Infinite Day

by Chris Walley

  A few hours later, a weary-looking Abilana visited him and gave him the list of injuries among the team. None were life threatening, but some required surgical operations, something she was reluctant to do in Below-Space. “Working with gray blood is just too much, even with robo-surgeons,” she said with a firm quietness.

  A consultation with Laura suggested that a brief surface visit would also be useful to check the ship for any damage from the explosion. Merral agreed that as soon as they were clear of the Sarata system, they would surface.

  Early the next morning, Luke presided over a service of remembrance for Slee, Ilyas, and Azeras, but Merral found that it brought him little comfort. He knew he was struggling with questions that needed answering. However, there were other pressing matters for him to deal with, and he pushed aside his personal concerns.

  Merral decided that the time had come to hold two necessary but unwelcome interviews. For reasons that he didn’t specify to Lloyd, who sat outside his office, he drew the blinds open on the hyperglass.

  He called Anya first and sat behind the desk waiting for her. She came in and stood awkwardly in front of his desk, staring at her feet.

  Merral motioned her to a chair.

  “I’ll stand,” she said.

  “Let me explain,” he began. “The only people who know of what happened yesterday are me, Lloyd, and Vero. And Luke.”

  “Inevitably.” The word had a sting of bitterness.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you tell Luke everything. He’s the man you get to deal with things . . .” The sentence was unfinished, but he got the meaning: that you are unable to handle.

  “That’s . . . a little untrue.” I mustn’t get angry. “But I do value his counsel.” He paused. “As commander of this operation, I am charged with maintaining the well-being of my crew. That is not an easy task. I am not trained for it.” I am forced onto the defensive already!

  She continued to stare at her feet, and he went on. “Anyway, none of us wants to make anything of what happened in the passageway. But I want to address it.”

  “I feel I’m on trial.”

  “No. This is not in any sense a court. Look, how do you feel about what happened?”

  She shook her head and stared down at her feet again. “I feel bad about it. I really do. I was already shaken from those Krallen. And that baziliarch appeared.” She gave him a bitter look. “I knew that Slee was dead. It was too much. I ran.” He saw tears in her eyes.

  “It made no real difference,” Merral said as softly as he could. “He died instantly of massive internal injuries, and there was nothing we could have done about it. I guess we’ve learned that this isn’t your sort of thing.”

  Now she looked at him, and he saw distress in her watery eyes. “No, it isn’t, Merral. I shouldn’t have come. I was a coward.”

  “You entered the Blade. That is hardly cowardice.”

  “I set my standards. Not you, not others.”

  “You set your standards? Or your sister?”

  She glared at him, and then looked away. “Yes, if I was just anyone from anywhere, I’d be judged a hero first class.” Her mouth tightened. “But I’m not, am I? I’m the sister of the Perena Lewitz who saved a planet. I’m judged by her standard.”

  “Look,” Merral said, trying to sound gentle, “fighting is over, at least this side of Farholme. We will talk about the journey beyond later. Anya, the matter is closed.”

  “Is it?” she retorted. “Perhaps for you. But not for me.”

  “I think it might be helpful if you talk to someone about it.”

  “Luke?”

  “He is the wisest person on this ship.”

  “Perhaps.” Then she rose and, with a terse “Thanks,” left.

  For some time after she had gone, Merral sat at his desk, staring into space. “Give me trees, Lord, to work with,” he murmured.

  Then, bracing himself, he placed two chairs in front of the desk and called Lloyd. “Sergeant, send in Isabella.”

  “Wouldn’t you prefer a Krallen, sir?”

  “What did you say, Sergeant?”

  “Slip of the tongue, sir. I’ll get her now.”

  Merral stood by the door to welcome Isabella. Each liaison project delegate—the word hostage was no longer used—had been issued a standard two-piece overall suit. Merral had considered them rather shapeless pieces of clothing, but he saw that somehow Isabella had put creases in hers so that she looked striking, and she had even managed to get her hair trimmed.

