Wells hesitated only a moment, but it was enough for Erickson. “Just as I thought,” she said, verbally pouncing. “The problem is not the weapons. It’s the reason we think we have for using them.”
“No prudent commander limits his options in advance,“Wells said with quick anger. “Yes, a unilateral attack has to be considered a possibility. But it wouldn’t be a first strike. They struck first, a long time ago.”
“Enough,” Erickson said, raising one hand. “Everything you say only confirms my initial decision. There will be no Triad while I’m Chancellor. I won’t be the one to put the Service on a war footing. You’re welcome to take your case to the individual planetary governments and try to persuade them to turn the Affirmation of Unity into something more substantial, something that can bear the weight of this kind of decision.”
“You overlook the likelihood that the worlds may be happy to have the Service deal with this, that in us they have exactly the central government they want,” Wells said.
“If so, they’re going to have to spell it out,” Erickson said curtly. The audience was over.
All the way back to his office in the Defense wing, Wells said nothing. He was too busy at first stilling the spurious emotions that had been stirred up in the conflict, and too busy after that digesting its substantive outcome. Neither explicitly included nor dismissed. Berberon trailed along, respecting Wells’s silence but regarding him with a combination of curiosity and apprehension.
Farlad met them at the door to the suite. “What did she say?” he asked hopefully.
“She said no,” was Wells’s succinct reply as he crossed the room and settled on one of the lounges. He stared at the floor as he massaged the back of his neck, aware that the others were watching him expectantly. “Teo, I’m even more grateful to you now for your suggestion,” he said at last. “It’s very important that Observer Berberon was there to see that display.”
“She did close the door rather firmly,” Berberon said with a weak smile in Farlad’s direction. Wells nodded, his expression grave. “More exactly, she left us with no choice but to ask a Vote of Continuance on her.” His face registering shock, Berberon shook his head vigorously. “Triad isn’t a recall issue.”
“It is for me.”
“Harmack, yesterday’s votes on Triad mean nothing in this context. Chancellor Erickson has been a first-rate administrator. No one has a grievance against her personally.”
“I have no grievance against her personally myself,” Wells said, raising his head to meet the Observer’s gaze. “But her attitude is reckless. It was one thing to be timid when we had no other choice. But only a fool or a coward would continue that posture now.”
“Blythe is neither a fool nor a coward,” Berberon said, a noticeable edge in his voice. “She took the stand she did on principle.”
“Perhaps,” Wells said in a tone that conceded no such thing. “Regardless, she’s wrong.”
“Harmack, this can’t be the only way we Can go,” Berberon said pleadingly.
Wells stretched out his legs and settled back against the cushions. “Actually I think she expects it. She as much as invited it. She acknowledged that the reaction has been critical. She made it a personal issue. She challenged us to show her that the Worlds stand with us. This will show her very clearly.”
Farlad sounded a note of caution. “We need to count the votes very carefully before going ahead with this. She may know she can withstand this and is hoping to hang you out to dry publicly.”
“Vote-counting be damned,” Wells said with a sidewise glance at Berberon. “I’ve got a principle at stake here too.“Berberon had found his way to a chair. “And who will you replace her with if you win? Yourself?”
“I’ve no interest in being Chancellor.”
“Who, then? You won’t sit for Rieke. Erickson won’t sit for Loughridge. Sujata hasn’t the experience. And Vandekar—well, Vandekar shouldn’t even be a Director, much less Chancellor. Like as not, you’ll go through all this only to elect Erickson all over again.”
“I don’t necessarily agree with your opinions of the candidates,” Wells said with equanimity. “What I would value is your opinion of where the requisite fourth Observer vote is most likely to come from.”
But rebellion had bubbled up from some heretofore unknown reservoir and taken command of Berberon’s tongue.“You’d better worry about where the first vote is coming from first,” he said, coming to his feet. “This time you want too much.”
