I felt sick to my stomach, still trying to reconcile the revelation Allerton had let slip. I looked the other way along the table at Pham, but she sat with her head back and her eyes closed, apparently no longer paying attention.
I pictured the giant torus burning, floating out in the blackness, the end to our journey tolled by its fiery death—a replacement decades or centuries away. I turned back to Polaski.
“Polaski,” I said. I tried to keep my voice steady. “I thought you were trying to make it to Serenitas. I thought that was the whole point.”
“I think that may be more important to you than to the rest of us,” he said.
“Polaski, there are people using that torus to go on to Serenitas. That’s what it’s for.” Did I really believe that?
“Uh-huh. Look, our own massed cannon went up against that fleet at the torus and didn’t get through, even if we did beat the pants off them. So you’d better believe no one’s waltzing through by themselves. Where do you come up with this drivel, anyway?”
Next to me, Lal Singh scraped his chair around to see me better. “I’m afraid I don’t understand this little disagreement, Mr. Torres,” he said. “I thought that this . . . this ‘broadside’ was your plan.”
I stared at him. “No. This is insanity, an attack like that. Where did you get that?”
He frowned and looked around at his counterparts and then back at me, genuinely confused.
“I don’t know if you are making a joke, sir. Everywhere in this system, the events of the past twenty years are understood to have been according to your plan. Mr. Polaski’s plan, Mr. Torres’ plan, they are the same thing to us. When we say one, we mean the other—they are interchangeable. So naturally I assumed that this inevitable next step—”
“This expedition hasn’t been mine,” I said. “Polaski’s the one sitting at the head of the table, isn’t he? He’s the one—”
“Excuse me,” said Singh, “but I must notice the moment at which you are saying this. A few minutes ago we heard a most distressing account of conditions on Earth, and we know that the situation here is even worse. We are dying of hunger at an alarming rate, industries are collapsing, and these creatures are attacking us unpredictably—and now because you find distasteful the counterattack designed to rescue us from the consequences of your plan, you wish to disassociate yourself from those who all these years have faithfully carried it out?”
I looked from Singh to Polaski.
“It’s not my plan, Singh.” I knew my voice sounded weak. “Polaski’s been driving this thing, not me.”
Singh coughed discreetly into a hand and looked briefly around the table.
“Excuse me again, Mr. Torres, but I find this to be most embarrassing. You are the one, I believe, who invented the cells. And later disabled them, I might add—including the ones in the airplane of my father’s brother over Madhya Pradesh. It was you who built the ships and gave so many of them to a man named Chih-Hsien Chien, a man employed by Chinese intelligence, a man who then gave those ships to the Europeans to carry their weapons. You are the one who launched your fleet, I believe, killing your own chief economist—the one man, I might add, who had been advocating greater restraint. It was you who insisted on sending a probe into the next system—a probe that incited your drones to attack us. Mr. Torres, I believe that anyone would find the events of this period to have been very much your doing.”
I watched my own fingers drumming on the table. I answered without looking up.
“This isn’t what I intended.”
“Ah.”
“So,” said Polaski. “Are we done here, Torres, or do you have a better idea?”
As the others at the table watched me and waited for my answer, I looked at Pham where she sat leaning back in her chair. Kip was sitting against the wall behind her, where I hadn’t seen him before. He was turned in his seat, watching Polaski with an uncharacteristic intensity.
I looked back down at my hands. I felt pressed for an answer, yet I could only call up the same old image: the drones’ ships waiting between us and the tunnel, and all of them suddenly stopping as I pressed a key. The struggle ending in that single instant—the uncertainty gone, the mistakes of our past done away with in a single stroke as I entered the password. The way opened up in front of us as we sailed through the tunnel, floating on toward the shores of Serenitas’ blue seas . . .
Polaski leaned forward in his seat.
“All right, let’s—”
“I’m going back for the case,” I said.
Next to me Chan turned her head away. Elliot whistled softly, but no one else uttered a sound. I stared down at my water glass.
