Enigma

by C. F. Bentley

  “You are on an extended tour of the colonies,” Major Roderick explained. “My people in communications and your reporter here feed them stock and altered photos of the masses hailing and applauding you.”

  “How long before the people begin to question why they did not hear of my presence in the places I have been?” Gregor resisted the urge to reach for the oxygen feed. He’d show no weakness before this Spacer officer, even if the man had proved his loyalty to Temple.

  “Another week. Perhaps two. The colonies you have visited have suffered major disruptions to communications due to sunspots and other natural phenomena. Only selected messages get through, all of them filtered through my people here.” Major Roderick turned his head and coughed. A sure sign that if he told the truth, he did not tell it all, or he twisted it in some way.

  Gregor allowed himself a tiny smile. “And what does General Jake have to say about all this?”

  “What the general does not know in his absence will not hurt him.” Major Roderick flashed a brief smile, then resumed his normal bland countenance as if it had never happened.

  “Absent? General Jake absent? I don’t believe it. That man is more persistent in his duty than any of our own Military.”

  “General Jake checked out a shuttle and filed a flight plan to the planet under consideration as a CSS headquarters. He is late in returning. Communications with him have been severed.”

  “Discord! I hope that man is finally out of my hair.”

  “You do not want that, My Laud.”

  “And why don’t I?”

  “We believe Laudae Sissy went with him.”

  Gregor grew cold. As much a nuisance as Sissy was, she and her prophecies were also valuable to him. He wanted her gone, but on his schedule. “How long?” he choked out.

  “Nearly two full days. Laudae Sissy’s acolytes believe they have eloped. A hover cam captured pictures of them holding hands and laughing as they entered the shuttle together.”

  The universe went white. Gregor clenched the mattress in a desperate attempt to remain conscious. His heart fluttered and beat weakly, erratically.

  Somewhere an alarm beeped.

  “She wouldn’t dare marry out of caste, out of race. Word of this must reach no ears other than my own.”

  “Too late. That piece of news is on every screen and holovid on the station. Half the FCC is laying bets on when they will return and if they will wear mating rings.”

  The major’s smile turned snide.

  Gregor fought too hard for calm to spare time to puzzle out his next move.

  “Get me documents to annul any marriage. Temple do not marry, and we do not make liaisons out of caste,” he snarled.

  “Does your authority extend to General Jake?”

  “Damn it, man, I will make it extend! He wears a caste mark, a lauded caste mark. That makes him ours, no matter his citizenship.”

  A nurse bustled in, checking instruments and adjusting medication flow. She slapped a vasodilator patch onto the back of his hand. Instantly his breathing grew less labored. Then she reaffixed the oxygen cannula into Gregor’s nose.

  “My Laud, I will leave you to rest.” Major Roderick saluted and began backing out of the room.

  “Send me Doc Halliday,” Gregor ordered as he laid his head back against the elevated pillows.

  “I thought you wanted nothing more to do with the CSS physicians.” Major Roderick paused in his rapid exit.

  “I have a chore for Doc Halliday that involves technology our physicians have not perfected.”

  The major lifted an eyebrow in query.

  Gregor turned his face away, unwilling to share his scheme.

  The only scheme that might save Harmony from Sissy’s foolishness. Harmony had to survive and thrive. He lived for no other reason.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “Jake, I need more history of my people,” Sissy said quietly as they warped out of planetary orbit and sped toward the jump point.

  “I gave you a bunch to put on Adrial’s reader,” he replied. He kept his hands on the controls and his eyes straight ahead.

  “Those are lists of Temple and Noble leaders, spreadsheets of productivity and expansion. I need something . . . different.” She too looked out the view screen at the blackness sprinkled with pinpricks of light. Stars. Other suns, many of them with planets. Some old, some new.

  If she squinted her eyes just so, she caught hints of the energy connecting them all, connecting everything. Except herself. She sensed a void around her body, mind, and soul through which none of those connections could penetrate.

  She needed something special to weave that energy into herself.

  The Goddess of the planet they’d left behind minutes ago hinted at a way for her to do that. She stared at the seeping wound on her palm: more than her blood and lymph secretions. The living blood of the plant and therefore the planet had penetrated and now mingled with her own.

  “How different?” Jake turned his attention back to her. He seemed to monitor the shuttle effortlessly, knowing precisely when to shift this dial, push forward that lever, manipulate that graph. It all looked so simple beneath his strong capable hands, and yet so complex she knew she’d never learn to fly by herself.

  “I need to know what my people thought about everyday life, how they coped with trials and celebrated joys.”

  “Social history.”

  “Sort of . . . I need to know the little rituals we did, how the common people maintained their connection to Harmony and the other Gods. How they avoided Discord and the other demons.”

  “Like when you kiss two fingers and then touch a glyph of Harmony on the tram doors? I found a glyph on my flight helmet.” He touched a spot on the other side of his neck, mostly hidden by his suit. “I remote kiss it every time I take off. A wish for safe journey. Should have given you one.”

