Sara took a stab at what she thought motivated Penny Sutton. “Listen, I’m not interested in taking credit for saving us,” she said. “I can make him a hero if he’ll just listen.”
Her face was stony, but at last she said, “I’ll see if he is free.”
When Sara entered the Director’s office she was surprised to see how he dominated the space—until she realized the room had been distorted so that ceiling and walls converged to create a false perspective that made him look larger than he was. As he walked over to greet her, he shrank back down to size.
“Magister Callicot, so wonderful to see you again,” he said, grasping her hand as if they were old friends. His tailored suit and silk shirt were still perfect, but his hand was sweaty and his face a little flushed. “How is your work going? Are you getting all the cooperation you need?”
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks. But I—”
“It is so difficult, so difficult.” His chiseled face took on an expression of concern. “Getting people to accept new ideas. They resist, you know.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, that’s why—”
“Trans-methodism gives us all the resources we need to solve the most challenging problem, if only the buy-in factor were what it ought to be. It’s the perfect matrix for cross-platform, acumen-based strategic alliances. We are all stakeholders here, that’s what people should recognize.”
“Um, yes. I need you to authorize something. Thora Lassiter and I have to take the shuttle down to the planet. We think we have a solution.”
“The planet? Risky place, so I’ve heard. Safety is Epco’s number one priority.”
“Yes, but remember what they say: high risk, high reward.”
For a moment he seemed paralyzed, caught in a slogan clash. “Well, write up a proposal,” he said. “I’ll have my people do a risk-benefit analysis.”
That was precisely what Sara didn’t want. “This is your chance to take a decisive stand,” she said. “Seize the moment. Show the hesitators how it’s done.”
“Yes, true. Write me that proposal. I’ll be looking for it. We’ll run it past the department heads, and Security, and then you’ll see decisiveness in action. Thanks so much for stopping in. My door is always open.”
It was useless to continue; Nelson Gavere was a void where a man should have been. As she was about to leave, he spoke again. She turned; he had retreated to the distorted end of the room so as to appear seven feet tall. “Great minds,” he said, “on a great mission. That’s what makes us … great.”
She gave him an ironic thumbs-up and left.
* * *
It was not Sarcodan, but the mouselike Sandhya Prem who finally took action. The news spread by word of mouth through the professional staff. Prem had called a meeting with one agenda item: to share solutions.
They gathered in a large room newly created by the fusing of a former recreation hall and laundry, both difficult to use now because the floor was tilted at five degrees. Prem ran the meeting briskly, first briefing everyone about the lack of progress on the wayport, the discouraging news from the planet, and what the physicists were calling the “paradox cluster” ahead. She then called on each department in succession to present proposals for a solution. Most of the ideas centered on ways of fixing the wayport. Some of the more theoretical physicists were working on an idea for a “stability field” to keep local space pasted together. But the simplest suggestion was to start up the engines and leave.
Sara listened as the engineers debated the challenges of reviving engines shut down 120 years before, when the ship had entered orbit and sent back its original message. The scientists argued about whether there was enough fuel, whether enough acceleration could be achieved, and even whether there was another destination reachable within their lifetimes. At last Sara stood up and said, “Excuse me, but there are five hundred people on the planet we’ve promised to help if we can. Shouldn’t our solution include them?”
Scientists, she learned, had the same priorities as other human beings: self first, others second. No one wanted to propose sacrificing the Torobes, but it was clear that saving them had not entered anyone’s calculations. At least Sara’s question deflected the conversation back to fixing the wayport rather than abandoning the planet. But even with a functioning wayport, evacuating five hundred refugees in two weeks presented serious logistical challenges.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have made any promises,” an electronic technician finally said.
Sara was about to protest that the moral responsibility would still exist, when Sri Paul Niyama stood up to represent the Corroborative Sciences Department. “Excuse me,” he said with his usual gentle earnestness, “I believe my department has something to offer.” Assorted rationalists rolled their eyes, but he continued unperturbed, “Paraclete Btiri was seeking guidance about why our expedition has been cursed, and the meaning of Iris came to him in a dream. He wishes you to know that the planet was put here as a metaphor, a test, a lesson. The natives are central to its meaning: blind but wise, unseeing but insightful. We are meant to learn that sight is an illusion. It blinds us to the true reality. We place too much faith in the visible world, and not enough in the invisible. To find a solution, we must be more like the natives: search our hearts, not our heads. Thank you.”
He sat down. Sara looked at Thora, intrigued by how Sri Paul’s message echoed hers. But instead of looking affirmed, Thora looked deeply frustrated, even a little angry.
“Thank you, Sri Paul,” Sandhya Prem said. “Would anyone else like to comment?” Reminded that there was one other department they hadn’t heard from, she turned to Thora. “Emissary Lassiter? Does the Intuitive Sciences Department wish to offer any proposals?”
Slowly, Thora stood. “Paraclete Btiri offers us poetry, which gives us hope, but not actionable information. Only rigorous research will solve this problem. Even if the Paraclete is right, being right is not enough. We have to know why we are right.”
