Strings

by Dave Duncan

  “There was a fifth person on board, a stowaway. A man.”

  “How—I wasn’t watching, I was working. Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “You wouldn’t have seen on public holo. I’d been given an honorary ranking on System. It let me see more than I was supposed to see, I think.” She had changed position slightly, and the cloth below her breast was no longer tight enough to show the violet beat.

  A stowaway? She was waiting—waiting for him to catch up with her own thinking. He had not matched wits with anyone so young and unpredictable in many years. He was getting too old for it. The last couple of days had been crushing.

  “There is—or was—a murderer on the loose in Cainsville?”

  “And also a spy, who sold the coin to WSHB. Not likely the same person, but possibly so.”

  Anyone could have worked out such things, given time. It was not this slender vixen’s comments that revealed her brainpower, but the way in which she made them. He had never had patience with stupid women, or women who pretended to be stupid, or men who preferred either.

  “You suspect execution?” He shook his head. “If there were a murder, then I am sure Fish already knows the culprit. Certainly Fish and Agnes are capable of dumping the scoundrel on the first handy planet. I’m certain that they’ve done such things in the past. They’re quite prepared to take justice into their own hands.”

  “But not with four others aboard?” She wanted to be convinced.

  “Never! I mean, Eccles purchased a Cainsville secret, but that was her job. I can’t see Agnes being vindictive enough to kill her for it. The traitor who sold it—well, that might be another matter. Devlin has ambitions, but she could throw him out on his ear anytime. And the two youngsters…No. I can’t explain the stowaway, but I think you are pushing suspicion a little far, Your Highness.”

  She sighed again and sipped more sherry.

  “I have always understood,” he added, “that breaks were not predictable.”

  She nodded sadly, keeping her eyes down so he could not see them. Even to him, unexpected death was always a shock, but the old had learned how to accept such things. Alya was much, much younger and was clutching at every thread of hope she could find.

  “You seemed very annoyed when you came in,” he ventured.

  “I was. I am.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “All the stupid mystery.” She looked up with the sort of smile that had once launched ships. “No—mostly I was mad at myself for being so dumb. I was halfway back here to Nauc before I realized the real reason I had been shipped out in that carton of monkeys. Hubbard Agnes lied to me, and I believed her!”

  Willoughby chuckled, hoping to keep that smile alive a little longer. “She often does, especially if she thinks you should be able to work out the truth for yourself.”

  “It was my own fault for showing up uninvited at her press conference, I suppose. But she told me that the Tiber planting was canceled and I was to return to Banzarak!”

  “She’s a bitch,” Willoughby agreed calmly, remembering Agnes’s amusement when she had called him to drop this tangle in his lap. “When did the fog lift?”

  Again a smile laid magic on the café au lait face. “Not soon enough! I should have known right away—if the Nile expedition had put Tiber at risk, I’d have got bad vibes as soon as it was suggested. I suppose I only notice when the buddhi speaks, and don’t notice when it stays silent. Even Jathro knew! He brazenly told me that I was to come here and make a speech—and I still didn’t catch on!” Of course, that was what was annoying her most—that the hack had seen what she had not. “Finally one of the reporters’ questions made me mad, and I began to wonder what I was doing traveling with a circus…”

  She shook her head ruefully and drained her glass. “My fault—I advertised my presence at Cainsville. Now I must make an equally public exit.”

  He nodded. “But my good fortune! We shall feed you a small lunch—about fifty guests. You will address the Refugee Authority, outlining all the priceless work that little Banzarak is doing for refugees, and tonight there will be a dinner.”

  She groaned. “Can I settle for a public flogging instead?”

  “You have stepped in at a moment’s notice to replace a South American vice-president suddenly indisposed. We are very grateful.”

  She grinned. “I trust his indisposition is not serious?”

  “You are confusing me with Dr. Fish. No, he is just suffering transportations of delight over a delightful new transportation he has just acquired. It came with a blonde in it.”