  She nodded. That was a ritual she’d made up. It seemed to make sense. She pictured the glyph in her mind, a waxing and a waning quarter moon facing each other and between them a small circle with a line beneath. Humans becoming a part of the sky and extending to the universe.

  “Don’t know if anyone recorded that kind of information on Harmony. Gil would know. I can send him a message. But that may have to wait until a greater sense of order is restored in Harmony City.”

  “Thank you.” She picked out an especially bright star on her view screen, one with a bluish tinge, and willed her mind to reach toward it.

  The void around her stretched a little but did not allow her to connect.

  “Since your people came from my people, I can search Earth records for some of that. Might be faster than waiting for comms to reach Harmony.”

  “Would you?” Hope brightened in her mind.

  “You can start with this one. Pick a star and look only at it.”

  “Yes.” She fixed the bluish one in her mind.

  “Then say: Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.” He smiled and looked into the distance as if remembering something special.

  “Can we see Empathy, the star that warms Harmony, from here?”

  “Don’t know. But when we get back, I’ll pull it up on the star charts and let you see it on one of your windows.”

  She flashed him her biggest smile. “And what are you wishing, my friend?”

  “Not supposed to tell.” His eyes turned bright with moisture. “If you tell, it won’t come true.”

  “I know what I wish for, but I don’t think it will ever come true.”

  The quiet chime of the hyperspace alarm barely registered as she closed her eyes, permanently etching Jake’s face in her memory.

  “Closing your eyes won’t keep the ghosts away,” Jake said sadly.

  “I have you to protect me.”

  With that thought, through her closed eyelids Sissy watched reality shift and twist.

  She couldn’t feel her body. Jake’s hand within h
er own became an insubstantial shadow. Flesh on bone, all as translucent as the diagnostic scans in Medbay.

  But there was another personality with them.

  “M’ma?”

  “Is that who you truly wish to see in this space between here and there, now and then?” a little girl asked on a giggle. “If we are between, then we must be betwixt. And that means we are nixed.”

  “Jilly.”

  “Remember what I said as I died in your arms?” Jilly asked. She perched on the console in front of Sissy. The blank screens showed through her drifting lavender draperies.

  “The answers are out here, among the stars,” Sissy replied.

  “The Covenant with Harmony can only be reforged out here. So what are you doing about it?”

  “I went to the planet. I saw the Goddess.”

  “There is more. There is always more. You are the nexus, the point of energy that connects our people to the universe.” Jilly began to fade.

  Sissy tried to grab the mist, hold it there, as she wished so often she could hold onto the bright little girl and her silly jokes. “There is a blank spot around me. I can’t grab hold . . .”

  “Don’t grab. Accept. It’s like willing a kitten to come to you. Stop trying so hard. And tell the others that, too. The universe is one big joke, but you can’t laugh until you step back and let the laughter come to you.”

  Klaxons signaled the return to normal space. Jilly disappeared into a trailing mist through the computer screen.

  Mac opened a window on his terminal. He’d found a new treatise in the CSS archives he wanted his little bird to read. Just a matter of a few keystrokes to transfer the text to her reader.

  The last time he’d borrowed the device, he’d set it to receive remotely from this terminal. While he had the reader open and receptive, he checked her progress in reading.

  Fragit! She hadn’t touched any of the material he’d given her. Instead she read and reread the Covenant with Harmony and the writings of their earliest teachers.

  He should delete all of the Harmony garbage. Adrial had wasted enough time chasing mystical trails that led in circles and endangered her life every time she got close to the truth of the Maril. She needed to sharpen her wits and hone her innate ability to manipulate people to her own will.

  Gods and religion had a place in keeping civilizations civilized, he supposed. But only for the gullible and naïve. The ones who willingly followed others. Leaders had to focus on more practical matters. He needed Adrial as his consort when he took control of the station. She needed to shift her focus before then.

  There, he’d adjusted her reading assignments, starring the ones he wanted her to study, just as Laudae Sissy did.

  As he shifted away from the terminal, he detected a small sound. Something out of place in his hidden lair.

  Four quick steps to his left brought him within easy reach of a duct.

  Before he could reach to pull himself through the emergency escape, a human in a CSS military uniform pushed his head and shoulders through. He held a long blaster expertly.

  At the same time, three more men in Harmony Military uniforms and caste marks shouldered open the primary door. They too carried energy weapons as well as long swords on their hips.

  The man in the lead was the new second-in-command.

  Mac raised all four of his arms in mute surrender. “How did you find me?” he asked in reluctant admiration.

  “Locator in Miss Adrial’s reader. The moment you sent her files, we had you,” Major Roderick replied.

  “Why must you arrest me?” Mac asked. He edged to his right. The trapdoor into the empty level below was buried under a pile of dirty clothing. Could he reach it before those blasters caught him? “I’ve done nothing to harm you.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But you know more about that outlaw cargo ship that crashed into the diplomatic wing than anyone else. You were seen with the dead body of your brother—you had motive, means, and opportunity to murder him. But no physical evidence. No one else had a motive to kill two other Labyrinthine workers. You also have knowledge of the entire workings of this station and how to break or fix it. Come quietly and we’ll talk. No pressure. No torture. Yet. We just need some information.” Major Roderick turned his back quite casually, as if he expected Mac to follow without question.

