by Timothy Zahn
“Good day to you as well, sir,” the younger man said with a nod that was as formal as his capelet. His dark eyes flicked to me, the sense of him shifting from stiff and grudging politeness to animosity as he did so. “I’m Sahm Aikman—HTI legal affairs department,” he continued, eyes shifting back to Randon. “This is my colleague, Dr. Kurt DeMont—” he gestured, the muscles of his hand as taut as the rest of him— “who handles the various medical aspects of the Solitaire run.”
DeMont’s eyes came back to Randon from their uneasy study of me and he nodded his own greeting. “Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” he said gravely. His eyes shifted again to me, and I sensed a surge of boldness peek through, as if he were considering speaking to me directly. But caution and protocol prevailed, the boldness withered, and he remained silent.
All of which would have been abundant proof, if I’d needed any, that the message O’Rielly had sent here had included the fact that Randon might be bringing his father’s Watcher along. But they weren’t quite sure yet …
“Pleased to meet you,” Randon said, nodding acknowledgment of the introductions. He, too, had picked up on their interest in me; equally clear was the fact that he intended to draw out their uncertainties as far as he could. “May I say, first of all, that I appreciate your getting all the accommodations trivia out of the way—it certainly made life easier for my aides.” He waved vaguely in my direction; like magic, both sets of eyes shifted to me. The gesture shifted smoothly, Randon’s hand ending up pointing at the computer sitting on the table. “You’ve brought me copies of your records?”
“Uh, yes, sir,” Aikman said, shifting gears with visible effort, his attention lingering on me for a second after his eyes had gone back to Randon. Standard business etiquette said that entourages like me were to be ignored in direct address until and unless they were formally introduced, and Randon’s deliberate failure to do so was beginning to irritate him. “I thought we could take a few minutes to go through them now, if you’re willing.”
“You have all HTI’s records here?” Randon asked.
“Oh, no—just those involving shipment through Whitecliff,” Aikman said. “The complete records are of course kept only in the Solitaire office.”
“Ah,” Randon nodded. “Well, then, I think I’ll pass. Not much sense in spending time studying one corner of the painting when I’ll get to see the whole thing in a couple of days, is there?”
A flicker of surprise touched both men, followed immediately by annoyance in different degrees. I gathered the local HTI office had gone to some effort to gather the records into easily digested form, and Aikman in particular was clearly put out at Randon’s casual dismissal of all that work. “As you wish, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” he said, managing to keep his voice civil. “In that case—”
“What I’d rather do,” Randon interrupted him, “is see what kind of night life Whitecliff has. I presume it does have some?”
Another flicker of surprise. DeMont recovered first. “Oh, certainly,” he said. “Nothing like what you’re used to on Portslava, I don’t suppose, but enjoyable in its own way. Here in Alabaster City, particularly, we have a wide mix of different entertainments.”
“Yes, port cities tend to be that way,” Randon nodded. “Though I certainly wouldn’t like to think I’m too much of a snob to enjoy something new. You’ll both be my guests, of course?”
Aikman and DeMont exchanged glances. Clearly, Randon wasn’t fitting into their expectations, and they weren’t entirely sure how to handle him. “We’d be honored to serve as your guides, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” Aikman said diplomatically.
“Excellent,” Randon said with a smile. “I’ll have to bring a couple of my shields along, too, of course. Company policy, I’m afraid.”
“Understandable,” Aikman nodded. “Well, then, whenever you’re ready—”
“Oh, and Mr. Benedar will be coming, too,” Randon said blandly, gesturing a hand toward me. “I’m sorry; I’ve been remiss, haven’t I? Mr. Aikman, Dr. DeMont—Gilead Raca Benedar.”
It was a game on Randon’s part, of course—nothing more or less than a way to suddenly spring my name and Watcher status on them and force a reaction. Certainly he had no interest in trying to carouse through Alabaster City’s night life with someone he considered a religious fanatic hovering disdainfully in the background. My own interest in playing that role was equally microscopic.
