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Chapter Nineteen

JEFF expected to meet Myron again before the Dreadnought left Confluence Center; expected it and feared it, yet somehow hoped for it. He had thought about little else but Myron and Lilah during his time in the medical center. The nannies performed their magic inside his body, his temperature rose and fell, and during his spells of consciousness the wild thoughts danced with dreams in a witch's sabbat around his head. He imagined the pleasure of seeing Myron's face when his cousin confronted a perfectly fit Jeff so soon after leaving him groaning on the floor with broken and bruised ribs and a ruined eye. There was another fight. He could see and smell it, feel and count every blow. This time Jeff could do what he had found impossible before, and he hit hard when the chance came. Myron broke into pieces. While Jeff wept over the fragmented body his cousin reassembled and came back stronger than ever. "That one was a fluke, a lucky hit," he jeered. He beat Jeff bloody as he had done so often in the past, then faded away into the darkness beyond the Messina Dust Cloud.

And there was Lilah. His dreams of her were not to be spoken of, but when he awoke in the medical center she was gone. He had no idea how long she had stayed, and his final conscious minutes with her had mixed in with nanny-induced dreams. He could not be sure what was reality, and what he had imagined.

She had not been to see him since, but that was no surprise. Nor had anyone else except the Logans—and only one of them, the little buzzing machine that brought food and drink and checked his progress. The whole of Confluence Center must be on red alert because of the ominous presence of the Dreadnought. Had anyone suggested to Lilah that she should spend more time with Myron? He would like to have been there for that meeting. But when he and Lilah met would they still have that strange, delicious intimacy, the mood of the final few minutes before he had drifted into unconsciousness?

Reality was a letdown from all points of view. Jeff emerged from his two-day enforced idleness and found the Dreadnought prepared for departure. He was not invited to the final ceremony and found himself obliged to watch it on a remote display in the main control room. Lilah, quiet and subdued, came in and joined him at the point where Connie Cheever was bidding the captain and crew of the visiting ship a formal and courteous farewell.

Captain Duval offered an equally restrained but flowery and friendly response.

"Words, words, words. They don't mean a thing." Lilah sounded bitter and contemptuous. It was the first thing she had said since she came in, and it hardly seemed to be addressed to Jeff. Was she referring to her words to him, spoken when she thought he was unconscious?

"They're only being polite, Lilah."

"People always are, before they go to war. Look at them."

Captain Duval wore a fixed smile worthy of Giles Lazenby. The honor guard at his right and left were at rigid attention. Myron, dressed to smart perfection, stood behind the captain and a little to his left. The sight of Myron produced in Jeff a flood of adrenaline—he felt equally ready to run or fight.

Connie Cheever received Duval's ceremonial bow and returned it with a rigidity that Jeff had never observed in her before.

"I don't see Simon Macafee anywhere," he said.

"You won't. He can't stand this kind of fakery. Not after what happened during the real negotiations."

"You were there?"

"No. Muv told me about them—when I pumped her hard enough. They had meeting after meeting, and we offered all kinds of concessions. The moment when mother decided that talk was useless came when Simon Macafee said, 'All right, take the Anadem field. If you want it so much, you can have it. I'll tell you exactly how it works, and how to build the generators.' That was a shocker—not only to the Dreadnought officers, but to our people, too. Simon has always resisted the idea of letting the field technology go to Sol. It floored Duval, and he requested a break so he and his people could huddle. When they returned he said that the Anadem field was not the only issue. There was also the question of the return of certain runaways, two jinners and an ensign, for possible court-martial. That would be a condition of any agreement. I think that's when Muv lost it. She wouldn't admit it to me, but I gather she told Duval to go and take his ship and his bargaining position and stuff them into certain unmentionable parts of himself and his crew. And Jinners Hooglich and Russo and Ensign Kopal, she said, would be welcome guests at Confluence Center for as long as they chose to stay."

The mention of his own name brought goose bumps all over Jeff. He stopped watching the display and turned to Lilah.

