Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  They reached the lift nexus, and Wells used his priority key to call a car. “So what do we do now that there is a problem?” Ten Ga’ar asked as the lift doors opened to admit them. There were two others on the lift already, and Wells shook his head. “Later.”

  “We can go to my office,” Ten Ga’ar said.

  “Mine is closer,” Wells said, in a manner that ended discussion.

  They rode in silence, Wells studying the lift status display and Ten Ga’ar studying him. Wells no longer terrified her, but she still respected his power. I should have insisted on my office, she thought in self-reproach. It was a constant struggle not to simply surrender on some level to his aura of command.Still, she thought, I think I’m handling myself pretty well on this one.

  Looking away from Wells, Ten Ga’ar became aware that the other riders were eyeing Wells and her curiously, with questioning glances and barely concealed sniggering smiles. When they left the lift four levels up, she laughed. “You don’t think they thought—hearing only what they did—”

  “I certainly hope so,” Wells said with a straight face. “My reputation can use the boost.”

  Ten Ga’ar said nothing, but Wells’s jest started her thinking. In all the time she had known him Wells had lived alone, but clearly by choice rather than by necessity. With his burning eyes, trim physique, and quiet authority, Wells projected a message to which many women responded strongly. Ten Ga’ar herself felt it, and she had heard more than a few others on the staff admit to the same reaction.

  Wells had taken advantage of that attraction to enjoy a series—and, at times, a multiplicity—of casual matings. In the language of her homeworld, he was ga’fla—one who beds, but does not wed. Ten Ga’ar counted among her friends two women who had been on his string and one who hoped she still was, and knew that their commitment to and hopes for the relationship had always been greater than Wells’s.

  Even knowing Wells’s reputation, each had been convinced that she could offer him something unique, something that would make her his chosen. Though Ten Ga’ar was polite enough not to force them to face it, the reality was that all Wells wanted from them was what any woman could give him. He consciously and consistently chose not to involve himself on any other level.

  But for perhaps as long as half a year, Wells had apparently been pulling back from even that minimal involvement. Ten Ga’ar became aware of it when Kilaoqe came to her, distraught that Wells had stopped asking for her and wondering if Wyrena knew who had stolen his attentions. After harvesting what they could from the grapevine and finding others wondering the same, they concluded it was someone Wells was seeing during his periodic brief visits downwell.

  Wells’s small, self-conscious jest opened the door to an entirely different view of the matter. Consciously and deliberately, Wells had allowed his intimate relationships to quietly expire, like so many neglected houseplants. Ten Ga’ar had an idea how long ago he had made that decision. What still wasn’t clear was why.

  Before Ten Ga’ar’s silence became conspicuous, the lift disgorged them on Level 1. Corridor traffic prevented them from resuming their conversation until they reached Wells’s office five minutes later.

  “You were asking about what we do now,” Wells said as they settled in facing chairs. “The only long-term fix that any of our people can envision is building a system of automated relay stations. The interference increases with distance, so the plan would be to lay out trunk lines, with active repeaters every ten cees or so grabbing every message, cleaning it up as necessary, and firing it along to the next. We’re also looking at instituting communications controls at the same time.”

  “The independent shipowners aren’t going to like that,” Ten Ga’ar observed. “They’re unhappy enough having to submit to Service traffic control. If you start telling them they have to channel all their transmissions through us as well, they’ll be in the Chancellor’s office crying foul before you can finish a sentence.”

  “They’ll have to live with it, though. At the moment every Kleine unit can direct-link to every other Kleine unit, and the number of possible connections has just completely gone around the bend. In the beginning that kind of unrestricted communications was a boon, but it’s becoming a nightmare.

  “By consolidating everything along a set series of links and doing some traffic management at the same time—every major user being allocated certain blocks of time to originate messages, with Defnet having a priority claim at all times—we should be able to get around these interference problems.”

  “If you want to volunteer to do the selling job on the Independent Shipowners Association, you’re welcome to it,” Ten Ga’ar said. “How many trunk corridors?”

  “At least eight, with possibly an extra one each for the Perseus and Microscopium Octants and a dedicated one for Defense in the Mizari Zone.”

  “With an average of five repeaters for every trunk, that’s more than fifty relays—”

  “Eighty-four, with backups and branch links.”

  “—every one with its own AVLO generator, station-keeping servos—would they be manned?”

  “Probably only the Defnet trunk. But there’d have to be maintenance ships for the rest of them. You’re right—it’s a big project, and expensive as hell. Just looking at the logistics, not the design and construction, it’ll take thirty-five years to bring it into being. And from the pace the Kleine signal is degrading on the longest runs—here to Ba’ar Tell and the Perimeter—we should have started ten years ago.”

  Her face showing worry lines, Ten Ga’ar shook her head.“Did you mean to imply earlier that there’s a short-term solution?”

  “No,” Wells said, “But there’s a short-term precaution we need to take.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Move my office and staff out to Lynx Center.”

  So that’s what this is about, she thought, looking askant at Wells. “The bylaws require the Chancellor and members of the Committee to stay time-bound to the Terran system for the duration of their appointment.”

