“Is that really possible?” asked Alex.
“Oh, yes. Certainly it’s possible. Anything’s possible. If we can get enough ships. There are a sufficient number of asteroids, but some of them are remote. So we’ll see. Fortunately, the shield need not be thick. A hand’s width will be more than sufficient.” She looked back at Kilgore, who was watching her with flickering hope. “We can do it. Given the resources.”
Kilgore took over. “We’re in the process now of manufacturing specialized lasers and clamps, which we’ll be able to affix to whatever ships we have to work with.”
“The problem,” DeVrio said, “is the ships.”
“How many do you need?”
The lights came back on. The Administrator got out of his chair, walked across the room, stared at the fireplace. “Lasing the shield together will be a monumental task. But collecting and herding the asteroids is even more daunting.”
“How many, Mr. Administrator? Do you need the entire Confederate fleet?”
He laughed. “The fleet plus pretty much every private and commercial vessel in the Confederacy. Plus everything we can manufacture in the next three years. That’s what we need. Anything less than that, and this world dies.” Again the room fell silent.
Kilgore came back to us and sat down on the edge of his desk. “The problem, of course, is that if we’re using these ships to construct a barrier, we can’t use them to evacuate anyone.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“We’re going to assume success with the Mutes. That they’ll hold off. Make some sort of deal. So we’ll start the planning. And start fitting the ships that have been moving people out to Sanctum. If we do not get a break with the Mutes, then we’ll cancel the shield immediately and go back to hauling citizens.” He sucked his lower lip. “Now, do you understand why we need you?”
Alex got up. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you, Alex. And Chase.” Kilgore sounded vastly relieved. I felt sorry for him. Weight of the world, as the old saying went. It took on new meaning that day.
THIRTY-FOUR
It was not, finally, the appearance of the thing striding out of the surf toward us, but the bloodred moon that seared my soul.
—Love You to Death
“Make it happen.” It was Kilgore’s final instruction as we left his office.
When we got back to Samuels, the Belle-Marie was waiting. I literally collapsed into the pilot’s seat, thinking how I’d not expected to see her again. “How you doing, Belle?”
“Good. I missed you.”
“You’ve been having a big time.”
“I carried a group of infants and mothers to Sanctum. Got back yesterday.”
“How’d it go?”
“Sanctum is not much more than a few modular buildings on a barren plain.”
“That’ll change.”
“I hope so.”
“Has the luggage come on board?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“All right. Let’s go through the checkoff.”
“Before you start, we have a transmission from Number 17 Parkway. Written text. For Mr. DeVrio.”
I passed it back to the cabin. Minutes later, Giambrey sent it forward: Giambrey,
There’s been another shoot-out. Ships destroyed and fatalities on both sides. The situation between the Confederacy and the Assemblage has deteriorated to the point that I wanted to caution you to use extreme care when you approach them.
Circe asked if she could sit on the bridge during launch. “Sure,” I said. “You enjoy spaceflight?”
She laughed. It was a pleasant sound, the laughter of a much younger woman. She seemed a different person from the one I’d met in Kilgore’s office. “This is the first time I’ve tried it,” she said.
“Really? You haven’t been out before?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to, but somehow I never got around to it.” She laughed again. “You’re looking at me as if I said something funny.”
“Just surprised, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re helping put together the most ambitious space project I’ve ever heard of.”
The launch doors opened and a black-and-white Benson-class yacht came in, moved slowly through the docking area, and tied up at the pier opposite. It carried Dellacondan markings.
I wanted to cheer.
“Thank God for them,” she said.
We watched while the pilot debarked. He was apparently alone. “So why didn’t you go out on one of the tours?”
“I’ve always wanted to. Just never found the time.”
“I understand.”
“Chase,” said Belle. “Operations on the circuit.”
“Okay, Belle. Put them through.”
“Belle-Marie.” A woman’s voice. “You are cleared for departure.” They gave us a heading. It hadn’t happened when I’d left with Ivan. “More incoming traffic,” the operator told me. “Wouldn’t want you to bump into anybody.”
“On my way, Samuels. Thank you.” I released the clamps and eased away from the dock. We moved through the launch area and out into the void. Below us, Salud Afar was a golden globe, vast oceans of clouds illuminated by sunlight.
“It’s a beautiful world,” Circe said. “You know, you make your living out here, Chase. So you assume everybody else gets to go for a ride, too. But the reality is that hardly anyone on the surface has even been up to Samuels. Places like this”—and she indicated either the interior of the ship or the greater universe outside—“you’ve made into your home. And it seems natural to you that everybody lives the same sort of life. But most people down there probably couldn’t even tell you how many planets there are in the system.”
“But that’s not you.”
“No, it isn’t. Chase, I’ve had a good life. Gone a lot further than I’d ever thought possible. But if I had it to do again, I think I’d follow the path you took. You’re a very lucky young woman, but I don’t think you know it yet.” Through a break in the clouds, I caught a glimpse of blue ocean.