  “Isabella,” he said as he took her hand and beckoned her into his office. She took one chair and sat upright on it, looking forward.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said. “You have no idea how relieved I am to get you all back.” But as he said it, he realized the words seemed hollow.

  “I need to thank you. I had never considered a rescue possible.” Yet he heard no gratitude in her tone, and her gray eyes were hard.

  Trying to build some sort of bridge between them, Merral asked her about her health and her cabin and then expressed the hope that she wouldn’t find the return journey too unpleasant.

  Her responses were polite but cool, and in the end, he tried another tack. “Isabella, I must take some responsibility for what happened at Langerstrand. I had my suspicions about the ambassadors. But I didn’t know everything. Vero kept me very much in the dark. And even if I had known, I couldn’t have told you.”

  “It would have been helpful if you had. But that’s all past now.” Somehow her tone denied the words. “But why did you kill the ambassadors?”

  What? “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me. Why did you kill the ambassadors?”

  “Good grief. We killed one . . . Tinternli.”

  “The woman.”

  “She was more machine than woman. She attacked us. They had already killed a thousand people at Tantaravekat.” He was suddenly aware of something. “Look, is all this news to you?”

  “Your version is.”

  “My version?” He stared at her for a long time, realizing that once more he was out of his depth. “So if I told you that they . . . were going to destroy all Farholme, that they had Krallen armies ready to rip us to shreds, that . . . they besieged Ynysmant—would you believe any of that?”

  She stared back at him. “Merral, I have been lied to repeatedly now for . . . what, two months? By your own admission, you didn’t tell me all you knew about Langerstrand. And Lezaroth was a liar. Although maybe some of what he said was true. I’m not sure what I believe now.”

  Merral noticed that he was shaking his head. “We have imagery, accounts, eyewitness testimony. Most of the soldiers on this ship fought. Ask them.”

  She said nothing, and he went on. “Over the next few days, we will be debriefing every delegate on an individual basis. You will have a chance at those meetings to express your concerns.”

  “Fine.” She gazed around with hard eyes. “This ship—how did you get it?”

  “We seized it.”

  “How?”

  “We tricked the captain and got on board.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He . . . got himself shot.”

  “I see. Did you kill many people?” Beneath the mild tone was anger.

  “Three others; they attacked us. We were trying to rescue you. Remember?”

  “I’m not saying I’m not grateful. I’m just asking questions. What about the rest of the crew?”

  “We left them on a derelict world. They should be safe.”

  “You . . . marooned them?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve changed, Merral. You’ve become much harder.”

  It is hard to disagree with that. “We all have.”

  In the silence that fell between them he saw that she was close to tears. She clenched her fist. “I feel angry . . . and bitter about being used. I trusted you. We made a commitment that turned out to be worth nothing to you. Then you
let me go into danger so your own schemes could work.”

  He saw a terrible look of hurt passion in her eyes. “You tricked me. I was disposable. Then Lezaroth did the same. He made promises. How I could help the Dominion and the Assembly find peace. But all he wanted was information.” She turned her eyes on him. “You know, you and Lezaroth have a lot in common.”

  In utter consternation, Merral got to his feet and walked around to the back of his desk.

  “Look . . . Isabella, this . . . is going to take time. I don’t think this is serving any real purpose. You’ve had a traumatic time.”

  “So that’s it, is it? I’m traumatized?”

  “I think you’d find it helpful to talk to Luke. The chaplain . . .”

  “Yes. Of course. Luke.” She rose and walked stiffly to the door. “Thanks for rescuing me. Of course, if you’d been honest with me in the first place, it wouldn’t have been necessary.”

  Later, Luke came to Merral’s office. The chaplain just shook his head when he heard what had happened. “And what did you say to that?” he asked.

  Merral leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “Nothing. I was genuinely speechless. Luke, I have spoken to the lord-emperor. I have rebuked baziliarchs. But here . . . words just failed me.” He banged his fist on the table. “How many billion kilometers did we come to rescue her?”

