Текст книги "Forge of Heaven "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

And his mother would decide “strictest confidence” naturally included her sister.

He increasingly didn’t want to go to the anniversary dinner. Other thirty-years-married people of his parents’ generation might think of going out to a romantic dinner for their anniversary and even make love afterward. No chance of that. His parents invited all the relatives and their kids to an enormous supper, to sit in the cramped living room for hours discussing sports and even more remote relatives, most of them deceased.

Worse, at some time in the evening, particularly if he once spoke his mind to his young cousins, the talk would get around to religion, that other great divide; and if he ever expressed an honest opinion violating their notions on that, his mother might ask again, in a hushed voice, if, working for the government, he was modified.

And if he ever answered that question with the truth, he’d have her praying for him daily.

If she saw Arden these days, they’d all be on tranquilizers.

He took 11th Street back down, a walk past two-story apartments. Cleaner-bots scuttled, small half domes moving busily wherever walkers were scarce, gathering up here and there a discarded wrapper, a little accumulation of dust. A handful of giggling, overfunded pre-pubes from upstairs, whose responsible parties probably hadn’t given a damn in years, taunted the bots, slyly tossing small bits of trash to attract them and trying in vain to tip them over. The teens were police bait, oblivious to the watch-cameras.

He left them to their folly, strolled back onto Grozny Street at the busiest intersection on restaurant row.

La Lune Noir. He was in a mood for the pastries. Best desserts in the Trend.

Nowhe was in a good mood.

2

AN ANOLE LOUNGED IN PLAIN SIGHT, belly down on a rock. Setha Reaux, having missed lunch, had a cup of caff, a muffin, and tried to steady his mind as he contemplated his bubble world. The lizard contemplated him from the other side of the glass.

The incoming ship had answered his queries, finally. Special Ambassador Andreas Gide to Setha Reaux, Governor of Concord. We will remain here five days for consultations. We look forward to a brief and productive conference.

Consultations. Business. Special Ambassador. An official, this Mr. Gide, with an unstated mission.

His first relieved thought was that there was no indication, at least, of an audit, and no summary request for records. After an all-night scramble, and all morning going through files, he had all the tax records accessible and immaculately clean if there should be a question. All the Council meeting logs. All the communications with the various business interests, on-station and off-. He had gotten it all organized in thirty-six hours, in the face of that oncoming, silent ship. He’d gotten the arena records in careful context, along with the time line of phone calls and conference agendas, which proved his case on the construction of the new station, in case there was a question on that front, locally or otherwise.

But nothing about this arrival looked like an operations audit after all, as that message indicated. He couldn’t say he was exactly disappointed to hear there was a Mr. Gide with some sort of consultations in mind—mortally relieved, was more the point—but after a night and a day in the office, he was frayed, underinformed, and most of all frustrated.

A flood of inquiries had hit his desk early when this ship had turned up, local agencies wanting to know what everybody on the station wanted to know: what was going on and why an Earth ship was here off schedule. The price-fixing board had immediately swung into action, of course, and the securities and exchange people had put in a night of overtime trying to scotch speculation on ordinary goods and luxury items. Everybody was discommoded. The fashion shops likewise were probably organizing flood sales on their newest items. When the regular Earth freighter touched the station in its annual visit, information on the mother world’s fashions came with it, and things changed rapidly in the haut tonshops.

This unexpected midyear arrival created an economic flutter in the damnedest places.

Technology futures naturally went softer by the hour: Earth technology was also a wild card, and one never knew what would show up in that market when Earth injected its Inner Worlds creations, patterns, and patents into the station’s data files, extracting automatic payment as they went.

Every ship traded. Even warships traded. Earth couldn’t physically touch the physical goods of an Outsider station, but patents and patterns for synth programs went back and forth on a two-way trade, some of it in Earth-owned goods on another Outsider station, some of it in stock futures, some of it in actual substance off-loaded from an Earth ship, just nothing taken aboard. Earth always bargained hard for what they sold, and had a monopoly on the finest synthesizer patterns, those that enabled molecular synthesis on say, caff and fine wines, patterns that subtly changed from year to year, each variation available at very high cost.

