Chapter Nineteen
CAPTIVE AUDIENCE
CHRONOLOGICPATROLINTELLIGENCESHIPBELLEBOYDXI
INTERSTELLARSPACE
ENROUTE TOGLISTER
“That’s it, Kalani,” said Burl Chalmers. “Not much else to see for the next few light-years.”
Kalani Temblar reluctantly pushed back from the viewport. Truth to tell, she had long since lost sight of the Five Goddess Delta Wormhole Station. No doubt the long-range cameras could pull it in with ease, but it hadn’t been that dazzling a sight, even at short range—just a collection of tubes and struts and hab modules stuck together in whatever way would cost the least money. Reluctantly, she pushed the button that swung the external shield back up and over the viewport.
Five Goddess Delta Station wasn’t much to look at, but it had been theonly thing to look at, besides Burl Chalmers—and she was, once again, about to be doing plenty of that in the temporal-confinement chamber. She hadalready done plenty of it on the first leg of their journey. TheBelle Boyd XI had just spent three and a half decades traveling from the Solar System to the Five Goddess Wormhole Farm. Kalani and Burl had spent that time in the TC chamber. The chamber had done its job and made those thirty-five years pass in a mere thirty-five hours. But that was a day and a half cooped up in a very small space with a very large man.
The run through the timeshaft had sent them seventy years back into their own past, thirty-five years before their departure date. The ship would spend another thirty-five years ambling along through interstellar space, so as to bring them to their destination about a month after the calendar date of their departure from the Solar System—though the ship would have aged seven decades in that time, while Burl and Kalani would have experienced only about a total of ten days of personal subjective time.
But those ten days would include two thirty-five-hour sessions in the TC chamber. Considering that it was supposed to make time pass more quickly, it was astonishing how slowly time passed in the TC chamber. What was even more astonishing was how long Burl could sleep at one time—and how loudly he snored. The TC chamber was in zero gee, and you weren’t supposed to be able to snore in weightless conditions—even so, Burl found a way.
And now came the time for her to experience it all over again. With a weary sigh, Kalani started to follow Burl aft from the command center down to the temporal-confinement compartment.
TheBelle Boyd XI might be a comparatively small ship, by Chronologic Patrol standards, but she was still a formidable vessel. Like all ships designed for transit through timeshaft wormholes, she was a long, all-but-featureless cylinder, with all external protuberances stowed for transit through the wormhole.
Her rigging for the long journey through interstellar space wasn’t much different. Only a few sensor booms were deployed, and the basic optical navigator viewports left open. Everything else was kept sealed shut. Interstellar vacuum was a whole lot of nothing, but they would be traveling through much of that nothing at very high velocities. Impact with one tiny dust mote—or even a somewhat thicker patch of vacuum, with a few more molecules per cubic meter—could do damage. There was no sense in exposing any more equipment than they had to.
She looked like most other ships in transit. But the volume and mass other ships would use for cargo or passenger appointments, theBelle Boyd XI gave over to weapons and sensors. When she arrived at her destination and started sprouting her external systems, she would look nothing at all like a peaceful freighter or passenger ship. Kalani had spent most of her time aboard learning the ship’s systems—and what she learned was enough to make Kalani’s blood run cold. Strange that a ship with such a pretty name could do such ugly things.
She had wondered about the name, in fact, and had taken the time to research it. Tradition held that the Chronologic Patrol Intelligence Service’s overt ship be named for celebrated intelligence agents of years and centuries and millennia gone by. Unfortunately, almost by definition, a good intelligence agent wasn’t ever detected, let alone celebrated. It was usually the failures that got famous—when they got caught.
If one searched all of history for generally admired, or even generally tolerated espionage agents, the resulting list would be surprisingly short. Perhaps that was the reason Belle Boyd’s name had been used on eleven ships—so far. Boyd was an agent for the losing side during a major insurrection in North America, in the early near-ancient period. She was captured more than once, and the last time she was, she wound up seducing—and marrying—her captor. Kalani was not entirely sure she approved of either Belle Boyd—the person or the ship.
But then, it had been a long time since anyone had much worried about howshe felt about things. With another long weary sigh, she followed Burl into the TC chamber.
WILHELMTON
WILHELMTONDISTRICT
THEPLANETSOLACE
When at last it came, the point of a knife at Elber’s throat was almost a relief.
He had certainly spent enough time waiting around for it. There had never been all that much to the village of Wilhemton, and after all the hard luck of the past few years, there wasn’t much left. Empty stores, empty houses, empty streets.
Elber learned a lot, and learned it fast, about just what hard times could do to a town. And discovered just how much easier life in hard times could be—for those with money. Back in Solace City, his daily stipend as authorized by Sotales would have allowed him to live in reasonable comfort—if he shopped carefully. But in Mistvale, prices had fallen so low that he had an effectively unlimited expense account. He could not eat or drink enough in a day to use it up.
Food was scarce, water was scarce, fresh linens were scarce, even heating and lighting were too expensive—for everyone but him. It shamed him to wave so much money around—but it seemed as though, within a day or so, that the whole town was absolutely dependent on his spending as much as possible. Money also made people much more willing to talk, about anything or everything. Elber asked a lot, and listened a lot, and the money smoothed the way.
