The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  Jameson held his tongue. Not the least of his concerns this night had been making it clear to the Commission, to his own government, and to Fleet how right he had been; how wrong, by extension, others had been. He had gone after Morisz with a savagery that surprised even him. Somebody would have to pay for the events of this night, and Jameson did not intend for it to be himself. The unfortunate Morisz, responsible for Visharta’s stupidity, was handy. A long and honorable career was about to end in disgrace. Jameson, without vindictiveness, motivated by pure self-preservation, would make sure of it.

  Struzik said, “Anyway, it’s done. One down.”

  He meant one point in the plan he and Jameson and the others had hammered out in the hours since Hanna’s escape. So far they had met no serious opposition; not because any of them were loved, especially not now, but because they had a formidable weapon in reserve. They had not formally declared a state of emergency. If they did their power in the Polity worlds would be frightening. They would have the power in theory, at least; no past Commission had ever invoked emergency rights, and who knew what the reaction would be in practice? Not even Jameson wanted to find out—though it might be something to be one-sixth of a god.

  His office was very quiet. There seemed to be a great deal of noise in his head, however. Some of it was left over from the frantic activity of the past hours, but some of it was the echo of Hanna’s pleas. He said, to shut it out, “Let’s have a quick review, Peter.”

  “All right,” Struzik said discontentedly. He began ticking items off on his fingers. “Defense. Saturation of the Polity. Steinmetz is still working out the details. The non-Polity worlds are getting the idea something’s wrong. Nothing’s leaked from here or D’neera yet, as far as I know, but they’re starting to get worried. Their reps’ll have to be briefed pretty thoroughly and pretty soon. Search. Steinmetz wants a dozen vessels searching Endeavor’s route—”

  “Nonsense.” Jameson did not pound his desk. He would save that for Steinmetz.

  “If we don’t search,” Struzik said reasonably, “how are we going to explain not trying?”

  “We’ve got to give the appearance of trying, but I see no reason to waste more than one or two ships on a hopeless task. I dislike tying up even one.”

  Struzik had liked the idea of a search from the beginning. He said, “Well, it is a clear interface between us and them.”

  “An interface many light-years long, where Hanna may be lost effectively as a single drop of water in the sea. There is an infinite volume of space in any direction from it, which Species X may have explored though we have not.”

  “The rendezvous must be a pretty recognizable point—”

  “There are thousands of easily recognizable points. Peter, it is a truism of space flight that an interstellar vessel is simply invisible unless it wishes to be found. In effect, it’s just not there. And suppose there is no rendezvous? Suppose she goes straight to their homeworld? No, Peter. I’ll talk to Steinmetz.”

  Struzik gave up. “Public information. Are we ready?”

  “Nowhere near it.” Jameson looked away from Struzik. A gray day at last grew over the gray ice. Plenty of expert propagandists had been working hard all night, but he did not think they would concoct anything that would soothe the public. Hanna’s possession and escape could not be kept secret, not with D’neera involved. The prospect of warfare would be terrifying enough to a population largely free of it for centuries. The revelation of what Species X could do—what they had done with Hanna—would rouse the latent xenophobia of a whole species. Plans for martial law were being updated everywhere.

  “Koroth,” Struzik said, and Jameson looked back at him quickly, waiting for news. But Struzik only said, “Still no physical resistance. They’re talking our people’s ears off, though. Lady Koroth’s hopping mad.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Why won’t you talk to her?”

  “I am the wrong person to talk to Lady Koroth.”

  “She thinks you’re the right person. As you know,” Struzik said pointedly, “she has talked to me. And to Andrella. And to Muammed and Katherine. At length.”

  “Not Arthur?”

  “Not Arthur. But she really, really wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m sure she does.” On a panel out of Struzik’s sight, a light had been blinking all night. Lady Koroth was waiting. If he pressed a key and said “Fourteen” she would be there.

  “What else, Peter?”

  “That’s it, for now.”

  “All right. We meet in an hour. I’ll talk to you then.”

  Struzik vanished. Jameson looked at the winking light. Other, more productive lights were flashing too. He wondered what Lady Koroth had ever expected; wondered if she had thought she could move D’neera into the tumultuous mainstream of human history without paying for it. The price, it was true, seemed high.

  He also wondered what she wanted so badly to say to him. He knew Andrella Murphy had told her of Hanna’s escape; did she want to speak to him of Koroth? Or of Hanna?

  He discovered then that his reluctance to face her was rooted in the latter possibility; and with the thought he touched the key and said “Fourteen,” and a video screen came to life and floated into position before him.

  He did not see Iledra at once. He saw a shadowed room, a burst of light near the video pickup, more light farther away, a window open to white daylight. It was late afternoon there; snowing, someone had said. The shadows were a tunnel between the two lights and in it, suddenly, Iledra appeared. She came closer quickly. The nearer light fell on her face, and he saw it was cold as the snowlight.

  She came as close as she possibly could, as if a hands-breadth mattered in the light-years between them. Her eyes were swollen, and her sleek fair hair was disarranged for the first time in Jameson’s experience. He recognized instantly that Struzik was wrong, or the reports he quoted stale. There was more than anger here.

