Stone glared at me. “This person has no authority to negotiate anything. No official position. In fact, she’s in custody, waiting trial for possession of Invidi technology.”
So much for friendliness.
Venner angled her shoulders toward me and her amber eyes looked me over again without meeting my own. “The Invidi ship, yes. I should like to talk to you about this ship that so interests my Invidi colleague.”
I bet he won’t tell you anything about it. “I’d be happy to discuss anything you wish, but first get the Q’Chn out of the rings and let us make sure the station functions properly,” I said. “The situation is serious and we’re not sure of the cause. Have any of your crew attempted to access the opsys core in the center of this structure?”
Venner tilted her head, a H’digh negative. “No.”
“Good. It’s an unusual system because it was built onto existing non-Confederacy technology. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be dangerous.”
“It is unacceptable for any of your people to be in this structure, even the opsys core. I cannot guarantee their safety. Both because of my Q’Chn comrades, and also because my crew becomes nervous if their identities are known.”
“Please, only three engineers. I’ll start repairing the comm system myself first.”
“Very well,” said Venner. “Three only. Unarmed.”
“You can’t ask them to go defenseless against the Q’Chn,” protested Stone.
Nothing is a defense against the Q’Chn, I thought. And Gamet’s people could conceal hand weapons in their toolkits if she wanted them to.
“Agreed,” I said, and turned to go back down the corridor to the core.
“Wait.” Venner’s light voice snapped. “We talk.”
I groaned inwardly. How much more time wasted?
“What about the Q’Chn?” said Stone. “Those sections in Alpha are important.”
“What about your lower levels?” said Venner. “Are their residents not important also?” She looked directly at me, and my stomach twisted in a knot of fear.
“Of course.” Stone looked from her to me, confused. His hairline was dark with sweat and he kept reaching up to rub the base of his throat.
Still hasn’t taken that inhibitor, I thought.
“Maybe she can’t get them out,” I said to him. “Maybe the New Council is not in control of the Q’Chn at all.”
We both looked at Venner but she ignored the jab. As if sick of the wordplay, she signaled to the other rebel with a single lithe movement. He had remained silent and covering us from the other side of the lobby.
“I wish to speak to Halley. Alone.” She used simplified Con Standard and pointed at me with her elbow, H’dighstyle.
Stone seemed about to argue, then, to my relief, gathered his dignity about him and allowed himself to be shepherded back along the corridor. He refused to meet my eyes. Probably suspected me of conniving with the New Council. Hell, I thought bitterly, if Florida can suspect me, why not Stone?
“Why are you here?” I said.
Venner tilted her elbow in the direction Stone had gone. “He thinks it is to harass the Confederacy.”
“Killing hundreds of people and taking over a warship could be described as harassment, yes.”
Venner let the sarcasm slide past her, as Henoit always did. “What do you think?”
I took a deep breath while I tried to think what to do. Dissemble? Try and draw out information? But while we stood here chatting the Q’Chn might be killing people in Alpha and the opsys degenerating past repair.
“I think An Serat persuaded you to come, by offering the New Council certain technology you want badly. I think you’re unable to use the jump point back or plot safe passage through Central without his help. I think you can’t stay too long, or ConFleet will come back through the jump point and overwhelm you. It won’t matter if Stone grants you access to Jocasta—ConFleet doesn’t respect neutrality.”
I paused to give her a chance to react, but she was too experienced for that.
I went on. “You don’t want to run in flatspace because there’s nothing out here at the edge of the Confederacy and you’ll be alone here, possibly for years. Your best weapons, the Q’Chn, are developing minds of their own and to keep your tenuous grip on this station, you’ve had to spread your forces thin. Captain Venner, I think you should be asking me for help. You’re stuck.”
Her face and body were still, but something in her scent changed. Even through the fog of the inhibitor, it was enough to make the back of my neck cold.
“You forget,” she said. “We have won a great victory. We have shown the Nine and unaligned worlds that Con-Fleet is not all-powerful. We have taken one of their largest ships.”
“You need a Bendarl or Invidi to jump it, though. You’re still stuck.”
“So are you.” She walked around me and stopped on the other side, so I had to turn to face her. Close up, I could see the uneven pigment on her face was indeed freckles from some kind of exposure to radiation. Her long, tight plaits were loose near the scalp, as though she’d tossed in her sleep.
“You are a traitor in ConFleet’s eyes,” she continued. “It will look like you stole Invidi technology and brought it to us. They’ll never trust you again. Why not stay with us?”
Coming on top of Florida’s comment and Stone’s suspicious gaze, it nearly made me laugh. Events seemed determined to push me into the New Council’s arms. Venner’s arms. The idea appealed enough to make me edge backward and hope the inhibitor was not losing potency. Or that Henoit’s presence was not inciting my hormones to indiscretion. He’d left me alone when I was with Bill earlier, but I could feel something now. Not much, just warmth and a feeling of physical well-being, dampened by the inhibitor.
“I did consider asking you for help once,” I said. “And I might again, if it wasn’t for the Q’Chn. I can’t accept them as partners. Not knowing what they have done, and might do.”