There were smiles all around the room. Thora continued, “I was in the midst of some very promising research when I was forced to come back here. I find that I need to return to the planet to continue it. I request your support.” She sat down again.
“What sort of research?” Prem asked. “Anything related to our current problem?”
“Possibly,” Thora said. “I can’t promise yet.”
“All right,” Prem said, then turned to the rest of the room. “We need to form some task forces to pursue our best ideas…”
Soon everyone was caucusing together, forming teams. Thora and Sara sat alone, and no one approached them.
“Why didn’t you tell them?” Sara whispered.
“Sri Paul sabotaged me,” Thora said.
“But he was right, in his way.”
Thora looked at her fixedly. “The right conclusion, the wrong methodology. If I had tried to make my case after that, I would have been classified with the religious zealots.” Abruptly, she rose to leave.
Mystified, Sara followed her to the door. “But your methodology is—”
Thora stopped, confronting her. “The same as Btiri’s? No. He is religious, I am a scientist, but that’s a trivial difference. The real divide is between muddy and rigorous thinking.”
She left then, and Sara did not follow her. Unlike Thora, Sara was not accustomed to being left out, so she scanned the room to find some group to join. But they were all talking technical fixes, and she could add nothing to their conversations. As she left the room, her feet turned by a kind of magnetism toward the object of her thoughts, the shuttle bay.
The dock was located at the very rear of the ship’s spindle, nestled in among the silent engines that would soon be blazing again if the technicians had their way. When she entered, the shuttle loomed over her, filling most of the cavernous space, secured to the floor by clamps in the low gravity. A lone maintenance worker had his head in one of the wheel wells. He was tethered to the craft by a web.
“Hey,”
Sara hailed him, not knowing his name. “Is it ready to fly?”
The man peered out at her. “Why, do they need it?” he asked.
“Soon,” Sara promised. “Say, how hard is it to operate this thing?” She could hardly believe what she was thinking.
“No idea,” the man said.
She let go of the wall and made a leap that carried her in a high arc toward the cockpit, but before she got there, something wrapped around her ankle and jerked her back. She looked down to find she was being reeled in like a fish on a line by one of Atlabatlow’s uniformed guards. Two of them flanked the door she had entered through. She shook her foot furiously, but the line held fast. When they had gotten her back through the door, they detached it and fell in on either side of her.
“Come with us, please,” said the taller one.
“Where?” she demanded.
“Just come.”
They led her back into the complex of offices where Security had its headquarters. She glimpsed a room where a woman sat watching a bank of monitors showing camera feeds from all over the ship, including the scientists still in their meeting. The guards took her into a small room that held only two chairs and a table. It looked like an interrogation room. When they left, she immediately tried the door. It was locked.
She waited half an hour, building up a head of steam, before Atlabatlow finally entered. He was back in a spotless uniform. He laid a folder on the table and said, “Please, have a seat, Magister. I must warn you this conversation is being recorded.”
So it was an interrogation. She said, “Nice to see you, too, Colonel.”
He sat down, so she did, too. They stared at each other across the table.
“What did you think you were going to do, hijack the shuttle?” he said.
She felt a little foolish, so she said, “Thora and I want to go back to the planet.”
“I know.” When she frowned, he added, “It is my duty to know what is going on.”
“Then you may have noticed this expedition is going to hell. I’m trying to save it. Listen, I know we haven’t always gotten along—”
He interrupted, “I need to know who you are working for.”
At last, some honesty. She decided not to insult his intelligence by claiming to work for Epco, but she was damned if she was going to show her cards first. Instead, she said, “Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing.”
His eyelids half lowered, making him look secretive and a little snakelike. She noticed for the first time how black his eyes were.
“I know you’re not working for Epco—or not just them,” she went on. “All I know is, it’s someone who wants Thora Lassiter out of the way. Who is it? Someone on Orem?”
His jaw clenched. She realized she’d hit a nerve. In a reasonable tone, she said, “Whatever she did on Orem, it’s not worth bringing the vendetta—”
“This has nothing to do with Orem!” he said, his anger just under the surface.
“Then what?”
“You tell me.”
She glanced at the surveillance camera. Atlabatlow took the hint. He removed a device from his pocket and made an adjustment. “We are private now,” he said. “I can assure you that I am not working for anyone who wishes harm to Emissary Lassiter. I am here to protect her against an agent they knew would be on board.” He skewered her with his gaze. “They knew about the agent because the party who wishes her harm approached me first, making the same stupid, ethnocentric mistake you just made—thinking I was not a Capellan first and foremost, that I would have some sort of racial tie to that barbarous planet where she was captured and attacked.”
“But if you’re not working for Orem, who—”
“I was born on Capella Two,” he said, his fury building as he spoke. “I have a graduate degree from UIC. Orem never entered my mind till the day it came into the news, when those savages kidnapped her, one of our diplomats. I was as angry as any Capellan—no, angrier, because suddenly I wasn’t just another person, I was one of them. I was suspect everywhere, because of my looks and my parents. Do you know what it’s like to have people think they know what you are, just by looking at you?
“I am working for the Magisterium. I volunteered for this assignment, to come to this godforsaken planet, just to prove who I really was. And you’re still assigning me an identity I abhor.”
