Back | Next
Contents

18

 

Nauc/Cainsville, April 9—10

WAY BACK IN 2042 or 2043, Hastings Willoughby had made a tour through Southeast Asia and called in on the sultan of Banzarak. Although young and still new on his throne, Kassan'assan had impressed the Secretary General as being already much more than the figurehead his constitutional position decreed.

Just as Banzarakian culture was a mishmash of many elements contributed by its neighbors—Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and even jungle animism—so the people themselves comprised a blend of many races. Normally they tended toward a nondescript average, but occasionally the melt would throw up someone quite extraordinary. Kassan'assan was one such, and so was his youngest sister, Princess Alya. Her beauty had been obvious even then, when she could not have been more than twelve—slight and dark, already sporting a cataract of heavy midnight hair and eyes enshrining all the ancient mystery of the East. Willoughby had prophesied that she would break men's hearts.

At the moment she looked more ready to break heads.

The U.N.'s new HQ building was provided with an imposing grand entrance for receiving distinguished guests: marble steps and high pillars of porphyry. Willoughby had selected the design himself and it was a fraud, being located safely indoors, out of the dangers of weather. Somehow that seemed symbolic. So far it had been reserved for ceremonial welcomes to heads of state or heads of government, but today he had decided that youth and beauty should be given the honor they deserved. To the great disgust of his protocol staff, he decreed that he would greet the princess there.

His life had been extremely hectic during the last few days, and he was feeling his age. He thought that a couple of hours entertaining a pretty girl was exactly what the geriatrician ordered. He had even indulged himself in a cane to lean on, but he rather regretted that as he watched Alya come striding up the shallow steps in a very unladylike march, her small entourage hurrying behind her and red-suited bulls from the Institute in escort. A bearded hajji, who must be her political case worker, was whispering urgently in her ear, undoubtedly trying to slow her down. Princess Alya was in no mood to heed his cautions.

Yes, a heartbreaker. She was clothed in skintight opal white, an outrageous choice and a stunning success. Tiny ripples of fire flowed over her as she moved—ruby and leaf green and kingfisher blue. She was taller than she seemed at first glance, and slender. She could almost have been taken for a boy, so unobtrusive were the curves of the hips and the conical breasts, but few youths could have ever matched that neck, or the tiny waist, or the raging arrogance that burned in every move.

Willoughby was amused. Agnes had warned him that there would be tempests.

Cameramen fluttered around like moths as he bowed over the royal hand. Age honoring youth—her slender beauty and his sagging decrepitude—he knew they made an incongruous picture. That, and Alya's looks, would ensure them a few seconds on the evening news, which was all that mattered.

He had not prepared a speech; after the first few thousand, speeches came easy. He bid the princess welcome, as the honored representative of her brother. The bearded man held out a paper for her to read. She accepted it graciously, then crumpled it with one hand and threw it at his feet. Was he the cause of her vexation, or only the butt? Then she spoke clearly and in perfect English, saying no more than necessary and barely enough.

She was extremely mad about something. She was also very young. Willoughby decided that further ceremony would be an unnecessary risk. He led her inside and skillfully engineered her away from her companions and into a private room. As the door closed, he caught a glimpse of the hairy-faced hack grinding his teeth.

The Banzaraki royal house, as he recalled, was pretty well agnostic in private, in spite of its many public roles. "I would not offend if I offered a sherry before lunch, Your Highness?"

She was glancing around the little office. It was cozily furnished and cunningly littered as though in constant use. Probably no one had been in it for weeks, but the disarray suggested informality and invited confidence. And none of the imposing documents lying around was of any importance whatsoever.

She released a long breath. "A sherry would be very welcome."

"Anything else?"

"Some answers."

"As many as I can find."

Her reply was a look of skepticism. Agnes had that effect on some people.

He saw her comfortably seated; he poured the sherry. Then he settled into an oversize, oversoft chair that disguised his height. He raised his glass. "Your health and that of your royal brother, and his family."

They sipped. She was eyeing him like a fencer armed with a real saber. He smiled. Pretty girls had that effect on him.

