by Chris Walley
“I’m sorry. But do you still hear them?”
Jorgio’s expression changed to one of perplexity. “No. But I feel I ought to. It’s just vanished. But I don’t think they have gone away. They’re like bulbs under the ground, ready to pop up.”
“You mean the sounds have been masked?”
“Masked?”
“Uh, hidden? Covered over?”
“Yes.” Jorgio smacked his thick lips. “Very likely, that’s it. They can do that, I’m sure. Tea?”
Merral smiled. Have I smiled at any other time today? “Sorry, my old friend. But I have never been so busy.” He paused, surveying Jorgio’s rough face. “We have visitors. You’ll hear about it tonight. A ship from edgeward of here—from the Dominion.”
A coarse eyebrow rose. “Indeed now. And are they nice or nasty?”
“What do you think?”
“Me?” Jorgio shrugged. “I reckon as you expect me to say nasty. There’d be a sense in that.” He creased his face. “But to be honest, I don’t know.”
“What do you feel?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. Nothing good and nothing bad. And that’s odd.”
“Isn’t it?”
How strange. This most perceptive of men lacks any sense that what approaches is evil. “I’m glad the noises have stopped. Let me know if you feel anything about our visitors. Pray for me.”
As he rose to leave, he suddenly noticed that the pad of paper he had moved was covered with a crude scrawl that looked like mathematics. “May I?”
He lifted the pad. It was mathematics. But it made no sense. For a start it was all in fragments. In one corner a line of symbols began suddenly and then broke off abruptly and in another a ragged island of equations seemed to have been torn out of the middle of some dense mass of algebra. Merral recognized some of the symbols—numbers, an integral sign, pi, a square root—but others were strange. Although only adequate in mathematics, Merral had the strongest sense that what he was staring at was not a random mélange of symbols, but instead genuine fragments from some real-world equations.
“What is this?”
Jorgio puckered his thick mouth. “The other dreams I’ve had. Them ones of numbers I told you about. That lot are bits that stuck in my mind. So I wrote ’em out. And to save your question, I don’t know what they mean.”
“Or even what they are about?”
“That neither. But they are important. The Lord told me that.”
“Keep them safe,” Merral said. “I’d like to show them to someone. But not just now. I have enough problems.” He patted the old man on the back, and then left.
Merral had asked to be contacted when any new transmission came in from the Dove of Dawn and was not surprised when, at five on the following morning, he was awakened by a diary call from Corradon relaying a message.
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Merral stared at the screen as the message began. This time there was only the male ambassador.
“Thank you for your welcome,” Ambassador Hazderzal said, with the same good humor. “We are delighted that you managed to destroy the stolen ship. We will do what we can to make good what was damaged. When we arrive in six days, we wish to land and meet with you. Can you designate a landing zone for our shuttle craft—somewhere we can set up a small center where we can talk?” With good wishes, the transmission ended.
“Merral,” Corradon said, sounding nervous, “what do we do?”
“Give me time to think. I’ll call you at nine. In the meantime, just acknowledge the message.”
Merral delayed calling Vero until after his morning run. Vero replied immediately, but with a voice-only transmission. The screen stayed blank.
“We heard from the ship.”
“Yes, I know.” From the way Vero’s voice reverberated Merral felt certain that his friend was in some enclosed space.
“How do you know?”
“I have my sources. I am, after all, chief of intelligence.”
“What sources?”
“Secret.”
“Very well. A landing zone: Isterrane, presumably?”
“No, it’s too close. It could be a Trojan horse. You know the story?”
“Yes.”
“You might want to reread it. Let me come and see you. Put the coffee on.”
Ten minutes later, Vero, unshaven and looking tired, sat at the kitchen table sipping from a large mug of coffee.
“Not Isterrane then?” Merral asked.
“No. Not anywhere near. If we have to use a vortex blaster, we could lose part of the city. We suggest the spare strip on Langerstrand Peninsula.”
“Langerstrand?” It took Merral a moment to remember the place—an open peninsula a hundred kilometers west of Isterrane.
“Why there?”
“We feel better about it. It was my idea—it’s remote and uninhabited.”
Who is we?
“Explain to the ambassadors that due to possible health risks we want a space between us. And that they can spread out there. Remember: good fences make good neighbors.”
“They do? Very well. But, Vero, this doesn’t match what Azeras said.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Vero sighed. “I really don’t.”
“The ship looks civilian, Vero. It’s no full-suppression complex.”
Vero chewed on his bottom lip. “I agree.”
“It’s got a low mass too. What does Azeras say?”
“He says that it must be a new strategy. And that sometimes seduction works better than rape.”
“A tasteless metaphor. I can’t imagine Perena warmed to that one. And you believe him?”
Vero sighed and scowled at his coffee. “Yes. Look, we shouldn’t even mention Azeras, but this is my take on him: I think . . . he is to be trusted.”
“On everything? I detected some hesitancy there.”
“He isn’t telling us everything. Not about the Freeborn, not about the Dominion, and least of all about himself. I have a feeling that there is something really ugly and horrible in that man’s life.”
“He lost his family.”
