I wondered if Tonio had been playing me all along. Telling me what I wanted in exchange for a place to stay and a tour of the multiverse and its attractions.
I had many hours before my appointment, but alcohol helped.
This reality’s blazing oxygen had burned the hangover out of my blood by the time I stepped into Denys’s office. The geometries of the room were even more curved than his place Downside, and there were even more windows. Outside the office, the structures of Upside glittered, and beyond them was the ominous octahedron of the Chrysalis, glowing on the horizon of Socorro.
There were two chairs in the room this time, but neither of them were for me. Both were on the far side of Denys’s desk. One held Denys, and the other the black-skinned, broad-shouldered form of Shawn Feeney.
Denys raised his brows. “Surprised, Captain Crossbie? Surely you don’t imagine that you and Tonio are the only people who employ back-channel communications?”
He was enjoying himself far too much. Cuckolds, as I’ve stated elsewhere, are rarely models of deportment.
“I’d asked for a private meeting,” I said, without hope.
“Shawn and I have decided,” Denys said, “that it’s time for you and your friend to leave this reality. We know that your ship is provisioned for a long journey, and we intend that you take it.”
“How do I know,” I said, “that there isn’t a bomb hidden somewhere in my ship’s pantry?”
The two looked at each other and smirked. Denys answered.
“Because if you and Tonio disappear, or die mysteriously, that makes us the villains,” he said. “Whereas if you simply abandon this Probability, leaving the two ladies behind . . .” He couldn’t resist a grin.
“Then you are the bad guys,” Shawn finished in his deep voice.
I considered this. “I suppose that makes sense,” I said.
“And in exchange for the free passage,” Denys said, “I’ll take the ring.”
“You?” I said, and then looked at Shawn.
“Oh, I’ll get it back eventually,” Shawn said. “And I’ll get the credit for it, too.”
“The Storch line,” Denys said, “will have at least a couple years to exploit the new Probability before we Pryors arrive in force. But even so, we’ll get there years ahead of the rest of the competition . . . and I’ll get the credit for that.”
Shawn smiled at me. “And you’ll get the blame for selling our secret to our rivals. But by then I’m sure you’ll have lots of practice at running.”
“I could tell the truth,” I said.
“I’m sure you can,” Shawn said. He leaned closer to me. “And the very best of luck with that plan, by the way.”
“The ring?” Denys reminded.
I thought about it for a moment, and could see no alternative.
“To get the ring,” I said, “I have to take my pants off.”
Shawn’s smile broadened. “We’ll watch,” he said, “and enjoy your embarrassment.”
Tonio was in Olympe by the time I returned. Delight danced in his blue eyes.
“I have received a missive from Adora!” he said. “We are to flee together, she and I—and you, of course, my compeer. She has bribed someone in Socorro Traffic Control, yiss, to let us leave the station without alerting the Pryors. We then fly to the coordinates she has provided, where she will join us. From this point on we exist in our own Probability of bliss and complete happiness!”
I let Tonio dance around the ship while I went to the captain’s station and began the start-up sequence. Socorro Traffic Control let us go without a murmur. I maneuvered clear of the station and engaged the drive.
As we raced to the coordinates the message had provided, there was no pursuit. No ships came out of some alternate Probability to collide with us. No lasers lanced out of the Chrysalis to incinerate the ship. No bomb blew us to fragments.
As we neared the rendezvous point, Tonio grew anxious. “Where is my darling?” he demanded. “Where is Adora?” His hands turned to fists. “I hope that something has not gone amiss with the plan.”
“The plan is working fine,” I said, “and Adora isn’t coming.”
I told him about my meeting with Denys and Shawn, and what I had been ordered to do. Tonio raged and shouted. He demanded I turn Olympe around and take him back to his beloved Adora at once.
I refused. I fed coordinates into the Probability drive, and, an instant later, the stars turned to hard little pebbles and we were racing away from Socorro, leaving its quirky electromagnetic structure in our wake.