She was silent for a moment, her eyes lowered. It made me uncomfortable—it was such a human posture, and one I’d never seen Henoit use. I couldn’t gain any idea what it might mean—was she also uncomfortable with the Q’Chn, but didn’t want to admit it?
“I presume you know about my personal connection with the New Council?” I didn’t want to drag Henoit into this, but if he was going to be useful...
“You were bonded with Henoit.” She pronounced his name the H’digh way, with a guttural cough like a big cat’s. “Tell me, ex-Commander Halley, have you been able to forget your H’digh husband?”
“Why do you ask?” I could see nothing in her smooth face.
“I thought you might need some guidance in our ways. I, too, have lost a spouse, and I imagine the nature of this loss could be a surprise to an outworlder.”
“I can get guidance from other H’digh.”
Venner stretched the muscles of her neck luxuriously. “Ah, but they won’t tell you what you want to know. They will say you are bound together for eternity. His soul is waiting in that place between now and the other. They’ll say when your soul leaves this life it, too, will cross into there. Then you will journey together into the other.”
“The other?”
Venner tightened her forearms in a H’digh shrug. “Whatever lies beyond this world. We have dozens of interpretations. I favor the idea that one’s essence is dissipated and becomes part of the universe.”
“But dissipated together?”
“That’s right.” She watched my face closely. “He did tell you it was forever, didn’t he?”
Nor death shall us part. I shook my head to clear away the echo of his voice. “Yes, but in our culture such words are no more than expressions of desire to stay together. Not...” Not fact.
“If you join us, I can help you make it no more than words.” “Even if I believed you, which I don’t,” I added hastily, “how can you break the bond? Have you done it?” “I do not know if it is possible for an outw
orlder, but we can try.” I wanted to be rid of Henoit, didn’t I? “What happens to the soul that’s waiting?”
“I don’t know,” said Venner. “Some people say it wanders, unable to cross over, and eventually becomes one of the dark creatures that trouble dreams.”
“And you?” “My soul, you mean?” She laid her arm on the rail next to mine, and leaned closer. She was trying me out. Seeing if I’m going to swoon or start agreeing with everything she said.
“My soul,” said Venner slowly, “would rather spend eternity alone than with my late spouse. Do you not feel the same?”
To my dismay, I could feel Henoit’s presence growing stronger, my body responding to it. Hot, itchy all over. “Henoit believed the New Council needed the Q’Chn. I think he was wrong.”
She stepped back, putting an acceptable distance between us again. “The New Council needs a partner with strength. So do the Nine Worlds.”
“How can you live with a partner who may turn on you at any second?”
“As the Confederacy turned on you?” said Venner. “As I recall, your spouse brought a Q’Chn here to liberate you from a blockade when the Confederacy did nothing.”
“We’re well aware of the Confederacy’s flaws. Why do you think we applied for neutrality? Neutral or not, I told Henoit and I’m telling you, we don’t deal with terrorists.”
You sacrifice too much in the present for your ideal future, I was going to add. The image that entered my mind was of Will’s face as he turned to follow the U.N. guide out the door of the hangar, and myself, too preoccupied with An Serat to even explain or say good-bye...
“If they court-martial you, you’ll spend the rest of your life in a rehab colony. I have seen ConFleet-run camps.” Venner’s voice was quite level. H’digh don’t rant. “I would kill myself rather than become an inmate.”
“My future is my business,” I said. “Right now I’m assisting the staff of this station and we need you to get the Q’Chn out of Alpha.”
She straightened almost imperceptibly.
Here it comes, I thought. What she really wants.
“Tell me something, then. And I will recall the Q’Chn.”
“What?”
“Why does the Invidi want that ship you stole from Con-Fleet?”
“Which Invidi?” I stalled.
“Ex-Commander, neither of us has time for games. I need to know why An Serat wanted to come to this station and what’s keeping him here.”
“Not to assist in your glorious victory?”
Her fine, hairless brows twitched with irritation. In a human it would have been a scowl. “I mean victory in the sense of a battle, not the whole war. We took Vengeful. Now we should retreat. But the Invidi will not come.”
I spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness that I thought she’d accept as sincere. “I don’t know why he stays. Why don’t you just go and leave him?”
“I cannot. My superiors...” She broke off. “How did you steal the ship? It should not be possible.”
“Its programming was incomplete at the time. I suspect Serat has since fixed it.”
“A jump drive?”
“Yes.” I couldn’t let myself even hint that Farseer might be able to jump off-network. To the New Council it would offer the ultimate escape.
“You have worked with the Serat,” said Venner. “If you have information about his plans, remember that it is in your interest for us to speedily leave here. The only way we can do this is with him. Our ship is set to jump for him.”
“Where is he now?”
“Somewhere in this center part of the station,” was the careless reply.
“But you said none of your crew had touched the core!” I stupidly banged my fist on the rail, which hurt.
“He is not my crew.”
“I need to find him and see what damage he’s done. You said you’d let me go in there.”
She inclined her head. “If you can persuade him to leave, do so. If he gives you information, I require it.”
