Eternity's End

by Jeffrey Carver

  *

  Implants flickering, blazing with exhilaration, heart pounding, his net of awareness stretched out beyond her... but toward what? For a frozen, pulsing moment he felt as though he were joined to a far greater network, the intelnet...

  *

  That sensation flickered away, and in its place was something different, the web of his senses stretching out into time, into the past and future; her past and his past, and visions of the future... two futures, like thin silver ribbons interweaving toward a place that couldn't be seen...

  *

  And behind it all, the joining that was like a choir, given physical shape by sound and music, and urgent movement, joined harmonies rising and straining and falling, the sweet sounds of harp and deep thrumming of bass, all growing, building toward a climax...

  *

  The brightness at their center flared with desire and urgency. For an instant that seemed disconnected in time, his gaze caught her deep green eyes and there was a breathtaking, liquid connection between them. Their movements joined, growing faster. Her heat was building around him, drawing him out farther and harder, breath coming sharper and sharper... and for a moment they were suspended in time, electrified... and then they came together, in expanding circles of fire against darkness; she was squeezing him in shuddering gasping release, and around them in the darkness of space were bursts of light and sharply drawn breath, and sounds wrapped in silence; and the web blossomed out and exploded with liquid light, raining crimson and gold and pearly white, pulsing until all of the fire was gone. And then a great quilt of darkening comfort closed around them, and they collapsed in quiet release.

  * * *

  "Jesus, Ace," he whispered, his face against her cheek. "How did you do that?"

  "Do what?" She laughed softly, trying to keep him from pulling free, but it was too late.

  "Fireworks?" He shifted, propping his head, and looked down at her. "I mean, really—fireworks?" He gazed appreciatively over her body, which he'd hardly had a chance to do the entire time they were making love. He drew a deep breath, awed by her long-limbed beauty. He stroked her hipbone, cupping the angles.

  "I want you to know I don't do that with every new arrival who comes into my node," she murmured, kissing his ear. "Did you like it?"

  "Like it?" He laughed softly, pressing his lips to her temple, beside the flickering augment. Her hair was damp with sweat. "Did I just die and go to Heaven?" He paused in reflection. (Have I just made love, with deep-cyber augment, to the Kyber Law? What have I done?)

  // Isn't that how spies are supposed to do it, according to your folklore?//

  He gazed into space, considering. Maybe so, but that was just in crazy male fantasies.

  "Good," said Tracy-Ace, pushing him up with a hand on his chest so she could see his face. She grinned, kissed her own fingertip and touched it to his lips. Rolling out from beneath him, she slipped out of his reach and stood up facing him. She was breathtaking, naked, staring down at him. He thought his heart might jump out of his chest. Crazy fantasies were beginning to crowd his thoughts. Along with the fears. (You're being set up, used.) But what a way to be used.

  "I'm glad you liked that," Tracy-Ace said. "Really glad. Because I like you, Renwald Legroeder." She bent down, leading with her nipples, and kissed his forehead, lips, chin. His heart pounded as she straightened up again, then almost stopped as she whispered, "I think pretty soon we're going to have to go introduce you to the Boss, don't you?"

  Chapter 25

  Yankee-Zulu/Ivan

  To his relief, Tracy-Ace hadn't meant now. One thing led to another, and they were busy for a while longer after that.

  They fell asleep half tangled together. Or rather, Tracy-Ace did. Legroeder drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep, his thoughts reverberating between a blissful euphoria and a terrifying conviction that he had blundered in the most appalling way. He awoke once with a start, imagining Kyber guards breaking down the door and thundering in to drag him away. His heart pounding, he peered across the room in the glow of tiny indicator lights, and saw nothing moving. Nothing except the slow rise and fall of Tracy-Ace/Alfa's breathing. He sighed and closed his eyes.

  Doubts crowded in, warring for his attention. How could he have let himself do this? Was he a complete idiot? How could he know he wasn't being used? Manipulated. Set up.

  He glanced in her direction. She was sound asleep with her back to him, but snuggled close. Peaceful as a lamb.

  What's the matter with you? Can't you just enjoy, without wrecking it by worrying?

  Enjoy what—sleeping with the enemy?

  His ears were ringing as he drifted back off to sleep.

