From where she sat at Lewis Gellner’s private table, she could see practically the whole of the center’s restaurant. Several diplomatic and support personnel were randomly distributed. Major Iverson had left as they entered, a diplomatic lieutenant draped over his arm.
“Interesting,” Koharski commented, taking another sip. “Almost as good as the real thing.”
“I thought you might like it.” Lewis Gellner downed his brew in large gulps. He smacked his lips when he reached the bottom and reached for a second cup. “It is the genuine article; just not grown on Earth. I understand that in some districts on Pritchard the climatic conditions are perfect for growing tea.” He set the cup down. “What did you want to see me about?”
Koharski swirled her tea. “Georgia Maricic.”
Gellner frowned. “Shouldn’t you be asking her directly, Lena? I’m not a source of information on Members of the Central Committee.”
Koharski gave a tight smile. “I’m not suicidal, Lewis, but I am worried. She seems to be drifting more and more into Stalker’s and Travers’s camp.”
“Don’t you like them?” Gellner finished his tea and dabbed at his moustache.
Koharski shrugged. “Stalker’s all right personally. That’s not the point.” Koharski picked up her cup but didn’t drink.
“Then what is?”
Koharski raised her eyes to meet Gellner’s darker ones. “At this rate there’ll be a peace treaty by the end of the week.”
“Does that disturb you?”
Koharski maintained her gaze. “You know my feelings. We need to be able to impose the terms we want, not accept whatever’s offered because we don’t have the strength to back up our demands.”
Gellner plucked a stray black hair from his uniform sleeve. “I don’t think you need worry, Lena. Negotiations are curious things. They can have a strange way of suddenly taking a turn for the worse.”
Koharski set her cup down. She looked long and hard at Gellner. “Do you know something you’re not telling?”
Gellner hesitated. “More tea?”
Koharski shook her head. “Lewis?”
“Nothing. But I have a feeling.”
“Am I to believe that?”
“Don’t press me, Lena.”
Koharski conceded. “What about Maricic?”
“I’ll have a word with her to encourage her not to listen too seriously to Stalker and Travers. But you needn’t be concerned. Maricic will take all factors into consideration.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Georgia Maricic didn’t make it onto the Central Committee by happenstance. She knows the issues.” Gellner stood. “If that’s all, Lena.”
Koharski rose. “Very well—” She broke off and stared across the room.
“What’s the matter?” Gellner asked, following her gaze.
“I thought I recognized somebody. Don Lahuna.”
He hesitated. “The theoretical physicist?”
Koharski shook her head and looked back at Gellner. “What’s he doing here? He’s attached to the Central Institute.”
Gellner made a dismissive gesture. “Probably somebody who looks like him.”
“Probably so.” Koharski agreed. “See you later, Lewis.” She rose and headed towards the exit as Gellner resumed his seat.
Cylena Koharski turned at the door to see the Fleet Admiral downing another cup of tea. Despite what Gellner said, she wondered why a theoretical physicist would be on Covenant. She never forgot a face.
“What do you make of this, sir?” Ensign Kathy Fines asked from her duty station on Cheshire Cat's bridge.
Lieutenant Hal WhiteWolf contorted himself to look over her shoulder.
Cheshire Cat had moved to within a scant two hundred million kilometers of the Gara’nesh fleet; almost seven hundred million from Covenant. Well within range of the Gara’nesh scanners if they focused in this direction. And well beyond range of immediate help should any be needed.
WhiteWolf stretched out a long, muscular finger to touch the schematic, as if physical contact with the screen could somehow impart additional information. The Roessler-spatial waves traced a jagged pattern across the screen.
“Looks like random scatter to me,” he grunted.
“Don’t you think it’s a little too regular?”
“What does the computer say?” WhiteWolf countered.
“Indeterminate.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
Fines, a pert brunette, touched another control. “I can’t tell, sir. It could be either the Gara’nesh or Covenant. From our present position they’re in a line.”
