by Janet Morris
An Epsilonian in the audience stood up, clapping his broad hands loudly. Others followed suit. Somebody shouted "Bravo!"
Croft nearly kissed the humpbacked, camel-lipped Epsilonian, so glad was he for the time-out called on Armageddon.
But in the tumultuous standing ovation, as he himself stood, the mullah reached behind the woman from Commerce and poked Croft in the ribs.
Croft craned his neck, his brow raised in an interrogatory.
The mullah nearly shouted, "If you proceed on this course, my orders are clear."
"What course?" Mickey Croft shouted back.
"Our princess shall be returned to us!"
"In due time, of course, my good man. We're—"
The mullah looked away, out at the throng.
No good. Croft considered prayer, then bribery, then capitulation. The diplomat in Croft counseled him to do whatever he must that could possibly save the conference at this stage.
He looked out over the crowd of faces. They were taking their seats. The applause for the Epsilonian was dying away.
And in the last row sat Richard Cummings, Jr: "King Richard the Second," as he was known.
Cummings was a more threatening presence than even the Medinan. If Croft had been lucky, Cummings would have been on the other side of the galaxy, so far away that word would only now be reaching him.
But Cummings had, in all probability, been on his Earthly preserve, counting plovers' eggs or hunting from his own herd of white-tailed deer.
Michael Croft hated Richard Cummings with every fiber of his being, and Cummings returned the sentiment. There were the rules by which everyone else played, and there were Cummings's rules. The publicly flashy environmentalist was privately a trophy-hunter, a taxidermist, a gourmet specializing in the flesh of Earth's endangered species.
It was enough to sicken any honorable man.
It could be, Croft told himself, that the Cummings boy and the Forat girl deserved one another.
But he could never be sure of that. One didn't indict the children of evildoers, or tar whole bloodlines with the same brush. That was where prejudice and intolerance began.
Sitting before his microphone, Croft took time during the introductory remarks of the next speaker to type in the code that would bring up the text of Remson's report on the dais-mounted display terminal/communicator/translator system with which each speaker's place was equipped.
When he'd finished reading it, Croft was stunned, and the moment for the Medinan mullah's speech was at hand.
The mullah stood up, took his mike in hand, and straightened his voluminous tribal robe.
"Colleagues," he began, "we of Medina had come here in good faith to take part in this historic conference and to undertake our customary pilgrimage. But as you may know, the UNE has decreed that we may not set foot upon the Earth in all our multitude of pilgrims.
"The hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca made by people of my religion. The UNE has interrupted and interfered with this sacred duty."
The mullah glared around at the audience.
There was a rustle as people shifted in their seats.
"This affront we were willing to sustain. We were even willing to take part in our most sacred rites via satellite, milling with the Earthly faithful only by vid and in spirit. All of this, we granted the UNE to show our good faith and our spirit of compromise."
Mickey Croft wondered whether he should try to stop the mullah. He wished that Forat himself was here. Forat had been scheduled to be here, but had sent this man at the last moment, claiming illness.
A terrible suspicion started forming in Croft's mind, and that suspicion was accompanied by a tightening of his stomach that made his whole body seem unwieldy and brought a sick, sweet taste to his mouth.
The mullah continued, "But now the affronts have become too execrable for us to sustain. The infidels who pull the strings of the UNE have no honorable ends in their minds. They wish only to impose their will on other peoples, as they choose. Look around you, and you will see here the puppets of UNE imperialism! We of Medina urge you in attendance who are still your own masters to sever all—"
From the back of the room, a voice interrupted, booming: "What about your Medinan 'sentient service personnel,' mullah? Your slaves that you breed and slaughter as you please? Are you going to give them the chance to decide whether they're puppets or their own masters?"
The speaker was Richard Cummings. On his feet, face white, Cummings continued: "You're not pure enough to be talking about 'honorable ends,' not when you've got chameleon species you're using for questionable purposes, as well as slaves. And not when you're imposing barbaric punishments on your own women, without even bothering to declare them as subhuman, though you're treating them that way. You want to talk about rights, mullah? Let's talk about human rights. Women's rights. When's the last time any of the rest of you ordered your own daughter's assassination— head chopped off, if I'm not mistaken—for consorting with a foreigner?"
The mullah actually threw down his microphone. The sound was deafening. Gathering up his robes, he stalked off the podium and stomped out of the hall without another word.
Among the audience, assorted others stood to leave with him.
Croft took his own microphone in hand. "Order! Order. If NAMECorp's representative would like to be heard, he knows the procedure. Everyone, stay in your seats. I have something to say."
And most would stay. This was a conference in mid-abort, but something could still be salvaged. Mickey Croft was an expert at salvaging what he could.
Out there, in the audience, were reporters, and reporters could carry a lot of weight, if the words they used were the words you needed them to use.
