by Bill Adams
Her sharp green eyes passed over me without a flick of recognition. Of course—the gyal-wa mask. I relaxed, but only for a moment. She and Malatesta were heading down the deck toward the Pretender; a moment later, I saw her being introduced to him in pantomime, while I stayed within range of the Doge’s mellifluous basso.
“—even attempts to reduplicate it on old Earth itself. One extensive Venice was built in a country called Florida, on the other side of the Atlantic, but its fortunes fell off when it was devastated by a Coriolis storm, what did they call them—”
“A hurricano,” I said.
“Ah, yes, thanks!—a great hurricano, the sort of storm our forefathers also feared for the first hundred years after the mutant corals were introduced. But for the past seven centuries, our weather control has been very reliable. In fact, that is the basis of today’s ceremony. Many kilometers to our west, even as we speak, vast underwater dams and locks are being shifted. World-wide ocean currents are diverted every year on this date, and with them the weather patterns that might send Coriolis storms in Venezia’s direction.”
I watched the Pretender’s face and bearing respond to Foyle’s Amazonian good looks. They kept talking. There was nothing I could do about it. I could count on Foyle to realize that this was not the—older—Evan Larkspur she had met two years ago. I was pretty sure I could count on her to not even mention a second Larkspur, at least not until she knew this one well enough to trust him. With luck, she never would. But she was a cloud on the horizon, and one I should have foreseen. With her sense of Kanalist destiny, how could she fail to come and check out the Pretender?
The Doge was finishing his explanation. “That’s right. And on this first day of the new current, extra water will rush across the channel and create, for just four or five minutes, the Mill Stream into which I will lower the traditional wedding ring that binds Venezia and the sea. We could just throw it, of course, but I like to see how deep I can get it.” Locals conversant with Wedding Day tradition apparently considered this a good dirty joke.
The “wedding ring” was a garlanded hoop a meter wide hanging from a large, unwieldy-looking crane in the bow; from the ugly way the crane was jury-rigged in place, it must have been commandeered from some commercial vessel for the occasion.
“Our Boss prefers the alternate Ur-Linguish term,” Arturo said suddenly in my ear. My attention had been so focused across the deck that he took me completely by surprise.
“Alternate term?”
“For Mill Stream…the Maelstrom. The only reason the Boss came today was to see it, and I want him to see it from my disco. If you would come over now, it will be easier to talk him across. I think you’re on better terms with him than I am at the moment.”
“All right.” Perhaps we could lure the Pretender away from Foyle.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, as we wended our way back to the side of the barge, where servants were fending Arturo’s tethered disco off with a long pole. “The Mill Stream is a big whirlpool? Isn’t that kind of a dangerous place to take these toy boats?” We went down a side ladder and hopped onto the disco; the boat’s computer automatically shifted the transparent windbreak around the perimeter of the deck to make standing in the open air more comfortable for us.
“Think about it,” Arturo said. “Hovercraft are the only boats that can safely approach a whirlpool; anything else would get swept in. My plan is to peel away before the dropping of the ring, and sweep around to the far side for the best view. Meanwhile, there’s something here I wonder if you could help me lift.”
We crossed the deck, past a fixed buffet table with windscreens, nearly as far as the computer well, which resembled the prompter’s box on an opera stage. Arturo bent down and folded back a panel in the deck to reveal two large metal handles. We hauled on them and brought a wine rack up to the surface, where the flick of a knob locked it into place.
“What makes you think you’re not on good terms with the Boss?” I asked.
“The Hard Men seem to be everywhere lately, haven’t you noticed? I hear rumors they’re planning a military action on another planet. Something more concrete than their usual bragging. God forbid they should drag the Boss along.”
“I’d think they’d be crazy to give the Column an excuse to come in here,” I said. “Venezia seems to be skating on thin ice as it is.”
