“I think we’ll have to take Director Hannish’s facts as given. Ensign Hyland has confirmed a number of them. And since she’s safely sequestered aboard Punisher, we can’t examine her evidence. Because we have so little time left, we must assume that Director Hannish, at least, has told us the truth.”
As it appears to her, Holt prompted unnecessarily.
“As it appears to her,” Cleatus intoned.
“I’ve already talked about this. I don’t want to belabor the obvious. Everything Director Hannish has revealed was supplied by Director Dios—the man directly responsible for the crimes she reports. And she can’t prove any of her charges. They’re all based on inference and distrust.
“Do you believe her? As I said earlier, consider the source. Warden Dios betrayed Com-Mine Security, framed Angus Thermopyle, tricked you into passing the Preempt Act. He suppressed an effective antimutagen and maneuvered the Amnion into committing an act of war. And now he’s been caught. He’s stuck in a mess of his own making. So of course he wants to pin the blame on someone else. That’s his only hope.” The FEA’s tone hinted at bloodshed. “He knows he’ll be executed if he can’t convince you he was just following orders.
“What else do you expect from a man who’s capable of the crimes Warden Dios has committed?”
He paused, trying to give his question the force of an indictment. Then he went on, “It’s a fact Director Hannish can’t dispute that Warden Dios has refused to speak to Holt Fasner since this crisis began. And for almost twenty-four hours before that he kept himself incommunicado. He’s declined to explain himself or his actions to the one man in human space who could have held him accountable.”
Good, Holt murmured in approval. Good.
Since Holt was satisfied, Cleatus took the next step.
“Where Ensign Hyland is concerned, I’m not convinced she’s telling the truth.”
Now he did his best to sound rueful: the sorrow of a man who hated impugning Hyland after all she’d suffered, but whose responsibility to the Council left him no choice.
“Again consider the source.
“For one thing, she’s patently insane.” He ticked off indications at random. “She kept her zone implant control. She let the Amnion force-grow her baby. She broadcast Dr. Shaheed’s formula while Calm Horizons could hear it. She freed Thermopyle from his priority-codes. She took command of Punisher.
“Which she must have done at gunpoint,” he added. “Or by threatening them with those singularity grenades. I can’t imagine that Min Donner would have let it happen otherwise.”
Then he continued tallying the evidence against Morn Hyland. “In addition, she took it on herself to negotiate for our survival. And she sold her own son to keep herself alive.” That was enough. “It’s all madness. And this lunatic theory linking Holt Fasner with Nick Succorso proves it. After everything she’s done and endured, she’s plainly demented.”
Be careful, Holt warned. The votes feel sorry for her. Don’t give them a reason to react the wrong way.
“But that’s not all,” Cleatus said at once. “If it were, I wouldn’t mention it. Who am I to question her decisions after everything she’s been through? I have to ask, however”—he made a show of shouldering an unpleasant burden—“exactly what is her relationship with Angus Thermopyle?”
He had the satisfaction of seeing the Hannish bitch wince. The rest of his audience stared at him, rapt or dumbfounded.
“She concealed evidence that would have led to his execution by Com-Mine. She freed him from his priority-codes. And did you notice that her deal with Calm Horizons doesn’t include him?
“What’s going on here? Is this an example of the hostage syndrome, where women fall in love with the men who trap and abuse them? Since she admits the crime of keeping her zone implant control, how can we believe her when she says Thermopyle was framed? Her only evidence conveniently exists in the datacore of a ship which has already been dismantled.
“She’s a cop. She knew what she was doing. Like Warden Dios, she’s ruined if she can’t pin the blame on someone else.”
Damn it, Holt snapped, I told you to be careful!
Gritting his teeth, Cleatus forged ahead. “And isn’t it really Angus Thermopyle who’s in command of Punisher? That would make more sense. He has some strange power over Ensign Hyland. He has singularity grenades. And he has a reason—he might call it a good reason—to hold Punisher as well as Director Donner under duress. He’s a welded cyborg. He may be slime, but he’s had every vestige of choice and dignity stripped away from him. He must want revenge. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t.
