I stared at the screen. All at once the letters and symbols I had labored so hard to decode looked like nothing more than shimmering hieroglyphs again. I didn’t know how to interpret the display. I didn’t know how to interpret anything. I felt a sudden stab of doubt. What if Saresh was lying to me, and there was no such thing as a signal shadow? What if he, or someone else, had screened my original transmission and deliberately held it back? What if he had diverted or deleted the message he claimed to have sent just now? The plea for help had been direct. I should have been more subtle. That was the entire point of the covert signals. In my mind I heard Tristan say again, Silence isn’t a signal. How long would Earth wait before deciding that the absence of a transmission from me was more than just a technical glitch? And once they realized there was a problem, what could they possibly do to help me?
“Eyvri?” Saresh said quietly.
I couldn’t look at him. A yawning chasm of fear and doubt had opened up in front of me, and only by holding myself perfectly still could I avoid tumbling headlong into it.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No,” I whispered.
We sat there in silence. I knew he was waiting for me to say more, but that single syllable was all I could manage. I felt paralyzed, torn between my longing to confide in him and my terror that confiding in anyone would only make matters worse. I had no idea what Saresh was thinking. When he spoke again, his voice was pitched so low I had to strain to hear it.
“Eyvri, you need to understand that in the Fleet, the hierarchy of rank is absolute. Orders given are meant to be followed without question. On long journeys like this one, a ship becomes a world unto itself, and as you’ve seen, the khavi’s domination is complete. If you knew our history, you would understand that there are very good reasons why this is the case.” I nodded. He continued, “That being said, even the best commanders aren’t infallible. Some of Vekesh’s command decisions with regard to you have taken on an oddly . . . personal . . . cast. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m not the only one who’s concerned. Rhevi Daskar and I have reported the situation to the Echelon and requested mediation. We expect a response within two or three days. Until the Echelon responds, you should do whatever you can to keep from antagonizing Vekesh further. Comply with whatever orders he gives you. Try not to draw his attention. Am I being clear?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you any of this,” he said. “But you looked like you needed to hear it.”
“I really, really did.”
“I can’t promise you anything except an objective opinion,” Saresh cautioned. “It’s possible that the Echelon will approve all of Vekesh’s policies, and then you’ll be exactly where you were before. And even if they do decide to reverse his orders, you’ll want to act as if nothing has changed. Above all else, you should avoid the appearance of . . .” He hesitated.
“Gloating?” I suggested. “Believe me, that’s the last thing I’d do.”
“Good.”
“He hates me enough already,” I muttered.
“I wouldn’t think of it that way. It’s not easy to have a command decision overturned, especially one as public as Vekesh’s policies have been.”
I shook my head. “How can you be so considerate of everyone’s feelings all the time?”
“I’m a Vox,” he said simply. “I feel other people’s feelings.”
I accepted the answer, although I didn’t understand why being a Vox made a difference in a society in which nearly everyone had access to telepathy. I thanked him again and left the axis chamber feeling noticeably lighter. I trusted Saresh. It was impossible not to; he was so calm and articulate and assured. It was immensely comforting to know that both he and Daskar shared my conviction that Vekesh was singling me out for inexplicable persecution. Other than Vekesh himself, the two of them were the oldest and most experienced members of the crew. If their instincts aligned with mine, it meant that I wasn’t overreacting or imagining things. Something was wrong. And within two days, or three at the outside, the Council and the Echelon would both weigh in, and I was certain that both entities would side with me. Everything was going to be restored to me: my technology, my friend, my pride. All I had to do was wait.
“You’re in a good mood,” Zey observed that night. We were sitting with Sohra on one of the platforms in the lounge. I had a rest day tomorrow and had indulged in a couple of beers. I didn’t know whether credit was due to the alcohol or the afterglow of my conversation with Saresh, but I had just conquered both of them in two consecutive dice games, a personal best.
