I wondered if Willow’s captain had said the same to his crew. He might have — navy regs require starship commanders to recognize dicey situations and call them accordingly. But at the moment, I figured Prope wasn’t thinking about ethics so much as covering her butt… hoping this speech would get her off the hook with the League of Peoples. Even if the League killed the rest of us the next time we crossed the line, perhaps they’d let Prope pass because she’d spoken the right words. "Oh yes, I warned them it wasn’t smart…"
"Thank you, Captain," Festina said stiffly. "You’re perfectly correct. Anyone who considers this landing improper is encouraged to stay on the ship." She glanced at the screen again: the soldiers had flattened themselves in darkening shadows as the sun continued to set. "It’ll be full night down there in thirty minutes," she said. "We’ll begin suiting up then. If some of you don’t show up at the robing chambers, I won’t send anyone looking for you."
She nodded to nobody in particular and quietly left the bridge. For a long time, none of the rest of us moved.
34
WAITING IN THE TRANSPORT BAY
We all showed up. In the little anteroom in front of Jacaranda’s four robing chambers, everyone I thought might come, did: Tobit, Dade, Kaisho, Counselor, Zeeleepull, Hib Nib Pib. And me, of course. I can’t say I’d thought long and hard about the morals of what we were doing. Mostly I’d been busy on the bridge. With a bit of persuasion (talk, not pheromones), I’d convinced Prope to let me record the message that would be broadcast when we landed: telling everyone I was the Little Father Without Blame, just coming down to Unshummin to pick up some friends. It wasn’t what you’d call a slick performance, especially not for something that would be heard all over the planet, on every radio band, looping again and again and again; but I didn’t think it was totally awful.
Besides, good or bad wasn’t the point. The point was to persuade Mandasars not to worry about a Sperm-tail coming in… and secretly to tell my sister I’d come back to Troyen. I didn’t know what effect I wanted that to have; maybe just to see what Sam would do.
All kinds of terrible suspicions lurked in the back of my mind. I needed to give Sam the chance to prove me wrong.
Back at the robing chambers, Festina was last to arrive. She tried not to smile too hard when she found the rest of us waiting. "Well," she said, "an embarrassment of volunteers." She gestured toward the four robing chambers. "Four seats, four Explorers. Me, Tobit, Dade, and York. The rest of you stay on Jacaranda, and I don’t want any bitching."
She got bitching anyway. Kaisho and the Mandasars argued and argued and argued why they should go with us… but anybody could see it was crazy to let them tag along. Kaisho was in a wheelchair — a wheelchair that could hover, but one that moved as slow as a constipated snail. If we wanted to get down and back in five minutes, we couldn’t afford her slowing us up.
No way for the Mandasars to come either. The whole city would reek of battle musk, even before our arrival got the troops heated up. One whiff would make Counselor and the workers freeze with terror. As for Zeeleepull, he could handle the musk (even if it put him in the mood for a fight), but he’d cause plenty of trouble if we met any palace guards. With an all-human party, we might convince the guards we were just there to pick up our friends — especially with Plebon and Olympia Mell to vouch for us. But if we had a Mandasar warrior along, one with a strange accent and no knowledge of palace-guard passwords, we’d be ten times more likely to get arrested as spies.
Zeeleepull and the others weren’t keen on listening to such logic. I’d warned them they might not be allowed to land but they still got all huffy, asking why I’d spent so much time teaching them how to act on Troyen when they’d never get to set foot on the planet. Eventually, Festina had to pull rank on them. She told them they could consider themselves reserves, in case the landing party called for help… but they simply weren’t going down in the first shot with us real Explorers.
Yes. Festina called me a real Explorer. After thirty-five years wearing the black uniform, I was finally going to earn it.
Tobit tried to usher me into a robing chamber, but I said, "Sorry. I’d better not."
"For Christ’s sake, York," Tobit snapped, "Troyen might have been a nice cozy planet when you lived there, but it’s been at war for twenty years. Nobody has a clue what kinds of gas and germs and shit they’ve been tossing at each other. Sure, they lost most of their tech base right at the beginning… but they still managed to preserve those Balrog spores they used on the Fasskisters, didn’t they? Who knows what other nasty crap they managed to collect while they were the top dogs of medical research? The only way to protect yourself is wearing a tightsuit."