In that trade, Earth had a bottomless gold mine, and the buzz was already out that there was, inbound, a new liqueur and a very fine Merlot pattern, not to mention an exciting and rare offering, the pattern of an aged wine from an estate collection: the ship’s command levels and the mysterious Mr. Gide might not have communicated a damned thing, but the trade office had certainly gotten communication from the ship’s trade officer, so ordinary business and moneymaking wasn’t beneath this ship, was it?

And what was currently going on in the substrate of the trade office was the ordinary flurry of intense, small-time negotiations, the trade board and individual license houses engaged by voicelink with the ship’s trade officer, who would work to obtain what he wanted and to pay as little as possible for it in goods and credit.

Reaux had sent a personal agent on a fast, discreet round of face-to-face meetings with key corporations, stating, quote, we regard this as ordinary trade and intend strongly to defend local interests—and implying, of course, the reciprocal, but unspoken: ifyou defend us if asked any nasty questions about our administration—just a little happy talk to confirm that, yes, the governor was certainly on the local corporations’ side, and they would all stand united, nobody being negotiated out of what advantage they held in their creative property, and nothing radically changing in the economic climate. Only granted they themselves hadn’t done something to bring on some sort of inquiry from Earth, the government would defend patents and negotiate for all companies equally, none sold out at disadvantage for the benefit of another no matter how Earth tried. He could be tough. Had been, on one notable occasion.

As for the stock market, the various moderating systems had engaged as they ought, and functioned as designed. Bulk commodity selling was impossible once those regulations went into effect: that was always the worst hit that could follow rumors of a new technology or a major sale, but the automatic safeguards had slammed that brake on the minute the ship turned up, and consequently there was no need to stop regular trading as that ship glided toward them. There was even a modest wave of profit riding the event, small speculative buying of certain companies’ shares.

So the ship looked to carry on ordinary business, midyear as it was.

So what was this oddly timed contact from Earth? A Mr. Gide? And consultations?

When had Earth ever consultedits governors?

That unusual word was worth looking for. Reaux put the computer to searching all the Earth ship calls since Concord’s founding, precisely for Consultations. That took a few moments, during which he drank off the cooling cup of caff.

Chime from the desk unit. “Sir.”Ernst. “Your wife is asking if you’ll be home for supper tonight.”

“Put her on,” he said, and hearing the contact made: “Judy?”

“…supper. Are you going to be home tonight?”

“For God’s sake, Judy.” It waspast his ordinary quitting time. He didn’t think he could make it through another overnighter in the office. “Well, I think it’s remotely possible, but I can’t think about that right now.”

“It would be a very good idea if you could come home this evening and say how nice Kathy’s hair is.”

That bad, then. “I’m trying. I’ll try, Judy.”

“Dinner at 1900h. I’m cooking.”

Judy was cooking. And dinner was fairly late. She hadn’t made it to her job today, he made that a good guess. He remembered the prior controversy. Judy had snared their daughter Kathy, she’d have called the hairdresser in, heavily bribed to silence, and Kathy’s hair was still tearfully controversial. He could read between the lines. Kathy was recalcitrant and Judy wanted backup.

A message crawl hit his screen. Braziswas on his way up the hall at this very moment: Antonio Brazis, head of the PO, local Chairman of the Outsider Council, his opposite number in station authority.

Dortland, his own head of station security, and Redmond, from the Trade Board, were next on his agenda, and they were going to have to wait, clearly, if Brazis was coming in. Ernst had been tracking all these matters, and shot this vital information to his computer screen in bold letters on a black background before he could make a commitment to his wife—and have to break it.

“Dinner at 1900h is possible. Possible. I might be late. I have no way of knowing what this ship business is, or when they’ll decide they want to talk. And I’ve got meetings.”

“Setha.”

“I say I have appointments, Judy. People are on their way to my office. Heads of departments. We have problems. That Earth ship. Our daughter’s hair, I’m afraid, is very much a side issue today.”

Silence on the other end. Judy knew when she’d pushed him absolutely too far. She wasn’t happy, but at least she didn’t sulk out loud.

“Likely 1900h,” he said, trying to mollify that deadly silence. “If not, be sure that something unexpected happened.” He had a dire thought, just before he thought she might hang up on him. “Judy? Judy, whatever you do, don’ttalk to the media.”

