Balance of Power

by Stableford, Brian

  I threw the bag on the bed with a gesture of utter disgust. Mariel, eyes closed, was clinging hard to Christian. Jan shut the door.

  “Why did they let him go?” I asked, my voice caught in a half-whisper.

  “He accepted the situation,” said Jan. “He asked them to release him so that he could prepare for the voyage. Nobody thought....”

  “No,” I said, looking down at the silent form of the stricken Piet. “I don’t suppose anyone would.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Piet was taken by carriage to the dock downriver of Ak’lehr where Ilah’y’su was moored. Anna’s body went with him, scheduled for burial at sea. Jan and Charles took charge of the operation, leaving Christian behind.

  The three of us gathered in Mariel’s room, largely to avoid the smell of blood. I abandoned my packing while Christian found me a stiff drink.

  He, strangely enough, seemed relatively unmoved by what had occurred.

  “We are all to sail on the ship tomorrow,” he said. “We leave early—just after dawn. Only your friend Nieland will remain. Those of us who wish to will be permitted to return with Ilah’y’su. By next spring, it will all have been forgotten, and as soon as the sickness breaks out again we will be on hand to defeat it. A small miracle, readily staged. In the meantime, the magisters will appear to have acted in accordance with the popular sentiment, without ever being forced to make any official statement.”

  “You know that you would have been forced to leave here in any case,” I said. “Sooner or later. Ul’el would have had his way. This way is better. For everyone.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  “You’re glad,” said Mariel. “Of all of you, you’re the only one who’s pleased that it’s all happened.”

  “What do you think?” asked Christian, with a cutting edge in his voice.

  She was unperturbed. “You must have been very lonely,” she said.

  Christian shrugged slightly, and turned away.

  “Bernhard Verheyden killed my father,” he said, in a deliberately offhand tone. “When he knew that I was not his son. Piet tried to kill me once. The others...they always knew that I was different, but they didn’t know how they were supposed to behave. They just didn’t know. I tried to be one of them. I’ve always tried. But there was never any real chance. I was always excluded, somehow, from the whole thing.”

  “You will come back?” I said, anxiously. “Someone has to bring the virus. I’d rather it was you.”

  “I’ll come back,” he said softly. “Not as Bernhard Verheyden’s son. As ilah’y’su. In my own right. As myself. Jan and Charles...they haven’t really got selves to be. Because they are Bernhard Verheyden’s sons. And Piet—Piet most of all.”

  I nodded, not pretending that I agreed, or understood, but merely accepting his declaration of intent.

  “We haven’t solved anything,” said Mariel. She was talking to me, reacting to something she’d picked up in my thoughts.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’re accepting all this as if we’d achieved something,” she said. “But we haven’t. We haven’t altered the situation at all. We’re no closer now to making any kind of a bridge between the Ore’l and the colony than we ever were.”

  “Christian is coming back,” I said. “Nieland is still here. There’s going to be a two-way crossing of the ocean at long last. That’s all worth something. It all counts.”

  “For what? Can you honestly say that what has happened here will measurably influence the history of this world in the slightest degree?”

  “We could never be sure of that,” I said. “Not even if we could track this world over the next thousand years. But what happened here could have been worse. And it would have been worse if we hadn’t been dumped on the doorstep when we were. We arrived at just the right time. A small miracle, in more ways than one. Maybe it’ll turn out to be an unnecessary miracle. Maybe a futile one. But don’t deny it. I don’t say we’ve achieved something here—we did what was here for us to do. But we did it.”

  “And with Nathan to write it up for us we can pretend to be masterminds?”

  I ignored that particular remark, and tried to find what was really worrying her.

  “Do you want to stay here?” I asked. “With Nieland?”

  She shook her head.

  “There isn’t a real job to be done here,” she said. “Not any more. Everything’s already under way.”

  She felt, in some peculiar way, as if she’d been cheated. It had all happened too quickly. It had happened all around her. It hadn’t been as she’d anticipated it at all. She’d been desperate for one more chance to use a power she was so afraid of losing. When the New Hope had first come to shore it looked as if she’d been robbed of the chance. When the forest savages picked us up it looked as if she’d got it back. Now...the situation had moved far beyond the simple matter of opening communication and learning to understand. All in all, coincidence had served us very well. But from her particular point of view...it wasn’t a victory, by any means.

  “Saving worlds isn’t a simple business,” I told her. “Sometimes there’s a single problem and a single answer. But even when it seems as simple as that there’s much, much more. Nothing is guaranteed. Nobody guaranteed you a set of ritual opportunities with ritual answers. You can’t expect things to go by a carefully prepared script. We find what we find and we make the best of it. You’ve seen a good deal of the Ore’l. You’ll see a good deal more yet. There’s a lot you can learn and it will all be useful. Don’t be discouraged because it doesn’t fit your preconceived ideas about what ought to have happened. The world doesn’t work like that.”

  Christian didn’t know what the hell we were talking about. She took mercy on him and let me change the subject. I was sure she’d come round, in time. At the moment, things looked to be in a hell of a mess.

