by Glen Cook
“Coffee and comic opera. Here’s the collection. The best stuff is gone already. You know how it is. I didn’t know when you’d show up. I couldn’t hold it forever.”
Perchevski sipped coffee. He closed his eyes and allowed the molecules of his homeworld to slide back across his taste buds. “I understand. I don’t expect you to hang on to anything if you’ve got another customer.” He opened the ancient stamp album.
“You weren’t out to the March of Ulant, were you, Walter?”
“Ulant? No. The other direction. Why?”
“Because of the rumors, I was curious. You know how Luna Command is. They say Ulant has been rearming. The Senators are kicking up a fuss. High Command keeps telling them it’s nonsense. But I’ve had a couple of high-powered corporate executive types in and they say the Services are smoke screening, that there’s something going on out there. A lot of heavy ships moving through here lately, too. All of them moving from out The Arm in toward the March.”
“It’s all news to me, Max. I haven’t had the holo on since I got back. I’m so far behind I’ll probably never catch up. These Hamburg . . . The notes all over the page. What are they?”
“Jimmy Eagle did that. Right after I picked up the collection. Lot of them are forgeries. The cancellations. Most of the stamps are good. He marked the reprints. You haven’t heard any news at all?”
“Max, by the time I got back from Illwind I was so sick I couldn’t see. I didn’t care. I don’t know why we’ve got an embassy on that hole, anyway. Or why they sent me there. The only natives I ever saw were two burglars we caught trying to blow up the Ambassador’s safe. They need a military assistance mission like Old Earth needs another Joshua Ja. Their methods of killing each other are adequate already.”
“Then you haven’t even heard that Ja is done for?”
“Hey? What happened? This I got to hear about.”
Joshua Ja was one of Old Earth’s more noxious public figures. The holonet newscasters had dubbed him the Clown Prince of Senegal. The nets followed his threats and posturing faithfully, using him as humorous leavening for their otherwise grim newscasts.
The self-proclaimed Emperor of Equatorial Africa was no joke to his subjects and neighbors. His scatterbrained projects and edicts invariably cost lives.
“He invaded the Mauritanian Hegemony while you were gone.”
Perchevski laughed. “Sounds like one gang of inmates trying to break into another’s asylum.”
Old Earth was a nonvoting member of Confederation. Both Confederation itself and the World Government refrained from interfering in local affairs. World Government held off because it had no power. Confederation did so because the costs of straightening out the home-world were considered prohibitive.
Earth was one of the few Confederation worlds supporting multiple national states. And the only one boasting an incredible one hundred twenty-nine.
World Government’s writ ran only in those countries deigning to go along with its decrees.
Centuries earlier there had been but two states on Earth, World Commonweal and United Asia. United Asia had remained impotent throughout its brief, turbulent history. World Commonweal might have created a planetary state, but had collapsed at Fail Point, so called because at that point in time agro-industrial protein production capacity had fallen below the population’s absolute minimum survival demand.
“You missed the best part of it, Walter. During the first week the Mauritanians shot down half of their own air force. And the Empire lost a whole armored brigade in a swamp because Ja ordered them to march in a straight line all the way to Timbuktu. The holonets had a field day. That’s the lilac brown shade there. We’ve got a Foundation certificate for it.”
Perchevski lifted the stamp and examined its reverse. “I already have a copy. I’m just looking.”
“Anyway, the Mauritanians have been less klutzy than the Imperials. They’re closing in on Dakar.”
“What’s the Council doing?”
“Laughing a lot. They’re going to let him go down. The word’s out that other countries shouldn’t accept refugees from the Empire. Ja and his gang have done too much damage to Old Earth’s image.”
“Old Josh? You’re kidding. How do you lower something that’s already at the bottom?”
“You see anything you want?”
“You, my love.”
“Smart ass.”
“Wednesday night?”
“What’ve you got in mind?”
“A cribbage game.”
“I’ll call you. If it does any good. If you’re not off to some weird place with a name like Toilet Bowl.”