Vero stared into the distance. “In the burning of Tellzanur.” His tone was subdued.
“That sounds pretty ugly and horrible to me.”
“Yes. You may be right. But I think there’s more. I just don’t feel he lies . . . well, not very much. Not like Betafor, who doesn’t know a truth from a lie.”
“That’s something, I suppose. But look, I’m alarmed about being on the contact team, because of this baziliarch. Shouldn’t I resign?”
“No. We need you there. And your absence or withdrawal now would be suspicious.”
“But I know about Azeras and Betafor.”
“That’s too late to change. Anyway the sarudar says he doesn’t think they will dare use the baziliarch while they’re trying to be nice. People know when their minds are searched. The risk will be when diplomacy ends. You’ll be safe till then.”
“And war begins. And that, if we understand the envoy correctly, is now just weeks away.”
“Exactly.” Vero rose. “And there is work to be done.”
Corradon seemed happy with the suggestion of the Langerstrand site and transmitted a message about it to the Dominion ship. The answer from the Dove of Dawn came almost as soon as the vast distance allowed. “We will land at Langerstrand as you wish. We pose no biological threat, but we are happy to be scrutinized. We will travel in silence for the next five days as we decelerate. We prefer to speak face-to-face.”
Over the next few days, Merral felt increasingly isolated. Anya was absent from her lab, Perena was unobtainable, and when contacted, Vero seemed preoccupied, almost brusque, and his answers impossibly cryptic.
As the Dove of Dawn came within range of more satellites, increasingly better data transmitted from the ship. The consensus was that everything about it—its delicate smooth spindle shape, its small size, and its
brilliant whiteness—marked it as a nonmilitary vessel. As each new image came in, Merral felt that there was almost a visible lessening of tension. Yet although he could not state his feelings openly, he felt unable to share the enthusiasm. In his mind the equation was obvious: either the ship was a deception or Azeras had lied.
With the increasing data, Corradon’s confidence grew, although Clemant maintained his wariness. Merral kept a careful eye on how Delastro reacted. The prebendant seemed rather exasperated by the fact that the ship and its inhabitants seemed so innocuous. But he kept to the agreement he had made with Merral and confined himself to making rather bland speeches that urged those of the FDF, as “the watchmen on the very walls of Zion,” to neither slumber nor sleep.
Three days before the Dove was due to enter Farholme orbit, Merral sat in his bedroom wearing nothing but shorts and feeling uncomfortably warm when he heard a sound from the corridor followed by an exchange of voices. A few moments later Lloyd stuck his head round the door.
“Mr. V.’s here, sir. He’s making some coffee.”
Merral threw a shirt on and went to the kitchen.
Vero, leaning back in a chair, peered at him over a large mug of coffee. “Just passing through.”
“Always a pleasure. Are you still happy with Azeras’s version of things?”
“Yes,” Vero said and Merral heard a hint of hesitation in the voice. “He’s a mess. I can’t begin to work out what’s going on inside him. There’s guilt and anger and self-pity. At first he was glad of our company, but now that the novelty has worn off, he seems to prefer being isolated.”
Vero helped himself to a biscuit out of a jar. “Anyway,” he said. “I came by because I’ve been talking with Betafor about all sorts of things. One thing I can tell you is that she confirms this ‘great adversary’ business.”
“Odd.”
“Yes, isn’t it? But what’s interesting is this ill-defined link between this great adversary and Lucas Ringell.”
Merral pulled the disk from under his shirt, and stared at it as it spun slowly on its metal chain. “So that explains the excitement on the intruder ship when they read this disk.”
“Exactly. A fearsome figure out of their mythology had returned.”
“Well, I’m not sure where this leaves us. I’m not sure I want to be known as the claimant to the title of Ringell Mark Two. But I’d better tuck this well away.” He slipped it under his shirt.
“Yes, keep it out of sight,” Vero warned.
“I’m worried about the Krallen,” Merral said after a period of silence. “Are you making any progress on them?”
“Hmm. We understand them better. They are fascinating in a terrifying sort of way. Betafor has confirmed what we suspected—their tiles will deflect most bullets unless they hit straight on. And did you know that they can survive very high temperatures? A thousand degrees for twenty to thirty seconds! No wonder cutter guns were almost useless.”
“So what does work against them?”
Vero stared away and his face seemed to look gloomier. “Ah, that is the problem. We have ideas. But . . .”
“We will need more than ideas soon.”
“I know. I know,” Vero said with an air of weariness and then sipped his coffee. “I’m beginning to feel sorry for Betafor. Creating her and her kind was a cruel act.”
“How so?”
“Apparently, the Allenix can comprehend all sorts of concepts that they cannot experience. So Betafor can understand—at least vaguely—concepts like friendship and love, but she cannot feel either. She understands that human beings have true personality, but she knows she can have nothing like it. She understands the idea of creativity, but she can’t create anything except lies. She is smart enough to see her limits and it frustrates her. For all her posturing about her superiority to flesh, she is trapped in a mechanical body.”
“I see.”
Vero stared thoughtfully at the kitchen wall. “You sense that she wants to be a real person but knows she can never be one. But the worst thing—the cruelest blow—is that she understands death. She has a horror of permanent system shutdown.”
