I wiped the dampness off my forehead as I crossed the park. To my left, across the browned grass, droplets of water had beaded up on the statue of the unknown draff. I hoped I didn’t end up like him, but there weren’t many guarantees the way the cybs were behaving.
“Coordinator?” asked Keiko’s smooth voice through the net.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
“Majer Henslom is here, waiting for you.”
“What does he want?” Whatever the cyb majer wanted, I wasn’t going to like it.
“He says he has something to discuss with you, not with your lowly subordinate.” The hint of a white-toothed smile followed the words.
“He didn’t say that.”
“He might as well have.” Keiko laughed, a laugh unheard by Majer Henslom.
“I know. They’re worse than Coordinators.”
“Not much.” The laugh was more pronounced.
“I’m crossing the park now.”
When I got to the admin building, I hurried, but not to the extent of taking the stairs two at a time.
Henslom was waiting, in greens so smooth they could have come from an antique metal press. I inclined my head to him and gestured toward the office. “Come in, Majer.”
He stood stiffly on the other side of the broad desk as I peeled off my jacket—bison leather.
“Sit down.” I motioned to one of the green chairs and dropped into the swivel. It creaked, as I expected. “What can I do for you?”
Henslom sat as stiffly as he had stood, at attention on the front half of the chair, watching me as if I were some demon from the past.
“Coordinator Ecktor … the majority of our troopers have not been planetside in months. Some have not been off their ships since we left Gates.” Henslom’s voice was harsh, as if he had been told to ask me. He would have rather demanded. “We appreciate your assistance in billeting the first five hundred, but we have several times that number of troopers.”
I fingered my chin. “We’re a small society, Majer. I don’t see how we could billet another five hundred troopers—that was what you had in mind, wasn’t it? Not in the Deseret locial. We might be able to work something out in Ellay.”
“Ellay?”
“That’s the locial west of here, about thirteen hundred klicks. We could probably open another residence bloc there in the next few days.” I spread my hands. “It’s not as though we had large empty dwellings or antique hotels. The residence blocs function more as temporary housing, and some sections are like guest houses for people visiting friends or family, but we don’t travel that much here. Coming up with space for a thousand extra bodies in one locial isn’t that easy.”
“We could bring down temporary billets,” said Henslom flatly.
“That’s not feasible. We’re still trying to get the ecosystems balanced.”
“A few thousand people couldn’t do that much damage.” His voice was disbelieving.
“We’d rather not risk it. There’s a great deal you need to find out about Old Earth before you make statements like that. Remember, unlike Gates, Old Earth suffered unbelievable ecological damage. We’re still expending close to sixty percent of our societal resources on ecosystem maintenance or rehabilitation.” I paused, then added. “Reforestation was an early and comparatively easy accomplishment, but even after all these millennia, in some areas more than ten percent of the trees are meleysen groves.”
Henslom looked blank.
“Sorry. Meleysens are bioengineered trees which detoxify soil. They literally die and decompose once there are no unnatural chemical organics and certain heavy metals left in an area.”
He still looked uncomprehending.
“Majer,” I said softly. “Think about it. If more than five millennia after reforesting was initiated we still have ten percent of some forests with areas of high toxics levels, just how stable is the ecology? We still have unbelievably high mutation rates in many species, and some totally new species that have evolved.”
“I see,” he said. I could tell he didn’t.
“I’ll begin arrangements to vacate a residence bloc in Ellay. We’ll try to have it available in three days.”
“I had hoped—”
“Majer. We have to move several hundred people.” I forced a smile. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Your head …” That was subvocalized, and I ignored it.
“Not now.” Henslom stood. “Thank you. I will tell Commander Gibreal that we can land another five hundred troopers in Ellay. He will be pleased. We can work out more arrangements later.”
“Let me know what you need.” I wasn’t promising, just saying I’d listen if asked.
I got the barest of nods.
After the majer left, I linked to the net and tried to connect with Locatio. I probed his index, but there was no response. I hated using the voice-storing feature, but sometimes there was no option. “Locatio, this is Ecktor. The cybs have requested additional earthside billeting for their marcybs. In order to ensure continued harmony as the cyb visit to Old Earth progresses, I’d like to request that you make available a five-hundred-person residential bloc for that purpose. This will have to be done by the day after tomorrow. You’re authorized to grant comptime credits, temporary housing upgrades, whatever is necessary. Thank you.”
Then I went out and told Keiko.
“How many marcybs do they have stacked up on those ships?” she asked, black eyes glancing toward the hall and the open staircase down which the majer had departed in his stiffly fluid strides.
“Five thousand, I’d guess, from the design and comparative analysis.”
“Enough to create a mess, but not enough to take a planet.”
“They don’t want a conquest,” I pointed out, “but a reason to slag Old Earth. It’s hard to avoid giving them that reason.”
“That’s an understatement.”
I yawned.
“Do you want some tea?” she asked.
“I could use it, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The office seemed empty, but it was immense enough that I could have had the entire representative Committee of the Consensus around the desk and it still would have felt empty.
