Spheres of Influence-eARC

by Ryk E. Spoor

  But the events that had brought them into the Arena and farther into their challenges—her intervention between Orphan and the Blessed, the Challenge that led to a desperate race between her and Sethrik, her direct Challenge to Sethrik which turned out to be a trap by Amas-Garao—those had all been caused by her own actions. Amas-Garao was influencing me on two of those, yes…but I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have done any of those myself. Maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn’t.

  She waited for Wu to finish, which he did and sat there with the expression of a child waiting to be scolded—something very much at odds with the overconfident, brash, dynamic Monkey King. I can’t cut him much slack yet, though. So she paused another several seconds—an endless time in that tense silence—before speaking.

  “Thank you for telling us the whole sequence of events, Wu,” she said finally. “That did make everything clear. Does anyone have any questions or comments before I go on?”

  Laila spoke up. “I find coincidence of that level very difficult to swallow.” Gabrielle nodded, as did DuQuesne. “At the same time,” she went on, tones as precise as her scientific work, “I find it hard to imagine how it was arranged so swiftly, if arranged it was, unless Amas-Garao did so.”

  “And I just don’t think he did,” said Gabrielle reluctantly. “Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I think he was satisfied with the last results and wouldn’t be playing games with us now.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” DuQuesne said. “But I’ll admit, it just doesn’t quite feel right for one of that Shadeweaver’s tricks. But that might just be because we don’t know what he’s planning to get out of the whole mess.”

  Ariane nodded. “In any event—plan or accident—this could have been disastrous. Sun Wu Kung, I want your word that you won’t ever do anything like this again, at least without consulting me.”

  Wu opened his mouth, closed it, and then sat there, a startling agony of decision on his face. “I…San…I mean, Captain! Captain, I…I can’t promise that.”

  That brought her up short; she had assumed he would give his word when directly asked. And what was it that he almost called me, and why? “You can’t? Wu, do you understand how serious this is? Why I have to ask you not to do things like that?”

  “Yes! I do understand, Captain! I’m not stupid. I’m sometimes distracted and I get excited and I don’t have patience, I guess, but…” he muttered something in that mangled language she didn’t understand. “I…I see things that are wrong and I can’t ignore them, Captain.”

  She found herself looking to the ceiling as though for guidance. And do I want to order people to ignore things that are wrong? Ariane pushed her hair back, as it had started to fall forward over her face, and rubbed the back of her neck. “Wu…All right, I don’t want you to ignore things that are wrong. But you have to weigh the cost to us. It’s wrong to endanger the rest of us without us even knowing, isn’t it?”

  He looked down. “Y…yes.”

  “Then all I’m asking is that you talk to me before taking action like that. Or if I’m not available, DuQuesne, and if neither of us, any of the others of the original eight—Gabrielle, Simon, Steve, Carl, Tom, Laila.” She looked at him steadily. “I realize there still may be exceptions—if it looks like someone is about to be killed and you really feel you must act, I can’t argue with you about it. I can’t tell you not to be yourself, or—to be honest—not to do what I would probably do in your position. But in this case you could have called ahead, given me at least some idea of the situation, let me make the call as to whether to intervene.”

  “And would you?” Wu Kung’s eyes were a hair brighter, and the question held a hint of the old energy.

  She hesitated, then with a sigh she nodded and smiled. “Yes, I suppose I probably would, though I would hope I wouldn’t offer a free-for-anyone Challenge as the prize to the winners.”

  “So does she have your word, Wu? That you’ll ask her before you act, if it’s at all reasonable to do so?” DuQuesne’s voice was just the tiniest bit less hard, following her lead.

  “Yes. Yes, Captain, you have my word. I won’t do anything even the tiniest bit like that without asking you if there’s even a little bit of time to ask in.”

  I suppose that will have to do. “Thank you, Wu.” She leaned back. “And it wasn’t, in this case, a disaster. We gained face, didn’t lose any, and you’ve just made a personal ally—one that we know from prior observation is both honorable and formidable.”

  “More than that,” DuQuesne said with a slow smile.

