He bounded through the open front door. Beyond, straw mats, ash paneling, and broad windows kept the entryroom full of light. ‘Hallo-o!’ he bellowed.
His wife appeared. He moved to embrace her. In her mid-forties, Elena continued thoroughly embraceable. Herself built on a generous scale, hair streaked with white like a sea phosphorescent in the dark, she was born a Bowenu of the Te Karaka tribe; they had met when the Navy sent him for advanced education to the engineering school where she was a student, had become lovers almost immediately, written back and forth while he was off to the Power War, and married as soon afterward as their parents could sign the customary agreement and arrange the customary festivities.
‘M-m-m,’ he purred into her ear. ‘You smell of woman, you do.’ Then he sensed how tensely she stood, stepped back, kept his hands on her hips but looked down into a faceful of trouble. ‘I say, what’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘A radio call today from Aruturu Haakonu in person. He said you were to come at once if convenient – if inconvenient, come all the same.’
Terai scowled and gnawed his lip.
‘He told me he knows you’ve been away as an Elector, and is sorry to haul you off to duty in such haste,’ Elena went on. ‘Otherwise he explained nothing. But I don’t believe he ever jokes unless there’s a sticky situation.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Terai agreed. ‘Hasn’t, since his son was killed … So be it. I’ll get the morning train from Napiri. Do you want to ride along to the station and take my horse back?’
‘Of course. Who else should?’ Achieving a smile, she stroked his cheek. ‘We needn’t leave before sunrise to catch the train, and you can sleep on it. How tired are you now?
‘Not half as tired as we both shall be,’ he laughed. They were a Navy couple of the old-fashioned sort.
2
Most buildings in Wellantoa were substantial, brick, stone, tile, often whitewashed or brightly plastered, a solar collector on every roof. Here too people disliked crowded housing. The hills above the bay gave more area to family gardens and public parks than to homes. This frequently meant going a distance of kilometers from place to place. Few in the city minded, despite their reputation as a hustling and bustling lot. After all, they could take bicycles, horses (properly diapered while in town), carriages, trams in the flatlands, their own feet anywhere; the mild climate usually made transit a pleasure; for the rare emergency, motor vehicle existed, taxicabs, ambulances, Fire engines, police cars. The waterfront was busy and noisy, as were the railway station and various factories, but on the whole, this was a gracious community.
Silhouetted on its height against the Tararua Mountains, the Admiralty overlooked much of it, from Parliament and the Palace at either end of the same ridge, down past the loveliness of the University campus and stateliness of the Royal Science Museum, and across the strait toward South Island. On this day, however, wind brawled out of the Tasman Sea, rain slashed, sight lost itself in silver-gray: weather to disquiet a believer in omens.
Terai was not, but he couldn’t help thinking how it fitted the lair wherein he sat and the purpose that had called him here.
Just under the ceiling, the emblem of the Intelligence Corps was the most colorful thing in the big room; but its image, a falcon stooping upon a kea, reminded visitors of that evil which the sheep-killing parrot symbolized. The only personal items were photographs of Aruturu Haakonu’s dead son Ruori and his surviving household, on the desk; a tabletop model of the ship aboard which he had served as a young man in the Okkaidan War, placed next to an outsize terrestrial globe; and a crossed pair of spears, acquired in Africa during his years as a field agent, on the wall behind him. Everywhere else were bookshelves and filing cabinets, of well-chosen hardwood but strictly devoted to reference material. The customary Triad images were lacking. The chief of the Corps was not a devotee of Tanaroa, Lesu, and Nan – not of anything, he had remarked to Terai in a rare unguarded moment, except human steadfastness in a universe that was also mortal.
‘Thank you for such a prompt response, Captain Lohannaso,’ he said when the other entered. Thereupon he rang for his secretary to bring tea, inquired after Terai’s family, and spent a few minutes discussing the prospects of the local soccer team. He well understood the value of good manners toward a subordinate. Underneath them, he remained an aristocrat of the Aorangi tribe, into whom something of the starkness and splendor of their mountain had entered.