"First question? No, I'll start. Did you have a good journey?"

"No. It was a zoo." The way she bared her teeth tended to confirm the legends of headhunters in her family tree, and not very many branches up, either. The lev must have been packed with reporters returning from Cainsville, and a beautiful princess would have been a welcome diversion.

He laughed aloud. "Your turn, then."

She studied him for a moment. "Why do you not mourn your grandson?"

"Oi! Your claws draw blood, ma'am."

"Is it thinner than water?"

"I commend your grasp of English idiom."

"I admire your skill at deflecting inquiry."

He regarded her while he took a sip of sherry, amused by the youthfully aggressive questioning. "Untimely death is always a tragedy, but I would be hypocritical to pretend any special sorrow for a young man I did not know existed until two days ago. I met him only once, for less than an hour. You had become friends?"

"Lovers." She hoped to shock him, but Hastings Willoughby had lost all his shockability long before this razor-tooth tigress cub was born. Still, his grandson must have been an extremely fast worker. Or she was. He felt a pang of envy at the thought of being nineteen and admitted to her bed.

Her poise was remarkable for her age, but that was a family trait. Willoughby had met most of the royal Banzarakians who had passed through Nauc in the last twenty-five years en route to Cainsville and worlds unknown, and he recognized the innate arrogance—but who would not walk tall after being reared on royal jelly and guided by the buddhi, the finger of God?

Yet there had been exceptions. A few had still been unsure of exactly what their inner demon was demanding, and those had been very scared young aristocrats indeed, meeting the unknown for the first time in their lives. Alya's eyes had borne traces of that dread two days before, at the press conference. It had gone now. It always did, as soon as they saw their path clear ahead again.

"Are you certain," she inquired sweetly, "that Cedric is dead?"

Willoughby had not thought of that alternative, and did not try to conceal his surprise. "I had never . . . You think that the Institute can recover a broken string? They've always denied—"

She shook her head vigorously, spilling plumes of peacock and hummingbird over her shoulders and breasts. "No. I've seen the math. The solutions are infinite. A string is only straight in theory. In practice it's bent by gravitational anomalies, just as light is. When they move, it moves. It wriggles, but you never know even which dimension to adjust, let alone—" She smiled, and for the first time she looked her age. "Sorry, Mr. Secretary General! Kas is always lecturing me for lecturing. No, when contact is lost, it's lost for good. But the break could have been faked. Stability is hard to achieve, instability is easy. The next window may still be available on schedule, four days from now."

Willoughby pondered that. "I swear to you, ma'am, that I honestly don't know. Agnes rarely takes me into her confidence. Almost never. I can see why she might fake a disappearance for the ranger, if he was the one who was going to lead the colonization."

"But the others are harder to explain?" The beat of Alya's heart showed just below her left breast, a faint rhythmic violet twitch on the opal cloth.

"Yes. Well, I suppose Cedric had become an instant celebrity, so she might fake a death for him also, if she were planning to send him off to another world with you."

"She wasn't." The violet beat had quickened. He waited, and after a moment she said, "And in four days I will not be on this world to find out—to know if he does come back."

Willoughby shrugged. "And Devlin Grant? His ambitions are no secret. He hopes to succeed Agnes. If she sneaks him back in four days, he will not remain incognito. As soon as any one of them reappears, then the secret is out. Dr. Eccles? She would certainly not stay out of view."

"No." The girl sighed very deeply and averted her eyes. Young Cedric must have done a fair job of winning her affections as well as her favors.

Momentarily Hastings wondered what sort of man could ever hope to bind this wildcat to a long-term pairing. She would never tolerate less than equality in a partnership, and would then instinctively seek to dominate it. Very few men could ever hope to match her in brains; she had beauty and spirit galore. She might select a milksop, of course—he had seen strong women make that mistake often enough—but he rather thought that Princess Alya would know better. Yet she would have trouble finding a man with enough durability to tolerate her flame without being consumed by it. He wondered what she could possibly have seen in the Cedric boy. Only physical size, surely, and therefore she had been after recreation, nothing serious. Not lovers—playmates.

