
"That'll be our call, not yours. Willard—hold it a moment—"
His hand moved over the console, bringing up readings as he waited.
When her voice returned, it sounded more distant. "Willard, the guard that led you to the transport was found, murdered, in the transport station. No sign of the Tandesko. We're—concerned."
"Understood," Ruskin answered, glaring at Ganz. "Recommend you disable the transport mechanism."
"That's already been done."
"Then I've got to get busy here. I'll check in when I can." He cut the circuit without waiting for a reply. "And now," he announced to the others, "I really must get busy. Jeaves—" He hesitated, wishing he didn't have to trust the robot program; but he had little choice. "I'll be needing my data files. We're now at the main console. Can you upload?"
"If you'll plug me in, Dr. Ruskin, I'll transfer all the data for you," Jeaves answered.
No screwing around with it, either, he started to say, but caught himself. Ganz was still watching, evaluating. "Thank you, Jeaves," he murmured.
"Of course, sir."
He swallowed his anger at the false deference. Jeaves had double-crossed him once already. He handed the gray case to Max, who began looking for the appropriate input connector. While the Logothian dealt with that, Ruskin glanced briefly at the Tandesko and then tried to put the assassin's presence out of his thoughts while he studied the telemetry readings. (Dax, watch that guy for me. If it makes a move, I want to know before my ears twitch.)
((I'll do my best.))
(If I only knew what it expects me to do.)
((I imagine hir doesn't want you to know; it's watching for your actions to be triggered by the NAGs. Any obviously conscious action could be interpreted as a failure in the NAGs programming.))
(Then I'm at its mercy, unless you can decipher and simulate the programming. Or—I could try to kill it.)
((That might be smart.))
It took him a moment to catch the sarcasm. Even with Dax on his side, his chances against a trained assassin were not good. Better that Ganz could be satisfied, or fooled.
Studying the holodisplay, he tried to make sense of what was happening out there in the star. The K-space gensats should be readjusting their power as collapse approached. The hyperstring tracking was coming in, and he saw a small error that needed to be compensated for. (Dax, I need all of the faculties you can give me.)
((Coming . . .))
There was a blurring and freezing again of his time sense, a feeling of motionlessness in motion. He was aware of chains twisting and molecules rotating . . . and somewhere in a forest, two small creatures were climbing a pair of trees, reaching toward a dark fortress high above in the amber mist; and he knew that he was already in that fortress, but he was a prisoner there, lost in a maze of his own making, and he needed help in finding his way out. He had thought that all he needed was the ability to process information, but he perceived now that there was something even more vital.
But it was all shifting and blurring. . . .