  Luke shook his head. “We came because of all of them, Merral. We came because we are the Assembly, and it’s what we do. We have a pattern to follow here. Saving the lost, the Good Shepherd . . . that sort of thing.”

  “True.”

  “If it’s any consolation, it’s not just you. I’ve heard that she has become a problem. I’ve been in on two of the debriefings. Both delegates mentioned independently that Isabella became isolated.”

  “So it’s her, not me?”

  “Be careful with the blame. The suggestion is that Lezaroth groomed her to try to get at you. But I will try to meet with her.”

  “Thank you. Luke, she said something else. Just now I dismissed it, but it has nagged at me since. She said, ‘You and Lezaroth have a lot in common.’ Is that true?”

  “I think you have some way to go yet. But she touches on a truth that needs heeding. War brings out the worst in human beings. We must always be wary that we do not become like our enemies.”

  Twenty-four hours later, Merral judged that they were safe enough to risk surfacing. As they hung there amid the emptiness of space, with Sarata already only a pale white point of light astern, Abilana carried out her surgery, and Laura ran a survey of the outside of the hull in case any debris had struck and done damage. In both cases, the results were satisfactory.

  They plunged back into Below-Space and onward to Farholme.

  21

  Over the next few days, Merral found himself very busy. Traversing Below-Space for only the second time with a strange ship and a relatively untrained crew posed many concerns. Not least was the issue of navigation. The Sacrifice was designed for use with a steersman on any journey out of the Sarata system, and they had to rely on the coordinates that Azeras had programmed into the ship’s navigational system. It was agreed that as a check, it would be essential to surface at intervals to calibrate their progress from the star-field observations. Helga, the ship’s weapons officer, continued the cautious work of understanding the offensive and defensive capabilities of the ship. Fortunately, the ship was designed to be used by a relatively unsophisticated crew, so there was much automation and a number of training programs, which, when translated into Communal, were very helpful.

  Helena, who had now been promoted to head of the military team, asked Merral about continuing training. He considered the matter and decided that, as they were unlikely to face opposition on the way back, the rate of training could be reduced. When we reach Farholme, we can decide who wants to continue on toward the Assembly. In the meantime, as long as we can keep our skills up, that will suffice.

  One key task was dealing with the delegates. Together, they were brought up-to-date with events, and then they were individually debriefed, partly to help them and partly on the off chance that they had learned something of the Dominion that might be useful. Merral was careful to leave dealing with Isabella to others. He rationalized his decision on the grounds that it was in her best interest; but he did wonder whether he had, in fact, just given up on her. Yet despite his distancing, he couldn’t help but be aware that she was not responding as well as the rest of the delegates to life aboard the Sacrifice. At one meeting, where soldiers recounted the battles at Farholme, he saw how she sat erect and stiff and distant from the others. Does she believe what she’s hearing? Or is she too proud to admit that she may have been wrong about me?

  One area of progress came from Vero. The sentinel had merged the data he had acquired from the Rahllman’s Star and the Sacrifice with that which he had brought from the Farholme Library. He referred to the new combined databank, which resided on his desk as a head-sized silver cube, as his Augmented Library. He spent every moment he could spare on the task of compiling and understanding the enormous amounts of information. On the second day in Below-Space, he sent a handwritten note to Merral:

  At last! I have found the way to lock out an Allenix from accessing the ship’s functions! See me to put it on your diary.

  At lunch, Merral sat next to Laura and slipped the note to her. She read it and nodded. They left the canteen together, and she turned to Merral and remarked in a low tone, “Should we deploy that now?”

  “No. But I’ll have it installed for our use. It’ll be ready when we need it.”

  She nodded. “I feel safer already.”

  Four days out, Merral caught up with Luke in his office. “And Isabella?” he asked.