“I’m winning,” I pointed out.
“It’s more than that,” Sohra said. “You seem . . . happy.”
“I’m looking forward to getting some messages from Earth. I feel like we’ve been out of touch for a long time.”
“Remember the signal shadow just after Elteni on our way out?” Zey asked Sohra. “What was that, a month?”
“Talk about out of touch,” she agreed.
“A month?” I echoed.
“Three weeks, anyway. It was a long time.” Zey rattled the dice in his hand and tossed them onto the board. It was a poor cast. Both he and Sohra hissed deep in their throats in disapproval. It was an ineffably exotic sound, one that never failed to startle me and which I hadn’t yet managed to imitate to my satisfaction.
“It sounds lonely,” I said. I made my own throw, which wasn’t much better, and shoved the dice toward Sohra.
She weighed them thoughtfully in her hand. “We’re always alone out here. We just pretend that we’re not.”
I was the first of the group to turn in. I walked back to my quarters alone, lighthearted and still a little buzzed, stopping on the way to rinse out my bottles in the galley. Stepping out into the corridor again, I nearly ran into Vethna.
“Watch where you’re going,” he said irritably.
“Sorry.” I turned in the direction of helix four.
He caught my arm. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Sorry, Rhevi.” I tried to jerk my arm free, but he held it fast. “Hey,” I snapped. “Back off. I said I was sorry.”
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be. You and your little pikvith.”
I’d never heard the word before, but I didn’t like the sound of it. “What the hell is a pikvith?”
Vethna snorted. “You tell me. You’re the one fucking him.”
I recoiled. The vulgarity was startling, and my revulsion was as real as if it had been spoken in English. The Vardeshi weren’t much given to profanity as a whole. They were particularly sparing in their use of obscenities that carried sexual overtones. It was one of the things I admired about them.
I pulled harder against his grip, but he didn’t let go, and in the resulting spike of adrenaline I lost my temper completely. “What the hell is your problem?” I demanded. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? I know you were the one who told Khavi Vekesh that Zey and I were hanging out. Why do you have to turn it into something ugly? We’re just friends! Can’t you understand that? Or has rana completely liquefied whatever you had for a brain to begin with?”
Abruptly Vethna let go of me. Thrown off balance, I windmilled backward and would have fallen if I hadn’t been caught by someone I hadn’t known was there. By pure chance, he grabbed the same arm Vethna had been holding, and I pulled violently free before I realized who it was.
“That’s enough,” said Hathan.
I went cold. How much had he witnessed of our confrontation? What had it looked like to him? If he’d arrived too late to hear the sordid insinuation that had prompted my outburst, all he knew was that I’d been screaming like a banshee at someone who outranked me. I replayed my last sentence. No, that wasn’t strictly accurate. He also knew I’d ridiculed someone for a drug addiction. I looked at Vethna. A smug smile played around his lips. I’d been tricked, I realized. He must have known all along that the suvi was appro
aching. He had engineered our entire argument. I had stepped neatly into his trap.
“I—” I said.
Hathan raised a hand. “Back to your quarters. Both of you. Now.”
“But he—”
“That was an order, Novi,” he said quietly. “I advise you to follow it.”
Tears of rage and humiliation stung my eyes. I knew better than to protest again, but the words burned in my throat as I walked away. He hurt me. He insulted your brother. He manipulated both of us. You saw what he wanted you to see. My arm still ached where Vethna had gripped it. Too angry for sleep, I used one of my precious shower slots instead. It took me three tries to enter the door code correctly; my hands were shaking. Rage, or lingering adrenaline, or more likely both. The hot water eased the soreness in my arm, but the sense of outraged fury wasn’t nearly so quick to subside.