Besides, flashing the cash helped make him visible, caused talk, and that was what he was trying to accomplish. It wasn’t long at all before everyone for kilometers in all directions knew that Bush Lord Destan’s old friend Elber Malloon was in town, and sure would like to get together with him.
Once that was accomplished, it only remained to wait and see if Zak Destan would take the bait. There was something nerve-wracking about waiting around to be kidnapped.
But it would appear that the days and nights of spending big and talking to everyone about everything had just met their reward. The feel of the blade against his skin was sharp and cool as the darkness just beyond the cottage porch where he had sat, night after night, offering himself as a victim, positioning his chair to make it easy to come up behind him. He never saw or heard the approach of the person who now stood behind him, reaching around to balance the knife point on his Adam’s apple.
“Take it easy, friend,” said the voice from the darkness at his back. “Nice, and slow, and quiet. Hands on the table, and don’t turn around.”
Elber set down his drink and put his hands flat on the table. “Okay,” he said. The knife blade dug in just a trifle as he spoke.
“Good. Real good.” The knife point shifted to the side of his neck, then was gone. “There’s a friend of ours that wants to talk with you. We’re going to go meet with him. Right now.”
Elber was about to reply, but then a black cloth bag was pulled down over his head. After one breath of whatever the cloth was saturated with, Elber passed out cold.
It was hard to tell for sure that he was awake. The banging, clattering, jouncing ride he was getting in the real world seemed all too similar to the nightmare ride he had just been on while unconscious. Nor could his senses tell him for sure that he was finally awake. The black bag was still over his head, and though the knockout chemical had obviously dissipated enough for him to wake up, there was still enough of it to make him woozy and make his eyes sting. Sound was reaching him, but it was oddly distorted, echoing and booming from all directions, the way it did sometimes during a high fever. He was lying on his back, strapped down at the chest and thigh on some sort of padded surface, his hands tied together in front of him, and his ankles bound together as well.
It was impossible to judge how long he rode like that, or how much of the ride he made awake, or asleep, or unconscious. Later on, he would have no way of telling how far he had traveled, or in what direction. He would even be hard-pressed to say what sort of vehicle he had been in. Some sort of clapped-out wheeled motorized transport, as best he could judge from the sound and the way it moved. He was probably in the cargo compartment of some sort of delivery van, but that was just a guess.
Elber had been born a lowdown, a peasant, and had found himself suddenly back in the lowdown world—though, as a visitor from the outside, flashing upper cash and wearing upper clothes. But for all of that, he was back in his old world—and the old reflexes came to the surface. If there was one thing a lowdown peasant learned, it was fatalism. Some things could not be changed, and there was no sense trying. It was best instead to wait it out, to endure, to preserve yourself and survive.
Elber Malloon closed his stinging eyes, shifted his position slightly to get as comfortable as he could, and willed himself to sleep.
He woke again to find the vehicle stopped. He heard the sound of slamming doors and loud voices and felt the movement of people climbing out. He heard a metallic door swing open from somewhere off beyond his head, then people climbing into the compartment that held him. Unseen hands undid the straps holding him down and the bonds around his ankles. They left his hands tied and the black hood over his head. No one spoke.
The invisible hands guided him, firmly but gently, to his feet, then led him out of the vehicle. A hand pushed his head down just as he stepped from the vehicle, presumably to duck him under a low doorway. The surface under his feet felt like grit-covered concrete, and something about the background noise, and the timbre of sound, made him think that they were at some sort of loading dock.
The hands led him through a set of doors and down an echoing corridor. At last they halted in front of a door. He heard the rattle of keys in a lock, and he was hustled forward and guided to sit in a chair set with its back to the door. Then the door slammed shut behind him, and the room was silent. After a moment, he discovered that the bonds around his wrists had been undone. He pulled them off, reached up, and pulled the hood off.
He was in a clean, plainly furnished room. Concrete walls, ceiling, and floor. The floor painted the sort of cold gloss brown used in factory floors, the walls and ceiling white. A bed, the armchair he was sitting in, a wooden table and wooden chair beside it. A set of shelves, with all the possessions he had traveled with neatly arranged on them, his luggage sitting on the top shelf. A curtained doorway to the left, the steel door behind him, and a large double-hung glass window in the wall opposite—with bars on the inside of the glass. He could reach through the bars to slide the window open, but he could not possibly get out. It looked to be early morning. He must have spent all night in the truck. The window looked out onto a small field, backing onto a browning forest.
It was almost precisely the equal in comfort to the cottage he had been renting. He would have considered it the lap of luxury before he wound up on SCO Station. And it really wasn’t all that much smaller, or plainer, than the quarters he shared with his wife and child, back on SCO.
He did not bother trying the steel door—he had heard the keys in the lock and the bolt sliding to when his unseen guides had left. He stood and pushed aside the curtain in a doorway off to the left. As he expected, it led to a tiny kitchen area, stocked with some basic foodstuffs, and an even smaller bathroom. All spotlessly clean. All quiet. And that was all there was.