  “The Ore’l will contain the plague this year,” I said, aiming at Christian. “With what we were able to find out about it. The magisters will be able to muster some kind of resistance.”

  Christian let go a dry, humorless laugh. “They will,” he said. “I know them. Do you know what they’ll do?”

  “If they’ve any sense,” I said, “they’ll close the road.”

  “They’ll do that,” said Christian. “And they’ll slaughter every single animal in every single herd within the area of infection. That won’t destroy the center of the infection entirely—too many people have caught the disease and the vector can transmit from person to person. But it will help. And it’s a good excuse. Their sympathies are with the farmers, you see. There’s always been trouble in that region between incoming farmers and the native nomads. This is an excuse for genocide...all the while maintaining the church’s front of total benevolence.”

  He said it all quite emotionlessly, with no hint in his tone of moral censure. I took it all in the same way. It was logical. I’d have realized it myself, if only I’d thought.

  “There’ll be some battles fought,” I said.

  “The nomads are dying with the plague anyhow,” said Christian.

  Another phrase echoed in my mind: “They’re only forest savages.”

  There was no point in worrying about it. No point even in feeling sick. Attica was a cruel world.

  So are they all.

  As Mariel said, we hadn’t actually solved anything. Sometimes, there are no neat answers. You just have to do what the situation allows you to do.

  “We’d better get busy,” I said. “We still have a lot of packing to do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  If our first sea journey on Attica had been an uncomfortable one, the second had all the makings of a nightmare. Piet began the trip locked in his cabin, and that was the way I—at least—intended it to say. Aboard Ilah’y’su, however, my authority did not count for a great deal. Here, at least, the Verheydens retained their power. The previous evening, Jan and Charles had reacted quickly enoug
h to the situation which they had found in my room. They had asked no questions. But it only took time for the questions to come floating to the surface, and they wanted answers. Piet told them nothing—which left it all down to me.

  The matter came to a head when we all (except Piet) sat down to a late breakfast, and were thus together for the first time. I had not at any time been top of the local popularity poll, and both Jan and Charles were by now harboring strong regrets about ever having become acquainted with me. They suspected that whatever had happened the night before I was more than half responsible.

  It was Jan, adopting the lead because he was master aboard his own ship, who asked me what happened. I had already thought about how to reply to such a question, but had not progressed far in the matter of sorting out an ideal—or even an acceptable—answer.

  “When Piet was released,” I said, “he must have come straight to my room. I don’t think he came with the intention of committing murder—more to blow off some steam. I’d had some of that before, after seeing Ul’el. He was waiting for me then to make threatening noises. But when he found Anna....”

  “Wait!” Jan interrupted. “What was Anna doing there?”

  “She came for the same reason,” I said. “To accuse, to insult...just to pay me back a little for what she imagined I’d done.”

  “Imagined?” queried Charles. But he didn’t seem to put any real venom into it.

  “She was upset,” I said, electing to censor the account somewhat—more (I assured myself) for their benefit than for mine. “I was trying to calm her down. She was crying. I was trying to reassure her. When Piet opened the door and saw us he leapt immediately to the wrong conclusion. He just went mad. He attacked me, and somewhere in the struggle picked up the scalpel. Anna was trying to stop him, trying to make him see sense. But he was just stabbing blindly. He didn’t know what he was doing. Until he killed her. And when he did realize what he’d done...the rest you know.”

  By the way Jan was looking at me I could tell that while he didn’t quite disbelieve me, he was not wholly ready to believe me, either.

  “He was trying to kill you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And she was trying to stop him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anna’s my sister,” he said. “Was my sister. She and Piet...well, it seems to me that if Piet had wanted to kill you she’d more likely have helped him than tried to stop him.”

  “That’s a vile thing to say!” said Christian.

  Jan transfixed him with a glare. “Why should Anna risk her life for him?” he said. “Is that how you see Anna?”

  “In the heat of the moment...,” said Christian, defensively.

  “Why else should Piet kill her?” Mariel intervened. The question cut through the burgeoning family dispute like a knife, challenging the foundations of Jan’s suspicion.

  He had no answer. At least he didn’t want to argue that maybe Piet hadn’t done it.

  “Look,” I said, “I feel pretty bad about this myself. She got killed, if you want to put it like this, instead of me. I don’t think she cared about me one way or the other. It was Piet she was thinking about. But she still got herself killed, and possibly saved my life in so doing. How do you think I feel? Delighted? Thankful? It hurts, for God’s sake...it really hurts. And out of that you want to build a family quarrel. What the hell for? What kind of people are you?”

  Jan’s eyes flashed with sudden anger—the same sudden anger that seemed to be the curse of all his kin. But he masked it quickly. Long practice of being a younger brother is the ideal trainer in self-control. It may not damp the aggression but it short-circuits the action well enough.

  “To the Ore’l,” said Jan slowly, “you may be a messenger from Y’su. But what are you to us? In a few short days.... How much more is there to come? Can you destroy us all before we reach Lambda? Is any of us ever going to see Ak’lehr again? Have you special seats in hell reserved for the whole family? Tell us, please...?”