  “And I go back to Cainsville—when?”

  “Tonight, about midnight. You should arrive about 0400. More sherry?” The first glass had improved her disposition remarkably, unless that was an effect of his brilliant conversation.

  She shook her head. “We should probably rejoin the world before your reputation is ruined, Mr. Secretary General.”

  “Probably. But ruin all you want.”

  Her eyes twinkled—moonlight on jungle pools—and then sobered. “One last question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Two questions, I guess. But related. First, why did Hubbard Agnes pull that idiot stunt with Cedric at her press conference? Eccles thought it was because she had planned to announce something else and then changed her mind. But there’s no sentient life on Nile—is there?”

  “Not so far as I know.”

  “Then that idea doesn’t work. It was not a change of plan!”

  “And secondly?”

  “You said right afterward that you thought she was mad. She knocked the wind out of you, and yet today you’re as chipper as a cricket, and entertaining her discards. Explain, please.”

  “I fear that secret is not mine to tell.”

  Her eyes glinted. “For as long as I can remember, I have been entrusted with a greater.”

  True! Well, he had never promised Agnes that he would keep it secret, and he would like to provoke a few more smiles. At his age there could not be many more to look forward to.

  “You should be able to work it out, as I did. I have known Agnes for a very long time. She is infinitely devious. Her stones are never aimed at less than two birds, usually more. But some of it you should be able to work out. She pretended to behave irrationally, and nothing so confuses the strategic-analysis routines as that does. That’s why a good poker player likes to be caught bluffing from time to time—it is an investment. She even fooled me. And she publicly made dolts of the media, so their next attacks on her can be blamed on bias.”

  “I thought of all those points. They are not enough to justify the risks.”

  Were Alya not so lovely, he would not tolerate that tone from her. “No? Well, I knew the answer by the time I had returned here. When she pulled the idiot stunt, as you phrase it, what questions came to your mind?”

  A crease formed between the exquisite eyebrows. “Who is he? Why is she doing this?”

  He waited.

  “Where has she dragged him from…”

  He waited.

  The royal eyes widened. “The organage!”

  He nodded somberly. “Organ replacement, as it is practiced now, is a despicable business. Autografts are the safest, but they must come from clones. It is a secret, of course, but a widely known one. The cost is enormous—not the initial procedure, but the covert raising of the child to adult size. Only embryos can be grown in tanks. A body contains a brain, and a brain contains a person. Diabolic. A huge and bestial industry.”

  “Why is it not exposed, then, and wiped out?”

  “Because it is the prerogative of the rich and powerful, Eccles Pandora and those like her. The minor flunkies in the great organizations know the truth and detest it—perhaps they would do the same if they could afford it, but they cannot.”

  “And Agnes was threatening to reveal the truth! It was blackmail!”

  He smiled and reached a long arm to lay his glass on a paper-strewn table. �
��You have it! And she did it on world holo—the biggest, most blatant blackmail threat ever made! The secret has survived so long only because no one with real influence has chosen to fight it. But Agnes has unlimited influence. By the time I returned to Nauc I knew—mostly, I admit, because the calls had started already. The phone was ringing, as we used to say. Friends—I use the term in the widest sense—friends I had not spoken to in years were calling me to ask the price. I expect Agnes has been even more popular.”

  There was another factor, of course, one available only to someone with power like Hubbard’s, but the girl had apparently missed that, so far.

  “And these minor flunkies you mentioned…”

  “They dared not expose the truth openly, but they slanted the reports—some of them. Enough of them. ‘A hitherto unacknowledged grandson of Hastings Willoughby, raised on a secluded ranch…’ And so forth.”

  “And your reaction—that was why she included you!”

  He nodded guility. “Even I was taken in for a while—and if even I assumed that Cedric was my clone, no wonder the rest did! She has never hesitated to use anyone, even me. Especially me.”