"I had not thought of the accident being a fake, Highness. Certainly with Agnes anything is possible, but I really cannot comprehend how that particular fraud could have worked, or what it would have gained her."

"There was a fifth person on board, a stowaway. A man."

"How—I wasn't watching, I was working. Are you sure?"

She nodded. "You wouldn't have seen on public holo. I'd been given an honorary ranking on System. It let me see more than I was supposed to see, I think." She had changed position slightly, and the cloth below her breast was no longer tight enough to show the violet beat.

A stowaway? She was waiting—waiting for him to catch up with her own thinking. He had not matched wits with anyone so young and unpredictable in many years. He was getting too old for it. The last couple of days had been crushing.

"There is—or was—a murderer on the loose in Cainsville?"

"And also a spy, who sold the coin to WSHB. Not likely the same person, but possibly so."

Anyone could have worked out such things, given time. It was not this slender vixen's comments that revealed her brainpower, but the way in which she made them. He had never had patience with stupid women, or women who pretended to be stupid, or men who preferred either.

"You suspect execution?" He shook his head. "If there were a murder, then I am sure Fish already knows the culprit. Certainly Fish and Agnes are capable of dumping the scoundrel on the first handy planet. I'm certain that they've done such things in the past. They're quite prepared to take justice into their own hands."

"But not with four others aboard?" She wanted to be convinced.

"Never! I mean, Eccles purchased a Cainsville secret, but that was her job. I can't see Agnes being vindictive enough to kill her for it. The traitor who sold it—well, that might be another matter. Devlin has ambitions, but she could throw him out on his ear anytime. And the two youngsters . . . No. I can't explain the stowaway, but I think you are pushing suspicion a little far, Your Highness."

She sighed again and sipped more sherry.

"I have always understood," he added, "that breaks were not predictable."

She nodded sadly, keeping her eyes down so he could not see them. Even to him, unexpected death was always a shock, but the old had learned how to accept such things. Alya was much, much younger and was clutching at every thread of hope she could find.

"You seemed very annoyed when you came in," he ventured.

"I was. I am."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "All the stupid mystery." She looked up with the sort of smile that had once launched ships. "No—mostly I was mad at myself for being so dumb. I was halfway back here to Nauc before I realized the real reason I had been shipped out in that carton of monkeys. Hubbard Agnes lied to me, and I believed her!"

Willoughby chuckled, hoping to keep that smile alive a little longer. "She often does, especially if she thinks you should be able to work out the truth for yourself."

"It was my own fault for showing up uninvited at her press conference, I suppose. But she told me that the Tiber planting was canceled and I was to return to Banzarak!"

"She's a bitch," Willoughby agreed calmly, remembering Agnes's amusement when she had called him to drop this tangle in his lap. "When did the fog lift?"

Again a smile laid magic on the café au lait face. "Not soon enough! I should have known right away—if the Nile expedition had put Tiber at risk, I'd have got bad vibes as soon as it was suggested. I suppose I only notice when the buddhi speaks, and don't notice when it stays silent. Even Jathro knew! He brazenly told me that I was to come here and make a speech—and I still didn't catch on!" Of course, that was what was annoying her most—that the hack had seen what she had not. "Finally one of the reporters' questions made me mad, and I began to wonder what I was doing traveling with a circus . . . "

She shook her head ruefully and drained her glass. "My fault —I advertised my presence at Cainsville. Now I must make an equally public exit."

He nodded. "But my good fortune! We shall feed you a small lunch—about fifty guests. You will address the Refugee Authority, outlining all the priceless work that little Banzarak is doing for refugees, and tonight there will be a dinner."

She groaned. "Can I settle for a public flogging instead?"

"You have stepped in at a moment's notice to replace a South American vice-president suddenly indisposed. We are very grateful."

She grinned. "I trust his indisposition is not serious?"

"You are confusing me with Dr. Fish. No, he is just suffering transportations of delight over a delightful new transportation he has just acquired. It came with a blonde in it."