“Everything you just heard from Ensign Hyland—including her implausible ‘deal’ with Calm Horizons—could be Angus Thermopyle’s revenge. If he wants to destroy the UMCP for what they did to him, he could hardly hope for a better way to go about it.
“Why do you think the scan net is down? Do you really believe Min Donner ordered that? Do you believe it actually restricts what Calm Horizons can see without limiting the effectiveness of our ships? I don’t. I think the net is down because that suits what Captain Thermopyle has in mind.”
Nice recovery, Holt gibed. He sounded more cheerful. I’m convinced.
Just wait, Cleatus muttered into his pickup. I’m not done.
“But even that’s not all,” he told the votes. “There are two other points I want you to consider.
“According to Ensign Hyland, the Amnion had her in their hands twice. What if she’s lying about the effectiveness of this antimutagen? What if it didn’t come from DA, isn’t based on Shaheed’s research? What if the Amnion have already gotten what they wanted from Davies Hyland? What if the whole story is a fabrication?
“What if Morn Hyland is no longer human? What if this entire disaster is some incomprehensible Amnion plot to discredit the UMCP and Holt Fasner just when we need them most?”
Are you listening, bitch? he asked Hannish mutely. Do you think you have a monopoly on tainting people with unsubstantiated charges?
Shit, Cleat! Holt yelped. I warned you to be careful! You’ve gone too far. They don’t want to hear that!
He was right. Some of the sheep muttered protests. Manse mouthed, No, no, in shock and refusal. Burnish exchanged whispered objections with his aides and Carsin. Len shifted forward as if he meant to intervene. Just loudly enough to be heard, Silat observed, “This charade seems rather too elaborate and—if I may say so—too human to be attributed to the Amnion.”
Quickly Cleatus retreated a step. “It’s just speculation, of course,” he admitted with apparent candor. “It would explain a lot—but I really don’t have a scrap of evidence. Hell, I don’t have any way of knowing where Succorso got his antimutagen. Or how good it is. But if I were a Member of this Council,” he added sententiously, “I would want to take every possibility into account, no matter how farfetched it sounds.”
That mollified the votes somewhat. Manse and Len subsided. Silat inclined his head condescendingly. After a moment Burnish silenced himself like a man biting his tongue.
Behind her expressionless mask, Hannish’s face was pallid with misery. She seemed to think he’d already won.
He wasn’t sure. Hurrying to recover his momentum, he stated, “One more point, and I’ll sit down. I’ve saved this for last, but it may be more important than all the others.”
Some of the sheep groaned; but he ignored them.
“I said earlier we have reason to think Hyland may be lying. Actually, I’m sure she is.” Before Hannish or Vertigus could react, he asserted, “She hasn’t told us the truth about her deal with Calm Horizons.”
He hoped his audience would hear the words he didn’t say: And if she’s willing to lie about that, she could lie about anything.
“Obviously she’s under some kind of pressure,” he explained. “Otherwise why did she say, ‘I can’t afford any more time.’ At first we all thought she was referring to the deadline of the command module’s dock with
Calm Horizons. But that’s still twenty-two minutes away,” according to his downlink, “and yet she couldn’t ‘afford any more time’ ten minutes ago.
“Why is she out of time? It doesn’t make sense. If she really made a deal—if the Amnion have agreed to let us live in exchange for Davies Hyland, Dr. Shaheed, and Trumpet— what’s left for her to do? What can she do?
“There’s only one explanation.” Abruptly he stiffened; let veiled outrage into his voice. “She has something planned. Something she doesn’t want us to know about. Something that will have a direct effect on the outcome of this crisis.
“It may be she intends to cheat Calm Horizons somehow,” he suggested bitterly. “Or it’s possible she’s actually agreed to give away a hell of a lot more than she admits. For all we know, we’ve been doomed without the decency of any forewarning. Or maybe we’ll have to live with an arrangement that’s too expensive for humankind to sustain.
“She’s crazy, remember. Whether you want to hear that or not, she’s crazy.
“Whatever happens,” he sneered, “it will happen because an abused ensign took it into her head to negotiate our survival on terms she isn’t willing to explain.”
