by Chris Walley
Corradon pursed his lips and stared at him before answering. “You hate it? I’d hope so.” He shook his head slowly. “Not good at it? I’d hate to meet anyone who was better than you. And the ship was, at least, utterly destroyed. The dead are . . .” He hesitated and then exhaled heavily. “The dead are a grievous and lamentable loss, but they are hardly your fault. As for your claimed errors of judgment, well, I think they are far outweighed by your wise decisions, your courage, and your skill. But there will be a full inquiry on the battle over the next month. There has to be for the records. And for lessons for the future.”
He turned, as if to leave, and then paused, staring at something on the bedside table. He bent over, and for the first time Merral saw the dull silvery disc and chain and realized that the identity tag was gone from round his neck.
“May I?” Corradon asked, and without waiting for an answer, he reverently picked it up and stared intently at it, mouthing the ancient words engraved on it. “ ‘Lucas Hannun Ringell, Space Frigate Clearstar, Assembly Assault Fleet.’ How very strange. How very strange indeed.”
His blue eyes glanced at Merral. “Well, anyway, if heaven allows any knowledge of these worlds’ tribulations, neither Brenito nor General Lucas Ringell will have been displeased with yesterday’s events.”
“Unfortunately, sir,” interjected Merral, trying not to sound rude, “my conduct is judged by a higher authority than either. And there, I feel, I have blame, not just praise.”
Corradon nodded, lowering the tag reverently down to the tabletop. “It is perhaps as well, lest this victory breed an overconfidence. But apportion blame fairly, Merral.”
“I will, sir. But my resignation?”
“I don’t accept it. Sorry.” Corradon shrugged.
“Respectfully, sir, I believe that you have to accept it. It’s over. The task I was asked to do is done.”
“Really?” Corradon exhaled loudly. “Merral, Lucian and I have agreed that the FDU is to be closed down. In fact, I will be announcing that during my speech.”
“Good.”
“To be replaced by a larger and better-equipped Farholme Defense Force with a range out to the system’s edge. With real weapons. And—I was not going to mention this now but I will—I’d like you to head it up. As Commander.”
“I don’t understand,” Merral said, staring at him and Vero, struck by the solemnity on both their faces.
“I will be stating—” the representative seemed to weigh his words—“that we will be enlarging our defense capability. As much as our world’s limited manufacturing and technical base can take. It would be an enormous help if you would lead the new force. Indeed, I think it would help stabilize shaken nerves across the planet if I could announce your appointment during my speech.” He looked out beyond the curtained window with a burdened gaze. “It is my job to tell the whole of Farholme that not only are we isolated from the Assembly, but we have enemies. That is a heavy task. I would like, in the same breath, to give them the slight comfort of saying their defense is in trustworthy hands.”
“No!” Merral snapped. “I see no reason for it. I want to be an ex-captain and an ex-soldier.”
Corradon gave him a wry, sad, and sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid, Merral, you face the same dilemma I have faced. This world is in crisis and it looks for leaders. You and I must do our bit to provide them with what they need.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I must go.”
He gestured to Vero. “I give you leave, Sentinel, to tell him what I told you.”
Then he walked to the door and opened it. He turned to Merral. “Captain D’Avanos, it would be a great help to me—and to Farholme—if I could have your agreement by noon.”
Then with a salute, he left.
Merral turned to Vero and was about to speak to him when the door slid open and an energetic female figure with a shock of tied-back red hair entered.
“Anya!” cried Merral.
Vero, beaming at her, got to his feet. “I’m off for a bit; I need some breakfast. Or lunch. Whatever is appropriate for now. We will continue our conversation, Merral.” Then he slipped out of the room.
Anya bent over and kissed Merral lightly on the forehead, pulled up a chair, and sat next to him. She was wearing a rumpled navy waistcoat and unfussy, plain blue trousers, and he felt his resolve weakening.