  She said without preamble, voice hard, jaw hard, “I want you to tell me about H’ana.”

  For a moment he had felt kinship with her, which had something to do with Hanna, but it was gone. He said, “There is nothing to say you have not already heard. I know Tharan has told you of all the questions she answered, and those she did not answer. This is the final answer. This somehow was the reason for what was done to her, the one thing she could not remember. They made her over in their image.”

  “You saw her. You spoke to her. I do not believe she could be controlled as completely as I am told.”

  “Believe it,” he said. “If you’d seen her face when she attacked me—”

  “You don’t know her.” The woman actually clenched her teeth. “She is strong. Strong!”

  He took a deep breath, for once disconcerted. He wondered fleetingly if Iledra had passed some endpoint of sanity. He said, “The alien persona, entity, whatever it is—it’s very strong too.”

  Iledra seemed not to have heard. “Why did she run from you?”

  “It was not she,” he said emphatically. “It was the alien. I suppose its intention, when its work was done, was to get away from Earth as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was anxious to get to D’neera or just into space, where escape would be easier. But it found out I suspected its existence and knew I would not let it go. It had to escape then, or never.”

  She stared at him, the gray eyes so sharp he wondered if she heard him thinking. He said, watching her face, “Lady Koroth, you said I don’t know her. I think now she is a stranger to you too. When you spoke to her last, was she herself? You know she was not. She was fighting something she did not understand. She did not know she was fighting; but she sensed she was losing.”

  Iledra looked at him with abhorrence. She said, “You are coming out of this very well.”

  “Yes?” he said, taken aback.

  “I think in the end the consensus will be that you are brilliant. That no one took you seriously enough, and the only man who did gave you an incompetent
for backup.”

  “Very true,” said Jameson, who had spent a good portion of the past hours encouraging just that point of view.

  “I think you are mad. Mad to keep power. I think you would do anything to get your way.”

  “You are entitled to your opinion,” he said quietly.

  She made a sound in her throat that was almost a growl. She said, “I once thought to find in you an ally. I have found instead a creature that cares for nothing except its own ends. I forgot the lessons of my ancestors, who came here renouncing your ways. We are not experienced with the hidden motive, we D’neerans. We do not always love one another, but each of us knows what another is about. I don’t have the habit of disbelief. When you spoke of your hopes to me and to H’ana, I believed you. I gave her to you for your ill-fated Project with some thought of the unity of man. I was a fool to trust you or any true-human.”

  He should not be taking this from her or anyone, a personal attack that was at best a distorted reflection of reality. It was advisable to measure her enmity now, rather than wait for more drastic proof; but he had had enough. He was reaching for the key that would end it when she said, “You destroyed her. There is no difference between you and the aliens.”

  He should not answer at all. But he said as if compelled, “She made her own choices.”

  She said venomously, “Choices! Her choices have been those you gave her, or drove her to. Ruin and suffering and the waste of a life precious to me as my own—she was lost, and she wanted to come home. She only wanted to come home!”

  He saw the anguish behind her fury, and understood. No one had to tell her some of Hanna’s choices had been made by her Lady. He said, because it would be easier for Iledra if she could believe it, “She was not herself even when she told you that. The woman you knew as Hanna may no longer have a real existence.”

  “You can’t mean that! When I am told she might have killed you, and refrained—”

  “But she is gone,” he said. “If she comes to you I will admit she has some measure of control, or if she returns here—”

  “Returns! She would never go back to you. She was escaping from you!”

  “The alien—”

  “There is more to it than that,” Iledra said. Her eyes glittered.

  “No,” he said, impassive from long habit.

  “I think you are lying.”

  He said deliberately, “She struggled and lost. The path she made in the short time she was on foot looked as if she had been fighting a physical entity. I’m sorry. But those are the facts and you must accept them.”

  “I don’t believe you. I saw her heart before she went away. It was turning toward you. She would have turned to you in her pain. What did you do?”

  He cut her off, with finality. “Nothing.”

  “She was running from you. She, not the alien.”

  “No. Good-bye, Lady Koroth.”

  He closed the call without ceremony and was still for some time, staring into space. The guess was too close for his liking. Iledra could not know of his promise to Hanna that she would be safe, and her pleas when she knew he had lied. Iledra could not know he had taken Hanna in his arms and comforted her—and then put her away. Several people knew of that intimate little scene, to his profound discomfort, but none of them would have described it to Lady Koroth, not even Andrella.

  And if someone did, what did it matter? His only mistake, he was told, lay in having been too kind. He should have had Visharta knock her out as she clung to him.

  Oh, hell, he thought. If I had it to do over again that’s the only thing I would change. Otherwise I’d do the same damn thing. There was nothing else to do.

  He reached for the key that would call Rodrigues so he could get on with his job: Steinmetz next, another commission meeting, another attempt to get heedless F’thal to understand the danger. But he paused at a last thought of Hanna, words Iledra had used: the waste.