  “I’m aware of that. A special exemption will have to be made.”

  “The Chancellor will be reluctant to make one. There’s a good reason Atlee wrote a travel restriction into the reforms. We don’t want a repeat of the abuses the old system permitted, the worst of which was Thackery being promoted to Director of the Service while he has in the craze returning from a field assignment.”

  “I’m aware of the problems Atlee was addressing,” Wells said. “But the fact is that we face the prospect of losing direct communications with the Perimeter before the relay system can be deployed. That would seem to be an important enough reason to make an exception. My moving to Lynx Center should guarantee that we experience no window of vulnerability.”

  “Why not just use Lynx Center as a temporary relay point until the trunk system is ready in that sector?”

  “I intend to. But don’t you think it’d be prudent to shorten the command chain where we can?”

  “The Chancellor will have to make that decision,” Ten Ga’ar said.

  “Of course,” Wells said agreeably. “Do you know where Chancellor Sujata is?”

  “Of course,” Ten Ga’ar said, rising from her chair to signify that the discussion was over. “Is this important enough to call her back from Earth?”

  “Important enough, certainly. Urgent enough—umm. How much longer is she supposed to be downwell?”

  “The Chancellor is due back next Monday.”

  Wells mused. “No. We’ll respect her privacy. But it’s certainly important enough to be at the top of the list when she comes back.”

  “Done.”

  The black-grained beach was deserted except for its native inhabitants and a solitary woman, sitting cross-legged just above the tide line. Bare-breasted and clutching a pendant dangling from her necklace, she rocked slowly to and fro as she chanted to herself:

  Selir bi’chentya

  Darnatir bi’maranya en bis
losya

  Qoris nonitya…

  Sujata opened her eyes slowly and looked seaward. Her other senses were already nearly overloaded: the brisk breeze exploring her skin, the tang of the salt spume in her nostrils, the cacophony of rushing and splashing water in her ears. She added to that the sight of endless waves punishing the faces of craggy black sea stacks, which stood defiantly against the battering of the sea.

  She had only begun to sample all of Earth’s textures, and yet this place had drawn her back. The interface between water, land, and air seemed to her the most magic of the many magic places she had discovered.

  Once, farther south on the same shore, she had come across a seal rookery at twilight and had sat awestruck on a cliff overlooking the beach as thousands of sleek, black bodies struggled ashore and clustered together on the sands for the night. The air had been full of their barking and their wet, musky scent; later, when she climbed down to the beach and walked among them in the darkness, she had sensed their self-awareness and primal circle of community.

  Sujata wondered at times whether she would have felt the same affection for Maranit had she undertaken a similar odyssey there. Maranit had seas and forbidding mountain ranges and deserts. But on Maranit the highlands of the First Continent were an island of life on an otherwise unfriendly world, like an infection that had not yet overwhelmed the patient’s body. The rest of Maranit, as well as it was known, was barren.

  But on Earth there seemed to be no environment so hostile that it did not harbor life. Life clung fiercely, possessively, to the Earth. On the top of some of the sea stacks, trees grew, stalwart remnants of an ancient forest carved up by the sea’s advance. Other sea stacks wore a cap of white guano that marked where gulls and terns roosted. The turbulent waves broke on a beach that was home to a hundred species, from tiny amphipods buried out of sight to the sandpipers that skittered along the changing water line.

  Half shrouded by a late-forming sea mist, the disc of the sun was dipping down toward the broken horizon. As it dived between the silhouettes of two of the largest sea stacks, a chime sounded from Sujata’s implant transceiver. Reluctantly she rose from her cross-legged repose and walked up the beach to the edge of the marrat grass, where a small carrybag rested.

  She took from the bag a Journan-style daiiki—a full-sleeved, ankle-length caftan dyed in muted rusts and ambers—and drew it around her. As she began buttoning the garment’s long front closure she began to hear a new note over the sound of the sea: a sound that was artificial, mechanical, and therefore alien to the place. A few moments later she saw the airskiff angling toward her, its landing lights bright against the darkening sky.

  The skiff landed a few dozen metres from where Sujata stood, and a moment later a young man clambered out of the cabin.

  “Sorry I’m late, Chancellor,” he called as he crossed the sand toward her. “I misjudged the headwinds coming west over the Rockies—should have gotten off earlier from Philadelphia.”

  “That’s all right, Joaquim,” Sujata said, lifting her bag to her shoulder and going to meet him. “I’m never in a hurry to leave here.”

  Two of the three seats in the airskiff’s small passenger cabin were already occupied by Katrina Evanik and Laban Garrard, recent additions to her staff. Evanik, dark-haired and round-faced, was from Journa; Garrard, slender and sallow-complected, was Dzuban. Their contracts called them staff consultants. In fact, they were field observers with advanced degrees in cultural psychology and certificates from the Survey Branch’s Human Studies School.

  Like Sujata, Evanik and Garrard had been on Earth for the last six weeks, but with a nearly opposite purpose. Where Sujata had isolated herself hoping to find the pulse of Earth’s natural community, her handpicked sociologists had immersed themselves in its human community.