“So, Tree Man, you survived,” she teased him, laughing brightly. “I gather that you float. Hardly surprising.” The joking tone did not conceal a deep relief. She took his hand and squeezed it hard.
“Yes,” Merral answered slowly, “I survived. But I’m not unscathed.” He tried to prepare the words that he had to say, but faced with her in person, he found the idea difficult. He played for time. “So did you catch any creatures?”
“No. Not alive.” She wrinkled her face in expressive disgust. “They were all dead. Some of the men say that the few that were left alive committed suicide once the ship took off. But there are about a dozen dead specimens in all. Although being clones, I think we’ll only need to look at one of each. And none of this very worrying new type. The predators.”
“They aren’t creatures. They are machines of some sort.”
“Machines? That explain—”
“Anya,” interrupted Merral, feeling that he had to speak now or her presence would persuade him to forget what he knew he had to say, “I have an apology and an admission to make.”
She looked at him carefully, as if wondering whether it was a joke or not. “Which is what?”
“That, the other night, I wasn’t entirely . . .” He could hardly bring himself to speak the word, it was so appalling. “Honest.”
“About what?” she said, letting his hand drop.
“About Isabella.”
Her face darkened. “But you said . . . you denied that there was anything.”
Merral felt that this was a new agony. “Yes, Anya, I know. I’m truly sorry.”
“You mean that . . . there is something?”
“Well, yes. It was, well, something that . . .” He paused. “Something that I slipped into hurriedly, without thinking. An understanding. Without parental consent. So, well, I thought it wasn’t really valid. And I have regretted it since. But—”
Anya had gotten to her feet now. “But what?”
“But, that I—we—never ended . . . Not mutually.” Merral felt his face burn with shame.
“So you are not free.” Her words were biting.
He tried to smile. “But I would like to be. Very much.”
“It was a lie.”
The word cut and stung like a lash of hail in the face, and the thought came to Merral that in the last twenty minutes he had been praised by the highest in the land and was now being utterly humiliated.
“Yes, I suppose . . . that’s a legitimate word. But I was caught off guard. No, that’s an excuse. . . .”
“I can’t believe it!” Anya said, her expression a harsh mixture of pain and anger. Merral wondered if it might not have been better to have stayed on the ship and been blown into a billion atoms.
“So what are you going to do?” she snorted, her eyes wide with emotion.
Merral tried to look away. “I’m going back to Ynysmant, and I’m going to talk to Isabella. Ask her to agree to our commitment—such as it is—being concluded. Mutually.”
He could hardly bear to look at her now. He knew that she was glaring at him.
“And if she refuses?” Anya asked in a sharp, querulous tone.
“I hope that won’t happen. But if it does . . . I have no idea,” Merral said miserably, thinking that in the last twenty-four hours he had known war, death, and injury, and that this was almost as traumatic as any of them. “I now want to do what is right.”
“Now . . . ,” she said, and the scorn in her voice cut into him. “Oh, now you want to do right!” She stood there shaking her head, her hair somehow having come untied and flowing out wildly.
“Anya,” he said, “I d
o love you.”
“And why, oh why, should I believe that?” she exclaimed and then rounded on him. “And anyway, what you feel is irrelevant if I can’t trust you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I hurt,” she said, wringing her hands. “I just feel . . .” She shook her head as she tried to find the words. She glared at him, her eyes glistening with tears. “I just don’t have the vocabulary. I just feel that . . . I don’t trust!” Then she turned sharply on her heels and stormed out angrily.
The door thudded heavily shut behind her.
Merral lay there, grasping the sheets with his eyes shut, wishing it had all never happened, and feeling very sorry for himself.
A few moments later, he heard the door opening, and he opened his eyes to see a young, male doctor looking at him in a concerned way. “Oh, Captain D’Avanos. The metabolic monitor system sent me over. Your functions were indicating high stress loads just now. You are, perhaps, in pain?”
