Haze and the Hammer of Darkness

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Right.”

  “Good. We’re only a Beta Class. Means you can handle swings by yourself, long as I’m on call. Better for everyone.”

  “Fine with me, once I know what’s where.” Martel lifts the discs thrust on him by Marta Farell. “Where’s the console?”

  “Corner.”

  Martel spots it before the engineer finishes his directions.

  “Not much,” Gates adds. “Dates from the First Republic.”

  Martel’s mouth drops open. That would make the unit more than an antique. More like a museum piece.

  “Not really.” Gates smiles. “Just what it feels like. Older than anything else in the station. About a century old, if you don’t count all the replacements. And don’t believe everything I say…”

  Martel shakes his head, not fully listening to the engineer’s patter, trying to remind himself to doubt things, not to be so flamed accepting.

  “… more than one way to do a story, make it good without all the fancy gear those Imperial automatons deck themselves with. Hades! Done better stories myself. So’s Hollie. We can’t hold a pinlight to Farell or Boster. Probably not to you, if what the record says is true. Even half true.”

  “Don’t believe all the records, either.” Martel forces a laugh. “I’ve had all the courses, but no experience.”

  “You’ll get that quick here. Another thing those big flames on Karnak don’t understand. Go there and hold faxers’ disc-cases five years before you get a three-clip slot on your own. Farell’ll have you out doing half-stan slots in days. ’Course, she won’t use it all. Rip you pretty good. But you’ll learn.”

  Another voice, Hollie Devero’s, breaks in.

  “She already has you out of the control center?” Her tone is pleasant.

  Martel automatically lets his perceptions check her over, but her pleasantness is genuine, as if her “forgetfullness” has taken fully. He hopes so.

  “Not exactly. She suggested that I learn the rules, procedures, and schematics.”

  “Funny, she is,” Gates comments. “Good editor, good teacher. Has to be, to get a dumb engineer like me to run sub. But sure doesn’t want anyone in with her when it’s hot. In the other studio, the one she uses to train, another story.” He shrugs. “All got problems. What’s yours, Martel?”

  Martel returns the shrug. “I suppose my biggest problem is that the Regent and the Grand Duke Kirsten don’t like me.”

  Gates claps his hands. “Bravo! A step ahead. Don’t like most of us till after we get here. Why? Offend the Imperial pride? Student prank?”

  Martel fingers his chin before answering. “It has something to do with the Grand Duke’s daughter.”

  “The goddesses will love you!” roars Gates Devero, breaking the laugh off sharply to touch his bruised cheek.

  “I didn’t know he had a daughter. I’m sure he doesn’t. Not one old enough, or young enough, for Martel.” Hollie’s voice conveys absolute certainty.

  “But I went to the Institute with her,” protests Martel. “And why would the Duke … and why all the bodyguards…”

  Hollie shakes her head once. “I know what I know. There was no sign of a daughter ten years ago.”

  “But the Duke wouldn’t chase me, Query me, and the Brotherhood wouldn’t—” Martel breaks off, realizing his gaffe in referring to the Brotherhood, but neither seems to care, and the reference only succeeds in increasing Hollie’s confusion.

  “Maybe he had her hidden away. Maybe … well, the Duchess wasn’t much for children.”

  “She went to school in New Augusta. Didn’t come back until my second year at the Institute. That’s when I met her.”

  “How long ago?” asks the woman.

  “About five years, I’d guess. You see, I only saw her in the corridors at first. I wondered who had the bodyguard with the matching colors. But it wasn’t until the middle of my third year that we had a class together or I ever talked to her. Dr. Dorlan warned me about her father, but I never really did much except talk to her.”

  I’ll bet! The thought from Gates takes Martel off guard.

  “But she seemed to like you?” asks Hollie.

  “I thought so.”

  Gates shakes his head. “That’s more than enough, Martel. The Dukes don’t like Regent’s Scholars until after they’re rich or powerful. In this Empire, you don’t marry into money.”