But Aikman and DeMont didn’t know that. “Mr. Benedar,” Aikman said in acknowledgment, his formal stiffness turning abruptly rigid. “Mr. Kelsey-Ramos … with due respect for your position, I’d like to suggest that it would be best if your associate remains behind.”
“Oh?” Randon asked, almost innocently. “Is there a problem, Mr. Aikman?”
Aikman locked eyes with him. “To put it bluntly, sir, Watchers aren’t especially welcome in Alabaster City.”
Randon met his gaze steadily. “I understood the Watchers have a settlement here on Whitecliff.”
“I’m sure he’d be welcome there,” Aikman countered. “But not anywhere else on the planet.”
For a long moment the room was silent; silent with heavy discomfort from DeMont, with almost calm calculation from Randon, with black hatred from Aikman. I lie surrounded by lions, greedy for human prey …
An icy shiver ran up my back. I’d encountered hatred before—Watchers who left their settlements couldn’t avoid running into it these days. We’d been barely tolerated before Aaron Balaam darMaupine and his followers had come on the scene; now, two decades later, feeling against us was still running high. There was hatred everywhere—unthinking hatred, frightened hatred, even inherited hatred. But Aikman’s hatred was different. Cold, almost intellectual, it had far less actual emotion simmering beneath it than it ought to have had.
God had given mankind intellect, one of my teachers had once said, and the Fall had given him prejudice; and there was no human force more dangerous than a combination of the two.
Randon broke the brittle silence first. “I seem to remember, Mr. Aikman,” he said, choosing his words deliberately, “that one of the chief cornerstones of the original Patri Articles was the banning of religious discrimination in the Patri and in all future colony worlds. I was unaware that policy had been repealed.”
The words were indignant enough; the emotions beneath them far less so. Randon’s father, I knew, would have felt automatic anger at such a brazen display of discrimination, but Randon’s own world view wasn’t set up that way. To him, I was less a human being than a tool with useful properties. But that didn’t prevent him from using my humanity to score a few points in this psychological trapshoot he had needled Aikman into playing.
Not that Aikman needed much prodding. “We have a fair number of emigres from Bridgeway,” he countered harshly. “They haven’t forgotten what darMaupine nearly did there. Neither have the rest of us.”
“That was over twenty years ago,” Randon pointed out coolly. “Mr. Benedar was all of eleven years old when darMaupine’s experiment in theocracy was brought down.”
“I’m not responsible for his age,” Aikman said, the first hint of caution beginning to break through the anger as he abruptly seemed to remember who this young man was he was arguing with. “I’m also not responsible for the concept of guilt by association. I merely state the relevant facts.”
“Then I take it you’ve not forgotten the most relevant of those facts, Mr. Aikman,” Randon shot back. “I’m in charge of this man … and the Carillon Group is in charge of HTI. Which means I make the decisions on this trip.”
Behind his lips, Aikman clenched his teeth, and for a second some of his hatred for me shifted to Randon …
“Excuse me, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” I spoke up, before Aikman could find a response he might later regret. “If you wouldn’t mind too much, I’d rather stay here this evening. I’d appreciate the opportunity to get a good night’s sleep in real gravity.”
Randon turned to eye me, the sense of him one of approval.
He’d made his point—had boldfaced his authority for the others—and now was perfectly ready for me to make my excuses and back out. “Yes, I remember you never slept very well aboard ship,” he commented. “All right, then, you’re excused.” He shifted his attention back to Aikman and DeMont, who were looking as if we’d just pulled the rug out from under them. As we had, of course, just done … and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I couldn’t help enjoying their discomfiture just a little bit. “My apologies, gentlemen,” Randon continued briskly, “but it appears it’ll just be you two and me after all. Well, then. Give me a few minutes to change into something more appropriate and I’ll be back. Oh, and I will take those records, I guess—my financial expert may find himself bored tonight.”