  Laila raised an eyebrow, and then suddenly both lifted, wings of surprise. “Ah. Of course. They will be the newest Faction, First Emergents, if they succeed in their Challenge. And an excellent set of allies, if we maintain close support to them prior to that time.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. It was obvious once mentioned, though; those who arrived in the Arena with a single Sphere to their names were First Emergents like Humanity; what else would the Genasi become, then, except the first native Emergents? “And we can use all the allies we can get—as could they.”

  Gabrielle tilted her head in thought, straight gold hair forming a momentary curtain. “Well, they haven’t won their Challenge yet. It’s a nice thought, but you know what they say about counting your chicks before hatching.”

  “They will win,” Wu Kung said positively.

  Ariane remembered the tiny Genasi battling down to the wire against the huge Sivvis—and how the honor between the two led Sivvis to send his opponent to victory, undoubtedly pissing the Vengeance off mightily. “They’ll sure try,” she said, “and I think we should be ready to help them any way we can.”

  Because, she thought, it sure couldn’t hurt to have the best warriors in the Arena on our side before the Molothos come calling.

  Chapter 21.

  “I’ll want to talk to you later, Wu,” DuQuesne said as they got up to leave. “But first I have to talk with the captain. Privately, if she will.”

  Wu looked to Ariane, who nodded. “Stay in the Embassy, Wu Kung,” she said, warningly.

  “I already promised…” Wu Kung began, then, seeing her start to straighten, quickly said, “I mean, yes, Captain!”

  Once the room was empty except for the two of them, Ariane slumped back into a chair, chuckling. “Do you know how hard it is to stay mad at him?”

  “Of course I do,” he answered, taking his seat again. “None of us could be ticked off at him for long, no matter what he did. But you handled him like a pro. He won’t forget that talking-to for a while, at least.”

  “I sure hope not. Marc, I don’t want to keep him penned up, so to speak, but I won’t have much choice if he can’t keep from getting himself—and potentially all of us—in trouble.”

  “I know. And I think he understands that, now. He had to go through a similar thing on his own Journey to the West, and with luck you won’t have to make his headband into a pain generator.” He studied her, the deep-blue hair, the eyes just a shade lighter, the slender body that hid startling strength (not to mention an electric-eel derived biomod that she’d used to great effect once on Amas-Garao), the shape of the face… “And you could probably get away with it, too, if you had to.”

  “What?”

  “He almost called you ‘Sanzo’ during that raking over the coals. You look a lot like her. And she was just about the only one in his world who got away with talking to him like that…well, except for Sha Wujing, after he was more friend than enemy.”

  “Shouldn’t ‘Sanzo’ have been a man? Or do I misremember my admittedly very faint grasp of the mythology?”

  DuQuesne laughed. “No, you don’t misremember. There were at least fifteen or twenty different versions of the Monkey King myth that got put into a blender and used to produce what we have out there,” he jerked a thumb at the closed door. “And some of those versions were…very far from the original, let me say. That’s not necessarily bad, but it means that only the broadest out
lines of the myth are still there. Anyway, that’s probably one reason he’s willing to listen to you.”

  He straightened. “But I didn’t hold you up here just to talk about Wu. Ariane, when I left, Simon had already located one of the Sky Gates.”

  Her face lit up. “That’s wonderful, Marc!”

  “Well, with a slight caveat that it depends on exactly where they go, but yes, I think it is. I’m guessing we may have an above-average number of gates, unless Simon just got real lucky on his first pass.”

  “The Sky Gates are just outside of the high-gravity area, right? So we should be able to put some kind of permanent station-keeping guards around them once we’ve located them all.”

  “Right. Armed to the teeth, too, at least until we know what’s on the other side of each one—and where any Sky Gates from those go to. Can’t afford to assume an innocuous-looking destination couldn’t be a potential staging-ground for the Molothos or someone else out to get us.”

  She looked up and sighed. “Marc, there’s just no way we can do all of this ourselves.”