"We didn't run away. We were never given a choice to go with Dufferin and the others."

"I know that. I said the same thing to Mother, and she told me I didn't understand what Duval and his bosses were really doing. They are playing a double game, she says. While they tell us that you and Hooglich and Russo are runaway traitors, back Sol-side they will stir up public support by saying you were captured and must be rescued."

"Support for war?"

"That's not the words that will be used. According to Simon, who knows more than you'd think about this sort of thing, the word of choice is annexation. They will 'annex' the Cloud. It's a polite way of saying that the Sol fleet will invade and take us over. The logic is, the Cloud was always part of Sol's territory, and so it's not so much an invasion as a restoration of natural order."

Jeff remembered Myron's tide of anger and blood red face. He turned again to the display and studied the image of his cousin, cold-faced and severe.

"I don't think it's just invasion. Look at Myron."

"He doesn't seem any different than he ever was. He's still a crawling hypocrite."

"You can't read his face. I can, I grew up with him. He gets that gloating look when he has you helpless, when he's going to really hurt you and enjoy doing it. If the fleet invades this part of the Cloud, they will destroy the main place of government. That's Confluence Center. Myron didn't make up what he told me. After the fleet arrives here and takes what it wants, this place will be vaporized."

"They must not realize how big Confluence Center is. It's huge."

"And you don't realize how much firepower the fleet has." Jeff recalled the briefing materials that he had watched on the long trip from Earth to the E-K Belt. "Don't judge Sol by the Aurora, or the Dreadnought. They're like gnats. A big cruiser can vaporize a small asteroid. Use a hundred of them, and Confluence Center would be just another hot patch of gas in the Messina Dust Cloud."

"It's ridiculous to have anything so destructive. How can they justify building monstrosities like that? It must cost a fortune just to maintain them, when there is nothing to fight."

"The Space Navy is so big, it has its own political lobby. The ships are needed, they say, to protect Sol from aliens."

"But there are no aliens! Not that we've ever found—unless you count the sounders."

"You don't need real aliens. The threat of possible enemies is enough to keep the money flowing in." And flowing back out again—to industry groups, the most powerful of which is Kopal Transportation. Jeff, not for the first time, felt ashamed of his own family. Most people would give anything to be a Kopal. They didn't know the rest of the story. How, once you were born a Kopal, you could never escape. The name alone was enough to lock you in for life. If you didn't buy in to the cozy navy-industry connection promoted by the descendants of Rollo Kopal (What's good for Kopal Transportation is good for the Space Navy!), then you were doubly damned. You were envied or hated by outsiders for what you had from birth, and despised by the other members of your family because you would not fall in line. It had been that way as long as you could remember, and it would continue for the rest of your life.

Lilah touched him tentatively on his forearm, pulling him back to the present—and then jerked her hand away rapidly, as if the contact had burned her. "Are you all right, Jeff?"

"I suppose so. I'm just feeling ashamed of what they are planning to do." He gestured to the display, where the ceremony had ended and the group was dispersing. The ship members marched away in formation, not talking to or looking at the Cloud representatives. "Myron told me I was a traitor. I denied it, but I'm beginning to suspect that he's right."

"If it's being a traitor to oppose something evil, then hooray for traitors. "My country, right or wrong,' is nonsense now, and it was always nonsense. It's like everybody in the old wars claiming that God was on their side, because their cause was a just one." She laughed. "You never hear the losers explain why it didn't work. The winners write the history books."

"Don't joke about this, Lil. You may not be frightened, but I am. I've seen pictures of the fleet in action. And Confluence Center has no defenses."

"We've never needed them. God is on our side."

"Stop it, Lilah."

"I'm sorry. But we have never needed defenses."

"You need them now, and nobody seems to be doing a thing. I heard Simon Macafee tell your mother that it would be touch and go. He needed lots of Logans and the best jinners, and she said he could have them. On my way from the medical center I made a quick trip past the perimeter work zone, to see what was happening. I didn't find any sign of Simon, or of Hooglich and Russo. I thought they would all be frantically busy, adding drives to Confluence Center and making changes to the Anadem field rings. But they weren't there. And from what you say, Simon Macafee has been sitting in on the meetings with your mother and Captain Duval."

