by David Nabhan
“Outrageous. I’m not asking your permission; I don’t require it. I’m a prisoner of no one. If you insinuate it even once more I promise I’ll see you’re placed in a brig before I leave Terra.” Rittener was giving the captain helpful knowing glances in Nerissa’s direction, as if to say, “Listen to her, brother. She’ll do it.”
Clinton held her hand as the shuttle descended. By the time a dozen levels had swept past and the gravity began to kick in, she was squeezing it as hard as she could.
RITTENER HAD DECIDED TO make it quick. It was the wrong choice, but the only one he had. A long, drawn-out misdirection would be much better. He cringed knowing he was going to put Sadhana Ramanujan at greater risk because of it. Nerissa would have to endure every moment of every false turn he might make and he knew he wouldn’t be able to watch her suffer for long in the increased gravity. This would be the sloppiest—and yet perhaps the most important—work he’d ever done. It would be the most obvious “splice” of his life.
Splicing was not only possible, but transpired sufficiently often to rate as a serious and daunting problem. Putting in or taking out information completely unseen to the System was a hidden fact—in business, trade, diplomacy, the military, spying, and anything else. Rittener knew the rules as well as anyone. Splicers had their best chance during brief intervals when solar storms flared by. That’s what Sadhana had meant by cursing him under the Sun. It told him when. The latest coronal mass ejection, though nothing much to speak of as they go, was rushing by the Terran Ring—just now—and interacting with the astronomical number of electrical fields at the Deck level. Now was when to sneak something in. Exactly where though had to be pin-point. Sadhana had been brilliantly coy in calling him two-faced—and then amending the insult to “three-faced.” Such a silly hyperbole could be written off by Terran security monitors as the embellishment of an angry woman, and nothing more. But in reality, she was actually directing him to an exact locale on the Ring, but only in a parlance that could be understood by . . . a pilot. Rittener knew where the “three faces” were even before the sting of her slap had worn off.
Pilots thought of themselves as the sentinels of a secret treasure trove of knowledge and power that came to them through all the ages, and but for them would be lost. The mantra was fairly simple to follow in the main. No ziggurat or pyramid was constructed by chance. To the contrary, the unbending will of chosen men and women was to be seen throughout history. Their fingerprints were everywhere, in any place where the cosmos had surrendered. Enlightened pilots saw bushido not just in the hearts of Japanese daimyos of the shogunate, but also in the rishis who accompanied Alexander the Great. And Templar esoterica ran thick through the pilots’ code. One of the charges against those medieval knights on that first unlucky Friday the thirteenth so long ago was a bizarre worship of a strange head: Baphomet. It was three faced, and there were a hundred metaphoric explanations for what the image meant. Rittener didn’t particularly believe in any of them, but was versed in the allegories. And he knew full well where to find a cranium. There was only one famous head in this vicinity of the Ring, at the very foot of the Borelian diplomatic level, put there perhaps as a taunt. It was a colossal bust of Daniel Forrester, one of the Terran Ring’s iconic founding fathers. It wasn’t much to take in, and, especially in this gravity well, was on no Borelian tourist itinerary.
The incongruous party exited the shuttle and stood supposedly admiring one of the least interesting points of interest on the entire Ring. Clinton stood seemingly mesmerized, but his rapid eye movements and twitching lips were hints that far from just standing there, he was taking part in the most important conversation of his life. He had spliced into a number of fuzzy, clandestine messages in his time. This one though was much more clean and crisp. He recognized the lioness by her claw print. The fidelity of the electronics had to be the handiwork of one of the only people who could accomplish such mastery over an almost mythical solid state art: Sadhana Ramanujan. The splice signal was from amanuensis to amanuensis, Sadhana’s to Rittener’s in this case.
Sadhana’s amanuensis was an image of the goddess Namagiri. Ramanujan’s ancestor, the great Srinivasa, claimed it was this deity who whispered equations to him, the entity who revealed the cosmic mysteries of mathematics to him. The divinity began speaking to Rittener quickly, indeed with the greatest haste, dispensing with all protocol, going straight to a grave matter.
