Warring States

by Susan R. Matthews

  “Warning order,” the talk-alert said. Padrake, Jils realized. “There’s fast-meal on the table, Jils, get yourself dressed. We’ve got to move out before sunrise.”

  Traveling at night didn’t present any real barriers to a determined observer; it simply reduced the odds of being accidentally observed by some casual passer-by. “With you shortly,” she replied, and then waited for the clear-tone on the talk-alert to sound before she got out of bed.

  She hadn’t bothered to unpack most of her kit last night so it didn’t take much time to pack up and get dressed. Fast-meal was on the table as Padrake had promised; the kilpers was hot and the cream was buttery, just as she liked it.

  When she’d retrieved her data-reader from its safe and opened up the outermost door of the suite to step out into the very early morning Padrake was there, sitting on a low stone bench in the atrium, waiting for her.

  “Slept well, I hope?” he asked with a wink, which she filed away for future reference. “Arik’s waiting for us, let’s go.”

  Was he really? She wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. There was a thin line between a First Secretary waiting because a meeting had been scheduled or a late development had to be pursued and reported on, and a First Secretary waiting because a Bench specialist felt she outranked him and he could very well just wait.

  There were two ground-cars waiting at the gate to the guest-compound, and Arik Tirom was in the first one waiting — hands folded in his lap, evidently meditating with his eyes closed. Someone got out of the second car, saluted, got right back in; Security. Padrake pointed; Jils went to join Arik Tirom in the first car, murmuring a polite “Good-greeting, First Secretary,” as she ducked her head to climb in and sit down on the padded bench facing the rear of the vehicle.

  Tirom opened one eye and grinned at her. “If you say so, Specialist Ivers. I call it altogether too early in the morning for any greeting to be good. Nothing personal.” It was a common complaint for the First Secretary, apparently; because all Padrake said — respectfully enough, Jils supposed — was “You’ve got just enough time for a short nap, Arik,” as he joined her on the bench in the ground-car.

  By the tell-tales in the framework all around her Jils could see that it was a high-security model of ground-car with the full range of detection avoidance technologies on board, but perhaps the single most important of those was the fact that it looked like a perfectly innocuous, not too new, not too expensive, general-purpose ground-car, from the outside at least.

  That made things a little cramped on the inside of the car, but Jils couldn’t make up her mind to be very much bothered by the heat and the pressure of Padrake’s body, so close to hers. Her body knew his body, and remembered it fondly for its strength and grace and the abstract beauty of the masculine frame when it was unclothed.

  She could feel her own flesh relaxing against his as against a familiar and comfortable support, a safe place; and had just gotten to the point of deciding whether or not she was going to start thinking about sleeping arrangements wherever they were going when the ground-car pulled to a stop and the doors slid open.

  “Site secured,” the ground-car’s systems said. “Shuttle is on stand-by. Confirm departure in twelve.”

  The second ground-car was stopped as well, but she couldn’t see any of the Security: quite possibly they were already emplaced. There were no hints of sunrise on the horizon — any horizon; the sky was a faintly glowing deep-napped charcoal gray, the smoke and ash in the upper atmosphere catching the lights from the burning launch-fields and diffusing it through the sky until it wasn’t even possible to tell which direction the launch-fields were.

  When a fire of that sort got large enough, it was frequently all that could be done to contain it. There was no way to actually extinguish an entire field of burning fuel-tanks without more resources than the Bench apparently had here at Brisinje — not with a city so close by. All they could do was to keep the surrounding areas from harm as well as they could, and let the fire burn out.

  Most of the fuel-stores would have been safely bunkered in hardened compartments with significant thermal buffering, yes, of course. But thermal buffering was only good for a range of temperatures over a period of time, and if the fire too hot — or went on for too long — even thermal buffers could fail. It was unnecessary for her to remind herself that a sabotaged thermal buffer would fail much more quickly and efficiently.

  The uniform glow in the sky and its unnaturally gray-black color gave the scene a very surreal cast. They had stopped on an old concrete apron at the riverside, in front of a seemingly rather dilapidated one-story building — quite small, one or two rooms if that, surely. There were weeds growing up between the cracks in the concrete and the apron.

  But the bracket-lock on the door only looked old; that would never yield to a key code sequence, Jils thought, watching Padrake invoke the secures with his identity-chop. That bracket-lock was a fully functioning security spider, suspicious and conservative, that kept them waiting for several long moments before it grudgingly agreed that Padrake’s chop was exactly what it claimed to be, and let its bolt slip.

  That meant the defensive traps and alarms set around and within were temporarily deactivated, Jils knew. Or else the spider had decided that there was something just a whisper web-filament thin the wrong side of “all correct” about Padrake’s chop and wanted them all inside where it could keep them until Port security could arrive.

  Inside there had once been an office, with a squared-off inner office in the middle of the otherwise unpartitioned building; it looked a little bit like a public ground-transportation station, to Jils, and then she realized that that was not too far from its actual purpose. Padrake led the two of them, Jils and the First Secretary, around to the rear wall of the inner office, where the controls were; the shaft-car was waiting for them. Self-braking linear descent module.