Elber was born a lowdown peasant, and peasants knew more than fatalism. They knew to use what was given to them. He headed to the bathroom and got himself cleaned up.
He spent the day lying on the bed, sitting in the armchair, staring out the window. Peasants were good at waiting. Twice he prepared simple meals for himself using the food left in the kitchen for him.
Mainly he reflected on everything he had heard and seen since his arrival from Solace City Spaceport. Back in the insurance office on SCO Station he had learned it was important to weigh the evidence, to consider each fact not only by itself but also in relation to all the others. What fit, what didn’t? What preconceptions were helping him to see? What assumptions led him in the wrong direction and should be abandoned? What had Sotales really intended when he sent Elber Malloon, once and maybe future lowdown peasant, to see Zak Destan?
He found himself starting at the beginning, over and over again, checking off all the evidence, one item at a time—then, over and over again, reaching a point where it was impossible to reach further conclusions without further information. But he could only get so far with such lines of thought before they turned into sterile, fretful guesswork. He needed more—and he needed it from Destan.
They waited until twilight, and then the door swung open. The lights were low and the two guards were wearing hoods over their heads—though theirs were equipped with eyeholes and mouth holes. Each wore a sidearm, but neither had his weapon drawn.
They did not speak, but led him with gestures out of the room and along the corridor, one of the guards dropping back two or three steps to cover him in case he tried anything. But Elber had no death wish, and besides, he was already going where he wanted to go.
They led him outside, down a short flight of steps, and onto a dirt path that led off under the dying trees. He didn’t get a chance for more than a quick glance backward, but what he saw confirmed his earlier guess. They were keeping him in one of the old agriculture transfer stations. Once, they’d been where the farmers brought the crops for transport to the cities. Now there weren’t many farmers, and even fewer crops.
After about a five-minute walk, they arrived at a campsite, seven or eight large tents pitched in under the trees.
That puzzled Elber for a minute. Why put him in a permanent structure while they lived in tents? Then he understood. The agtran station was secure. They could lock down a prisoner. But it was also a fixed target. Tomorrow, this campsite would be empty. Movement was their best defense.
Whoever, exactly, “they” were. Elber was fairly certain he was about to find out.
His two silent guides brought him to the largest tent and took up positions on either side of the entrance. One of them pulled open the tent flap and gestured for him to step inside.
He did, into a warm, brightly lit interior, comfortably furnished with the very best portable gear. And there, working at a camp desk in the center of the room, was Zak Destan himself. His black hair was cut short, in an almost military style, and his beard was trimmed short and neat, a darting, dapper triangle of salt and pepper that gave his chin a bit of dignity and style. But the eyes were the same. Dark, deep-set, expressive eyes, jet-black eyebrows that set off his pale skin. Eyes that could smile, or threaten, or warn, or laugh, or hate with astonishing eloquence. Eyes that warned of the dangerous mind behind them.
As Elber walked into the room, Zak stood up and smiled broadly. He was dressed in what looked at first to be a fieldhand’s coveralls—but no fieldhand ever wore coveralls that well cut, or well made. There was some sort of insignia sewn on the shoulder of the coverall, and the name DESTAN was stenciled below it. “Elber! Good. Very good. They said it was you—but I couldn’t quite believe it. But come and sit down.”
Zak led him to a dining table off to one side of the tent. A bottle of red wine was waiting there, along with two glasses. Zak gestured for Elber to take a seat, poured two glasses of wine, handed one to Elber, and sat down himself.
Elber accepted the glass and took a polite sip of wine. Did Zak remember? Was he trying to make a point? Or was it sheer chance? The last time Elber had seen Zak was on the night of the Long Boulevard riot—a riot touched off when Zak brought a wine bottle down on a security guard’s head. Elber might have wanted to know, but didn’t see any way to ask. Instead, he let it go at, “Hello, Zak.”
“Hello, Elber,” Zak said with a wolfish smile. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Doinghere?” Elber echoed. “I’m being kidnapped.”
“Before that. Waiting around tobe kidnapped, by the look of it. Drawing attention to yourself, dropping my name all over the place, choosing a place to stay on the outskirts of town where no one would be watching. That wasn’t all chance.”
“No,” Elber said. “Iwas hoping you’d—ah—come get me. I didn’t think I’d have much luck if I went out looking for you myself.”
“No, that’s for sure. That would have put you in a nailed-shut box for sure. But the way you worked it instead was pretty dicey too, my friend.”
“It worked,” Elber said. “That says something for it.”
“Well, it worked so well it almost didn’t work at all,” said Zak. “You were so damned obvious that it got my boys nervous. They had to check back with me, clear it, make sure it was all right to take you.”
Elber shrugged and covered his uncertainty with another sip of wine. “I’m new at this sort of thing,” he said.
“That’s what I figured. You’ll learn.”
I’m going to get more practice? How many times do you expect to kidnap me?But no, that wasn’t was Zak meant. He was talking about intrigue in general, plotting, games in the dark. “I guess I will,” he said.
“You will if you want to live,” said Zak, his voice suddenly earnest, the playfulness gone. “Whoever sent you won’t leave you alone after this, no matter what they promised. They can’t. Just by doing this job, you’ve already gotten to know things they don’t like people knowing.”
