"I wanted to elicit some reaction," he said. "But if these attacks are that reaction, it's so far out of proportion to the situation as to be insane. So I must have missed something."
"We talked about this after the bombing," she said, "and you and Dahno agreed it must have been the work of that—that secret group you came here to look for."
"Only because we couldn't think of anyone else," he said. "But that conclusion only dodged the question of why they, or anyone on this planet, would want to attack us."
He held up a hand, stopping her reply while he thought.
"But maybe they don't have to be from Ceta at all," he went on after another moment. "We've made a lot of enemies elsewhere, certainly."
"Who out there could have reached down onto Ceta and set up not one, but two, attacks in such quick succession?" she asked. He nodded at her objection.
"Generally, you're right," he said. "The only group really capable of being efficient enough to follow us to Ceta on short notice and then set up these attacks—only the Dorsai could do it."
"It's not the Dorsai," she said.
"I know you have Dorsai ancestry," he said. "Is there another reason to believe they couldn't do this?"
"It's not that they couldn't," she said. "It's that they wouldn't." He was impressed by the firmness of her assertion. "You're that sure?"
"Absolutely," she said. "I have Dorsai ancestry, yes, but that doesn't make me one of them. It does, however, make me sure that such an attack is something no true Dorsai would ever do."
"I'll admit it feels like a false idea," he said. "But who else could have done it?"
"Besides," she said, not ready to let go of her thought just yet, "no Dorsai-led group would have let itself be caught so off-guard by Henry and his Soldiers—no disrespect to Henry and his people "
"That's true, too." He grimaced and raised a hand to massage his forehead. "Who else is there? Who have I overlooked?"
"You're working now from the premise that the attack must have come from off-Ceta," she said. "But the logic only works if the premise is correct."
"You're right," he said. "I did start out by assuming there isn't anyone already on this planet who would have wanted to attack us—and who also could have done it. But I gather you're saying that I'm making a shaky assumption, there."
"Yes," she nodded. "If you think about it for a moment, what you really mean is that there's no one on this planet who would have done it, and could have done it, that you know of"
"And where are you going with this?"
"You've already deduced the existence of an unknown—a hidden—group on this planet. But you know next to nothing about them, so how can you conclude that they couldn't have attacked us?"
"But that group, whoever they are, should not have had any reason to attack us," he said. "Yet."
"Go at this from the other side of the problem," she said. "Ask how they knew—not only that we were on the planet, but that we presented a threat of some sort to them. And then, ask how anyone could have known where we were going to be—not once, but twice."
He nodded. "I guess they've done us a favor."
She looked at him, interest in her face.
"You know perfectly well what I mean," he said. "We still don't know who those people are—but we definitely know there's someone out there!"
"More than that," she said. "We now know they have some sort of access to our plans."
"And that narrows the range we have to search quite a lot, doesn't it?"
"Yes," she said, looking more somber. "Our own people." "Yes."
They talked on quietly for a time, as the night passed outside their container. Bleys slipped into an intermittent and unrestful nap, awakening each time the medician's CALL roused her for another check on Dahno's condition ... and sometimes he woke for no reason that he could tell, as if he were seeking to escape some dream his waking mind could not remember.
Toni stayed awake, keeping her attention focused on the satellite news channel that beamed down steadily as they moved across the face of a continent.
"Are you all right?" she asked, finally, softly, a few hours later, when he had come uncomfortably awake once more.
He looked at her, wondering what she was referring to.
"I'm tired, and my head aches," he said warily. He kept his voice low, as she had. "But I'm not hurt."
He stopped, and flicked his eyes in the direction of their companions in the container.
"It's all right to talk," Toni said, still keeping her voice down. "Dahno is heavily sedated, and Mary's sound asleep."
"I've been waiting to see if I'm going to go into another blackout," he said, almost whispering. "But I'm not sure I'll know I'm doing so, until after I come out of it."
"You've certainly had enough stress to bring on two or three blackouts," she said, almost cheerfully. "We'll deal with that if it happens. But that wasn't what I was getting at."
"Then what were you asking about?"
"How are you doing, emotionally?" she said.
"Emotionally? What makes you ask that? Are you wondering if nearly being killed is going to make me break down?"
"Break down, no," she said. "But it's not unusual for people to have an emotional reaction of some kind after they get out of a bad situation. When we had to fight our way off Newton you were sick from the DNA poisoning, so I couldn't tell how you were doing otherwise. But it's occurred to me that, if you aren't already having some reaction, maybe you should be warned to expect one."
"I guess I know the kind of thing you mean," he said, remembering how he had felt the first time he killed a man—Dahno's old associate—back on Association. "So far there's no sign of anything like that."
"It may sneak up on you," she said. "Don't be surprised by it, and don't let it make you do something you'd regret." "Are you having a reaction?"