The park was filled with gray mist, and droplets formed on the outside of the office windows, then condensed into globules that ran down the glass in random tracks.
“Your tea, Coordinator.”
I tried not to jump. So distracted and unfocused had I been that I’d not even heard her enter. “Thank you.”
“They don’t make it easy.” In a black jumpsuit and with her black hair, she was probably the cybs’ nightmare version of a demi. She nodded in the general direction of the south residential bloc where Majer Henslom’s marcybs were boarded. “That’s why you’re Coordinator.”
“Such a vote of confidence.”
“No one has ever been that fond of whoever was Coordinator—not until much, much later.”
“Like I said … a great vote of confidence.”
She smiled briefly, then left, her steps silent and graceful.
A faint trail of steam wafted up from the pale brown mug that sat on the middle of the desk.
After drinking half a cup of Keiko’s royal blend—that was enough to wake up a hibernating bear—I connected into the uppernet and pulsed a link toward Ell Control. “Elanstan?”
“She’s on Kappa, Ecktor.” Somehow, Rhetoral felt more tightly wound, and I could almost sense the chill of angry blue eyes. “Do you want me to twist the link there?”
“No. That’s fine.” I tried to keep my words easy. “How is it going?”
“The rest of the system is warming, slowly. The online stations will be above ninety percent by tomorrow.”
“That says you’ve still got problems with Delta and Kappa.”
“Elanstan says Kappa will take three or four days. She’s not talking about Delta. I suppose you want everything on line tomorrow?”
“We have some ti
me, but I had to agree to vacate another residential bloc. This one’s in Ellay.”
“Do you think it’s a ploy?”
“No, Henslom was told to ask me. He didn’t want to. The cybs haven’t quite figured out how to proceed. I think they expected outright hostility, and our welcome has upset some of their notions.”
“That won’t last long.” He laughed harshly.
“You’re right, but I’ll take all the time they’ll give us. Keep me up to date.”
“We will.”
After the link cleared, I swallowed the rest of the royal blend, too quickly. Then I walked to the window and stared southward across the park, where sunlight was beginning to break through the gray mist. Patches of blue appeared in spots, especially to the south.
“Ecktor! Some Coordinator you are!”
The words burned through the net, jolting me upright in the green swivel that squeaked sharply with my startled movement.
“You didn’t even have the courtesy to consult with me before this … the request.” Each of Locatio’s words burned like red-hot iron spears.
“It wasn’t exactly a request, honored Consensus representative,” I offered smoothly.
“I know that! You’re the Committee’s representative, not its dictator!”
I swallowed before answering. “Under the Coordinator’s charter, there are no limits on my actions, except my immediate removal. The Committee could probably even send me to one of the swept isles, Locatio. But a Committee can’t respond fast enough, or assess the changing situation. I did what I thought best.” Maybe so, but I was beginning to sweat as I responded. Had I done right?
“Letting another five hundred of those monsters back on Old Earth? Displacing hundreds of our people? Without even consulting those most affected?”
“Guilty as charged—except that I have to consider the alternatives. Crucelle’s team hasn’t come up with a viable blazelink. The satellite system isn’t fully on line, and there are twelve adiamante hulls in orbit, and each one generates as much power as all of our locials together normally. I’m trying to purchase time as cheaply as possible. Do you have any other ideas?”
The silence stretched across the link. I wiped my forehead.
“It’s still high-handed. Couldn’t you have at least said that you’d let them know?”
“The one advantage we possess is myth—the myth of demi unity and decisiveness. If I wander around like a demented cleft cow, I give that up.”
“You have an answer for everything, Ecktor.”
I wished I did.
“I’ll be talking to you later.”
The faint hissing vanished with the link, and I rubbed my temples. Talking with Locatio in person was difficult; linking was almost impossible.
A knock on the half-open door got my attention, and I motioned Keiko in.
“While you were on the net, the majer sent a force leader over here. They’re not happy with the food supplies. They claim they need more animal protein.” Keiko rolled her dark eyes.
I frowned and went into the logistics net, trying to track something I thought I’d seen. After a timeless instant, I found it. Keiko was still there when I shook my head. “There.” I passed the data to her. “The midplains bison herds are above eco-norm. See if the Kaysta locial can cull what we need.”
“I’m glad we’re not in Afrique. You’d have someone culling rhions.” This time, she offered the thought without a smile.
I winced. Rhions made vorpals look small and mild, but rhion meat was good.
“Coordinator …” The smooth oiliness of the netlink betrayed K’gaio’s presence even before her signature-link identified her. “Locatio just contacted me.”
Keiko nodded to me and slipped back out of the office, graceful and silent.
It had to be the middle of the night in Kelang, but K’gaio was as unruffled as she always sounded or appeared. That might have been one reason why I wasn’t comfortable with her. No one was that calm all the time, and I wondered what inner fires stoked her.
“I could sense the firebolts from here,” I offered with a laugh.
“He was somewhat agitated, and he asked me to intercede on his behalf, or, more properly, on behalf of the Ellay locial.”