“Why would I talk to the media?”

“Because of that ship! I’m not talking to the media, I have no particular answers for them, and it’s remotely possible the media will hang around the apartment trying to get information or just the temperature of the household to have something to report. We have a serious matter here, Judy. Turn on the news, for God’s sake. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. And don’t let Kathy leave. As happens, it’s a very good night to eat in, and I’ve got to come home. I’m exhausted.”

Small pause. Not a happy pause. “1900h,”Judy said, and broke contact.

It wasn’t just a day. It was an unmitigated two days of hell. The ship came on, unhastened, uncommunicative, across several AUs of untenanted space.

The anole got up on his legs on his branch, expanded his throat, and displayed to a rival.

Damned well that’s what it was, that inbound ship: like the lizard, a display of power.

One Andreas Gide, ambassador with special powers. An off-schedule show of force, making them sweat. The simple ability to launch a ship this far, on a special mission. Lizard on a branch.

The context search had produced a result on his screen. Ships arriving for consultations,in the long history of relations, inevitably came because of tension between the Apex Counciland Earth.

Scrolling through the dates, it had meant much the same even before the days of the Earth Federation, while it was still a question of Inner Worlds versus Outsider colonials.

Politics changed. But the stress lines on the charts, dictated by who lived where and where the trade routes went, didn’t change all that much. Location dictated politics, and consultationsat Concord were always ominous, always, thus far, involving some tension between Earth and the High Council at Apex, several times because of some perceived misdeed regarding ondatrelations.

Well, not at Concord. He’d heard of no problems with his on-station Outsider Council counterpart, the ondatrepresentative was perfectly quiet, and he didn’t believe whatever brought Earth inquiry to them was a valid suspicion. Some sort of accusation could always turn up, instigated by politicians with an axe to grind, something could be going on elsewhere, but Concord was incredibly remote from most of human interest.

And, God, he didn’t need problems with Brazis, who was a competent, quiet administrator, to color his lifelong term of office.

He didn’t need any Ambassador Gide—political ideologues with ambitions were always to fear. Earth was known, occasionally, to stir things up on the fringes to make some political point at home.

Spies were also to fear, individuals who might have damning reports to give such a ship, but they were always present, people either sent here by various interests ranging from commercial to political—his chief of security, Dortland, had given him a small watch list—or persons born here and ambitious for advancement they couldn’t get under his administration: his personal list of the latter ilk started with one Lyle Nazrani, who had his financial fingers in the new station construction, who was high up in the banking industry, and who’d raised hell about the arena contractors and a dozen other issues in the new station construction, anything to get on the news. Therewas a man who’d lose no time getting a private interview with Mr. Ambassador Gide, and Reaux was equally determined not to let that happen.

Say what Earth would, however, and no matter what politicking might advance some party on Earth or some ambitious idiot on station—the ondatpresence had a major say in matters on Concord, too. The ondatalways had a major say at Concord, and might just very easily decide, for at least a decade, that they viewed Concord as still within their sphere of territory, in which case…

In which case the shadowy presence that existed within their sealed section might pull that section off, as they had done, once and twice in the worst times of Concord’s history, when the whole fragile peace had nearly shattered. Let Earth remember that,if Earth wanted to interfere with Concord’s smooth running. The ondatmight suddenly move in a warship and exert a greater power over Concord administration and over what ships came and went, all Earth’s ambitions be damned, and never mind the local human economy. That had happened more than twice—economic disaster, from which Concord had taken decades to recover.

And no one wanted to think of a situation that might cause that quiet presence, that sometimes amusing, sometimes sinister presence, to wake up and become actively involved. They lived with the ondat. Concorders saw the sleek, frighteningly massive ships that slid up to the station at irregular intervals and did their business, saying nothing, having no intercourse with any human. They knew that, beyond the walls of that independent section, something lived that veiled itself in shadow, in ammonia-reeking murk, and carried on inquiries that made no human sense… no oneplayed politics with the ondat. That was the very point of Concord’s neutral existence, was it not?