Wells sat upright slowly, holding contact with Berberon’s defiant eyes. “I’ve never demanded anything from you, Felithe, least of all that you compromise yourself,” he said in a measured tone.
“Oh, not directly, no, that would taint the relationship,“Berberon said sarcastically. “You call your puppeteer, and the World Council dances, and the words come out of my mouth. You bloody Nines! Well, this time I won’t have it.”
“How little you understand us,” Wells said quietly.
“You .should wish that were so,” was Berberon’s harsh-edged reply. “I’ll stand against you with my vote, my voice, and all the debts I can call in. I supported your advancement to the Committee, Harmack, and I’ve done you a hundred smaller favors since then. But this time you’re wrong. Blythe Erickson belongs in the Chancellery, and Triad be damned.”
When Berberon was gone, Farlad cast an apprehensive glance in Wells’s direction.
Wells caught the glance and returned a wry smile. “No, I’m not going to retract what I said earlier. This wasn’t your fault.”
“Did you know that he knew?” Farlad asked cautiously.
“Yes and no,” Wells said. “He’s never said anything before, but I always assumed he believed I was a Nine. We are not that hard to pick out of a crowd, after all.”
“This makes matters awkward.”
“I doubt he has adequate proof to ask for my dismissal. You would have trouble proving it, even as a Second-tier Nine.”
“I meant his opposition.”
“Ah. It changes only the difficulty of the objective, not the objective itself.” Wells shook his head and laughed softly. “Of all the surprises—even Berberon has principles. Who would have thought he was hiding a diamond or two in his shit all these years?”
The laughter helped, but nonetheless Wells’s equanimity was bruised by three so closely spaced setbacks. Before long, he sent Farlad away and sealed himself within the cocoon of his suite to mend.
There were times it seemed as if he had been lighting the same fight forever, that the nits and gnats who kept coming forward to spar with him were determined to wear him down before he could ever face his real opponent. The only cure for that weariness of spirit was to retreat for a few hours, to take time to simply be.
Wells had one totem, one source of material comfort. From a voice-locked drawer he retrieved a small jeweler’s box, such as might hold a ring or a pair of earrings. Inside was a thumbnail-sized gold trigon comprised of three discontinuous bars. Besides Wells, only the metalsmith who had made it knew it existed. Only Wells knew what it was: the symbol of Triad, an insignia for a nonexistent command.
But he knew the kind of men that would wear it, the kind of ships they would employ, the task they would undertake. They would wear the gold triangle, not along with the traditional black ellipse but in place of it. It would be a symbol that set them apart, that raised them up. Looking at the example he held in his hand, he did not consider such thoughts to be mere wishes or hopes. The tangible, tactile reality of the gleaming emblem somehow made it easier to believe in that which was still unrealized.
As Wells was returning the insignia to its case his implant transceiver penetrated his meditations with the seven-tone signal that announced a page from the Nines. He had been half expecting it, since the third of the promised progress reports was overdue. But the voice he heard was not that of the researcher, or even a messenger, but of one of the most senior members of the Eighth Tier: Robert Chaisson.
A brilliant political historian with polymathic knowledge of pre-Reunion society, Chaisson was one of the five overtiers who had recommended Wells’s promotion to Eighth. At that time Wells had regarded him as the most likely candidate to join Eric Lange, the movement’s martyred founder, on the Ninth Tier. Four years later Wells understood the sociodynamics of the Eighth Tier well enough not to expect that, but he was still vaguely uncomfortable to have Chaisson treat him as an equal.
“How are you, Harmack?” Chaisson asked cheerfully.
“I’m well, Robert. Busy. A bit tired. Our paths haven’t crossed for a while now.”
“You have to get back down to Earth now and again.”
“I do, actually. It’s just that I never seem to have the time to come over to the Americas.”
“Maybe you just need a more compelling reason,” Chaisson said, continuing on before Wells could decide if the comment was said in pique or jest. “I understand you had a setback in Committee yesterday.”