  “Especially with a mother like the Duchess,” adds Hollie. Especially her! The thought has a trace of bitterness, and a touch of nostalgia, but the deepest feeling is repugnance.

  Martel closes his eyes, trying to sort things out. Hollie was convinced that there is no Kryn, no daughter of the Grand Duke, and the strength of her feelings and even her surface thoughts show she knows something she is not telling and does not want to tell about the Duke. The depth of those feelings, which his perceptions can only sense generally, also tells Martel that she has buried those memories from herself, and especially from Gates.

  “Kryn didn’t seem to care much for her mother,” Martel temporizes.

  “That must be it. Still … well, the Duke would act like that if he cared enough.” Which he didn’t always. She waits a moment, then lifts her head. “Before you start studying all those discs from Marta, I have some forms for you to authorize. We need to report that you’ve started work.”

  Martel nods. The less he says the better.

  Hollie Devero marches out through the portal, expecting Martel to follow.

  Gates gives a half-wave, and Martel returns the gesture before hurrying after Hollie. As far as he can tell, their false memories have stuck.

  Now all he has to do is learn how to be a decent faxer, if he can avoid being distracted by all the contradictions that keep popping up.

  xii

  Despite the multiplicity of the theories regarding the “seeding” of the known Galaxy with so-called Homo sapiens, no satisfactory explanation exists which can adequately describe why so many human and humanoid cultures apparently began at the same absolute point in time, or why a number of humanoid remnants have been discovered on habitable planets with no evolutionary train which would have led to such beings.

  With centuries of concentrated archeology behind us, we have yet to discover any real traces, besides the so-called fleet anomalies, of a star-spanning civilization which predates our own. Yet the odds of two separately evolved humanoid races possessing genetic compatibility, let alone the hundreds with absolute interlockability, and the other handful which are close enough for sterile crossbreeding, are prohibitive.… One might as well leave it to the “will of God” as attempt any rational scientific explanation at this time.…

  —Essays

  Fr. Adis SterHillion

  New Augusta, 2976

  xiii

  Martel watches the monitor of the direct feed from Karnak. The feed is a wasteout, and is displayed on the aux screen, because it features a ballad singer. A redisc of Gates Devero is the actual on-air program.

  Martel has seen Gates’ tape twice, and three times would be too much. So he watches the unused feed from Karnak.

  Unusual as it is for him, he is tired, with another five stans left on his shift.

  The singer, a young man with kinky black hair, pointed mustache, and a fluorescent green bodysuit, warbles the words in a false tenor, thin but true. The song was old, Martel knew, a variant on words that predated the First Republic, which had predated the Empire by a good millennium.

  … and where have all the poor men gone,

  Gone to slavers, every one.

  Ah, where will they ever turn, where will they ever turn?

  Good Question. Where have all the poor men gone?

  On Karnak, the answer was simple enough. Gone to the sewers, the Brotherhood, before it was driven underground and off-Empire, or gone to the wellhouses.

  The Fuards make their poor cannon fodder. Who knows about the Matriarchy?

  Martel leans forward in the swivel to check the remaining
run time against I.D. schedule. He wants to have everything ready, because he will have to give the I.D., with a cube scene of the ocean, voiced over, before switching to the upcoming news feed from Karnak.

  “The poor ye shall always have.”

  Wasn’t that the antique quote? What about the poor on Aurore? Couldn’t be as many, not with the nearly mandatory work ethic Rathe had pointed out.

  He smiles.

  Strong-willed lady.

  She knows more than he does. Even so, he has to discount all the hints that he is much more than a bright faxer with a bit of esp. More than that … absurd.

  Is it? Really? He pushes away the nagging question, decides to think about the poor.

  But he doesn’t have the time, yet. With the units flicking off the downcount, he touches the feedmesh and begins to fade over the scene-cube.

  “CastCenter of Aurore. Path station from Sybernal. Gate Seven.”

