“Yes. Please may we?” Genevieve chipped in.
“I don’t know,” Aunt Celina said. “This is hardly the time for sightseeing, what with the militias forming up. And I promised Hermione I would attend the Red Cross meeting today. One must do what one can to support our brave menfolk in such times. I really can’t spare the time to show you around.”
“I could,” Roberto said. “I’d enjoy it.” His eyes were lingering on Louise again.
“Don’t be silly, darling,” Aunt Celina said. “You have school today.”
“Fletcher Christian could chaperone us,” Louise said quickly. “He’s more than proved his worth. We’d be completely safe.” From the corner of her eye she could see Roberto frowning.
“Well—”
“Please!” Genevieve wheedled. “I want to buy you some flowers, you’ve been so kind.”
Aunt Celina clasped her hands together. “Oh, you are a little treasure, aren’t you. I always wanted a little gal of my own, you know. Of course you can go.”
Louise blew her cheeks out in thanks. She could just imagine what would have happened if they’d tried pulling that routine on Mother. Genevieve had gone back to her eggs, her face a perfect composure of purity.
At the other end of the table, Roberto was chewing thoughtfully on his third slice of toast.
* * *
The sisters found Fletcher Christian in the servants’ quarters. With so many of Balfern House’s staff called away to their militia regiments he had been put to work by the cook bringing sacks up from the storerooms.
He gave both girls a measured look as he lowered a big string bag of carrots onto the kitchen floor and bowed gracefully. “How splendid you look, my young ladies, so refined. I always imagined you more suited to finery such as this.”
Louise gave him a very sharp stare. And then they were grinning at each other.
“Aunt Celina has lent us the use of a carriage,” she said in her grandest tone. “And she’s also given you leave to accompany us, my man. Of course, should you prefer to remain here doing what you seem to do so well . . .”
“Ah, my lady Louise, I see you are a cruel one. But justly do I deserve such mockery. It would be my honour to accompany you.”
He picked up his jacket under the disapproving gaze of the cook, and followed Louise out of the kitchen. Genevieve picked up her skirt hems and ran on ahead of them through the house.
“The little one seems none the worse for all she has been through,” Fletcher observed.
“Yes, thank the Lord. Was it truly awful for you last night?” Louise asked once they were out of earshot of the other servants.
“The room was dry and warm. I’ve made my bunk in sorrier circumstances.”
“I apologize for bringing you here, I’d forgotten quite how bad Aunt Celina was. But I couldn’t think of anyone else who could extract us from the aerodrome as quickly.”
“Pay it no further heed, my lady. Your aunt is a model of enlightenment compared to some of the matrons I knew in my own youth.”
“Fletcher.” She put her hand on his arm and slowed their pace. “Are they here?”
His sturdy features turned melancholy. “Yes, my lady Louise. I can feel several dozen encamped throughout the city. And their numbers grow with every passing hour. It will take many days, perhaps a week. But Norwich will surely fall.”
“Oh, dear Jesus, when will this ever end?”
She was aware of his arm around her as she trembled. Hating herself for being weak. Oh, where are you, Joshua? I need you.
“Speak not of evil, and it will pay you no heed,” Fletcher said softly.
“Really?”
“So my mother assured me.”
“Was she right?”
His fingers touched her chin, tilting her face up. “That was a long time ago, and far away. But today I think if we avoid their attentions, then you will remain out of harm’s way for longer.”
“Very well. I’ve been giving this some serious thought, you know; how to keep Genevieve and the baby truly safe. And there’s only one way to do it.”
“Yes, my lady?”
“Leave Norfolk.”
“I see.”
“It’s not going to be easy. Will you help me?”
“You do not have to ask that of me, lady, you know I will offer you and the little one what aid I can.”
“Thank you, Fletcher. The other thing was: Do you want to come with us? I’m going to try and reach Tranquillity. I know someone there who can help us.” If anyone can, she added silently.
“Tranquillity?”
“Yes, it’s a sort of palace in space, orbiting a star a long way away from here.”
“Ah, lady, what a temptress you are. To sail the stars I once sailed by. How could I resist such a request?”
“Good,” she whispered.
“I imply no criticism, Lady Louise. But do you really know how to prepare for such an endeavour?”
“I think so. There was one thing I learned from both Daddy and Joshua, Carmitha, too, in a way; and that is: Money makes everything possible.”
Fletcher smiled respectfully. “A worthy saying. And do you have this money?”
“Not on me, no. But I’m a Kavanagh, I can get it.”
6
Ione Saldana’s palatial cliff-base apartment was empty now, apart from herself; the guests from the Tranquillity Banking Regulatory Council had been ushered out politely but insistently. The convivial party most definitely over. And they had known better than to argue. Unfortunately, they were also astute enough to know they wouldn’t be turned out unless it was a real crisis. Word would already be spreading down the length of the giant habitat.
She had reduced the output of the ceiling’s electrophorescent cells to a sombre starlight glimmer. It allowed her to see out through the glass wall which held back the sea, revealing a silent world composed entirely from shades of aquamarine. And now even that was darkening as the habitat’s light tube allowed night to claim the interior. Fish were reduced to stealthy shadows slithering among the prickly coral branches.
