Three-Dollar gaped at Harry, amazed. “No wonder I remember you so vividly! No wonder that we all do. You stood as the Nexus when the first TimeBinders created the Regency.”
“Yes,” Harry admitted. “I did.”
Three-Dollar sagged in resignation. “Forgive me. I had no right to make any more demands of you. You have already served us. We have no right to ask for anything more.”
“Damn straight,” said Harry, satisfied.
“But will you do it anyway?” said Three-Dollar, still meeting his eyes.
“You never give up, do you?”
“No. Neither do you. We stand on the same side, only you don’t realize it yet. As soon as you do, you’ll know what you have to do—”
Harry snorted. “I’ve known what I had to do since before we arrived. I just don’t want to do it.” He pushed past Three-Dollar, muttering something nasty.
“But you’ll do it?”
“But I’ll do it,” he conceded.
A Romantic Interlude
On the bridge of The Black Destructor, Kernel d’Vashti and the Lady Zillabar studied the aerial view of the Forum. The crowd around the amphitheater swelled as they watched. From above, they could see the entire disk; the word had obviously spread quickly. People moved down the spokes from their various vessels, they threaded their way across the paths and the lawns and the gardens. They rode the moving walks and filled the layered rows of the great arena.
As she watched, Zillabar’s expression turned as brittle as ice. She didn’t bother to hide her feelings anymore. She said coldly, “I assume that this little demonstration below represents the successful workings of your great secret plan . . . ?”
d’Vashti returned her gaze with equanimity. “I expected the Gathering to proceed. That it now appears as if it will begin earlier than either of us expected neither helps nor hurts the actions I intend.”
“I can’t believe how you’ve mismanaged everything. The Regency will crumble because of your stupidity. I should have you flayed alive.”
“Shut up, you stupid sow,” d’Vashti said. “I control you now.”
She stared at him aghast.
He stepped in close to her and lowered his voice. “You have no ship, you have no Dragon Guards, you have no authority on this vessel—or anywhere else for that matter. You have no power at all except that which I choose to let you have.”
Zillabar’s face flushed with rage. “How dare you speak to me that way!”
“I’ll speak to you any damn way I want, you arrogant bitch. You belong to me now. If you want courtesy, respect, even the simplest privileges of your rank, you’ll have to purchase them. Do I need to tell you what price I expect?”
“Never. I’d sooner feed my eggs to scavenger dogs than let you father the next generation of my family line.”
“That anger will only make the mating sweeter. When I finally subdue you, my Lady—when I finally turn the passion of your anger into the even hotter passion of lust, your screams of ecstasy will blister the air.”
Zillabar spat at d’Vashti’s feet. He just grinned a very un-Phaestor-like expression. “The more you revile me, the more aroused I get. I think I’ll have to get a larger size of underwear.”
Zillabar couldn’t stand it anymore. d’Vashti had even taken away her ability to rage. She turned away, shaking, quivering, already beginning to feel the first stirrings of . . . of the weakness and hunger that she knew . . . would lead inevitably to . . . d’Vashti’s chambers . . . and her eventual enslavement to the needs of her body.
No! She had to resist the hormonal storm. She had to! She wanted to wail aloud. She could feel herself poised on the precipice of—dreamtime! Yes. She needed dreamtime. A lot of it. That would help her retain her focus. She began freezing herself solid again—
d’Vashti snapped his fingers at the attendants. “Return the Lady to her quarters. Keep her there. Oh, and don’t let her go into dreamtime. I’ll need to consult with her later.” He didn’t even bother to bid the Lady a good day; he strode to the opposite end of his command bridge and began snapping out orders to his Captains.
“Ready my shuttle for immediately departure. I have a Gathering to attend.”
Another Romantic Interlude
Using the massive singularity injector, suspended from the overhead crane, Gito began the delicate process of extracting the pinpoint black hole from the spherical singularity cage of the The Lady MacBeth’s main engine. While he performed this delicate operation, Finn and Sawyer argued between themselves.