"A little," she said. "But one as trained as I've been keeps her ki centered as a matter of habit; and that helps prevent her—me— from being thrown off balance."
"I don't know if that means you don't have a reaction to all those deaths, or if it means you have a way to cope with that kind of reaction."
"The latter," she said. "Being as trained as I am doesn't mean I don't feel."
"I didn't think otherwise," he said. "It's different with me, a little. I began to train myself, long ago, to prepare for the deaths that would be necessary ... it doesn't mean I'm blind to them. But they can't throw me off stride."
Silence followed.
Finally, about seven hours after they had left the bunker, it came.
"It's Henry," Toni said. Bleys sat up, looking over at her control pad.
Determined to avoid being traced through their communications, Henry had instructed them to send out no messages, but to watch for his instructions to come in piggybacked on the signal from the broadcast satellite.
"My pad is still decoding—there!" she said. She took a moment to read the text message on her small screen.
"It's actually not for us," she said. "Our drivers are being given orders for a rendezvous in—let's see—just over three hours." She looked up as Bleys made a movement.
"Do we need to let the drivers know?" he asked.
"No." She shook her head. "They have their own pads—" she was interrupted by a soft double tone that seemed to emanate from the lightstrips inside their container.
"That would be them letting us know they've gotten instructions," she said. "Leave it in their hands."
"All right," he said. He settled back on the mattress. In a moment he spoke again from beneath the arm draped across his face.
"This is the hardest part."
"Delegation was never a strong suit for either you or Dahno," she said, smiling a little. "But you, at least, are learning. Now get some sleep."
"And you?"
"I may be a basket case tomorrow," she admitted. "All the more reason for you to be in top form."
Part of him was uneasy about doing as she
instructed, but he could not come up with an objection that would not sound lame even in his own ears. He settled for closing his eyes again. He still wondered if he'd fall into a blackout now, or soon—or if not, whether he might wake up later without any memory of what had occurred today.
After a while, he fell into an uneasy sleep.
Unimaginably distant, the stars—maybe they were entire galaxies—were so faint that they would not be noticeable to any senses not sharpened by lifetimes spent in interstellar space. But as he watched, in his comfortable floating, those lights were a dazzling panoply of infinitely varying shades of red—the red of light so old it had gotten tired on the way to him.
He had been out here for so long that any time before was—not forgotten, but forgettable in its insignificance.
The black was cold but not unfriendly. It held him in its calm, strong embrace as comfortably as any warm ocean, rocking him gently as it drew him, in accordance with the immutable laws, to the end it had been ordained he would share with all the Universe, as it all came together in that final, gentle, terrible place that was the totality of the infinitely far future.
But there was a blur intruding on his solitary blackness, a barely sensed perturbation in his long, slow orbit, that incensed him with its wrongness... some intruder, out of place, or maybe just out of time....
CHAPTER 12
Well before midnight the Friendly consulate in Abbeyville had received permission from its host state, the Lancastrian Commonwealth, for a detachment of Friendly troops to be brought in from one of the leased units Bleys had already visited, to increase security in the consulate compound. All parties were maintaining a strict silence about the day's events, and nothing had made it into the media, which was the way everyone preferred it.
The two vehicles in which Bleys and his party left the battlefield had proceeded to the city after transferring their passengers, and by mid-evening had sped into the consulate's inner courtyard. The subsequent arrival of the rest of Bleys' official party, along with an official request for a deployment of local forces to guard the consulate from the outside, seemed to make it clear that Bleys was in, and intended to stay in, the consulate's safe confines. But no official statements were issued, and communications in or out of the consulate were scant and tightly controlled.
The consulate had already been buttoned down for hours when Bleys and his companions arrived at the rendezvous with Henry and his Soldiers, nearly a thousand kilometers away. But none of them had any intention of locking themselves into a potential trap.
Instead, they all headed for a tiny regional landing pad, where two privately chartered suborbital shuttles awaited them; and within four hours Bleys, Dahno and Toni were smuggled aboard Favored of God, secreted in a load of supplies for the repairs that were supposedly in progress on the ship. Favored had been sitting quietly on the pad outside Ceta City since some days before Bleys' own arrival aboard Burning Bush, ostensibly awaiting the arrival of its charter party. Favored WAS listed, in the port records, as the Konrad Macklin, of Freiland registry.
Kaj Menowsky, the Exotic-trained medician who had killed off the genetic antagonist with which Bleys had been poisoned on Newton, was waiting for them, along with a few of the ship's personnel, as Bleys and Toni were released from the crates in which they had boarded the vessel.
"Kaj!" Toni exclaimed. "We were told you'd been hurt. How're you feeling?"
"I'm fine," the medician said shortly. Clearly feeling he had no time for being sociable, he immediately began making a quick check into the stability of Dahno's condition. "It was just a mild concussion," he added, almost grudgingly, without turning to look back at her.