  “Hello, Katrina, Laban,” Sujata said as she settled between them. “How did things go?”

  “I thought it was very productive,” Evanik said. “I only wish it wasn’t necessary to leave this abruptly.” The skiff lurched abruptly as Joaquim guided the skiff back into the air.

  “I understand. But we’re looking for a series of snapshots. We haven’t the resources to make feature films,” Sujata said.“Laban? Did you think your time well spent?”

  “I told you before we came down here that I’m not comfortable with this methodology,” Garrard hedged. “I still don’t see why we can’t go to the Council’s Data and Evaluation people. The chances are they already have what you want to know on file.”

  “I’m not interested in having my data filtered through the Council’s particular set of prejudices,” Sujata said. “And I doubt they would have what I want available, in any case. These people studied and probed and judged my world—and yours, and Katrina’s—as though Earth represented the ultimate expression of humanity. I don’t think they’re prepared to look at themselves with an objective eye.”

  “I seem to recall that the anthropologists were under the aegis of the Service—”

  “The Service has always reflected primarily Terran culture and attitudes,” Evanik said.

  Garrard glared crossly at his colleague. “Even so, what the Chancellor has us doing can’t be considered a properly formulated research program—”

  “I asked you to find out what Terrans are thinking and saying about Wells, the Mizari, and the possibility of war,“Sujata said. “That seems perfectly clear to me.”

  “But all you’re going to get is a limited sample of completely anecdotal evidence. There’s no way to construct any sort of useful hypothesis from that sort of data—”

  “I already have my hypothesis,” Sujata said. “What I need is for you and Katrina to be my eyes and ears. I want you to watch and listen for the things I would be watching and listening for if I were free to go where you can and make the kinds of contacts you can make,” Sujata said. “Which brings me back to my original question. What did you find out?”

  “I’d prefer to wait until I’ve had a chance to review and edit my notes,” Garrard said stiffly. “I hope you will allow me to be at least that professional.”

  Before the frosty silence that followed could become too uncomfortable, Evanik spoke up. “Did either of you hear about the war rally in Munich?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t have,” Sujata said. “Dr. Garrard?”

  “It would be easier to say if I did if I knew more about what Dr. Evanik is referring to.”

  “Katrina?”

  “It was on the fourteenth—a spontaneous noon-hour rally,” Evanik said. “There must have been three thousand people—”

  “Is that your estimate or the authorities’?” Garrard said, interrupting. “What did the authorities say?”

  “It’s my estimate. I saw at least one camera crew there, but if there was any mention on Earthnet, it was blacked out locally. That’s why I wondered if you’d heard about it.”

  “No,” Garrard said. “I heard nothing. Though it should be easy enough to find out what the net carried.”

  “Was it the rally itself or the reason for it that was so unusual?” Sujata asked.

  “Both, really. From a communications rationale there’s no reason to bring people together physically when Earthnet can relay the information content to any number of people up to and including the entire population. And the Council frowns on what it calls ‘unstructured mass associations’ for anything other than live entertainment events, since human beings are not at their rational best in large multiples of a hundred.”

  “How did these people get a permit, then?”

  “Apparently they didn’t,” Evanik said. “There was no prior announcement, no publicity, just the rumor that someone named Robert Chaisson was going to be there. At eleven-thirty the plaza was empty—at noon it was packed. It was all very old-fashioned. No Orator’s Screen, no dais. Chaisson simply climbed to the highest spot in the plaza, set up his loudbox, and spoke to them.”

  “What was his agenda?”

  “His mai
n point was that he thought the Council should immediately begin building a standing army of at least half a million men. And he wanted the Council to urge the other major worlds to do the same. He asked the crowd to press Dailey, the Commissioner for Eastern Europe, to propose it to the Council. He also urged the young men in the audience to prepare themselves to serve, and to tell Dailey they were willing to volunteer. He was a very effective speaker, by the way. Very bright, very articulate.”

  “Why would Earth need a self-defense force?” Sujata wondered aloud. “Does this mean they’ve no confidence in the Defenders?”

  Evanik shook her head. “Exactly the opposite. They have complete confidence in the Defenders—though Chaisson did say that Earth shouldn’t be content to have the Service do its fighting for it. But he wasn’t talking about a self-defense force. He wants an offensive army—to attack the Mizari. The words he used were ‘to root out the vermin wherever they’re hiding and make space safe for mankind again.’ ”

  “How did they respond to him?”

  “They stayed. They listened. That line about the vermin got a big roar of approval. And they booed the Peace Corps when they came to arrest him.”

  “Ah. That explains it,” Garrard said, settling back in his seat. “As a general rule, the net doesn’t publicize criminal activity.”

  That didn’t begin to explain it, Sujata thought. They had to know it would be blacked out. So who was it meant for? Tanvier. The Council. It had to be. And they would take note, and they would start to worry. “The Nines are restless—” And then Berberon would come knocking. But why now? What do they want now?

  Perhaps just the obvious. “Worry about us getting cocky and going out looking for them,” Berberon had warned her. Maybe it was time to start…