Tonio and I were on the run. Again. Trapped with one another in Reality, whether we liked it or not.
I had let Tonio play me, just as he had played Adora and Katarina and Maud and the others. Now we were in a place where we had no choice but to play each other.
Tonio was in despair. “Adora and Katarina will think I deserted them!” he said. “Their rage will know no bounds! They may send assassins—fleets—armies! What can I do?”
“Start,” I said, “by sending them flowers.”
ART OF WAR
NANCY KRESS
In addition to beauty, Art—and especially the value of Art—are things that are most definitely in the eye of the beholder . . .
Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the mid-seventies, and has since become a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Omni, SCI FICTION, and elsewhere. Her books include the novel version of her Hugo- and Nebula-winning story, Beggars in Spain, and a sequel, Beggars and Choosers, as well as The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, Oaths & Miracles, Stinger, Maximum Light, Crossfire, Nothing Human, and the Space Opera trilogy Probability Moon, Probability Sun, and Probability Space. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and Other Stories, The Aliens of Earth, and Beaker’s Dozen. Her most recent book is the novel Crucible. In addition to the awards for “Beggars in Spain,” she has also won Nebula Awards for her stories “Out of All Them Bright Stars” and “The Flowers of Aulit Prison.”
“Return fire!” the colonel ordered, bleeding on the deck of her ship, ferocity raging in her nonetheless controlled voice.
The young and untried officer of the deck cried, “It won’t do any good, there’s too many—”
“I said fire, goddammit!”
“Fire at will!” the OD ordered the gun bay, and then closed his eyes against the coming barrage, as well as against the sight of the exec’s mangled corpse. Only minutes left to them, only seconds . . .
A brilliant light blossomed on every screen, a blinding light, filling the room. Crewmen, those still standing on the battered and limping ship, threw up their arms to shield their eyes. And when the light finally faded, the enemy base was gone. Annihilated as if it had never existed.
“The base . . . it . . . how did you do that, ma’am?” the OD asked, dazed.
“Search for survivors,” the colonel ordered, just before she passed out from wounds that would have killed a lesser soldier, and all soldiers were lesser than she . . .
No, of course it didn’t happen that way. That’s from the holo version, available by ansible throughout the Human galaxy forty-eight hours after the Victory of 149-Delta. Author unknown, but the veteran actress Shimira Coltrane played the colonel (now, of course, a general). Shimira’s brilliant green eyes were very effective, although not accurate. General Anson had deflected a large meteor to crash into the enemy base, destroying a major Teli weapons store and much of the Teli civilization on the entire planet. It was an important Human victory in the war, and at that point we needed it.
What happened next was never made into a holo. In fact, it was a minor incident in a minor corner of the Human-Teli war. But no corner of a war is minor to the soldiers fighting there, and even a small incident can have enormous repercussions. I know. I will be paying for what happened on 149-Delta for whatever is left of my life.
/> This is neither philosophical maundering nor constitutional gloom. It is mathematical fact.
Dalo and I were just settling into our quarters on the Sheherazade when the general arrived, unannounced and in person. Crates of personal gear sat on the floor of our tiny sitting room, where Dalo would spend most of her time while I was downside. Neither of us wanted to be here. I’d put in for a posting to Terra, which neither of us had ever visited, and we were excited about the chance to see, at long last, the Sistine Chapel. So much Terran art has been lost in the original, but the Sistine is still there, and we both longed to gaze up at that sublime ceiling. And then I had been posted to 149-Delta.
Dalo was kneeling over a box of mutomati as the cabin door opened and an aide announced, “General Anson to see Captain Porter, ten-hut!”
I sprang to attention, wondering how far I could go before she recognized it as parody.
She came in, resplendent in full-dress uniform, glistening with medals, flanked by two more aides, which badly crowded the cabin. Dalo, calm as always, stood and dusted mutomati powder off her palms. The general stared at me bleakly. Her eyes were shit brown. “At ease, soldier.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Welcome, ma’am.”