“They can’t come in,” Arturo said flatly. “That’s why this system is so important. The Column can’t come through our sun. Only very small craft can get through unless they’ve got the blessing. Unfriendly ships are deflected when they attempt the plunge.”
“How can that be?”
Arturo made a theatrical pause of folding down the outer breast of his tunic, buttoning the triangular flap into place. “I wish I could be sure you’re on my side. I could use an ally. I’ve seen you befriend the Boss, but there’s something—something you hold back. Do you believe in liberty?”
I was prepared for this moment. “I do. And if that’s his cause, I’m his man. But if he’s just out for himself…”
“I understand. If I could be sure you meant that—”
“Does this help?” I pulled at the watch chain on my belt and showed him its fob. It was my Master’s ring. It looked no different from any chapter-master’s, but there weren’t many of those.
His eyes glittered, but he shrugged. “A piece of metal. Could a working actor find the time to become a Master?”
“My chapter was broken up by the authorities—I have to eat. You’ve heard me talk with the Boss. Where do you think I learned so much of the old tongues?” He looked unconvinced. I tried again. “Let me put it another way…How far did you get?” That startled him. “Come on,” I continued. “I’ve seen you use breath control when you’re angry at Ivan, I’ve heard you paraphrase the proverbs. You’re not a Master, but you’ve trodden the path. As far as Questioner, perhaps?”
As if unwillingly, Arturo nodded. “All right…Master,” he said. “But you haven’t told the Boss that’s what you are.”
“No.” Something told me to go for broke. “I’m sorry, Questioner; I know your feelings for him. But I don’t know if he’s worthy of the trust so many chapters are placing in him. I’m not even absolutely sure he’s Evan Larkspur.”
“He must be! There are too many things only Larkspur could know. I grant you, I’ve had doubts, too. I wish I knew who was bankrolling him. Oh, the Doge and his family are first-rate people, Old Rite for four centuries; but there’s someone else behind them. And there’s the matter of his therapy—”
“For his leg, you mean? The real Larkspur didn’t have a limp, you know.”
“No, no, the limp comes and goes, it’s psychogenic; there’s a stammer, too, sometimes. Trauma from a suspend-sleep accident. He’s supposed to have been in the tanks too long, on the Barbarossa.” I felt my teeth gritting—how could the Pretender know about that? “He claims he doesn’t remember everything that happened—a head injury. But when he abandoned the ship he was far from the inhabited part of the galaxy; he survived the long shuttle trip back by going into suspend-sleep again and again—on top of his earlier overexposure. He’s lucky to have kept his sanity at all. But the therapist who comes from offworld once a month…there’s so much security around him…Something funny about that setup, I admit it.”
Paydirt! And before I could decide whether to press him further, he volunteered more:
“But he must be the real Larkspur, because he has the White Book. That would be where he got the alien technology he’s using to keep the Column out of our system. He calls it the Shy Lock—a Venice joke—”
“I get it.”
“I’m not giving away secrets—he hasn’t told anyone much. He had some small devices called Censers sent to all our Venezian trade legations and consulates throughout the human sphere. Somehow, just by being on a planet, the Censers affect the ships in orbit. The ships receive a blessing that will permit
them to pass the Shy Lock—but not if they’re Column-owned or Column-run. Our people were told it’s a telepathic process—the Censers actually communicate with the organic part of the ship’s computer brain and leave some posthypnotic suggestion behind. The ship will know how to pass the Lock when the time comes, but will forget the ‘password’ forever if the Column takes command of it.”
The same story Von Bülow’s people told; I’d hoped for better.
“If you got as far as Questioner,” I said, “you know there’s no such thing as telepathy.”
“I thought perhaps…the Masters kept the secret to themselves?”
“And lied to you earlier on the path? Never. This is some sort of cover story. But that’s good. We wouldn’t want him broadcasting the true details of how this Shy Lock works.”
“And you must admit,” Arturo insisted, “it is beyond all known technology for something broadcasting on this planet to prevent ships across space from accessing our sun. We would have thought it impossible—some sort of wave communication across praeterspace.”