Presently he sat straight at the glassy sweep of the desk, and his single eye came to such intent focus that the artificiality of the left one was unmistakable. The eye was gray, his hair and a beard that fell to his breast were white, his features craggy and pallid. In him the Ingliss side of the ancestry was dominant – spirit as well as body, Terai imagined.
Nevertheless, he was not discourteous, he did not go too hastily at matters. His concession to the Maurai temperament took the form of didactic discursiveness.
‘I’ve recalled you partly because you’re among our ablest field operatives, Captain, in a period when we’re damnably short even of run-of-the-mill personnel,’ he said. ‘And you understand the present danger better than Her Majesty’s average subject does. We’ve had it too easy for centuries. You don’t take our hegemony for granted.’
‘The admiral is kind,’ Terai muttered, and reached for his pipe.
Aruturu made a harsh sound that might have been meant for a chuckle. ‘It’s not precisely kind of me to bring you here when you’ve earned a long leave, and for the mission I have in mind. A mission which should never have been required in the first instance.’
‘Really, sir?’
The monocular gaze went afar. ‘Our colleagues before the Downfall would not have been caught by surprise as we’ve been. Compared to them, we – everyone like us on Earth – we’re naive, ignorant, understaffed, underequipped, undersupported. We’ve never had any enemies who required us to become efficient. But you’ve heard me on this topic before.’ Aruturu returned his look, sharpened, to Terai.
‘Now we seem at last to be up against somebody who has given the business a great deal of thought and done a great deal of ground-work. Somebody with whom you may be uniquely well qualified to cope.’
Terai raised his brows and waited.
‘In view of your trip to Laska five years ago,’ Aruturu explained.
Terai winced. ‘That was hardly a success of mine, sir. I suspect I was rather cleverly hoodwinked, and lucky to get out alive, but I found no proof of anything.’
‘I suspect you came closer to making a discovery than all the agents we’ve had in those parts before or since. The sheer size and wildness of that country – a society too loosely organized, in its damned Lodges, for us to infiltrate in any useful degree – Well.’ Aruturu’s tone grew metallic. ‘What brought your name to my mind was another name in a report lately received from Europai. Mikli Karst.’
Terai nearly dropped his smoking gear, recovered, and got busy with it. ‘I’m surprised the admiral remembers me in that connection.’
‘I’ve an excellent memory, Captain Lohannaso, and a better data retrieval system. Your own recollection may have gotten a trifle dim, after the range of later assignments you had.’ Aruturu formed the smile of a carnivore. ‘Yes, of course you made yourself too conspicuous among the Norrmen to be very useful there, again. But how would you like to meet your old opponent on ground that is new to you both?’
Wind shrieked, rain dashed against panes, the noise of a typewriter in the outer office suggested skeletons holding carnival on Ghost Night. Terai started his pipe. The smoke scratched his palate in friendly, reassuring wise. ‘Please say on, sir.’
‘This will take time,’ Aruturu warned. ‘I shall have to ramble through the background of it all.
‘Our operatives in the Domain of Skyholm are miserably few, in spite of the increasing Maurai presence in the country. The well-developed domestic communication and air transportation systems do enhance th
eir capabilities somewhat, and they send regular dispatches via GRC.’ Terai recognized the abbreviation for coded radio, relayed by the sea stations which the Federation maintained worldwide.
‘They report that a large Union ship, complete with an aircraft, has reached a port on the western peninsula and settled down for an indefinite stay,’ the chief continued. ‘Earlier she was in Espayn. They’ve sent us as many names and ratings as they could learn, and Mikli Karst’s is at the head of the list, seemingly the leader of the expedition. Its purpose is undisclosed, aside from vague talk of “commercial and diplomatic negotiations.” It arrived about two months ago, following similarly secretive scurryings about in Espayn. Karst is seldom at the harbor, but has been seen in places such as Tournev, the principal city. Several members of his party have not been seen at all since shortly after the landing. Certain rumors recently heard, and passed on to me, are what have perturbed me enough to decide we had better get properly cracking on this. They tell of strangers in the eastern marches of the Domain, who crossed the Rhin River and vanished among the Allemans. They sound as if that party may well be from the ship.’
