by Janet Morris
Reice sat forward, hunched over his control suite, doing just that.
You had to give South and STARBIRD credit for guts, anyhow. Or maybe it was plain stupidity. There was a saying that if you needed a hero, you just had to paint a good man into a corner.
South's corner was filled with one big, shiny, silver Ball.
CHAPTER 28
Send You a Letter
Richard Cummings the Second came striding into Croft's inner office as if he were Destiny itself.
Croft hadn't been sure, until he'd been advised that Cummings had entered the building, that the NAMECorp CEO would come at all.
Then Mickey would have gone to him. But Cummings didn't need to know that.
Croft sat behind his fossil-bearing desk of polished hematite and spread his arms expansively. He wasn't going to get up to greet Cummings.
But then he was up, in front of his desk, pumping Cummings's hand.
Damn, it was hard to function this way. Mickey tried to focus on his words and control his expectations: "So glad you could come, Richard. I really needed to see you where I could control peripherals. Please sit down."
Cummings stepped back from him, narrow-eyed. Had the NAMECorp CEO seen Croft slide around his desk? Cross the distance without moving?
If he had, would he pretend he hadn't?
Cummings said, "This better be good, Croft. I'm going to have your scalp over this alien business. And to be truthful, I can't wait."
Cummings had been in the presence of the aliens, too. He was in the seat that Mickey had indicated, looking at his hands on the arms of the overstuffed chair as if he weren't sure he'd decided to sit there.
Croft took careful, predetermined steps forward. "I want you to know that we've moved heaven and earth to satisfy your conditions." Wrong words, surely.
Cummings looked up at Croft as if he weren't quite sure why he was here. He definitely hadn't gotten over finding himself in that chair.
Had Mickey done that to Cummings, somehow? Made him take a seat?
No time to find out. No time to wonder, either, or they'd be playing musical chairs for one of those awful intervals where everything sequential folded up and reality became a ball of aluminum foil you couldn't unfold without tearing it to shreds.
Cummings said, "I told you, Croft, I'm not interested in anything but word from my son. If you and your flunkies haven't got that—"
"But I have got that. That's why I wanted you to come here." Move slowly. Try to keep your attention on Cummings. Walk around your desk. Sit down. Slowly.
"Good," said Cummings disbelievingly. "Then let's see it. I wish you wouldn't waste my time, Mickey. You can't possibly have anything substantive this fast. Not fast enough to put your spin on the Security Council meeting tomorrow. And I'm here to enjoy letting you know that I know it."
"Richard," said Croft, safe in his chair, "just watch the monitor, please."
And Croft touched a button on his desk top to start the vid.
Behind Croft's desk, on the big screen set into the wall for command briefings, a likeness of Cummings the Third appeared.
Richard Cummings III said, "Hi, Dad." The face of Rick Cummings was full of mischief and not a little hostility. Beside him sat Dini Forat, the Muslim girl with whom young Cummings had fled his father and her father and all the conventions opposed to their marriage.
Croft stole a look at the older Cummings's face. Richard the Second looked as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He looked, in that instant—old.
His eyes seemed sunken. They were too bright not to be holding back tears.
The son was speaking from the vid screen: "We were told you're making trouble, Dad. So Dini and I want you to know we'd like you to quit it. We're happy here. We're not going to be happy if you use all your tricks to get us home and then try to split us up." The youngster reached out and put his arm over the girl's shoulders. His face was stony. "So lay off, okay? You lost this round. Everybody loses, once in a while. If we have guarantees from you, we'll come for a visit. But you're not to cause any trouble. The Council's promised to protect us from you. We're holding them to it."
A furry creature, reminiscent of a raccoon, jumped up on his lap, stared at the camera, and climbed onto Rick Cummings's shoulder.
Dini Forat said, "Father, this is a message for you, too. We were in danger from you. Now we are safe. Our home is beautiful. Life is full. We will come to see you, and Mr. Cummings, only when we have guarantees of safety. And of honorable intentions. If you do evil, we will not come."
The screen went blank.
Richard Cummings was rubbing his eyes. When he took his hands away from them, they were red. "If this is some kind of joke, Croft. ... If you've faked this. . . ."
"Don't be ridiculous, Richard. Why would I bother? How could I? Those children both look a year or so older than when we last saw them."
"I . . . noticed." Cummings was trembling.
Croft sympathized. He'd been doing some trembling himself lately.
At least the sequence of events was staying predictable. Croft kept his mind focused on the step-by-step process of the meeting in progress. "Richard, you know as well as I do that the speed at which we received the communication you asked for is beyond our technology. If we could acquire that technology alone—be able to communicate so quickly over such vast distances—what would it be worth to humankind?"
"A lot." Cummings said dully. He was still shaking off the shock of seeing his son.
Croft mercilessly pushed his advantage: "And if that is just a foretaste of what the Council of the Unity has at its command, what then? Do you want to rebuff them? Open hostilities we might not be able to withstand? Why make an enemy? Or another enemy. Your son doesn't seem too thrilled that you've interrupted his honeymoon." Croft's words were brutal, but his career and more were at stake.