"And I go back to Cainsville—when?"

"Tonight, about midnight. You should arrive about 0400. More sherry?" The first glass had improved her disposition remarkably, unless that was an effect of his brilliant conversation.

She shook her head. "We should probably rejoin the world before your reputation is ruined, Mr. Secretary General."

"Probably. But ruin all you want."

Her eyes twinkled—moonlight on jungle pools—and then sobered. "One last question?"

"Of course."

"Two questions, I guess. But related. First, why did Hubbard Agnes pull that idiot stunt with Cedric at her press conference? Eccles thought it was because she had planned to announce something else and then changed her mind. But there's no sentient life on Nile—is there?"

"Not so far as I know."

"Then that idea doesn't work. It was not a change of plan!"

"And secondly?"

"You said right afterward that you thought she was mad. She knocked the wind out of you, and yet today you're as chipper as a cricket, and entertaining her discards. Explain, please."

"I fear that secret is not mine to tell."

Her eyes glinted. "For as long as I can remember, I have been entrusted with a greater."

True! Well, he had never promised Agnes that he would keep it secret, and he would like to provoke a few more smiles. At his age there could not be many more to look forward to.

"You should be able to work it out, as I did. I have known Agnes for a very long time. She is infinitely devious. Her stones are never aimed at less than two birds, usually more. But some of it you should be able to work out. She pretended to behave irrationally, and nothing so confuses the strategic-analysis routines as that does. That's why a good poker player likes to be caught bluffing from time to time—it is an investment. She even fooled me. And she publicly made dolts of the media, so their next attacks on her can be blamed on bias."

"I thought of all those points. They are not enough to justify the risks."

Were Alya not so lovely, he would not tolerate that tone from her. "No? Well, I knew the answer by the time I had returned here. When she pulled the idiot stunt, as you phrase it, what questions came to your mind?"

A crease formed between the exquisite eyebrows. "Who is he? Why is she doing this?"

He waited.

"Where has she dragged him from . . . "

He waited.

The royal eyes widened. "The organage!"

He nodded somberly. "Organ replacement, as it is practiced now, is a despicable business. Autografts are the safest, but they must come from clones. It is a secret, of course, but a widely known one. The cost is enormous—not the initial procedure, but the covert raising of the child to adult size. Only embryos can be grown in tanks. A body contains a brain, and a brain contains a person. Diabolic. A huge and bestial industry."

"Why is it not exposed, then, and wiped out?"

"Because it is the prerogative of the rich and powerful, Eccles Pandora and those like her. The minor flunkies in the great organizations know the truth and detest it—perhaps they would do the same if they could afford it, but they cannot."

"And Agnes was threatening to reveal the truth! It was blackmail!"

He smiled and reached a long arm to lay his glass on a paper-strewn table. "You have it! And she did it on world holo—the biggest, most blatant blackmail threat ever made! The secret has survived so long only because no one with real influence has chosen to fight it. But Agnes has unlimited influence. By the time I returned to Nauc I knew—mostly, I admit, because the calls had started already. The phone was ringing, as we used to say. Friends—I use the term in the widest sense—friends I had not spoken to in years were calling me to ask the price. I expect Agnes has been even more popular."

There was another factor, of course, one available only to someone with power like Hubbard's, but the girl had apparently missed that, so far.

"And these minor flunkies you mentioned . . . "

"They dared not expose the truth openly, but they slanted the reports—some of them. Enough of them. 'A hitherto unacknowledged grandson of Hastings Willoughby, raised on a secluded ranch . . . ' And so forth."

"And your reaction—that was why she included you!"

He nodded guility. "Even I was taken in for a while—and if even I assumed that Cedric was my clone, no wonder the rest did! She has never hesitated to use anyone, even me. Especially me."

Alya smiled into the distance, nodding. "So where mere bribery was no longer enough, you have been threatening ruin, you and she." Her face darkened again. She turned her cryptic oriental gaze on him, and it was deadly. "Then the two of you will hang on to power—and the organages will remain?"