“Covenant?” WhiteWolf scoffed. “Not likely. And I’m not about to move ship to find out.” He scratched the back of his head. “Run a full diagnostic routine, Kathy, and recalibrate.”
“We did that only a few days ago, sir. Everything checked out.”
“I know, but we’d better be sure.” He touched the screen again. “Notify me when the recalibration is completed. Then we’ll see if this is real or not.”
Fines nodded and instituted the routine. “Will do, sir.”
“Cocoa?” Kuchera set a steaming mug down on a convenient ledge next to Jade. “Guaranteed straight from Earth.”
“Guaranteed?”
Kuchera smiled. “The shipyard stocked you well.”
He draped himself in a chair and picked up Jade’s left hand, playing with her fingers. They had the lounge to themselves. Karenina Neilson had retired to her quarters, ostensibly to rest. Jade wondered if her pilot suspected the nature of the relationship between her and Troy.
Jade removed her hand, lifted up the mug of cocoa and drank half of it.
“Do you mind if I put on some music?” Kuchera asked.
“Not at all.”
“Computer access,” he said. “Music library. Vaughan Williams, Symphony Number Five, third movement.”
Jade scoffed, “You don’t believe the quartermaster put that in our library.”
The strains of the ancient 20th century symphony swelled into being.
“Brought it with me,” Kuchera said.
She shut her eyes in order to listen. The Romanza, she recalled, had once borne a quotation referring to the Crucifixion. The composer had later removed it, but the symphony’s allusions to his setting of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress remained.
“I haven’t heard this in forever,” she said.
“It remembered it was always one of your favorites,” Kuchera said.
“It was sweet of you to bring it,” Jade said.
The lovely Romanza ended, to be followed by a buoyant Passacaglia.
When the music finished, Kuchera leaned closer. “Now that you’re all relaxed, would you care to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“You’re becoming too perceptive, Troy.”
“It’s part of letting me in.” He waited.
Jade drained the last of her cocoa and came to a decision. “Have you seen much of Earth, Troy?” she asked. “Silly question. You’ve been hanging around Command.”
“Right. But I’d not visited Earth before. My family had neither the money nor the desire.”
“I went once,” Jade said. “When I was fourteen. My father took me. My mother never left Greatmount. She was too afraid of space travel. Dad went on business, of course, to teach a seminar, otherwise we couldn’t have afforded it. But he took me for a weekend to Florida.”
Kuchera shrugged. “The closest I got was Savannah.”
“Hot, unbearably humid, built up to high heaven, but still having some wonderful beaches. White sand, spreading as far as you could see. The water nearly as blue as the sky. Palm trees waving in the breeze.” Her voice grew soft and wistful as she relived the memory.
“It sounds wonderful.”
“I spent almost the whole time swimming, when I wasn’t lounging in the sand or hunting for seashells. One day, I was walking along the shore when I saw some rays swimming close to sh
ore, coming up close, right where the waves were breaking. In and out, flapping and moving away. So graceful and elegant. I was fascinated. I stood there forever, watching.”
“What are rays?” Kuchera asked.
“A type of fish.” Jade drew in the air with her finger. “Flat, diamond shaped, rather like a Sunfire. Thin. They swim by moving the tips of their—wings, or fins or whatever.” She demonstrated. “I think they must have been spawning. They were only there that one day.”
Her voice faded. Kuchera waited a moment and then asked, “What happened?”
Jade started. “Some children came along. Seven or eight years old. They saw the rays, and began shouting to each other. One of them picked up a handful of sand and threw it at the closest of the rays. Then they all started doing it.”
“Did it hurt the rays?”
“Oh, I doubt it. Throwing sand into the water is pretty futile. But it was the…the…”
“Meanness?” Kuchera suggested.
