Текст книги "Forge of Heaven "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

“I can’t stay here,” he said, trying not to show his agitation. “Not when you do that, sir, I’m sorry, and especially not when you deny it.” He remembered his instructions, what he had to do. “I’ll report to my office, and if you want me to come back, maybe, but only if they say so. I’ll get clearance for your questions before I say anything else.”

“I won’t wish you good-bye,” Gide said. “Tell them, among other things, that they wantme to ask my questions. If I don’t get answers, it could be the worse for this place. Tonight. Tonight at 1800h, you’ll come back.”

“I’ll tell them,” he said, and headed past Gide, for the door.

The shell trundled close behind him. He hit the door switch frantically to get out.

“The door’s on mylock,” Gide said. “Do you want out, Mr. Stafford?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t trust himself to answer.

He heard the lock click. He hit the switch again and the door opened.

An explosion slammed him back, off his feet, skidding on his back on the polished tiles. Shock had hit all the way to bone and brain even before he slammed into one of the pillars.

Smell of burning metal. Absence of sound. Hazed view of blinking lights and something gold moving. Gide had shot him, he thought in shock, scrabbling after leverage to escape. The outside door was still open, past his feet. He scrambled to get his knees under him, and his hands slipped on the tiles, something fluid soaking his knee. Acrid fumes stung his nose and eyes. His hand came down on something sharp, and he felt the pain.

Sharp metal. A few feet away, Gide was over on his side, a living human body wriggling out of its gold shell and bleeding onto the tiles.

Gide hadn’t shot him. Gide himself was shot, struggling to get out of his confinement, injured, mouthing soundless words. Procyon stumbled up, dragged the man clear of the fuming plastics and torn metal of the shell.

Gide writhed around and struck at him, wildly shouting something that had no sound, no sound at all.

Angry at him. Blaming him. But he couldn’t hear anything the man said. Just the ringing in his ears.

He couldn’t stand here. He couldn’t be swept up by the police. He didn’t know what he decided in the next few seconds, but he found himself out in the garden. And after that he was running down the street outside, past scattered shocked onlookers in this exclusive district. He tried to tap in to reach Project offices, but when he tried a pain lanced through his eyes, and he stumbled half to a stop.

Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t call for help. He just ran after that, and Earthers being Earthers, people just stared at him without trying to stop him.

He reached a lift station and called a car, and the woman who arrived in it got out in a hurry and let him have it to himself. He programmed it for the Project offices and didn’t sit down, just hung on to the bar and hoped the police wouldn’t be fast enough to stop it.

The next thing he knew, he was walking sedately down a street nowhere near Project offices. He was outside Caprice’s, and why he was there, he couldn’t figure. His coat looked like hell. He brushed flecks of spattered plastic and white ash off his sleeve, but it smeared, and he took the coat off and dropped it on a bench along the frontage.

This wasn’t at all where he’d tried to go. There were blank spots in his mind. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here from the lift, but he saw his reflection in the shop windows. He looked like hell, and he kept walking, thinking vaguely he had to get home, and he was supposed to buy a present, and call his parents, and keep Ardath happy. But he couldn’t be conspicuous, walking around like this, deaf to the whole street.

There was one route safer than the rest, for somebody who looked this bad, duck out of public view down the service alley, beyond Caprice’s frontage. That was safe. That led back—wherever he had to go.

To his neighborhood, at least, eventually.

He had a splitting headache. He took his hair loose as he walked, hitting one elbow and then the other against the narrow walls of the service slot, but undoing the clip didn’t help his head.

He heard a buzzing on the tap, first sound he’d heard since…since he couldn’t remember. The office, he thought. He tried to tap in, but he couldn’t sustain the contact. He knew he’d done something wrong. That he shouldn’t be here. Whatever had hit him, he didn’t belong in the service alley.

Headache stabbed behind his eyes and made his nose run. He wiped his face, forgetful where he was going, at the moment, but he was sure if he kept walking he’d come out in familiar surroundings, and if he got home he could sit down, and if he could just sit down a minute, then he’d remember what he was supposed to do.