  Alya smiled into the distance, nodding. “So where mere bribery was no longer enough, you have been threatening ruin, you and she.” Her face darkened again. She turned her cryptic oriental gaze on him, and it was deadly. “Then the two of you will hang on to power—and the organages will remain?”

  He shrugged. “We shall see. Negotiations are still in progress, as the saying goes.” He chuckled and pulled himself forward in the chair, preparing to rise.

  Centuries of absolute monarchy blazed at him out of those eyes. “I am not sure that I appreciate the moral distinction, Mr. Secretary General. To prolong life at the expense of those other young lives is an unquestionable evil. You just said so. To prolong your own power at that same cost—is this ethically superior?”

  How easy it must seem from the vantage of youth!

  He rose stiffly, feeling his tin legs quiver. “I said that the game is not over, Highness. You must be satisfied with that. For now.”

  She wasn’t—but then her anger faltered as her Toledo-sharp mind slashed through to another layer of truth. “There’s more!” she said. “It wouldn’t work without…There has to be more to it than that?”

  “Luncheon, Your Highness?” Willoughby said.

  They had luncheon, with speeches and more media coverage.

  Alya attended a meeting of the U.N. Refugee Authority and read a text that was excessively dull, having been written by a computer.

  There was a grand dinner in the evening, and the media were there again. There was talk of the princess’s world tour being extended to include Latin America—and all this just to conceal the secret connection between Banzarak and Cainsville.

  She was whisked away in a helicopter, one of a half dozen flying in variable formation. At an isolated and well-guarded airstrip she boarded an unmarked plane, followed by Moala and the two political nonentities and Jathro—who had become an intolerable pest again, now that his rival Cedric was dead.

  In the black heart of night, while aurorae danced their spectral measures in the uppermost silences, the plane descended along a complex path into the unreported airstrip at Cainsville.

  The size of it staggered Alya, but then she recalled that thousands, and hundreds of thousands, had come the same way during various brief periods in the past. If all went well, the salmon run would start again, very soon. Salmon? Lemmings…locusts?

  Bees! A swarm of bees, and she was the queen…

  She was rambling. Her mind had been tattered by another brutal day.

  The Institute’s passion for security showed again. Despite the remote location and the lateness of the hour, the plane was not unloaded until it had been towed into a hangar. With her eyes smarting under the arc lights, Alya picked her way cautiously down the steps to a reception party headed—again—by the inscrutable Dr. Fish. Everyone else looked as though they had just crawled out of bed, she thought. He looked as though he had just left a grave. He whispered polite queries about her journey and then murmured an almost inaudible introduction of Ranger O’Brien Patrick.

  “Since yesterday’s tragedy, ma’am, Ranger O’Brien has been appointed to take over Baker’s duties. Dr. Devlin’s are being administered by the director herself, pro tem.”

  O’Brien was lanky, middle-aged, and lugubrious. He shook Alya’s hand, but it was hard to tell whether he bowed over it, or if that was just an illusion caused by his stoop. “The hour is late, Your Highness.”

  “Very.”

  “A quick update on tomorrow, then,” he said. “There are still two worlds you have not seen. Quinto has been on our list for a while. It has already been overnighted. Like Orinoco, it is showing some disturbing features. We have colonies of fruit flies in the lab, containing planetary material. They’re not thriving as they should. We don’t know why yet.”

  What was bad for a fruit fly might not be much good for a queen bee, Alya thought muzzily. Lord, but she was weary!

  “Usk’s due in mid-afternoon. I can’t tell you much. This is only its second window. We transmensed a robbie the first time. The data from that will determine what we do next.”

  She nodded, wondering why they had to hold their conversation in a vast and dismally echoing hangar, a dozen weary people standing around at an hour so godforsaken. “Tiber?”

  “Tiber will be accessible early the following morning. The overnighters’ reports will, of course, be critical.”

