“Senior Pilot Willet Lindy is to be detained incommunicado and in quarantine at police headquarters on Sefforia. His ultimate disposition will depend on the outcome of the investigation we are only now commencing. Lieutenant Commander Cyanne Lindy will be given the option of joining him or the crew of the Arbiter. I have no doubt that she will prefer to stay at the side of her husband; she has only been offered the option of another post out of respect for her family.
“Dr. Merco Beccassit and any other staff, medical or otherwise, that the logs show to have had anything more than the most casual of contacts with the aberrant that you are transporting will also be transferred to police headquarters where they will also be quarantined. The doctor will assist us, as much as is practicable while being sequestered, with the investigation of the aberrant and the circumstances of his abduction until such time as the doctor may be returned to his previous duties at the Union Academy of Science.
“You will remain on Sefforia to oversee the refit of Vigilant. However, I regret to inform you that you will be supplied with a monitor bracelet. The bracelet will be directly interfaced with the UP network. Any mention of Vigilant’s trek to the forbidden world or the aberrant now aboard your ship, no matter how indirect, will result in you being relieved of command and detained under house arrest. Furthermore, any behavioral abnormalities exhibited by you that might in any way be attributed to your contact with the aberrant will result in your immediate quarantine at headquarters with the other members of your crew already detained there.
“The aberrant is to be interned at your residence.”
“What?” Valessanna nearly shouted at the unhearing inspector before her. You can’t do that, she thought. It contravened a dozen different laws. But just as quickly she decided that the higher ups could do most anything they wanted. The aberrant certainly wasn’t going to be in a position to get in touch with anyone concerning the matter, and she was looking a rehabilitation term right in the face even if she was totally cooperative. So who was left to file a complaint?
“Your residence has already been informed and the appropriate preparations made,” Claudaine’s image said even as Valessanna fumed. “I apologize for the imposition, but as you do live alone, your home is in a very secluded location, and as we assume that you have already been exposed to the aberrant, it was deemed in the best interests of everyone involved that this action be taken. It is only a temporary solution. You have my personal assurance that other accommodations will be found for the aberrant as soon as it is practical to do so. Already, a frigate has been dispatched to the Sol system in an attempt to discover Vazilek intentions in that area. It may be that we can return him home in short order. But for now, he must be kept somewhere far from the public eye. Your home is as good a place as we have in that regard.
“Vigilant will dock at Creebarton Memorial. The port is in the process of being evacuated for your arrival. The media will be told the evacuation is due to structural concerns only just now brought to light. Security personnel will be on hand to transport the Lindys, Dr. Beccassit, and whomever else we determine should be quarantined to headquarters. You are instructed to summon your personal vehicle to transport yourself and the aberrant. Your monitor bracelet is to be picked up at UP headquarters in Bensora. Shuttles will be on hand to transfer your crew to Observant, Arbiter, and Courageous.
“Once Creebarton is emptied of personnel, security operatives will board Vigilant to wipe your logs before a civilian repair crew is brought in to take her out to the belts. She will be routed to the Toko Bizet shipyard for refit. A shuttle will be placed at your disposal so you may oversee the repairs while still spending time on the surface, and in the process keeping a human eye on the aberrant.
“I regret that I will be unable to meet with you in person. As soon as the crew transfers are complete, the Courageous, along with Arbiter and Observant, will be leaving orbit. Vazilek activity has increased in this sector since your departure, and we are urgently needed on the beat. I look forward to a face-to-face meeting once Vigilant has been returned to the force. Goodbye and good luck, captain. Claudaine out.”
The image disappeared, replaced by a displayed summary of her remaining unread messages. They were few, and all of them from Seldon, undoubtedly asking for instructions on how to deal with this or that detail concerning her return. She did not feel like reading them at present, so instead instructed Vigilant to save them for later perusal. She leaned back in her chair and hugged herself tightly with both arms.
It could have been a lot worse, she told herself. She still had her command, at least for the time being, and there appeared to be a good chance she would make it through without a court martial. Plus, she was home. But having the savage take up residence in her house, that was simply too much to contemplate. She would be perfectly safe of course. Seldon and the warder robots would see to that. But having to deal with the man’s primitive nature on a daily basis was going to be extraordinarily trying, to say the least. All she could do was go home with him in tow; pop a Distreban, an Apprereign, or some similar drug; take a long soak in the tub, and hope it all would calm her mind enough to endure the initial days of the ordeal. Then perhaps Claudaine’s promise of finding “other accommodations” for the aberrant would come to fruition in short order.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the door chime. “Open,” she said to the air and the compartment door slid aside to allow an agitated Kira Pellotte to storm into the compartment. She stalked toward Valessanna waving a printout wildly through the air.
“I’ve been transferred,” she said, as if the mere thought of such a thing had been an utter impossibility only moments before. “I’m to man the third watch in Arbiter’s sick bay. Everyone I’ve seen has similar orders, everyone. It’s as if they are transferring the entire crew to other ships.” The unperturbed stare Valessanna leveled in her direction quickly quieted her, and then the import of the captain’s expression hit her. “They are, aren’t they?” she said in a less flustered tone. “They’re moving everyone.”
