Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  Then Max thought of a figure and doubled it, and moved the amount to a secure account he’d once set up using his other identity. He carefully entered it in the records as Max Constant and Gen Marling—severance pay. It was probably what the platinum investments would owe them over the next five years, if they all lived that long.

  Then he mailed a note to Billy with a time stamp for twelve hours from now, grabbed his bag, and ran out to meet Cara.

  “Are we going in the Howling Wolf?” he asked.

  “No such luck. She belongs to the Olyanda fleet. Oleg Staple has already taken her. I’m afraid this will be third-class travel. We’re going in the Flint.”

  “Is Jake flying her?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I asked what could possibly go wrong would I be tempting fate?”

  Cara laughed, but there wasn’t much mirth in it.

  The Flint was definitely third-class riding. She had two forward facing seats and a line of four seats on each side, facing inward. Aft of the entrance hatch was a galley, the tiniest washroom Max had ever seen, and a cabin with two bunks and barely room to climb in them.

  “She’s not much to look at,” Cara said, “but she’s retrofitted with a jump drive.”

  Jake climbed aboard, took one look at Max and then at Cara. “Not another kidnapping?”

  “Not this time. A mercy dash.”

  Jake raised both eyebrows. “Where to?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know.”

  Jake raised the Flint on her antigravs and eased out of Port 46. Max saw Cara’s eyes get the kind of glazed look he recognized. She was talking to someone. Jussaro, probably.

  “Oh, great.” Cara pulled a face at Jake. “Dounreay is your first stop.”

  “What’s wrong with Dounreay?” Max asked.

  “The first time you take a taste of osteena beer you’ll know,” Cara said.

  “Why can’t you reach out telepathically and tell her we’re coming?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “Did she particularly say she never wanted to see me again?”

  “Like I said, she thought you were going to side with Ben.”

  “But I’m not. I haven’t. I never would.”

  “You need to tell her yourself.”

  “I would if I could.”

  “You’ll be able to on Dounreay.”

  “What if she leaves before we get there?”

  “We’ll get there. Trust me,” Jake said. “Gen’s going to be doing bodkin jumps in and out of the Folds. We’ll go in and stay in.”

  “What about the void dragon?”

  “What about it? Can’t have it both ways.”

  • • •

  Max has his eyes closed as they fly the Folds. He can’t see the void dragon anyway. Does it matter if he looks for it? He hears Cara reacting to something.

  “Otter-kind,” she says. “No problem.”

  He doesn’t fall for that. He keeps his eyes resolutely closed.

  Then with a rush . . .

  • • •

  They emerged from the Folds close to Dounreay.

  “I thought you said it was hard-baked mud,” Max said as they came in to land.

  “That’s the dry season,” Cara said. “This is the middle of the wet season on this continent. Osteena comes up like weeds and then fruits at the end of a two-month growth spurt.”

  “Can’t they grow anything else?”

  “On the other side of the continent, across the Great Irrigation Ditch, they harvest rain and use it for crop watering in the dry season. This side of the GID they don’t have the resources. Not yet, but they’ll get there. Another fifty years or so and this place will look civilized.”

  “Gen’s not planning to stay here, is she?”

  “I doubt it. It’s one of the staging posts. From here, Jussaro’s contact will give her another destination. Three or four jumps down the line and she’ll be safe.”

  “What’s to stop her taking off in the Dixie and going wherever she likes?”

  Cara shrugged. “Nothing, Sanctuary is organized in cells. There are staging posts like stops on a version of the old Underground Railroad. There’s someone to help settle you seamlessly into wherever you end up.”

  “Are we heading for Wonnick again?” Jake asked.

  “I’m afraid we are.”

  Cara had described Wonnick in the dry season. In the wet season, it was nothing but a sea of mud with waving green fronds growing out of it. Jake had to flatten an osteena bed in order to land the Flint close to the Dixie Flyer.

  The town gate opened and Zandra Hartwell strode out.

  “State your business—oh, it’s you.”

  Cara strode forward, leaving boot prints in the mud.

  “You go ahead,” Jake said. “I’ll bide here a while. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, Jake—for everything,” Max said.

  Jake waved him off with one hand and Max followed Cara to the gate in time to hear a craggy woman in a long raincoat say, “She doesn’t want to see anyone and she’s not going back.”

  Max pointed through the gate to the third house on the left. “Tell her to tell me herself and I’ll leave.”

  *Gen, honey, Liv, it’s me.* He put all the emotion he could muster into that one thought and pushed it out as hard as he could.

  *Max. We’re not going back.*

  *Of course not. I’m coming with you. If you’ll have me, that is.*

  The door opened and a buddysuited figure appeared on the step holding the hand of a toddler.

  *Daddy!*

  Max almost took a step back. Liv sounded pleased to see him. His daughter stumped toward him on strong little legs, slipped in the mud, sat down hard, and stood up again. His feet didn’t ask permission, he ran toward her, scooped her up mud and all, and almost fell into Gen’s waiting arms.