“Actually, I was thinking about going to the archaeological digs at Ley.”
“Funny you should mention them. More coffee?”
“Sure. Why?”
“They broke into a new chamber last month. It was in pretty good shape.”
“Is it open?”
“They put a transparent tube in. You can walk through and look, but you can’t get close to anything or get in the way.”
“Call me, then. If you want to go see.”
“Excuse me, Walter.” Another customer had come in. “Yes sir? May I help you?”
“How are you in Twenty-first Century France?”
Perchevski lost himself in the bits of paper that told tales of a remote, turbulent era. He finally selected seven pieces for his collection, paid for them from the Walter Clark account.
“Max, thanks for the coffee. And hold that Berlin piece, will you? I’ll let you know as soon as I make up my mind. Like maybe Wednesday?”
“All right, Walter. Ill call you tomorrow.”
“Leave a message if I’m not there.”
“I will.”
He clambered aboard a bus and returned the two hundred kilometers to his apartment.
You’re a fool, he told himself. To go all that way for an hour of gossip.
But damn, did he feel better.
He had traveled a lot farther in the past. He doubted that Max had a ghost of a notion just what she meant to him. She was one of the few stable realities in his life. She was a landmark by which he guided himself back from the wildernesses of Bureauland.
He mounted his new stamps in his albums using a surgeon’s care. He took down a notebook and marked their catalog numbers off his list of wants, noting the date and price he had paid for each. He entered the total in his cumulative ledger, then marked down the fact that two more album pages had been filled.
The detailed record keeping was necessitated by something within him, some compulsion to put down tiny proofs that he was interacting with the universe, if only through the hieroglyphics of numbers. He had other notebooks in which he kept other records. He did a lot of bookkeeping on the events of his life.
None of it ever left his apartment.
He wondered what the Bureau snoops made of the lists and notes. He was sure they checked them whenever he was away.
He finished his record keeping. He looked around the sterile room. It suddenly became very tight, very lonely.
He tried the holo, turning to the Luna Command news channel. He caught it in a low cycle. There was nothing on but an endless parade of public service messages, though once a commentator mentioned rumors of a forthcoming major news event involving Navy. Something big was expected, but its nature could not be determined. Security remained unusually tight.
“Sure,” Perchevski growled at the cube. “The Chief of Staff will probably announce this year’s winners in the Fleet Backgammon Playoffs.”
Luna Command was heart and brain of Confederation. It was headquarters for the Services, which were Confederation’s bone and sinew. It was the hub of a human enterprise kept unified only by its military. And the only exciting thing that had happened there in Perchevski’s lifetime had been the discovery of the prehistoric alien base on the moon’s dark side.
The military did not control Confederation. But the only obstacle to absolute mili
tary rule was a gentlemen’s agreement among the generals and admirals to accept the forms of democracy. High Command could do anything it damned well pleased, any time it pleased, were it to ignore custom. Out in the remote reaches, far from senatorial eyes, it often did. There were few sanctions the civilian sector could exercise.
Aggravated, Perchevski killed the holocast. He checked the lunar calendar for the best viewing site, recovered his tunic, and hit public transportation again. He took the high-velocity electric train the six hundred kilometers to the tourist observation dome overlooking Tycho.
The crater was not the attraction there. People did not come from Confederation’s one hundred thirty-four member planets, and more than a hundred dominions, protectorates, associated states, and outright colonies, to look at a hole in the ground. The allies and tributaries were not interested in a crater either.
Neither was Perchevski.
Tycho observation dome offered a magnificent view of Old Earth. His homeworld. A world he had not visited in eight years.
Tycho, or its sister domes, was as close as most tourists cared to get to their biological roots.
Perchevski lay back in a lounger and half-listened to the canned commentary.
