by Nancy Kress
She couldn’t think of any answer.
“I got train tickets for oh six hundred hours tomorrow,” Uncle Martin said. “Amanda, you look fantastic.”
“Thank you,” Amanda said absently. It still didn’t make any sense.
NINETEEN
ABOARD THE MURASAKI
Kaufman and Marbet stood in the conference room aboard the Solar Alliance Defense Navy warship Murasaki, having the first shouting argument of Kaufman’s life.
Initially they had faced the torrent calmly if tensely, each determined to row upstream until the other was convinced. Right after docking, a sullen MP, heavily armed, had shown them to this room. Another MP conducted Magdalena elsewhere. Kaufman, expecting to be met by the ship’s commander if not by Ethan McChesney himself, had protested this, but the somber MP had ignored him.
Now Kaufman said, “If it weren’t for Magdalena, we wouldn’t have ever gotten aboard this ship. McChesney trusts her, not us.”
“Then he’s as big a fool as you are, Lyle. She’s not trustworthy. It’s in every line of her, every movement. She doesn’t care about the artifact being aboard, or what it might be used for. She doesn’t even care that Stefanak is dead and Pierce is in power except as it affects her private plans and business interests. And Stefanak was a former lover!”
For some reason, this angered Kaufman more than the rest. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” Marbet said coldly. “Much as you’d like to be in Stefanak’s former place. God, she’s old, and all too used, and you’re still sniffing around her like some dog around a bitch in heat.”
“If that’s the level your much-vaunted ‘sensitivity’ shows you, I’m glad I don’t share it.”
“No chance that you ever will. You see about as much as any man blinkered by lust. She’s using you, and using McChesney, too. But at least he isn’t frothing with testosterone, I hope.”
“Which, in your opinion, I am.”
“Yes!”
“Are you sure what you’re experiencing isn’t insight, but jealousy?” Kaufman said, and immediately regretted it. He’d crossed some emotional line, and he knew it, and he’d also left himself open to the retort he knew she’d make. The torrent was swirling them both downriver.
“Jealousy, Lyle? You really flatter yourself. Since we first landed on World, you’ve been far less sexually appealing than you apparently think you are. You’ve been self-pitying, and self-absorbed, and making a fool of yourself around that woman. I haven’t been in the least tempted to jealousy, since that implies desire. You’re about as desirable to me as a tomcat licking both its wounds and its swollen prick.”
Now Marbet looked as if she’d said too much. Which she had. There were words, Kaufman knew, which could not be unsaid, and not be forgotten. They lingered forever, like subtle poison. There were good reasons he’d never married.
She knew she’d gone too far. Hand to her lips, she said, “I’m sorry, Lyle. That was a terrible thing to say.”
But she didn’t say it was untrue.
He said stiffly, “We should get back to the practical decisions here. McChesney is going to walk through that door in a few minutes, and he’s going to listen to Magdalena and to me and to you, and then he’s going to decide what to do. It would be better if we’d already decided what we think should be done.”
“Take the artifact to the Solar System, where it should have been all this time, protecting humanity with setting prime eleven. Radio everybody at every star system we pass through that we’re doing that. With so much public attention, Pierce will have to let it go on to Mars, and have to leave us alone as heroes who discovered and corrected Stefanak’s lies.”
“That’s one possibility,” Kaufman said.
“We’re being overheard, aren’t we?” Marbet said suddenly. “That’s why you look like that!”
Kaufman didn’t know how he looked, and didn’t care. He said irritably, “Of course we’re being overheard—don’t be naive.”
“Then why bother to—”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Kaufman said, thereby settling the pointless, stupid, destructive score. He should have told her instead about the official surveillance record, about the necessary military games to get your point of view on it. For later, just in case. By not telling her, he’d also thrown away a valuable aid to rebuilding a working relationship between them. But she’d goaded him into it. Women.
He wasn’t supposed to be able to be goaded like that. His career had been built on that negative capability.