‘How so, and how did they reach our men?’ Terai inquired.
‘They scarcely would have, and in any event they would not have included any worthwhile description – save that the leader of the band is a rather spectacular woman. That raised gossip along many a trade route.’ Aruturu repeated his grin. ‘The Norrmen make mistakes too. Though perhaps they had no choice; perhaps she was the best they could get for the task, whatever it is.’
‘What do you think they’re up to, sir?’
‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Yet consider.’ Aruturu ticked points off on his bony fingers.
‘First,’ he said, ‘none of this would be possible without the connivance of aristocrats high in the Domain. Its states have extensive autonomy, but Skyholm keeps basic control. Of recent years, that control has been faltering. Regardless, no gang of foreigners could establish a base, travel about as they please, and never offer a real explanation – unless they had some intrigue afoot with powerful men.
‘Second, the Domain is riddled with intrigue. Its Captain is nearing the end, like Her Majesty here; but the Captaincy of Skyholm carries authority several orders of magnitude above what our monarchy does. Contending for it are traditionalists, Gaeans, a dozen different cabals of malcontents. If the Northwest Union can help engineer the succession of a government favorable to it vis-à-vis us, we’ll not only be eased out of a growing market, our European operations – our intelligence – will be slowly strangled.
‘And the Norrmen will fare as they choose. … What are that woman and her followers doing beyond the Rhin? Could they be after fissionables? Could that be the basic reason why Norrmen are plotting with members of the Aerogens?’
Terai, who was no coward, shivered. The gale outside was less terrible than that which Aruturu bespoke. ‘Sir, I’ve, well, I’ve heard what you might call whispers about this, but it’s hard to, to accept. Didn’t the Federation scour the world for that stuff, long ago, and throw it into a subduction zone?’
‘Yes, but the search was cursory in wilderness or in devastated areas, and afterward the supposition was that the remainder could be confiscated as it was discovered. That didn’t work so well, did it? The Norrmen before the war found fuel for several reactors, without undue difficulty. There must be rather more lying about in forgotten nooks and crannies. And lately – We’re keeping it secret for the time being, if only to avoid public panic, but we have gotten definite evidence that somebody is foraging again. You’ll be briefed.’
The calm statement came to Terai like a kick in the belly. He felt sick, half stunned. ‘But it doesn’t make sense!’ he protested.
‘Why not?’ his superior replied.
‘Because – teeth of Nan, because it doesn’t!’
Aruturu leaned back in his chair. ‘Give me your reasons, Captain. I’ve obviously been through the argument before, but you need to clarify your own thinking.’
‘Well –’ Terai puffed hard, raising a small guardian cloud for himself. Dismay drained from him and horror receded to the bottom of his mind. Monstrosities could be slain; but first they must be understood. His thoughts grew methodical.
‘Well, the logic of it,’ he said. ‘Suppose somebody – call him X – suppose somebody did get together a few hundred kilos of uranium-235, plutonium, or whatever else. Let X make bombs of it, too. What then? I presume the bombs would be for use on us,’ since we dominate Earth.‘How shall they be delivered? A fleet of bombers or rockets is ridiculous. Quite aside from the metal, where’s the fuel to come from? Oil wells are treasures in the firm grip of the chemical industry. Synfuels depend in the last analysis on solar energy, and that’s too diffuse. X couldn’t build an adequate plant, or divert the amount he’d need from the civilian economy, without us noticing.
‘Therefore X can only mount a sneak operation, bombs in the holds of merchant ships and so on. Supposing he could coordinate the thing, against our bases and outposts around the world – and I don’t see how he could – it wouldn’t destroy us. We’re too widespread; too much of our strength comes from village and family enterprises; what was left of our Navy would still be stronger than anything he could muster. Besides, surely most of the human race would join us, to stamp on anybody who’d risk a second Downfall.
‘No, sir, if X is crazy enough to try that, then X is too crazy to be any real menace.’