“ . . . where the race of Man began . . . possibly also the planet of origin of the Sangaree . . . first successful extraterrestrial landing, July 20, 1969, in the old dating. Neil Armstrong . . . ascension of World Commonweal following World War III . . . Fail Point, July, 2194, led to the Collapse. Reinhardt Ships carried Commonweal refugees to interstellar colonies from 2187 through the end of the Luna Wars in 2226. The Treaties of Jerusalem of 2228 led to the chaotic exploration and random settlement we now call First Expansion.
“A profligate expenditure of resources and racial will initiated a reactionary isolationism which spanned the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth centuries. Space travel, even to Luna, was discontinued. Contact with the star worlds did not resume till 2613, when Vice-Admiral Takada Yoshimura brought New Earth’s fleet back to Luna. A short time later Yoshimura encountered ships of the Palisarian Directorate.
“The old records in Luna Command revealed the locations of scores of settled worlds. The secondary colonies of the Directorate were under pressure from Toke at the time. The Directorate and New Earth concluded a xenophobic alliance, and began searching for other human allies.
“The concept, if not the fact, of Confederation had been created.
“We have our former enemies, the Toke, to thank for midwifing Confederation through its birth pains. The unrelenting determination of the Star Lords and Caste of Warriors united humanity. The conflict endured sufficiently long for Confederation to become a reality, with its military headquartered here in the tunnels of Luna.
“Confederation and Luna Command have been growing steadily since.”
Perchevski stopped listening. He had heard it all before.
He knew he would hear it again. The viewing domes were the Meccas of regular hadjs.
He looked at the Earth and wondered how his parents were doing. He had not heard from either for a long time.
He slept while returning to his apartment. It had been a long day.
Two messages awaited him. The first was from Max. She wanted to see the xenoarchaeological digs Darkside. The other was from his employers. The printout said:
SENIOR STAFF PARTY WEDNESDAY 8 PM
ATTENDANCE MANDATORY
CONTACT 864-6400-312 FOR FURTHER INFO.
He sighed, pecked out the number. Max would not like this. He tried her number after he had gotten the story.
“Max? Walter. Yeah. Thanks for calling. Hey. I’ve got a problem. Just got word from my boss. I have to go to a staff party tomorrow night. Can’t get out of it. I know. I’m sorry. Hey! Want to come along? All the big wheels will be there. The Chief of Staff Navy is supposed to come out with some big announcement. No. I don’t think it has anything to do with the March of Ulant. That’s all smoke screen, if you ask me. It’s at the Command Club. Can you meet me there? Okay. ’Bye.”
He lay back on his bed and wondered what the news would be, and why he had been ordered to make an appearance. He was a senior operative, but certainly not senior staff.
He also wondered how long it would be before they called him down and stuck him behind a desk. It didn’t look as if his vacation was going to go through, and they did not like people just loafing around while they waited for an assignment.
Again he thought about his parents.
Seven: 3048 AD
Operation Dragon, Engagement
He could not write. He had too much free time. He always worked better when the minutes were quick and crowded.
Something was wrong with his head. Skeletons were coming out of their closets in there. Especially the Alyce affair. The unbreakable walls of Tyre were crumbling.
It had been years since he had thought about Alyce. Why now? That hasty Psych programing before the mission? Or were the edges of his sanity just fraying?
He had two bad days. There were moments when he did not know where he was or why, or, sometimes, just who he was.
He sometimes felt his life was managed by guardian devils. The Fates pursued him like indefatigable hounds, with malice their only joy.
The ship dropped hyper without warning. “Are we finally there?” he asked the air. He stepped into the corridor. Most of the landsmen were there.
Jarl Kindervoort’s voice filled the ship. ‘Passengers, remain in your quarters. Strap in for acceleration. We’re about to engage a Confederation squadron that has been following us.”
“Engage?” Moyshe said. “What the hell? Mouse? What’s going on? Jupp’s not supposed to move for two weeks yet.”
Mouse shook his head warningly. People were listening. The Sangaree woman appeared to be in a black rage.
“Wheels within wheels,” benRabi whispered. “Beckhart’s doing it to us.”