When Ione was younger she had spent hours staring out at the antics of the fish and sand-crawling creatures. Now she sat cross-legged on the apricot moss carpet before her private theatre of life, Augustine nesting contentedly in her lap. She stroked the little xenoc’s velvety fur absently, eyes closed to the world.
We can still send a squadron of patrol blackhawks after Mzu, Tranquillity suggested. I am aware of the Udat’s wormhole terminus coordinate.
So are the other blackhawks, she replied. But it’s their crews I worry about. Once they’re away from our SD platforms, there really is nothing we can do to enforce their loyalty. Mzu would try to make a deal with them. She’d probably succeed, too. She’s proved astonishingly resourceful so far. Fancy even lulling us into complacency.
I was not complacent, the habitat personality said irksomely. I was caught off guard by the method. Which in itself I find disturbing. It implies a great deal of thought went into her escape. One wonders what her next move will be.
I’ve got a pretty good idea, unfortunately. She’ll go for the Alchemist. There’s no other reason for her to behave like this. And after she’s got it: Omuta.
Indeed.
So no, we don’t send the blackhawks after her. She may lead them to the Alchemist. That would give us an even worse situation than the one we’ve got now.
In that case, what do you want to do about the intelligence agency teams?
I’m not sure. How are they reacting?
* * *
Lady Tessa, the head of the ESA’s Tranquillity station, had been badly frightened by the news of Alkad Mzu’s escape, a fact which she managed to conceal behind a show of pure fury. Monica Foulkes stood in front of her in the starscraper apartment which doubled as the ESA team’s headquarters. She had reported to Lady Tessa in person rather than use the habitat’s communications net. Not that Tranquillity was unaware (hardly!), but there w
ere a great number of organizations and governments who knew nothing of Mzu’s existence, nor the implications arising from it.
It was twenty-three minutes since the physicist’s escape, and a form of delayed shock had begun to infiltrate Monica’s body as her subconscious acknowledged just how lucky she’d been to avoid vanishing down the Udat’s wormhole. Her neural nanonics were helpless to prevent the cold shivers which spiralled their way around her limbs and belly muscles.
“I won’t even dignify your performance by calling it a disaster,” Lady Tessa stormed. “Great God Almighty, the principal reason we’re here is to make sure she remained confined to the habitat. Every agency endorses that policy, even the bloody Lord of Ruin supports it. And you let her stroll out right in front of you. I mean, Jesus Christ, what the hell were you all doing on that beach? She stops to put on a spacesuit, and you didn’t even move in closer to investigate.”
“It was not exactly a stroll, Chief. And I’d like to point out for the record that we are just an observation team. Our operation in Tranquillity has always been too small to guarantee Mzu remains inside should she make a determined effort to leave, or if someone uses force to extract her. If the agency wanted to be certain, it should have allocated a bigger team to monitor her.”
“Don’t datavise the rule flek at me, Foulkes. You’re boosted, you’ve got weapons implants”—she flinched, and glanced up at the ceiling as though expecting divine censure—“and Mzu is in her sixties. There is no way she should have ever got near that bloody blackhawk, let alone have it snatch her away.”
“The blackhawk tipped the physical balance heavily in her favour. It simply wasn’t a contingency we allowed for. Tranquillity had two serjeants eliminated during our attempt to stop her boarding. Personally, I’m surprised the starship was allowed to swallow inside at all.” Now Monica glanced guiltily around the naked polyp walls.
Lady Tessa’s baleful expression didn’t alter, but she did pause. “I doubt there was much it could do. As you say, that swallow manoeuvre was completely unprecedented.”
“Samuel claimed that not many voidhawks could be that precise.”
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to include that most helpful unit of data in my report.” She got up out of the chair and walked over to the oval window. The apartment was two thirds of the way down the StEtalia starscraper, where gravity was approaching Earth standard. It was a location which gave her a unimpeded view across the bottom of the vast curving burnt-biscuit-coloured habitat shell, with just a crescent of the counter-rotating spaceport showing beyond the rim as if it were a metallic moon rising. Today, as for the last four days, there were few starships arriving or departing from its docking bays. Big SD platforms glinted reassuringly against the backdrop of Mirchusko’s darkside as they caught the last of the sunlight before Tranquillity sailed into the penumbra.
And what use would they be against the Alchemist? Lady Tessa wondered sagely. A doomsday device that’s supposed to be able to kill stars . . .
“What’s our next move?” Monica asked. She was rubbing her arms for warmth in an attempt to stop the shaking. Grains of sand were still falling out of her sweater’s sleeves.
“Informing the Kingdom is our primary responsibility now,” Lady Tessa said in a challenging tone. There was no reaction from the AV pillar sticking up out of her desktop processor block. “But it’s going to take time for them to respond and start searching. And Mzu will know that. Which means she’s got two options, either she takes the Udat straight to the Alchemist, or she loses herself out there.” She tapped a gold-chromed fingernail on the window as the myriad stars drifted past in slow arcs.
“If she was smart enough to get away from all the agency teams tagging her, she’ll know that she’ll never stay lost, not forever,” Monica said. “Too many of us are going to be looking now.”