"We are calling a special session to debate the rights of such creatures as the Medinan sentient service personnel. During that session, we'll also discuss the procedures for transporting newly discovered life-forms of indeterminate nature. And life-forms which fit the 'chameleon' description that the gentleman from NAMECorp has brought to our attention. Now, although it is somewhat difficult to hold an open discussion on the question of potential Medinan abuses without Medinan representatives present, we'll take some questions on related issues for, say, a half hour. Then we'll recess. Hopefully, this afternoon, the Medinans will return and we can continue with their participation. One way or the other, I want to assure all of you that, on Threshold, no rights of any person will be violated. Ever. No matter what local customs may be elsewhere, or what pleas of diplomatic immunity may be tendered: on Threshold, we consider justice to be an inviolable right of all life-forms."
The audience erupted into cheers and shouts as Croft sat down.
He was in no hurry to choose a reporter to begin the question-and-answer. The conference might be well and truly aborted, but that didn't mean he would concede the fact.
Let the Medinans walk out and stay out. Let their revolutionary fervor slip its bonds. Let there be riots in the street. All well and good, if that was what was necessary to bring this matter under the conference's scrutiny.
According to what Croft had read in Vince Remson's report, not only were the futures of the Cummings and Forat children at stake, but the very lives of the Medinan bodyguards known as Ali-4, Ali-5, and Ali-7 were on the line.
As he recognized the first questioner, Croft summoned Dodd with a handsignal. When the youngster came over, bent low to avoid being too obvious, Croft told him to catch Cummings, Jr., and tell him that Croft wanted to see the NAMECorp CEO privately this very day.
"Let him pick the time and place, Dodd. But don't let him off the hook. Do this, and I'll forgive you for the mix-up about the Forat girl."
"You will?" Dodd's fat face became radiant.
"I will."
Dodd went hurrying out with a newfound determination.
Croft wished he could find some similar light at the end of his own dark tunnel. He'd entirely missed the first question.
Mercifully, the woman from Comme
rce was answering it. It seemed to have something to do with new standards for importing previously undiscovered life-forms.
Let her chew on that one. Croft stabbed at the terminal before him. In just a few seconds, he'd called for a full-scale meeting of his staff, in his most private office, posthaste.
Now all he had to do was get out of here so that he could attend it.
CHAPTER 17
Favor in Return
South stared unabashedly around the Customs Director's half-cylindrical blue office, grateful that the floor beneath his feet was flat. Riva Lowe didn't seem to give a damn about South's mission to X-3, but she wanted to help him. Was helping him. Even if she was evasive about her reasons, only an idiot looked a gift horse in the mouth.
Some guy named Remson had guaranteed STARBIRD's security, even given South his card.
Now here he was in the heart of Threshold's politico-military complex, by the looks of it, with this lady who specialized in hacking through red tape with a half-smile on her lips and a tongue like a machete.
South ought to be thanking his lucky stars. But he wasn't. He didn't understand a damned thing that was happening to him. He didn't even understand why, at what Lowe had shown him was the central Stalk, or hub, of Threshold, he was experiencing normal gravity.
"Artificial," Lowe said when he asked, with that half-smile that was beginning to drive him crazy—the sort of smile you give to an idiot or a kid because you're simplifying down to his level.
But she leaned back in her weirdass chair and somehow a schematic of Threshold appeared behind her, on what he now realized was a-large-format display screen.
He looked at the complex of toruses and dodecahedrons and balls and frisbees, all strung on the Stalk or connected to it by tubes and cylinders and strutwork, and he blinked.
The schematic was color-coded: blue for government and administration; red for industrial; yellow for residential; orange for agricultural; purple for commercial/recreational; green for academic/scientific.
"We're still growing," she told him, and tapped her chair's arm. The schematic was replaced by a view of Threshold from somewhere inside, out toward the stars. "What you'd see if we had a window in here." Again, she nearly smiled.
He said, "Ma'am, I don't know how I can thank you for what you did for me and Birdy. ..."
"I do." She sat forward, and suddenly everything that had been bothering South—the ultramodern surroundings, the obvious power wielded so offhandedly by this hundred-pound woman, his sense of helplessness in a situation he didn't understand—everything receded.
Here was the catch. He could feel it. Whatever she'd been planning, whatever she had up her sleeve, was about to hit the table.
All the adrenaline Joe South hadn't been able to metabolize during the long siege shipboard rushed through him. He was dizzy. He was infinitely tired. He was wide awake and trembling like a leaf, waiting for her to tell him what she had in mind.
Like the good test pilot that he was, he automatically sucked in his gut, tensing his solar plexus, and pressed his hands together in his lap, performing an isometric stress-relieving exercise.
It helped enough that when she opened her mouth to speak, the meaning of her words penetrated his over-amped psyche.
"I want you to take a passenger out to Threshold's Number Seven spacedock for me. It'll be good practice for you, using our docking bays and our traffic control procedures."
The screen behind her changed again, into a split image of Spacedock Seven and a routing diagram of how to get there from STARBIRD's current berth in the ConSec docking bay.
He heard himself say, "I'm going to need a copy of that, and an etiquette manual or a flight sectional or whatever you've got for flight rules around here."
He didn't bother mentioning the temperature malfunction he'd had with STARBIRD's fusion power plant. Birdy and he would find a way to take care of that. The last thing he needed was to accidentally discourage her from giving him a mission—any mission. Because a mission meant they trusted you. You weren't some crazy if you had a mission. You weren't some criminal, either.