“Thank you. And this is . . .”
“My wife, Dalomanimarito.”
“Your wife.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They didn’t tell me you were married.”
“Yes, ma’am.” To a civilian, obviously. Not only that, a civilian who looked . . . I don’t know why I did it. Well, yes, I do. I said, “My wife is half Teli.”
And for a long moment, she actually looked uncertain. Yes, Dalo has the same squat body and light coat of hair as the Teli. She is genemod for her native planet, a cold and high-gravity world, which is also what Tel is. But surely a general should know that interspecies breeding is impossible—especially that interspecies breeding? Dalo is as human as I.
The general’s eyes grew cold. Colder. “I don’t appreciate that sort of humor, Captain.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’m here to give you your orders. Tomorrow at oh five hundred hours, your shuttle leaves for downside. You will be based in a central Teli structure that contains a large stockpile of stolen Human artifacts. I have assigned you three soldiers to crate and transport upside anything that you think has value. You will determine which objects meet that description and, if possible, where they were stolen from. You will attach to each object a full statement with your reasons, including any applicable identification programs—you have your software with you?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“A C–112 near-AI will be placed at your disposal. That’s all.”
“Ten-hut!” bawled one of the aides. But by the time I had gotten my arm into a salute, she was gone.
“Seth,” Dalo said gently. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes. I did. Did you see the horror on the aides’ faces when I said you were half Teli?”
She turned away. Suddenly frightened, I caught her arm. “Dear heart—you knew I was joking? I didn’t offend you?”
“Of course not.” She nestled in my arms, affectionate and gentle as always. Still, there is a diamond-hard core under all that sweetness. The general had clearly never heard of her before, but Dalo is one of the best mutomati artists of her generation. Her art has moved me to tears.
“I’m not offended, Jon, but I do want you to be more careful. You were baiting General Anson.”
“I won’t have to see her while I’m on assignment here. Generals don’t bother with lowly captains.”
“Still—”
“I hate the bitch, Dalo.”
“Yes. Still, be more circumspect. Even be more pleasant. I know what history lies between you two, but nonetheless she is—”
“Don’t say it!”
“—after all, your mother.”
The evidence of the meteor impact was visible long before the shuttle landed. The impactor had been fifty meters in diameter, weighing roughly sixty thousand tons, composed mostly of iron. If it had been stone, the damage wouldn’t have been nearly so extensive. The main base of the Teli military colony had been vaporized instantly. Subsequent shock waves and air blasts had produced firestorms that raged for days and devastated virtually the entire coast of 149-Delta’s one small continent. Now, a month later, we flew above kilometer after kilometer of destruction.
General Anson had calculated when her deflected meteor would hit and had timed her approach to take advantage of that knowledge. Some minor miscalculation had led to an initial attack on her ship, but before the attack could gain force, the meteor had struck. Why hadn’t the Teli known that it was coming? Their military tech was as good as ours, and they’d colonized 149-Delta for a long time. Surely they did basic space surveys that tracked both the original meteor trajectory and Anson’s changes? No one knew why they had not counterdeflected, or at least evacuated. But, then, there was so much we didn’t know about the Teli.
The shuttle left the blackened coast behind and flew toward the mountains, skimming above acres of cultivated land. The crops, I knew, were rotting. Teli did not allow themselves to be taken prisoner, not ever, under any circumstances. As Human troops had forced their way into successive areas of the continent, the agricultural colony, deprived of its one city, had simply committed suicide. The only Teli left on 168-Beta occupied those areas that United Space Forces had not yet reached.
That didn’t include the Citadel.
“Here we are, Captain,” the pilot said, as soldiers advanced to meet the shuttle. “May I ask a question, sir?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Is it true this is where the Teli put all that art they stole from humans?”
“Supposed to be true.” If it wasn’t, I had no business here.
“And you’re a . . . an art historian?”