And, pressed to the wall, faced with a threat, as he’d reminded himself last night in the throes of the tax records—he did have good relations with the ondat,with (the only name they knew) Kekellen. Earth would be well-advised, would it not, to leave that situation undisturbed?

Kekellen had sent him a message yesterday through the symbol translator: Ship Earth?Meaning, roughly, What in hell’s this untimely ship doing here, and should we care?

His own linguists had replied: Ship Earth unclear word. Reaux talk this ship. Talk Kekellen soon.

Soon.

Well, that was a stall, no question, and sufficient to the day the trouble thereof. Those pesky abstracts like soon, if,and whyhad taken the linguists and the ondatages to work out. He ordinarily hated it when his experts used abstracts to Kekellen. Stick to solids, he’d say. Keep it concrete, especially if it’s an emergency. Don’t seem to promise things.

Wehave a situation with the ondat,he could legitimately say, however, carefully citing that message. Keep it quiet, please, Mr. Ambassador Gide.

Thatwas the ultimate power of a Concord governor, after all, wasn’t it, the ultimate argument for keeping Earth’s fingers off Concord politics—the ominous foreign presence that sat, cocooned in its own segment of Concord Station, occasionally insinuating its robotic errand-runners past what had once been a tightly sealed barrier. The ondathad, in the last century, breached whatever moderate quarantine had once existed, had begun to do so during the last two governorships, beginning with random inquiries to ordinary offices and citizens…

And lately taking delivery of orange juice, table salt, live lettuce, and eight canisters of chlorine, which it just confiscated from various shops and storehouses. Figure thatone. Last week it had taken a sculpture from a good neighborhood. It scared hell out of the merchants. No one claimed to understand it.

He should report the sculpture theft to the Earth ship. Let them worry about it.

NO QUESTION the see mefrom the governor’s office had to do with the ship incoming. The invitation suited Antonio Brazis, even at this late hour. He was just as anxious to see Setha Reaux and know what Reaux knew before this untimely ship got to dock and sent its electronic tentacles running into their affairs.

He hoped to hell that Reaux’s personal fund-raising peccadillos hadn’t caught up with him. As governors went, Reaux was a good one—not immune to influence peddlers, especially close to the construction interests that formed a real power base in a station currently building its own replacement; but he had to maintain his own power base, and he was a sensible and honest man where it counted, regarding the overall welfare of the station. Infighting always swayed governors: wealthy expatriate Earthers arrived on Concord to assume what wasn’t, after all, a popularly elected office; and life-appointed governors grew corrupt primarily because they were outsiders in the lower-case sense, foreigners incapable of function if locally stymied and opposed. A man wanted to have allies, and Earth might appoint its governors from Earth itself, counting them more loyal, but local Earther descendants chose Station councilmen in hotly contested local elections, and oh, believe there was favor-trading, if a governor really wanted to get anything done, let alone done on time.

Outsider chairmen, for which Brazis was truly grateful, had no such considerations: the High Council at Apex life-appointed both the head of the Planetary Office and the Concord Chairman, both offices, in his case, vested in one person, and yes, local Outsider citizens held elections for civil posts and local Council, just like Earther citizens, though with far less fire and drama. The Earth governor thus remained forever at the mercy of his legislature, which directed day-to-day operation of station systems, managed trade with Earth and the Inner Worlds, and maintained control over the police, customs, and legal systems. In effect, a governor could ask, but had the devil’s own time enforcing policy, if he had not played the local game of favor-trading.

Not so, Brazis’s own office. Hetraded no favors. Concord’s local Outsider Council, lacking any power to regulate station operation, was more a debating society, handling zoning regulations and public services in its districts. Concord’s Outsider Chairman presided over the Outsider Council and appointed the head of the civil police in Outsider districts.

That, on most stations, was that—Outsider government wielded very little power over the station’s external dealings.

But on Concord, there was that other office: the Planetary Office. The Project.

And the project director, holding absolute authority over the Project, necessarily held police powers and regulatory authority, not only equal to the Earth-appointed governor’s authority, but authority that could actually override the Earth governor’s decisions, where it affected the PO’s operations or Project security.

