Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “My conscience owns me, Chancellor. You never have understood that,”

  “Your power is out of balance with your responsibility. You speak for yourself, but what you say endangers everyone. Who gives you the right? Who gives you the authority?”

  “And whom do you represent, Janell Sujata?” he asked, his eyes flashing anger for the first time. “What plebiscite put you in office? When did the Unified Worlds designate you to represent them? One coward selected you, and three more put you here—and even they’re dead now. An impressive mandate, indeed. Necessity gives me the right. Chancellor. 1 give myself the authority.”

  Sujata knew she should challenge Wells’s pronouncement, but she felt drained, her determination blunted, her optimism sapped. He isn’t listening. Not to me. He never wavered, not for a moment.

  To retreat was to concede defeat, but she lacked the will to continue. I did lose. I did lose, but I’ll try again. Another day, another tack—perhaps with Yamakawa here, or Venngst. They might listen. There’s still a little time. With an audience he wouldn’t dare defy me openly—

  She heard the desperation in her own thoughts and turned away before it could show on her face. Mustering what dignity she could in straight shoulders and an erect head, she stalked out of the office. But her fleeing steps were not swift enough to keep helplessness from closing in on her, nor to catch up with her departed hope.

  Though she had left Berberon in her office awaiting her return and report, that commitment had fled her consciousness by the time the moment to fulfill it arrived. Instead Sujata went to her room and sought refuge in the embrace of bed covers and the dark freedom of sleep. But her dreams were disturbed and disturbing, bringing restlessness rather than peace. She moved back and forth between sleep and consciousness, hardly knowing the difference between them, for her reality had become a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

  So when the page alarm sounded from her transceiver, Sujata was more tired than when she had turned in. It was a jarring way to be awakened—the sound seemed to drill through the bones of her skull. By habit she placed the implant off-line, but new surroundings and the grim circumstances had broken many habits. She fumbled for the stem and pressed it once to acknowledge, then lay wide-eyed in the dark and tried to gather her wits.

  “Chancellor?” It was Berberon’s voice.

  Sujata managed a grunt of assent.

  “I wondered if you were finished with Commander Wells. It’s been almost four hours.” This time she managed words, though they were slurred. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we’re finished.”

  Berberon waited a moment, as though expecting Sujata to amplify her answer, then cautiously asked, “What success did you have?”

  “None.”

  “Ah.” Berberon managed to make that single syllable ring with compassion. “I thought that might be the case when you didn’t come back.” He paused. “Do you want me to go see him?”

  An ally, a fresh reinforcement, Sujata’s clouded mind told her. “We have nothing to lose by it,” she said sleepily. “I think you do understand him better than I do.”

  “I wish it were otherwise,” Berberon said, his words strangely clipped. “You try to think of other things now. It’s my turn to carry the freight—my turn and long overdue.“There was a long silence, then he added, “Take care of yourself, Janell.”

  Sujata murmured a good-bye and placed her transceiver off-line, then turned on her side and drew the extra pillow under her arm. Sleep was inviting her back, teasing her with the promise that she would not have to think at all.

  Surrendering to the exhortations, she shrugged aside the tiny voice of alarm, the warning that she had missed something important in the conversation that had just ended. The pleadings of her body for a surcease of feeling, an end to her mind’s pain, were too strong, and she slept, blissfully unaware that in the days ahead sleep would be very hard indeed to come by.

  The weariness Berberon had heard in Sujata’s voice was only an echo of that which he felt in his entire being. It was not simple fatigue but something much deeper and much harder to eradicate. He was weary of the stratagems and the secrets, weary of the double-dealing, the intrigue, the responsibility.

  Most of all he was weary of the guilt. Tanvier had been the architect of the appeasement plan, but it was he, Berberon, who had supervised construction. Little matter that he had done so reluctantly, that he had seen the flaws in the design and worried over them. Now that the edifice stood poised to collapse, he was as culpable as Tanvier—more so, perhaps, for having swallowed his objections and surrendered his conscience to the dictates of duty.