EARTH WOULDN’T BE AMUSED, Reaux well knew, to find out that the governor’s daughter was skipping from shop to shop in the Trend, growing less and less like Judy’s daughter in the process. He knew that she’d had lunch for two at La Lune Noir, where Dortland’s agents had just missed her—that fact had Reaux’s blood pressure already at max. Highest security in the universe, that at Concord, and a fifteen-year-old with a hot credit card gave Dortland’s best operatives the slip on a shopping binge.

And she’d, yes, been withsomeone, God help him. He hoped it was no worse than Denny Ord, who was only amateur trouble. At least she wasn’t alone.

But he couldn’t take time to stay with the succession of reports until they actually turned up something. He’d taken one anguished call from Judy in the hours since he’d gotten to the office, and since then claimed to be in a chain of meetings, when, in fact there was only one meeting the outcome of which he ached to know, that between Procyon Stafford and Mr. Andreas Gide.

So long as Gide’s ship was attached to the station, he had to assume his office phone was tapped. He’d asked Judy to keep off the phone with the family crisis, so Judy had wanted to go to her mother’s. That meant her mother would be on the phone, what time she wasn’t listening to Judy. And the media was still lurking.

No, he’d said. Stay put. If Kathy comes home, be there.

And did Judy do what he asked? No.

He’d told Ernst, long since: “If Kathy calls, put her through immediately.”

Dortland’s reports said at least two off-station interests and the local Freethinkers had attempted to hack the physical lines in the last twelve hours—but Gide’s ship had actually succeeded, and succeeded with more than the phones, delving into things Earth government had no business meddling with, before bumping up against the separate system that was the Outsider network.

There was, Dortland had reminded him, a Council agent on the station, who’d been reporting to Brazis, but who might be independent and without Brazis’s knowledge. Did they think now, with this ship here, that this presence was coincidence? Maybe that was what Gide was really after.

And Judy called him, crying that shewas suffering stress.

“Sir.” Ernst opened the door in person—rare he did that. His face was white. “Sir. The ambassador’s been attacked. Shot, along with the security team. Our two men are dead.”

Shot? My God.

While Ernst stood there awaiting a sane directive from him, and he didn’t have a clear thought, not for half a dozen heartbeats.

“Gide’s alive?”

“He’s alive, sir. Headed for Bonaventure Hospital, as the nearest. Mr. Dortland’s going up there right now.”

“I’m going.” It was the worst imaginable disaster. It was political, personal ruin. He couldn’t think straight. “Brazis’s man? Stafford. Where is he?”

“He wasn’t named in the report, sir. He may have been there at the time. Or not. That’s all I know.”

“Call Brazis. Tell him what’s happened. Tell him—hell. Tell him I’ll talk to him when I know something. Ask himwhere his man is. Get a search out for anybody out of district.”

“That’s under way, sir. I’ll call an escort for you.”

“Armed escort didn’t protect the ambassador, did it?” He was putting on his coat, and Ernst dived back to his desk, to call the security office. He was going to have his escort, like it or not.

If things were going to hell, rule one, the government had to stay functioning. He couldn’t abdicate the investigation to that ship out there or they’d start grabbing more and more power. The tripartite authority on Concord demanded that not happen, for the sake of the peace they maintained.

He walked through Ernst’s office, on his way out. “Call the advisory board into session. All police to duty.”

“Yes, sir,” Ernst said. “Escort is on the way, sir.”

“Call the Southern Cross. Advise them there’s been an unexplained incident, connect them to my handheld if they want to talk to me, personally, isolate the crime scene, and tell them we’re doing everything we can for the ambassador. Tell Dortland I’m coming. No. Cancel that last. Phone lines aren’t secure. Just call the ship. Get the translation staff all to duty: tell them prepare something, some explanation for Kekellen, fast, before he hears about this, do you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

He fastened his coat and walked out through the outer foyer, not surprised when four plainclothes security agents turned up somewhat breathlessly in his path and fell in with him.

“Bonaventure Hospital,” he told them. “Get me a priority through the lifts.”

“All secure, sir,” the senior said.

It might be the only thing on Concord that was.