Tight-lipped, Aikman reached down and pulled a cyl from the computer. His hand was shaking noticeably with emotion as he did so. “We’ll see you in a few minutes, Mr. Kelsey-Ramos,” he said, his voice fighting hard to remain civil as he handed the cyl over.
Randon nodded and we left. In the elevator, several floors from the lobby level, he finally turned to me. “Quite a show, Benedar, eh?” he said with a smile.
I swallowed. “Indeed, sir. I really don’t think it was a good idea to bait them the way you did, though.”
He dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand. “The fastest way to get through a corporate mask is to give the person wearing it a good, hard push,” he told me off-handedly. “I’m sorry if you felt offended in there, but you have to admit you’re a very convenient lever to push with.”
A tool with useful properties. “I’m also reasonably capable of reading people without the need to push them,” I reminded him, annoyed despite myself. “The whole purpose of me being here—”
“Is to use your wonderful powers of observation to spot things that I miss,” Randon cut me off with a patient sigh. “Yes, I know. I’ve heard my father go on and on about your vaunted Watcher mind-reading tricks.”
“It’s not mind-reading—”
“So then let’s have it, eh? What did you see down there that I missed?”
I clenched my teeth. “They don’t like you,” I told him. “They aren’t sure yet whether you’re a clever manipulator or a pompous fool, but they’re prepared to dislike you either way.”
“That one’s pretty obvious,” Randon snorted. “Also obvious is that Aikman, especially, dislikes you even more than he dislikes me. I was thinking more along the lines of something a bit more subtle. Are these really the full records for the Whitecliff shipping route, for instance?” He waved the cyl.
I thought back over the conversation, over the shifting senses of the two men during it. “There was no lie in either of them,” I told Randon. “Whatever you have there, it was given in good faith.”
“I’m sure it was,” he shrugged. “Also self-evident, I’ll point out. Falsifying records isn’t a job given to middle-levelers like those two. Not if the corporation’s smart, anyway.”
“How do you know they’re middle-levelers?”
“You don’t think HTI would waste any of their high-level people running back and forth playing zombi escort, do you?” he snorted. “Come on, Benedar—that’s simple logic.”
My stomach tightened. Zombi. Dehumanizing with a label. “Yes, sir.”
He gave me a hard look. “You’re not going to go all queasy on me when we reach the Cloud, are you?”
“I’ll be all right by the time we reach Solitaire,” I assured him.
I hadn’t exactly answered his question. He noticed, but let it pass. “I hope so,” he said instead. “If HTI’s going to try and obstruct us, it’ll be the people running the Solitaire office who’ll be behind it. I’ll want you running at full power by the time we face them.”
I gave a neutral nod, hearing the anticipation in his voice. He grew into a young lion; he learned to tear his prey; he became a man-eater. The nations came to hear of him; he was caught in their pit; they dragged him away with hooks to Egypt … “Yes, sir,” I murmured. “I’ll be ready by then.”
I learned the next morning that Randon’s baiting of Aikman and DeMont hadn’t ended with my departure, but had merely changed its form. From the bleary eyes of the two shields he’d taken along I gathered that they’d returned to the hotel considerably after local midnight; from the fact that Aikman and DeMont dragged their way to the Bellwether nearly an hour after we’d arrived I gathered that Randon had employed one of his father’s old gambits. Lord Kelsey-Ramos had been notorious in his youth for the technique of celebrating his opponents into a frazzled mess, and it was clear that Randon had inherited both the stamina and vodkya tolerance required to play such a game.
A dangerous and rather childish game, to my way of thinking … and yet, in retrospect I can’t help wondering if perhaps there was more behind it than Randon’s grim determination to be in control. Because if Aikman and DeMont hadn’t been late—if I hadn’t already been in my stateroom preparing for departure when they arrived—I almost certainly would have been right there at the gatelock when they and the spaceport authorities arrived.
They, the authorities … and the two human sacrifices they delivered to the ship. Our two zombis.
Chapter 3
IT WAS THE MIDDLE of ship’s afternoon two days later, and I was playing singleton chess in a corner of the crew lounge, when we reached the Cloud.
