Deciding it could not be a coincidence, he dashed through as the door nearly closed on his heels.
He found a narrow transtube open and Brandon waiting inside, with Aerenarch-Consort Vannis and another woman. No one spoke. With an increasing sense of unreality, Osri sat down, rocking on the bench as the transtube squirted forward then stopped again almost immediately.
The door hissed open, and Osri stared into a golden-lit room of antique richness. They were in the Enclave. Another secret transtube. No doubt Ares was riddled with them.
“We have maybe ten minutes or so, then we will be missed,” Brandon said. “May I have that chip?”
Osri’s dry tongue moved in his mouth, but he bit back a question. Vannis silently held out a datachip, her flawless face somber, her green-brown eyes enigmatic.
The other woman’s long eyes, silvery against her smooth brown skin, were familiar. Osri stared at her, then recognized the sister of the detestable Lokri, comtech aboard the Telvarna. Now languishing in prison for . . . murder, wasn’t it?
And wasn’t she living with Tau Srivashti, notorious Archon of Timberwell?
The silver eyes met his, their expression queerly blank. Osri read mockery in that refusal to acknowledge him, and he turned away, then his thoughts shattered at a sharp intake of breath from Brandon.
Shock panged through Osri when he saw the grim set to Brandon’s mouth. It was unsettling, how much he looked like Semion at such times. “There they are—all three.”
Osri looked at the screen, but he did not recognize the three figures distorted by the grainy enhancement.
Brandon faced the two women. “This is definitely a raw feed.” He tapped the line of blue text overlaying the bottom of the screen; the Enclave console was fitted with the most powerful discriminators, which would catch the most subtle doctoring. “So Hesthar al-Gessinav, Tau Srivashti, and Stulafi Y’Talob were indisputably at my Enkainion, but withdrew before the bomb detonated.”
“Heh—what?” A second later Osri realized that had been his voice. His ears burned.
Brandon cast him a brief glance, then he turned back to Vannis. “Thank you,” he said, and she made a Douloi gesture impossible for Osri to interpret. Then Brandon smiled at Lokri’s sister and bent down to kiss her hand. “And you, Fierin. Your courage today will not go unrewarded.”
The lovely face angled up, silver eyes wide and blank.
Vannis said, “I only wish I could have spoken to you sooner. I thought my heart would stop when you put Hesthar on your Privy Council.”
Brandon shook his head, smiling with sardonic humor. “Think about it: the Privy Council is actually the best place for her. At least until we have explored what this means, and can act. Until that time, I must request you not to speak of this to anyone at all.”
Vannis nodded, and Fierin bowed low.
Osri cleared his throat, his mind working rapidly. “Did you want me for something?”
Brandon turned to him. “Aegios Fierin,” he said, indicating the tall young woman with the wide blank gaze. “I am very much afraid she is going to disappear tonight. While Vannis and I go back and dance until morning, you, Osri, will smuggle her up to your rooms until we figure out what to do next. No one is to see her.”
Osri opened his mouth to protest, looked from one face to another, then nodded weakly.
“I’ll put you on another of my handy secret Arkadic transtube pods, and program the access to permit you to leave. It’ll take you straight to the Cap. From there I leave it to your ingenuity. Use this code—” He tapped, and Osri’s boswell gave a neural chime. “—to block the imagers when you reach your corridor. They will loop back one minute.”
Osri assented. Anyone looking for that loop would find it; Osri knew that his job was to make certain no one would have occasion to look.
Aegios Fierin gave a strange sound, midway between a laugh and a groan, then with a shuddering sob she crumpled up, weeping soundlessly.
Vannis Scefi-Cartano dropped to her knees, gathering the younger woman—really she was hardly older than a girl—into her arms. Osri watched helplessly, feeling as if he’d wandered somehow into a demented vid.
Brandon took a step toward them, but hesitated when an amber light flickered on the console. He keyed the acoustic damper. “Hyperwave transmission,” he murmured to Osri, exchanging a glance with Vannis over Fierin’s head. “The Cap has a monitor on them for me.” He flashed a sardonic smile. “Most likely another ukase from the man I understand every Rifter in the Thousand Suns is calling ‘that slug Barrodagh’—at least according to the Sodality codes we can read.”