The door to the conference room opened and Magdalena and McChesney came in, Magdalena saying, “Well, since the game’s up anyway…” She smiled pointedly at Kaufman. Oh God, Magdalena had been listening, as well as McChesney. She’d heard what Marbet had said about lust.
McChesney said hoarsely, “I turned on the Faraday cage. Let’s talk.”
Colonel Ethan McChesney had been in SADC Intelligence his entire military life. He’d masterminded the capture of the Faller whom Marbet had learned to communicate with, the only human to ever succeed in capturing a Faller alive. McChesney had been in charge of several Special Projects for Sullivan Stefanak, and as far as Kaufman knew, had carried out all of them with competence, thoroughness, discretion, and as much morality as was possible in Intelligence. That had made him invaluable to Stefanak, whose own morality was more intermittent. If you’re going to ride political winds, it’s good to have an anchored pole somewhere in case you need it.
The same qualities, however, now made him dangerous to Nikolai Pierce. McChesney was a loyal, much-too-knowledgeable operative of a deposed enemy. The most expedient thing for Pierce was to empty McChesney of his considerable covert knowledge with a Pandya Dose, and then dispose of him. The only reason Pierce had not already done this was that he probably didn’t know yet where McChesney, in his Special Compartmented Information project known only to a few people, physically was located. It was only a matter of time before Pierce found out. Somebody among those few people would be forced to tell.
McChesney knew all this as well as Kaufman, probably better. McChesney looked terrible. When Kaufman had seen him last, two years ago, Ethan McChesney had been a sleek, quick man with the comfortably padded body and shiny dark hair of an otter. Now he was too thin, his hair dull, his movements clumsy. McChesney had given his life and loyalty to an organization that was now trying to kill him. For some men, betrayal was worse than death.
The four of them sat at one end of the big foamcast conference table. Kaufman shoved the quarrel with Marbet out of his mind and concentrated. “Let’s start by going over the facts, all right? The Protector Artifact is aboard this ship, Ethan. We know that beyond a doubt.” Knowledge pinned on the behavior of an hysterical alien child, he didn’t say.
McChesney didn’t try to deny it. “Yes. The artifact’s been here since you brought it up on the Alan B. Shepard three years ago. It was stowed on the Murasaki when you docked with us for supplies, on General Stefanak’s direct orders. Only two people were told at this end: me and Commander Chand.”
Kaufman changed tactics. He wasn’t going to have to bargain information out of McChesney. On the contrary, McChesney looked like a man glad to finally be able to share a crushing burden. Kaufman said, with sympathy but not too much sympathy, “And you’ve been responsible for it ever since.”
“Yes. The crew hasn’t even been rotated, and of course they all wonder about that, but there’s nothing anyone can do. Until Magdalena’s ship came through the tunnel, we’d had only one previous contact for two years.”
Completely out of touch. Only physical objects, not message carrying waves, passed through a space tunnel. McChesney had orders not to send anything through to Caligula space, the military outpost on the other side, and nothing had come through for him. The entire crew of the Murasaki might as well have been missing in action, which was probably what their relatives had been told. No wonder the MPs in the docking bay had looked unhappy.
Kaufman encouraged him. “So you had no idea of the growing power of Pierce’s faction, or that General Stefanak was threatened.”
“None.”
“And you learned of the coup … when?”
“When Magdalena’s ship came” through. We’re old friends,” McChesney said, and Kaufman was careful not to look at Marbet. “I couldn’t let her aboard, but she’d recorded recent newscasts and beamed them aboard for me.”
In exchange for letting her down to the planet, Kaufman thought. No, there was more to it than that. He waited to hear what.
Magdalena obliged. “Come on, Ethan, you might as well tell them all of it. When I gave you the news that Stefanak might go under, you asked me to find a place on that backwater planet to hide the artifact from Pierce, if it came to that.”