“I know,” said Elber. “I figured that much out a while ago.”
“So who did send you?” Zak asked. “Who sent you, and why?”
Elber looked Zak straight in the eye and wished desperately for time to freeze in that moment, the way it had in that temporal confinement up on Greenhouse when they did the Ignition.
He knew—heknew —that he had exactly one chance to answer the question, one chance to get it right. And it wouldn’t be enough just to give thecorrect answer. He would be judged by the way he spoke as well. Hesitate, seem unsure—and his daughter would be short one father.That thought cleared his mind, focused things sharp.
“Sotales sent me,” he said, his voice calm and collected. “He wanted to establish some sort of contact with you.”
Zak stared at him, hard, for a handful of seconds, and Elber had time to get scared all over again. “All right,” he said, and Elber knew he had passed a test, perhaps the first of many. He was going to be allowed to live, at least a while longer.
“So Sotales wants contact with me,” Zak repeated. “Why?”
Elber shrugged. “Hesaid he was doing it as some sort of favor for the groundcops, but I’m not sure. I thinkSotales himself wanted a contact with you. Everyone has always said Sotales likes to play a lot of games at once.”
“You’re being awfully honest with me,” Zak said, eyeing him thoughtfully.
“You want me to lie some?” Elber asked.
“I want to know whose side you’re on. You say Sotales sent you, then you start telling me what you think of Sotales. Turning on him already?”
“He didn’t hire loyalty,” Elber said. “He set me up—fake arrest that made sure I lost my job. He just promised he’d take care of me if I did what he asked—made sure I knew things would get bad for me and my family if I didn’t. I’m just a messenger boy. Why pretend while I’m here, with you?”
Zak studied Elber thoughtfully for a moment and emptied his wineglass. He set the glass down and reached for the bottle to refill it. “You’ve changed a lot since I saw you last,” he said.
“I’ve changed a lot in the last fewweeks, ” Elber replied. Changed enough to amaze himself. Wherehad he found the wit and the nerve that it had taken to get him to Zak Destan’s headquarters? But he knew the answer—it was the answer to just about every question he asked of himself.Zari and Jassa . They were motive enough to make any man do what he had to do.
“Well, here we are, having a nice chat, sipping wine. So what were you supposed todo once you’d established contact, for Sotales, or whoever?”
“I’m supposed to find out what you want,” Elber said.
“Thatshouldn’t be too hard,” said Zak. “I’ll take you around to one of my caches, and you can make a list of what’s there. I take what I want, and I want what I take.”
“That’s not what they think,” said Elber. “They think it’s something more. And I think so too.”
Zak snorted derisively. “Youthink so? Farm-boy Elber Malloon, master spy—andhe knows how to think? When didyou ever think a thought in your life?”
“Not until just a little while ago,” he said, calm and quiet, not even tempted to rise to the bait. “Not until Sotales set me up. But you said yourself I’d changed, Zak. And I’ve had a lot of time to think—and to see, and to hear, since I came back to Solace.”
Zak laughed, a little longer and harder than he should have. Maybe the wine was doing it. “Okay, Mr. Thinker. Let’s see how you do as a mind reader. What doI want?”
Out,Elber told himself.You want out, even if you don’t know it yet. He didn’t feel quite bold enough to say that out loud. Not just yet. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “But first you tell me a few things.” He hooked his thumb up, toward the sky beyond the tent. “Sotales and the others up there said you were just a plain old robber, a crook. They allowed as how some might think of you as a reiver. Eventhe reiver in these parts. Folks back in town called you Reiver Boss Destan—even ReiverLord Destan. Some called you Bush Lord. What do you call yourself?”
“So they call me different names,” Destan replied, plainly dodging the question.
“Names mean things. ‘Reiver’ is just a fancy name for a big-time robber. Reivers can be folk heroes—but they’re not respectable. No one wants his daughtermarrying a reiver. A Lord is lordof something—a place, or an armed force, usually. And a Bush Lord might be a real leader for the people. Ask someone what they call you, and you’ll know what they think of you. So what do you call yourself?”
“What doyou call me, Elber?” Destan asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Elber said, astonished at his own daring. But Zak had always been the sort to push harder when he sensed weakness. Acting meek and mild could do Elber no good. “I’ve asked you twice, and you still haven’t answered. What do you call yourself?”
Zak looked hard at him, sighed, and slouched back in his chair. “I haven’t decided yet, either,” he admitted. “It was a big deal for me when I heard them call me reiver, thenthe reiver—and then the Lord stuff started. But, okay, you hit the target there, Elber. Lord ofwhat ? Buy this town’s loyalty, give that mayor a new car, bribe those cops, pay for those weddings—and you’ve got a bunch of peasants who will love you until they notice the money’s run out. I oughta be able to do more’nthat with what I got.”