“Sawyer,” he said. “I just want you to consider something. Okay, maybe I still have too much Vampire blood in me. Maybe it’s affected my thinking. But just consider this for a moment. If we truly believe in the sacredness of life everywhere, then we don’t have the right to destroy d’Vashti’s ship and its crew like a band of terrorists.”
“Absolutely,” Sawyer agreed. “But if we don’t destroy that vessel, then no one will have a life anywhere to hold sacred.”
“Yes, but—remember what Harry said. ‘We have to play by our rules, not theirs! Else we’ve already lost.’”
“I have to tell you, big brother. This discussion does not make me happy. I don’t like hearing you argue for the enemy.”
“I want to suggest something . . . an alternate plan. What if we connect the trigger to the weapons monitor?”
Sawyer snorted. “And you think that’ll stop him?”
“It’ll stop him damn quick if he breaks his word to respect the sanctity of the Forum. If he fires his weapons, the trap goes off,” Finn said.
Sawyer thought about it. A series of expressions passed across his face so fast, Finn couldn’t follow them. Abruptly, Sawyer said, “All right.”
“Huh? You gave in too easy. Why?”
Sawyer shrugged. “d’Vashti represents a danger to us only if he keeps his word. When has he ever kept his word?” He grinned. “I like the idea of him squeezing the trigger on himself.”
“All right—” said Gito. “Here we go.” He pressed a button. The singularity injector moved like a piston. It extruded a shining cylindrical part of itself directly into the center of the spherical cage. Gito watched his displays carefully. “I have it,” he announced calmly. He encapsulated the singularity, sealing it within the enclosed magnetic bottle, and then slowly withdrew the injector from the cage. His fingers danced across his keyboard. The machinery made some sounds, lights flashed, chimes sounded, and then the injector swung around and released the magnetic bottle into Shariba-Jen’s waiting arms.
The robot took the bottle carefully, readjusting his stance to allow for its weight. The singularity itself, suspended in both a magnetic and gravitational bottles expressed almost no weight at all; but the bottle itself had considerable mass. Gito approached now, and slid a small ring over the end of the bottle, the gravitational lens. He locked it into place, attached the Limited Intelligence Engine, armed it, withdrew the key and handed it to Finn. “All right. Let’s go.”
“Wait—one second.” Captain Campbell stepped into the engine room. “Sawyer?” she said. “May I speak to you?”
Sawyer looked at Gito and Finn apologetically. “Excuse me, guys.” He jumped up onto the deck circling the engine room and crossed to where Captain Campbell stood. She looked into his eyes meaningfully.
“I want to tell you something . . . important.”
Sawyer nodded, waiting expectantly.
“Sawyer,” she said slowly. She stopped, swallowed, lowered her lashes shyly, then brought her eyes back up to his. “Please . . . don’t fuck this up.”
“Uh—” He nodded quickly to cover his disappointment. He had hoped for something a little more personal. He started to turn away, then figured—what the hell, go for it! He turned back to Captain Campbell, grabbed her hard into his arms and drew her face to his. He kissed her long and deep—and when he finally let go of her, she looked red with embarrassment and anger. Her chest rose and fell with quick ragged breaths
.
“You—” she said. “And I—” she added. “—will have to have a serious conversation about this—” She took another breath. “Just as soon as you get back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sawyer agreed solemnly. He grinned all the way back to Gito and Finn.
The Nexus
The last of the TimeBinders arrived. Nyota laid her rod of authority on the pedestal with all of the others. The twelfth great note rang out across the disk of the Forum, summoning all to the central amphitheater. Nyota smiled, almost with childish delight, then joined the eleven other men and women waiting to one side. They looked solemn and proud and grim, all of them.
Around them, the crowd rustled waited. They gossiped among themselves. They worried, they speculated, they tried not to look upward at the great red starship still hanging over them like a threat.
Abruptly, Harry strode down into the center of the Forum amphitheater. He wore a white robe that gleamed like starlight. He turned around slowly, as if meeting the gaze of every set of eyes in the stadium. “I stand before you, Godfrey Daniels Harry Mertz, ready to assume the responsibility of the Nexus. I have done this before. You know me as the immortal, the long-liner, the leaper of years, the wanderer, and the man from Earth. You know me as a legend, but I stand here as flesh and blood.