"Here you go." Hard copy came out of a slot in her desk. She reached across to give it to him.
His hands were still trembling when he took it. South hoped she'd put that down to eagerness.
He said, "So this is it? I can go?"
"Not so fast, Captain," she said. She hadn't straightened up. Riva Lowe had both elbows on her desk and she was leaning toward him. "You'll need to sign some more papers, first. We want you gainfully employed as a Customs agent. You'll need background on the passenger, and the mission."
Papers. He didn't want to sign anything else. He was hardly listening. Instead, he kept trying not to look at her, the way her breasts nearly grazed the desktop.
"Wait a minute. I can take my own ship, right?" he asked.
"Right," she affirmed. "We'll get you trained on something better later, but for now, this way will be best. We want this passenger satisfied that his needs are being attended to, but we don't want him out at this site alone, or capable of doing any damage to the artifact there, or trying any intimidation tactics on the agent who escorts—"
"Artifact."
"I'll put together a briefing for you. Don't worry. You'll have more trouble with the scavenger—the salvage expert whom you're ferrying out there—than with any other part of this. Just don't let him out of the ship—"
"Out of the ship? Lady—Director Lowe—nobody goes out of my ship except under—"
"Exactly. That's why this is a perfect start for you."
Another document came out of her desk's slot, and when she handed this one to him, their fingertips brushed.
Damn, he'd been away from society too long. You didn't mess with your boss, no matter how pretty she was. And you didn't ask too many questions when somebody was doing you a favor.
"That'll give you some official clout with the scavenger, if you have to use it." Again, she nearly smiled at him.
But not quite.
It was at that moment that South realized Riva Lowe wasn't a bit more relaxed now than when she'd come walking into his ship like salvation.
Was she scared of him? "Ma'am, I really want you to know that, after all you've done, you can count on me. For anything you need. Whatever I can do ..." He spread his hands. He was still holding the last document she'd given him.
"Good. Here's the scavenger's address."
Yet another piece of printout came his way. And a little card with a magnetic strip on the back. "Take public transportation until you know your way around. Use the card when it's Customs expense or when you need to identify yourself." She sat back.
"Is that it?" Maybe he could get out of here without signing anything. He stood up, suddenly anxious to leave before she changed her mind. He had a mission, after all.
"Not yet, Captain. We've got to go over the matter of passing title to your ship. Are you sure you want it, given that it'll take a good bit of your money?"
He didn't understand the money stuff here yet. But he had what he needed. "I liked what you said—I own the ship, I can live on it in some sort of trailer-park situation. Then I don't need so much cash, right? You'll be paying me something. ..."
"Ah—" She seemed slightly disappointed. "All right. We'll do that. Keep in mind, when you buy things, that your salary's still minimal. Try not to spend more than you earn, and you'll be fine. If you get into trouble with the currency, just remember that you're grossing a third K-note a year, before taxes. ..."
He didn't care. He signed the papers she handed him: STARBIRD was his!
"When do I have to pick up this salvage guy, and is he going to be glad to see me?"
"Call him and arrange a time as soon as you think you can handle it. I'd like him out there with you as soon as possible. I know your ship's slow by our standards, but don't mention that to him. He should consider himself lucky to have somebody bothering to take him at all. He's not to go out there in his own
ship—or any way but with you. So he may be testy at first. He's a little . . . crusty. Don't take any guff from him. Remember, you're a Customs agent. There must have been Customs agents in your—days."
"Yeah." He looked away from her. Was this some kind of trick? Was she just trying to get him out of the way? He had no business having any kind of reaction to somebody like her, let alone the reaction his body was considering.
He took all the papers that she'd given him and held them before him in both hands. "When I get back, we'll start in Customs school, and some kind of pilotry course, right?"
"When you get back, we'll have to. Your license to operate is inherent in your credentials, but you'd never pass a flight test at your current familiarity level."
She was one hell of a bureaucrat. And she was as out of reach as his hometown was.
He stared into Riva Lowe's exotic eyes for one painful moment, then dropped his own. "You got any more papers for me to sign?" He shifted from foot to foot.
"Right here—"
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Stand by, South."
She took a handset out of a desk drawer and swivelled her chair around. A small viewscreen blossomed on the back wall. He couldn't see what was on it; her chair was in the way.
He couldn't really make out what she was saying, either. It wasn't his business to try.
He was already wondering about getting that temperature malfunction checked out. If it were just a bad sensor, it wasn't going to be much of a problem. . . .
He wandered around the room, looking at pictures on the walls of places he'd never dreamed of, and reading citations for services that didn't exist in his time.
Then she said, "South, something's come up. I've got to go. You've trusted me this far. Trust me a little farther. You've got my word and Remson's, as well, that we'll work things out for you. When you get back, make an appointment to see me."
When he turned to look at her, Riva Lowe was standing, holding her hand out for him to shake in farewell.
And the next thing he knew, he was in the outer office, and somebody at a desk outside was directing him out of the building.