“Yes,” Valessanna stated, nodding matter of factly. “Everyone but me. I stay with Vigilant. And you won’t be going to Arbiter. Once they analyze the logs they will have you quarantined at headquarters, along with the Doctor, the Lindys, and anyone else they deem to have had more than ‘the most casual of contacts’ with the aberrant. I am the lone exception. I am to be his jailer, as he has been assigned quarters at my home.” The last sentence was delivered with a mixture of disgust and exasperation.
“How can they do this?” Pellotte whined plaintively.
“Vigilant will be refitting at the Toko Bizet shipyard for quite some time,” Valessanna answered. “She won’t need a crew. Everyone except the engineering staff would have eventually been transferred anyway, but because of our friend Mr. O’Keefe, even they will move on immediately. And no one gets shore leave. Apparently headquarters is bent on keeping the media completely in the dark until they can figure out what to do with the aberrant. Even I am to be issued a monitor bracelet to wear until all of this is over, to make sure that I keep my mouth shut. I fear you will be stuck inside headquarters for quite some time. I doubt you will even be allowed to send mail. I’m sorry.”
“Is all this sanctioned by law; can the police actually do this legally? Or do we have some recourse in the matter?” Pellotte was regaining her composure, more thoughtful now than angry.
Valessanna considered the question for a moment, going over the enlistment contract in her mind. “I believe that they can,” she said finally. “The force has always retained to right to tell us where to serve during the length of our contracts. There is also a clause that states we can be denied leave in times of extremity. One could debate the fact that the presence of the Earther is a galactic emergency, but the crisis with the Vazileks would certainly qualify. I imagine the courts would say the force has the right to reassign any of us or deny us leave on that basis alone. Objectively speaking, I would say that the force h
as not overstepped its bounds at all in this matter.”
Pellotte’s hands, which had heretofore been used to exuberantly punctuate her words as she spoke, dropped limply to her sides. “Then this is the end for us, isn’t it?” she asked mournfully.
Valessanna paused, trying to think of something sentimental to say, but sentiment was not in her nature, not anymore. “Probably,” was the only word she could come up with.
Pellotte collapsed into her lap, pulling herself close to the captain as she did so. She buried her head against Valessanna shoulder. “I’ll miss you,” she sobbed.
“As I will miss you,” Valessanna answered, cradling the girl tenderly in her arms.
O’Keefe was lounging on the sofa in his quarters with his feet propped up on the table, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, when the corridor hatch chimed. He instructed Vigilant to allow entry, and Pellotte walked in with the captain. The latter was the first to speak.
“We will be putting in at Sefforia within the hour. When we arrive, everyone aboard must leave as Vigilant is to be taken to the shipyards for repairs.” She recited the words dryly, as if reading from an official pronouncement. “As per orders from the chief inspector of this precinct, you have been remanded into my custody until further notice.”
Oh, my God, O’Keefe thought, won’t that be just lovely. The captain tossed a small, flexible bag made of black fabric onto the sofa beside O’Keefe and continued.
“Please pack whatever you wish to take with you. All your needs on the surface will be provided for, but if you have grown attached to any of the clothing or toiletries that we have provided for you here, you are free to bring them along. In the meantime, Kira would like to speak with you privately. I will wait for you in the corridor.” With that, she spun on her heel and exited the room. As she strode away O’Keefe noticed that for once her hair was not spun into a tightly woven bun. Instead it flowed down her back, and was slightly disheveled as if she had only recently risen from her bunk.
“So what’s this all about?” O’Keefe asked, without getting up.
Pellotte stood downcast, staring vacantly at a bulkhead. “I’ve come to say goodbye,” she stated simply. “I am to be quarantined, along with everyone else aboard who has had any contact with you. Those who decide such things will not allow me to see you again.”
O’Keefe dropped his feet to the floor and sat up straight. It took several moments for the import of her words to sink in. “Well, that’s just great,” he said at last, while crumpling the bag the captain had provided into a ball and throwing it side-armed, as hard as he was able, against the facing wall. “You’re leaving, and I’m to be stuck alone with that cold fish captain of yours. Wonderful.”
“Cold fish?” Pellotte asked quizzically.
“It’s just a saying we barbarians use.”
“It doesn’t sound very complimentary.”
“It’s not.” O’Keefe rose from his seat and crossed the deck to stand before Pellotte. He fidgeted awkwardly, searching for words. At length he simply embraced her. “I wish you weren’t going away,” he whispered.
“So do I,” she said. “But I am, and there is nothing either of us can do about it.” She paused for a long moment, returning his embrace before speaking again. “We will never see each other again. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Well, hell,” he joked, using the English word to curse, as Akadean contained no words referencing the underworld, “don’t be so optimistic. You never know. The way I hear it, you might live another eight, nine hundred years. We might run into each other again. They can’t keep both of us shuttered away forever.”