When I woke the next morning, my first thoughts were of Saresh and the mediation request he and Daskar had sent to the Echelon. I checked my messages hopefully. There were no new transmissions either from Vardesh Prime or from Earth. I’d known there wouldn’t be. It was still too early. It was unlikely that we would hear anything before tomorrow. At least I had a day off. Saresh had recommended that I stay off the khavi’s radar, and I had every intention of following his advice. All I had to do was avoid crossing paths with Vekesh.
I froze, sweatshirt halfway over my head, as the memory of last night’s confrontation with Vethna came flooding back. It wouldn’t matter if I sat in my quarters all day. The damage was already done. When Hathan reported the incident in the hallway to Vekesh, as he was no doubt obligated to do, it would place me squarely in the khavi’s sights again. I sat down on the edge of my bed and put my head in my hands. Why had Vethna gone after me like that? And what had prompted him to be so aggressive? I had observed the Vardeshi to be sparing in their use of physical contact among themselves, and they were particularly so with me. I could think of maybe a dozen times over the past two and a half months when one of them had touched me. Not one of those instances had been violent. On the contrary, they had been immensely tactful—a slight readjustment of my fingers on the kevet or a consoling touch on the shoulder so light I hardly felt it.
Remembering Vethna’s grip, I worked my right arm free of the sweatshirt sleeve and looked at it closely. He had grabbed me hard enough to leave a bruise just above the elbow. I’d known from the first that Vethna disliked me, but until now he’d restricted his malice to the occasional verbal taunt. This was something else, and while it was infuriating—and frightening—it was also out of character. The brief surge in hostility caused by his withdrawal from rana had long since subsided. I went to the mess hall and ate my solitary breakfast, still pondering the escalation in his behavior. The only explanation that presented itself was almost too ridiculous to contemplate. Could Vethna have been infected by the Flare?
I rejected the idea almost at once. It had been many hours since our encounter. If a disease that induced homicidal violence were spreading through the Pinion’s crew, surely someone else would have noticed by now that something was wrong. And Daskar had said that most suspected cases of the Flare turned out to have utterly prosaic causes. All the same, it might be worth asking her. She might have some insight into what the prosaic cause in this case might be. More importantly, she was a doctor, and the bruise on my arm unquestionably belonged in her weekly medical report. I washed my breakfast dishes and headed for the clinic. My heart sank when I saw that its front room was dark and unoccupied. I thought about hailing Daskar on my flexscreen, then decided against it. We were certain to see each other at some point that day. The bruise, and the questions, could wait a few hours. And if for some reason she happened to be with Vekesh at the moment, I didn’t want to encourage his suspicions that I was trying to meet with other members of his crew in solitude.
I was too restless to read, so I changed into my workout gear and went to the fitness center. Ziral, who also had the day off, was alone on the mats at the far side of the room, dressed for ranshai, working her way through a series of forms. She nodded briefly to me without pausing in the sequence. I watched her for a few moments, drawn as before to the power and grace of the movements. Then I powered up the treadmill, snapped on the harness, settled the visor on my face, and started my run.
Running without music had quickly become tedious, and I’d made a few tentative forays into the platform-jumping program for which the treadmill had been designed. I’d discovered that at the absolute lowest level of challenge, with the gravity set absurdly low, I could just about manage the easiest track. I still dreaded falling, but I didn’t do it often, and it didn’t startle me the way it had the first time.
Twenty minutes into my run, I was absolutely focused on the brilliant yellow platform stretching ahead of me, gauging the distance to the next gap, when a voice spoke my name directly into my ear. I stumbled sideways and plunged off the left-hand edge of the platform into darkness. Panicked, my heart slamming in my chest, I snatched the visor off. The voice was Ziral’s. She was standing directly to my right. Saresh stood beside her, looking incongruous in his uniform. The vaguely troubled expression on her face was mirrored on his. “What?” I gasped. “What’s wrong?”
“Khavi Vekesh wants to see you,” Saresh said.
I stepped down off the treadmill and picked up my flexscreen, which I’d tossed on top of my sweatshirt prior to beginning my run. “I don’t have any messages.”