  He drops his vocal an octave, easy enough for those with the right relaxation techniques, and begins the scene logo fade to prep the newsline.

  “Straight from Karnak, Imperial Regency News Central, comes the latest update. From Gate Seven, here’s Fax Central.”

  As he completes his last word he switches to the outstation signal, an eight-frame of the Fax Central logo, and from that to the mainline cut, featuring the slim figure of Werl K’rio, silver-voiced and silver-clad.

  “Brief power failure at the Regent’s Palace … described as not serious. Concerns that the Grand Duchess is failing … and a dedication.”

  Martel takes himself fully off-line, but continues to watch the story on the power outage at the Regent’s Palace. No one could explain the failure of both the main and backup systems, and the outage lasted nearly a full stan. No details were forthcoming. A Regency spokesman dismissed the occurrence as “a freak happening.” Rumors of a strange appearance coincident with the blackout were dismissed by the Major Door-keeper as “absurd.”

  Have to wonder what was behind a power outage in the palace. What ambitious officer suffered an unfortunate accident? Or “perished” in protecting the Prince Regent?

  Someday, the mere tradition of the Prince Regent wouldn’t be enough. Someday, someone like the Grand Duke would succeed.

  Wonder what that will do to the Empire? And Karnak? And Kryn?

  He shies away from the thought of her, grasps at the earlier questions, the one of the poor on Aurore.

  Had he ever seen any?

  He concentrates, trying to drag up memories of shabby clothes, a beggar on a corner, unshaven faces outside a crowd of touries or happy norms.

  Martel squints, looking through his console, but cannot drag up that kind of image.

  But there have to be poor on Aurore. Have to be!

  Where else would they be? Where would they be hidden away? Or is Aurore so prosperous or so conditioned that none are in need?

  Ding! The warning chime interrupts his mental search, reminding him that he has to go local.

  First, the I.D. and the logo. He’d dragged an old one from the cube library, featuring a woman who could have passed for a goddess—golden hair and golden eyes, and a voice that could have sold freezers on the poles of Tinhorn. The phrasing wasn’t current, but complied with the stat requirements. The date on the cube made it over forty stans since it had been used last, but Martel’s tests showed it was technically acceptable. Besides, it would be a nice change from the scenery that Marta Farell used.

  She’d said he could use whatever he wanted from the library, provided it wasn’t sealed. Not that anyone would notice, not on his shift.

  Despite the eternal daylight of Aurore, most of the norms and all of the tourists stayed with standard Karnak time, which meant that Martel’s shift ran through their “night.” Most faxviewers were touries, with a few norms.

  Martel wonders if he is a norm or a native. No one had ever described the difference, except Hollie Devero.

  “Natives understand Aurore, live with it. Norms don’t. That makes Gates a native, and me a norm.” That was what she’d said, and it was all anyone had said to Martel, including Rathe.

  He refocused on the board in front of him, matching the frame counts, then precisely plugging in the I.D. cube.

  “The CastCenter of Aurore. Gate Seven. From Sybernal and for your information and your pleasure.”

  Even after forty standard years of storage, the cube fires a bolt, and then some.

  Martel wonders who she was, whether she will see the cube and not recognize the woman she once was. But his fingers are busy. As he feels the gut-level impact of the face and voice, he is already triggering the next program.

  Again he matches the frame count to perfection as he brings the title logo of the holodrama on line.

  A “romantic and escapist” plot, the summary had indicated, called Yesterday, the Stars, the drama featured a junior cruiser commander in the Imperial Fleet forced to choose between his career, which he loves, and a young Duchess, the woman he loves.

  The cube was on the list Marta had suggested as suitable for his time slot. For now, he was relying heavily on her guidance. Sooner or later, he’d have to strike out on his own, he supposed.

  Martel sets the warning chime and eases himself out of the control chair to head for the index for the station cube files. He hopes to find some more interesting I.D. spots, or some standard dramas that hadn’t been faxed to gray oblivion.