"But, um… um…"
"He must not be sealed up," Counselor said. "It’s important for the palace guards to know he is Teelu. They must be able to see him. And smell him."
She turned and looked directly at Festina… as if they’d talked about me recently and decided some things between themselves. I guess that shouldn’t have been surprising; if Festina had begun to suspect stuff about me and pheromones, she’d go straight to someone who could smell the scents I put out. Now Festina put her hand on Tobit’s shoulder, and said, "Let it go, Phylar. Edward can do more for us if he’s not closed off in an airtight cocoon."
"I can do more without the tightsuit too," Dade said. "They’re really hard to move in and you can’t—"
"In your dreams, junior," Tobit interrupted. "If you don’t shut up, we’ll make you wear two."
Fifteen minutes later, we stood in the transport bay — Tobit, Dade, and Festina in fully sealed tightsuits, me in a light "impact suit"… which was basically an Explorer uniform with elbow pads.
My face and hands felt itchy from getting doused with camouflage nano: smart little color-changing bugs, programmed to match general background shades and to break up my silhouette so I’d be hard to recognize as human when standing in shadows. My uniform was covered with the same stuff; so were the tightsuits. Even in the brightly lit transport bay, the other three Explorers were easy to overlook. At one point, I was listening to Festina run over last-minute details with Tobit, and suddenly realized Dade was standing right beside me, listening too. When he wasn’t moving, my eye seemed to slip straight past him without noticing he was there. Down on the ground where darkness had fallen, we’d be nine-tenths invisible.
Too bad invisible didn’t mean undetectable. My nose was picking up a nostril-gouging chemical smell from all the suits; Mandasars would know something strange was close by, even if we were completely lost in shadows. Then again, if they couldn’t see to aim their crossbows, maybe the camo wasn’t a total loss.
Festina turned to the rear of the transport bay and called up to the control console, "Do you have the message to broadcast?"
"All recorded and stored in the ship-soul," Prope answered.
"And is the anchor in place on the ground?"
"Naturally," Lieutenant Harque said.
He and Prope were running the console themselves, rather than letting the usual crew do anything. I told myself the captain was showing how cooperative she could be, by giving us her personal attention. Still, I had to wonder if Harque was really the best technician on the ship. While the others had been suiting up, I’d watched him fumble with the control dials, trying to maneuver a Sperm anchor down to the surface. I don’t know if he made any real mistakes, but he cursed a lot under his breath.
This particular anchor was the usual box with gold horseshoes, but it also had a tiny flight engine attached and a whole bunch of stealth bafflers to prevent people from noticing anything on radar. Not that we expected any radar dishes had survived the Fasskister Swarm, but Explorers hate taking chances. We needed the anchor on the ground, right where we wanted to land, like a pin to tack down the bottom end of the Sperm-tail. Without the little machine, the tail would flap about as wild as a firehose and might throw us out anywhere within a thousand-klick radius.
; It would be really bad to get dumped into an ocean. Or in front of a big hostile army. Or thirty thousand meters above the ground.
"So the anchor’s in place?" Festina asked. "Did anyone down there notice it landing?"
"Negative, Admiral," Harque answered, as smooth as if he’d never had a flick of trouble putting the box in place. "Perfect insertion, in an alley within twenty meters of the Explorers’ signal source. The anchor’s been there for ten whole minutes and no one has come to investigate."
"So," Tobit muttered, "either the folks on the ground didn’t see the anchor go in, or they know exactly what’s happening, and are waiting in ambush."
"Ever the optimist," Festina told him. Her voice had a metallic ring to it, because she was speaking through her tightsuit transmitter. Since I didn’t have a tightsuit myself, I had a teeny receiver fastened into my ear — glued good and tight so it wouldn’t fall out. I didn’t have a transmitter, but I wouldn’t need one: the others could hear my normal voice just fine, as long as I was within normal talking range… and we had absolutely no intention of ever splitting up.