PROCYON WAS OFF visiting some lord and had not returned. Three quakes had shaken the rocks in the last short while and sent pebbles and sand-slips cascading off the plateau.

Auguste, meanwhile, reported a panorama Marak ached to see—the two streams spurting out of the Halfmoon cliffs had joined, ripping out rock, forming one great waterfall in the midst of the Southern Wall, and a deepening pool at the bottom. A cloud of spray obscured the lower view from the heavens. But Auguste said it was a great deal of water coming in…and when the rock above it failed, as it was likely to at any moment, it would be a sudden, cataclysmic flood.

So here they were, he and Hati, patiently negotiating the alternate descent of their terrace, with a sea forcing its fingers through a barrier to the west, threatening to become a waterfall of unimaginable proportions.

Right now their new sea, so Auguste assured them, was only a spreading line of damp going out from that pool, saturating sand dry for millions of years. The pans would soak up a great deal of salt water and battered sea life as that shallow pool spread. The volume of inflowing water had tripled in one day. It could magnify a thousand-fold without much warning, that was the worse problem, and if the worst happened, thenhow fast did they need to climb the terraces?

Auguste said he would get back to him with that answer.

The eyes in heaven had other, more pragmatic uses. The watchers on high had spotted their runaways down midway, stopped on what might be a plateau with no safe way further down. That might be good news. Topologists in the heavens were trying to plot a reliable route for them to reach that site, as well as mapping a safe path up, and meanwhile the beshti were busy eating the green growth down there. The young bull might try even an impossible slope, if he spooked; but he would delay to move the females, and the females, already run hard, would grow less and less inclined to move from lush graze and run again.

Their base camp, up on the spine, Auguste had reported, luxuriated in hot tea and a leisurely morning. Their radio link had Fashti in contact with the Refuge, now that the relay was up and working. Meziq was in less pain today, and had nothing to do but sit, be waited upon, and heal, in their enforced wait. Fashti sent regards and wished them success, saying that they were all eating well.

“The rascal,” Hati said, when Marak told her that. She had banished her own watcher’s chatter in frustration, during the last shiver of the land. Ian himself was proving a nuisance, this morning, arguing with Auguste that the heavens should not spend any effort to offer them a path to the beshti, which only encouraged their adventure. They should not go down farther, Ian argued. Auguste, however, agreed with them, that there might be time, even yet, to get the beshti back and give them a fast route off the spine, which—Auguste hinted—might not be that stable, once the flood reached it.

Auguste had said meanwhile that Procyon was still engaged, that he, Auguste, intended to stay on duty through this shift and half of Drusus’s. That Brazis would give his watchers both a few hours’ sleep, leaving only Hati’s watcher on duty during the coming night.

Another shaking began. The beshti stopped where they were, and their riders bent down low to the saddles, to lessen the strain of a high load on the long-legged beshti’s balance.

“Husband!” Hati exclaimed, pointing straight ahead, as—at first silent, hazy in the distance—a section of the towering cliff face gave way, an immense promontory splitting from the ridge above and falling, falling down to the next terraces, where its ruin provoked a tremendous landslide and carried a plume of dust all along its course.

That might have been above their heads. They were lucky.

On the other hand, it might have spooked the beshti below them into another run.

Marak stole a look up, not his first, as he had watched for cracks and flaws in the rocks of the cliffs above them. They had avoided one easy-looking descent as unstable. Harder, however, to judge the terrace directly underfoot. Hati was curt with her watcher’s renewed attempt to question her, in no mood to give a detailed description.

He, himself, had far rather Procyon’s modest silence, at the moment, than Auguste’s worried questions. And if, on the other hand, he ever wanted information from Auguste, that cautious watcher always said wait, he would find out. What he knew was never enough: he always wanted to ask the absolute latest before telling him a damned thing.

“Do you judge it safe to continue?”Auguste asked of him, however, wavering in his support.

“Safe? Do we seem to be fools? It is by no means safe with the cliffs coming down, but our other choice is no better.”

Not wise to berate Auguste into silence. He was usually more patient than that. He was running out of resources, he was down to two watchers. And he had no wish to drive Auguste and Drusus toward Ian’s side of the argument.