Sara was struck dumb—not only from finding out what was actually on his mind, but from realizing how shallow her own assumptions had been. She knew she ought to apologize, but it came hard—and then he didn’t give her a chance.
“So now,” he said, once more under control, “I will ask you again—who are you working for? Bear in mind that I already know.”
For a moment she didn’t understand, and then it became obvious. “You think I’m the agent. The one they hired after you turned them down.” He said nothing, just waited for her confession. She broke out laughing. “Oh, what a piss-poor operation they would be, to hire me! No, I’m here doing a favor for a friend—a mentor, really—Delegate Gossup. He asked me to look after her; they’re related somehow. I thought you were the one conspiring against her.” She shook her head, still not quite convinced of his innocence. “If we’re on the same side, why the hell didn’t they tell us?”
His face showed he didn’t really believe her either, but her question didn’t puzzle him. “You know something,” she said. “Why they might have set us up at cross-purposes.”
He paused as if considering whether to answer, but finally said, “The conspiracy is all within the Magisterium, and Lassiter is not the real target—Delegate Gossup is. By sabotaging her, they are hoping to force him to intervene, which would reveal some secrets that could lead to his ruin. He may not have completely trusted either of us.”
“And so right he was,” Sara said. “Why did you act so damned suspiciously? Always shadowing us, watching us, trying to intimidate.”
“I was protecting her,” he said, “from you. The moment you came here you were worming your way into her confidence, with your checkered past and your false show of unsophistication.”
She was flattered, at least, that he thought it was false.
“You were constantly trying to provoke me, and undermine my authority. Every time something adverse happened, you were there. The one thing I was unable to connect you with was the murder of her bodyguard.”
“He was her guard?” Sara said, surprised.
“Of course. I know now that all her misadventures were the result of natural forces, not conspiracy. But now you are trying to engineer it so she will return to danger.”
“As if she isn’t in danger already! Colonel, we’ve got to do a reset. I’m sorry for my assumptions, but whatever happened in the past, it doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters but getting back alive. Thora Lassiter may be our best hope of going home again. Given a year, the scientists might come up with a fix, but we don’t have a year; we’ve got two weeks. We’ve got to help her.”
“I am aware of her theories,” he said. “She doesn’t have much scientific support.”
“She can’t produce the evidence if she can’t do the experiment. That’s all she’s asking for. And the experiment could save our sorry skins.”
He still looked suspicious—or maybe that was just his normal expression, she couldn’t tell. “You are convinced that going back to the planet is what she needs to do?” he said.
“It’s not what I say, it’s what she says.”
He came to a decision. “Tell her I can authorize a shuttle mission for her and a single companion of my choosing. It cannot be you.”
Now it was Sara who felt a twinge of suspicion. She looked him in the eye. “Swear to me that you’re not a threat to her.”
“I swear,” he said.
She held out a hand. “Truce?”
He looked at her hand as if it were a cobra, but finally shook it.
chapter thirteen
from the audio diary of thora lassiter:
I am going back to Torobe.
When Sara told me the news, she confided how she had mistakenly suspected Colonel Atlabatlow of foul play. I said automatically, “You were beminding him wrong.” She laughed and said it was a good metaphor. But now that I think about it, I wonder if it is a metaphor at all. We bemind people all the time—making assumptions, creating illusory roles for them—and it alters their reality. They start to become what we expect them to be, just like the “forest” of Iris did when we “discovered” it. In a sense, we have beminded a whole planet here. It is a credit to Colonel Atlabatlow that he was able to resist reinvention and demand his own reality. Even I looked at him and saw only the reflection of my own past. I must think about this more when I have time.
Right now, I have no time. We have less than two weeks before colliding with the paradox cluster. There were many preparations to make for my experiment. First, I spent some time on the pepci, sending messages to Capella Two. One was to my friends in the refugee relocation program, requesting asylum for five hundred blind villagers who need to stay together in a place where they can be independent of outside assistance, however well-meaning. The response was good-natured but a bit daunted: “You don’t like to send us easy problems, do you?” I told them to be grateful it wasn’t five thousand.
The second message was harder. I am forced to rely on my father now, despite all that has gone on between us. It would have been easier to explain my request verbally, but I didn’t want to face him, so I sent it by text. It was a strange message, and I pray he will not dismiss it as lunacy. After explaining our desperate situation, I said, “Think of me at night, when you are alone or meditating. If you dream of me, imagine I am trying to contact you. Close your eyes and visualize me. Believe that I am there.” Then, as if that were not odd enough, I told him to have a certain piece of equipment on hand. The wayport technician gave me the specifications of the quantum imbricator they need, and I attached them.
My greatest uncertainty is about transporting such a complex object through the Ground. I made the technician show it to me, and explain it in detail, so that I can visualize it and understand its essence. I held it in my hand with my eyes closed. It is small, and shaped like a seahorse, with a ribbed central section that contains a processor powerful enough to assemble every molecule in a human body in the proper order. I asked the technician if I could take it with me to show Dagget, but he was unwilling to risk sending it to the planet, even broken as it is.
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