Zak stood up, paced back and forth across the tent. “And then, then—” He stopped, turned around, and glared at Elber. “Hell. You know what? Sotales was damned smart to sendyou . You knew me back then. I can’t pretend in front ofyou . I’m no mystery man to you. I’m the drunken thug who started a riot with a wine bottle because he got bored.” Both men looked toward the bottle on the table, and both of them smiled. “All right, you caught me. Ithought you’d remember.” Destan shook his head. “Anyway, they think I’m the big man because I know how to rob the convoys and steal from the uppers and get away clean.
“I’m a real big powerful man—until some farmer comes cap in hand to one of my boys and says his farm is dried to dust—or washed away like yours was, Elber. Farm gone, and can I help? What am I supposed todo ? Buy him a new one? Steal one from a convoy and give it to him? I can’t giveall of ’em food enough to see ’em all through. If I stealall the high goods fromall the upper convoys and hand ’em all out, itstill won’t be enough to fix it all.”
“No,” Elber said. “It won’t. But I’ll answer my own question now, and then yours. I’m guessingBush Captain is about right. More than just a reiving man, but not a lord of all. Close?”
“Close as can be,” Destan admitted. “I like it when they call me that. But what about the other one? What doI want?”
“To buy that farmer a new farm,” Elber said. “You near as much tried it, a few times, from what the villagers say. To get the medicine for the sick children—but you’ve told your troops to steal no food, no medicine, because that’s just saving here by killing there. Makes it harder to do good.”
Destan laughed hard and sat down again behind his camp desk, a little bit away from Elber. “‘To do good.’ The joke is that it’s no joke. I wake up in the morning, and I’m not thinking about the next hit on a convoy—I’m thinking about food for starving farm kids.”
He looked over at Elber. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m still a son of a bitch no-good reiving thug. When this blows over—I’ll look out for me again. But—but hell, Elber, you ain’t the only one who’s changed. Look at a kid, a kid from a family you know all your life, and that kid’s got a swelled belly and ribs stickin’ out and can’t run, can’t play, and the uppers won’t stir, and you’ve got a warehouse full of stolen upper booze and goodies that won’t do her a damn bit of good—ah, hell—youtry not wanting to do something.” He reached out a hand, swept the papers from his desk. “Hell, I even got a village teacher to show me how toread, just so I could study the problem better.”
“I know. I know,” said Elber. “But study all you want—you can’t do anything, Zak. Nothing that will do any good. Not down here.”
“What are you talking about? I’m going to do plenty. New plan, different plan.”
“Let me do some more guessing,” Elber said. “No more just stealing from the uppers. You’re going to chase the uppers out, do what they’re supposed to do—take care of the lowdowns. ’Cause the uppers—they’ve broken their side of the deal. We do the hard work, they keep us safe. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But now it’s not happening that way.”
Destan glared at Elber. “Your guessing is a little too good,” he said. “You working for friends who’ve been listening in?”
“I don’t need to,” Elber said. “And I don’t think they needed to listen. They just needed tolook —at you, at all the other reiver bands popping up. My guess is Sotales is contacting all of them, as best he can, using people like me, when he can, other ways when they have to. He’s the chess player, and I’m one of his pieces. He’s putting his pieces where he needs them for the next part of the game.”
“And what is the next part? To buy the reivers off?” Destan growled. “Is that why you’re here? A big bag of cash for me, and I won’t care so much if Farmer Muglehorner’s daughter dies of starvation?”
“No, Zak,” Elber said gently. “That’s why it’s me they sent.” He patted himself on the chest. “That’s why Sotales chosethis chess piece instead of some other one. You know my little boy’s buried out there, in a grave that got flooded over when the waters came. Buy you off for trying to help, and I’d be dancing on little Belrad’s grave.”
Destan grunted. “Maybe so. Then why are you here?”
Elber shook his head. “Ithink I’m here to have you tell me you’re going to start a revolt if the uppers don’t do what they should, and make things right. Then I’m supposed to go back and tell them that and have you see I’m a good little messenger boy. Maybe then, maybe later, the grown-ups will push me aside and take over. Then, maybe, you’ll hold off your revolt for a while, while everyone negotiates, and you cut a deal everyone can live with—for a while. You get to see they stick to the bargain, whatever it turns out to be.
“Then—then when things turnreally bad, maybe you’ll trust them enough to believe the truth about the real bad news.” Elber looked hard at Destan. “You and the other reivers are getting stronger—groundcops and all the uppers are getting weaker. Start a relationship with you, now, they figure, and it’ll save time and lives later on, when the crunch hits and you really need to talk and act fast.”
“What crunch? What are you talking about?”
“The news they figure no one down here is ready for yet,” said Elber. “But I think I’ve got it figured out, now, and maybe you’ll believe it coming from me, now. If I tell you now, and make you believe—maybe, maybe, I can save time, and lives. So here goes.”
If. If he could make Zak see that, now, today, then how many lives would be saved? “It’s not just this valley, or bad weather the last couple of years, Zak. It’s theplanet . You can’t see it from here, but I can from up there. Look out the window from SCO Station every day and you’d see it too. Theplanet is dying. The uppers can’t fix it. No one can.”
“What are you talking about?” Destan objected. “How can a whole planet die?”