"Are we ready?" Dade asked, far too brightly. This was his first trip planet-down, and he was getting off lucky. Troyen might be at war, but it was a lot friendlier than most places Explorers went. Mandasar warriors might actually listen if you pleaded for your life.
"Ready as we’ll ever be," Festina said, without sounding too happy about it. "Start the sequence, Harque."
"Aye-aye, Admiral. Pressurizing now."
A weight pushed on my ears as Harque increased the air pressure around us. Regulations said we had to have a higher pressure on our end than the atmosphere we were heading for — otherwise, the end of our Sperm-tail might suck up stuff off the planet. The extra pressure would also give us a real strong push into the Sperm-tail.
"Fully pressurized," Harque announced. "Anchor activated. Preparing to plant tail."
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Festina. "Get ready, Edward," she whispered softly. "Harque is just the sort of asshole to eject us without warning."
She nudged me to face the Aft Entry Mouth — the big irising door that would snap open any second now. When stuff started happening, it’d go really fast: no countdown to ejection, just zoom, the instant our Sperm-tail was planted. The tail would be glaringly obvious to anyone on the ground… a glittery ribbon of colored sparkles, stretching into the sky. Ideally, it would only stay put a few seconds, just long enough for us to hit the ground and switch off the anchor. Then the tail would slither away wherever it liked, flicking in all directions and confusing observers about where it actually touched down. If we were lucky, we could slink away from the landing site before anyone came for us. "Almost locked in," Harque muttered.
I glanced over at Festina beside me. Through the visor of her helmet, I could see she’d closed her eyes. Maybe she was praying. I thought about the last time I’d ridden a Sperm-tail: the way I’d been bludgeoned with ugly memories I hadn’t wanted to relive. Did that happen to Festina too? Did that happen to every Explorer who shot through a Sperm-tail universe?
And yet we stood shoulder to shoulder as if we were brave people.
"Contact," Harque said.
For a moment nothing happened. Then Prope spoke in a gloating voice. "Good-bye, Festina."
The Mouth snapped open and swallowed us up.
35
WORKING INTO POSITION
Scooped off my feet by a gust of wind-puffed out the Mouth and into the Sperm-tail. I felt myself turn boneless, like water poured into a long long funnel that would spill me onto the dark soil of Troyen.
The palace grounds and Diplomats Row. My home.
I’d never felt wanted on my father’s estate; as for the moonbase, it was just a barren nowhere. My only true home was the place I was going — where I lived with Verity and Sam till they both died.
Except that Sam wasn’t dead, was she? Did that mean Verity wasn’t dead either?
No, no, no! a voice screamed in my head. Another presence was trying to pierce through to me as I gushed down the Sperm-tail. Just like the last time: an unknown spirit reaching in, dredging up my own memories and forcing me to confront them. I tried to resist, but couldn’t shut out the images.
Verity’s empty bedroom. After I’d escaped from those guards and sent Innocence to safety, I’d gone back to the high queen’s chambers. Both bodies had disappeared — nothing but that pool of Sam’s blood. I remembered kneeling in the damp, touching the red stickiness, lifting my fingers to my nose…
…only now I could remember the smell. The smell of the blood. As if my nose had been Mandasar-sensitive way back then. I smelled the blood and knew it wasn’t real — just artificial stuff, the kind the doctors synthesized for me whenever I needed a transfusion. Heaven knows, I’d needed tons of transfusions during my year of being sick. My nose knew the difference between real blood and fake.
That blood, the blood that had spilled out of Sam, was just stuff whipped up with a chemistry set. I knew that. Twenty years ago, I knew: knew that Sam’s death had to have been as fake as the blood.
How had I forgotten that?
And my sense of smell — so sharp back then, so far beyond human. But somehow it had gone all dull again… until those doses of venom woke everything up.
Everything.
Memories were coming back faster now. I remembered kneeling there in Verity’s chambers and squeezing my eyes shut to keep back tears. Crying because I knew. The Mayday signal that had brought me to the room… my sister lying in a pool of fake blood… the mutinous guards rushing me away before I could look at Sam’s body too closely… waiting for me to lead them to Innocence…
It was all a setup. By Sam and the mutineers. To fool dumb old Edward, who was close to the little girl queen and might know where she’d hide.
