by David Drake
“I bloody well wasn’t!” Daniel said. He added to his companions, “Wasn’t looking forward to fighting the Merchant in space, I mean. Say, Master Cleveland? You may not know that we named the planet after you. When we get back to Xenos I’ll register HH1509270 at Navy House as Cleveland’s World.”
“Really?” said Cleveland. “You can do that?”
“I don’t think there’ll be a protest,” Daniel said. He thought of adding, “It’s not really much of an honor.” He let the initial statement stand instead.
“Really,” Cleveland repeated, this time without the rising inflection. “I … well, thank you. My mother will be pleased, I think. For a long time she didn’t get much news of me that pleased her.”
The officials waiting on the dock had come up the boarding bridge when the liberty party was past. Brother Graves was following a man and a woman in gray uniforms of different cut.
The man’s tunic had a plastic badge on the left breast reading CUSTOMS SERVICE; it didn’t quite cover the unfaded strip of fabric where an embroidered patch had been recently removed. The band on the woman’s cap said Harbormaster.
“We’re here to collect customs duties,” the man said.
“And docking fees,” the woman added. “The procedures were instituted, ah, recently.”
From the way you put it, they were instituted this morning, Daniel thought. At any rate, it couldn’t have been longer than four days ago, because they weren’t in place when we lifted off.
Aloud he said, “I believe Lieutenant Cory can deal with docking fees, madam. And we carried only passengers on this arrival, but you’re welcome to search the hold. You’ll be more comfortable if you wait until the hold has been sterilized, but it’s your choice.”
He turned and called, “Lieutenant Cory, will you come aft, please?”
“Brother Cleveland, I’m very pleased to see you safe,” Graves said, edging to the side so that he could speak to his fellow. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you on the below-surface scans you asked me to look at, though. If we can go to my office, I can show you there. When the captain is free, that is.”
Cory entered from the bridge. He’d volunteered to be duty officer so that Vesey and Cazelet could take the initial liberty.
Hale is on anchor watch, come to think, Daniel realized. Not that he was concerned about a problem until the former classmates were off duty in turn; and then it was none of his business.
“We can use my equipment,” Adele said. “Unless Cory needs the console?”
“Cory, you’re relieved on the bridge until further notice,” Daniel said. “Come this way please, Master Graves, and I’ll show you the hospitality of the ship.”
Graves looked doubtful. “Ah—I’ve scanned Pearl Valley, with much more sophisticated apparatus than what was used on the scans Brother Cleveland found on file. The results take a great deal of specialized capacity.”
“I think you’ll find that my hardware will be sufficient to the task.” Adele said. Daniel noticed that she said “my” rather than “our.” “If not, we can adjourn to your office, Brother Cleveland.”
Where we will wait for the sun to rise in the west, thought Daniel. Because that’s about as likely as the chance of Graves’ software overpowering Adele’s equipment.
He closed the bridge hatch behind them, leaving Cory to deal with the local officials in the hold.
* * *
Adele took the data chip from the case which Graves handed her. Setting it in the console’s holder, she said, “It will project in the center of the compartment as well as on the two displays, but you’ll probably want to manipulate it, Brother Graves. Take the command seat, and I’ll sit at the back. As I usually do.”
Instead of seating himself immediately, Graves frowned and said, “I realize this is a very powerful unit, Lady Mundy, but the programming necessary to read this format—”
A holographic index of files appeared in the air where Cleveland and Daniel could read it. So could Hogg and Tovera, for that matter, though Adele doubted they had any desire to. She said nothing.
“I apologize,” Graves said politely. He sat down and brought up a file with the stylus he had drawn from his pocket. Adele said nothing, but she appreciated the simplicity of Graves’ apology.
The image meant nothing to Adele. It might have been a close-up of luncheon spread: an inverted arch of basically pinkish color, with overlayers and inclusions of contrasting colors, generally shades of pastel green. Near the bottom of the U was a black speck; below was a layer of sullen crimson.
“This is a cross-section of Pearl Valley,” Graves said. “The pink is mudstone laid down thirty thousand years ago. The underlayer is granite, and there are blocks of harder rock which were engulfed as the mudstone formed when the valley was part of a lake bed.”
Cleveland nodded. Daniel didn’t react, but Adele assumed he understood as clearly as even she did.
“The item Brother Cleveland noticed is here,” Graves said, circling the black dot and then expanding it to fill the image area. “I suspect the original surveyors ignored it because it was too small to be of significance. They were looking for copper ore, after all.”
“That isn’t a natural occurrence,” Daniel said. “It has shape. No crystal could look like that.”
“It has shape …” Graves said. Adele heard an unexpectedly grim tone in his voice. “And it’s hollow, which we can see because one end is open and there are holes in some of the facets.”
He switched to another image, this one a schematic of pale blue lines. The image rotated slowly. The shape was irregular, something like a drinking tumbler which had been squeezed in the middle and whose sides were pleated. Besides the open top, holes shaped like twisted teardrops pierced the sides in several places. The bottom, though concave, was solid.
“It isn’t a container of jewels,” Cleveland said, “but it’s something. And somebody, Captain Pearl or somebody, buried it there.”