  He had undertaken this journey solely to expiate his guilt, a goal he had not yet come close to achieving. Now there was a strangeness to everything around him that told him the end of his journey was near. The end of the corridor seemed to recede farther into the distance with each step he took toward it, and the sound of his footsteps echoed hollowly in his ears. All other sounds were hushed except the hammering of his heart within his chest.

  As he made the turn from the corridor into the anteroom of the Office of the Commander, Perimeter Defense, the oddly focused feeling persisted. He had time enough to calmly note the three identical unmarked doors leading to inner offices, the fish-eyed scanner high in one comer, the golden-hued broken triangle prominent on the facing wall, and a hundred other details before the aide behind the desk turned a questioning eye in his direction.

  “I’m here to see the Commander,” Berberon said, summoning a well-practiced air of authority.

  “Your name, please?”

  “Berberon. Felithe Berberon, representing the World Council of Earth as Special Observer for Defense.”

  The aide nodded and gestured toward the chairs on the opposite side of the room. “Thank you. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll see if Mr. Shields is available or can work you into his schedule.”

  Berberon rested his hands on the edge of the aide’s desk and leaned across it. “I’m afraid you misunderstood. I want to see Wells, not this Shields.”

  “I’m sorry, Ambassador Berberon,” the-aide said unblinkingly. “Your name doesn’t appear on the Commander’s cleared list.”

  - “Of course it doesn’t,” Berberon said with an engaging smile. “Chancellor Sujata and I have only just arrived on Wesley. If you’ll just advise the Commander that I’m here, I assure you he’ll want to see me.”

  While Berberon was speaking, the middle door opened and a rangily built man in a black dress all over emerged. “A problem, Lieutenant?”

  “Colonel Shields, this is Ambassador Berberon. He’s requested to See the Commander, but he’s not on the cleared list.”

  “Obviously an oversight—” Berberon began.

  “If the Commander wants to see you, Mr. Berberon, be assured that he knows where to find you,” Shields said coldly.“If you have a concern, you can relay it through me.”

  Berberon bit back a sigh that would have verged on a sob and glanced away from Shields with what he hoped was an indignant look on his face. Is this what I’ve come to, unable even to finesse my way past a flunky and a supernumerary?

  Berberon was addled by indecision: to threaten, to wheedle, to make a show of displeasure and storm off, to accede—the seconds were passing, and with them the initiative.

  Then the door on the left opened and Wells himself emerged, engaged in conversation with a man Berberon did not know. Berberon took two steps toward them, then stopped short when Shields began to move to intercept him.

  “Commander Wells, I really must see you,” he blurted out, more anxiously than he would have wished.

  Wells glanced his way in surprise and his steps slowed.“I’m sorry, Observer Berberon,” he said. “I haven’t the time.“Then he continued on, passing behind Shields and heading for the rightmost door, the stranger trailing behind him.

  “But you met privately with Janell—” Berberon cried out in protest.

  Wells slowed, st
opped, and turned to face Berberon. “I have certain responsibilities with respect to the Chancellor. I have none toward you. You have no authority here, no official status whatsoever. I tolerate your presence on this station as a courtesy to the Chancellor. But I feel no obligation to allow you to waste my time with inanities.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that—” Berberon sputtered.

  “Besides,” Wells continued, the stiffness going out of his pose. “I can find reasons to respect Sujata. The same has never been true of you. You’re smarmy and weak, Berberon, a perfect argument for breeding control.”

  The man standing beyond Wells looked embarrassed for Berberon, while Shields was clearly enjoying the skewering. Berberon’s mouth worked soundlessly as he struggled to compose a retort.

  “Please save your breath,” Wells said. “I feel nothing but contempt for you. It’s a continuing irritant to me that in protecting what’s good about our species I have to protect the likes of you as well.” Shaking his head disgustedly, Wells turned away.

