Should he have let her go?
No.
Was he going to let her go?
No.
Thinking about it, he smiles. Listening to the soft chittering of birds through the open windows, the muted swash of the sea beyond the hill, and, feeling the sharp edge of the salt air, he smiles.
x
The receive channel on the relay ship opens for nanounits.
The monitor blinks green, signifying that the relay has been completed.
The Brother at the controls touches one plate, a stud, begins the quick sequence to take the ship into underspace to wait for the next transmission.
Once the small ship is underspace, he stabilizes the controls, touches the replay stud, and waits for the equipment to return the message to real time.
The image on the screen is that of Brother Geidren, current domni of the Council.
“By order of the Council, all Brothers and Sisters of the Order are hereby requested to give their full prayers to the Congregation of the Fallen One, in accordance with the Writ of Perception.
“Though all will not be accomplished that might, though the hours of the very stars are numbered, still we persevere until each is weighed and numbered.”
The screen blanks.
The Brother frowns.
Like all Brotherhood quicksends, it has a double message, and for the first time in many years, he does not understand the logic behind the second message.
In effect, the Brotherhood is being disbanded, being told to join and fully support the Church of the Fallen God while continuing the basic goals of the Brotherhood.
The relay pilot pinches his fat lips together.
The command releases the ship to him, for whatever purpose, and the same effect apparently will take place throughout the Brotherhood.
He rechecks the authentications, and taps a query into the sender. The whole idea of the message is absurd. There will always be a Brotherhood, Empire or no Empire.
To go underground even more thoroughly has been expected since the ejection from the Empire, but to join such an offbeat group of lunatics as the Church of the Fallen One?
He readies his ship for the real-space transfer to send his query.
xi
CASTCENTER—a simple bronzed plaque over the portal.
Martel steps through.
The foyer on the inside is small. Indirect yellowed lighting combines with the brown plasteel to convey a clean dinginess. The entry console is vacant, as are the two armless chairs across from it.
Martel sits down, lets his perceptions range through the small building.
There are, from what he can tell with a quick scan, three studios, several smaller rooms, four or five offices, a larger screening room, plus fresher facilities, editing rooms, and the reception area.
He picks up three people in the entire circular building. One engineer, one caster, and one administrator. A man and two women.
The administrator, female, is walking down the corridor toward Martel.
Martel stands up.
“You must be Martel. Certainly took your time in getting here.”
He frowns. He is reporting eight weeks earlier than he has to.
“Does everyone report early?”
“I forgot.” The woman smirks. “You had adjustment problems.” She has sandy hair, cropped straight at chin level, and bangs that are trimmed squarely above her eyebrows. The washed-out gray of her eyes matches the gray tunic and trousers she wears.
Martel wonders about her obnoxiousness, but answers evenly. “That’s right. I had adjustment problems. But I’m here and ready to work.”
She slouches into the lounger behind the console.
“Aren’t you the chiever-beaver. Just like that.”
Martel waits.
“Sit down. Sit down. Farell’s on the board, will be for the next two stans. Few comments from KarNews on the in-feed. That’s about it. That’s all it ever is, except for the specs and the logos, the gossip pieces, the once-in-a-god-year storm warning. Feed the touries their home-planet news. We handle Karnak.”
Karnak? The one fax outlet on Aurore handling Karnak, and that’s where the Brotherhood has placed him? He files the point for reference, and turns his attention to the woman.
Her eyes are bright. Too bright. Cernadine. Do the demigods allow addiction?
Why not? So long as it doesn’t impair performance or hurt anyone else. Cernadine is safe and available. And explains the washed-out look in her eyes.
“Fine. Farell’s on the board. You are…?”
“Hollie Devero, at your service, Masterfaxer Martel.” Her mouth quirks upward even farther, then twitches into a thin line before she continues. “And how did a Regent’s Scholar with a masterfax rating end up on Aurore, the punkhead of faxing?”
“You seem to know all the answers. Since I’m not sure, you tell me.”
“You’re right. I do know full feed on you, Marty Martel. How you actually put a little love into a greeter’s life, and how you really like to take long walks alone on the sands, and how you avoid people. And how the first things you bought were black tunics and trousers. And you had to special-order them!” She laughs and the sound is brittle.
Martel bites his lip. No one should be greeted like this! No one!
“Then you know why I’m here.”
Her voice loses its edge. “No. I don’t. First new faxer in ten standard years, first one not even a Guild prentice, and the Guild approves you … and no record marks.”
Martel probes at the fringes of her thoughts, gently, uncertain how cernadine affects her sensitivity, unsure how sensitive she is.
… say that?… Did I … what … Martel … the one …
Her curiosity is building against the damping waves of the cernadine, but Martel senses she does not know what she has just said. How? Why?
Someone else is walking down the corridor from control area—the engineer.
Danger. Danger! Danger! DANGER!
Martel strikes, lets his mind go in a blast of energy, lashing at the man in a way he only half believes.
“Gods! No!…” The scream from inside and outside Hollie Devero catches at the edge of his attack, and he holds back the darkness … finds himself staring from a slumped position against Hollie’s console at a man lying facedown, antique slug-thrower gripped in his hand.