“Ask anyone from Glister,” Elber replied. “I’ll bet there were a lot of protests and revolts there, too, before the end came. ‘Fix it or we’ll take over and fix it ourselves!’ Is that pretty much what you want to tell the uppers?”
Destan picked up a pen, doodled aimlessly on a scratch pad, then dropped the pen and crumpled up the paper. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Pretty much. The uppers sure aren’t doing the job.”
“How you going to fix it, Zak?How? What aren’t they doing that you will? Relief supplies only last as long as there’s a place in decent shape to send the relief from. Look around you. Remember what this landused to be like. Hell, remember what it was likelast year . The house is on fire, halfway burned down, and you want to kick out the firefighters and put your own people in charge of putting it out. Makes sense if the firefightersare slacking off—but suppose they’re doing their best, but there’s no water for the hoses? And even if the uppers don’t fight you at all, what about the time and effort lost in the handover? Besides, they will fight. You know it.”
“‘Only fools fight in a burning house,’ ” Destan said. “Once they see that they can’t stop us—”
“It’ll be too late. The house will be burned down. It’s already too late, Zak.”
“You ought to be more careful, Elber. It’s not too smart to get your kidnapper angry at you.”
“I’ll risk it,” Elber said. “Kicking out the uppers won’t do any good. All your plans won’t help. Fixes to the rules won’t fix anything, food buy-ups will just drive prices up, and it’s fool’s work to repair buildings and machines that will have to be abandoned in an evac anyway. The sooner you realize I’m right, the sooner you can start thinking fresh, the better a deal you can get for your people.Your people, Zak.”
“What do you mean,mine ?” Destan demanded.
“You wouldn’t be planning to take them from the uppers if you didn’t feel they were yours to begin with. They started being yours the second you wanted to do something about that starving farmer’s baby.”
“Damn you!”
“Tell me it’s not true,” Elber said.
The room was silent for a time, and the night outside seemed to grow darker, though the lights in the room stayed as bright as ever. Destan glared at Elber, but Elber returned that gaze, steady and calm, though his heart was pounding.
At last Destan called out, “Halbern!”
One of the troopers reappeared at the tent flap. “Sir?”
“Escort our friend back to his box,” he said. “Stick him in there and keep him there until I say so.”
“Yes, sir.”
Elber stood up and crossed the tent, wondering if he was going to pay for his pretty speeches with his life.
As his captors led him back, stumbling through the darkness to the agtran station, he tried to tell himself it didn’t matter. He had delivered his warning—a louder, clearer warning than Sotales had intended. If they killed him, the warning would still have been delivered. But maybe it did matter—a lot.
Sotales had plainly felt Destan wasn’t ready to hear the whole story—otherwise he would have arranged for Elber, or some other courier, to tell it. Instead he had felt it wiser to start with a slow, cautious approach, establishing contact, getting the lines of communication open, so they’d be ready for use later on.And you decided to be the big smart guy and slice through all that, Elber told himself.Suppose Sotales was right, and Destan not only wasn’t ready to listen—suppose thanks to my pushing him too hard now he neverbelieves? Kills me, kills the next guy to try, tells himself it’s all a plot—and all the people he could have saved, should have saved, wind up dead?
Elber tripped over a tree root and went sprawling, facefirst, into the ground, barely getting his hands in front of him in time. His guards waited impassively as he stood up, brushed himself off, and resumed the walk.Or suppose you’ve just plain guessed wrong—about the planet dying, about what Sotales has in mind, about where they’re supposed to go? Then what?
He kept moving, one foot in front of the other, on through the dead woods. He had meant well.
But Elber Malloon was learning the hard way that just meaning well could be a hell of a good way to make the problem twice as big.
He moved on through the darkness, straining to see his way ahead.
Zak Destan paced angrily back and forth across the interior of his tent.Damn the little twerp! Damn the little hayseed, better-than-you, do-the-right-thing, lowdown, know-it-all little twerp! Come in here with a story like that—especially when it’s true.
He stopped pacing for a minute and poured himself another glass of wine from the bottle.True . Itwas true, and, in his gut, he knew it.That wasn’t the part that bothered him. What bothered him was that he saw it, saw it clearly, the second it was in front of his face. Things had been getting worse for so long it was hard to see how they could ever get better. There was one other thing that got him mad—damned angry in fact—at himself. Maybe without really intending it, Elber had rubbed Zak’s nose in something, something he hadn’t even been aware of before.
He, Zak Destan, Bush Lord—well, Bush Captain of Wilhemton District, would-be leader of a lowdown rebellion, had still had in his head the idea that the upperscould fix it all—but simply refused. His plan for rebellion had been simply to take over and force them to make it all better.
It was part of the culture he’d been raised in, the culture that had molded Solace, and been molded by Solace, since the first days of the terraforming effort. He’d been bred and trained for so long to believe that the uppers could dole out whatever rewards they liked, he had, quite unconsciously, clung to that instinct, that hope.
He snarled at nothing at all, finished his glass of wine at one gulp, then took a long pull of the bottle. He’d made himself a big noise, a big man. Reiver Lord! Bush Lord! And then along came Elber know-it-all Malloon.