“Six thousand years ago, I stood here as the Nexus, and now, today, the twelve wearers of the TimeBands have asked me to perform this task again. Does anyone here object?”
A rustle of awe swept through the crowd. Several people screamed. A few fainted. Many of those in the closest rows dropped to their knees in worshipful posture. But Harry went to the nearest individuals and began pulling them back to their feet. “No, you mustn’t. Don’t do that. Please—”
Around the amphitheater, one by one, people began standing. Slowly, they began applauding. The sound of it grew louder and louder, a steady rhythmic wave of acceptance and acknowledgment and honor.
Harry bowed his head, sadly. Tears filled his eyes. “You leave me no choice. I accept.”
Harry went to the central pedestal. A headband lay there, next to twelve rods of authority. He lifted the headband and placed it on his own temples. He waited a moment as the fields shifted and solidified, focusing on the patterns of his brain. He had to grasp the edges of the pedestal to steady himself, but after a moment, the dizziness passed and he straightened again.
Now, each of the twelve TimeBinders came forward, one at a time. Each one lifted his or her baton off the pedestal and handed it to Harry. Calvin of Canby, Fariah of B’rik’yno, Lord K’aenar, and then William Three-Dollar—he looked at Harry worshipfully; they all did.
Harry accepted the batons one at a time, gathering them batons into a single bundle. As he took each new baton, Harry met the eyes of the presenting TimeBinder in mutual understanding. As he added each new baton, it linked itself with the rest. The rods became united—and they began to give off light. They gleamed stronger and brighter with the addition of each baton. At the same time, Harry seemed to grow taller and brighter himself. Harry kept his emotions solemn until little Nyota M’bele placed the last baton in his hand. He winked at her. And she winked back.
Now, Harry held his newly-assembled caduceus aloft and proclaimed, “By the authority of the TimeBinders, I stand here as the Nexus of the Unification. Let the word go forth. The Gathering has begun!”
Harry had become the Nexus.
When he spoke, he no longer spoke in his own words or with his own voice. He had become the living presence of all twelve TimeBinders speaking in unison, embodied in a single mind.
The Nexus stepped to the center of the arena. A circular area lifted up slowly, becoming a rising dais, a pedestal, a place to stand. Everyone in the amphitheater could see him. An expectant hush fell across the waiting crowd.
In The Mountain
As one shuttleboat dropped away from The Black Destructor, another one approached. Nearly a hundred docking ports lined the bottom of the great vessel and almost that number dotted her upper hull. The tiny shuttleboat slid into one of the lesser ports near the tail of the mountain-sized vessel.
The airlock doors slid open and Gito, Sawyer, Finn, and Shariba-Jen debarked. Each of them carried a duffel over his shoulder—their personal belongings. Gito greeted the waiting Juda-Linda. She eyed them all suspiciously.
“As I told you I would, I brought my assistants,” Gito explained.
Juda-Linda’s gaze slid up Sawyer’s slim frame and down Finn’s thicker one. Sawyer offered a genial, but unconvincing, smile to the dwarf-sized woman. She barely glanced at Jen.
“Too big. Too ugly,” she decided. “But what the hell, you can keep them for now. Later, though, we’ll have to reassign them. The Phaestor don’t like humans—at least not where they have to look at them. Come this way.”
Sawyer and Finn exchanged glances. “The little woman has even less charm than Gito,” Sawyer whispered.
“Good,” Finn whispered back. “It just makes the job easier.”
“I’ve got the perfect quarters for you,” Juda-Linda said. “Below the keel.”
Again, Sawyer and Finn looked at each other. Having your quarters below the keel signaled extreme disrespect—almost disgrace. “Perfect,” said Sawyer. “Below the keel? I wanted the keel. I like the keel. The keel appeals to me.” He turned around and waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Jen, whose duffel contained a magnetic bottle wrapped in shield-cloth and rags.