“I’m in a difficult position, K’gaio,” I pointed out. “There are twelve adiamante hulls in orbit, jammed with weapons reminiscent of the Rebuilt Hegemony, and our system isn’t fully operational yet.”
“Do we really know that they have such capabilities?”
“They have enough power generation ability to move those hulls from star system to star system. They’ve got portable net capabilities, and multiple comm systems and channels. I wouldn’t want to assume that they don’t have matching weapons capability. Would you?”
“No. When you express it in that fashion, Ecktor, I can understand your concerns. Still … it might be useful to know more …”
I smiled. “I agree, absolutely, K’gaio. That’s why it’s important to let them put more troops on the ground, and to keep them separated. We’re far better off with five hundred marcybs in Ellay and five hundred in Deseret than with a thousand in one locial.”
“You continue to convince me that you are the right person to be Coordinator, Ecktor. You may tell Locatio that we have spoken.” With that, she was gone, leaving me with the dirty work of relaying her messages to Locatio.
My stomach growled, confirming the fact that I hadn’t eaten since right after dawn. Keiko smiled as I left the office and headed downstairs to the small cafeteria.
Two draffs in blue singlesuits looked away as I stepped inside the archway and toward the serving bar. I tried to ignore the low-voiced comments as I took a basket of greens, with cheese.
“ … Coordinator … say … lost soulmate and doesn’t care … what cost …”
“ … nice enough … when … on comp-duty …”
“ … better tech than any cyb …”
“Cyb type came out of his office … looked like the Coordinator had chewed him up like a vorpal would …”
“ … hope we don’t get …”
As soon as I gave my code to the terminal, I left the cafeteria and took the basket back to the office. Keiko shook her head.
“Everyone’s speculating,” I explained.
“We don’t have Coordinators that often.”
“It’s not as though I’m Wayneclint.”
“You’re the first since him who’s had to deal with the cybs,” she pointed out.
“Could I have some more tea?” I asked, imposing more than I probably should have.
The rest of the afternoon went better, or at least more smoothly, despite the endless linkages on the logistics for clearing the Ellay residential bloc, the repeated questions about the bison requisitions, the maintenance queries about Elanstan’s authorization to requisition all manner of electronics and subchip assemblies, not to mention several dozen less pressing items that got to me simply because, as Coordinator, I represented a new and higher authority to which more routine matters could be appealed. I turned them all back, because that wasn’t my business, but even denials took time.
Late that afternoon, as I took off into the wind, heading north, the dark snow clouds were rolling southward toward Parwon. I turned the flitter south, rotors thwopping their way through the cooling skies, glad to be away from the locial, if only for a few hours.
After another light dinner, I decided that I needed more exercise, something to get my mind off both the past and the rapidly approaching future.
The gray of twilight had begun to fade into the faded nielle of early evening as I trotted westward under a moon that would likely be covered before the evening was fair begun. A few tattered leaves fluttered from the limbs of the three pear trees at the western end of the garden, and something small and furry scuttled through the leaves under the spreading piñon that marked the beginning of the endless hectares of restored lands.
The rustle halted with the soft whu
ft, whuft of wide wings. Downhill and to the north passed a great spotted owl, her two-meter wings partly folded by the time I saw her outline vanish below the tree line. Exit some rodent, probably a giant field mouse.
I laughed softly and stretched out my stride, letting the cool air flow past my face. It had been a long day, and Locatio’s inane protests had been the worst part.
I didn’t run all the way to the meadows. Even had I been in good shape, just to get there would have taken most the night. But the meadows were on my mind. I’d studied the reclamation records for the area around the house, years back, just out of curiosity, and had been surprised to discover that at some ancient time, there had been a massacre—not of Amerindians, but of old Caucasians, something less common among such sites. Not much had been left but bones bearing the marks of firearms, but there had been plenty of bones—and remnants of a monument, but the inscription had been weathered out of existence and the rec teams had reconstituted the stone.
Morgen had claimed the place had a haunted feeling. I’d always felt melancholy there, and the cyb arrival triggered something. Were we to be the attackers or the victims? Either choice meant deaths.
My steps had shortened, and I forced my stride into a longer pattern as I paralleled the dry depression to my left.
A dark tower of fur growled from the hill to my right, three-plus meters of young black bear, and I growled back, the kind of growl that acknowledged her claim, presence, superiority, while skirting the area. Over any distance I could have outrun her, so long as I didn’t get within the first fifty meters where her sprint could have caught me, but there wasn’t much sense in provoking anything. Besides, the bears pretty much kept the vorpals away in the hilly areas that weren’t out and out mountains. And the young female on the hill probably was more interested in plastering shut the giant bumblebee-hive entrances with the mud she slopped from the rivulet running from the spring.
I didn’t know what plants the bears plastered inside the hives, but whatever it was, the bees would eventually abandon the hive and leave the honey. Most bears cultivated a few hives that way, and one sometimes took a few pears from the tree at the end of the ridge, but only on the side away from the house, and only when I’d taken the flitter.
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