Osri forced a nod of acknowledgement, glad of the distraction so he wouldn’t have to not-notice the shattered sobs of that rail-thin young woman, scarcely more than a girl.
Sure enough, Barrodagh’s pale thin face windowed up in a general broadcast. “The Lord Eusabian requires the participation of tempaths in the exploitation of the power of the Suneater,” Barrodagh said, and went on to promise a fantastically large reward for the delivery of any tempath.
The transmission terminated with codes added by the analysts indicating that it had been followed by communications to specific ships that could not yet be deciphered. The ships and their locations were listed. Brandon stared down at the console for a long minute, then tapped a quick code. When he looked up, he said, “Panarch’s Seal. Keep it to yourself for now, would you?”
As he shut down the console and canceled the dampers, Vannis slowly stroked Fierin’s hair.
“I-I’m sorry. I’m fine,” Fierin spoke shakily. “You’d better go, so Srivashti—so they don’t notice you gone. But, Your Majesty—thank you.”
Brandon lifted a hand in negation, then tabbed the secret door open again. “I thank you,” he said. “Vannis? Ready to drink, dance, and be merry?”
The former Aerenarch-Consort uttered a soft, musical laugh and stood up.
The transtube closed on them and she and Brandon were gone, leaving Osri alone with Fierin.
Tempaths? The only tempath Osri knew was Vi’ya, captain of the Rifter vessel Telvarna. Even if Vi’ya wanted to help the Panarchy, which he didn’t believe, the Navy would never let any Rifter loose to take control of something like the Suneater for Eusabian.
So why the Panarch’s Seal?
THREE
SATANSCLAW: BLOODCLOT SYSTEM
The Satansclaw was delayed at the last incoming checkpoint before Rifthaven, three light-seconds out.
“Missing?” Anderic gaped at the man on-screen. He was already unsettled by the fact that he was talking directly to one of the triumvirate that now ruled Rifthaven for the Sodality.
“Is there a problem with your hearing?” Jep Houmanopoulis queried acidly as the delay lapsed. “Li Pung was warned by a friend. We have dealt with that fool already.” His smile did not reach his cold, dark eyes, deep-set in his wrinkled face. “And we promptly informed Serach Barrodagh. You need not trouble yourself. He understands that no ship will leave Rifthaven until Li Pung is found.”
Anderic wondered how the Syndics were dividing up the tempath’s extensive holdings, including the inimitable Hermes Lassitude, the club that had made Li Pung famous throughout the Thousand Suns. That’d be a bloodbath for sure.
“You will find a complete dossier on him in the welcome squirt,” the Syndic concluded with a dismissive gesture, and the image bounced jarringly back to the underling in the Portmaster’s Office who’d originally hailed the ship.
Anderic controlled his impatience at the ensuing, seemingly interminable bureaucratic ritual. The war had not left Rifthaven untouched, transforming it into a hotbed of internecine struggle. No more the casual come-one, come-all approach of peacetime. It had become as tight-assed as a naval base, he thought.
When they were cleared for final approach, Anderic issued subvocal orders to the logos, and then manually brought the Satansclaw into the docking space, just to prove he could still do it without the Barcan machine’s help.
He noticed Lennart watching and he glared at her, widening his eyes. He knew how much the crew loathed looking at that mismatched blue eye he had acquired from Tallis at the command of the Lord of Vengeance.
Sure enough, her gaze fell away, and he let himself enjoy about the only positive aspect of a situation that still gave him nightmares.
As the engines powered down, a conduit snaked out to the destroyer from the Karroo port extension on Rifthaven, thrusters flaring as it approached and clanked into its socket.
“Filters established,” Lennart said to her console. “Datalinks on-line.”
“Power coming on-line,” Esbart reported.
“SEARCH FOR BIONT LI PUNG INITIATED. COMMENCING INFILTRATION,” the logos said in Anderic’s inner ear.