And all of a sudden Zak was forced to ask himself if he was truly leading a rebellion—or if he had merely been stirring up enough trouble so they’d pay attention when he went, yelling loudly, waving a gun, but even so, cap in hand, to the Big Manor, to plead with Mr. Lord High Upper to wave his magic money-and-power wand and make it all better, please, and bow politely when you ask.
He frowned and set down the empty bottle. He was tempted to call for another, but thought better of it. He was blurry enough for a night when he needed to do some real clearheaded thinking. All right, then.Think. Think it through. It wasn’t just Wilhemton, not the district, not the country or the continent. The whole planet.
If so, what was the point in raising a warning? The Big Run had shown there just wasn’t room in the habitats for everyone on Solace. Zak had no idea of the numbers, but he knew that only a relative handful of those who had tried had made it as far as a ship heading for orbit—and even that handful had come damned near wrecking the habitats through overcrowding.
But if there was nowhere to go, what purpose could be served by “establishing contact” with the likes of Bush Captain Zak Destan? To buy him off? Keep things quiet, keep them calm long enough for the uppers to evacuate back to Earth and Blue Haven and the other high-class planets?
Much as the idea appealed to Zak’s streak of paranoia, it was far too risky a policy for a chess player like Sotales. Sotales always looked five or six moves ahead before he did anything, and it was almost inevitable that someone would talk—Elber justhad talked.
Then what? Whatwas the plan? Zak reached over, cut off the lights, and stared into the darkness, trying to think.
Elber woke up to find a knife at his throat again. The room was pitch-dark, dead silent, but he didn’t need to hear or see—he remembered what the point of a blade felt like against his skin. He would remember that for the rest of his life.
“I’m—I’m awake,” he said in a half whisper, not wishing to speak louder for fear of causing the knife to move.
“What’s the plan, Elber?” Destan asked, his voice a throaty growl next to Elber’s ear. Elber could smell the wine on Destan’s breath, the whiff of dried sweat from his clothes, a mix of other, fainter smells—coffee, machine oil, sulfur and smoke and burned gunpowder, vying with each other to tell the story of how Destan lived.
“What—who—what plan?” he asked, still muddled by sleep and disoriented.
“We can’t live here if the planet’s going to put four feet in the air. Sotales wouldn’t warn us if there wasn’t something we could do. So there must be somewhere else. Where are we going?”
Elber tried to shake off his fear, his confusion, his exhaustion. “Zak, Sotales didn’t tell me. Didn’t tell me anything, hardly. I did some digging, some guessing, on my own.”
“So do some more guessing,” Destan said, and the pressure behind the knife blade’s point increased by just a hair.
Give him an answer he doesn’t like, and you die,Elber told himself.Will he like the truth? “I’m guessing, I’m guessing, Zak. But I think—I think that’s what Greenhouse is really for.”
“Greenhouse?” Destan demanded. His voice was still hoarse and angry, but at least the blade point didn’t dig any deeper.
“Think on it,” Elber said, trying to talk fast and talk calm, in pitch-dark, with a knife resting on the big vein in his neck. “All that time and money for the NovaSpot job. They say it’s all so they can fix up domes, and build new domes, start up the bio projects to grow new breeding stock, revive Solace, fix things up again. But if I’m right, and Solace is too far gone for a fix-up, Kalzant and the uppers know that better’n anyone.They’ve got all the info. So why spend on NovaSpot unless they’re going to use Greenhouse for somethingelse big enough to make the job worth it—a job that’ll need all the domes and gear they’re talking about?”
“Greenhouse can’t hold everybody,” Destan protested—but still the knife didn’t go deeper.
“I don’t know all the numbers,” Elber said. “I’m just guessing from the info I could get. They could work it lots of ways. Maybe they’re going to build a lot more domes than we think. And there are a lot of abandoned domes that they can start using again, now that NovaSpot is throwing light everywhere. Maybe Greenhouse will be a way station where they can hold people before evac to someplace else. They could just evac the worst-off—or best-off—from Solace and stretch how long Solace will last that way. Probably some of all that. Anyway they do it, they buy time.”
“Buy time for what? To fix the planet proper?”
Elber shrugged, and instantly regretted the movement, as it jogged Destan’s hand and caused the knife point to scrape back and forth against his throat. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe just so more people can get away when they evacuate to other planets.”
Destan grunted, and remained silent for a moment. Finally, the knife point vanished from Elber’s throat. He heard motion across the room, then the light bloomed on, blinding-bright for a moment before his eyes adjusted. He levered himself up on his arm, then swung his feet out of bed. He watched as Destan pulled a set of infrared goggles down off his face, so they hung by a strap around his neck. Destan grabbed a chair from by the table, and dropped into it heavily. “Okay,” he said. “Your guessing gets you about where mine gets me.”
So I get to live,Elber thought. “Good,” he said. “So what next?”
“You got ways to contact Sotales,” Destan said.
It wasn’t a question, but Elber answered it. “Yeah, sure.”