“Forgive me.” He wanted a favor from Auguste and decided not to antagonize the man. “No, we are not in a safe place at the moment.” They urged their nervous beshti into a judicious descent down a sandy stretch. Beneath his left foot, in the crook-legged posture in which one sat a saddle, he had empty air. A cloud of dust still lingered where the section of cliff had come down, the last of the ruin just now reaching the basin floor.

Let the oncoming flood begin to saturate the ground, however slow its advance, then more of the cliff might come down. He foresaw that event, looking very differently at the ridge above and around them. The watchers aloft could not see the rocks as they were, split with ancient cracks, sandstone that had resisted wind and rain, but which might not resist saturation, basalt layers which occurred in natural pillars, already fractured, that strong current could carry apart. Seawater rising and lapping about the base of these cliffs could seep through cracks, eating toward the spine to the layered rock of the Needle Gorge itself, so that this might not be the future shore—only a half-drowned island.

The rock fall and its earthshaking thunder played over and over in memory. He felt an unaccustomed fear, and thought that, on this occasion, Ian could have been right about the rocket, but Ian was not right now. Ian and his trucks or an arriving column of riders could not be fast enough to rescue them.

And knowing that Ian and Auguste were likely engaged in debate on his case, he did what he rarely did: he tapped into the dialogue.

“Marak,”Ian said, recognizing his arrival. “Where are you now?”

“I thought you knew.”

“In general, yes, well down off the ridge, not taking advice from anyone. Give up this chase, Marak, in all friendship. Your position is growing far too precarious.”

“Once the sea arrives, very much too precarious. This whole expanse of cliffs is fissured and apt to give passage to water going toward the gorge, Ian. A section of the cliffs just gave way in the last quake. All our arguments aside, we are not safe here. We need the beshti now to get ourselves and the boys out of here, back toward the Plateau.”

A small silence. Ian was considering his argument. “If it’s that dire, go down now, do you hear me? I can send a plane to the basin.”

“I have young men waiting up on the rim.”

“If you need rescue that badly, Marak, you and Hati. I can save you. If it comes to that. Don’t refuse the thought. I can get you out, if you don’t wait too long…or divert yourselves in a useless chase. Go straight down now. I’ll send a caravan after the others. But get yourself and Hati out.”

Hati’s danger was, Ian knew damned well, the thought hardest for him to bear. He was hardly subtle.

“Save your plane, Ian. We shall find the beshti and get us all off the ridge, quite handily. Auguste has promised us a safe trail along the terrace. It saved us being in the path of a landslide just now.”

“A rocket is going out within the next hour to deliver our reserve relay to Halfmoon.”

Doing what they had failed to do. What he had argued against, months ago. “I truly wish it luck.”

Luck, which a soft-landing in that place certainly needed. They had as well drop it from a height.

“It’s a spectacle out there, Marak, a long, long waterfall that ends in a plume of spray. I have the transmissions from Concord and the satellite. I hate to say, if you had stayed here and gone by plane in the first place, you might have both seen it and gotten pictures.”

Ian tormented him. Ian had to make his point, even now, while he had empty space beneath his left foot and little sand-slips sliding down from every step the beshti made.

“Send out your rocket,” Marak retorted, and let fly his own annoyance. “Send your plane to the Wall and get your pictures. You were right, Ian, I entirely admit it. We shall not be there to see it. We are here, on the face of this cliff, which is our just reward. But we deserve more help than we have gotten from the heavens in the last two days, do you hear me, Ian-omi? Now Brazis is saying Hati’s watchers will give Drusus relief tonight. By noon, tell Brazis so, I wish all my watchers back as they were. This is not a moment to indulge some foreign lord’s whims, and the threat to our camp does not take the night off because two men are tired. I ask you make this clear to him, Ian.”

“Marak, be patient.”

“Is there reward for us in patience? We had little warning of this event. Where was my warning, Ian? Was all-seeing heaven perhaps distracted from watching us, while it was watching this foreign lord?”

“You know the difficulties of prediction. Your position is between us and the epicenter.”