“I know.” Slowly he extended his right hand. “I’m afraid I need to confiscate that.”
I was starting to get my breath back, but I felt dazed and a little disoriented. I didn’t process the words at first. I stared blankly at his outstretched hand. “What?”
“Your access to technology is being . . . restricted.”
“Why?”
“We weren’t given an explanation,” Ziral said. “Just an order.”
“I’m sure the khavi will be able to answer your questions,” Saresh said.
I stared at him. He met my eyes candidly, but he said nothing more. His face was as grave as I had ever seen it. Without further protest I handed him my flexscreen. He took it and folded the wrist strap with what seemed to me unnecessary precision.
“What happened to your arm?” Ziral asked.
I followed her gaze. She was staring at my upper arm, where the marks of Vethna’s fingers were unmistakable.
“Those are from Vethna. He grabbed hold of me in the corridor last night.”
“Why?” Again the question was Ziral’s.
“I have no idea. Maybe so I would hold still while he insulted me. That’s what he did, anyway.”
Ziral and Saresh exchanged a look I couldn’t decipher at all. Then he said, “We should go. They’re waiting.”
Sweaty, flushed, and disheveled, I followed them to the khavi’s private office. Vekesh was sitting at a table that faced the door. He looked up from his flexscreen as we came in. Silently he gestured to a stool on the opposite side of the table. I sat down; the other two remained standing. After a moment Hathan came in quietly and stood beside the door. The silence stretched out torturously. I had been on the receiving end of too many reprimands from Vekesh to venture a question or comment. I waited.
Finally he said, “Novi Alkhat, is there something you’d like to tell me?”
I looked at each of them in turn. All four of them met my eyes unflinchingly, but their faces were closed. I said, “Khavi, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean.”
“No? Well, you must be accustomed to that by now.”
I stared at the floor. When he failed to elaborate, I steeled myself and asked, “Could I please have a glass of water?”
Vekesh nodded to Ziral. She left the room and returned with a cup of water. I downed it and passed it back to her. “Thanks. Can I get a refill?”
Vekesh said, “You’ve had enough. Ziral, you can go.”
She left, but not without looking back at me with an expr
ession that was both guarded and concerned.
The water had done little more than draw my attention to the raging thirst induced by my run. The sweat was rapidly cooling on my body, and I knew that as the warmth of exertion faded, my running shorts and sleeveless shirt would be inadequate protection against the chill of the air. I looked at each of them in turn: Vekesh, Saresh, Hathan. They all looked cool and poised in their uniforms. I felt—and knew I looked—laughably out of place. I didn’t feel like laughing. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t good.
“Is this an interrogation?” I asked.
Vekesh gave a short humorless laugh. “If the Vardeshi were interrogating you, human, you’d know it.”
The word human set alarm bells tolling in my mind. Trying to project a calm I didn’t feel, I said, “Then I’d like to shower and change and eat something before continuing with . . . whatever this is.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have time for that,” Hathan said. But he stepped out into the hallway for a moment. Ziral reappeared shortly with a bottle of water, an energy bar, and the sweatshirt I’d left in the fitness center. I pulled the sweatshirt on and made an effort to neaten my sweaty hair. Then I ate and drank while the others waited silently. It was exactly as unnerving as I would have expected, but I forced myself to do it anyway. In the aftermath of the workout, I was starting to feel slightly lightheaded. When I’d finished, I nodded to Vekesh.
He glanced at Hathan, who began to speak. “Earlier this morning the Pinion’s entire communications network went down without warning. Attempts to restart the system have failed. We have no ability to send or receive signals of any kind, either within the ship or beyond it. No other systems seem to have been impacted, and we seem to be in no immediate danger. But as of now, we’re effectively mute.”
I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I said, “That sounds really bad.”
“It is,” Saresh confirmed.
“Can you fix it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“I’ve never seen it before.”
Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1) Page 24