“She’s scared of death?”
“Scared stiff. And she knows that there is nothing beyond that. There is no confident expectation of eternal life or even a faint hope. Just an awareness of an end.”
“From which we gather that her makers fear death.”
“Yes. But it’s tragic and cruel to have made a creature capable of understanding eternity, but of never attaining it.”
“An interesting meditation.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Vero said. “But it’s more than just a reflection. Fundamentally, she is a frustrated, unhappy, and fearful creature and she can’t be relied on.”
There was an oddly conversational tone to his voice and Merral realized how much he missed it. Now there was so much pressure and so many enemies.
Vero drained his cup and got to his feet. “One other thing. You’ll find the encryption program on the diary system has been modified. Betafor made some suggestions and Maria Dalphey checked them out. We hope that will give us some security against any future probing. But I’d better be off. We have some interesting days ahead. And there’s lots to do, especially on the Krallen.”
Later the following day, as the sea wind rustled the fronds and the sun set in the ocean, Vero walked to where Azeras was sitting hunched in a chair under the shelter, staring at the back of his hand. Vero had wanted to move both the sarudar and Betafor from the Manalahi Shoals to the deep foundations of Isterrane for safety but, after protesting that he had spent too much of his life hiding in tunnels, Azeras had won himself a delay.
As Vero approached, Azeras looked up sharply and the images vanished.
“What were you watching?” Vero enquired.
The answer was as slow in coming as if it had been dragged up out of the very depths of Azeras’s psyche. “My past,” he said and looked away.
The gloom persists. Something terrible hangs heavily over this man. When this is over, we must get this man some help. But in the meantime I must use him as he is.
“Azeras,” Vero announced, sitting down, “I’ve decided to keep you as part of my advisory team. There will be just four of us who know who you really are. I will try and keep you away from everyone else, but you will have an alias and have to pretend to be one of us.”
“What’s the alternative?” Azeras’s voice was glum.
“Solitary confinement, I’m afraid.”
“Then I will work with you as an advisor.”
“Good. Now let’s talk about these Krallen again. What defenses are there?”
“Hit them before they land.”
“But we may not be able to do that.”
“Stay in tanks or armored vehicles.”
“We have none.”
“Well, we tried body armor,” Azeras said slowly. “It helps. It needs to be hard though. Their claws are tipped with an alloy that is harder than almost all metals. They have a nasty trick of putting their two or three claws together and groping for eye sockets.”
“If we were to design body armor, could you advise us?”
There was a long pause. “I suppose I could. Betafor would give you hardness details—it has its uses.”
“So we might have some personal defense. But how do we kill them?”
There was another long silence as Azeras toyed with a scar on his arm. “It’s not easy. The True Freeborn never really managed it.”
“Do they have weak points?”
“No. Fire at them a lot. Get a lucky shot in between the tiles and you may do some damage, especially if you hit the circuits just below.”
“There is circuitry there?”
“A nervous system equivalent. Runs through a silicone fluid bath. Betafor’s similar.”
“Yes, we persuaded her to let us see her schematics. So if we could get through the tiles and if we put a current into the wiring, they could be switched
off?”
Azeras grunted. “There’s too many ifs there.” He leaned his long frame back so that the chair tilted on two legs, and stared up at the palm tree above his head. After a few moments he sat upright and the front legs crashed down.
“Have you thought of something?”
“Maybe.” There was another long pause. “The blade that you used to cut those fronds—what technology did the commander say was used to make it?”
“The bush knife? Molecular tuning, but I’m the wrong person to explain how it works.”
Azeras looked at him with wintery gray eyes. “He said that it parted the wood molecules as it struck. And that there were blades for different subst—”
“Wait! You think we could make a blade that would cut through Krallen skin?”
“Maybe. Might be worth trying. The Krallen skin is made to deflect high-speed impact and beam weapons, not cuts.”
“W-would that be enough? Just cutting through?”
“No. You’d need an electrical charge. Twenty volts at least; Betafor would know the values. Have two electrodes on the blade—an ionic transfer battery in the handle. You have those. That’d knock them flat.”
“Permanently?”
Azeras hesitated, then shook his head abruptly. “No. You’d need to chop their heads off or smash them in pretty soon afterward to make sure they didn’t recover. But that can be done.”
“A-Azeras, that’s all possible. We can do this. We could e-easily make ten thousand blades—enough for the r-regulars and the irregulars.” Then Vero was struck by a problem and his enthusiasm rapidly drained away. “Ah but how . . . ?”
“How do you tune a blade for Krallen armor?” A faint smile crossed Azeras’s face. “Get some Krallen.”
“Ah. Couldn’t we do something based around Betafor’s skin? There are spare tiles.”
“No. Krallen are different.”
“Bother. So, we really would need some Krallen to experiment with?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“Well it may be.” There was a long pause. “But you know there might—just might—be a way.”
The next day, as Merral stared at a desk map in his office struggling with how long he could keep three thousand soldiers on alert, he heard a sudden ripple of excitement outside of his office.