Merral stared at him, not sure whether to order him out. In the end, an approximation to civility triumphed. “Thank you. It’s not a medical problem. But you can help. Unhitch me from these monitor cables, will you? I want to walk. To the window. I need fresh air.”
There was a pause. “Well, we were planning to keep you under observation until tomorrow.”
“And what happens if I just pull them off?” countered Merral, hearing a strange brusqueness in his voice.
The doctor looked alarmed. “Oh, I’d rather you didn’t. You’ll probably damage the sensors, and they are made—were made—off system on Ticander. We have only a limited number.”
Merral lifted up the sheet, painfully bent down to his ankle, and began undoing the covering bandage. “Well, let’s not risk that, shall we? Get them off, please. And can you find me some proper clothes?”
Ten minutes later, the far-from-pleased doctor having departed, Merral walked stiffly over to the balcony rail and leaned against it, trying to avoid the tender part of his chest. As he had suspected, he was high—perhaps six floors up—on the tower that was the Western Isterrane Main Hospital. He looked out southward over the playing fields, green woodlands, and rolling pastures that ended abruptly at the sharp line of the sea cliff. Beyond that, the open vastness of the sea stretched onward to the horizon. Around one of the new sandbanks offshore, he could see the etched lines of white breaking waves, and he could just make out flocks of gulls wheeling. He breathed in and felt he could smell the sea air.
He had hard decisions to make.
He was still pondering them a few minutes later when there was a noise behind him, and he turned to see Vero entering.
Again, he glimpsed the two statue-stiff blue figures outside the door.
There was something in Vero’s gait and look that told Merral he had met Anya. The sentinel walked out to the balcony and, standing by him, stared at the view.
“Sorry,” he said, but the single word conveyed an intense empathy.
For a long time Merral did not answer. He felt the warm sunlight on him, stared at the curves of the ground ahead and the splendid beech trees clad in the green brilliance of their early summer foliage, and heard the excited screams of the swifts as they swooped around in the air catching insects. He wanted to be a long way away.
At length, he spoke. “Vero, I don’t know about you, but since Nativity I have said ‘sorry’ to more people than in all the rest of my life.”
“Me too. The world has changed in so many ways.”
“It is broken, Vero. And I don’t know how we rebuild it.” Merral’s sigh was deep enough to make his chest ache. “It is broken so badly, so thoroughly, that I could weep.”
He caught a look of sharp, pained sympathy from Vero. “I know,” he said, almost inaudibly.
Merral remembered something. “The men outside, the ones wearing blue. Who are they?”
Vero leaned forward, staring toward the infinite distance of the sea, and when he spoke his tone was distant and drained. “A new organization. Advisor Clemant has come up with it.”
“Called what?”
“Police.”
Merral closed his eyes briefly as he grappled with the significance of the word. “What?”
“It’s not a Communal word. It’s an old French and English word. A non-military law-enforcement body. For internal security.” The staccato, reluctant phrases displayed his disquiet.
“Oh, I know what it means, Vero. But here? in the Assembly?”
“Yes; Clemant is no fool. He knows what we know. That the old world is gone. And that the new one will be a hard place. The police will be, he says, merely a precautionary and temporary measure. Maybe . . .”
“I know. He hinted at it. Oh, what a mess,” Merral muttered, feeling that another new, discordant note had entered his world. It was never Eden here. At best, maybe it was a sort of harsh New Eden. But it has gone. I miss it already and I fear for its future.
The noise of schoolchildren playing a Team-Ball match on the fields below dragged him out of his sad reverie. He looked over to where Vero was silently wrapped in his own thoughts.
“What are you supposed to tell me?”
Vero looked up carefully at him, “Do you really want it?”
“It can’t make things worse.”
Vero’s fingers tapped the railing thoughtfully. “It can. I heard a rumor last night and had it confirmed now by Corradon. While we were training at Tanaris, some of the Space Affairs orbital experts began to bring together some of the astronomical work Perena had started. On the records of objects within the Alahir system. They had lots of data that she hadn’t been able to access, and they reprocessed all the old records.” His voice was emotionless.