Brazis being both local Chairman and Project Director was not to Earth’s liking: that had been clear when he took the second office. Earth officially didn’t like that combination of powers—in fact, Apex itself was divided on the matter, which had carried by one vote—but it stood, and it was useful when it came to putting his foot down. He had been at Concord for thirty years. Earth was still unhappy about it.

So now Earth sent an off-schedule mission and Reaux wanted to talk to him. Consequently, he had to wonder in which capacity, and whether he would have to put his foot down, or just listen to some financial confession of the governor’s, an appeal for understanding—in which case he would listen, and back the governor, for what it was worth, if it accorded with his interests, and the governor would almost undoubtedly explain to him how extremely it did.

What was more worrisome was the remote possibility that this incoming, very expensive ship had intentions that were going to annoy the PO. He hoped not. It had been a tranquil thirty years.

The governor’s sweeping body scans, in the long office hall approaching the governor’s suite, were fast, discreet, and asked no permission, setting off a flurry of small beeps and protests from his electronics, internal and otherwise. Brazis took no umbrage. His security was armed, he wasn’t, and, by no means on his first visit here, he knew where to leave his escort, at the entry to the governor’s suite of offices. He walked on through the last doors alone, into Ernst’s little wood-paneled kingdom.

“Mr. Chairman.” Ernst instantly reported his presence to the governor, got up and opened the governor’s office door the low-tech way, with the button. “Sir.”

No waiting. No social dance. Governor Reaux rose and met him with a little bow, if not a contaminating handshake…he wasstill native Earther, even two decades into his office.

“Antonio. I so appreciate your coming. Tea?”

He’d been on the go since the ship business had hit the horizon. Which was yesterday. “Tea sounds good,” he said. He didn’t have his scan with him—didn’t, as a rule, trust private dispensers, especially when he couldn’t watch the preparation, but an Earther staff wouldn’t slip you anything but a chemical problem. Reaux wouldn’t have an illicit nanism near his precious person.

“Did you run the media gauntlet?”

“They were out there, no way not. I’m afraid my visit will be on the news. I said it was a courtesy call. They were noisy and unconvinced.”

“Mmm.” Reaux poured the tea himself, from a dispenser tastefully concealed next to the extravagantly expensive lizard globe.

Fascinating creatures, Brazis considered them. They’d come all the way from Earth, intact, in a long-ago administration, and the globe had run for, reputedly, a hundred and fifty-odd years with minimal intervention. The lizards stared at him. Little predators, a whole food chain. A man who superintended the program that reseeded and redeemed the planet had a great admiration for the balance requisite in that globe.

Reaux served him tea in Earth-import ceramic, antique and fragile. And sat down behind his desk for his own first sip.

“You’ve made inquiries about the ship inbound,” Reaux said.

If there was one thing Brazis continually appreciated about Reaux, it was his straightforward, no-time-wasted approach. “Yes. But I’m sure your information is better. My problem or yours?”

“Frankly, I don’t know. They claim someone with ambassadorial status aboard. A consultation. You aren’t expecting anything like this, are you?”

“No reason, I assure you.”

“A five-day visit, routine in length if not in timing. If there is anything on your levels you know that’s going on—I certainly hope you’d tell me.”

“Not a thing.” He hoped his eyes were clear all the way to the back of his brain. The Chairman of the Outsider Council naturally knew a dozen things, including the names of unruly groups and certain individuals who might decide the visit of a mission from Earth was exactly the time to act up, either to get local concessions for their peculiar points of view or to create a racket clear to the Chairman General at Apex. “Naturally certain elements will be excited. They might think of something on the spur of the moment, but I doubt they’re prepared to carry anything off in an organized way. My security is out and about. Do you think you can possibly keep Mr. Nazrani off the news for five days?”

The Earth governor didn’t get to twit the Outsider Chairman about hispeculiar security problems without taking a shot in return. Reaux accepted the jab with a wry, unamused laugh.

“I know enough to make him nervous.”

“But no one of your enemies is nervous enough to act rashly, dare we hope?” Brazis said. It wasn’t Nazrani and the sports arena they were discussing now. It was their own intermingled affairs. The whole sociopolitical structure of Concord was in fact a geodesic, dependent on its little lines of tension. Pinned together by its own sins and the knowledge of those sins, that web held strong and steady, against most minor disturbances. The current cooperation had never been challenged from the outside.