“No,” she said, pushing away from him slightly. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t feel like I’m to have a long life. I’ve been considering the things you’ve said about the Vazileks, and I can’t help but think that you are right about them. Our leaders look at them as if they are like us, as if they—deep down—think as we do. They’ve pinned all their hopes on that, and I no longer believe it. I don’t think I’ve really believed it for a very long time, because I’ve seen what they are capable of. They will never tire of their attacks. Things will only get worse, just as they have been getting worse for years, and we are not ready for that. I have had the most intense feelings lately that the days left to me, and the days left to most everyone else on the force, are numbered.”
“Well I didn’t mean to make you so fatalistic,” O’Keefe said. “I was just trying to make everyone see what might occur. It doesn’t mean it’s an absolute. Anything can happen. I merely assert that you should try to prepare for the worst. And I certainly wouldn’t give up the fight before it even starts.”
He was lying of course. He was still quite sure the Vazileks meant to conquer the Akadeans and that there was a good chance they were fully capable of doing so. But he felt it was his duty as a male to try and say something to comfort the woman.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “But I still have a bad feeling about the future, and it won’t go away. I can’t help it.” She was silent for a moment before continuing. “I must go. Try to be nice to Valessanna.” She stood on tiptoe as he bent down to receive a small kiss on the cheek, then she fled his arms, nearly running out of the door, and leaving O’Keefe standing alone.
He remained standing, immobile, for some time, sorting through his feelings. His situation had again changed so dramatically and so abruptly that he wasn’t at all sure how he really felt about it. Was he heartbroken? No, it wasn’t that. There was no insatiate ache slowly filling his chest, no feeling of his appendages too leaden and tired to move, no sensation of his soul draining out the undersides of his heels. He cared deeply for Kira, but he had found that having her was an altogether different thing from lusting after her. He simply did not feel that all-consuming desire for her that could rob a man of sanity, that madness named love that could reduce the most stouthearted fighter to feeble quivering faster than Delilah’s razor.
No, what he felt was more the sadness of loss, not just of a woman, but also of a time. It was the empty melancholy that falls over a man when he has reached the end of a fair season and knows it, and further knows that it can never be recaptured. Pellotte had almost certainly been correct. They would never see one another again. There would no more long sessions of lazy sex, no more languid, laughing, after dinner conversations. It was quite possible that even her premonitions of death would be prophetic. The Vazileks could very well end up killing both of them, and in the not so distant future.
“Aw, the hell with every damn thing,” he said out loud, and in his native tongue. “You just gotta put one foot in front of the other and deal with it.” He crossed the floor to where the crumpled black bag lay, knelt to pick it up, and then made his way into the bedroom where he proceeded to stuff into it all the clothing that the Akadeans had given him. He didn’t like anything that was available for him to wear, and did not believe he could possibly be provided with anything worse on Sefforia, but there was really no telling. That damn captain might have him wearing a pink tutu if he brought nothing with him. So he took everything, even the formal wear. Packing took only a minute, after which he donned pants, shoes, and a shirt before walking out of his quarters and into the corridor.
Captain Nelkris stood a few yards down the hallway, leaning against a bulkhead. She had struck a familiar pose, standing as usual with her arms tightly crossed and an unpleasantly severe expression imprinted over her face. As he entered the corridor, the woman pushed herself away from the wall and approached him warily, studying him as she always did. “I should have thought your goodbyes with Kira would have taken considerably longer,” she said as she advanced.
“What would you know about it,” he said gruffly. The woman had not been in his presence more than a few seconds and she was already irritating him. But if she was aware of the fact, it wasn’t evident in her demeanor. She stood before him, gazing placidly past him at the wall.
“My home is
beautiful, is it not?” she asked absently.
“Excuse me?” replied O’Keefe, not having the foggiest idea what she was talking about.
“Sefforia,” she said, gesturing with a sweep of her hand to the bulkhead behind him. He turned to find one of the floor to ceiling panels that made up the sides of the corridor now showing a three-dimensional image of the planet they were orbiting, this despite the fact that during the weeks they had spent deep driving through the void that one panel had appeared to be no different from any other.
“I was born there,” the captain continued. “My home is there.” She stepped past O’Keefe and stood next to the illuminated bulkhead. “I live here, in Valenta,” she said, pointing to a green expanse, a continent roughly the same shape and relative size as Australia but set in what appeared to be, from where they gazed down upon the planet, Sefforia’s northern hemisphere. The continent looked as if it sat roughly halfway between the equator and the pole, and rotated slowly away from them as she spoke.
“Oh,” O’Keefe muttered, at last understanding. “Yes, it is beautiful.” He made the statement flatly and without conviction, but the world truly was lovely. Sefforia hung before them like a deep blue pearl. From their vantage point it looked like at least 80 percent of its unfrozen surface was covered by water, while both poles were blanketed by large expanses of ice. In addition to Valenta, he could see two other smaller, island continents on the sunlit side of the world. All three, from what he could discern through the cloud cover, appeared to be completely forested or at least green with vegetation from end to end and top to bottom.
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