He shrugged. "We shall see. Negotiations are still in progress, as the saying goes." He chuckled and pulled himself forward in the chair, preparing to rise.

Centuries of absolute monarchy blazed at him out of those eyes. "I am not sure that I appreciate the moral distinction, Mr. Secretary General. To prolong life at the expense of those other young lives is an unquestionable evil. You just said so. To prolong your own power at that same cost—is this ethically superior?"

How easy it must seem from the vantage of youth!

He rose stiffly, feeling his tin legs quiver. "I said that the game is not over, Highness. You must be satisfied with that. For now."

She wasn't—but then her anger faltered as her Toledo-sharp mind slashed through to another layer of truth. "There's more!" she said. "It wouldn't work without . . . There has to be more to it than that?"

"Luncheon, Your Highness?" Willoughby said.

 

They had luncheon, with speeches and more media coverage.

Alya attended a meeting of the U.N. Refugee Authority and read a text that was excessively dull, having been written by a computer.

There was a grand dinner in the evening, and the media were there again. There was talk of the princess's world tour being extended to include Latin America—and all this just to conceal the secret connection between Banzarak and Cainsville.

 

She was whisked away in a helicopter, one of a half dozen flying in variable formation. At an isolated and well-guarded airstrip she boarded an unmarked plane, followed by Moala and the two political nonentities and Jathro—who had become an intolerable pest again, now that his rival Cedric was dead.

In the black heart of night, while aurorae danced their spectral measures in the uppermost silences, the plane descended along a complex path into the unreported airstrip at Cainsville.

The size of it staggered Alya, but then she recalled that thousands, and hundreds of thousands, had come the same way during various brief periods in the past. If all went well, the salmon run would start again, very soon. Salmon? Lemmings . . . locusts?

Bees! A swarm of bees, and she was the queen . . .

She was rambling. Her mind had been tattered by another brutal day.

The Institute's passion for security showed again. Despite the remote location and the lateness of the hour, the plane was not unloaded until it had been towed into a hangar. With her eyes smarting under the arc lights, Alya picked her way cautiously down the steps to a reception party headed—again—by the inscrutable Dr. Fish. Everyone else looked as though they had just crawled out of bed, she thought. He looked as though he had just left a grave. He whispered polite queries about her journey and then murmured an almost inaudible introduction of Ranger O'Brien Patrick.

"Since yesterday's tragedy, ma'am, Ranger O'Brien has been appointed to take over Baker's duties. Dr. Devlin's are being administered by the director herself, pro tem."

O'Brien was lanky, middle-aged, and lugubrious. He shook Alya's hand, but it was hard to tell whether he bowed over it, or if that was just an illusion caused by his stoop. "The hour is late, Your Highness."

"Very."

"A quick update on tomorrow, then," he said. "There are still two worlds you have not seen. Quinto has been on our list for a while. It has already been overnighted. Like Orinoco, it is showing some disturbing features. We have colonies of fruit flies in the lab, containing planetary material. They're not thriving as they should. We don't know why yet."

What was bad for a fruit fly might not be much good for a queen bee, Alya thought muzzily. Lord, but she was weary!

"Usk's due in mid-afternoon. I can't tell you much. This is only its second window. We transmensed a robbie the first time. The data from that will determine what we do next."

She nodded, wondering why they had to hold their conversation in a vast and dismally echoing hangar, a dozen weary people standing around at an hour so godforsaken. "Tiber?"

"Tiber will be accessible early the following morning. The overnighters' reports will, of course, be critical."

Shivering with the dank dejection of the small hours, Alya was thus reminded that her time of decision was almost upon her. She had sworn to make absolutely sure. But how could she ever recognize absolute certainty? She might beg another three days, until the Tiber window opened again, but how could that help? If the instruments and measurements and analyses all said that Tiber was safe; if her intuition about it remained unchanged; if Hubbard and her experts then turned to Alya and said, "Well?"

Well? What then?

"I need bed!" she said firmly, and headed for the line of waiting golfies.