“And the Q’Chn?”
“I shall attempt to recall them. But not while you are listening.”
I walked away from the lobby. When I looked back from the corner of the corridor, she waved, an ironic lift of her hand.
Thirty-two
The comm link to Alpha was out when I tried to contact Murdoch halfway along the corridor from Venner. All I could do at the moment was hope Venner would keep her word and call off the Q’Chn. My job was fixing the opsys problems so the comm system wouldn’t go down like this.
I met no Q’Chn in the center corridors or as I climbed down the tubes that were tunnels when the gravity field was off. Down to Level Eight, Section Two. The last time we had a Q’Chn on the station I did this in the dark, without gravity.
Down the ladder, past the crawler crossing, past entries to the rooms on either side. Finally my boots thudded on the uneven floor of the inner corridor, which formed the wall of the core. I counted the hatches under my feet and the doors to rooms over my head. The section names were written neatly on the light strips that ran along the wall above. Bare corridors up here, panels in various shades of gray and blue, conduits and fibers open for easy access. Transit passengers and tourists didn’t come to the inner corridors, only those residents who worked here.
I tried to keep my mind on counting the sections and rehearsing what I’d have to do to the opsys, but Venner’s words echoed in my ears. You are a traitor in their eyes. Murdoch once said I’d make a fine pirate, although he didn’t mean it as a compliment. The New Council were fighting for what I’d always believed in—equal rights for all sentient beings, whether members of the Confederacy or not. I just didn’t agree with their means. Yet the means we could use with a clear conscience—peaceful protest, lobbying the Confederacy Council, development of stronger links between the Four and the Nine—seemed so ineffective.
And what was it she’d said about Henoit? Could I rid myself of his strange presence? It would be good to live with Bill without Henoit peering over our shoulders, so to speak. At the moment, I didn’t even know if it was Bill who turned me on or Henoit; whether it was I who turned Bill on or H’digh pheromones somehow working through me. Hell of a mix-up. But Venner’s alternative sounded unpleasant for the soul, or whatever, cut loose in the afterlife. Even if I didn’t believe in it, Henoit had, and maybe for his species this afterlife had substance of a kind. I didn’t want to damn him for eternity any more than I wanted to spend it with him.
Nearly there, next section.
The core held much of the Tor technology we’d used when we built Jocasta, although cleansed and now inactive. Which must be why An Serat was in here now.
A quick bioscan of the center told me nobody was there at all, including the New Council crew and myself. So I gave up the scan as useless and headed for Section Two; there was an uplift access tube that ran the length of the core on that side. We used it to move maintenance equipment within the core. I suspected some of the cannier traders such as Trillith also used it to move merchandise, although this was supposed to be done via the outer freight tubes that went straight from the spokes to loading bays.
The larger hatches on the freight tube side were the only way an Invidi could get into the core. He’d never fit through the crawlways designed for maintenance bots and modified for humans. The original accessways hadn’t been that large, either. Nobody but the Invidi knew what the Tor had looked like, and they weren’t telling, but my guess was small, possibly smaller than humans, and maybe multi-limbed like the K’Cher and Leowin.
I reached the freight crawler safety doors, which were solid, unlike the clear uplift doors. The “open” sequence on the controls worked, and they widened slowly. The crawler shaft stretched left and right, a gray tunnel lined with a frieze of darker conduits and pipes. The entry hatch in the base of the crawler shaft yawned open. I sat down on the edge of the tunnel and slid down into the hatch. Within the entry hatch I could see the walkway that ran
beside the core at right angles to the tunnel.
There was a short ramp down onto the walkway from the entry hatch. The walkway was a narrow, two-and-a-half-meter-high passage, surrounded left, right, and below by the flickering surface of Jocasta’s opsys core, and bounded by a guide rail running alongside to prevent people touching the core. The space remained in half-light, like the final moments of a fine day before evening. I’d forgotten how the catwalk rattled under one’s boots, how stale and metallic the air always tasted in here.
A large figure blocked the path ahead.
“An Serat,” I called, not wanting to approach him suddenly from behind. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t turn, or acknowledge me, other than to say, “Go away.”
I approached a few more steps. “You need to stop whatever you’re doing to this system. You’re causing it to malfunction and you threaten the lives of people who live here.” We’d attached color-coded tags to the functions Engineering accessed regularly, and this one was purple and green. Tiny traceries of energy skittered across the surface.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“I inquire further.” The voicebox translated his next word as something like “Tranoradariana,” but that couldn’t have been right.
“I don’t know that name,” I interrupted. “Please explain.”
“Whom you know as Tor. They are here.”
“No, they’re not. We overlaid it.”
The Tor hardware contained the necessary directions for its use, in the same way directions for biological entities like ourselves are encoded in our DNA. When building Jo-casta, the challenge was to replace—overwrite—change the Tor directions to Invidi-derived Confederacy codes. If An Serat found any areas where he could reactivate the Tor directions, the entire station was in trouble. We’d have to evacuate if we couldn’t keep our opsys “clean” of Tor elements.
An Serat rocked once. “I have methods you cannot comprehend.”
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