  “Jan,” said Christian, softly, “You’re talking like a lunatic.”

  “Like Piet?” asked Jan, his voice jagged with suppressed pain.

  “Piet will be all right,” said Christian.

  “All right!” exclaimed Charles. “How in Y’su’s name can he ever be all right? He’s lost everything he had, including Anna, whose throat he cut himself in a moment of blind anger. How can he ever be all right? He’s under lock and key now—do we have to keep him that way forever, just to protect this one from being murdered?”

  The wave of his hand was, of course, directed toward me. Yet again, my temper outweighed my sense of diplomacy. “Wouldn’t it be rather a waste,” I snapped, “if Anna got killed trying to stop Piet murdering me, and then he went and did it anyhow.”

  “You killed Anna,” said Jan, flatly. “Your coming here. Your determination to interfere. You were the cause of his anger.”

  “He was the cause of his own anger!” I spat. “His fevered imagination! He thought himself a dictator when he’d long since lost any real power. He thought himself injured when everything that happened was inevitable. He saw Anna and me together and out of his mind flooded all kinds of crazy thoughts. What I did was to precipitate a crisis that had been coming for years. What I did was to provide something that might bring together the colony and the empire into a relationship which has at least the prospect of peaceful coexistence. You’re so wrapped up in the microcosm of your family loyalties you’re blind to the real issues here. Without my arrival, my chance to stop this plague before it takes off again next year and decimates the southern reaches of the empire, what kind of future do you think this world could have had? Piet’s policies were heading straight for some kind of confrontation with the colony, and then to war. It’s up to you—all of you—to do what Anna did and get in his way, to try to undo what he’s done. You have to get out of the stupid way of thinking your father left you and start thinking about everyone else, human and Ore’l alike. If you can’t find another way of thinking during the next half-year, you’ll take back to the empire exactly the same seeds of destruction that we have locked up in a cabin right here on board. Can’t you for one minute strip away your blinkers and realize the importance of getting this virus back to Ak’lehr and using the opportunity it provides to begin all over again. You can still be ilah’y’su if that’s the game you want to play but the message has to change.”

  The sheer vehemence of the tirade left them somewhat at a loss. Only Christian found words, and what he said was: “He’s right.”

  My speech hadn’t been a masterpiece of tact. That brief comment, however grateful I was to hear it, was the thing that really killed the argument. It killed the argument because it brought out a stock response—a response I’d already seen in Piet and Anna. It was a formula that allowed Jan to dismiss every last thing I’d said without further contemplation. Instead, he rounded on Christian, and said: “You would!”

  Every time the chips were down, the sons of Bernhard Verheyden had that ready: the accusation of betrayal, aimed at the brother who was not their father’s son.

  Christian came to his feet, ready to fight. Jan was even readier. Charles stood up too, and I never found out whether he was going to do the sensible thing and try to separate them, or whether he was going to turn it into a free-for-all.

  The reason I never found out is that there was a sudden violent knocking on the door. It was thrown open without the benefit of a pause for a reply.

  Al’ha’s shaggy head appeared in the gap, and he said: “‘Ere’s a shi’! We unner a’hack!”

  Even as he spoke I heard the muffled crack of a rifle. “Oh Jesus,” I moaned. “It’s the bloody New Hope. That stupid bastard Ogburn’s trying to hijack us!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We paused in the hatchway that opened up on to the deck. There had been no more firing, but no one was eager to rush out and make a target of himself. I could see the tops of the New Hope’s mast
s away to port, and though they seemed close I suspected that she was out of range. Ilah’y’su was in the process of trying to tack away to starboard.

  Al’ha went up first, keeping low and making for the cover of the bridge. Jan followed, and then the rest of us, one by one. I expected Mariel to stay below, but when I turned around after reaching cover she was right behind me. We were crammed into the wheelhouse, and it was pretty crowded. Al’ha took the wheel and told the Ore’l who’d been steering to stand by and keep low.

  The New Hope was also coming about to follow us.

  “What does he think he’s doing?” I muttered. “First he raids coastal villages—now he’s attacking ships at sea. We can’t be more than a couple of miles out from land in the middle of the empire.”

  “He doesn’t know there’s an empire,” Mariel reminded me. “I always had him down as a frustrated pirate.”

  “Hail him,” said Jan, to me. “Tell him who we are. Maybe we can make him change his mind.”

  “No chance,” I muttered, under my breath. Aloud, I said: “It might come better from you. If he sees me or Mariel he’s going to start worrying about past crimes.”

  Jan nodded. He stepped out of the wheelhouse and vaulted up on to its roof, supporting himself against the mainmast.

  “Hey!” his voice boomed out. “Hold your fire!”

  He must have been clearly visible. He was just as clearly human. It must have come as something of a surprise to Ogburn and his crew. The New Hope was a bigger, faster ship, and she was managing to keep almost abreast of us, though some thirty degrees or so to the rear, and I could see a couple of men up in the rigging looking down at us. I kept my head down, making absolutely certain I couldn’t be identified.

  There was a long pause while Ogburn discussed the new development with his officers.