Struggling to keep her knees from buckling, Nerissa’s blood had rushed out of her ashen cheeks and now matched the color of her magnolia evening wear. Her eyes and lips were twitching like Clinton’s, but hers were from the strain of the gravational force weighing down on her. She was doing everything she could to keep a smile on her face.
The Gurkha guardsmen were attending to a series of different but building problems. There had been some sharp words and deadly glares exchanged with the Terran troopers, who weren’t happy in the slightest that an embassy that included a man with an active death warrant out on his head has strayed so far from the confines of his resting quarters. It all made for quite the sight, even if the bust of Dan Forrester wasn’t.
This was not a text-book, by-the-numbers kind of splice—hardly.
“Are you holding up alright?” Clinton asked Nerissa, looking over and noticing the strain. “You should be sitting down.” But as he was saying this he was simultaneously asking Namagiri why he should trust Sadhana and to explain her purposes for contacting him. It was next to impossible to do both things at once.
Nerissa fainted. Ram saw her going down and made a sudden movement to catch her. A nearby Terran trooper who’d been crowding them mistook Ram’s sudden movement for aggression. The trooper swung mightily from the Gurkha’s blind side, delivering a terrific blow that knocked the diminutive soldier completely off his feet.
Tam reacted instantly and threw himself into the fray, elbows, fists, boots, and knees making vicious contacts with jaws, noses, ears, groins, shins. Rittener yelled desperately to call his guard to stand down while attempting to bluster the Terrans to back off by pointing to his absurd envoy’s badge; both actions were abysmal failures. One of the troopers stumbled going down, trampling across an unconscious Nerissa.
Now it was on.
In under a minute, a military shuttle flashed onto the scene at breakneck speed, spilling out troopers before it even moored. A senior commander began bellowing orders, backing the Terran troopers away from the scene. Rittener was still—through all of it, thick and thin—now just making an end to a most complex and intense dialogue with Sadhana Ramanujan.
Nerissa was under her own duress, being brought back to consciousness with smelling salts.
“I’ve had enough sightseeing for one day,” she said offhandedly, “if that’s alright with you?” She was struggling to get the words out though, not speaking to the senior commander but to Rittener. The high-ranking officer hadn’t waited for her or anyone else to answer. With one sweep of his arm Nerissa was being air-lifted back top, with another the subordinate captain was dismissed amid a torrent of stinging curses. The last gesture he sent in the Borelian envoy’s direction. His sash was ripped, his formal suit spattered in someone’s blood, his brawl-tousled coiffure more fit for a scarecrow than an ambassador, and to add insult, he was missing a shoe. The Terran looked him up and down with a mixture of dismay and disgust. “Maybe it’s time for you to present your credentials.” No consular invitation was ever given less diplomatically.
Rittener’s guard couldn’t be pried away for anything, and after quite a bit of persuading compromised by standing outside the doors of Ethan Van Ulroy’s offices. They still were able to hear enough even where they were. The aide-de-camp sat between two sullen-faced men wearing uniforms and badges unfamiliar to Rittener. Whoever they were, they weren’t diplomats.
“You’re leaving Terra. Now.” That was Van Ulroy’s opening remark. He didn’t wish to inspect any credentials. The authorities had made arrangements to jettison Rittener in
a most disrespectful manner, pressing a D-class Borelian tramp into service. It was loaded with fertilizer for the Garden. Instead of going home on the state’s Pegasus he’d be stuffed into the corner of a garbage scow. Van Ulroy flung a last piece of trash at him.
“You have one thing to tell the Council and just this. Call the Borelian fleet back. Do it immediately. Do it or face the gravest consequences.”
Clinton got out only one question. “Is that a condition, request, or threat?” This was the real conference between Terra and Borealis, even though neither Stephanangelo or Madame Karis were present.
“Put it under any heading you like!” Van Ulroy thundered. “It will be heard by deaf ears but those are the exact words. Call back the fleet and stand down.” He then dismissed him by standing suddenly and walking briskly straight out of the room.
Only half an hour later as they were taking their berth next to seventeen metric tons of manure Rittener heard Ram Dahadur grumbling. “They were exceedingly rude, sahib.”
“Maybe not,” Rittener answered. “They might just have been being honest.”
