“I’m here. Where else would I be?”
“As an executive, you could be anywhere on Stittara.”
“What other interesting suggestions or hints do you have?” Her smile was somewhere between professional and amused.
“Let’s just say that I’m very glad you’re where you are. What about interesting tidbits you have that you might be willing to share?”
“Matters here have been quiet.”
“Do you know any more about Rob Gybl?”
“Only that it’s unlikely that such is his appellation. You suggested that already, though.”
“I also think that the other fellow was there on your account, perhaps trying to slow down what was already a fait accompli.”
“Constantia thought so. She has some ideas. After everything settles down, we should have dinner. I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you.”
The screen blanked, again suggesting that she’d said all she had to say. I hoped she was indeed at Syntex, but with links you could never be certain. As with so many things, especially now.
For several minutes I just sat there. I’d almost run out of options. There was no point in trying to persuade the Planetary Council. They weren’t about to go against a major multi, and even if they did protest, they had no power to stop the project. I had no environmental proof that would meet Survey Service standards. Those standards were high because of past abuses by environmental extremists. And that left Belk Edo.
So I tried to link him. I got his aide, the handsome Fabio Marghina.
“Dr. Verano … what can I do for you?”
“You could put me through to Executive Edo.”
“I’m sorry. He’s not available at the moment.”
“When will he be?”
“I really couldn’t say, ser.”
“Then, can you get him a message?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
I sighed. “Tell him that I need to talk to him about a similarity between the deep drilling project and the Pentura project.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Doctor.”
“Thank you.”
I waited almost an hour, fretting, stewing, and looking at the time readouts, every few minutes, before the screen announced Edo’s return call.
“Verano, what’s this nonsense about the similarity between Pentura and us?”
“I’m fairly certain that they were looking at magnetic containment in the upper level of the planetary core. You’re going to beam high energy at the core. The result won’t be pleasant. It’s likely to be far worse than that.” I couldn’t very well tell him that it might destroy Rikova or all settlements on Contrio near RDAEX. He’d ignore that as hysterical environmentalist rhetoric.
“You may be a first-class ecologist, Doctor, but you’re not even a fifth-class engineer. Spek assures us that the test won’t create any problems. On what do you base your contentions?”
“That running that high an energy field close to the core will cause major disruptions in the planetary magnetic field, and those will engender tectonic readjustments.”
“All of our engineers, and our geologists, have studied the matter, and they’ve concluded that there is absolutely no danger. Are you a high-energy physicist? Or an engineer? We’ve had the best people in the Arm working on this for a generation. And you’re telling me that because we might upset the planetary magnetic field just a bit, we face some sort of danger? Come now. If you’ve got some evidence beyond that, I’d like to know.”
“What about all the Builder (A) forerunner sites buried in mud at the same time one hundred twenty million years back? Or the badlands that date to the same time three million years ago—”
“Mere chance. Besides, what was happening hundreds of millions of years ago was under different conditions.”
“What about the fact that no one has yet been able to sample a skytube?”
“Oh … now you’re suggesting that they’re intelligent? Total rubbish. The density of the organic entities in the atmosphere precludes even low-level cognitive organization.”
I couldn’t help but think of the last line of Ilsabet’s rhyme—Are fingers smart? But Edo wouldn’t have bought that, either.
“Come now, Verano. Isn’t it time for you to deliver a meaningless threat? Isn’t that what environmentalists do when they’ve run out of facts and science?”
“No. I won’t threaten. I’ve offered my concerns. You’ve dismissed them. You’ll go ahead with your project, and I’ll have to hope I’m wrong.”
“Of course you are. I do appreciate your not trying to play politics and your not resorting to hysterics. And once the project proves out, I’ll even have you out for a celebratory dinner.”
“Thank you. I’ll hope for that dinner.”
“You actually might.” He smiled. “Until then.”
I stared at the blank screen for a moment, then shook my head.
Half an hour later, I got a link from Kali.
“Are you satisfied?” she asked coldly.
“With what?”
“Edo thinks I leaked everything to you. You’ve probably cost me and Teppera more than you could ever repay.”
“Is this a secure link?”
“At the moment. Over time, no.”
What she meant was that it was encrypted deeply enough that real-time decryption was unlikely, but if anyone recorded it … they’d eventually break the encryption.
“Please do what I asked … If I’m wrong, I’ll turn over all my assets to you. I’ll even garnish future earnings to pay damages. Just … think about it.”
She shrugged. Even that expression was cold.
“Please.” I hated begging. I’d sworn to myself that, after Chelesina, I’d never do it again.
The screen went blank.
What could I have done? No one would believe what I’d seen with Ilsabet … and if I’d tried to explain that …
Why wouldn’t anyone see?
54
I woke before what passed for dawn on fiveday—bolting wide awake. I immediately checked the news. There were no reports of anything untoward or even slightly unusual anywhere on Stittara. I still cleaned up and dressed quickly. I skipped my workout and exercises, something I’d been doing too often of late, but I wanted to get to the office and the console there.