Martel knows the man is dying or dead. Maybe.
“You … you killed him…” Tears, real tears, tears not from the cernadine, well from the corners of her eyes.
Even from under the blanket of the drug, he feels the grief, her ties to the dying man.
Can he do anything? Has he done too much?
Martel sends his perceptions out, touches the heart, adds strength to the beat, oxygen, repairs a torn artery, a stripped vein, and, standing back in his mind and watching himself do the miraculous, finishes by rebuilding a damaged nerve chain.
His knees wobble as he staggers up and over toward the now-unconscious man. His vision blurs momentarily as he bends to pick the slugger from a flaccid hand. He removes the shells and drops the empty weapon on the console.
“You … owe … me … one … Hollie.”
He sits down heavily, concentrating on breathing for himself. Half watches the woman as she kneels beside her lover.
“I thought you’d killed him.”
“No.” I did, but I undid it, and flamed if I know how.
“Why?”
“Why, yourself? Why did”—and he picks the name out of her thoughts—“Gates want to kill me? Given the demigods, maybe you owe me two.”
Her eyes widen. Her face crumples, gray to match her washed-out eyes. “Why? Why? Why?”
Martel echoes her thoughts silently, blocking them as well.
Gates Devero had been primed to explode as soon as one Martel, faxcaster, student, Brother, showed up at the CastCenter. But the attempt had been direct. Too direct.
Gates was supposed to fail. That m
eant Martel had been set up to kill the engineer, which meant … Martel shivered.
He remembers something Rathe said.
“The gods are jealous, Martel. Jealous.”
“Jealous” seems an understatement.
Martel finally answers the question Hollie asked. “Because he was supposed to fail, Hollie, because he was supposed to fail.”
“Oh, gods, no! Why us?”
“Not you. Me. Don’t worry. You’re safe. So’s Gates. A second time would be too obvious.” For now.
“Second time?”
“Forget it. Just tell Gates he tripped.”
Martel lurches to his feet, knees solid at last, picks the weapon off the console, and drops it into a pocket.
“Tripped?”
“Got any better ideas, smart lady?” His voice burns, and the anger in it turns the gray-faced administrator grayer.
“But the gods…”
Martel swallows, hard. Only the thoughts count.
“Gates tripped, Hollie. That’s all that happened.”
And with that his thoughts follow, changing the pictures in her mind, then in Gates’. Both would remember that Gates tripped.
Martel is sure that the gods will know that the memories are false, should they check, but what really happened is erased, gone, except in his own mind.
“In answer to your other question,” he goes on as if nothing has occurred, “I’m here—”
“I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know.”
“—because I was Queried by the Emperor and the Grand Duke of Kirsten.”
Hollie turns her head from side to side, slowly, still on her knees by Gates.
“And the only ambition I have is to get paid for being a faxer while I sort things out.”
He looks at the time readout. Almost a full stan has passed since he walked into the CastCenter.
One stan? One whole stan?
He tightens his lips. Apparently his mental excursion into the physiology of one Gates Devero has taken longer than he has realized.
“You’d better help Gates up,” he suggests mildly as he lets the engineer wake and groan. “By the way, am I expected to follow Farell?”
“No. She’ll brief you, give you a handful of procedures, and walk you through. Double duty for her. Double pay. Doesn’t happen enough. So she won’t mind.”
Martel can tell her thoughts are on Gates, her genuine worry about the fall he has taken. Martel heads down the corridor toward the control center.
He scans Farell from outside the control room.
She is dark-haired, from her own mental image relaxed, and, so far as he can tell, untrapped.
He waits until she finishes the locals and is into the KarNews feed before opening the portal.
“Martin Martel,” he announces quietly.
“Swear I’d locked that.”
He looks vacant.
“Guess not.” She gives him a half-smile, accented by naturally red lips. “You’re Giles’ replacement. Our new wunderkind from Karnak.”
“Green from Karnak,” he admits, “and so far as faxing goes, green as gold. Lots of ratings, a few degrees, and no more than the minimum uncontrolled airtime.”
“No illusions, at least.” She gives a fuller smile.
Her arm sweeps the circular room. “This is it. All older than you or me. Just a reader-feeder op, with enough of us in it to assure the touries that they’re seeing real, live people before they get the latest from home.”
The control center is clean, and from his mental runover Martel knows that the equipment all works, everything except a disassembled line feed on the end of the counter where the portable faxers are lined up.
“By the time, I’m Marta Farell. You ready to start, or is this just social?”
“Ready to start. But let me get a few things straight before we start on technicals.”
Martel gestures at the old but clean equipment around them.
“From what you just said, there’s no local base to the operation. No, if you will, native support. Who foots the bill?”
Marta pushes a loose strand of hair off her forehead, carefully pats it back into place.
“Not much of a bill, really. We don’t have any of the extras here. No image enhancers, no multijection feeds, no strictly outside faxers. We all do the outside work. Not really news usually, but the froth.” She shrugs. “Learn a lot about the basics here. That’s all we’ve got.”