Jade looked her gratitude. “Yes. Meanness. Here were creatures I had never seen before, and that I thought were beautiful. And here were these children trying to hurt them. And their parents—they just stood around and laughed, not caring. Granted they were fish, but it made me angry, Troy.”
“What did you do?”
She looked away. “Nothing, I regret to say. I waited until the children had finished their game and left, and then I watched the rays some more.”
“And the moral of the story?” Kuchera prompted.
“A question, really. Has humanity grown up?”
“Well,” Kuchera replied, “we escaped the 20th and 21st centuries without a nuclear war. We’ve kept interworld skirmishes to a minimum.”
“Yes, but is the Hegemony any different from those children? Why do we try to hurt something just because it’s there, or it’s different, or we don’t understand it, or we’re afraid of it? Why are we so eager to hurt and so unready to look for beauty or appreciate differences? And why do most people stand around and say and do nothing?"
“Why do we fight a war and don’t try to understand the enemy?” Kuchera said.
“Exactly.”
“But you’re not a war-monger, Jade.”
“I wish…I wish humanity wasn’t governed by a corrupt, totalitarian regime. Then I wouldn’t feel…feel so guilty. So torn.”
“You? Guilty?” Kuchera frowned.
“I want peace, Troy, with every atom of my being. But I have to do it wearing this-” she touched the rank stripes on her shoulder, “—the symbol of that regime.”
“You’re human, Jade,” Kuchera said. “Defending humanity isn’t wrong.”
“No, but…” Jade looked straight into Kuchera’s eyes. “What if peace isn’t the way it’s meant to be, Troy? What if the Gara’nesh are destined to bring down the Hegemony? What if working for peace is wrong?”
Kuchera exhaled loudly. “Blessed are the peacemakers. Working for peace is never wrong.”
Jade settled her voice. “What I mean is this. Every empire falls. The Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians to the Greeks to the Romans to the barbarians…Even the great American civilization of the 20th and 21st centuries crumbled.”
“A fact of history. It’s the nature of human civilizations to be transient.”
“Perhaps the Hegemony has become so corrupt and degenerate that the only remedy is destruction.”
“The same questions arose at the time of First Contact,” Kuchera said slowly. “There was a group—the Reconstructionists—that wondered if God had lost patience with the Hegemony and meant to use the Gara’nesh to punish us.”
He took a deep breath. “Jade, I think you’re overreacting. I won’t argue with anything you’ve said. And I hate the evils of the Hegemony as much as you do. But it’s not up to us to decide if the Hegemony stands or falls. It’s not meant to be our decision.”
“But—”
He motioned, and Jade broke off what she was going to say.
“There is no way that we—anyone for that matter—can decide whether or not it would be best for the Hegemony to stand or fall. That’s for the future to decide. People will look back and say ‘Yes, the Hegemony was an over-ripe fruit past due for picking,’ or ‘No, the Hegemony was undergoing a time of transformation and came out better and stronger.’ We are too enmeshed and limited in our perspective, Jade.”
“No crystal ball, that’s what you’re saying.”
“None. All we can do is play our part, live as we should, and trust that time, or fate, or—you and I would say—God makes it come out right.” He raised his shoulders. “Who knows, perhaps there are enough good people around that change will result. It’s been known to occur.”
“I suppose so,” Jade said doubtfully.
“Examples,” Kuchera said. “Think how different the world would have been had Britain followed France down the road to revolution during the 18th century. Or if the West had succumbed to Communism in the 20th century. Or if the radical Scientism movement had had its way in the 21st. But good people wouldn’t let those things happen.” Kuchera took her hand and elevated it. “Throwing up our hands and admitting defeat is not the way to go.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Jade confessed.
“Here’s another historical story. You ever hear of King Josiah of Judah? Sometime way B.C., his kingdom was staggering to destruction while a prophet named Jeremiah was prophesying the end. Josiah still tried to be a good king and do what he thought was right. He didn’t give up or stop working because he thought God might be on the side of the Assyrians or Babylonians.”