Ram thought for a moment. “If that’s Terran honesty, I’d rather have them lying to me,” he reasoned.
ON BOREALIS, IN DAIYU’S palatial mansion on Gamma Level, Stanislaus’ broiling scowl at least warned him.
“I don’t appreciate the liberty you took with my niece’s safety,” he rumbled. Stanislaus had been thinking about it long enough for the words to marinate and soak up anger. Rittener had little choice but to acknowledge them without much of a fight.
“I had no other option, Dr. Stanislaus. There was no way I could accomplish it without her help.”
Daiyu nodded at Stanislaus. That was an acceptable answer. Another nod told Rittener to take his seat, a thin pillow placed on the tatami floor. Daiyu’s chashitsu was an unusual venue for official business but an elegant and pleasing one nonetheless. Rittener’s place was next to the hearth built into the floor and sidled up to the rustic, unfinished stone wall. The masonry curved behind him to an alcove where exquisite scrolls hung at his back. They were ancient, from Japan, and priceless. This was a simple chakai and Daiyu herself doled out confections and poured Rittener’s tea. For all the trappings of an informal ceremony it was as if the entire Council were present nonetheless. The debriefing was being logged by Diana—not the ten-foot-tall version, but a less intimidating one, human-sized and simply present and listening.
“Especially after Adem Sulcus’ death, Dr. Stanislaus, Clinton-Rittener should be praised for pulling things out of the fire. I think we owe him some latitude.” Stanislaus had to acknowledge the truth of that, the logic pressing his lips together.
“So you bring us two messages: one from Sadhana Ramanujan and the other from Ethan Van Elroy,” Daiyu started things off; Stanislaus interrupted immediately and corrected.
“One was from something or someone claiming to speak for Sadhana Ramanujan. That’s more accurate, isn’t it?” It was an ill-conceived idea. Rittener excused it.
“I’m quite sure that was Dr. Ramanujan. She was close enough to slap me.” Stanislaus’ face still radiated residual anger; his eyes reflected that he could certainly imagine doing that.
“For the Council,” Daiyu motioned to Diana, “Clinton-Rittener, would you please recount it?”
Rittener took a deep breath, slowly. “She said Terra had a wunderwaffe, a wonder weapon, one that would change the outcome of any potential war, one that would leave Borealis powerless,” Clinton said plainly.
“Huh!” Stanislaus gave his opinion immediately.
“What kind of weapon?” Daiyu asked.
Rittener shook his head negatively. “She didn’t say.” Then he corrected himself. “She wouldn’t say. She made quite a point though about the fact that she shouldn’t be seen as a traitor. She kept the details back because of her loyalty to Terra.”
Rittener stopped for a moment, giving thought.
“I know it was just a splice and nothing to judge of her in person, but it was believable.”
“Believable?” Daiyu cocked her head to the side. “And what makes you say that?”
“I just knew.”
“Huh!” Stanislaus repeated, and louder this time. “Besides the ability to make Borealis helpless, was there anything else this splice of the amanuensis of someone claiming to be Sadhana Ramanujan said?”
That was the worst way to preface the remarks that followed, making them seem ridiculous.
“Terra had been working on the weapon since before I was born, from seeds that were . . . extraterrestrial.”
Daiyu seemed not shocked in the least. “And why do you think she should have told you this when she held back all the rest?” Rittener knew. He’d heard the words himself, inside his head, and he had no doubt about their veracity.
“That we should know the extent between the chasm now that exists militarily between Terra and Borealis. That was her intent.”
“A chasm,” Daiyu repeated his term. She put down her tea and was shaking her head “no.” “That seems to render our deliberations irrelevant. Perhaps we should have the Terran Archonate sort this all out for us and then simply await their communiqué.” She said it somewhat facetiously. The sarcasm lit a fire.
“Excuse my digression, Madame Councilor. Here though might be a good place to deliver Ethan Van Ulroy’s message. He said you had deaf ears and intimated strongly that Borealis would suffer for it.” He looked at both of them with incredulous eyes. “You can’t have already made your minds up to ignore this, have you?”
“This could be a perfect false-flag maneuver. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy, to break his resistance, without fighting.” Diayu quoted Sun Tzu. Stanislaus agreed, almost grousing under his breath how absurd it would be to surrender based on an insubstantial splice. Neither councilor was having any of it.