“And . . . she was wrong?” Merral asked, feeling that there was now a note of alarm ringing throughout the spaces of his mind.
“No. She wasn’t. Her path of the Intruder ship was confirmed. Of the first ship.”
The adjective exploded into Merral’s brain. “The first?”
“Yes. The thing is, they found another trace. A few days later.”
“Where is it?”
“Ah. The best analysis suggests it appeared in the system a day later and followed the first intruder ship at a distance, as far as the inner asteroid belt, where it changed orbit and stopped.” He gave a profound sigh. “Now, as you know, there you—I suppose I ought to now say we—have good data and continuous monitoring. It stayed for a week and then headed back out of Assembly space. One day it was going fast toward Fenniran. And the next, it had gone.”
The facts were easily absorbed, but Merral struggled to find meaning in them.
“What else can you say about it?” he inquired.
“Only that it was bigger. Much bigger.”
Merral clutched the railing as hard as he could, as if by doing so it would somehow impart something of its stability into his own life.
“Jorgio said that the barrier was down. The steersman confirmed it.”
“And warned of other ships.”
“Indeed. This second ship—any ideas what it was doing?” Merral now understood what Corradon had meant about “lessons for the future,” why he wanted an enlarged FDU, and why he had wanted Merral to lead it.
“We don’t know for sure,” answered Vero, looking up as if he expected a sign in the heavens. “But there is a suspicion that it was chasing the first intruder. That was the idea generated from the orbits alone. The evidence from the ship here, including your report about the damage, confirms that it had been attacked.”
“So the inference is what? I’m still partially sedated, remember.” Or am I? Perhaps I am just numbed.
“That the intruder—call it the first intruder—was fleeing.”
“So, although it was hiding in the Lannar Crater, it was not hiding from us.”
“Not primarily hiding from us. But you see the obvious implications?”
“No. Or rather, I think I do. But be gentle.” Merral felt that a whole chorus of
alarms was now echoing through his body.
Vero continued in a soft, factual tone. “The idea—the theory—is this: There was a chase, and the first intruder somehow made it into your—our—system. The other ship followed it. Only to realize it had stumbled onto something too big. Us. The Assembly. It watched for a bit and then went back.”
“From where it may return again at any time?”
For a long time Vero said nothing but just stared over at the tiny figures of the schoolchildren running around the ball.
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was small. “That’s the point. They may be our friends or our enemies. They may be this Dominion under this Lord-Emperor Nezhuala. But we know that they know how to fight. And Corradon and Clemant feel that we ought to be prepared for the worst.”
“I see.”
“Yes,” Vero said, looking at his watch. “But we can talk about it later. Corradon is speaking in an hour. I was going to watch it with Perena.” He paused. “And probably Anya. Are you all right here?”
“Me? Yes, I want to think about what I must do. Your news has added a new dimension to the problem. But you, Vero, what will you do?”
“What will I do?” Vero asked slowly, and Merral saw his brown eyes tracing a black swift, effortlessly scything through the air.
“I, like you, thought my task was over. It is not. I need to search every bit of data Brenito left me on the rebellion of Jannafy and see if we can find any clues as to what really happened. And I want to talk to Jorgio again. Oh, and I suppose I must prepare my statement for the inquiry.” Then Vero touched Merral’s shoulder briefly. “And you, my friend?”
“I have a lot to think about. I want to leave for Ynysmant as soon as I can. I want to write my report while it is fresh in my mind, and I have things to sort out with Isabella.”
“Yes.” Vero looked at Merral with his deep brown eyes. “I am sympathetic. I have been thinking. About the way we are.” He paused. “Can I say something?”
“By all means.”
“It is just this: Before all this happened, we took everything for granted. We did what was right because it was pleasing to us. We had, as it were, the wind behind us. Now, all that has changed. The wind is against us. Yet what is right has not changed; it has just become harder to do it.”