“So it’s a small bill. But who pays it?” Martel resists the urge to snap. Like everyone else Marta Farell seems to avoid straight answers.
“You do. Partly. The rest is from fees and donations.”
“Me? Fees?”
“Wait…”
Farell eases into the focal seat, uses the finger-touch controls, and settles herself into a position as the holo scanners focus on her.
“That’s the stan update from Karnak. I’m Marta Farell with CastCenter … official fax outlet for KarNews on Aurore. At the chime, stan time will be fourteen-thirty, Aurore Standard, Imperial Central, Karnak Regent.
“Next we’ll be taking you with Gates Devero on a tour of the eastern beaches, and a look at a few out-of-the-way spots you may have missed.”
Martel admires the way she slips into the local feed. He wonders if the Devero slot is a repeat.
“Repeat?”
“Right. Geared on the Karnak tourie. Run it twice a bloc month. Once you get the feel of things you’ll be out there as well. Interests?”
“Not using my full name,” slips out before he thinks. Flame! Why did you say that?
Marta Farell only nods. “You a drinker, adventurer, a shopper, anything like that? Rockgrubber or sailor?”
“Loner, I guess. Would a slot on places to really escape fly, really fly?”
“Martel, we got more stans to fill than you dream, and you’re only the fifth faxer for a round-the-clock operation. Even an extra half-stan slot a week would help.”
“And who pays the bills…”
“If you’re that persistent about faxing, half my problems will be solved. All right. There’s a standard ten percent deduction from all pay on Aurore. To pay for services. And we’re a service. About one-tenth of one tiny percent goes to the four faxcenters. Mostly for power costs. The fees are from docuslots. The one that’s running now was picked up by both KarNews and the MatNet on Halston.
“One of mine ran prime on Tinhorn. You never know. We back-feed regularly, and sometimes they catch. You get two percent commission on the back-feed sales.”
“What’s the rate?” Martel doesn’t have the faintest idea of what the majors would pay for a backwater documentary.
“Average is maybe a hundred thousand credits a quarter-stan.”
Martel figures. The faxer would get two thousand Imperial credits for each quarter-stan, or four thousand for a standard half-stan bloc. Two full blocs equaled his annual contract. There had to be a catch.
“How many have you had picked up?”
“In the past ten years, I’ve averaged three full blocs a year. That’s the problem.” Farell turns in the seat, waiting as if to see whether he can solve the puzzle.
He spreads his hands, admitting his bewilderment.
“Really good faxcaster can buy out his contract in five years, with enough left for first-class passage anywhere. But you’ve got to be good, because we can’t doctor the tape. Edit, yes, but no image enhancement, viewpoint realterations, threshold emotionals, none of the fancy techniques they taught you at the Institute.”
“Why not?” Stupid question, Martel!
Farell looks around the studio.
“With what? We’ve got two portaunits that are up, and one that sometimes works.” She catches her breath and plunges into the next sentence, again unconsciously patting a stray hair back into place. “The reason why we don’t have the latest equipment is that the Empire doesn’t send it. We buy second-, third-hand. Besides, I doubt that propafax is wanted on Aurore. You
’ll notice that our relay doesn’t carry the emotional bands.”
Martel wants to ask why, but Marta Farell doesn’t pause.
“Don’t ask. Just say it’s not wanted.”
“Stet.” It isn’t all right, but what can he say? “Why don’t the majors send their own teams?”
“Expensive. Fuel costs once you break sub are twice any other planet in the Empire. Second, let’s just say that outside fax teams aren’t exactly welcome.”
“Sort of like Imperial agents aren’t welcome?” Martel asks with a grin.
“Yes. Not something I’d advise smiling about.”
Martel frowns, turns toward the monitor, rubs his forehead with the middle three fingers on his right hand. He senses the hostility his last remark has triggered.
Why? Awfully sensitive. Just take over the shift and let her go. Right? Wrong. You don’t even know the feed parameters.
“Is there a center manual and a set of engineering specs I could study?” he offers.
The woman does not answer, walks over to the console, and pulls out two discs.
“Here. Why don’t you use the vidfax in the lounge, second port on the right as you leave. Ought to be able to go through those in a stan or two. Then I’ll check you out on the system.”
Martel feels her relief, but does not go into her thoughts to double-check.
The control lock snicks into place as he steps out.
There! Her thought is as clear as if she had spoken.
Martel smiles. The lock had been engaged when he entered.
Gates Devero, recumbent in a recliner, nods at Martel as he enters the blue-paneled lounge.
“Martel … sorry I was so clumsy when you came in. Don’t know what came over me. Really upset Hollie.”
The younger man scans the room.
Gates picks up the inquiring glance and answers. “She’s left. Be back later. Getting me a coldpak for this flamed bruise.”
The cheek below Devero’s right eye shows the beginning of a dark blotch.
“I hope it wasn’t my fault, being later than you expected.”
“No. Need another faxer. Understand your problem. You also carry a second-tech cert?”
Haze and the Hammer of Darkness Page 35