All right, Cleat, Holt put in. You’ve made your point. Now let them vote. We can still pull this off.
Cleatus couldn’t stop. “Am I the only one,” he demanded harshly, “who can smell Angus Thermopyle’s reek in all this?”
Yet he had to stop. Holt was right: the time had come. If the bastards couldn’t make up their minds now, they were beyond hope. They deserved any terrible thing that happened to them.
But, God! Cleatus Fane did not want to share their fate.
Suddenly he felt as tired as Len looked. “Members,” he sighed, “I’ve answered your objections as well as I can. It’s up to you. The future of our species has to be decided now.”
Heavily he left the dais, returned to his seat. For a moment he had no idea where matters stood. Exhaustion filled him like defeat, and he couldn’t begin to estimate the mood of the Council. There must have been more he could have said; some better way to meet Holt’s demands; some sentence or argument that would have turned the fear of the sheep to his purposes. He simply couldn’t imagine what it might be. He’d done his best. Now he had to leave his personal terror in the hands of a gaggle of twits and cowards.
When he heard Len ask for a motion from the floor, however, and saw how the votes treated his proposal to recharter the UMCP, he knew that he would live.
CIRO
Ciro Vasaczk knew he was insane; but the fact didn’t trouble him. He had more important things on his mind.
First among them was Calm Horizons.
The huge defensive was still half an hour away when he and Angus climbed out of Trumpet’s airlock in their EVA suits; cleated their belts to the gap scout’s sun-streaked metal skin; settled themselves to wait.
“They won’t spot us,” Angus had assured him earlier. “I can emit jamming fields. Several kinds. They’ll cover me. Both of us while we’re together. After that you’re on your own. But you’ll be under their targ range. Behind the module and Trumpet. And they’ll be distracted. You should be safe enough.
“I want to get out there early.”
The sweat in his voice told Ciro he was lying; coercing himself. With the insight of his insanity, Ciro recognized that Angus was terrified of EVA; of being confined and helpless in the vast dark. His breathing wheezed hoarsely from his intercom.
“That bastard’s so big—I need time to study her. Figure out the dangers. Plan my moves.”
Ciro hadn’t argued. He had moves of his own to plan. From the lift to the airlock and then outside, he’d followed Angus.
There he got his first human look at his enemy.
Because the solar furnace would have scalded his eyes in their sockets, he’d dialed the polarization of his visor high. As a result, Calm Horizons seemed to loom ahead like a dark beast crouching in the unutterable night of space; a predator poised to spring from the concealment of midnight Nevertheless he could see her clearly enough. Lights blazed from ports, emplacements, airlocks: she already had spotlights and video fixed on the approaching vessels; already had the dock she intended for the command module etched in illumination.
Despite the shroud of blackness, she revealed enough of herself to show him that she was enormous. Her bulk blotted out half the heavens, and the few stars he could see past the rim of her hull looked paltry and unattainable, like forgotten dreams.
The sight scared him. Calm Horizons was his doom; as fatal as mutagens and proton cannon fire. But that didn’t shake his commitment. It didn’t shake his trust in Angus.
The Amnioni meant to use Davies and Vector against humankind. On top of that, she was the only available source for the particular antimutagen which had kept Sorus Chatelaine human.
She was responsible for what Sorus Chatelaine did to him.
He could make out UMCPHQ as well, a torus of steel half-licked by sunfire. The orbital platform showed lights of all kinds, as if the cops thought they could manage the dark by emblazoning their place in it. Vaguely Ciro recognized that UMCPHQ was an altogether bigger construct than the defensive. But distance shrank the station: light shrank it by limning it so precisely. UMCPHQ merely caught the sun and gleamed: Calm Horizons dominated the cold gulf between the planets.
Other sparks too close for stars indicated more ships, according to Angus—part of Min Donner’s cordon. Other stations must have been out there, too. If Ciro squinted against the sunlight past Trumpet’s stern, he could identify Punisher’s obscure shape, nearly lost in the dark. But he paid no attention to the cruiser. On those occasions when he felt afraid, and wanted to look away from Calm Horizons, he preferred to turn toward the bright planet hanging like a backdrop beyond UMCPHQ.