  “I know. And there’s people coming through any day now. I’ve given strict orders that they’re not to come through Transition, though, unless you say otherwise. More people to work on the Inner and Upper Sphere, great. More people here? No, not until we’re damn sure where we stand.”

  She nodded her agreement, and he moved forward to the next subject. “Okay, that’s where we stand on that for the moment. I also wanted to ask you about something else.”

  Another nod. “Simon.”

  “So you’ve noticed it too.”

  “Something is bothering him,” Ariane agreed, “but he hasn’t said what it is, or why. He’s clearly trying to hide it, even from me—which has me a little worried. Why would Simon hide something from me?”

  DuQuesne didn’t need that emphatic “me” explained. Simon’s affection for Ariane was quite open and obvious, and Ariane had often used Simon as a sounding board and advisor, nearly as often as she used DuQuesne. “I don’t know, either, and that’s definitely got my back up. Seemed to happen around the time he was doing his research on the drive physics and adapting them to being a sensor, but I’ll be damned if I can guess what it is that’s got him all twitchy.”

  “Well,” Ariane said after a moment, “I suppose I’ll just have to ask him, if he won’t bring the subject up himself. I’ve let it slide for a while, but…”

  “But it’s not Simon’s normal behavior, which means it’s something that worries him in some way, bad enough to feel he shouldn’t or can’t tell us.” DuQuesne shrugged. “Yep. I know you hate prying, but that’s just about the only way you can make this thing go.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll give him one more day, and if he doesn’t come to me, I’ll tell him he has to talk.”

  “Good enough.” He rose. “Thanks, Captain.”

  She saluted from a sitting position, so he left, not waiting for her. Just as well. I have to catch Wu.

  He found Sun Wu Kung in his suite, practicing lightning-fast staff-work. The red-enameled, gold-tipped staff stopped in mid-action as he entered. “DuQuesne! What is it? Do you need me to go back to guarding?”

  “In a minute, Wu. Look, I’ve been thinking hard about what happened back on the Sphere, and I want you to keep that a dead secret. From everyone, even Ariane, at least for now.”

  He looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “Because I think what you did is pretty much impossible. I don’t think any of the other factions can talk to their animals as though in their native language, and I think I know why you can. I’ve got a couple other pieces of evidence that tell me I’m right. And if I am right, Wu, that’s one big secret weapon, a whole armory of secret weapons, waiting for us to unleash.

  “But that kind of secret tends to leak easy, and it’s a lot less effective if you know it’s there. Especially if learning one secret might lead you to another. The various Factions already might have enough to make some guesses—especially the Shadeweavers, who can cheat—but something like this might give the whole show away.”

  Wu studied him, then nodded. “Okay, I understand. I think. But what is it that you’ve guessed?”

  DuQuesne grinned humorlessly. “Sore wa…himitsu desu, as one particularly annoying guy we knew used to say. I’m keeping that secret, at least for now. Until I’m sure.”

  “This had better not be anything that will put Ariane in danger,” Wu Kung said, and for a moment the eyes were green-gold stone.

  Excellent reminder of what I chose him for. “No, Wu.” He gazed into the distance, guessing, estimating chances. “No, Wu. If anything…that secret might just save her life one day.”

  Chapter 22.

  “Simon!” Laila Canning said, and there was honest surprise in her voice. “What in the world…or worlds, I suppose…are you doing here?”

  Simon looked around at the soaring lines of the Faith’s great hall, and the lines of people of all species filing in. “Well, partly I have never been here before, and I admit to a great curiosity as to the workings of a faith which is held by members of almost uncountable species.” He smiled, though it took some effort to keep the expression natural. “After all, humanity has never managed to agree on one set of beliefs, and I would be—am—surprised that a single belief could draw people of such diversity to it.”

  “Hmph,” she said, and the brown eyes were narrow and analytical. “You weren’t at our meeting yesterday—I’m sure you heard about that little event?”

  “About Sun Wu Kung managing to get himself in trouble the first time he wandered free? Yes, I did, when DuQuesne stopped by to take over the scanning this morning.”