  Mac found the trapdoor latch with the pincer on his secondary leg. He worked it slowly, careful not to make any large movements or sudden noises.

  “You could ask Lady Adrial . . .”

  “Her,” the major snorted. “She has the emotional maturity of a thirteen year old and the attention span of . . . of . . .”

  “Of an ammonia breather,” Mac finished for him.

  Almost. He almost had the trapdoor ready to fling open.

  “If you say so. Never met one of those before.”

  “My mother took an ammonia breather as one of her mates. My half sister by that relationship can actually string two coherent sentences together.”

  Major Roderick chuckled. But the laugh sounded false and forced. Then his eyes narrowed and his voice sharpened.

  “You can forget about escaping. I’ve got another dozen men with blasters stationed below that door. The moment it opens, they start firing. Now are you going to come easy or hard?”

  “I believe I shall come easy. This time. Tell me, Major, have you read The Prince by an Earther named Machiavelli?”

  “Last night. I took it off Miss Adrial’s reader. She wasn’t interested in it at all.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Adrial scanned the news from Harmony time and again. She listened to speech after speech given by Laud Gregor, High Priest of all Harmony. He had a beautiful, well trained voice. He could cut through a noisy crowd and make himself heard in the far reaches of a stadium without amplification.

  He was the same voice she’d heard down the hall yesterday. How could that be?

  She knew him, knew she’d met him at least once, conversed with him. And yet she had no memory of the occurrences.

  She looked more closely at each snippet of coverage. Laud Gregor did not look the same age in any two consecutive appearances.

  The reporters, or those who fed the stories to the reporters, had used old broadcasts with new time and date stamps.

  Her body grew chill with dread. Both Laud Gregor and Laudae Sissy had left the Harmonite Empire. The Goddess and Her family must be desperate in loneliness and mourning. Without the HP or HPs in residence the Gods had no one to anchor themselves to. That would explain the rumors of quake and volcanic eruptions she’d heard whispered about. The Gods desperately sought a way to force Laud Gregor and Laudae Sissy to return to Harmony so they could interact with the people through them. Gods could not speak to ordinary people directly.

  She’d learned that on a dozen rim worlds that fought for survival without the aid of clergy and planetary deities.

  Like the Squid People. They had another name for themselves, but no humanoid throat could work around the gargling squeals common to oceanic species.

  Her memory took her back to falling through a doorway in the alleyway, back and back again before that to Biblio III, a planet devoted to scholarship. Humans had colonized the world and stayed on after the Messengers of the Gods had invaded. The winged soldiers had recognized the treasure of collected knowledge, in old-fashioned books and scrolls as well as digital texts.

  Adrial had gone there, three stops, no four, after her exile from her home world.

  She smelled again the dusty perfume of books, books, and more books stacked onto shelves a mile long and ten stories high, all encased in a building with many skylights and tall windows. Natural light was kinder on the eyes than artificial ones. Special filters protected the books from harmful direct light. A team of workers constantly monitored temperature and humidity inside and out to optimize the longevity of the books.

  Motorized platforms moved up and down or along the shelves. She traveled slowly, drinking in the ti
tles, dreaming of the wonders within each book.

  A red volume, bound in ancient and cracking leather, seemed out of place. She jabbed her finger onto the control button as hard as she could. It creaked to a halt three meters beyond the book. She jerked the platform back and forth, up and down half a dozen times. She cursed and kicked the controls. In her eagerness she pushed the controls too hard, overshooting her aim. Finally she made it stop closer to the book. It stood out from the newer, shinier, and more subdued bindings.

  Cautiously, she stood on tiptoe and reached up and up, pushing and grinding her shoulder joint until her fingertips brushed the precious book. Then she had to inch it forward enough with her fingernail hooked in the bottom of the spine until it teetered on the edge of the shelf.

  At last it fell, and she caught it awkwardly against her thighs before it dropped to the platform. With the book cradled against her chest, she maneuvered the platform down to a reading table. That portion of the journey was easy; the platform was programmed to return to the ground as a fail-safe.

  A caretaker handed her gloves to keep her skin from making direct contact with the ancient paper. She opened the cover and stared at the lovely typeface and delicate decorations on the title page. She didn’t care that the book was written in a language she did not know. She cared only that it contained line drawings of every race known to the Labyrinthians. Races that had traveled far and collected wisdom from dozens of teachers from as many more races.

  And there in the middle, on a center foldout page, she saw the Squid People. She’d never seen anything so bizarre or so graceful in her life. Her eyes grew dry and gritty from staring at the drawing so long.

  “Ah, yes, them,” the caretaker sighed, looking over her shoulder. “They live in water and have developed special films for writing upon and indelible inks from their own bodies.”

  “Do they travel the stars?” she asked, tracing each black line reverently.

  “Oh, my, yes. They have wonderfully designed ships, even if they are getting old, rusty, and unreliable. Their quarters are sealed off from the engines and cargo holds so that they can keep their saltwater environment separate. They can survive in atmosphere for a few hours, but they prefer not to.”