“Certainly there can be no harm in at least attempting a compromise,” Clinton petitioned. “I implore you to consider calling for further talks—real talks, substantive discussions. I make no mention of surrender.”
“You imply it,” Daiyu answered stubbornly.
“And all of it based on a flighty splice,” Stanislaus supported her.
There it was again: Borealis’ unbending, foolish arrogance, just beckoning hubris its way. Everyone in the Solar System had suborned to accept it, but not this time, not this man.
“What do you know of splices, Doctor?” Rittener snapped finally. “Your last splice was used to set a broken bone.” He had an equally outrageous and insulting allusion for Daiyu’s talents for poetry, as compared to her relative ignorance concerning modulating baud interstices in solar flux. Both remained stone silent. Not many had ever spoken to either of them like that.
Rittener wasn’t one of many in the Solar System. He was still the mathematics genius of decades ago, the linguist prodigy turned diplomat turned general, a former yuan shuai of the coalition of Jiangsu, Shanxi, and Fujian, the son of an illustrious diplomat whose father held even greater stature. His flashing blue and green eyes, now sending out stares too glowering to endure for long without looking away, assured the Council that he suffered no self-doubt. “If only you knew how many speeches like yours I’ve heard. On Earth they come before every disaster, every annihilation. If only once there were a new wrinkle, a new slogan, a new preamble.”
Now he stood. What came next he decided shouldn’t be said sitting down.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll take my seat on the Council. My first charge is to demand an open vote.”
Daiyu shook her head. “That has been rescinded. The jurisprudence is clearly against that. The ruling is that charges against you must be settled before you can take a seat on the Council.”
That was another excellent and self-interested reason to covet a councilor’s seat. “And I’d certainly like a vote on that too!” Both Stanislaus’ and Daiyu’s unyielding and mute faces said that wouldn’t be happening either. Rittener saw no reason
to prolong the debriefing. No one was really listening to him anyway. He’d leave them with something to think about though.
“There’s a species on Europa, under the ice, within that huge planet-girdling ocean, called skim shepherds. They’re apex predators and fear nothing. But there’s only one prey they take: skimmers. Schools of skimmers haunt the great cracks in the ice shield at the surface where nutrients enter the water, opened and closed by Jupiter’s tides. So skim shepherds enjoy easy lives, expending no energy in the hunt yet certain that their meals will be provided like clockwork. You see, there’s a unique symbiosis at work. The shepherds follow the schools, protect them, prevent anything from harming them. When they require sustenance, through a sense that no one understands fully as yet, the skimmers respond by pushing the old, the injured, the weak, the infirm out to be taken.”
Both Daiyu and Stanislaus knew the story. Only Rittener though had actually seen it at work on the Jovian moon.
“Your point, Mr. Rittener?” Slanislaus asked, using his Earth moniker as a slight rebuke.
“Which is the dominant species, Dr. Stanislaus? Since the way of the world is not black and white but very grey, which is providing the greater service for the other? Can you answer me that?”
Daiyu had the answer. “We are neither skimmers nor their shepherds. But you’ve done your duty, Clinton Rittener. The Council thanks you for that.”
Clinton clicked his right boot heel down hard and pounded his heart with a fist in the style of European Union officers. As he turned and strode out, he knew he hadn’t.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GOTTERDAMMERUNG
LIKE MANY CATASTROPHES, THIS one too came without much warning. Borelians didn’t see the fleet arrive with their own eyes, having scrambled en masse into the Core at the sound of the alarms. Unlike other disasters that struck other great cities in the past, there was no mad panic for one, as there had been at the dawn of the fourth day of 2053 in Los Angeles, for example, when it was leveled by the series of great earthquakes. The natural impulse to run scared and flee, which had emptied countless cities before countless invaders, was missing too. That didn’t mean though that morale hadn’t already been struck a mortal blow. Like a last stronghold of a crusading order now surrounded on all sides by a sea of enemies, Borealis saw her stark circumstances in the same light. There was no place to escape, and Borelians thought they might actually be glimpsing the arrival of the city’s end, an idea that spread like a virus.