  “You took your time, mister,” she said when he came up for air. “I guess you are coming with us, after all.”

  “If you’ll have me.”

  “Well, I can hardly leave you in Wonnick.” She jerked her head up to where the Flint was merely a dot in the sky.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  PLANNING

  CARA UNLOCKED BEN’S OFFICE DOOR, WALKED in, and dropped the override key on his desk. She felt slightly sick, as she had done since this whole thing blew up.

  Ben stared at it, slightly puzzled, and then looked at the door.

  “You’re free to go.” She shrugged. “Or stay.”

  “Until when?”

  “Permanently. No one is pressing charges.”

  “Gen and Max?”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone? How do you mean?”

  “Gone. Left. Vanished. Fled.”

  Ben blinked twice. “Gone where?”

  “Just gone. What part of gone is unclear? They’ve left, and they won’t be coming back. Ever.” She wiped her cheek with her fingers. They came away wet.

  “How can they just—? I need to find them, to apologize. I’ll make it right.”

  “There are some things that can’t be made right, Ben. Not with words, not with actions, not with time.”

  “Are you talking about Gen and Max, or are you talking about us?”

  “There is no us. Not anymore. I’ve moved my things out. The apartment’s all yours. I’ll work with the Free Company until we’ve sent out the news about the Nimbus, then I’m going, too.”

  His mouth moved into a W shape. Where? When? Why? But the questions died on his lips.

  “You know I never intended to let anything happen to Liv.”

  “I know you tried your damnedest to keep her safe, but you’re not God, Ben. It could have gone to shit at any time. It almost did. We thought it had. The void dragons, the Nimbus
. Foldspace itself. You know that. I know that. And Gen and Max know that. You can tell yourself you had no choice. You can tell yourself the results outweigh the damage, but that wasn’t your choice to make.”

  His jaw tightened. “Yet here we are. We have an answer.”

  “Then we’d damn well better save the universe with it.” Cara swiped her cheek with a closed fist. It came away wet. “Because any less than that and all this pain will have been for nothing. Gen left us a message. After everything that’s happened, she still wanted to help.”

  Ben made a small choking noise. Cara considered it an invitation to continue. “She said Kitty Keely told Liv she wanted to kill everyone.”

  “Define everyone?”

  “The whole human race.”

  “Oh, shit. She really is the Nimbus’ avatar.”

  “I believe she is,” Cara said, “and that might account for why David Cho offed himself if he was conflicted about it.”

  “And Kitty’s not conflicted?”

  “It doesn’t sound like it. Not conflicted in the least. Make of that what you will.”

  Wenna stood in Ben’s office doorway. “Looks like you’re staying.”

  “While I can be useful. You’re in charge, though.”

  She gave a soft snort.

  “I mean it, Wenna. You’ve always been the one who holds this place together. Ask anyone. I’m surplus to requirements now. Half the people want to get rid of me for what I did, and the other half—well—I’m not sure I agree with them.”

  “Have we time for philosophy? They’ll all get over it.”

  “The idea that morality is about achieving the right consequences only works when it’s not your friends and your friends’ child that you’re letting down. I didn’t respect their rights, as parents, as friends, as human beings.”

  “That’s your burden,” Wenna said softly. “And I’m sorry for it. But your task is to make the most of what you’ve learned.”

  “I’m going to see Garrick, and then I need to talk to Jessop in the Monitors. I’ll need a Telepath to work with. Maybe not Cara.”

  “She’s the best we’ve got.”

  “I know, but—”

  “She said she’d stay for as long as it took to get the word out.”

  He sighed. “All right. Ask her if she’s available later this morning, please.”

  He noticed a slight softening of attitudes from the people he passed on the way out to the tub cabs. Not everyone met his eyes, but a few did. There were a few curious looks and some polite nods. Would they have changed their minds so readily if Gen and Max had still been here?

  He collected Gwala and Hilde on the way. As they settled into the cab, he broke the awkward silence. “Are you two my guards or my bodyguards today?”

  “Which would you like us to be?” Hilde asked.

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “We still have to prevent anyone from killing you,” Gwala said.

  “For what it’s worth, we knew right from the beginning what you were up to,” Hilde said. “There’s no way the child’s mother would have let you take her precious daughter without at least coming with you.”

  “You didn’t try to stop me.”

  “We figured it was above our pay grade. Besides, you must have had a good reason.”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” Gwala said, “if it had come down to a choice of saving you or saving the baby, we’d have chosen the baby.”

  “Quite right, too.” Ben wanted to laugh for the first time since he’d squeezed the trigger on his stunner.

  Gwala punched in the destination and the cab hurled itself into the traffic stream toward the Hub.

  “You could have called ahead,” Garrick said as Ben left Gwala and Hilde at the office door. “I might not have been here.”

  “But you are, and so am I. This can’t wait.”

  Ben frowned at the fading bruises on Garrick’s face from his fall. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “I don’t feel as bad as I look.”