  For an instant he saw clearly the woman Hanna had been becoming. Wonder had outweighed her fear, until she saw a new danger in him. She had had a chance to kill him after that, and warned him instead, with passionate concern. And then made a clean, straight escape, with that thing in her head and the hounds close behind her.

  The waste, he thought. The waste.

  After a while his hand descended, and Rodrigues said, “Yes, sir?”

  “Steinmetz,” he said, and leaned back to wait, thinking rigorously of organization.

  Chapter 13

  The planes of reality were all discrete, white emptiness cut by darkness, so sharp-edged Leader thought it would all fly apart at any moment. The split was intrinsic in the universe. He knew it, all the People knew it, and bridged it all-together. Now there was nothing to contain it but himself and this alien and memory unsupported by the binding We. Though empty, she functioned, an automaton operating by animal compulsion, automatic and implacable as the universe. She did not even see that reality was unstuck.

  Her thoughts cut him, and he was entirely exposed to them now and sometimes, even, thought them. Revulsion and hatred washed over him; in denial of his existence she would drown him. Scalding blasts of negation threatened him. Hating in return was salvation: so the Student-Celebrants whispered long ago: HATE AFFIRM. AFFIRM. AFFIRM.

  Stronger than captive or paradigm she had also her Home at her back close at hand and around her a Render’s artifacts

  they made none we stopped them in time

  and now that her enemy was visible she faced him powerfully and he was alone, save for her. Save for her who

  would Us

  kill, I would kill

  the Students were

  bloody were beastly were cruel were

  right. You

  kill. You kill!

  She made the random transit over the yacht’s repeated warnings. The arcs of thought were not all hers. She followed them one by one. Danger danger danger too dangerous a game suicidal (but if it were not sometimes necessary all ships would prohibit it utterly. The instructor shook his solemn head. They should; there is no reason for it ever to be necessary. You ought to be with me now, Umberto.)

  Artifact of beasts THAT IS NOT MY THOUGHT I WILL NOT THINK IT.

  The random Jump would save her from pursuit; the computer that ordered it would itself need time to determine where it was. There is Sol. Firsthome of water. NOT MY THOUGHT.

  In the strange starfield she tried to think, but the alien bubble burst in her head and she swam in its shards. Heartworld II trembled around her, its planes and angles quivered with immanence, poised, changing to something else. It too would shake apart and dissolve in non-being. There was no color in the universe. It was a white fog cut by shadows from dead space, being and unbeing clearly distinguished. She fell through its cracks to the Students’ arms, experienced in pain and in murder…

  clearly remembered dimly foreseen

  and murder I will—!

  She shook her head violently over and over until it ached. The pain made a handle and she hung on it. The disjunctions were Leader’s reality, not hers. Or his perception of hers, shaped by living millennia; their weight crushed her. She ought to have a soul and she had nothing—

  “Stop it!” she cried out loud, and buried her face in her hands. The skin of her face grew hot, grew coarse, and she moaned from her own deep fear.

  Home, Nearhome, warm sea of thought gently turning

  gentle sea indigo amethyst white spires of Home

  “Home,” she whispered, and slowly, painfully, straightened. Her thoughts cleared. She could go home. Iledra would protect her, help her dig out this monster and never, ever hurt her.

  She said to Heartworld II, too quick for Leader, “Set course for D’neera.”

  “Working,” it said, and all her muscles convulsed in his blast of fury.

  * * *

  He did not know how to speak. He was not made for it, and even using her he could not do it. Wildfire was constructed to find aural equivalents for
thought and written symbol, and he was not. Nor was she exquisitely alive to currents in the atmospheric sea, so that even commanding her consciousness he was robbed of a potent sense and irreparably numbed. But he used parts of her well.

  He held her paralyzed in horror and moved one hand to cancel the course she had just set. Fear and rage rained on him like blows. The hand jerked; toward her head; as if she could plunge it into her skull and tear him out in handfuls of dripping brainmatter. But he held steadfast to the hand. It was a soft and disgusting paw, nearly black against the white of this living, thinking room. Yet she was very light compared to many of the Treecubs, who ran a spectrum that confused him.

  Their machines could be run without speech. He had learned how to do that in the long nights, driving her weary body so that in the end he knew more than she did, drawing fierce and invisible on her knowledge, for survival and escape depended on it. She understood the workings of this vessel only because he had showed her and forced her to see because she had not wanted to see and not wanted to know because: because of the other one. Whose eyes had picked him out.

  Now the other hand, set to dancing over a keyboard whose logic was mathematical. He understood that, too.

  Yes. More much more much closer his goal than he had hoped. Yes. Yes!

  She said in despair, to no one but inevitably to Leader: He was right.

  ??

  to keep me there. No choice

  ??

  the future on his shoulders

  I have too.

  Heartworld II said, “The first portion of this course requires intensive calculation due exclusively to randomization. The remainder is known. The probability is ninety-five percent that no more than sixty transits will be required to reach subject terminus. The probability is 90.233 percent that the journey will require less than 144 hours.”

  * * *

  Hanna stared at the course display. Its rainbow colors were incomprehensible, and then coalesced into something she could understand. It was almost a course for D’neera. Almost.