Earth.
Sunshine burned blue across the wide oceans, picked islands and continents like brown intaglio out of the azure. By some trick of the light, or his visor’s polarization, he couldn’t see any clouds. The whole lambent atmosphere of the planet seemed untrammeled, as clean as the seas, warm, welcoming—and utterly defenseless; exposed to violence.
Ciro had never witnessed in person the effects of a super-light proton beam; but he knew enough physics to imagine Calm Horizons’ cannon striking a shaft of ruin into the heart of one of those brown, populated features and reducing it to char. A wound that profound would be visible from a distance far greater than his.
He wasn’t born there. Neither were his parents. But their parents were. It was his planet. His genetic code remembered it, even though his mind held no recollection. Belted to Trumpet’s skin while the command module towed her toward Calm Horizons, he was as near as he would ever come to his homeworld.
If he and Angus failed, that ineffable, aching swath of blue would become humanity’s graveyard.
For the third time Angus checked Ciro’s anchor. It was always possible that the approach protocols Calm Horizons assigned would force Captain Ubikwe to use thrust suddenly.
Ciro’s belt was secure. He wasn’t crazy in a way that made him think he could hold on with just his hands.
“You know what to do?” Angus’ voice gasped inside his helmet. “You’re sure?”
Ciro understood that the Amnioni couldn’t hear them on this channel. He and Angus were linked to each other, and to Trumpet and the command module, by specialized frequencies which the enemy wouldn’t recognize. Still, he wished Angus didn’t talk so much. The sound in his ears made him feel exposed, as if words might betray him to the defensive.
He hefted his impact rifle. It was secured to his belt by a flexsteel line. “The hatch is open,” he breathed softly. Angus had opened it before they left Punisher. “Everything’s ready. I won’t let you down.”
To some extent that was a lie. He’d already figured out exactly how he would disobey Angus’ orders.
Angus knew the truth, of course. He grasped everything else. But for Mikka’s sake
—or his own—he acted like he expected Ciro to do what he was told.
“Make sure you don’t,” he panted back, “I don’t care how crazy you are. We can’t afford any screwups.”
Angus himself was only armed with a pair of laser cutters. He carried nothing else except an extra EVA suit strapped to his back and a heavy canister of plexulose hull-sealant clipped to his belt. If Ciro hadn’t trusted him, the boy would have wondered how much damage Angus could do with such puny weapons.
“Leave him alone, Angus,” Mikka muttered from Trumpet’s bridge: automatic protectiveness, with no force behind it. “If he does screw up, you won’t die any faster than he does.”
“You like the view out there?” Captain Ubikwe asked before Angus could reply. He spoke in a soothing rumble, trying to defuse tension between Angus and Mikka. “They tell me it’s spectacular, but I don’t enjoy it much. I guess I’ve spent too much time behind metal walls. Open space makes me want to puke.”
“Then it’s a good thing you don’t have my job, fat man,” Angus croaked. He might have been choking.
“Damn straight.” Captain Ubikwe sounded cheerful; almost happy. “I’m fine where I am.”
If everything else went wrong, he was supposed to cut Trumpet loose and try to ram Calm Horizons’ proton emitter. Apparently he didn’t mind imagining that kind of death.
Ciro disapproved. He felt diminished by Captain Ubikwe’s good humor. He was sure the captain didn’t trust him.
“I wish you would all shut up,” he put in petulantly. He hated his own voice. It was too much like a kid’s. “I already have enough to think about.”
To his surprise, both Mikka and Captain Ubikwe fell silent.
Angus didn’t. But Ciro had heard it all before: to some extent he could tune it out. Instead of listening, he concentrated on Calm Horizons—and on the woman, Soar’s captain, who had made him what he was.
In some sense he’d fallen in love with her. She’d injected a mutagen into his veins. She’d ordered him to destroy Trumpet. Now she was dead—and he’d failed to carry out her wishes. He was bound to her by attachments as intimate as passion.
The Gap Into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die Page 57