“He claims to control the lock from here?” I asked.
“Yes. But—perhaps that’s a cover story, too. You don’t have to hang around the Hard Men too long to discover that they stand permanent guard on one floor of the Palace. But the Boss is far too clever to keep the Lock controls there.”
“I don’t know whether to share your faith or not. But it does sound like he’s got the resources we’d expect of Larkspur.”
Arturo looked relieved to have got all this off his chest. I was about to suggest joining forces when he turned toward the Bucentaur and hailed Julia at the rail. “If she comes on board, the Boss will follow,” he explained. He took a few steps toward her, but without waiting for help, she gathered her light festival skirt with one hand and came down the rope ladder to our deck like a Venezian born.
“No one new except tourists,” she said, “and some lesbian giantess who wants the Boss to talk archaeology with her. Let’s keep it a private party. We’ve reached the deep channel, haven’t we?”
“Hell, it’s almost time,” Arturo said, and dashed across the deck for the ladder. “I’ll get the Boss.”
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the sea. But Julia was right, it was now a dark blue, and raced under the boats’ containment skirts like a river at flood, crosswise to our course.
“Just how big is this whirlpool going to be?” I asked her.
“Big enough to present an ‘image of the sublime,’ ” she said, “or else the Boss is going to be exceedingly miffed.” She sketched dance steps across the big round deck, and when the boat’s computer managed to match her with music from hidden speakers, she looked as if she’d just been kissed. If only we could all be on vacation.
The Pretender appeared at the head of the ladder with Arturo. Malatesta was arguing with him, for some reason agitated about his leaving the Bucentaur. The Pretender finally yanked his arm away and rapped out a few angry words; he looked slightly drunk. The Doge yelled something I couldn’t make out, and the Pretender brayed back cheerfully, “Sorry I couldn’t stay to give away the bride! We’ll all meet at the reception after.” Then he clambered down to the deck of the Capriccio, Arturo following like a puppy.
Within seconds, the Pretender caught the beat of the computer music and neatly danced his way into Julia’s arms. The two of them made small circles in the middle of the ten-meter deck. Arturo looked on philosophically for a moment, then stepped over to the control well and spoke with the boat’s computer. From their conversation I gathered that the Maelstrom always appeared within a known and fixed area of the channel. The computer already knew this; it monitored the disco’s position via the synchronous satellite network and trimmed the drive props accordingly.
All the vessels were similarly equipped, and at this time, with a great deal of yelling back and forth and confused bumping, they pulled into their planned positions to view the spectacle. The Pretender and Julia waltzed obliviously.
In a few minutes, the twenty-odd boats were spaced out in a huge broken circle on the water, most of them near the Bucentaur, but a few on the opposite side with the Capriccio. The Doge’s mock-gondola turned tangent to the circle, and the crane’s arm swung out to point toward its center, the great “wedding ring” hanging from its cable just above the water. The sea beneath us was churning to a froth, choppy enough to bat at the air-containment skirts, though the constantly adjusting propeller vanes were sufficiently powerful to hold us all in place. The seabirds tore back and forth in the sky as if they’d gone mad. The universal sense of expectancy seemed so great as to physically buoy us up—but I suddenly realized it was the sea’s level itself that was rising, so rapidly it was like the deck driving into our feet. In a flash there were two opposing currents, not one, and a momentary fountain of white spume at the exact center of the circle.
The fountain subsided, to be replaced by a dark spot, slowly discernible as a dip, a dimple in the sea that grew steadily wider and deeper. Then our deck mounted up again, shaking us almost to our knees—we’d insensibly clustered at its center—and the bottom fell out of the sea in front of us with a roar like a cataract.