Twenty years ago, I’d wept bitter tears and pushed away those bad thoughts about Sam — pushed them away hard. Because if I didn’t, I’d have to ask who really killed Verity, and who released the outlaw queens, and who had made sure none of the peace initiatives ever really worked—$
Without warning, I hurtled out of the Sperm-tail and rammed against a brick wall.
Four Explorers shot into a dark narrow alley. Me, I collided with the nearest wall and crumpled. The other three, in big bulgy tightsuits, hit and bounced like they were wearing their own trampolines. Dade and Festina managed to keep their feet; Tobit caromed off the wall and went down, smacking flat on his butt, flipping over to his stomach, and hop-skipping along the pavement. If the folks on Jacaranda were watching via satellite, they must have been laughing their heads off.
Smashing the wall pretty near knocked the wind out of me, but my head was clear enough to realize I was closest to the Sperm anchor. Everyone else had bounced several paces away. Shaky and reeling, I kicked out my foot and hit the anchor’s off-switch. The glittery tail whipped away past my face in a jamble of colored lights, swishing across the city like a single strand of aurora borealis. With luck, Harque could keep the tail dancing all over Unshummin, distracting searchers in both armies. Meanwhile, we’d carry the anchor box with us; when we switched it on again, the tail would come straight back to our party, giving us a quick escape route.
"Everyone all right?" Festina’s whisper came softly through the receiver in my ear.
Tobit and Dade both answered, "Fine." I just nodded. Up in the ship, Festina had told me to keep quiet as much as possible. Since I wasn’t muffled up in a tightsuit, nearby soldiers might hear if I talked.
Festina made an okay sign, then craned her neck to look at the sky. "Jacaranda, are you receiving?"
"Loud and clear, Admiral," Harque answered.
"We’re on the move," Festina said. "Dade, you grab the anchor. Edward, stay right behind me." She turned to Tobit. "Have you figured out where we’re going?"
Tobit had unclipped a Bumbler from his belt and was scanning the area. "The signal came from that direction," he said, pointing to the w
all I’d banged against. "Inside this building." He lifted his head and looked up. "For best transmission, they’d go to the roof. Of course, they may not be there now; it’s been an hour since the beep."
"If they’ve left, they’ll come back," Festina answered. "They can’t have missed our Sperm-tail."
The tail was still lashing the city, darting from block to block: whisking over the pavement, flapping against walls, lifting high over the rooftops and circling like a lariat before plunging down again in a splash of green and gold and blue and purple. I could hear distant Mandasar voices, commanders yelling orders at their troops, or just soldiers hollering at each other. Some would be shouting, "Keep cool," and others, "Look lively," and a few maybe even, "Naizo!"… tired palace guards who were ready to surrender to anything.
"Let’s head for the roof," Festina said. "Plebon and Olympia may still be there. If they aren’t, they’ll know they should hurry back to their transmission site. And from the roof, we’ll have an easy time grabbing a ride out."
"Sure, Ramos," Tobit growled. "Easy. Piece of cake. In the history of the Explorer Corps, have you heard of a single landing that didn’t turn into a complete ass-biter?"
"Always a first time," Festina answered. "Let’s go, people. Immortality awaits."
At the end of the alley, Tobit poked the scanner of his Bumbler just past the edge of the wall. That way, we could look around the corner without sticking our heads into the open.
The Bumbler’s vidscreen showed the front of the Fasskister embassy… or what was left of it. Something had smashed it hard, like a wrecking ball or an explosion or a barrage of cannon fire. A great chunk of the brick face had been knocked in, exposing the four stories of the interior to open air. Unshummin’s weather was as mild as you could get — shirtsleeve temperatures most of the year round, with only a bit of rain — but it had still taken a toll on the inside of the building. All the floors had a definite sag, and some were crumbling on the edges. I imagine the place was filled with insects and jiffpips: centipedey things that could jump and climb like squirrels. (For some reason, Mandasars found jiffpips sweet and cute… maybe because they were distant evolutionary cousins, like lemurs are to humans. Me, whenever I saw a jiffpip, I wanted to whack it with a sledgehammer.)
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