I’d begun to suspect that Polaski might destroy us all, and I was sure now that he would destroy the tunnel leading from the system. And I knew, too, in that instant, that I didn’t have the courage to stop him. Pham talked easily about standing up to him, but however much she’d changed, I hadn’t seen her show that sort of courage herself in standing up to these people. Especially to the kind of person I was beginning to see in Polaski. People like Major Cole, or Bart Allerton. Tyrone Elliot had once without hesitation turned a two-barreled heater on Cole, but a battlefield at night was not the same as a conference table. Going back for the codes before Polaski could go through with his attack was the only sure course we had.
“But Edvard,” said Marina Tonova, leaning forward to look at me around Singh. “It is drones’ main base, now. You cannot go back there.”
“I’ll go in on a shuttle. They’ll leave it alone.” I looked at Pham as I said it, but she just opened her eyes slightly and shook her head.
Seeing her with a hand resting on the baby, I was reminded again of the darkened vehicle assembly building where she’d found him—the frozen and airless chamber filled with the dead, the drones moving like ghosts in its shadows—a black on black painting of the pit of lost souls, the pit where the treasure lay buried.
“Lord almighty,” said Elliot.
“Hell, Torres,” said Polaski, “you do whatever you want. Just stay out of my way.”
Across from me Elliot carefully put both his hands on the table in front of him.
“Torres,” he said. “You can’t go back there by yourself. You can’t even fly those ships worth a dog’s ass—probably get lost on the way without someone to look after you.” He looked down at the backs of his hands. “I’m coming with you.”
“No!” Perris grabbed Elliot’s shoulder. “No, Tyrone! You’re not going off with that man again to get yourself killed! You’ve done enough for him—more than he deserves!” She was shouting, shaking his shoulder. “You said we’re getting out, Tyrone!”
Elliot stared down. “Someone’s got to go with him—”
“No!” She spun and pointed at me, her face pale. “Don’t you dare let him go, Eduardo! You tell him. Tell him!” She groped behind her for the door. “Tell him, you bastard!”
She spun around to burst out through the door and then froze, staring into the face of a man standing in the center of the doorway. He was a pudgy man, with a bristling grey mustache and thick glasses, which he peered over in confusion as his hand groped for the door handle that was no longer there.
Then I was on my feet, still reeling from Allerton’s slip about identifying faces through the domes, reeling from Singh’s accusations and from Perris’ attack on me, and now filled with fury at the man in the doorway.
“Becker!” I shouted. “You son of bitch, you’ve got a nerve—”
Allerton slammed his glass onto the table. “Becker! What the hell—”
But a hand had appeared on Colonel Samuel Becker’s shoulder, nudging him forward as a familiar voice spoke from behind him.
“It’s all right, Ed—you can let him live another few minutes. I must say I’m flattered by your loyalties.”
Carolyn Dorczak slid into the room past Becker to stand against the wall, pushing her dark hair out of her face as she looked around. She looked re
sted and amused, pursing her lips as she studied the room with her brown eyes, reaching back to take Harry Penderson’s hand and pull him into the room behind her.
I sank back into my seat as Allerton rose out of his.
“Becker,” he whispered, his face pale and his voice unsteady. “You told me—”
“That the plane crashed?” said Becker. “Yes, yes, I did, didn’t I?” Becker moved away and dropped into a chair against the wall, then leaned his head back and pushed his glasses up with his little finger as though settling in for a nap.
Allerton’s eyes narrowed and he lowered himself back into his seat. He was avoiding looking at Dorczak.
“I’ll have your hide, Becker.”
“No you won’t, you schmuck. I don’t work for you anymore.”
Polaski’s own grey eyes had narrowed with caution at this point. He ran the handle of his gavel slowly across his cheek. Allerton sat straight up in his chair, the fingertips of both hands placed carefully on the edge of the table, gold rings glinting in the light as he looked around the room with worried eyes, his gaze finally coming to rest on Dorczak.