  A mine elevator, in principle, but a very well-appointed one with built-in seating and pleasant surfaces, freshly oxygenated air in circulation, all of the amenities. She checked the ceiling by force of habit as she stepped in: yes, there was the emergency escape hatch, right where it was supposed to be.

  Padrake locked off the doors and keyed the program, and the elevator started to move. There was nowhere to go but down from their current level, though, so — Jils asked herself — was “elevator” really the right word? It would be when they were ready to come up again, yes, but who knew when that would be?

  “It’ll be fifteen or twenty,” Padrake said to her, seating himself near the control panel. “Make yourself comfortable.” Tirom had already done so, Jils noted; he’d made this trip before, obviously enough.

  “Where are we going?” She knew the obvious answer. Padrake would know she knew. She trusted him to answer the right question.

  “Chambers here are built on an old flood plain, Jils, a gigantic lahar runoff zone. But underneath the layer of mud deposit that went down when the Broken Crown mountains blew there are caverns in the rock that were there even before that happened. There’s an abandoned research station.”

  How far down were they going? She didn’t want to ask. If she stopped to think about it she’d get claustrophobic: but that explained the constant air circulation, right there. Claustrophobia. People could frequently succeed in ignoring the fact that they were encased in a tiny box descending at an unknown rate of speed for an unknown distance through layers of what had once been mud and rock and boiling water to spend an indeterminate period of time in an undisclosed location if they could feel what their most primitive brain would interpret as a breeze, in their faces.

  A research station buried deep would have had limited contact with the surface; limited accessibility, and probably in-depth life science monitoring, so that there could be no off-the-record collusion between Bench specialists. As if there would be . . . but then such collusion would be all the more dangerous if it did happen — Jils reminded herself — because of just that presumptio
n, that of course there would not be.

  “And your role in this visit, First Secretary?” she asked.

  Tirom had been listening quietly, with one hand resting on his knee and the other arm flung over the back of the empty seat next to him, across from where Jils sat on the corner angle adjacent to Padrake’s left. He looked very comfortable. No issues with very deep places, or if there were any he was good enough at hiding them to fool Jils.

  “Official Bench sponsorship, Dame Ivers, formal approval of predetermined scheme of procedure. I get to make a speech. Then I get out, and leave you and Padrake to do the job we need for you to do.”

  There were no view-ports in this car and she was just as glad of it. She couldn’t see depth, speed of descent, time remaining, on the controls; Padrake’s body was in the way. How long had they been traveling?

  “You’ll be getting regular reports, then, I expect?” Her normally precise time-sense did not feel quite trustworthy to her; she decided against trying to second-guess herself. Maybe there was something about traveling down rather than up or across that had a disorienting effect on her internal chronometer — at least where the gravity was not artificially generated. She hadn’t been deep in a long time, not deep in the earth rather than deep in deep space.

  And the deep she’d been hadn’t been so deep as this, surely, it had taken her three hours to descend the cable-line into Cabinap, but that had been on her own power with a simple gravity-assist. More controlled. Safer. She and Karol — she cut off that line of thought and frowned, trying to concentrate on what Tirom was saying. She’d asked the question. The least she could do was pay attention to the answer.

  “There’s a central comm console, secured transmit, needless to say.” Prudent and proper, just and judicious, Jils thought, irreverently. “The Bench needs you to be concentrating all of your special skills and qualifications on the one issue. Forget all about the rest of known Space just for now, Dame.”

  She’d gone into isolation to brainstorm solutions and model approaches before. She had to admit that this sounded like the most complete isolation she’d ever done. Even on vector in the middle of nowhere you could get a conversation of sorts going with someone, if you had the power and there was someone scanning frequency or waiting for a predetermined contact.

  She couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say; she lapsed into silence after a polite “Thank you, sir,” and brooded. If they killed her they would leave her here. They might even simply leave her here, and let the “killing” part take care of itself.

  The announcement of the Selection would be a wonderful time to release intelligence about the execution of Bench intelligence specialist Jils Ivers in connection with the investigation into the death of First Secretary Verlaine. It would be the truth, too, just not enough of it, but the investigation could be declared officially closed.

  They would need to minimize the uncertainty in the environment, regardless of the final determination on a new First Judge. She would be a very tidy surrogate solution. She had until the Selection was decided, though.

  She couldn’t let her mind whirl like this. She had to put it away. She had a task facing her that she knew to be of more importance than her own life. Now was not the time to deny the Bench the best she had to offer just because it might include her own execution, for the good of the Judicial order.

  “And we’re here,” Padrake said, reaching out to touch one of the controls. “It’ll just be a moment for the doors. They’ll be waiting for us in the theater, Arik, Jils, right, here we are, let’s go.”

  The face of the car opened on a horizontal track to reveal a narrow, dimly-lit corridor of dressed rock, and an airlock at the end of it. Contamination measures, Jils decided. There were three airlocks in all, each combining a number of different techniques to keep the interior as free of pollutants as possible — light, subsonics, positive air pressure.

  Three airlocks, and on the far end of them when the door opened to let them pass Jils saw a welcoming committee waiting for them, more Bench specialists than she had ever seen in one place before in her life. Not that that was so difficult a benchmark to exceed.