  He awoke to find Tracy-Ace's arm flung over him, her face against his shoulder, her hair against his cheek. She stirred, pressing a leg against him before flickering an eye open and murmuring, and any thought he'd had of drawing away vanished instantly.

  She pulled him out of bed and into the shower. Engulfed in a haze of warm mist, Tracy-Ace was just drawing him close again, sending a rush of arousal up his spine, when a memory surfaced in his thoughts, a conversation with Com'peer back at the Narseil station. The surgeon and her team had just finished changing the DNA in his gonads. "That's where raiders like to do their testing... more humiliating that way..."

  He swallowed and tried to divert his thoughts, but there was no hiding the loss of arousal.

  "You okay?"

  "Uh, yes—fine!" he wheezed. He forced a grin, then seized her in a fierce hug. What have I done? Thinking with my gonads. What have I done?

  She nuzzled his neck, but clearly wasn't fooled. "Let's get dressed and get something to eat," she said, hurrying out of the shower. "Then let's go talk business with the Boss."

  "Yes, let's," he muttered, trying not to sound as if he had just been punched in the solar plexus.

  * * *

  The Boss. The single syllable, even in the silence of his thoughts, made him shiver.

  After a barely-touched breakfast, they walked to Section 29, which they had passed yesterday. It was, she said, the nerve center of the station, and indeed of the entire Outpost Ivan organization. The security at the entrance was just as threatening as at the maintainers' facility.

  Inside, though, the operations center had a surprisingly cobbled-together look, with a great deal of electronic equipment, and people sitting at stations of indeterminate function. Legroeder tried to cover his apprehension by peering over some shoulders, but Tracy-Ace pulled him onward. "This way," she said, heading to the back of the room.

  This way. Legroeder kept his eyes open for anyone who looked like a Boss. Would he be a walking display case of augmentation? Tracy-Ace brought him to a semicircular alcove in back, several steps up on a kind of dais, where a swivel chair sat in the middle of a cluttered array of at least fifty tiny console monitors. The chair was facing away from them; blue smoke billowed up from it. Tobacco smoke, with a sharp, pungent sweetness. Legroeder wrinkled his nose. He hadn't smelled that since DeNoble. He hated it.

  The chair rotated to face them. A bald-headed man without a trace of augmentation rose, waving a cigar in his right hand, as Tracy-Ace led Legroeder up the steps. "Legroeder, this is our Boss, Yankee-Zulu/Ivan. YZ/I, Rigger Renwald Legroeder."

  "Legroeder," said the Boss. "We meet at last." He puffed from his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke upward.

  At last? Legroeder wondered, staring at the Boss. Why—was I expected? And where had he seen this man before? Yankee-Zulu/Ivan was extremely pale-skinned, especially on his bald pate, slightly heavy of build, and a few centimeters taller than Legroeder. He did not seem particularly augmented. Not at first. A moment later, Legroeder's impression of that changed. The Boss's eyes were cerulean blue, glowing from within. But it was not just his eyes; his face was suddenly aglow, as well, with a pale golden light. And now his hands—and through his silken shirt and pants, the rest of his body.

  An illuminated man.

  Now he remembered whe
re he had seen this man before. It was in the joe shop, where Tracy-Ace had first debriefed him. The Boss had been quietly observing, from the back of the room. And for one instant, Legroeder had seen him aglow.

  Yankee-Zulu/Ivan stuck out a hand, and as Legroeder shook it uneasily, waves of light rippled up the Boss's arm, shining through the shirt sleeve as though it were gauze. Legroeder could not keep his eyes off the moving light. As it passed over the Boss's shoulder and torso, it disappeared. But a moment later, pulsing threads of green, blue, and red became visible beneath the Boss's skin.

  "Are you wondering if you should run away?" Yankee-Zulu/Ivan asked, with a rumble that grew into a hard-edged laugh.

  Legroeder drew himself taller, but didn't answer.

  The Boss turned to Tracy-Ace/Alfa. "You didn't prepare him for our meeting," he said.

  "Oh, we did some preparation," Tracy-Ace murmured, with a sideways glance at Legroeder that made him flush.

  "Is that so?" said another voice, behind the Boss. A tall man, dark haired with red skin, stepped out of an unnoticed shadow in the back of the alcove. "Will you introduce me to your friend?"