  “That’s good, because you look like hell. One thing you might like to know is that after you passed out, Liv Marling told her parents that Kitty Keely wants to kill everyone—not everyone on the station, but all of mankind.”

  “You believe the word of a baby?”

  “In this instance, I do. Absolutely! About that and about other things, too. When she was born, the void dragon put something in her brain. They can communicate.”

  “I heard about your escapade, of course. I had a visit from Max. He told me about seeing the older Liv, and he said more besides.”

  “Whatever he said, I probably deserve it.”

  “From his point of view, I’m sure you do. I’m a bit of a consequentialist. I believe the end can justify the means, and sometimes good things come from bad actions. So . . . what exactly did you find out?”

  Ben told him about how humans were poisoning the void with their platinum waste, which was what had prompted the retaliation.

  “It’s attacking us the only way it can,” Ben said, “by using what we send through against us.”

  “The jump gates—”

  “Are our weakness.”

  “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “We close them. The void dragon suggested as much.”

  Garrick gave a low whistle.

  “Yes, I know,” Ben said. “Huge consequences, but if we don’t . . .”

  “Huge consequences.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So do you have a plan?” Garrick asked.

  “We can’t do this without the megacorporations.”

  “You, my friend, are probably not the best person to speak to them. Your grandmother, on the other hand—”

  “Maybe.”

  “You kidnapped a baby and took it into foldspace. Don’t tell me you don’t want to put Louisa Benjamin at risk. She’s old enough to decide for herself.”

  Ben nodded. “Yes, she is, but before then I think we should practice what we preach. We have to close down the gates close to all the Crossways Protectorate planets.”

  “They aren’t going to like that.”

  “No one’s going to like it. We can only soften the blow by providing their fleets with jumpships, or at least retrofit jump drives, as an interim measure. It’s not a permanent solution, but it’s better than doing nothing.”

  Garrick paced the length of his office and turned. “The scale is enormous, Ben. We’re talking about hundreds of jump drives for the Protectorate planets. We’ve only produced them in small quantities so far. We’d need to draft all the skilled labor we could find and set up a plant on Olyanda, and also contract out to any of the planets with shipyards.”

  “Yes.”

  Garrick let out a long, slow, breath. “All right.”

  “Once we pass on the blueprints to shipyards, there’s no guarantee the megacorps won’t get hold of the plans.”

  “I know. One more hard decision.”

  Ben shrugged. “The jump drives may be short-lived anyway. Ultimately, we have to find a way of not polluting foldspace with platinum, or we need to stop flying the Folds.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Maybe not alone, but if all the megacorps committed their Research and Development divisions working together, we—mankind—might crack the problem. It’s been a race before with enormous advantages for those who are first past the post, but what if we all held hands and crossed the finish line together?”

  “Do you believe that could happen?” Garrick sounded skeptical.

  “I’m not such an idealist that I believe they’re suddenly going to put five hundred years of bitter rivalry behind them out of the goodness of their hearts, but if they get scared enough, they might.”

  “How scared do they
need to be?”

  “I’m going to talk to my contact in the Monitors to see if I can get an accurate figure on how many ships have been lost in the Folds. If it’s as many as I think it is, sooner or later one of the inner planets will be hit with an infantry army of massive proportions. That thought alone should galvanize them.”

  Ben turned to go, but Garrick called him back. “You realize this means demand will drop, so the platinum on Olyanda will lose its value.”

  “I suppose it will. I figured that in general terms, but economics isn’t my strong point.”

  “Max warned me.”

  “What?”

  “Before he left, he sent a message and warned me the price of platinum might plunge. We’ve converted a proportion of our stockpiles to credits, though obviously the plant is still producing. We’ll need platinum rods for our own ships.”

  “I guess the Free Company should sell excess stock, too.”

  Garrick laughed. “That man was more your friend than you realize. He set that in motion before he left, and helped himself to his fair share.”

  “I can’t blame him for that.”

  Cara was waiting in the comms chair for Ben. She could work from his office, but chose not to. The comms chair was in a cubicle that isolated the operator from what was going on outside. It was a nice, quiet, neutral environment. Normally, Cara didn’t mind the background noise and Ben’s steady presence.

  Today wasn’t normal.

  *Ready?* Ben asked.

  His touch was so familiar she wanted to burst into tears. One more advantage of being in the comms chair. No one could see her tear-streaked cheeks or hear her blubbing.

  *Ready. Who to first?*

  *Jess Jessop.*

  Cara was familiar with Jessop now. She sent out a thought and was rewarded almost instantly with a handshake, implant to implant. *Prime Jessop, I have Ben Benjamin requesting contact. Is it convenient?*

  Keep it formal, girl. It will help.

  *If waking me in the middle of the night is convenient, then, yes, put him through.*

  Cara connected Ben smoothly.

  *Jess, I have some new information about the colony attacks and ship disappearances, but first of all I need some information from you about the numbers of ship losses in the Folds. It’s my guess the megacorps are playing it down.*