“Excuses, Ian.”

“You cannot argue with physics.”

“I canargue with distraction and delay of information.” He grew angry much more slowly than Hati. He took far longer to let it build, but here, on this slope, after the ruin that had cascaded down to the basin, and with the gnawing thought that if he had managed better, and used Ian’s damnable wire-cored rope, he would not be chasing the beshti, his temper was very near the boiling point. “I find it remarkable that when we should have had some slight warning, Brazis was busy reassigning my watcher to this foreign lord, and he either has not explained to Drusus why this is, or has told Drusus to lie to me, promising me Procyon’s return soon, soon, soon, which has not happened yet.—Are you listening, Auguste? Ask Brazis when we will have his full attention.”

“Sir,”Auguste protested.

“Do you wonder the same, Ian? Or do you by any chance knowwhat Brazis is up to?”

“This is a major event at Halfmoon. A great many people have been distracted from routine. A great many people have changed shift.”

“Give me no excuses. I have every confidence in Drusus and Auguste and Procyon. But less now in Brazis, who seems to believe earthquake and flood will not happen once the sun goes down. Tell him what I say, Ian. Ask him why the heavens were sleeping when the quake came. Five seconds’ warning would have averted this. Heaven has eyes and ears to see an event as it happens, anywhere in the world. The beshti foreknew it. Where were the watchers? Why were we caught by surprise?”

“Because they have no ground sensors at Halfmoon. They relied on us to get them there.”

That stung. It was even possibly right. But he was not willing to back off his argument. “They have their lasers. They measure the earth. They keep their watch. I want better information.”

“They will have better information soon. Our warning margin has greatly improved with the new relay. It will become much better with the next.”

“Granted your rocket survives.”

“I have a greater concern for your survival, Marak. You and Hati are far too valuable to risk. Give up this folly. The beasts may come up to the camp on their own once they see the water advance.”

“The forecast, have you heard, is fog and rain. The terraces are a maze. The water is coming, the cliffs are apt to give way, and if the beshti have any sense, they will take out running, away from the flood and away from us, across the pans. They may even make it, but we may not, without them. I do not choose to go up to camp without trying and hope for the cliffs not to fall down, Ian. I do not, to be honest, trust your planes. Sometimes they fail to take off, once they land in that much dust. And never suggest to me that we abandon those boys in camp and get ourselves to safety.”

“As a last resort, Marak. If you should be trapped. I shall send a plane out, when the flood comes nearer, as a last resort.”

“We are not that far from the beshti.” This was not quite admitting that their fugitives were well down on the next series of terraces and out of sight. “Another day, Ian. No need of your airplane or the risk to the pilot. The water is coming, but it is not coming that fast.”

“Not coming that fastyet, Marak-omi.”

“Only give me heaven’s undivided attention and all my watchers, Ian!”

“I promise you, I promise you I shall talk to Brazis about the situation. Do what you can.”

“Do this. Call my camp. Advise the boys leave the other relay, pack up only essentials and short canvas, and move back down the ridge. Tell them move day and night, by what stages they can, and stay in touch by hand radio. If we have to overtake them well to the east, so much the better.”

“You agree you will not attempt to continue this mission to the Wall.”

“I admit it. I admit it, Ian. I know it pleases you greatly. I shall gather the boys and retreat to the Plateau.”

“I’ll call them with that instruction. Meanwhile, Marak, in all good regard—take care. Don’t take chances. And remember the airplane.”

“I hear.” Broken sandstone from the edge rolled down the sandy face below him. But the footing looked solid, and led out onto un-fissured rock. His temper improved, the ledge proving solid. He had made provision to get the boys to safety. He had admitted to himself and to Ian that they were not going on from here, no matter if he recovered the beshti in the next hour. “Keep me advised, Ian. And, mind, tell Brazis, in the strongest terms, better warning, and no more excuses.”

HAIR, NAILS—Mignette wanted a makeup tattoo, but she couldn’t make up her mind about the style or the shade, so she tried out a look instead, glowy green cat-eyes—she’d gotten cosmetic contacts—and a slinky black bareback blouse with fringe that sparkled. Soft boots that matched the blouse. Deep red hair with blazing coppery highlights.