It was no surprise that Chaisson knew; he had a web of contacts in Capital. “A temporary problem only, I expect.”
“I am glad to hear you so optimistic. Though it is disappointing in a way—I thought perhaps I would have a chance to lift your spirits. I’m calling to tell you your search has borne sweeter fruit than you imagined.”
“Thackery’s personal recs still exist?” Wells asked hopefully. .
“Presumably.”
The answer did not seem to make sense. “What do you mean?” Wells asked, less insistently than he would have if he had been talking to anyone else.
“It would be unusual to purge them while you still might need them, wouldn’t you say?”
“Damn you, stop playing. What are you trying to say?”
Chaisson laughed, a soft-edged sound like a bird’s wings fluttering. “That Merritt Thackery is alive. He’s living alone in the Susquehanna Valley, on property listed in the name of J. M. Langston.”
Wells felt his legs weaken under him even as his heart began to race. “Alive? How? He resigned as Director the year before I was born. He was old then, and that was forty-three years ago!”
“Not as old as you seem to think. Don’t forget that he did field work even after the Revision, almost right up to when he resigned. Directors weren’t time-bound then—that reform came later. Brian Arlett, the Fourth Tier who handled your request, says that biologically Thackery’s no more than a hundred and five—hardly remarkable. And there’s always been speculation that his journey through the spindle turned his odometer back, so to speak. There was even a cult of the Immortal centered on him—short-lived, though.” Chaisson chuckled deep in his throat at his own joke.
“I can hardly believe it,” Wells said, holding his head in his hands. “How can he have hidden from everyone for forty years and we find him in forty-eight hours?”
Chaisson laughed again. “You know the answer to that. We cheat. We can milk the databases in ways no legitimate user can. Arlett can tell you more, if it matters to you. He’s waiting to come on the line and give you a full report. My only role here is to steal his thunder.”
“Has Thackery been contacted? Does he know we’ve found him?”
“No to both. He hid himself purposefully and well. Arlett didn’t think we should give him a chance to destroy what you’re after.”
“He’s what I’m after—now.”
“The sentiment still applies. And besides—just as I wanted to be the one to tell you, I thought you would want to go see him first yourself.”
“I do, absolutely.” He glanced across the office at the clock. “I should be able to get downwell within the hour.”
“No hurry,” Chaisson said breezily. “A couple of Third Tiers are watching him. He won’t go anywhere without us knowing it.”
“Thank you.”
“Not me. Arlett saw to that, too. He really has done an excellent bit of service for you. You are planning to promote him for this, I assume?”
“Of course.”
“Just wanted to be sure you weren’t so excited that you forgot,” Chaisson said cheerfully. “Brian’s a good kid with a lot of potential. I’ve been aware of him for some time. Oh, and Harmack? When you’re done with Thackery, let me know. I should very much like to talk with him myself.”
Chapter 6
* * *
Refuge
Had he been there for any less urgent purpose, the dirt road might have been enough to make Harmack Wells turn back. Just as it had been described to him, it was the sort of road seemingly designed to enforce privacy. Unmarked, overgrown, and eroded, it offered no promise that anyone lived at the other end of it, much less the man who did.
But neither the steep slope nor the washboard surface of the road was an impediment to Wells’s slim-profiled skeeter. He guided the vehicle slowly through the shadowy tunnel until it ended, widening out into a clearing barely large enough to turn a nonflying car around in. The leaf-and-needle carpet covering the clearing showed no sign that another vehicle had ever disturbed it.
Leaving his skeeter parked on the road, Wells continued upslope on foot, on a path barely discernible from the rest of the terrain. Until entering the Pennsylvania Protectorate, he had not realized so much undomesticated forestland still existed in the densely populated eastern half of North America. Not that he had spent any time wondering about it: His last several visits had been confined to Capital and Benamira.