  Tracy-Ace tensed; her expression turned sour. This was the man they had seen walking into the command center yesterday. Someone you won't need to worry about. "Hello, Lanyard," Tracy-Ace said. "How nice to see you here. Rigger Legroeder, I'd like you to meet a colleague of mine—"

  "Come on, now," said the tall man. "You can call me a friend."

  Tracy-Ace ignored the comment and continued speaking to Legroeder, taking him by the wrist as though to lead him through the room. "This is Group Coordinator Lanyard, who is a member of Outpost Ivan's Ruling Cabinet."

  Legroeder felt his implants flicker to life as information flowed to him through his wrist. // Lanyard/GC is not just a member of the Cabinet, which oversees Outpost policy, but also of the current political opposition to this Boss. There may be a balance-of-power struggle here; he is considered a potential threat. Tracy-Ace was not expecting Lanyard/GC to be present, and isn't pleased. He formerly had a... relationship... with Tracy-Ace/Alfa, which ended badly.//

  Legroeder did his best to hide his scowl.

  "Lanyard is here as—?" Tracy-Ace paused and stretched out an inquiring hand.

  "An observer," said Yankee-Zulu/Ivan at once, which seemed to bring a frown—quickly concealed—to Lanyard's face.

  Legroeder's augments flashed him a quick schematic. // The command hierarchy places Yankee-Zulu/Ivan at the top of the power structure. However, he remains in power at the pleasure of the Cabinet, which does not make day-to-day decisions, but grants him authority. YZ/I oversees the outpost from this operations center, through direct feeds to his internal augments as well as visual information in this room.//

  Legroeder nodded inwardly. Here it was, then. All this way he had come, to learn what he could about the operation of the fortress; and here was the man who ran it—if he really was a man, under all that glowing skin. Except, apparently his power was not absolute.

  YZ/I was watching Legroeder with evident amusement. He puffed out three smoke rings and watched them disperse, then glanced back at Lanyard before asking Legroeder, "So—have you found our world here to your liking?"

  Legroeder opened his mouth, and closed it, moving his head to avoid the smoke. He glanced at Tracy-Ace, but she had turned poker-faced.

  As his gaze shifted back to Yankee-Zulu/Ivan, Legroeder drew a sharp breath. Instead of a man, he was gazing at a man-shaped holo, an image of the Kyber armada coursing through the swirls of the Deep Flux. The colony fleet. Was it underway already? Bound for...? He wanted to ask, but YZ/I the man seemed to have utterly vanished into the image. Legroeder glanced to the side and suddenly realized that all the monitors around him were filled with images of space, forming a mosaic curtain. It was a picture he recognized: the Sagittarian Dust Clouds, inbound across the galactic sea. It was a course toward the rich star clusters known by various names in the Centrist Worlds, the clusters a war had been fought over.

  The Cloud of a Thousand Suns.

  The Well of Stars.

  "YZ/I, I already told him about the fleet," Tracy-Ace said, with an edge of impatience in her voice.

  "Is hearing the same as seeing?" boomed a voice that seemed to come from the deeps of space where the pirate fleet was hurtling. The image of the fleet rotated until it seemed that the ships were flying straight toward Legroeder. The holo blinked off, and Yankee-Zulu/Ivan was standing there as a man again. He stuck the cigar back in his mouth.

  Behind him, Lanyard looked annoyed. "Do you really think it's wise to show him that, as if it's your personal toy?"

  YZ/I shrugged. "What's he going to do with it, Lanyard? He's here, with us. Anyway, he's going to have to know that we're serious—and why. Is that okay with you, Rigger Legroeder?"

  Legroeder, unsure what to say, jerked his head toward the monitors, where the image remained. "Is that where the fleet is headed? The Well of Stars?"

  "That's right." YZ/I's voice grew deeper. "It's the biggest colonizing fleet in the history of the human race! And it's going to be launched within the year!" His lips suddenly curled into what at first looked like a sneer, then seemed to be a wince of pain. "If we can solve a few little problems." He stroked his lips as though to rub away the previous expression. "What do you think of it, Rigger Legroeder?"

  What Legroeder thought was that he was having trouble breathing. It was a magnificent fleet. Setting out to populate the galaxy with pirates. It would be a really fine thing if he could think of a way to stop it. But how?