“I am. The military has some strange nooks and crannies.”
He ignored this. “And is it true that the Taj Mahal is here?”
I stared at him. The Teli looted the art of Terran colonies whenever they could, and no one knew why. It was logical that rumors would run riot about that. Still . . . “Lieutenant, the Taj Mahal was a building. A huge one, and on Terra. It was destroyed in the twenty-first century Food Riots, not by the Teli. They’ve never reached Terra.”
“Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. “I heard the Taj was a sort of holo of all these exotic sex positions.”
“No.”
“Oh, well.” He sighed deeply. “Good luck, Captain.”
“Thank you.”
The Citadel—our Human name for it, of course—turned out to be the entrance into a mountain. Presumably the Teli had excavated bunkers in the solid rock, but you couldn’t tell that from the outside. A veteran NCO met me at the guard station. “Captain Porter? I’m Sergeant Lu, head of your assignment detail. Can I take these bags, sir?”
“Hello, Sergeant.” He was ruddy, spit-and-polish military, with an uneducated accent—obviously my “detail” was not going to consist of any other scholars. They were there to do grunt work. But Lu looked amiable and willing, and I relaxed slightly. He led me to my quarters, a trapezoid-shaped, low-ceilinged room with elaborately etched stone walls and no contents except a human bed, chest, table, and chair.
Immediately, I examined the walls, the usual dense montage of Teli symbols that were curiously evocative even though we didn’t understand their meanings. They looked handmade, and recent. “What was this room before we arrived?”
Lu shrugged. “Don’t know what any of these rooms were to the tellies, sir. We cleaned ’em all out and vapped everything. Might have been booby-trapped, you know.”
“How do we know the whole Citadel isn’t booby-trapped?”
“We don’t, sir.”
I liked his unpretentious fatalism. “Let’s leave this gear here for now—I’d like to see the vaults. And call me Jon. What’s your first name, Serge
ant?”
“Ruhan. Sir.” But there was no rebuke in his tone.
The four vaults were nothing like I had imagined.
Art, even stolen art—maybe especially stolen art—is usually handled with care. After all, trouble and resources have been expended to obtain it, and it is considered valuable. This was clearly not the case with the art stolen by the Teli. Each vault was a huge natural cave, with rough stone walls, stalactites, water dripping from the ceiling, fungi growing on the walls. And except for a small area in the front where the AI console and a Navy-issue table stood under a protective canopy, the enormous cavern was jammed with huge, toppling, six- and seven-layer-deep piles of . . . stuff.
Dazed, I stared at the closest edge of that enormous junkyard. A torn plastic bag bearing some corporate logo. A broken bathtub painted in swirling greens. A child’s bloody shoe. Some broken goblets of titanium, which was almost impossible to break. A hand-embroidered shirt from 78-Alpha, where such handwork is a folk art. A cheap set of plastic dishes decorated with blurry prints of dogs. A child’s finger painting. What looked like a Terran prehistoric fertility figure. And, still in its original frame and leaning crazily against an obsolete music cube, Philip Langstrom’s priceless abstract Ascent of Justice, which had been looted from 46-Gamma six years ago in a surprise Teli raid. Water spots had rotted one corner of the canvas.
“Kind of takes your breath away, don’t it?” Lu said. “What a bunch of rubbish. Look at that picture in the front there, sir—can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be. You want me to start vapping things?”
I closed my eyes, feeling the seizure coming, the going under. I breathed deeply. Went through the mental cleansing that my serene Dalo had taught me, kai lanu kai lanu breathe . . .
“Sir? Captain Porter?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I had control again. “We’re not vapping anything, Lu. We’re here to study all of it, not just rescue some of it. Do you understand?”
“Whatever you say, sir,” he said, clearly understanding nothing.
But, then, neither did I. All at once, my task seemed impossible, overwhelming. Ascent of Justice and a broken bathtub and a bloody shoe. What in hell had the Teli considered art?
The New Space Opera Page 58