  Berberon had resolved not to take the first opportunity but to wait patiently for the best one. Now it seemed as though the first would be not only the best but also the last. Oblivious to anything but Wells’s retreating figure, Berberon reached into the pocket that concealed the tiny flechette gun.

  He had barely drawn the weapon clear when a tremendous blow to the side of his face sent his head snapping to the right, and the impulsive clench on the trigger released a wild flurry of darts. There was a sharp cry, but Berberon did not know from whom.

  Shields. I was too close to Shields—

  Staggering back toward the entrance to the anteroom, Berberon tried to turn the gun on the Chief of Staff. But the younger man’s reflexes were quicker, and Shields stepped in close, a look of grim pleasure on his face. A sweeping blow with the left hand sent the weapon spinning out of Berberon’s grip, and then a quick thrust with the right drove fingers as rigid as iron rods up under Berberon’s sternum. The final blow was a stiff-knuckled shot to the larynx, the cracking and splitting of his own cartilage loud in Berberon’s ears.

  Wide-eyed at the sudden pain that possessed him, Berberon toppled backward, sucking air with strangled, rasping sounds, the periphery of his vision graying. By the time his head struck the hard surface of the corridor floor with teeth-jarring force, Berberon’s limbs were already numb and cold, and the shuddering spasms that shook his body as it lay there were only the last protests of a mind that was already gone.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  No Call to Die

  “I am the family face

  Flesh perishes, I live on…

  The eternal thing in man,

  That heeds no call to die.”

  —Thomas Hardy

  Sujata’s eyes flew open suddenly, her sleep-addled mind attempting to focus on that which had disturbed her. Knocking—a loud, impatient knocking on the door of her quarters. Loud enough to drag her up from a deep and dreamless sleep;impatient enough that when she did not answer immediately, the door slid open to admit a cascade of light and two tan-uniformed security officers. The younger of the two, an ensign, advanced as far as the end of her bed. The other, a lieutenant, remained by the, door.

  Lying flat on her back was a poor position from which to enforce a sense of indignation, so Sujata struggled to a sitting position, gathering the blanket around her torso to hide her nudity. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  The ensign squinted in her direction and said, “Chancellor Sujata, you are to come with us.”

  “Where? Why?”

  “Chancellor, all I know is that we were told to escort you if you were cooperative and drag you if you weren’t,” the lieutenant said from the entryway. “Whose orders are these? Surely I have a right to know that much.”

  After a moment’s hesitation the lieutenant said, “Commander Wells’s.” He added, “Chancellor, since I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of dragging you, I’d be grateful for your cooperation.”

  Sujata’s first impulse was anything but cooperative. But since her grievance was with him who had given the orders, not those who carried them out, she bit her tongue. Keeping the blanket wrapped around her, she swung her feet over the side of the bed. “I have to dress.”

  The ensign nodded stiffly. “We were told to wait.”

  “You can do so outside.”

  “With all due apologies, Chancellor,” the lieutenant said,“we were instructed not to leave you alone or turn our backs on you.”

  A half-remembered conversation flashed through her mind, and suddenly Sujata knew with a horrible certainty why she was being summoned. No, Felithe, not that, not now. Even in failing you could have cost me my last chance, and if you’d succeeded—

  Sujata stood, letting the blanket fall away. Shrugging off her visitors’ watching eyes with the knowledge that they could not invade her truly private self, she crossed the room to the wardrobe.

  “Be quick, please,” the ensign added.

  To be summoned like this, to be subjected to this kind of invasion—Slipping into a russet daiiki, she reflected, Wells wants to humiliate me. He is angry, angry enough to make him reckless. She reached for a brush to quickly erase the snarls and tangles of a restless sleep, then stopped in mid-motion. No—let him see me this way. Let him think he has won his little game. Perhaps I can do more with him by surrendering the advantage than by trying to reclaim it. There is something about that in the Canons, isn’t there, Wy renal

  She turned to the officers and planted her hands on her hips. “I’m ready.”