Witness that Concord, ancient as it was, remained a continual point of uncertainty in a very old and essentially stable arrangement. There was Earth and the Inner Worlds, there was the Outsider territory, and those got along.

But given Concord’s unique existence in a bubble inside ondatspace…distant governments, if they were sensible, wished only a report of unending tranquillity from Concord. “We’ll certainly support you, if that’s what you’re asking. We consider your administration progressive and sensible over the last two decades. We very much value our working relationship.”

“I’m flattered.” Reaux could hardly be entirely flattered to hear he was greatly valued by the other side of this ageless détente. Small smile. “But don’t tell them that.”

“By no means. I’ll swear you’re a son of a bitch and I detest negotiating with you. I’ll exit past the media swarm frowning and angry. Do you have any clue what this portends?”

“Nothing,” Reaux said—which Brazis doubted. “Do you?”

“Nothing.” His own dance on the brink of the truth.

“It may be some political hiccup on Earth itself. Such things are difficult to foresee. We can only make sure Concord is secure, from whatever internal sources disturbance might come. I ask again: you’ve heard nothing.”

Maybe it was time for a little half-truth. “The Council at Apex has absolutely nothing to gain from disruptions at Concord. This is the important point, it’s always been true, it continues to be true, and you can assure Earth of this. The local Outsider Council, disregarding all the little trade questions we discuss with your Council, has an overriding interest in continuing stability here. We like our governor very well.”

A small tight smile, a little nod. “As we like our local Chairman.”

“If what’s arrived is Earth’s own problem trying to stir up something for home political value, it assuredly doesn’t need to involve us. This ambassador—”

“Gide is his name. Andreas Gide.”

“Mr. Gide should do his business, ask a few questions, take a physical tour, I suppose, to say he looked or advised. And then go home. They do this, don’t they, every time they need to shore up their own political capital? ‘We have a mission to Concord, we’ve investigated subversive activity.’ I’ve seen one before this, in my predecessor’s time.”

“What did they do?”

“They ask a few questions, take a physical tour. And go home. It scares hell out of Earth’s internal factions, is my theory. Just meddling around out here near the ondatdiverts attention from whatever they’re up to at home, and it’s far enough away nobody can possibly prove a thing. The game’s always the same.”

Deep breath. “My records indicate some sort of Outsider trouble.”

“Did they actually say that?”

“The word they used for the reason for their trip was consultations. I looked it up. They always say that precise word when they’re investigating Outsider trouble.”

Certainly information worth logging. “I can assure you their excuses are one thing; their intentions are likely for domestic capital. This is the last place either your people or mine want controversy.”

“Antonio. I want Blunt Street quiet. Very quiet. Bottom line, I want no trouble they can point to.”

“Earth demonstrating its god-given authority does provoke a certain natural sentiment on Blunt.”

“I want it astonishingly quiet. I know you can do it. I can’t stress enough how important it is that you do it.”

Clearly this was why Reaux had called him here: keep it quiet and we stay friends. Reaux was worried, whether on specific information or because it was the man’s nature to worry extravagantly.

“I advise you,” Brazis said, “with the friendliest of intentions—keep your secret police off Blunt.”

“Then you need to have your own police thick down there. Quietly. Discreetly. Without our visitors noticing it. Without stirring up Kekellen’s questions, God help us. You know me, Antonio. You know I mean it in the friendliest way, about trouble down there. My predecessor let Blunt get way out of hand, as was. They’ll remember that. It’s in your interest as well as ours not to let the old Blunt Street situation make any visible resurgence. We’ve made a great deal of progress in our two administrations. I don’t want it all unraveled because nowEarth gets some notion to find fault with your government over something that’s no longer an issue here.”

It wasthe trade question, smuggling, at the back of Reaux’s worries, Brazis would bet four months’ salary on it. But Brazis didn’t find smuggling an issue to be discussed, not here, not now, not in this context. Truth to tell, he had his own very uncomfortable feeling about Blunt at the moment, for reasons completely aside from that inbound ship, and any rash attempt to bring down the iron fist of Earth there could do particular damage to quiet investigations already in progress.