“Pearl Valley’s mudstone would be very easy to bore through or trench,” Graves said, returning to the image of the object in its matrix. He reduced the scale slightly. “It couldn’t be disturbed without leaving evidence of the disturbance, however; not when I’ve examined the site with equipment as sensitive as what I’ve been using.”
He grinned and turned toward Daniel. Adele watched his face, now in profile, as an inset on her display.
“You may be too polite to ask whether I could have made a mistake, Captain,” Graves said. “Yes, of course I could, though these images don’t require very subtle analysis. I asked two other engineers to look over the scans. They aren’t members of our community, but I trust them personally and professionally. They came to the same conclusions that I did.”
Graves shrugged. “The mudstone appears to have formed over the object,” he said. “If it’s an artifact, it isn’t a human artifact, and it certainly isn’t something that Captain Pearl buried.”
Adele had a great deal of experience in sharpening fuzzy images, but these had not been manipulated. She was looking at raw data as it came from the surveying equipment, and they were razor sharp even at the highest magnification.
“Brother Graves?” she said. “What is the object made of? It would appear to be very dense.”
“Yes, Lady Mundy,” Graves said, turning toward her with a troubled expression. Adele had inset real-time images of the three other principals on his display, but Graves seemed to be trying to look through the holographic screen to see her directly. “It’s almost impossibly dense. Granted that our scans have a degree of error and that gravity plotting is suggestive rather than solid proof—”
He shrugged again. “My colleagues and I believe that the artifact is made from a stable transuranic element,” Graves said. “Element 126, presumably, though the element’s existence is merely a prediction, and it has no name. Well, unbihexium, but that’s a placeholder unless and until the element itself is discovered. Which we apparently have just done.�
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“Then it’s valuable after all,” Cleveland said. He too looked worried. “Even though it isn’t a case of jewels.”
“I suppose you could say that the artifact is of incalculable value,” Graves agreed. “There isn’t a market for such a thing, because it would be unique in human experience, but it’s certainly valuable.”
“I don’t see any sign of an antenna, a wire, or a spike on the end,” Daniel said. “I thought it might be a sort of cavity resonator, trapping signals and reemitting them on a different wavelength.”
“What sort of signals, ah, Captain?” Adele said. “I didn’t make a detailed search of Pearl Valley, but I think my equipment would have noticed anything that didn’t fit standard parameters.”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. He grinned engagingly. “Nothing electronic, then, not if you didn’t pick it up.”
He looked from Graves to Cleveland, then said as if idly, “You believe Pearl Valley is a good place to live, Master Cleveland. For that matter, I liked the atmosphere myself, though I’m probably not a good example. I generally like places.”
“Yes, that’s so,” Cleveland said, obviously puzzled at the change of subject. “About the valley, certainly. And I’m glad to hear that you’re a happy man, sir.”
“Pretty generally, yes,” Daniel said, still grinning. “What do you suppose feelings look like? And how would you transmit them?”
“There’s no evidence …” Graves said. He let his words trail off, perhaps because he had thought further and had realized that there was no objective evidence on any part of the matter. The healthful, welcoming nature of the Transformationist community was wholly subjective.
“Since we don’t appear to need weapons anymore, thank goodness,” Cleveland said, “then we don’t need the money we were going to buy weapons with, do we, Brother Graves?”
“I don’t accept the connection between the artifact and our faith,” Graves said. “I’m confident that if we drill down and bring the object to the surface, which we could do very easily, it will have no adverse effect on Pearl Valley or the Transformationist community.”
He shook his head slowly and continued, “But no, I don’t see that the community has a serious need for money. Many of those who join us do so after successful careers in the wider world, and the members who guide our investments are quite skilled.”
“Then I suggest—” Cleveland began.
His face changed, and he straightened on his seat. “Captain Leary,” he said in a formal tone. “Forgive me for forgetting that you and my mother are each due a third of any treasure which the expedition finds. And it appears that we have found a treasure.”
“If my sister were here,” Daniel said, “she might have an opinion on the matter. But she isn’t here, and I’m not in the business of money.”
He shrugged and said, “No treasure has been recovered. You owe me absolutely nothing, and I’m confident that Mistress Sand would say the same. Not that it matters, because she isn’t here any more than Deirdre is.”
Daniel looked at Adele and raised an eyebrow. “Do you have anything to add, Lady Mundy?” he asked. “You had some business of your own to transact on Corcyra, I believe?”
“I’ve accomplished everything I came to do,” Adele said. In a neater fashion than either Deirdre Leary or Mistress Sand can have imagined that I would. Neater than I imagined myself.
“Then I think we’re done with necessary business,” Daniel said nodding. “However—”
He looked around the compartment. His grin was just short of splitting his face. “Although it doesn’t matter to anybody and therefore nobody can be disappointed, I do have an idea as to where Captain Pearl hid whatever it was he brought from Bay. Anybody else interested in seeing if I’m right?”
He’s really a little boy, Adele thought. Then, May he never change!
Cleveland stood up, grinning back at Daniel. “I may have found peace and enlightenment,” he said, “but I haven’t lost my sense of curiosity. I certainly would like to learn!”