He stopped, short of breath after such an unwontedly long speech. For a while, the storm keened.
To tell the truth,’ Aruturu said, ‘I agree with your reasoning. A nuclear attack on us would be a grisly absurdity. However, we cannot reason the data away.’
‘What could the motive be?’ Terai implored.
Aruturu sighed. ‘I’ve spent more sleepless nights than I care to number, trying to answer that. Your X might build a powerplant, as the Norrmen wanted to do before the war. But given our policy of prohibition, that doesn’t make sense either. It would have to be tucked off at the back of beyond, where it could play no worthwhile industrial role.
‘What else? An attempt at extortion? Or, controverting both sanitary and morality, an actual attempt at bringing the Federation down? Whatever the aim, it’s necessarily hostile to us, because the ban is ours.’
Terai made no comment. None was needed. You could argue against the right of the Maurai to be the custodians of Earth, but you could not dispute the fact that nuclear energy, in whatever form and for whatever purpose, meant the possibility of nuclear weapons.
‘Who is X?’ Aruturu pursued. ‘Probably the Northwest Union. Oh, not officially. An entire nation can’t hide so hellish a secret, especially when it’s so weakly governed. But a close-knit consortium of their Lodges might.’
‘We shouldn’t dismiss others,’ Terai counseled. The admiral remembers how Beneghal made an undercover effort of that sort.’
‘Indeed. And you know what a close watch we’ve kept on Beneghal ever since. Who else? X has to have the technological capability, which excludes the vast majority of mankind today. Besides, most societies are sympathetic or, at worst, resigned to us. In the case of the Northwest Union, we stand foursquare between them and their dearest dreams.’
‘The Gaeans don’t like us either,’ Terai reminded.
Aruturu nodded. True. However, can you imagine them splitting the atom? They’d hang any of their own people who tried. Aye, aye, the Corps is investigating them. It’s investigating every candidate, the whole way from Okkaido to the Domain itself. But let us not play games, you and I. We have just a single prime suspect. Or, rather, and much more difficult for us, a number of prime suspects; but the guilty group, with ninety percent certainty, is Northwestern. Our task is to find them, prove their guilt, and break them, before it is too late.’
He fell silent for a space. The gale ramped. When he spoke further, it was most quietly:
�
�Terai Lohannaso, I do not order you on this mission. Think first. Refusal won’t be held against you. It’s lonely and weird and may lead you nowhere but into death. You have earned better.’
The big man braced muscles and will. ‘If nothing else, Admiral,’ he said, ‘I’ve my kids to think about, and whatever kids they’ll be having. I accept.’
Aruturu’s smile this time held a touch of warmth. ‘Well, then, I promise you’ll find it fascinating, as great a challenge as you can ever meet. Our men presently in the Domain are routine information collectors, not spies; their identities and duties are known to Skyholm. I ask you to go there on a roving commission.
‘The Norries may not be after fissionables at all … in Europai. In any event, that can scarcely be their primary goal. Ferret out what is happening, Captain, and take whatever measures may be indicated. In effect, you’ll have plenipotentiary authority.’
‘Just what does that mean, sir?’ Terai asked cautiously.
‘Well, you should send your findings here, for the Cabinet and the Navy. But if you can’t, then, whatever you decide to do. Her Majesty’s government will back you down the line. It has that much faith in me; I have that much faith in you.’
Aruturu waited a little before finishing, with a visible measure of pain: ‘Besides the regular sort of staff, you’ll have an associate who, I believe, is quite extraordinary. And I ought to know. He’s my grandson – in part; in a way, a strange way.’
3
Had the ancient canal through either Panama or Suez been restored – projects thus far rejected as demanding too many machines and too much fuel – or had Hivao traveled, spendthrift, under power, she could have reached the antipodes in less than the two months it actually took. Heavy weather and foul winds did not impede her particularly; but around Cape Horn they combined with icebergs drifting up from Antarctica to make her creep along. Later, as she headed north, most currents were unfavourable until, near the end of her journey, she entered the Gulf Stream.
Orion Shall Rise Page 16