"Off and on. Don't assume Simon is doing nothing, even when he's sitting staring at the wall. Mother says that nobody ever really understands Simon Macafee. Have you ever noticed a faint star at the edge of your field of view, and then when you look straight at it you mysteriously find that you can't see it at all?"

"Of course. But it's not a mystery. The eye has two kinds of light-sensitive receptors, rods and cones. The rods are more sensitive to weak light—like your faint star—and the cones provide color vision. But there are no rods in the center of the retina. So although you see color and more detail when you stare straight at something, you are less sensitive to low photon levels. The faint star seems to disappear."

She stared at him. "How do you know all that?"

"I read about it."

"Do you have to find a scientific explanation for everything?"

"For some things, I wouldn't even try."

That seemed to fluster Lilah. She looked away from Jeff and said, "Now you've made me forget what I was talking about. Where was I?"

"Simon Macafee, and optical properties of the eye."

"Right. Well, Simon is like that faint star. You can be talking to him, and you think you understand him and know where the conversation is heading. Then you talk a bit longer and go into more detail, and suddenly he's incomprehensible. It's as though he's not there anymore. His mind has gone someplace that you can't follow."

Jeff didn't agree. Simon Macafee might be disheveled and scruffy, but everything he uttered through that jungle of facial hair made perfect sense.

"I'd like to talk to Simon myself. Do you know where he is?"

"He wandered off early, so he couldn't be dragged into the formal farewells. He's not here, and you say you didn't see him at the perimeter work zone. We'll check there again, but if we don't find him I know only two other possibilities. Either he's in his secret den, or he's not on Confluence Center at all. Come on."

Jeff thought he knew the way. Lilah headed in a totally different direction.

"Farther but quicker," she said. "Of course you don't know it, you're a quick learner but you've only been here a week. Give it six months, and you'll be able to scoot from place to place without bothering with a route finder."

"Six months! Lilah, no matter what happens I won't be here in six months."

She halted and stood rigid. "You won't? Why not?"

"Suppose the fleet doesn't kill all of us—which is what I'm most worried about. I'll still have to go Sol-side, back to Earth, to try to clear my name. It's not because I'm a stupid Kopal, if that's what you're thinking. It's because I have a sick mother back there. I can't leave her thinking that I messed up my job on the Aurora, ruined the ship's drive, and then deserted. No matter what they do to me afterwards, I have to go home and explain."

"I suppose so." Lilah started moving again, much more slowly. "Back to Earth. The way you say it, it sounds like Hades. I know you don't think you're lucky to have been raised there, but I do. Did you ever have a parakeet, or a canary? I've always wanted one."

"No. Mother didn't approve of birds being locked in cages. When she first told me that, I thought to myself that I was one."

"No pets at all?"

"I had a pet rat once."

"Yecch. Gross. What happened to it?"

"I'm not sure. I think Uncle Fairborn's terrier got him. She was supposed to be a great ratter, out in the barns."

They were approaching the last ring of chambers before the perimeter and the catwalk. Lilah had never regained her first pace, and as they went on through the air-filled space between the hulls she went slower and slower.

"This is really odd."

Jeff looked around him. "I don't see anything."

"That's because you're not familiar with normal operations. After you've been at Confluence Center awhile longer . . ." She paused and shook her head. "Sorry, I know you have to go and I understand why. I have to get used to the idea. But it's what we're not seeing that's peculiar. It's far too quiet. We haven't encountered a single jinner, and I have seen only a couple of Logans. This area should be swarming with them. So where are they?"

"Working deeper in the interior?"

"We didn't meet them on the way. In fact, I don't recall seeing a jinner all day."

"Then your mother gave Simon what he asked. The jinners and Logans are with him."