Kaufman was startled. He hadn’t expected that. But it made sense. McChesney knew what Pierce was—knew that Pierce, unlike Stefanak, was crazy enough to actually use the artifact at setting thirteen. Take it to the Faller home system and try to fry the enemy, despite the risks to spacetime.
McChesney said, “I know Pierce from way back. Stefanak was different. He was a good soldier. Pierce doesn’t listen to anyone he doesn’t want to hear. He’d do it, Lyle.”
“I know he would,” Kaufman said somberly.
“And anyway, Ethan,” Magdalena said, “if you had to run, it’d be a hell of a lot easier to run without that artifact. Which the entire military is looking for.”
McChesney was too schooled to look irritated at the charge of self-interest. Or maybe too honest. No one wanted to end up dead. Nor did McChesney pretend that the Murasaki could mount a convincing defense, warship though she was, against the kind of force Pierce could send through the tunnel. No way.
Magdalena added, “And as I already told Ethan, I found a place on World to hide the thing. Not in the Neury Mountains where you dug it up, that’ll be the first place they look. An underwater cave on a remote island, big enough and isolated enough. Marbet can bribe the local natives into silence.”
She goes off on long trips in that skimmer, I don’t know where,” Ann had said of Magdalena’s stay in Gofkit Shamloe.
“Good,” McChesney said. “There are two problems. First, I couldn’t take it down before now because if Pierce’s forces come through and the Murasaki isn’t in orbit around the tunnel, they’ll forcibly board her and I don’t know how they’ll deal with the crew. I’m responsible for these men. It seemed better to take the chance that Pierce wouldn’t be able to locate me right away and wait for the Sans Merci to get back from World. She can take the artifact down. With luck, they’ll never know she was here. Her passage shows up nowhere on the Murasaki records. They’ll search the ship, they won’t find the artifact, none of my men will know anything, even under drugs, except me and the commander. Chand will show up on the records as having died of cardiac arrest four months ago.”
“Chand will go with me in my flyer through the tunnel,” Magdalena said. “You didn’t think I was going to accompany the artifact on its trip back down to the planet, did you, Lyle?”
Kaufman ignored her. “And you?”
McChesney said evenly, “Pierce knows I have other reasons to avoid his questioning besides the artifact.”
Suicide. The two soldiers gazed at each other. For some men, yes, betrayal was worse than death.
Kaufman said only, “It sounds like the best plan to me, Ethan. But you mentioned a second obstacle.”
“Yes.” McChesney glanced at Magdalena, and something furtive in the look alerted Kaufman. Beside him, Marbet suddenly sat up straighter.
McChesney said slowly, “The second obstacle is Dr. Thomas Capelo. He’s aboard.”
Nothing had ever surprised Kaufman so much in his life. But … it made sense, sort of. Put Tom where the artifact was so that—
“Laslo! Where is he?”
“Who?” McChesney said. Magdalena rose to her feet, knocking over her chair. Kaufman found it hard to look at her face.
“Laslo Damroscher! My son! He was with Capelo!”
“There isn’t anyone with Dr. Capelo, Magdalena,” McChesney said.
“You’re lying! Laslo’s here!”
McChesney looked both apprehensive and bewildered. “No, only Dr. Capelo was brought aboard. Much later than the artifact—just a few months ago. He—”
“Give me my son!” Magdalena said, and her voice rang of splintering glass.
Kaufman rose. “Magdalena, if Colonel McChesney says he’s not here, then he’s not. Stefanak’s men—”
“If you’re lying to me, Ethan, I’ll have your liver, you know I will. I want to search every square inch of this ship for myself.”
Kaufman made a gesture to McChesney that Magdalena couldn’t see: Let her. After a long moment, McChesney nodded. Kaufman said, “You can search the ship, Magdalena. But first you have to remove your flyer from your ship and let the artifact be loaded onto it. The artifact has to start down to World. After that, the colonel and I will go over the ship with you. Not before.”
“Still negotiating, Lyle?” she said with a flash of her old mockery. But she couldn’t sustain it. The strain was too great. “All right … load the fucking thing.”