And she felt good. She felt goodand alive for the first time in her whole life. Noble liked what he saw, no question, and they linked hands and walked down the Trend, part of the scene.

They were quiet, compared to some. She studied the nodding plumes she saw, wondering how much, and where, and if she dared be that extravagant immediately. The Trend could be cruel. Though there was something to be said for daring.

But they passed for Fashionables, now, she and Noble, and she was really, truly, classy Mignette, who didn’t overdress, who, if anything, kept it understated and dark, except the dramatic eyes, the shagged hair with the V-cut bangs. She’d tentatively begun a Look of her own, and she was increasingly sure it would be black, with green eyes. Maybe she’d do the hair deepest black, then. She hadn’t decided. She was Mignette, but when she became a Stylist she might become Minuit, midnight,with pale skin—she’d change her complexion—and deep black dress, because most of the Trend didn’t have her looks, and simple was best. Her face was pretty enough not to need the shapers that turned so many people just too pretty and too regular to really carry a Style. Black was inexpensive, compared to matching colors. She’d learned that from the education she’d gotten. So she could have quality on not too extravagant a budget. She’d be Minuit. As for Noble, he was trying to afford a treatment to get rid of all his freckles. He’d be far different without them, and maybe not better. She couldn’t imagine Noble without freckles, but that was what he wanted most, aside from fixing his nose and his chin and getting a fancy tap. He’d be creamy-pale, kind of an interesting face, if he got what he wanted, because his forehead was low, and his natural eyes were pale blue. That meant he could wear all kinds of contacts, down to dark, which he had on at the moment. He had on sexy black pants that showed off really good legs. A good silk shirt. He had nice, high cheekbones, from the start. If he went on, he wouldn’t be just Noble. He’d become Somebody, if he could maintain a good, clear imagination of what the shapers could do, and stuck to it, with real quality, no matter how he had to piecemeal the work.

Meanwhile they walked to the same music and watched the traffic where they walked, awed by the occasional Stylist, amused by those who tried to manage a Look, not that successfully.

A gang of juvvie sessions-dodgers watched them pass, wide-eyed. “Look at that,” one said. And, in awe: “Look at the eyes.”

They talked about her,not about Noble, who’d had far more practice down here, shaping a Look. Her first venture, and they talked about her, as if they might want to go buy the same item, even if it would be a disaster on their scrawny pale faces. They’d do better to buy mods to fix their blotchy complexions and give up greasy snacks.

But she was bornwith good genes. She could get away with things. Her mother always said so.

And people down here who didn’t know she was her father’s daughter and important for who she was born to be—they just liked what they saw of Mignette, who was all on her own, with Noble, who was looking for Random, who was Mark, who’d phoned that he’d dodged out again, Tink, who was Denny, still being with the youth authorities, Random supposed, though incorrectly—they’d had one contact with Denny, who was lying low.

But at the moment Random was living up to his name, and they hadn’t found him, constantly just missing him, so the phone calls indicated. They were afraid to stay on too long. She was sure her parents were having the phones traced, so they used Noble’s card, but they didn’t press their luck.

They turned up Blunt Street, which they’d searched before on their intermittent quest. When they found Random, Noble said he would know him, being pretty sure at least what his Look would be, and Random could recognize Noble and probably even recognize her, expecting at least something different.

So they just walked the street, still flush with finance. She had her card, and, just the way she’d figured her father, he’d gone all softhearted and extended credit bit by bit to his one and only daughter, worrying how she’d get along. He’d go on extending it. He’d hope she’d call. She would, tomorrow.

Papa needn’t worry. Noble said he had a friend who’d let them sleep over in a safe place, upstairs of Michaelangelo’s.

She was going to do it with Noble tonight, if they didn’t find Random. With Noble, who was older than she was. She really was going to do it, if they turned up alone in a room in Michaelangelo’s, and she thought maybe Noble wasn’t thatanxious to find Random, having ideas of his own. She knew just how it would play out. She’d made a few decisions for herself. Finally. And her mother couldn’t stop her.