  “Indeed. And that means you came here essentially directly from Transition, no stopover at the Embassy. What’s the real reason you came, Simon?”

  So much for subtle approaches. “Yes, well…I wanted to talk with you privately, away from our Embassy, and this seemed one of the better choices.”

  Her head did the quick, birdlike tilt he remembered from their first meeting. “I see.” She glanced around. “Well, not out here, certainly, unless you want random passers-by to hear whatever secret you apparently wish to tell me. This way.”

  She led Simon through a low archway to one side, where they found Nyanthus, the leader of the Faith, apparently in the process of putting on ornamental garments for the ceremony. “Excuse my intrusion on your preparations, First Guide.”

  The warm, mellifluous voice rolled out from the First Guide’s openwork candleflame top, and his symbiotic sensing-creatures flew out and circled them in greeting. “It is forgiven, Laila Canning, and I bid you welcome again to the house of the Faith. And to you, Simon Sandrisson, I bid a special welcome, on this, your first entry to our home.”

  “Thank you, First Guide Nyanthus,” Simon said.

  “First Guide,” Laila said quickly, “Simon and I need to speak privately. Might we…”

  The tendrils that made up the candle-flame flickered open for a moment. “Of course, Laila. You may use one of the private rooms in the Path of Trust; there should be several free, as these are the days of the Cycle of Wonder.”

  Laila thanked him and turned to go.

  “Thank you very much, Nyanthus,” Simon said, and quickly followed the brown-haired scientist.

  Dr. Canning led him about three-quarters of the way around the circular walkway that went around the perimeter of the great worship hall; by the time she turned down a side passage, Simon could hear alien but very pretty music starting to rise from the great hall. “I suspect a symbolism in which rooms he offered to you.”

  Laila’s smile was quick and bright. “I don’t doubt it; Guide Nyanthus is very wise, and very smart, and always alert to what is going on. He signals both that he trusts me, and that if we have secret conversations then both of us must trust the other—with must being able to be read at least two ways.”

  Simon tried to smile, but the tension was too great. �
��Yes, I see.”

  Laila gestured and one of the doors opened slightly; she looked through, nodded, and waved again, causing the door to open fully.

  Going through the door, Simon saw some human-style chairs and a desk. “Interesting. I suppose the Wagamia might use this, but is the design common?”

  “I am not entirely sure,” she admitted. “Given that we are in someone’s embassy, I would not bet against the possibility that the furnishings rearrange themselves for each group that opens the doors.” She chose a seat and sat down.”Now, Simon, what is so secret and important that you leave the Embassy and come here—and that you don’t even discuss with Ariane?”

  He tried to sit, but he was too tense, and sprang up, began pacing. “Laila…it must be very difficult for you. I know that Ariane has always wondered…”

  “Ah.” She looked distant. “Simon, I won’t lie. It is very difficult. The more so since I can’t tell why Ariane is wary of me, other than just general caution, but I’m sure there’s some quite clear reason that made her nervous about me.

  “And I confess—quite freely—that I don’t have any proof that I was not, in fact, modified by Mandallon in some way. I was nearly brain-dead after all, and it’s quite possible his attempt to fix me involved putting a part of himself in—perhaps putting in much more of him than me.” She sighed. “Honestly, I don’t blame DuQuesne his suspicions; given what we now know is his past? I’d be paranoid too, and the Arena’s given us more than enough reason to question everything we know.”

  Laila stood—exactly when Simon decided to sit. The two of them looked at each other for a moment and Simon could suddenly not keep himself from laughing. Fortunately, the same impulse had struck Laila, and for a few moments they laughed, fading to chuckles. Laila Canning sat back down, a smile still on her face. “Oh, that was good. Do you know…I don’t think I’ve had a decent laugh since I came to this damned place, until now.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Laila.”

  “Hardly your fault, Simon. True, you haven’t done anything to argue against their suspicions that I know of, but really, there’s nothing to argue.” Her lips tightened and she looked down, smooth, straight brown hair momentarily shadowing her face. “I have…been seriously considering joining the Faith.”