“Let’s hope we didn’t suddenly get expendable,” Mouse’said. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, damn! I figured you knew. Beckhart? Maybe Jupp thought he saw a chance? Maybe that frontier thing broke?”
“What? That’s bullshit. The Ulantonids know better. It’s the Old Man. Got to be.”
“Better strap in. Say any prayers you know.” BenRabi had seen several battles while in the line. They had ruined his taste for space warfare. Defeats were too total and final.
The vessel shuddered while he was strapping in. He recognized a heavy missile salvo departing. The ship clearly mounted weaponry not customary for her class.
Would the nasty surprises never end?
For a few seconds his mind fell apart completely, into absolute chaos. A tiny part of him seemed to be outside, watching the disorder.
All-clear bells and his door buzzer sounding bracketed the reassembly process.
A crewman stepped into his cabin. “Mr. benRabi? Will you come with us, please?”
He was as polite as the spider inviting the fly.
There was going to be trouble.
A half-dozen people wearing guns backed him. BenRabi joined them in the passageway.
Another group had collected a stoic Mouse.
How had they blown it?
Kindervoort was directing the pickup himself. He looked like a man with a compulsion to explain. And to ask. Moyshe hoped he would not get primitive.
Mouse seemed to fear that. But hatchetmen lived by the Old Testament: eye for an eye, live by the sword . . .
“Got you, boys.” Kindervoort grinned toothily. He had an overbite.
BenRabi had an irrational aversion to the man. It had nothing to do with the situation. More like loathing at first sight.
Kindervoort had a colorless, fleshless face. His skin lay stretched drumhead tight over prominent cheekbones and a lantern jaw. Shadowed hollows lay between. He achieved a deathshead look when the light was wrong.
BenRabi automatically disliked anyone with that gaunt, graveyard look.
“
Ah, here you are,” said the Ship’s Commander as they shuffled into his darkly decorated office.
The furniture was of mahogany-toned imitation woods crafted in antique styles. The walls and ceiling had been artificially timbered to suggest the captain’s cabin of a sailing ship. There were reproductions of antique ship’s lanterns, a compass, a sextant, a chart of Henry the Navigator, framed prints featuring caravels, clippers, and the frigate Constellation. “Any trouble, Jarl?”
“No sir. The Bureau doesn’t employ fanatics. May I present Commanders Masato Igarashi Storm and Thomas Aquinas McClennon, of Confederation Navy? They’re senior field agents of the Bureau of Naval Intelligence. Commanders, Ship’s Commander Eduard Chouteau.”
BenRabi pursed his lips. He had been afraid Mouse’s real name might be Storm. Mouse had been conspicuously absent from Academy during their final year of school. That had been the year of the Storm-Hawksblood war in the Shadowline.
Moyshe had visited Blackworld after that war’s end. There had been a Masato Igarashi Storm there at the time, but their paths had not crossed. That Masato had taken command of his father’s mercenaries after Sangaree treachery had killed his father, brothers, and most of the family officers.
Kindervoort certainly had him pat, though the name McClennon seemed like a stranger’s, like that of someone he had known a long time ago, in an age of innocence.
He felt less like Thomas Aquinas McClennon than he did Moyshe benRabi, Gundaker Niven, Eric Earl Hollenkamp, Walter Clark, or . . . How many men had he been?
“Take seats, gentlemen,” Chouteau said. “And relax.”
BenRabi dropped into a chair, glanced at his partner, Mouse, who also seemed stunned. The simple knowing of a secret name bore so many implications . . . The spookiest was that someone might have penetrated the Bureau deep enough to have gained access to its primary data system. That meant a mole of a generation’s standing.
“Worrying about your Navy friends?” Kindervoort asked. “Don’t. They’re all right. They cut and ran. And I mean fast. Guess they figured there wasn’t any point to a slugfest when they couldn’t gain anything even if they won.” He chuckled. So did Chouteau.