After a very short time, though, he smiled; and directed that Dahno be conveyed to the ship's infirmary. Then he turned to Bleys and Toni.
"How are you two?" he asked.
"I'm fine," Toni said. "Just tired—we haven't slept much lately." "I'm fine, too," Bleys said.
"Come with me," Kaj said to Bleys. "I want to check you over, too."
"No," Bleys said, more loudly than he had intended. "I'll answer as many questions as you want, but later! I have to have time to think and to get some things under way. And you have to take care of Dahno."
And I just can't take any of your incessant questions right now! he added to himself. The medician, for all his good work in combating the genetic attack on Bleys, at times made it seem as if keeping his patient talking was the key to his treatment.
"I've already confirmed that Mary did everything necessary to stabilize Dahno's condition," Kaj said. "It'll take only minutes to remove the needle still in his chest—in fact, Mary could have done that, even under field conditions, if the needle weren't lodged in a rib. But this ship has all the equipment we need, and I promise you
Dahno will be able to move about with very little constraint within three or four days, and will be completely recovered in less than two weeks. But—"
"No 'buts,'" Toni said firmly, taking Kaj by an elbow and rotating him so he could follow the crewmembers moving Dahno deeper into the ship. "There's an emergency situation still in progress, and we have things we have to get done right away." With a hand in the center of his back, she pushed him gently in the direction he was now facing.
"Again?" Kaj said; and then he shrugged, lengthening his stride and moving away from them in the direction of the ship's infirmary.
"Contact me in twenty minutes!" Toni called at his retreating back.
"I should have specialized in trauma . .." they heard his voice trail off as he passed through the hatch.
"Bleys, this is the first officer, John Tindall," Toni said then, turning and indicating the middle-aged man who had supervised the gentle removal of Dahno from his crate—no small feat, given Dahno's size—and then come to stand silently nearby during the brief argument with the medician.
"I know we've met before, Mr. Tindall," Bleys said, offering his hand.
"We have, Great Teacher," the first officer said. "We've had the pleasure of your company on board Favored of God on a number of occasions, although at those times we were usually carrying other passengers as well."
"The pleasure has been mine," Bleys said. "I learned long ago I could feel safe and comfortable in the care of this ship and her people."
As the first officer beamed, Bleys continued: "How is Captain Broadus? I assume she's busy?"
"She is ashore, sir," said Tindall. "Henry MacLean indicated it was imperative that this ship appear to be on other business, as well as virtually deserted during repairs. Since repairs are customarily the first officer's province, the captain took rooms ashore—under a false name, of course."
"I see," Bleys nodded. "No one would think anything was going on aboard a ship whose captain was apparently taking a bit of recreational leave."
"Yes, sir," said the first officer. "The captain is unhappy about it, though."
"They also serve who only stand and wait," Bleys murmured. "Yes, sir."
"I suspect, now we've come aboard, she'll find some reason for her own return," Toni said. Then, more briskly: "Mr. Tindall, can we arrange to have a work space set up for us?"
"Already done," the first officer said. "Please follow me."
"I need to know more about what's been going on," Bleys said, as he and Toni entered the ship's main lounge a few minutes later. "We still haven't figured out who our enemy is."
"Henry said we'd have nearly total communications available here—and I expect that would be you?" Toni said, addressing the question to two figures now rising from desks on the other side of the lounge.
"Yes," one of them said. He was short and muscular, with hair almost the same medium shade of brown as his skin.
"You're Walker Freas, I think," Toni said. "And you would be Sarah Kochan," she went on, turning to the second figure, a short, red-haired woman whose face carried an intense display of freckles.
The two Soldiers nodded. Their presence indicated they were members of the speci
alists among Henry's Soldiers—some of whom were technical specialists being trained in the skills of fighting, and the rest warriors being trained in technical skills. Bleys, when Henry had brought the idea of the dual force to him, had foreseen friction between the two groups, but the cross-training seemed to be paying off, as each side developed more respect for the other, having learned something of what the others had to know. . ..
"There are four more of us," Walker Freas said, "two on duty with the comms consoles, through that door there—" he pointed, "—and two catching some sleep."
"Henry gave me to understand you have landlines set up through the pad facilities, that can't be traced," Toni said.
"That's right," Sarah Kochan said. Her face lit in a toothy smile. "The line is shielded up to its junction with the public system, as is required by the interstellar compacts for spaceports."
She was referring, they all knew, to some of the legal niceties that gave all ships on spaceport pads the sovereignty of their home planets, and put them virtually beyond the control of whatever planet they might be on.
"And after that juncture, it becomes virtually anonymous in the midst of the public system," Sarah was continuing. "It's a permanently open connection, which means no initialization signals to attract attention—going to a safe house where we have all the standard comm security gear in place, as well as a nano-modulated—"
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 12