Trying to suppress his own laughter, Finn poked him hard in the ribs. “Shut up.”
Still grinning, they followed Juda-Linda deep into the bowels of The Black Destructor.
Elsewhere in the mountain, other events began unfolding.
Through corridors much more elegant than the ones traversed by Juda-Linda, Gito, and the others, four of d’Vashti’s insect-guards escorted a quiescent Lady Zillabar toward her quarters. d’Vashti had assigned her a spacious guest chamber low in the aft of the vessel—the location represented a deliberate insult, though not one as severe as if he had placed her below the keel. Had he placed her there, the Lady Zillabar would have had no choice but to commit suicide to rid herself of the stain.
As they came down along the wide corridor, a pale Phaestor youth and several Dragons came up the passage from the opposite direction. Neither party acknowledged the existence of the other, but as the Dragons came alongside d’Vashti’s guards, they all turned in unison and quickly dispatched them, killing them easily and efficiently. One had his back broken, another had his head bitten off, a third collapsed under the blows of a Dragon’s hammering fist, and the fourth—well, the Dragon just reached into his chest and ripped his beating heart out with his bare hand.
The Phaestor youth ran to the Lady, dropping to one knee and offering his service. “We have brought your salvation, holy mother,” he offered.
Zillabar reacted with anger. “It took you flaming long enough, you stupid bazoons!”
The boy hung his head with shame. “I apologize, my Lady. We have had some difficulty keeping up with you.”
“Oh, the hell with it. I don’t have time for bitchery anymore. Let’s go.”
“We have a shuttleboat waiting, ma’am, and we have a long-range cruiser waiting for you, deep in the rift. This way, please—”
They headed up the corridor at a brisk pace. The Dragons carried the bodies of d’Vashti’s insect-guards, not willing to leave either evidence or a potential snack behind.
The Word
“When last we met—we TimeBinders—when last we put our minds and our hearts and our memories together, we gave birth to a Regency, a body with the authority to muster the resources to fight the predators that threatened the worlds of the Palethetic Cluster.
“We redesigned ourselves. We recreated our children. We turned into the most vicious possible fighting force. We gave them a language of their own, and we turned them loose to patrol the rift between ourselves and the Eye of God. They succeeded in stopping the predators
. They succeeded—and we succeeded in our original goal of security and safety throughout the Palethetic Cluster.
“But we also made a mistake. At that time, we did not look far enough ahead. We did not ask ourselves, what will we do when the predators no longer represented a threat? Will become of our children then? Well, now we have the answer to that question, and it dissatisfies us.
“Let me tell you what has happened. Six thousand years ago, we designed a language for our Phaestor children that would channel their thinking into action and results. We gave them a language which not only denied passivity—you could not even express the concept of it. The Phaestor language has no words for surrender or weakness or failure.
“The language worked. It helped to make our Phaestor children invincible, because they could not conceive any possibility other than victory. The language obliterated the alternative. But—” said the Nexus. “That same Phaestor language has come home to torment the parents. When the Phaestor ran out of predators to destroy, they needed a new challenge. They reinvented themselves as an aristocracy, and they gave themselves a goal—the Regency would expand its authority over the Cluster worlds, to include not just their defense, but their governance as well.
“We do not deny that the Phaestor won a great victory over the deadly planet-killing predators. We will always owe them our gratitude for that—but the excellence they demonstrated at making war does not also imply equal excellence at making peace. We have found instead that the mind-set needed for winning a war interferes with the processes of peace, over and over and over again.
“The Phaestor have mostly succeeded in extending their authority. They have mostly succeeded in assuming the governance of the Cluster. And they have mostly succeeded at transforming the way the rest of us think and feel and speak, because they have made their language—the language that we invented for them—the language for all of us.
“I speak to you now, as the Nexus, as the voice of all the TimeBinders. I give you the first decision. We must return to the Old Tongue. We cannot continue to use the language of the Phaestor. It channels our thinking away from the methods of respect and cooperation. As long as we use the Phaestor tongue, we speak in a crippled language!
A Covenant of Justice Page 34