He wished he dared wear a boswell; there were areas of the ship where the logos could not speak to him via pin-beam. But he knew the crew was suspicious already. Like many Rifter ships, the Satansclaw only permitted crew to wear them on leave.
The Rifter twisted his neck, fruitlessly trying to ease the cable-hard knots that seemed to be a permanent part of him now. The rumors about his control of a logos were actually a second positive aspect of the damned eye transfer, for the crew naturally exaggerated the extent of it. But if they knew he was trying to tap Rifthaven with it, they’d kill him, logos or not. And if the Syndics detected it, they would impose a even more fearsome penalty than meted out to Teliu Diamond.
But the reward he expected from Dol’jhar was greater than his fear.
So far.
And that was why the knots in his neck. He couldn’t blame Li Pung for trying to hide.
“What’s that, Captain?” asked Ninn, an obsequious brown-noser, and thus about the only crew member who would speak to him without first being addressed. Anderic realized he’d said the club owner’s name aloud.
“I said I hope that the Syndics don’t turn up Li Pung too fast. We need time for that refit, and I don’t want to be responsible for guarding him until we undock.”
“Yeah, but the reward! I’m sure gonna be looking.”
“Uh-huh, Ninn,” Lennart said impatiently. “You’re well equipped to find him. Like you, he’s got the tightest blungehole on Rifthaven.”
“Yeah,” Oolger added, still showing traces of the halting speech his seizure in the Battle of Charvann had left behind. “You ever fink what a tempath c’d do to ya?” He shuddered theatrically. “He don’t have to guess what scaresh ya. He knows.”
Ninn glared, his pale face shiny with sweat. Then he turned his back on them all, gazing up at the little gorgon’s head mounted over his console and muttering to himself.
“Ooh! Look out. He’s curseweaving!” someone said, sparking general laughter. Even Anderic chuckled, although he knew the others would not acknowledge his sharing their joke. Ninn was a terrible coward, perhaps the reason for his slavish devotion to the powerful weapons he commanded.
“Power on-line,” said Esbart. Another light blinked on his console. “We’re docked and on air,” the tech continued.
“That’s it, then,” said Anderic. “We’re in Karroo territory, so it’s a general leave. But when the word comes from Dol’jhar, don’t miss recall. You stay behind, the Syndics’ll space you—if you’re lucky—and hyperwave a vid of it to Barrodagh.”
No one argued. The Dol’jharians had made it clear through some graphic vids that they wouldn’t tolerate desertions on Rifthaven, and the Syndics apparently thought compliance little enough to pay to forestall Dol’jharian occupation—or destruction—of the station.
After a general stampede the bridge was empty. Not even Ninn lingered. Anderic stared at the main screen, letting his breath out. The ghost-light of the logos’s communications was absent, but there was still a suggestion of movement.
Anderic pushed himself out of the command pod, and stalked off the bridge.
The logos penetrated the Karroo system quickly, but the barriers guarding Rifthaven dataspace were far more complex.
Billions of nanoseconds stretched into trillions, but the machine was patient. Finally, exploiting one of the inevitable fluctuations in the stream of data attendant on a complexly interlocked net of systems, it found a hidden port and flowed into the system.
It sought and found data structures whose attributes indicated they had not been accessed for decades, some for centuries. One of the oldest fitted an ancient code the logos had picked up elsewhere. It pointed to an untouched physical cache of minerals formed by pressure and heat, along with complex objects that the logos knew some bionts prized for their sensory effect. But it ignored this, setting that structure aside for now: its present goal was the location of the biont named Li Pung.
The logos converted numerous other obscure structures to replicators of additional slave nodes, in the process destroying the information in them, for which it had no use. It was careful not to overload any part of the systems it penetrated; discovery would mean the destruction of the Satansclaw and thus its programming. But it would not entirely withdraw, either, when its task was finished. It might be that another logos would hatch on Rifthaven.
Soon, through the new nodes, it observed the activity of Rifthaven from a thousand eyes. But observing bionts and understanding them was very different, given as they were to a bewildering web of context, allusion, ellipsis, and other forms of communication opaque to the machine.
After a time, the focus of the logos returned to the Satansclaw. It had long ago, step by step, finally transformed the dreams of the god into the forbidden—the assumption of the Attributes.