“And yet the Udat doesn’t have any special equipment rigged. I checked the CAB registry, it hasn’t had any refitting for eight months. Sure, it has got standard interfaces for combat wasp cradles and heavy-duty close defence weapons. Almost every blackhawk has. But there was nothing unusual.”
“So?”
“So if she does take Udat straight to the Alchemist, how will they fire it at Omuta’s sun?”
“Do we know what equipment is necessary to fire it?”
“No,” Lady Tessa admitted. “We don’t even know if it does need anything special. But it was different, new, and unique; that means it’s non-standard. Which may give us our one chance to neutralize this situation. If there is any hardware requirement involved, she’s going to have to break cover and approach a defence contractor.”
“She might not have to,” Monica said. “She’ll have friends, sympathisers; certainly in the Dorados. She can go to them.”
“I hope she does. The agency has kept the Garissa survivors under surveillance for decades, just in case any of them try to pull any stupid revenge stunts.” She turned from the window. “I’m sending you there to brief their head of station. It’s a reasonable assumption she’ll turn up there eventually, and it may help having someone familiar with her on the ground.”
Monica nodded in defeat. “Yes, Chief.”
“Don’t look so tragic. I’m the one who’s going to have to report back to Kulu and tell the director we lost her. You’re getting off lightly.”
* * *
The meeting in the Confederation Navy Bureau on the forty-fifth floor of the StMichelle starscraper was synchronous with that of the ESA in both time and content. In the bureau it was an aghast Commander Olsen Neale who accessed the sensevise memory of Mzu’s abrupt exit from the habitat as recorded by a thoroughly despondent Pauline Webb.
When the file ended he asked a few supplemental questions and came to the same conclusions as Lady Tessa. “We can assume she has access to the kind of money necessary to buy whatever systems she needs to use the Alchemist, and install them in a combat-capable ship,” he said. “But I don’t think it’ll be the Udat; that’s too high profile now. Every navy ship and government is going to be hunting it inside a week.”
“Do you think the Alchemist really does exist then, sir?” Pauline asked.
“CNIS has always believed so, even though it could never track down any solid evidence. And after this, I don’t think there can be any doubt. Even if it wasn’t stored in zero-tau, don’t forget she knows how to build another one. Another hundred, come to that.”
Pauline hung her head. “Shit, but we screwed up big-time.”
“Yes. I always thought we were a little overdependent on the Lord of Ruin’s benevolence in keeping her here.” He made a finger-fluttering gesture with one hand and muttered: “No offence.”
The AV pillar on his desktop processor block sparkled momentarily. “None taken,” said Tranquillity.
“We also got complacent with how static the whole situation had become. You were quite right when you said she’d fooled us for a quarter of a century. Bloody hell, but that is an awful long time to keep a charade going. Anyone who can hate for that long isn’t going to be fooling around. She’s gone because she thinks she has a good chance to use the Alchemist against Omuta.”
“Yes, sir.”
Olsen Neale made an effort to suppress his worry and formulate some kind of coherent response to the situation—one he didn’t have a single contingency plan for. No one at CNIS ever believed she could actually escape. “I’ll leave for Trafalgar right away. Our first priority is to inform Admiral Lalwani that Mzu’s gone, so she can start activating our assets to find her. Then the First Admiral will have to beef up Omuta’s defences. Damn, that’s another squadron which the navy can’t spare, not now.”
“The Laton scare will make it difficult for her to travel,” Pauline said.
“Let’s hope so. But just in case, I want you to go to the Dorados and alert our bureau that she may put in an appearance soon.”
* * *
Samuel, of course, didn’t have to physically meet with the oth
er three Edenist intelligence operatives in the habitat. They simply conferred with each other via affinity, then Samuel and a colleague called Tringa headed for the spaceport. Samuel chartered a starship to take him to the Dorados, while Tringa found one which would convey him to Jupiter so he could warn the Consensus.
* * *
The same scenario was played out by the other eight national intelligence agency teams assigned to watch Mzu. In each case, it was decided that alerting their respective directors was the primary requirement; three of them also dispatched operatives to the Dorados to watch for Mzu.
The spaceport charter agents who had been suffering badly from the lack of flights brought on by the Laton scare suddenly found business picking up.
* * *
So now you have to decide if you’re going to allow them to inform their homeworlds, Tranquillity said. For once the word gets out, you will be unable to control further events.
I didn’t really control events before. I was like an umpire insuring fair play.
Well now is your chance to get down off your stool and take part in the game.
Don’t tempt me. I have enough problems right now with the Laymil’s reality dysfunction. If dear Grandfather Michael was right, that may yet turn out to be a lot more trouble than Mzu’s Alchemist.
I concede the point. But I do need to know if I am to permit the agency operatives to depart.
Ione opened her eyes to look through the window, but the water outside was sable-black now, there was nothing to see apart from a weak reflection of herself in the glass. For the first time in her life she began to understand what loneliness was.
You have me, Tranquillity assured her gently.
I know. But in a way you are a part of me. It would be nice to have someone else’s shoulder to lean on occasionally.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 146