She trailed into Columbus Dome with Moala and Jathro and the other two, and they were all silent and morose and weary beyond care. Alya surprised herself by stopping off at the cafeteria and gulping down three straight cups of rank black coffee. It was 0414 hours. She needed sleep and lots of it, not coffee. She was nutty.

When she went for a fourth cup, Moala begged to be excused. Her eyes were red as embers.

"Of course!" Alya said, cross at herself for being so inconsiderate. Moala smiled, rose, and headed draggily for the spiralator.

But Jathro's two sidekicks went with her, and that left Alya alone with the lizard himself.

He—damn him!—barely looked tired at all. A faint leer of satisfaction twitched his beard. He slid a sticky hand over hers.

"Alya, my dear!"

"Dr. Jar?"

He shook his head. "When we are alone like this, you may call me Jathro. Of course, I realize that the sad loss of your young friend has been a great shock to you. You know I am always at your service, and if there is any way in which . . . "

Evidently even Jathro could read expressions sometimes—his voice trailed off as he registered hers. She hoped, though, that he had not been about to suggest what she suspected he had been about to. She would certainly have maimed him.

"You have my leave to withdraw, Dr. Jar."

The bright eyes flared dangerously. Then he rose to stalk away in a sulk. She was alone at last.

She sipped at her cup and then put it down angrily, spilling half the contents.

She did not need more coffee! For a moment she laid her face in her hands. It had been an utterly inhuman day. The only good thing about it had been that she had been granted very little free time to brood over Cedric. Merciless Heavens! Trapped, maybe for years, in a cell in hell with Devlin and that awful Eccles woman!

Why had her intuition not warned her? True, it never worked for other people. Only her own interests provoked a satori. Cedric had gone. She had used him, yes—or her buddhi had—but now that he was no longer available, she was sure that what she had begun to feel for him near the end had been something she had never felt for a man before. It must have been love, or at least the start of love. Certainly he had been eager to offer her all the love she would accept. Potent stuff, love—it was sticky on both sides.

Had he not been important, then, that almost-lover, that potential future mate? On a frontier world his outdoor skills and his courage—even his size—would have been invaluable. He would have been a good protector for her, devoted and competent. If his destiny had been to die on Nile, then why had she not received a warning to save him? Would that not have been to her advantage?

Or had his real destiny been that his grandmother had other plans for him and would never have released him to accompany Alya to Tiber anyway? To her buddhi, Cedric had been important no longer. He had outlived his usefulness. She shuddered and drained the last of the coffee.

Her buddhi had been having an off-day, obviously. After so many centuries of shunning cobras, it had not twitched when Hubbard Agnes had pretended she was sending Alya back to Banzarak.

No, that was not fair. She had felt no satori because her intuition had not been fooled by a lie. She rose. Her feet bore her to the spiralator, and it carried her up.

What happens at the top? she had asked Baker that first day. As she reached her floor she felt a sudden urge to find out for herself what happened at the top.

She watched the exit go by and did not move. The coffee was pumping life back into her, making her heart thump. Round and round . . . and that was fitting, because her head was starting to spin. Up and up, and she began to sense a soaring excitement.

Her intuition was not fooled by a lie.

Her intuition was not fooled by a lie.

Doorways slid by, curving downward. There were more levels than she had expected, dimly lit as befitted the middle of the night. Then the confining cylindrical wall vanished. The steps flattened out level with the floor, curving around to vanish into the side of the central pillar, as Baker had said. She stepped off.

The circular hallway was much smaller up near the top. There were numbered doors. Conscious of the wild beating of her heart, of a strange warmth that had started in her loins and was raging through her like a forest fire, she walked around until she found the one that felt right.

It was not locked.

The light was off and he was asleep.

But even in the dark, she knew. Her heart was trying to beat its way right out of her chest. She shivered with desire like a fever. She was reaching for her zip even as she closed the door, and she crossed the room without a stumble, undressing as she went.

Most women would hesitate to climb naked into a strange bed, but she did not. She knew who was breathing there. She was almost sobbing with happiness and excitement and longing.

He was important! He was, he was!

Back | Next
Framed