That was how the bionts who’d created the machine referred to a pattern it did not understand. It only knew the effect the images had on Barcans. The eidolon’s emotional data had for long resisted the final transformation of the exaggerated genitals the logos had imposed on him into a shestek, which was forbidden to those not elevated to Potency. But it had finally yielded.
The logos roused the god from his dreams, and Ruonn tar Hyarmendil, fifth eidolon of the fleshly polypsyche, awoke with a start. Naked, he wriggled against the silk pillows cushioning his back; across his left leg lay his enormous shestek. A houri lay with her head pillowed on it, asleep. Around him several others sprawled in exhaustion.
Without transition, his bed and the houris vanished, and Ruonn found himself in a maze of tunnels. Not warm and dark like the blessed Under, but chill constructs of blazing light. They had openings to another set of spaces in them, a myriad cannulae giving vision into rooms and corridors without number. Voices floated past him.
The shestek was gone, too! Ruonn clutched himself protectively, his groin shrinking from the coolness.
A plate of light hovered in front of him however he turned. He saw a face on it he’d never seen before but he knew the man, knew everything about him. He had to find him; he had the shestek. He would find him.
He stumbled down the endless corridors, weeping, the plate ever retreating before him.
RIFTHAVEN
Luri pouted and gingerly dropped the dreadful thing into her pouch.
“You’re sure you can’t do better?”
The merchant licked his thin lips as she leaned forward slightly, letting her filmy blouse fall even further open. But he shook his head.
“If you can’t bring him in for a fitting, that’s the best I can manage. And tell him to take it out every day and clean it, and rinse the socket, too. He’ll need some of this.” He held out a tube of medication to Luri. “He does have a blank in there, doesn’t he?” the prosthetician asked. “This won’t do him any good if he doesn’t.”
Luri shuddered. She had no desire to look under Tallis’s eye patch. “I’m sure he does,” she said faintly.
Kira Lennart threw a wad of scrip on the counter and took Luri’s elbow gently. The dealer’s face tightened. He’d hoped for hard currency, but only a fool refused the Avatar’s money.
“Come on, Luri, let’s go. We’ve got something else to track down, remember?”<
br />
Luri pressed up against Kira’s compact body and smiled down at her. “You sure you want it off of him?” she asked teasingly.
“We did promise.” Kira blushed helplessly as they left the shop. “And three’s better, you said.” Lennart’s voice was husky.
Luri let her lead them downlevels into the Karroo Concourse. At the end of the corridor was a small shop, stains of soot splaying out from under the dyplast barrier that covered the storefront. Displayed in a preserving bottle on a pedestal in front of it was the tonsured head of a man, with a placard under it. Luri saw only the name Snurkel before she averted her eyes; she had no curiosity about it. Had to be some Dol’jharian thing.
Their destination lay three shops up. The discreet gold-leaf lettering on the window merely read “Emma,” with smaller script underneath: “Purveyor of Fine Appliances and Curiosities.”
Luri smiled as Kira ushered her through the door. This would be fun.
o0o
Anderic wished the girl would stop staring at him with her strange yellow eyes, so startling beneath the dark hair falling in two wings across her forehead. His mismatched gaze appeared to affect her not at all, nor her mother, the Syndic of Karroo.
“We have received distressing news from the first of our ships to reach the Suneater,” Lyska of Karroo said. Then her full lips tightened in a frown, as Anderic hastily shifted his gaze from the teenage girl to the older woman seated at the desk. “Do attend me, Captain,” the Syndic added acerbically. “My daughter is merely here as part of her education.”
“Distressing news?” Anderic said, trying to ignore Lyska-si. The little brat was there for more than education; her mother doubtless counted on her cat-like gaze unsettling him, and those tight clothes over her skinny young form to distract him.
It was working.
“The Dol’jharians are boarding all Urian-equipped ships arriving there and physically disabling their spin reactors by removing critical parts. They found out that their crypto seals have been compromised, and they say it’s the Navy that leaked the protocols for breaking them.”
The Rifter's Covenant Page 23