“Hmmm.”
“Or think of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans standing against the entire Persian army. They were defending not only Sparta but also Athens and the other Greek city-states—who weren’t exactly on friendly terms with each other. Did they throw down their swords and go home because maybe their gods had sent the Persians to teach their fellow Greeks a lesson? No way.”
He touched her knee. “Defending our civilization and working for peace are not mutually exclusive.”
“I see your point,” Jade said. “What happened to Josiah and Leonidas?”
“They were both killed,” Kuchera said. “Josiah staved off the end for a while, but Judah still fell. The Greeks, on the other hand, were inspired by Leonidas’ sacrifice, and defeated the Persians. So you just don’t know how things will play out.”
“I guess not.”
“Somebody once said that all that’s necessary for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. The war is wrong. If we can help end it, perhaps the Hegemony will improve. We should fight what we know to be evil in the Hegemony, but we should not allow humanity to be conquered by an alien race.”
Jade gave a small smile. “Point made.”
“Feel better?” Kuchera asked.
Jade squeezed his hand. “Every now and then I have days like this. It’s so hard to look past the evil, to keep a straight perspective.” She stretched out her legs. “I’m beginning to feel glad that you came along.”
“See what happens when you let somebody else in?”
Karenina Neilson flicked off the screen in the far wall of her suite. The images of Commander Lafrey and Lieutenant Kuchera faded.
She climbed into bed.
“Light off.”
In the dark, she lay on her back and stared towards the invisible ceiling. Emotions tangled within her—guilt and unease, indecision and perplexity. She didn’t like spying on Commander Lafrey. And she could only do it because of certain modifications to Starwind’s internal sensors that she hadn’t told the commander about.
None of the emotions had faded when finally fatigue drove her into sleep.
In the privacy of his quarters on Covenant, Fleet Admiral Lewis Gellner opened a secure commlink.
The man who answered was well-built without being fat, his face broad, with a chin that receded sooner than it should have. His skin was
deeply tanned to a chestnut brown.
“Oh—Admiral.” His greeting was hesitant.
“What do you think you’re doing, Lahuna, showing yourself?” Gellner barked.
The man’s face flushed. “I wanted to go for a walk, that’s all.”
“I told you not to let yourself be spotted. Koharski almost recognized you!”
“I’m sorry, Admiral. It won’t happen again.”
“It had better not, Lahuna. One mistake at this stage…”
“I’ll be more careful, Admiral.”
“You’re right you will.”
Gellner cut the link.
“It had better not happen again,” he repeated to himself as he prepared for bed. “Genius or not.”
TEN
Markher 12. Member of star cluster named in honor of Wilfred L. Markher (2123-2228 CE), physicist, whose detection of Roessler-spatial transition waves in 2199 paved the way for the development of a successful interstellar drive.
The Markher cluster of red giants was surveyed in 2488 by SC Gribbin. The name was adopted formally at the Second Convocation on Stellar Nomenclature (successor to the Interstellar Nomenclature Council) in 2504.
Markher 1, 9, 11, and 12 are the only members of the cluster to possess planetary bodies. Markher 12 masses 1.7 sol; the system comprises eight planetoids, the largest of which has a diameter of only 1000 kilometers.
The Markher cluster lacks commercial and strategic value, and has been visited only rarely since its initial charting.
Currently under Naval interdict, permission must be sought from Chief of Naval Operations, Sector 6 Command, Weston's World, Alpha Australis IV, before any approach closer than two parsecs is attempted.
Failure to observe restrictions carries penalties as prescribed in the General Penal Code, Section 4577, paragraphs 26-31.
From The Navigator's Guide to Human Space, 260th Revised Edition, 2553.
“Not my idea of an inviting place,” Kuchera remarked wryly when Jade shared the information with him the next day. He turned off a replay of an old news broadcast featuring the then Captain Charles Stalker commanding SF Warrior, and turned his chair to face her.
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