Cummings shuddered slightly. He looked away from the screen above Croft's head and said, "Have the Medinans seen this?" His words spilled out of his mouth very slowly, like a waterfall of alphabet, and puddled in his lap.
Croft concentrated as hard as he could on getting out his next statement. But still, part of his mind was half praying, Please, don't let things fall apart. Don't let the moments disappear, or get scrambled. Don't let the floor dissolve, or the Council show up. Not now. Not till I'm done.
And he said: "The Medinan embassy is in receipt of a copy of this video letter."
Cummings said, "Well, I'd like to know if they think that their Forat girl seems . . . different. My son seems very different." His face was turning red, flushing. "That's not the boy I know."
"You're not saying this is a fake?" All around Cummings's head Croft could see whirling spirals, as if Richard Cummings's skull was smoking. "Because that's ridiculous." Had they said these words before? "We checked with the psychometric modeler, which verified this as an actual video of your son and Dini Forat."
"No, that's not what I mean. I mean they're . . . different. Changed," Cummings growled. "If those aliens have hurt them. ..."
Who wasn't different, changed, from contact with the aliens? "You're a bit different yourself, Richard, than you were last year." Croft stood up very carefully, and watched his feet as he took step after step toward Cummings.
"They're different, I say."
The carpet was waving, as if it were a miniature forest. There were things crawling in it. Colored things. Things like snails. . . .
Focus on Cummings's face. Look into his eyes.
"You asked for a message from your son. You have that message. Whether you wish to see your son or not, is up to you."
"Of course I want to see my son!" Cummings thundered, and stood up.
He towered over Mickey, and for an instant Mickey was afraid.
Then Cummings was five feet away, and looking from his balled fists to Croft in bewilderment. "What? What's happening?"
"You're agreeing to stop arousing anti-alien sentiment."
"The hell I a
m! I never agreed to anything like that! I want to see my son! You're beginning to sound like you're in league with these kidnappers!"
"And I want you to bide your time. We're doing everything in our power to negotiate a peaceful resolution to this crisis. The Council is willing to produce the children, so long as no harm comes to them from their parents. That doesn't say much for the way you and Dini Forat's father treated those children. Do you understand me? Your children are afraid of you. They think harm will come to them if they come back. They still fear for their lives at your hands. And they must be guaranteed safe passage by my government. Is that clear? They'll visit. But they don't want to stay here. They can't be forced to stay here. Do you agree to abide by those conditions, Richard? Otherwise, no matter what you do, those children aren't willing to come to Threshold."
Mickey's mouth seemed to be breathing fire.
Cummings must not have noticed. He said heavily, "Fine, Croft. I agree to await the return of my son. I'll see for myself, then, what's to be seen."
And Cummings stormed out the door.
Croft made his way back to his desk and nearly collapsed in his chair. He was shaking all over. His knees were quaking.
The Council had agreed to produce the children. But both Cummings and the Medinan embassy had doubts that the message tape showed their missing citizens—or at least, showed them unharmed.
Mickey hoped to hell that the Council of the Unity really had a living Richard Cummings III, and Dini Forat, to produce.
Otherwise, the damage that Croft had done today to his own—and to the Council's—cause was incalculable.
Now he had to find the strength to take that information back to the Interstitial Interpreter. How did you say to the II that he'd better not be lying, or even stretching the truth in any way?
Croft couldn't imagine how he was going to do that. But he must. Everything he'd worked so hard to secure hinged now on the appearance of a couple of wayward teenagers who'd disappeared under mysterious circumstances, out near where the Ball now was at Spacedock Seven.
CHAPTER 29
In the Ball
South found it hard to leave STARBIRD alone and derelict, floating empty in space, even though Sling's new upgrades would improve her survivability if he bought it out here. He told himself she was parked, safe and sound, where somebody—Sling, if nobody else—would be sure to salvage her if South never came back.
But he didn't believe it. Nobody would want STARBIRD but him. His ship would end up scrapped, or chopped for parts. He felt awful about it, hanging there in his suit between the ship and the Ball.
He could see himself reflected in the Ball, he was so close. A nondescript human in a space suit with a Manned Maneuvering Unit strapped to his back and a black box in one hand. Unremarkable. Nonthreatening.
He hoped.
"Birdy," he said into his open comlink, "I'm going to jet over there now and make contact." Birdy was with him, sort of, as long as he kept his com channel to the ship open.
He could hear his harsh breathing in his helmet. His nose was stuffy. Hell of a note. His breath rattled up and down his nasal passages, and his mouth felt as if he'd been eating glue. But he was going to get this job done.
Get it over with.
Face his demon.
Face down his fear.
His climate-control was humming happily. "Spec scans," he told Birdy, and his helmet's heads-up display quadranted to bring him multispectral views of the Ball in infrared, UV, and electro-optical, as well as realtime.
In realtime, the Ball was waiting quietly for him to approach. He'd read a book once about a boy who tamed a wild horse that wouldn't let anybody else near it. When the kid finally got close to the wild stallion, the horse had just stood there and waited for the boy to touch it.
But he was no kid, and this Ball was nothing of his world.