The canopy of leaves was so thick and the path so undulating that it was impossible to see the house until he was on top of it. It was a Swann self-contained, half buried in the hillside and cloaked in a shell of natural wood planking so light in color, it looked as though it were freshly cut. So disguised, it almost seemed to belong there.
Below the house, on the sunny south slope, was a sprawling ornamental garden, a living quilt of yellow and red and white blossoms. On the steepest parts of the slope the flowerbeds were terraced and the wood-slat walks became stairs. The detailed planning and diligent care evident in the garden made a sharp contrast with the neglected road and forest path.
Movement in the garden drew Wells’s eye: a man, his back to Wells, kneeling on one of the upper tiers. Wells picked his way to the nearest walkway and followed it upward. Drawing closer, he took note of the man’s thinning silver hair, the tray of tools resting to one side, the trowel being energetically wielded in one gnarled hand.
As Wells reached the same level as the gardener, the creak of the walkway boards under his full frame announced his presence. The man glanced up, then brushed moist black dirt from his hands and sat back on his heels. A thick, close-cropped white beard masked what would have been a familiar visage.
“I do not welcome guests,” he said. “Please leave the way you came.” There were many years and much travail in the lines of his face but a clear and determined light in his eyes.
Wells stepped toward him. “Do you know who I am?”
“No,” said the old man, sniffing as though to say he also did not care.
Wells drew another step closer. “I know who you are.” When the old man continued to silently regard Wells with open annoyance, Wells went on, “I know all about you. The Great Revisionist. First Ambassador to the D’shanna. Director of—”
“Spare me my biography,” said the man, turning away and plunging his hands into one of the tray’s several compartments. He deposited a double handful of peat in the hole before him, then sighed and hung his head at an angle. “I had rather hoped I had been forgotten.”
“Hardly,” Wells said, approaching within a metre. “Though, like most of my generation must, I thought Merritt Thackery was dead. Or do I take you wrong? Is that what you want?”
Thackery said nothing as he pressed the soil into place around the last of a new cluster of zinnias, kept his silence as he gathered up his tools and took the tray in hand. Turning his back on Wells, he started up the sloping walkway, his strides made deliberate by age.
Wells follow
ed Thackery at a respectful distance. When Thackery went to place his tray in a large wooden storage box nestled against the house, Wells jumped forward to lift the heavy lid. But Thackery made no acknowledgment that the younger man was even there.
“I mean I know everything about you,” Wells said as Thackery washed his scarred hands under an outdoor spigot.“Even things you may not know. And things you may not want others to know.”
But still Thackery showed no spark of interest, almost as though he were deaf to Wells’s words. He wiped his hands casually on his trouser legs, then moved toward the door.
Not being recognized had been an affront; being ignored drove a needle deep into Wells’s ego. “Do you think this is all it will take?” he called out angrily. “Are you waiting for me to get tired of being ignored and go away?”
“No,” Thackery said, pausing on the threshold. “I am waiting for you to stop trying to impress me and tell me what you want.”
“Then you’ll talk with me?”
Thackery!s eyebrow lifted in surprise. “You would have had to go to a great deal of trouble to find me. I know, because I went to a great deal of trouble not to be found. You didn’t intend to let me refuse, did you?”
Wells stared a moment. “No.”
Thackery nodded. “Then you’d better come inside.”
The house had been as completely reworked on the inside as it had on the outside. Only the positions of the sun jacket, the regen inputs, and other elements of the environmental system marked it as a Swann. Many of the interior walls had been removed, and several ceilings raised, so that instead of several small rooms, there was a single elongated and irregularly shaped chamber. At one end a spiral staircase led to a rooftop observation deck, visible through the sloping high-wall glass of the sun jacket.
It seemed almost like the great hall of a castle from a new medieval age. Aside from the light fixtures, virtually none of the common home technology was in evidence. Nowhere did Wells espy a netlink projector, or even a furniture grouping oriented for a concealed one. And to reinforce the impression, despite all the glass, the interior seemed shadowy and somber.
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