  YZ/I was still waiting for an answer. Legroeder moistened his lips, then asked, "Why did you show that to me? Were you thinking I might want to join up?"

  YZ/I stared at him for a moment with those glowing eyes—and suddenly broke into a long, iron-hard guffaw. "No, Rigger Legroeder, I didn't really think you'd want to join up. Not after your experience at Barbados—or should I say, your seven years of captivity at DeNoble." Legroeder froze in sudden terror. YZ/I's eyes gleamed. "DeNoble. What a goddamn scum-pit of humanity. To think they're part of our Republic."

  Legroeder felt paralyzed like an icecat in a spotlight.

  "And you're mad as hell about it," YZ/I continued sourly, "and you've come to see what you can do to try to wipe us all out for good. Do I have it right?" He puffed smoke in a stream toward the ceiling, where a vent fan seemed to push it back downward rather than draw it away.

  Legroeder struggled to draw a breath. How did YZ/I know about him and DeNoble? What else did he know? He closed his eyes to a squint, focusing inward in fury. (Did you betray that information—when I was with Tracy-Ace—?)

  // We did not. We carefully monitored the passage of information.//

  (Then—) He blinked his eyes open.

  Tracy-Ace was touching his arm. He glared at her in silent indignation. He was afraid to think... didn't want to ask... or to admit...

  Do you feel bad because you lied to her and then made love to her... or because you got caught?

  He got his breath back at last, but felt her gaze burning back at him.

  "Oh, for chrissake, Legroeder, don't try to deny it," YZ/I said.

  Legroeder jerked his eyes back to the Boss.

  "Legroeder," Tracy-Ace murmured in a strained voice, "I've known all along. We've known."

  He jerked his eyes back to her. The world was tilting under him. How could you have known? But Tracy-Ace had already turned to YZ/I, her implants flaring. "Did you have to drop it on him like that?"

  Legroeder slowly followed her gaze, and saw that the man had ripples of light flickering up in waves from his feet to the top of his head. YZ/I shrugged. "He can take it." He glanced at Lanyard, and in a voice that seemed calculatedly casual, continued, "Rigger Legroeder, there are a great many things that we know—things on the outside, in the Centrist Worlds. But you must not assume that we are like those who held you captive at DeNoble. We're not."

  Aren't you? Legroeder felt his fa
ce stinging with humiliation. His cover was gone, had never been there in the first place.

  But YZ/I wasn't gloating over the revelation. Instead, he was turning to speak to Lanyard. "I believe you had another appointment, Group Coordinator? Don't let us keep you."

  Lanyard stiffened ever so slightly. "I think, given the circumstances, that it's probably more important that I hear—"

  "What's important," YZ/I interrupted, "is that we conclude these sensitive discussions in private, for now."

  Lanyard's eyes flashed dangerously. "Don't try to shut us out, YZ/I. If you go too far along this course, you might find—"

  "I promise to give you and the Cabinet a full report," YZ/I said soothingly. "I assure you, we will not go too far along this or any other course. But just now... well, I'm sure you understand. Rigger Legroeder is on the spot—and he doesn't need to hear about our internal concerns. Compre-hendo?"

  For a moment, it looked as if Lanyard would argue further. Whatever went between them did so in silence. Lanyard closed his eyes, and a line of augments flickered on his earlobes. Abruptly, he blinked his eyes open, nodded brusquely, and strode away.

  As soon as he was gone, a privacy forcefield shimmered into place, enclosing the three of them. YZ/I laughed quietly. "I wouldn't laugh too hard," said Tracy-Ace, with a distinctly unhappy look on her face. "He could cause us trouble."

  "Well, you'd know that about him, wouldn't you?" YZ/I said with a little chuckle, causing her face to darken even further. "No, Lanyard is okay; he's just fond of poking his nose where it doesn't belong. We're going to have to be careful of that." YZ/I paused, then said to Legroeder as if they had not been interrupted, "Rigger Legroeder, Tracy-Ace/Alfa did not betray you to me."

  Legroeder stirred, filing the Lanyard encounter away. "Then who did?"

  YZ/I rubbed his jaw. "If you must know, I'm the one who told her. We've known from the beginning about your escape from DeNoble. For Rings' sake, we brought you here. We have things to discuss with you."