“I had nothing to do with—”
“Yah,” interrupted Pham, leaning back with her fingers laced together behind her head. “You did.”
“How the hell do you know what I did or didn’t do?” he hissed.
“Because Commander Bolton, he find out. He pretty good spy. He learn from best, hah?”
Allerton was almost whispering. “And who might that be that he learned from, in this little fantasy of yours?” His lip was trembling.
“New president, State of Lowhead,” said Pham. “Carolyn Dorczak.”
Allerton stared at Pham, slowly sliding his chair back. “You shut up. What’s all this to you, anyway, you little junkie?”
“Truth important. You lying.”
“Well then, you stay out of it!” he hissed. “You just remember that a few people at this table might be interested in your past, you little gook whore, and I’d hate to have to be the one—”
Pham scraped her chair back matter-of-factly and stood to address the room. “I am Tuyet-Nhung Pham. I am a coward and a liar, and a cheat, and a murderess. It is all true.” She sat back down and looked at Allerton.
By the door, Penderson watched her with a raised eyebrow, then turned to give me a friendly salute.
Allerton stared at Pham, breathing rapidly and gripping his glass with both hands to keep them from shaking. Finally he took a deep breath, and with a brief glance at Dorczak he looked down the table.
“Well, I guess that tells us—”
“So, Mr. Allerton,” said Pham, “you order Becker to kill Ms. Dorczak?”
He swatted at the air as though at a mosquito, still looking at Polaski at the other end. “I think this discussion’s gone far enough,” he said. “I’m as happy as anyone here to see that Mr. Penderson and—”
“You not answer question,” said Pham. She leaned forward in her chair to face him. The others around the table watched without making a sound.
“Damn it!” said Allerton. “I won’t stand for this! I think you’ve already given this assembly of honorable and senior representatives ample reason to doubt anything that you—”
“You still not answer question.”
He gritted his teeth. “—to doubt anything that you, as a self-admitted liar, claim to have heard from a man who is conveniently dead. Now I think that this assembly has recently had a vivid demonstration of who’s to blame for the tragedies in this system, and I’m sure that an honorable man such as His Excellency, Mr. Singh, for example, would agree that these proceedings properly concern addressing those unfortunate tragedies and working for the survival of innocent civilians, as Mr. Polaski has suggested, even though we must overlook the comments that Madame Xiang made yesterday regarding the Russian people—don’t you agree Mr. Singh, given your experience in these matters?”
“Ah, well,” said Singh, not understanding at all, “I suppose I most certainly do believe that, ah, under the circumstances—”
“What about Russian people,” said Marina Tonova, “eh, Chinese witch?” She thumped the table, squinting across at Xiang.
“Yesterday?” Xiang was baffled. “What is this—”
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” Pham was on her feet again, banging a pencil against her decanter. “Mr. Allerton uses you to change subject, Madame Xiang, because he not want to answer question. That is not okay.” Against the wall, Penderson and Dorczak both folded their arms and watched Allerton, who gripped the table now with white knuckles and stared at Pham.
“What the hell is your problem?” In a convulsive movement he flung back his chair and shot to his feet to tower over her, sweeping his glass aside to shatter against the wall. The baby startled in his bassinet and cried. “Shut that thing up!”
“No,” said Pham. “You haven’t answered question.” She reached out a hand to the baby, still watching Allerton. “And stop shouting, you frighten baby.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck about your baby!” He stared down at the bassinet and wiped the back of his hand across the spittle on his mouth. He was shaking with rage. The baby howled louder and reached out his hands. “I said shut that thing up!” Allerton lifted his arm high into the air and swept it down toward the bassinet to backhand it off the table.
TWENTY-SIX
An Angel in the Dust
B
art Allerton was forced to the floor so quickly that none of us fully realized it had happened. As his hand descended toward the bassinet Pham seemed to draw away from him, but a moment later she was reaching for him as though to keep him from falling. Then she was lifting the baby, and Bart Allerton was making an odd sound from where he lay on the floor, his larynx crushed.