We sent a message to Selotta and Kassel to let them know we were coming. Then, approximately an hour after we’d left the station, I lined up on Borkarat, their home world, told Alex and Giambrey to buckle in, and slipped between the dimensions.
One drawback about this kind of travel is that you can’t send or receive traffic en route. Should the Mutes respond by telling Kilgore to stick his diplomatic initiative in his ear, he’d have no way of contacting us to let us know.
Circe stared out at the long gray twilight of the transdimensional world and told me how she’d always wanted to do this. “Not under these circumstances, of course. But it’s so strange out here.”
“How was life under the Bandahriate?” I asked.
“I was a teenager when he died. A lot of people hated it, of course. Hated him. I’m sorry to admit this, but I didn’t pay much attention to public affairs. People were out there risking themselves, trying to get rid of Cleev. And I was drifting through school. Boys and physics. It was all I cared about. And not necessarily in that order.” She gave me a shy smile.
“It must have been a relief when he was gone.”
“To be honest, I think things ran better under Cleev than they do now. For one thing, Kilgore’s government is more corrupt.
“Don’t get the wrong impression. I’m not saying I’d want Cleev back. But it isn’t as black-and-white as everybody pretends.”
She was a study in contrasts, upbeat and happy most of the time, but she had an existential dimension as well, deepened, no doubt, by the responsibilities she carried. Although, as I got to know her better on that long, lonely flight, I realized it wasn’t merely the consequences of failure that weighed on her. She seemed, in fact, confident of success. If these creatures could really see into each other’s minds, and into hers, then they would see what was at stake. And they had to possess a degree of empathy well beyond anything you f
ound in humans. How could such a species possibly stand by and watch a catastrophe on this scale wipe out hundreds of millions when they needed to do so little to help prevent it?
No, it was something other than her mission. It was, oddly enough, the more mundane aspects of existence that sometimes broke through and affected her, the sense of passing time, of opportunities missed, of the ordinary losses one incurs in life. Young no more. Where do the years go?
While I probably spent too much time thinking about the incoming gamma-ray burst, she was quite capable of commenting that, succeed or fail, the day would come when we’d give almost anything to be able to return to such hours on the bridge, to sit with each other and munch jelly sandwiches, which we’d been doing at that moment. And I don’t mean to suggest she was not concerned about the bigger picture. But she lived in the moment as much as anybody I’ve ever known.
Giambrey also managed not to allow the importance of the mission to weigh on his mind. “We do what we can,” he said. “If the Mutes are reasonable, they’ll take advantage of the opportunity to help us. This is an opening for them, as well. A chance to establish better relations and head off a war. They’d be damned fools not to cooperate.”
He was originally from the City on the Crag. His physician father had visited Salud Afar as a young man, fallen in love with its wide oceans and vast forests, and maybe its sense of solitude, and eventually persuaded his wife to vacation there. She came to share his love for the place, and, after Giambrey’s birth, they’d made what he described as the ultimate big move.
“Doctors were more in demand there,” he said. “There was always a shortage. Not sure why. But the result was that the pay was better. Though my dad always insisted that wasn’t the reason.”
His smile left me feeling everything would be okay. This was a guy who’d been around a long time, and his manner suggested he knew what he was about. His presence provided a balancing point in the storm.
“I started out as a journalist,” he said. “But I wasn’t tough enough for the job. Couldn’t ask the hard questions. Didn’t like offending people. So eventually my boss suggested I should find another line of work. What I was good at was writing speeches. And one thing led to another.”
“Tell me about the Administrator,” I said.
“What do you want me to say, Chase? He’s been good. He tries to do the right thing. He doesn’t have the organizational skills that other chief executives have. And he’s got a huge organization to run. We’ve only had self-government for less than thirty years. Look at where you come from, for example. Rimway. It’s still a world of nation-states. But they’ve a long tradition of cooperating. Working together. On Salud Afar, all the nation-states are brand-new. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Everybody thinks that the way to stay in power is to climb over the other guy.
“There’s even a sizable portion of the population that wants the Cleevs back. You ask what I think of Kilgore? I’m amazed he’s been able to hold everything together. Then, of course, to get hit with this”—the upbeat exterior faded a bit—“Thunderbolt.” He sighed. “I feel sorry for him. I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want his job.”
Giambrey spent a substantial part of his time studying Ashiyyurean script. I helped by sitting quietly while he explained the intricacies to me. To be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to pay much attention, but I tried. I asked questions, and listened to the answers. Circe also tried to do a cram program in the language, but she got bored, too, and gave it up.
“When we get there,” Giambrey asked, “are we going to have problems getting access to what’s happening? I mean, do they have HVs?”
“Yes, you’ll have problems,” I said. “Communications systems aren’t set up for us.”
“How are they different?”
“They’re Mutes, Giambrey.”
“I understand that. But how do they broadcast if nobody speaks? Do they transmit pictures with text?”
“If they wanted to contact us, yes. That’s exactly what they’d do. But for themselves, it’s a whole different ball game. Do you know how telepathy works?”