  Luke sighed and shook his head. “The iron has entered her soul.” He paused and seemed to consider what he had just said. “I’m getting as bad as Vero. I don’t really know what that means. Exactly. But it seems to fit. It’s hard to get through to her. She perceives everything as a form of manipulation. So any effort to help is seen as us trying to twist her. By all accounts, this was happening on the way out. It’s a natural tendency, but Lezaroth played on it.”

  A bitter look came on his face, and he struck his thigh with a clenched fist. “Merral, you have seen the Blade and what lies within. Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is the worst of the Dominion’s evil. The most spectacular, perhaps, but hardly the worst. To twist an ordinary human being into bitterness is far worse than conjuring up any amount of demons.”

  “And Anya?”

  “You and your women, eh? She told me what happened when she saw the baziliarch. I sympathize with her.”

  “She wants to be a hero, like her sister.”

  “That’s obvious.” He leaned back in his chair. “Merral, we talk of courage as if it always takes the same form. But it doesn’t. Anya’s sister was courageous; she chose the route that she knew would lead to her death. It was very brave. But Anya has been faced with different challenges; to face sudden monstrosities may require quite a different kind of courage. There are parallels elsewhere. Someone—say, a forester—breaks a leg in some accident. Does bearing that sudden and unexpected pain require the same courage as handling the news that you are going blind?”

  “Probably not. They are very different things. But you’re hopeful?”

  There was a pause. “Yes. But I’d be happier still if I knew that the war was over instead of just beginning.”

  Five days after the fiasco at the Blade, Lezaroth was summoned without explanation to Gharnadoul, the nearest of the Worlds of the Dead. He was flown alone by autoshuttle to a deserted landing station, where a robot took his gun and ordered him into a single-person transport. As the tiny cab sped through the air locks and accelerated out into the barren landscape, he stared impassively out the dirty window.

  The sun was a malevolent yellow disk peering through angry, twisting clouds. In the sulfurous light he could mak
e out the landscape on either side of the roadway: a vast, torn terrain smashed into high, jagged cliffs and deep, bottomless gulfs. Lezaroth had never visited either of the Worlds of the Dead—few men had—but even in ordinary times they were never spoken of by choice. And now, with the lord-emperor in a murderous mood, he knew both were deadly places.

  As Lezaroth stared at the road ahead, he knew he expected to die. How many men has my lord killed since the Sacrifice escaped? The rumor is that at least fifty were consigned to the depths of the Blade in order to appease the powers there. And another fifty or so are still being tortured. He had read the transcript of the last moments of the Twisted Spear, and he sensed that his encouragements to KD had borne a bitter fruit. He will kill me.

  The road crossed a chasm, and he peered down, seeing the broken remains of an older track littering the slope like a torn snake. He saw no other vehicles. I am alone on a World of the Dead and heading to death.

  Soon he cut through a long, gloomy tunnel, and then he was out on an immense sandy plain with the wind whipping up great spirals of yellow dirt. Suddenly the dusty haze parted, and he glimpsed amid the desolation the towering, faceless, gray walls of the first of the great mausoleums.

  Here Lezaroth’s resolve made a comeback. No, I will not yield to death yet. Not even here, where death is supreme. After all, if the lord-emperor had wanted to kill me, he had the chance over the last few days. I am a soldier; I will fight for life. The tiny cab raced on over the desolate plain, winding past gigantic pyramids, soaring obelisks, and gargantuan, multistoried towers. He saw that some were ruined. Even the Worlds of the Dead are not immune to decay.

  Finally the cab drew toward a massive lead-colored dome adorned with spires. A doorway opened for the vehicle, and at a deserted station, a robotic voice ordered Lezaroth out and into a lift. He plummeted down for what seemed minutes before the lift stopped and the doors opened. Ahead was a gloomy and irregularly lit space with a high curving roof; it was so enormous that he could not see the far side. He swung his eyes around urgently, looking and listening for threats. Inside the huge area were massive plinths of ink black stone on which lay half-cylindrical caskets of gleaming glass. Inside he could make out long forms, as brown and brittle as husks of wood.