It was several minutes later when Susan Perris stood up from Allerton’s side and told us in a shaky voice that he was not in danger, but that he had suffered wounds she wouldn’t have thought someone half his size could inflict.
Then, with a last look at Allerton and a chilly glance directed at me, Perris left to summon help. Chan followed her out, though she seemed uninterested in Allerton. For a few minutes, then, the room was filled with uneasy fits of conversation, dropping away occasionally into nervous silence. Pham was gone, her departure unnoticed.
Polaski’s face had closed over into a mask during the confrontation, and now, with careful looks at me and at Dorczak, and with a quick look at Allerton on the floor, he motioned to Jacob Todd and strode out of the door. He pushed a hand against Kip’s chest on the way out, causing him to stumble against the chairs and fall.
Harry Penderson helped Kip up, then leaned across the table to me with his hand extended.
“How you been keeping yourself?” he said.
“Jesus, Harry, I don’t believe you’re here.” I shook his hand, then walked around the table to embrace Carolyn Dorczak.
“Cheer up, Ed,” she said.
“Damn it, Carolyn, no one knew . . . we thought you were dead.”
She stepped back as the medics moved Allerton’s stretcher through the door, his bluish face twisted with pain. Dorczak hugged herself and moved closer to Penderson, then turned back to me.
“I know that’s what you thought,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She glanced at Allerton as he disappeared. “The girl’s quick, isn’t she? Scary, if she’s not on your side. We heard she brought back a baby from Four. That’s a change, isn’t it?”
“She killed David Rosler,” I said.
“I know,” said Dorczak. “I can’t say Harry minded any.”
“How did you hear about it?” I said. “Where the hell have you two been?”
“Mike Bolton told us. He said Pham’s been having a rough time. She’s done a lot to help us out, though. We’ve been back on the Boar River plains, Ed—Sammy Becker’s been back and forth to keep us in touch. I was sorry to hear about Mike, by the way. I kind of had an itch for him once, you know.” With a wry little smil
e she took Penderson’s hand. “He was very gracious about it.”
“Bolton knew where you were?” I said. I felt the nausea coming back.
Dorczak pushed her hair out of the way and nodded uncertainly. “He wasn’t sure where you stood, Ed.”
“Okay.” I watched her for a minute. “So you’re back at the helm in Lowhead, then? Does that mean you can hold your ships back from Polaski’s assault on the torus? You know about that?”
“Oh, yes, we know.” All at once she looked tired. “I don’t know, Ed. I may have hammered a civilian government back into place, but it’s only because the military was already nervous about Allerton. I still need to be pretty careful about pissing them off. The truth is, if you were to stop people on the street in West Lowhead and ask them, they’d say they still want a strong posture against these drones. None of them’s ready to have us lay down our weapons and trust in their benevolent grace. It’s only the intellectuals who’re saying we should, and I’m not sure even they are ready to let go and rely on faith alone. No, Ed, I can give you some time, but that’s all. And maybe your defections will help. But by now I think you’re the only one who can stop Polaski. I know he likes to think he wipes his feet on you these days, but without you to pump him up he’ll fall apart and this whole system might have a chance to come up for air.”
“Our defections?”
Penderson nodded. “Priscilla Bates is coming back to Boar River with us. With Throckmorton and all of his troops in tow, and there’s a few others. What do you need more time for, Torres?”
I put my hands in my pockets, but neither Elliot nor I answered.
“Jeeps,” said Dorczak, “you boys look like you’ve been caught smoking or something.”
Then her face sobered. “You’re not going back, are you? To try and get control of the drones again? Oh, Ed, don’t!”
I
’d meant to find Chan the night before Elliot and I left, but provisioning the ship seemed to grow more complicated at the last minute, and by the time we were ready to seal the locks I only had a minute to look for her. I didn’t find her, but I did promise myself that I’d spend more time with her as soon as we returned.
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