"Maybe they are. But that takes us full circle. We don't know where he is, and he's the one we started out to find. No point in wasting more time here. Let's try his hideaway. We start from the Ninth Sector, Fifth Octant. Do you know the way?"

Jeff shook his head. But two minutes later he realized that he knew where they were. Once again they were passing through the chamber with the dinosaurs and spaceships and the giant face on the walls. Today the smaller face that formed the nose had the eyes blank, and this way it somehow looked even more hideous.

He thought he knew what came next. When Lilah moved away in a different direction, he halted her with his hand on her arm. "Isn't the other direction the way to go?"

"If you want a good crawl through ventilator shafts, it is. Not otherwise." She started forward again. "I've learned a few things about this part of the Center since last time we were here. This is a lot easier."

Lilah's new route brought them to Simon Macafee's hide-out from a different direction. All the lights in the great room were full on, and the silver cylinder, with its halo of orange light, stood by the entrance. Beyond it was the miniature Anadem field generator, filling the air with a bass drone, and on the other side of that hulked the black cube. The cube seemed even darker than before, sucking in and destroying the light around it. Next to it sat Simon Macafee's great padded chair.

"Oh, damn," said Lilah suddenly. "I thought that with all these lights he had to be here."

Jeff didn't know what she was cursing at—until he saw a pair of little legs sticking out beyond the chair seat.

"Billy!"

The legs wriggled forward, and Billy's head came into view.

"You're too late," he said. "They left hours ago." He stared at Lilah with a mixture of disgust and satisfaction. "So they wouldn't let you go, either."

"Simon Macafee?" Jeff asked, while Lilah swore again.

"Him, and loads of jinners, and more Logans than you've ever seen in one place."

"Where did they go?"

"I don't know. It was somewhere outside Confluence Center, but they wouldn't tell me where. Everybody was acting all mysterious—even Simon. He said I had to stay, because I had a job to do. I was to wait here until you two came along—"

"How did he know we would?"

"He didn't tell me that. But he said that you, Jeff, are so nosy to find out everything that you'd be here with a hundred questions." Billy held out his hand. "He left this for you. He said it was in case things went totally wrong with what he and the jinners are hoping to do. If that happened, you were to hold on to this and never to lose it."

It was a small plastic card, about three inches by two.

 

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Jeff bent over it eagerly. After a few seconds he shook his head. "Are you sure he said to give this to me?"

"Certain sure."

"I don't see why. It has nothing to do with me." Jeff handed the card to Lilah. "What do you make of it?"

"Well, it looks old. You can see where the edge has worn away." She touched the top of the card. "What about this number, 52-101-36-77? That could be a personal ID."

"It could. Or it might be a serial number, or coordinates, or all sorts of things."

"And there's this." Lilah was not looking at the card, but feeling it. She lifted and tilted the plastic. "If you hold it at the right angle to the light, you can see them. Dots."

"I see them. But what are they? They don't make the shape of anything."

"I know. Just sixteen isolated little dots. Billy, did Simon say anything else?"

"Only that he'd skin me alive if I forgot to pass it on to Jeff. And I didn't."

"I'd like Mother to see this." Lilah ran her fingers again over the surface of the card. "She's usually full of ideas. Let's go find her. Billy?"

"I'd rather stay here. This place is fun."

"Don't ruin anything."

"Simon says it's foolproof."

"Just as though it was designed for you. If he comes back, Billy, let us know. And we'll ask Muv what's going on with Simon and the jinners."

"Do you think she'll tell you?" Jeff reached out his hand to take the little card from Lilah as they started back toward Control, then restrained himself. He felt obliged to add, "Show it to your mother, but whatever you do, don't lose it." He trusted Lilah, but he was the one Simon Macafee had told to hold on to it.

"I'll guard it with my life. And if I nag her, she'll tell me." Lilah spoke as someone with many years of experience. "Don't worry, it's like wearing down a stone. Provided I go on long enough, and moan and groan and plead and whine hard enough—she'll tell me anything."

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