“No. Does anybody?”
“More or less. Signals are transmitted from one brain to another by fractal dimensional charge effects. I think that’s right, but don’t ask me what it means. They can only do that across a limited space. A few meters. The signal gets progressively weaker with distance. When they broadcast, say, a sports event—”
“Do they have professional sports?” asked Alex.
“I don’t know. Is it okay if I go on with this?”
“Sure. I’m sorry.”
“If they broadcast a sports event, the commentator’s thoughts are, in effect, transmitted to a receiver. The receiver converts them to an electronic signal, blends the signal with the base transmission, and sends the entire package to, say, your living room. There, another converter sorts it out, gives us picture and sound. And the commentator’s reactions are converted back to fractal charge effects and put out there for anybody in the room to pick up. To read.”
“Incredible.”
“Born of necessity,” I said.
The most annoying part of the mission was being cut off from the world at so critical a time. We were sealed into our cocoon for almost four weeks with no idea whether, as Alex commented, full-scale war was breaking out between Mutes and Confederates.
Giambrey remained upbeat, but I could see that the man who initially had been anxious to accept the challenge grew to wish, as the days passed, that everything was over. He didn’t like being out of touch either. Nothing would have helped like picking up the Nightly News. Alex suggested we cut the jump short, come up for air, as he put it, try to pick something up, then continue the flight. That sort of thing is hard on fuel. And, of course, it wouldn’t have worked anyway. Anything we did pick up out there would have been thousands of years old.
Circe took to reading science novels and playing psychological games with Belle, in which the AI generated a random situation and they worked together to determine what the most common human response would be, according to surveys and studies conducted over the centuries. One of the situations was an attack on an ambassador arriving to conduct peace talks. How likely was such an event to lead to war? Answer: 37 percent.
She asked if I knew the odds against getting killed by a blast from a hypernova? I had no idea. She pointed out that, to date, it had happened to nobody in human history. Ever.
She also found it frustrating that we had penetrated the galaxy, were traveling through that ocean of stars, and she couldn’t see anything. I tried putting visuals up for her, using the navigation display to show off planetary rings and exploding suns, but she explained she’d seen it all before, she’d sat in her living room and watched all this, and it wasn’t the same as actually seeing it. So in the end we sat and talked and watched some shows and played loki tournaments. (Loki, for those who’ve never been to Salud Afar, was a card game that was very popular in the Coalition. Both our passengers were addicted to it.) Alex picked it up quickly. I dropped into last place and pretty much stayed there.
I don’t think anybody slept very well. And the hypernova remained, of course, the prime topic of conversation. We went over it and over it. Circe insisted that the shield could be made to work if the resources could be made available.
Giambrey confessed that he’d never even seen a Mute. “I keep reading how repulsive they are. That spending time with one is like trying to pet a spider. And they’ll know everything I’m thinking. How’s it even possible to begin to negotiate with such a creature?” Kilgore’s people had loaded Belle with all the data they had on the Chief Minister and his staff. But Giambrey said it wasn’t very helpful.
The year before, I’d spent almost two weeks alone with the Mutes. Had in fact visited Borkarat, where I’d met Selotta. “That’s the real reason you and I are here,” Alex told me when we were alone on the bridge. “You’ve got the experience. You’re the only real hope we h
ave to make this mission succeed.”
“So why was I the invisible woman in his office?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he felt you’d be more relaxed if he didn’t put any pressure on you.”
“So why are you putting pressure on me?”
“Listen, Beautiful. Pressure’s your middle name.” He grinned. “Relax. Look, you’re good at this kind of thing. So am I. Giambrey probably is, too. But he’s going to be out of his depth on Borkarat. You know it, and I know it. So does he. So he’s going to be counting on us to charm the Mutes into giving us what we need. What they need, too, for that matter.”
“Well, good luck to us,” I said.
To my surprise, Giambrey took me aside and said much the same thing. “I’m not comfortable with any part of this,” he confessed. “It’s like playing loki with our cards faceup on the table. I don’t know how to begin a negotiation under these circumstances. So when we go into this thing, I want you to feel free to advise me. Tell me what you really think. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Are they as repulsive in person as I’ve heard?”
“No,” I said. “That’s exaggerated. But you will have a reaction.”
“I won’t throw up, will I? I’ve worked with Mute avatars, and it wasn’t bad.”
“Okay. Good. You’ll be fine, Giambrey.” The reality was that the effect didn’t carry full force with an avatar. I suspect it’s because you know it’s an avatar. It’s more intense when a live Mute actually walks into the room. But I kept that to myself. “Look, what’ll happen is that you’ll try to smother your reaction. Don’t bother. Let it go, and after a while you’ll become accustomed to it. The Mutes have a similar response to us. But they’re pretty smart, and if you just let it happen, everybody will start laughing. It becomes a joke.”
“Really?”
“Take advantage of the mission to make a few friends here. It will serve you and Salud Afar well in the future.”
His jaw tightened. “If there is a future for Salud Afar.”
The Devil's Eye Page 29