Without warning, oddly enough, though the effect sphere’s edge was supposed to be both stationary and well established. But reach it without warning we did. From the rear of the Bellwether came the faint thunggk of massive circuit breakers firing as the Mjollnir drive spontaneously kicked out, followed an instant later by a round of curses from the others in the lounge as the ultra-high-frequency electric current in the deck lost its Mjollnir-space identity of a pseudograv generator and crewers and drinks went scattering every which way.
And then, abruptly, there was silence. A dark silence, as suddenly everyone seemed to remember what was about to happen.
A rook was drifting in front of my eyes, spiraling slowly about its long axis. Carefully, I reached out and plucked it from the air, feeling a sudden chill in my heart. We were at the edge of the Cloud, ten light-years out from Solitaire … and in a few minutes, up on the bridge, someone was going to die.
For in honor of their gods they have done everything detestable that God hates; yes, in honor of their gods, they even burn their own sons and daughters as sacrifices—
A tone from the intercom broke into my thoughts. “Sorry about that,” Captain Jose Bartholomy said. Behind his carefully cultivated Starlit accent his voice was trying to be as unruffled as usual … but I don’t think anyone aboard the Bellwether was really fooled. “Space-normal, for anyone who hasn’t figured it out already. Approximately fifteen minutes to Mjollnir again; stand ready.” He paused, and I heard him take a deep breath. “Mr. Benedar, please report to the bridge.”
I didn’t have to look to know that all eyes in the lounge had turned to me. Carefully, I eased out of my seat, hanging onto the arm until I’d adjusted adequately to the weightlessness and then giving myself a push toward the door. My movement seemed to break the others out of their paralysis—two of the crewers headed to the lockers for handvacs, while the rest suddenly seemed to remember there were glasses and floating snacks that needed to be collected and got to it. In the brisk and uncomfortable flurry of activity, I reached the door and left.
Randon was waiting for me just outside the bridge. “Benedar,” he nodded, both voice and face tighter than he probably wanted them to be.
“Why?” I asked quietly, knowing he would understand what I meant.
He did, but chose to ignore the question. “Come in here,” he said instead, waving at the door release and grabbing the jamb handle as the panel slid open.
“I’d rather not,” I said.
“Come in here,” he repeated. His voice made it clear he meant it.
Swallowing hard, I gave myself a slight push and obeyed.
There is a unique smell that accompanies death. I don’t mean the actual, physical odor of decomposing flesh, but a wider scent that extends somehow to all the other senses as well. I’d smelled it twice before: once at my grandfather’s deathbed, where all the hospital disinfectants in the air were unable to disguise it; once at the scene of an accident where the victim was conscious to the end. Both times, for hours afterward, I had tried to separate out the sensations I had felt into pieces that I could understand … and both times I had failed. There was a fear of the unknown involved, certainly, combined with a sense of the profound mystery surrounding the departure of a human soul from this world. But there was more to it than that, and neither my own intellect nor those Watcher elders I took it to could ever totally solve the puzzle.
Randon and I entered the bridge … and for the third time in my life I found the smell of death.
Captain Bartholomy and First Officer Gielincki were there, of course: Gielincki because it was technically her shift as bridge officer, Bartholomy because he wasn’t the type of man to foist a duty like this off on his subordinates. Standing beside them on the gripcarpet were Aikman and DeMont, the former with a small recorder hanging loosely from his hand, the latter with a medical kit gripped tightly in his. Flanking the helm chair to their right were two of Randon’s shields, Daiv and Duge Ifversn, just beginning to move back … and in the chair itself sat a man.
The Bellwether’s sacrifice.
I couldn’t see anything of him but one hand, strapped to the left chair arm, and the back of his head, similarly bound to the headrest. I didn’t want to see anything more, either—not of him, not of anything else that was about to happen up here. But Randon was looking back at me …
The days of my life are few enough: turn your eyes away, leave me a little joy, before I go to the place of no return, to the land of darkness and shadow dark as death …