  Shivering with the dank dejection of the small hours, Alya was thus reminded that her time of decision was almost upon her. She had sworn to make absolutely sure. But how could she ever recognize absolute certainty? She might beg another three days, until the Tiber window opened again, but how could that help? If the instruments and measurements and analyses all said that Tiber was safe; if her intuition about it remained unchanged; if Hubbard and her experts then turned to Alya and said, “Well?”

  Well? What then?

  “I need bed!” she said firmly, and headed for the line of waiting golfies.

  She trailed into Columbus Dome with Moala and Jathro and the other two, and they were all silent and morose and weary beyond care. Alya surprised herself by stopping off at the cafeteria and gulping down three straight cups of rank black coffee. It was 0414 hours. She needed sleep and lots of it, not coffee. She was nutty.

  When she went for a fourth cup, Moala begged to be excused. Her eyes were red as embers.

  “Of course!” Alya said, cross at herself for being so inconsiderate. Moala smiled, rose, and headed draggily for the spiralator.

  But Jathro’s two sidekicks went with her, and that left Alya alone with the lizard himself.

  He—damn him!—barely looked tired at all. A faint leer of satisfaction twitched his beard. He slid a sticky hand over hers.

  “Alya, my dear!”

  “Dr. Jar?”

  He shook his head. “When we are alone like this, you may call me Jathro. Of course, I realize that the sad loss of your young friend has been a great shock to you. You know I am always at your service, and if there is any way in which…”

  Evidently even Jathro could read expressions sometimes—his voice trailed off as he registered hers. She hoped, though, that he had not been about to suggest what she suspected he had been about to. She would certainly have maimed him.

  “You have my leave to withdraw, Dr. Jar.”

  The bright eyes flared dangerously. Then he rose to stalk away in a sulk. She was alone at last.

  She sipped at her cup and then put it down angrily, spilling half the contents.

  She did not need more coffee! For a moment she laid her face in her hands. It had been an utterly inhuman day. The only good thing about it had been that she had been granted very little free time to brood over Cedric. Merciless Heavens! Trapped, maybe for years, in a cell in hell with Devlin and that awful Eccles woman!

  Why had
her intuition not warned her? True, it never worked for other people. Only her own interests provoked a satori. Cedric had gone. She had used him, yes—or her buddhi had—but now that he was no longer available, she was sure that what she had begun to feel for him near the end had been something she had never felt for a man before. It must have been love, or at least the start of love. Certainly he had been eager to offer her all the love she would accept. Potent stuff, love—it was sticky on both sides.

  Had he not been important, then, that almost-lover, that potential future mate? On a frontier world his outdoor skills and his courage—even his size—would have been invaluable. He would have been a good protector for her, devoted and competent. If his destiny had been to die on Nile, then why had she not received a warning to save him? Would that not have been to her advantage?

  Or had his real destiny been that his grandmother had other plans for him and would never have released him to accompany Alya to Tiber anyway? To her buddhi, Cedric had been important no longer. He had outlived his usefulness. She shuddered and drained the last of the coffee.

  Her buddhi had been having an off-day, obviously. After so many centuries of shunning cobras, it had not twitched when Hubbard Agnes had pretended she was sending Alya back to Banzarak.

  No, that was not fair. She had felt no satori because her intuition had not been fooled by a lie. She rose. Her feet bore her to the spiralator, and it carried her up.

  What happens at the top? she had asked Baker that first day. As she reached her floor she felt a sudden urge to find out for herself what happened at the top.

  She watched the exit go by and did not move. The coffee was pumping life back into her, making her heart thump. Round and round…and that was fitting, because her head was starting to spin. Up and up, and she began to sense a soaring excitement.

  Her intuition was not fooled by a lie.

  Her intuition was not fooled by a lie.

  Doorways slid by, curving downward. There were more levels than she had expected, dimly lit as befitted the middle of the night. Then the confining cylindrical wall vanished. The steps flattened out level with the floor, curving around to vanish into the side of the central pillar, as Baker had said. She stepped off.