“And I,” said Graves, rising also.
“Hogg?” said Daniel, getting to his feet. “You usually carry fishing lures, don’t you?”
“Aye,” said Hogg. “And I’ve got a shotgun if you’d like to try the local game besides.”
“Just the lure,” said Daniel. “We’re going fishing for treasure.”
CHAPTER 31
Brotherhood on Corcyra
The Kiesche’s whole crew stood near the pool in front of the Manor, waiting for Daniel to do something. He hadn’t made any announcement, but obviously somebody had.
He looked at Vesey. She nodded. The set of the lieutenant’s jaw showed that she was uncomfortable, but her voice didn’t tremble as she said, “Sir, it seemed to me that this is what we came here to do and that the crew ought to have a chance to watch if they wanted to.”
She drew a deep breath and swallowed. She said, “And before you ask, I talked to Captain Samona—”
Arnaud had made the former exile leader second in command of the Pantellarian naval forces on Corcyra.
“—and he offered to send ten spacers under Commander Angelotti to the Kiesche, so that I could relieve Lieutenant Cory and the anchor watch to join us.”
Daniel thought for a moment, then grinned and said, “Very good, Vesey.”
His only hesitation had been his surprise that Vesey, of all people, would make such a decision on her own. It was good that she had—but surprising.
Sweeping the gathering crowd with his eyes, he said, “If this is the way you Kiesches want to spend your time, you’re welcome to do so, though I’ll say that I usually found more interesting things to do on liberty. Before I became a staid and proper commanding officer, that is.”
He cleared his throat and said, “And you know, I might decide to get a little improper myself once I’ve taken care of this little problem.”
He grinned at the laughter. “I don’t expect this to be very exciting, though.”
“Well, we’re ready for it if you’re wrong,” said Barnes. He and Sun had drawn stocked impellers from the arms locker, while Dasi had a submachine gun. Woetjans held a cutting bar instead of her usual length of pipe.
What in heaven’s name has Vesey told them? Daniel trusted those four spacers with the weapons they carried, which he wouldn’t have said about everyone even in this picked crew. He couldn’t imagine how their hardware would be useful in the present situation, though.
“People want to help, Daniel,” said Adele quietly from his right side. “They don’t like to feel that they’re useless, even when they obviously are. None of us like that.”
She smiled. Daniel was used to Adele showing nothing in her expression. He had never seen her looking so sad, though.
Hogg squatted on the lip of the pool, working with the controller. The lure dangled in the water, collecting nerve frequencies which the controller sorted and analyzed.
The shallow end of the pool had originally been four feet deep. Several inches of detritus, mostly organic, covered it. Woetjans had used a whipstaff to probe down ten feet before she found hard bottom at the deep end, but the muck over the plasticized base was at least four feet thick. You could no more stand on it than you could stand on the water itself, but things certainly lived in its darkness.
Daniel stripped his tunic off, then cinched his belt tighter to make it more difficult for things to wriggle down inside. He had bloused the cuffs of his trousers under the tops of his spacers’ boots, which themselves were tough though flexible. They could be worn within a rigging suit as well as by themselves. While the boots didn’t make swimming easier, neither did Daniel expect them to be a great hindrance.
Hogg looked up and said, “You know, master, I’ve never been the hand at one of these that you are. How about you take the controller and I get in the water? It’s hot, and I wouldn’t mind the dip anyhow.”
“We’ll do it my way, Hogg,” Daniel said. He didn’t try to
argue: there was nothing to argue about. One or the other of them was going to take his chances with the sponge, and Daniel Leary would make that decision. Had made that decision.
The water in the pool circulated clockwise, driven by slow strokes of the sponge’s tentacles, but the surface remained a mirror to the eye. Daniel could see the bottom here in the shallow end, though the water itself was dark and the muck was smooth except where something—a twig or in one case what looked very much like a surgical pin of stainless steel—stuck out of it.
A worm-shaped animal the length of Daniel’s thumb writhed into view, then vanished again beneath dead fronds from the plants in pots on the Manor’s porch roof. The creature had scores of tiny legs and a pair of mandibles half the length of its stubby body.
Hogg rose, holding the controller in one hand and the lure in the other. The filament that connected them was a ghost in the sunlight. It coiled itself on a reel in the controller when the lure came out of the water.
“Suit yourself,” Hogg said with bad grace. “If it was me doing it, though, I’d lob in a grenade first.”
“That would divide the sponge into bits,” Daniel said, “without killing them. It would make the pool into the equivalent of a bath in acid for any animal life, unless the lure works. If the lure does work, then the grenade wasn’t necessary. And it will work.”
“I said what I said,” Hogg muttered, but he wasn’t really arguing.
Daniel couldn’t imagine why the trick with the lure wouldn’t work. Even if things went wrong, the Kiesches would get him out before he was devoured and the Medicomp in the ship would take care of the stings. It’s going to work fine!
As soon as Daniel and his crew had arrived, loafers on the plaza had begun drifting over to see what was going on. Now more civilians joined the spectators, some of them people who had been crossing the plaza but also guests from the hotel portion of the Manor and staff members from government offices on the ground floor.