It was the Maelstrom, a churning hole in the water over a hundred meters in diameter and as deep as we could see. The eerie effect was redoubled by the way we hung in one place on the surface of the picture and by the hundreds of seabirds tracing another white circle in the pale haze fifty meters above the mill—hypnotized or stampeded by God knows what, perhaps the glittering fish trapped in the vortex. For a long moment, we were all held in suspense. But the ocean did not collapse back into itself, not yet, and breath returned, and even talk.
I could hear most of what the Pretender was shouting to Arturo. “…see anything…get any closer?”
Arturo looked as if he would have opened a vein for his Boss, but he had to shake his head. “…not safe…mouth…dilates in place.” He diffidently stepped back toward the computer well, getting as far as the wine rack.
The Pretender moved to the rail, shaking his head. “…wish I’d known…powered hang gliders…” Suddenly he pointed into the sky. “…has the right idea.”
I looked up and saw it, the only shadow in the sky, an ugly stub-winged flitter that must have approached at the last moment. As I watched, it eased into hover mode just beyond the confetti circle of racing birds. Julia caught my arm and leaned close to my ear. “Bet it’s televising this for the tourists.”
I nodded, but vaguely realized that there was something wrong with that—no televideo on Venezia. And then the flitter did an insane thing, dropping lower than the birds, close over the tumult in the water; one little downdraft and the idiot would be smashed into the sea, and he didn’t even get a better camera angle, he was closer to us than to the Maelstrom…
But I didn’t put it together until I chanced to see the sunbright pinprick skating across the deck, a spot of green so intense that daylight couldn’t wash it out, and I recognized it—
—a laser, the cold one that aims the gun—
—and I yelled for Arturo to get down, man! as the green dot ran up his pant leg and his white shirt like some flaming insect and fixed on his temple, when the gunman on the flitter must have pressed the button, and even above the roar of the water I heard the unmistakable whiffleball-and-whipcrack sound of the pulsed laser, the hot one—
And Arturo’s handsome blond head exploded like a melon hit with a sledge. His open-necked corpse pitched into the wine rack and carried it over into the computer well, heavy glass crashing into the console—
While the Pretender, Julia, and I scrabbled prone against the deck, nowhere to hide, the girl screaming Arturo’s name, but the flitter had dipped to one side, its wing-fans rotating, and now it veered up and away, its job done—
And the deck gave a great shudder; the windscreen retracted into the deck; the propeller vanes folded down into the railing; and I k
new the computer and the engines had gone dead.
“Shit,” the Pretender said, loud and clear, as the last of our air cushion hissed away, and we felt the disco begin its queasy, greasy slide into the current…
Only one vessel, a light three-meter manta, realized our plight in time to do anything. With a streaming-haired beauty at the manual controls, it slalomed across the whitecaps to our side, only to bump rubber fenders with us and rebound. One of the two passengers tossed a line and the Pretender caught it.
I heard them shouting something about tying it to the railing—I was at the computer well, ignoring the bile in my throat as I hauled Arturo’s headless body clear. But the blood-soaked wooden rack, weighted down with dozens of wine bottles, had collapsed into the narrow space—I couldn’t count on getting at the controls in time. I scuttled back toward Julia and the Pretender; I couldn’t walk erect anymore, since the flat deck was rocking like a real boat now.
The whirlpool was reeling us in faster and faster. The manta was trying to pace us, but there was little slack left on the line the Pretender held. I was going to yell something about not tying it on, the little manta props could never handle our drag, we’d just pull them in with us, but the Pretender was ahead of me. He threw a loop around Julia, and managed to tie it behind her despite her protests—“All of us!”—and he was still holding on with one hand, extending the other to me, when she was yanked back into the sea by the manta, line and all. For a split second the Pretender and I stood poised at the rail, the vortex howling immediately behind us, and one glance at the white water between our disco and the rapidly receding manta told us swimming was out of the question.
And then our end of the Capriccio’s deck pitched up almost vertical, we were dangling from the rail, and I got one glance down between my feet at the huge whirling maw awaiting us as we slid over the edge.