I made it early enough that the lights were mostly off, and I was the first one around in my section. I checked the news again. Nothing.
I sat and waited. Aloris walked past, stopped, nodded, and went on. So did Zerlyna. Dermotte waved. Raasn didn’t even look in my direction as he hurried past my door and toward Aloris’s spaces.
I checked the news again.
Then the screen indicated a link from Meralez, Planetary Council, and I immediately accepted.
“I just received a call from Executive Edo at RDAEX. He intimated that your environmental assessment might be less than unbiased.”
“I’m sure that he didn’t say that,” I replied dryly. “He might have suggested that, in recent conversations with me, I’d revealed a concern for the environment disproportionate to the factual evidence available.”
Meralez’s laugh was actually warmly humorous. “What did you tell him?”
“That I was concerned about the current RDAEX project, that from what I’d been able to piece together, it resembled the Pentura project in many ways, and that I thought there was some risk of triggering tectonic disturbances.”
“Why didn’t you contact me or Councilor Morghan?” Her voice was quiet, almost menacing.
“For the same reason I didn’t go to Executive Director Zeglar or Director Algeld. I don’t have anything in the way of evidence that comes close to meeting Survey Service requirements for environmental endangerment.”
“So you expressed your concerns to Edo in a way that made him complain to the councilor.” Meralez nodded thoughtfully. “Rather effective way of bringing it to our attention. What do you think will h
appen if RDAEX proceeds?”
“I don’t know. That’s another reason why I didn’t bring it to you. I hope nothing does. I’m afraid that hope is unfounded.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Not really.”
I shrugged. “Best-case scenario … nothing happens. Most likely in my opinion … RDAEX and part of Rikova are destroyed. Worst case … the same thing that happened to the Ansarans.” I mentioned the Ansarans because I wanted to know just how far the selective blindness of Stittarans went.
Her face froze for an instant. “Did you tell Edo that?”
“No … I did mention that Stittara wasn’t as stable as he thought, not with all the badlands dating to three million years, and all the forerunner sites being buried in mud at the same time a hundred and twenty million years ago.”
“It could be worse.”
“Worse than what happened to them?”
“No … what you said.”
“I have the feeling it won’t matter,” I said glumly.
“There is that.” She paused. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention any of that until…”
“Until the results of the RDAEX project are known?”
“Until the results are in … and we have another chance to talk.”
I nodded. That was an acknowledgment, not an agreement.
The screen blanked.
Zerlyna walked into my office just after I blanked the console. She looked at me. “You’ve been sitting here, on and off, since yesterday afternoon. You checked out a van and haven’t touched it since yesterday morning.”
“I’m waiting. I don’t wait well.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“The results of an experiment, you might say.”
She looked as though she might say something, then offered a faint smile. “Let’s hope it goes the way you want.” Then she slipped out of the office.
What is the way you want? If nothing happened, in all likelihood RDAEX would proceed until something truly terrible happened … unless I was totally wrong, in which case, I’d likely have destroyed what remained of my career as an ecologist. If what I thought would happen did in fact occur, thousands if not tens of thousands of people would die, Kali Artema among them, but those across the rest of Stittara would survive, at least until some other idiot tried to probe the mystery of Stittara. And, if the worst occurred, as it had appeared to have happened to the forerunners and the Ansarans … well, I wouldn’t be around to worry.
In the meantime, I kept going over what I knew and what I’d done.
Less than an hour later, the screen flashed red, burning priority, and my whole body tensed. “Accept.”
Meralez appeared. She was pale, and her hair was just slightly disarrayed. There was a hint of wildness in her eyes. “How did you know?”
“Rikova? Or worse?”
“Rikova is gone … all of it. There’s just a twisted vitrified mass there.”
“Can you show me the images?”
“They’ll be rough, even with enhancement. The sky makes hash out of even infrared images.”
The screen split, with Meralez on the left, and a satellite zoom scan on the right, not in color but in shades of black and white and gray. I’d half expected skytubes cluttering the target area, but there were none near. Then I realized there wouldn’t be. There wasn’t any smoke, but IR minimized it, so that, even if there had been, most of it wouldn’t show on the screen. What the image did show was an oval area that, even from an apparent height of over a thousand meters, looked just like the badlands I’d seen outside Docota, except it appeared larger. The lumps and amorphous masses, and the few bent and twisted spires, were enclosed in a depression, not quite a crater, but with much of the devastation below the level of the surrounding rolling plains. The stone appeared to be solidly vitrified and shinier than the older badlands, but that might have been an affect of the IR imaging. I couldn’t make out any pattern to the odd misshapen lumps, not a trace of the underground installation and city that had been there. Once more, it looked as though a solar flare had struck, turning everything into primeval chaos that had solidified instantly.
I just looked. I’d known it would happen. I’d even bargained to keep the damage to less than it would have been. At least, I thought I had. And I’d gotten what I’d bargained for … and lost the only person on the entire planet I really cared about.
“Verano!”