  Buzz!

  The incoming fax line was lit, for the first time since he’d been doing night shifts.

  He leans over the console and taps the accept stud.

  “CastCenter.”

  The screen remains black, only the green light beneath blinking to indicate the caller remains on the circuit.

  “May I help you?” he tries again.

  “Do not show HER again. This time it is ignorance. Next time will indeed be blasphemy.” The low voice sounds feminine.

  “What?”

  The red light blinks that the connection has been broken.

  Martel touches the stud, frowning.

  Strange. Most strange.

  Buzz!

  Two in the same night? Incredible, when for months no one has faxed at all.

  He accepts the second call more tentatively.

  The caller is Marta Farell, disheveled hair pushed back off her forehead, a robe thrown around her shoulders, and close up to the screen, as if to block off the view into the rest of the room.

  Is there a faint golden glow visible over her shoulder? Martel wonders why anyone would need artificial light.

  He keeps his smile to himself. At least in private Marta is human, and in the hurriedly thrown-on robe, she even looks desirable.

  “That I.D., Martel? Has anyone faxed?”

  How did she know?

  “Uh … yes. Blind. Said if I ran it again, it would be—”

  “Blasphemy,” she finishes.

  “Right.”

  “That one’s not sealed. Gates ran the other one like it once a couple of years ago, and the same thing happened. I didn’t know we had another. Don’t run it again. Or any other one that has Her on it.

  “Her?”

  “I think it was the Goddess in one of Her lighter moods. She probably wouldn’t mind, but Her followers certainly do. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.”

  As she reaches down to sign off, her eyes flicker to the side, and the robe parts slightly, enough to show that she had indeed thrown it on hurriedly.

  Strange. Why would Marta interrupt what she was obviously enjoying to warn you? The Goddess? What goddess? Ridiculous.

  “You’re saying words like that too much.” His words echo in the empty control room.

  Obviously, some people take the god and goddess business seriously. Very seriously.

  He looks down at the small vidfax unit, but the amber light stays amber. No more calls.

  The poor? What about the poor? Do we always have them? And what does that have to do with “Her�
��?

  Just as he thinks he is learning something, another series of questions pops up.

  He pushes the poor out of his mind, and turns back to the index to see what else features the golden woman and to find another I.D., hopefully one that won’t be classified as blasphemy by one cult or another.

  xiv

  The sand is warm, even without the directness of sunlight, and Martel turns over onto his stomach.

  Rathe lies facedown, her head on a small towel, her toes pointed at the thin line of foam where the wavelets break on the golden sands of the beach. She is relaxed, nearly asleep.

  Martel frowns, unable to forget the incident with the logo cube.

  Something about the goddess is familiar, but he cannot put his finger on it.

  Should you tell Rathe?

  He shakes his head and stretches, letting his weight sink farther into the clinging sand. He places his right arm across the middle of Rathe’s back, just below her shoulder blades, and squeezes her gently.

  She turns her head on the towel and looks at him from sleepy eyes.

  “You had the late shift, and I’m sleepy. How come?”

  He shrugs, then grins as he realizes how meaningless the gesture is from someone lying on his stomach and half buried in sand.

  “Don’t know. Guess I’m still trying to get used to this place.”

  He squeezes her again, and she squirms the few centimeters necessary toward him until their bare legs touch.

  “It’s so peaceful here.”

  “Thanks to you,” he answers. “If you hadn’t found the cottage…”

  “But you chose it.”

  He does not answer, but squeezes her again, then closes his eyes, trying to let himself relax.

  When he wakes, Rathe is sitting cross-legged and spreading food from the basket she has brought.

  “You finally hungry, sleepyhead?”

  “Sleepyhead? You fell asleep first.”

  He props his chin up with both hands and grins at her.

  Rathe uses her left hand to tousle his short and curly black hair. Then she smooths the cloth on which she sits and gestures to the space across from her, palm upward.