McChesney said patiently, “You’ll have to give the orders to your crew. Bring the ship into cargo-exchange configuration with the Murasaki.”
She didn’t move. Kaufman took her arm and gently pulled her toward the door. She shook him off but followed McChesney out, leaving Kaufman and Marbet alone.
Marbet said, “When she shatters, she’ll rip up the galaxy if she can.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure her son is dead?”
“As sure as I can be without having been an eyewitness. I told you about the recording. That was Tom’s voice. I think Stefanak had a decoy artifact location set up in the Belt, something for his enemies to find if they looked hard enough. I think he had Tom housed there, too, for whatever reason. Then, after Laslo accidentally stumbled across the site, Stefanak decided to move Tom. I don’t know why, or why he put Tom here. Maybe Tom knows.”
Marbet said, “We didn’t even ask to see him!”
It was true. Chagrined, Kaufman said, “Magdalena was so…”
“I know. Lyle, she’s not completely sane. You can’t rely on her, no matter how much you think you need her. In fact, why do you need her, now that we’ve found Tom?”
“I don’t know yet. Let me think. Don’t lecture me, Marbet.”
Her green eyes darkened. “I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to comment. Tell me what else I’m supposed to do or not do. Am I going down to the planet with the artifact as Magdalena said, to—what was it?—‘bribe the local natives into silence’?”
“Of course not. You and I and Magdalena and the commander have to all be out of the World system before Pierce’s force arrives, if it does arrive. And Tom, too. A good thing Magdalena’s flyer will seat six. Our flyer is still on World. The Sans Merci will have to vaporize it, in case Pierce does land a detail on the planet. Come on, let’s get McChesney to take us to Tom.”
She didn’t get out of her chair. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“Essa.”
Oh, God, he had forgotten her. The alien had been nothing but trouble since the beginning.
“Don’t look so put-upon, Lyle,” Marbet said acidly. “If it weren’t for Essa, you wouldn’t know the damn artifact was here in the first place.”
He said evenly, “Essa can go back down to the planet in Magdalena’s ship. That’s where she belongs. Are you coming to talk to Tom?”
She rose silently and followed him.
McCnesney’s ship came alongside. With the two cargo bays sealed to each other, no one could see what was transferred. This was how the artifact had been moved from the Alan B. Shepard to the Murasaki three years ago. Kaufman had been aboard. Supposedly he had been in charge of the entire expedition to dig u
p, investigate, and transport home the artifact—but he had never been told that the artifact was being left on the Murasaki. Suddenly, he wanted to see the thing for himself.
McChesney and Magdalena stood inside the joined cargo bays. Her crew trundled the artifact, resting in a metal ring mounted on a wheeled platform, from one ship to the other. The artifact looked exactly as Kaufman remembered. A sphere of dull gray that looked like metal but was actually an allotropic form of carbon that resembled, but wasn’t, a known class of fullerenes. Spaced evenly around its circumference were seven protuberances, each a small raised crater. Inside each crater were, two nipples, spaced apart. The craters were marked in primes, although apparently the unknown makers had also considered “one” a prime: one, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, each indicated by raised dots outside the crater.
To activate a given setting, you had to depress both nipples. Kaufman’s team, under the leadership of Tom Capelo, had tested settings prime one, prime two, prime three. Prime five had, sometime during fifty thousand years of burial on World, acquired two small rocks wedging its nipples inward, which meant that setting prime five had been permanently depressed. Causing, according to Syree Johnson, the protection of World against the weapon that had fried the entire rest of the World star system. Also causing, according to Ann Sikorski and Dieter Gruber, the quantum-effect probability field that had led Essa and her people to evolve shared reality.
Settings prime seven, eleven, and thirteen had only been worked out mathematically, by Tom Capelo. They had not been tested. Unless you counted the “test” by the Fallers, presumably at setting prime seven, that had irradiated the entire human-colony star system of Viridian. Millions of people had died.