So he jetted around it awhile, grateful for the illusion of control he got from rolling his thruster track-ball under his palm or tapping fine course corrections onto his wristpad.
He could fly around out here all day and all night, a moth just smart enough not to dive-bomb the flame.
Or he could get it over with. Bite the bullet.
The lower-left corner of his visor displayed a blinking red dot: a signal from Birdy that somebody wanted to talk to him.
He'd told Birdy not to patch anybody through. He didn't want to be pulled back at the last minute. He didn't want to have a pre-game argument with Reice. He didn't want Riva Lowe to start second-guessing him. He didn't want any incomings whatsoever.
He told Birdy to queue the message, and any follow-up. He'd deal with it later.
Better hurry. Before somebody found a way to stop him.
"It's you and me," he told the Ball. He tapped his forward thruster control, and physics gave him a gentle shove toward the silvery sphere that had been making his life a living hell for so long.
The sphere seemed to ripple, as if he'd disturbed the surface of a pool of water between him and the Ball.
And it began to change color.
A purple wave ran across it, like the edge of night over a planetary surface. Or like a shock wave seen from an aircraft high in the sky.
After the purple leading edge, a red band came rushing. Then yellow. Then green. Then indigo, then . . .
South heard his own voice in his helmet saying, "Now's the time for the black box. Push the button and watch the show. Sling, I hope the hell you knew what you were doing. . . ." For the record? Not really. Because he wanted Birdy to know he was still okay.
Because he wanted to make sure he could still hear his own voice.
He still had the forward thruster control depressed. If he didn't let up soon he was going to crash right into the color-rippled surface of the Ball.
Crash hard.
He held the black box out in front of him like a shield. Like a rifle. He turned it on.
And he didn't let up on his forward thruster.
"Okay, Ball. Open up, says me." His whisper was harsh. His teeth were locked together.
If he was right, the Ball was going to make its own decision any time now. . . .
He remembered the first time it had opened up for him. If it didn't do that in the next few seconds, he was going to hit that silver/pink/gold/lavender surface pretty damned hard.
The rainbow surface, quadranted into display modes by his helmet, disappeared. His heads-up went totally blank. Black. Featureless. Systems failure?
He tried breathing. His life-support seemed to be working. What a time for his helmet to go down. "Birdy?"
No answer.
"Realtime," he gasped. Maybe the suit could still hear him. It was still keeping him moving forward.
For an instant more the world around him was totally black. And then he could see through a clear faceplate.
Into a crevice in eternity. Inside a Ball that was opening wide to swallow him whole.
He let off the forward thruster.
He engaged reverse.
Nothing happened.
He said, "Shit, wouldn't you know?" as he sailed past the outer edges of the Ball and the universe he knew and loved disappeared from sight. Ahead was—what?
A swirl of colors. A maelstrom of texture.
A mist, or a pressure seal, or a giant eye.
His thrusters wouldn't respond. He was headed straight into it, deeper and deeper.
He desperately wanted to see behind him. See if the Ball was closing up. He tried throwing his weight to one side in an instinctive gesture. No good.
Made sense. He was nearly panting. He tried his thruster track-ball once more, saying "please" under his breath.
And it responded. His MMU kicked him in the pants and he spun at dizzying speed.
He couldn't find the opening he'd come in through. And then he could. It was closing behind him.
He still had the black box in his hand. Everywhere he spun, everywhere it pointed, the Ball roiled as if it were being stir
red.
He couldn't make sense of anything he was seeing, he was spinning so fast. All the swirls were so agitated, it was as if the Ball were dizzy, too.
He reversed his thrust, carefully.
Then he shut off the black box. There was no use wasting power. And it seemed like wherever the black box pointed, the colors were the most disturbed.
Colors trying to tear themselves apart. A whirlpool trying to form a center of calm. Lots of stones falling into water and making rings that extended until they banged into each other . . .
The black box blinked yellow: standby.
His reverse thruster slowed his own spin. He stabilized himself with a final tap. And the colors around him steadied.
Whirlwinds eddied. Storms subsided. Planetary eyes blinked and opened wide. Clouds parted.
He floated, absolutely still, above a place. A portal. A gate. An arch of lions with roaring mouths wide. A curve of dragons whose spread talons kneaded the threads that kept spacetime taut. A ship was around him for one instant, a huge and busily humming ship full of lights with streaming tails and machines happily at work generating a pulse and a wave that he could feel running through him.
Then the ship was gone. The huge, circular ship with the command stations and the view stations into everywhere.
The portal of lions was gone. The dragons knitting spacetime were gone. And the boundary conditions of perception were those he could live within, once again.
He was floating above a place, and it was so familiar his heart ached.
White temples, on green hills. Lazy meadows brushed with flowers. Dark groves full of life.
He tapped his thruster, wanting to turn again. He needed to see something else. If he kept looking that way he'd see his family, his girlfriend, his parents.
And rings in a lavender sky full of clouds. He'd been here before.
He wanted to know about the Ball.
He said, "Come on, Ball. Where are you?"
He needed to see beyond his mind's attempts to show him something acceptable.