  To her surprise, they led her not toward Wells’s suite but into an area of the station she had not yet seen. Much of the signage along the way was cryptic, number and letter codes without obvious meaning, and it was difficult even to keep herself oriented to station compass points. But presently they came to a block that—wherever it was located—unambiguously housed the station’s medical services.

  But who’s hurt? Felithe? Or Wells? Perhaps it was some thing other than anger that had given his orders their urgency, she thought. She was led through the triage area with its ex press lift—from the docks? she wondered—and into a corridor lined with double-doored examination rooms.

  Standing outside the last room on the left were two more station security officers, a male colonel and a female ensign.

  Notwithstanding the precautions Sujata’s escort had taken while she dressed, the ensign searched her—not politely— before standing aside to admit her to the room.

  Two steps inside, Sujata stopped short, her breath catching in her throat at what she saw. In one of the far corners stood Wells, half turned away from her, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders hunched. There was a padded bulge at his right calf, as though his trousers were concealing a bandage.

  Shields sat casually in a chair, one leg hooked over the other, a smoking stick in one hand. And lying on his back on an examination table, naked and still, was Berberon. Or, more precisely, Berberon’s corpse. The ambassador’s open eyes, as lifeless as tinted glass, stared up at the ceiling.

  One small part of Sujata’s consciousness had been preparing for this possibility since she had left her room. Even so, the sight suffused her thoughts with a wave of regret and outrage. Stepping forward to the table, Sujata touched the purple bruise in the middle of Berberon’s chest and felt the clamminess of the cooling flesh.

  “What happened?” she asked in a small voice.

  Wells whirled in place to face her, raising his right arm to point a small weapon at her face. When his arm was fully raised and extended, the mesh opening of the gun’s rectangular barrel was only a few centimetres from her face.

  “Do you really need explanations, Chancellor?” he snapped. “He failed in his assignment. Now he’s dead instead of me. What do you think, Chancellor? Do you like looking down the barrel?”

  Sujata almost did not hear the words. The moment Wells turned, she saw with astonishment that
his mask was down. Felithe had surprised him. No, more than that—he had shaken him, she thought, reading a hundred nuances in Wells’s face and tone and posture that she had never seen in him before. I would not have expected this. Perhaps there is something here—

  “I don’t especially like it,” she said with a practiced casualness, looking past the gun to Wells’s face. “Do you like seeing the man who paved the way for you to become Director lying there like a trophy kill?”

  Slowly Wells lowered the weapon and passed it into Shields’s hands. “He came to my office and tried to murder me,” he said. Deprived of the camouflage of anger, his voice betrayed his shock with an uncharacteristic tremble. “Tried to shoot me in the back, right outside my own office. He came closer to succeeding than I like to think about. If Colonel Shields hadn’t been there—”

  Though Wells would not admit to it, it was obvious that he was favoring his right leg, bearing most of his weight on his left. A little pain, perhaps, Harmack? There’s a message in it if you’ll listen. Sujata glanced momentarily at Shields, then looked back to Wells. “Am I to assume from the way you had me rousted out that you expect me to try to follow his example?”

  Wells laughed without humor. “I expected you to try to tell me that he did this on his own—”

  “Far from it. If you believed that, it would be easier for you to shrug this off, which is just what you should not do,“Sujata said, resting both hands on the table at Berberon’s side.“Of course he had orders—orders from the World Council. They’re frightened of you. This tells you how much. Don’t blame Felithe. Blame yourself and what you’re doing here. You closed off all the other options.”

  It was Shields who answered, stepping in as though protecting Wells. “I’m afraid that the blame points more toward you, Chancellor. Yes, the Ambassador received such orders from President Tanvier before you left Lynx. But the new President, Dailey, countermanded them after Wesley came out of the craze.”