There was a voice somewhere, but I sat fixated on the image.
“Verano!”
I jolted upright in the swivel. For a moment I couldn’t remember to whom I’d been talking.
“Are you there?” demanded Meralez.
“I’m sorry. It … it hit me…”
“It hit them harder.”
I swallowed, trying to clear the lump in my throat. Finally, I said, “Did any of the satellites register a surge in directed solar energy?”
“Hold. I can check that.”
Half the screen blanked, and I kept looking at the other half. I didn’t see anything moving. I wondered about the fact that I’d felt nothing, but then, Contrio was a third of the planet away, and what had hit Rikova hadn’t been a tectonic disturbance.
Meralez’s image returned. “There was some sort of energy surge. All the sensors focused anywhere near overloaded. Some blew totally.”
I nodded.
“You never answered my question.”
“What question?” I stalled.
“How did you know what was going to happen?”
“What might happen,” I corrected her. “It makes perfect sense. It’s much less disruptive than using volcanism to send a message. First came the volcanism, because Stittara didn’t know better, but I imagine it took eons to rebuild the planet. When the Ansarans started to change things too much … well that was when their cities and towns turned to badlands.”
“Why now? Why not before?”
“I imagine that we provide something Stittara needs, amusement, stimulation, whatever. So long as the ecology stays balanced. When that changes … then Stittara gets less tolerant.”
“You’re suggesting that the entire planet … is alive?”
“I doubt that, but there’s definitely some sort of massive intelligence … or grouping of them.”
“I have to go.” Meralez looked hard at me. “You will brief the entire Planetary Council, Dr. Verano.”
“Once we know the scope of the damage…” I broke off what I was saying because the screen blanked.
I was still sitting there several minutes later, when Aloris, Zerlyna, and Jorl Algeld all filed into my office. That confirmed what I’d already known and expected.
They looked at me. I just looked back at them.
“Is it true?” Aloris finally asked.
“What? That something turned RDAEX and Rikova into an instant badlands? According to the Planetary Council, it is.”
“It just came across on News One,” added Zerlyna, looking at her link.
“And you knew it was going to happen?” asked Algeld.
“No. I thought it was possible if RDAEX went ahead with their deep-drilling project. I told Executive Edo that it was dangerous and that doing it could endanger all Rikova. He told me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, and that I was a fifth-rate engineer.”
“That’s why you’ve been sitting here, brooding?” asked Zerlyna.
“I told Meralez there was a problem, and I told Edo. I didn’t have anything that meets Survey Service standards for proof.”
“No one ever does,” said Algeld sardonically. That he spoke so was surprising to me.
“Why did you think it was possible?” asked Aloris.
“Because it appeared to have happened before…” I explained everything except my last conversation with Ilsabet. No one but Clyann was likely to ever find that out, since I’d never made an appointment or used a link, and there was likely nothing in the tunnelcams to call attention to me. Even if they did
, and questioned Clyann, I doubted she’d say anything except I’d asked to speak to Ilsabet and that she’d turned me down.
“Now what?” asked Aloris.
“I still have an assessment to finish.” If only out of pride. “There’s not much I can do about what happened.”
None of them said a word.
After they left, I still sat there.
Could you have done anything different to protect Kali?
I didn’t know what. I couldn’t have kidnapped her. She likely knew more about combat, hand-to-hand, and weapons than anyone on Stittara, except perhaps Rob Gybl, if he still happened to be alive, and that was something we’d likely never know, one way or the other. Kali wasn’t the type who wanted or needed protection—unless she was dealing with a planetary intelligence.
55
I spent the remainder of fiveday going over everything I’d learned, as well as all the environmental data … and I still didn’t have anything that would actually prove in a legal or scientific sense that there was any solid reason for the disaster at RDAEX. I’d tried to convey the problem … and certainly Melarez had known in time to have advised Belk Edo, but either she hadn’t or he hadn’t listened.
Once I returned to my quarters, I watched all the news about the disaster until I finally turned it off and collapsed into more of a stupor than a sleep. Sixday morning, as soon as I awakened, I called up OneNews and watched their commentary summary, listening and sipping tea that had cooled too quickly.
“… the more we have learned about the horrifying disaster that obliterated the city of Rikova, the more perplexing it appears. There are no satellite or sensor images of the destruction. One moment, the city appears normal. The next all images vanish. When those sensors in working order resume, they show only the destruction. One scientist at Stittara University stated that the ruins look like a giant had stirred up the city and then directed a solar flare at it for an instant. There is no significant radioactivity, and no indication that military weapons of any sort were employed. The orbit control station has confirmed that the few spacecraft in the area of Stittara have all been accounted for and none possess any weaponry capable of such destruction … There are no known survivors in the area of the devastation … and no recognizable remaining structures … The Planetary Council has sent aid to the one nearby outland community, but … it appears that little damage, except to vegetation, occurred much beyond the area of total destruction … such an effect corresponds to no known weaponry …
The One-Eyed Man Page 35