“So use one of them. Tell him whatever it’ll take to get me a meeting with someone who can deal. Someone who can make things—big things—happen. I want you to stay around here too. You’re a direct line to Sotales, and I might need that. But when the big upper comes, I want to hear a deal, an offer—and I want to hear about Greenhouse in the offer, and something about getting my people there. I’ll listen to whatever offer they make, and I’m reasonable. I know Greenhouse ain’t ready yet—they’re still putting the place back together, now that the NovaSpot is done. So I’ll be calm about times, schedules, and so on—but I won’t accept less than I need.
“And if Idon’t hear something I can agree to, or if they don’t keep their side of the deal—well, Wilhemton District isn’t going to be a very nice place to be a cop—or an upper. If they won’t take us someplace we can live safe—we’re going to have to take, and take, and take, just to live at all—andno one around here is going to live safe. Make me a good offer, keep up to the deal we make, and things will be nice and safe and quiet here for everyone. You got all that?”
Elber, barely daring to move, still feeling the bite of that knife in his throat, forced himself to nod, to speak. “I’ve got it.”
“Good,” Destan said, and stood up. He headed for the door. “My people brought all the gear you had with you. Contact Sotales. You have what you need.”
Another not-question. Elber glanced over his possessions, neatly arrayed on the open shelves. His eyes lit on a fold-frame flat-photo of Jassa and Zari that he had brought along. One of Destan’s people had carefully set it right where he could see it from anywhere in the room. “Yeah,” he said.Everything I need except them.
“Good. Then you’ll stay here for the time being. We’ll keep you safe, but you’ll get exercise and time outside and so on. Tell your guards if you have problems, or need something.”
Destan walked to the steel door, knocked on it, and an unseen someone outside unbolted it. He left without another word, and the steel door boomed shut behind him and the lock bolt slammed home.
Elber nodded faintly at the empty room, trying to tell himself that it was good news, that Zak Destan had done exactly what he had hoped he would do.
But they were, all of them, a long way from being safe. Sotales might or might not wheel out a big enough shot to make Zak happy. But even if he did, that was not to say Zak would agree to the deal that was offered—or that Zak would keep his side of the bargain. Bush Captain Destan would—but suppose it turned out Zak was just a no-account reiver after all?
Between time zones, message queues, and his other duties, it was nearly a full day later when Olar Sotales received the message from Elber. Despite the elaborate bugging system built into Elber Malloon’s body and possessions, Sotales didn’t even know Elber had indeed made contact until Elber himself reported in.
Olar Sotales didn’t like being surprised, and he did not like machines that didn’t work. But when he checked, he found that the bugging system was working perfectly. It was simply that various technical limitations, and the security situation, meant that it took a while for the data dumps to find their way to Sotales, then more time for his ArtInts to process them and edit them down into something marginally coherent.
He elected to delay his reply to Malloon until he had at least viewed the portions of the playback that the ArtInt had flagged as of most interest. But the contents of those sections—the two conversations between Elber and Destan—were so startling that he viewed them several times and checked several other passages, just to see if he had missed something. Malloon had made so many accurate guesses that Sotales half wondered if some mysterious someonewas somehow feeding him information.
He left Malloon hanging awhile longer even after that, as he took time to reflect on what he had learned. It was plain to see that he had badly—even grotesquely—underestimated Malloon. Still and all, the results of that underestimation were more than he could have dared hoped for. Destan was demanding, with threats, to get exactly what Sotales had hoped to get him to take reluctantly, after long and weary negotiations.
Malloon had done remarkably well, but that did not necessarily mean he should be rewarded just yet. It might well be best to let the fellow go on thinking he had gone too far, presumed too much.
And, of course, there was always the awkwardness, and even the danger, inherent in having a superb source of information. Sotales dared not do or say anything that would even hint at the existence of the body-bug system. He knew he would likely have to forgo a number of otherwise useful moves in the future, so as to preserve the continuation of the bugging system—and its wearer. After all, if Destan discovered the bugs, it was almost certain that it would be not just the minitransmitters, but Malloon himself, that would be deactivated. Sotales was not willing to risk that. Not yet, anyway. Malloon was likely to be very useful indeed in the times to come.
In fact—that gave him an idea. Sotales had plenty of sources and contacts and so forth in the spaceside operations on Greenhouse and among the upper ranks. But he didn’t know enough about the situation on Greenhouse itself, on the ground, where they were actually working on the habitats. And the habitats were going to be the key. They’d need them, sooner than just about anyone realized.
He could arrange for Malloon to be permanently assigned to—what was his name? The young fellow that had saved Groundside Power. Benzen! That was it. He could put Malloon on Benzen’s habitat-building team—doing liaison work for Destan, or some such. That would position Malloon to provide Sotales with information, not only on Destan, but on the habitat operation as well. It might be wise to start putting things in position to make that possible.
But there were other issues for Sotales to contend with beforehand. Malloon had said some rather unkind—and perfectly accurate—things about him. But he was quite willing to accept as a compliment the comparison to a chess player. This was indeed a game of position—and Greenhouse was where it would be won, or lost. He needed to get his pieces on that part of the board.
He would have to consider his next move most carefully before he responded to Elber Malloon. Sotales shook his head. The farm-boy had made a lot of things happen, no question.
Not that it mattered, really, but Sotales was starting to wonder which of them was the pawn—and which the player.