  There were five of them waiting, Balkney in the lead; for a moment Jils was convinced that she had traveled through three airlocks for nothing — that she would be shot down here and now, and what a mess that would make, she’d seen it — before reason reasserted itself. They’d not shoot her in front of Brisinje’s First Secretary. They’d wait.

  “Gentles,” the First Secretary said, and it occurred to Jils that apart from answering her question it was almost the first thing he’d said all trip. It was early. Maybe he was asleep. “You honor us. Is there a particular reason for this greeting party?”

  There was a woman there with them, middling tall, dark blonde hair done up in a thick fat glossy braid, a face like a stereotypical pastoral worker of some sort — ruddy mouth, beautiful skin, dark arched eyebrows over dark brown eyes. Milkmaid, maybe. When she spoke, Jils knew in an instant that she was Combine, from the accent; and realized who the woman had to be. Rafenkel. Sant-Dasidar Judiciary. Was it her imagination, or did she see a hint of a bright red something hanging around the woman’s neck beneath her duty-dress, something like the red halter of the Malcontent?

  “It’s an historic occasion,” the woman said. “We don’t initiate a convocation every day. We felt a little formality might be in order. The others are waiting for us in the theater.”

  In fact they’d never come together in Convocation before, or if they had it had never been recorded.

  “Thank you, Dame Rafenkel,” Tirom said, confirming Jils’ assumption about the woman’s identity. “After you.”

  Yes, the corridors were narrow and low-ceilinged, but they had room to walk two abreast. They’d have had to get heavy equipment into and out of the research station, Jils reminded herself. It wasn’t far to another airlock, but one that opened onto a paved floor rather than one lined with sanitation fabric this time; and there was significantly more light.

  “This way,” Rafenkel said politely. The double doors of the theater were propped open to welcome them. As theaters went it was very small indeed, with seats in three tiers to accommodate a total of perhaps eighteen people all told. There was a table at the base of the theater, its lowest level, seven or eight steps down from the entry doors. Some chairs.

  Capercoy, from the Fifth Judiciary at Cintaro, was seated at the table along with a sleepy-eyed man with glossy black hair whom she knew by reputation as Rinpen from Ibliss. Capercoy stood up, Rinpen went up the middle of the room to close the doors, Balkney ushered the First Secretary to a seat and sat down himself next to Tirom. Jils found a spot for herself and Padrake seemed to waver between several choices before he elected to place himself just in front of her, in the lowest tier of seats.

  Once the doors were closed Capercoy spoke. “Thank you for coming, First Secretary. Welcome back, Delleroy; welcome, Ivers.” Why did they bother to secure the doors? Jils wondered. Everybody was here. Nine Bench Specialists; one First Secretary. “You know the main purpose of our gathering, First Secretary, to present the Bench instruction to proceed and to establish the ground-rules. We’ve been talking about it and we think we want to change some of the ground-rules, so we want to place a revised agenda in front of you before we go on record.”

  She could see a subtle twitch in the uniform fabric across Padrake’s shoulders. Surprise. Wariness. Nothing too obvious, but it was there for people who knew how to look at Padrake, and she did.

  “Indeed,” Tirom said, with commendable aplomb. “Do your fellows know about this?”

  Capercoy glanced over in her direction, his golden-brown eyes touching first on Padrake’s face and then on hers. Calm. Sure. Confident. “No, First Secretary, neither Delleroy nor Ivers have participated in this discussion. You’ll remember, sir, that when the Bench decided on convocation it was with full knowledge that there was not much by way of an idea on how to proceed. But
we had a plan.”

  “Which you wish to emend,” Tirom agreed, perhaps to show that he had been listening. “What do you propose?”

  “We take it as given that the most obvious solution is to find a way to select Chilleau Judiciary. If your counterpart at Chilleau had not been murdered it is almost certain that Chilleau would have taken the selection — ” with a Bench specialist’s characteristic care, Capercoy had elected to characterize the selection as “almost” certain, Jils noticed — “and in fact it’s widely believed in some areas that Verlaine was killed in order to prevent that from happening.”

  Yes. Old news. “And if that’s why Verlaine was killed it’s a bad idea in principle to let anyone get the idea that it works.” Rafenkel had seated herself opposite Padrake, on the other side of the room; she spoke calmly, reasonably, and she made a lot of sense. “Our first priority should be to see whether there’s any way in which Chilleau could still be selected.”

  “We do the Bench a disservice if we artificially restrict our selection set,” Capercoy continued, building on Rafenkel’s point as smoothly as though they’d scripted it. “After discussion we’ve decided that we’d like to propose consideration of Chilleau’s selection standing without challenge as our first step. Because if there is a way we don’t need to spend weeks working to the least worst alternative. The best solution remains Chilleau, if it can be done. We are all agreed on it.”

  That would gratify the Second Judge to a significant extent if she could hear it, Jils knew, but she was unlikely to. If she ever did it would be only well after the convocation had concluded, announced its findings, and dissolved. Too bad.

  “Does the Fifth Judge know about this?” Padrake demanded. “She can’t have intended you to propose any such thing, Capercoy.”