Voice of the Whirlwind

by Walter Jon Williams

  Did the Prime know? Was it the Prime’s idea? Two of Angel’s questions, repeated over and over again.

  …The Alpha got his meeting with the Prime, and there had released a spore that, a few hours later, caused the Prime to begin uncontrollably dispersing a hormone meant to warn the colony of an attack by outsiders. Others were infected as well, and when the hormone began to spread through the colony, the Powers grew uncontrollably agitated. The Prime and the others in the Legation headquarters, the center of the infection, attacked and killed one another. At this point, warning was given, and the human personnel were evacuated to their shelters. One-third of the Legation, over eight hundred Powers, were killed in the two days that it took for the outbreak to run its course. Before the outbreak grew chaotic, the Alpha visited de Prey in his office and shot him four times with a large-caliber silenced weapon. Resuscitation efforts failed. The Alpha then escaped Vesta by means unknown.

  Damage to the Powers was limited by the fact that the Prime’s deputy, Prime-on-the-Right, had left for Power space just a few days before the outbreak and had escaped the catastrophe. Damage to de Prey was not confined, however. His insurance company, LifeLight, a former division of Coherent Light located on Earth, had failed to implant his memories in a clone. The mindthread recording was somehow defective. De Prey was going to stay dead.

  Good work, Curzon, Steward thought. The Alpha couldn’t have arranged the de Prey clone’s failure. That had to be the work of Consolidated agents on Earth.

  He smiled. His own insurance company had been another branch of Coherent Light, but if he’d ended up with LifeLight, he might have been going through revival at the same time as de Prey. What would de Prey have thought, Steward laughed, to see his assassin going through physical rehabilitation at the same station?

  He paged through the rest of the file. There were long records of his interrogation by Angel, internal Brighter Suns correspondence questioning the evidence of his being a clone without appropriate memories, then proof positive from the hospital in Arizona that the files had not been updated. The final order had been countersigned by Angel in a smudged, angry hand. Steward grinned.

  He flipped out of his file and into de Prey’s. Vee tag. N. Degrees in psychology and military science from St. Cyr, a school specializing in producing policorporate mercenaries. A picture of a young man with a lean face, cautious eyes, and a beret. Thesis: Warrior Fanaticism: A Study in Combat without Morality. The quality of the thesis work and a staff position during a short, highly successful Far Jewel campaign in Szechuan had caused Coherent Light to take an interest and to sponsor his defection from Far Jewel. That was among a series of Far Jewel defections that should have been taken as a warning sign of the failure of Far Jewel’s Earthside program, that the horror of Petit Galop was about to engulf Europe.

  Pilot studies in de Prey’s indoctrination techniques, combined with combat experience in policorporate brawls on Earth triggered by Far Jewel’s collapse, proved the value of de Prey’s methods. De Prey was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and given the authority to form two battalions of Icehawks. Another promotion came soon after, and so did four more battalions.

  During the Artifact War, de Prey was high in the councils of Coherent Light. His policy was to convince the other warring policorps that CL was aiming at conquest of Sheol. Apparently the appalling escalation of the war was part of de Prey’s policy, and he intended much of Sheol to be destroyed or rendered uninhabitable in order to deny its effective use to whatever policorp finally conquered the place. When Coherent Light collapsed, de Prey defected to Seven Moons, along with information that allowed Seven Moons to absorb a lot of CL’s fragments.

  Seven Moons was one of the policorps that helped set up Brighter Suns, and de Prey made a transfer to the Pulsar Division at that time. His work was in counterinsurgency, counterintelligence, and countersabotage, the reverse of what he’d done with the Icehawks, and some of the documents indicated he had some understanding with the Pulsar hierarchy to the effect that when Pulsar and the Renseignement General set up their own external affairs office in direct competition with Group Seven, de Prey would be able to resurrect the Icehawks as his, and Brighter Suns’, tool in the policorporate struggle.

  Steward found that interesting. So far as he understood the charters of Brighter Suns and Consolidated Systems, they forbade the policorps to create a military that could act as anything other than a small, highly restricted internal police unit, and they were also forbidden to own territory outside of Vesta and Ricot. Somehow, Brighter Suns expected to alter its charter to the extent of creating a military force. How could they expect the other policorps to allow that? Was that the plan that the Alpha’s attack had been designed to forestall?

  It occurred to Steward that the implications in this document might well be of vast interest to other policorps.

  Steward looked at the picture of the vid screen, the totem he’d pasted above his bed. What was Curzon up to? he asked. What was Brighter Suns up to, that Consolidated had to stop it?

  The de Prey file finished with yet another page on the LifeLight debacle, and Steward punched up the file on A. C. Curzon. She was a trade representative for a minor mining policorp in the Belt, and Steward flipped instead to Carlos Dancer Curzon, who turned out to be Brigadier-Director of the External Directorate of the Consolidated Police. Which meant, apparently, that he ran Consolidated’s spies.

  The file was disappointingly thin. Curzon had been born into the trade, his father and mother both highly placed in Outward Ventures’ security apparatus. Both his parents had gone down with Outward Ventures and were presumed dead. At the collapse, Curzon had fled to Charter Station on a ship full of Earth-bound refugees, but he’d jumped ship on Charter and was known to have opened negotiations with several policorps for information he’d brought from Outward Ventures. He’d disappeared from Charter, and rumors were that Outward Ventures, which was growing savage in its search for defectors, had killed him to keep his stolen data a secret, but then three years later he’d turned up on Ricot as head of the External Directorate.

  There were a few photographs in the file that showed a fleshy man with a square, high-browed face and thin brown hair. Curzon’s precise age was unknown, but he was believed to be in his forties. Sexual orientation and marital status were unknown. Ideological and religious beliefs were unknown. The names of his close associates and sponsors in the Consolidated hierarchy were unknown. Any genetic modification or wetware implants were unknown, but if they existed, they were not obvious. The budget for his organization was unknown.

  Steward massaged his aching temples. He was gaining information, but none of it seemed relevant. The rest of his files had been chosen at random and probably constituted tens of thousands of pages of information, all of it having a high probability of being less relevant than what he had here.

  He got out of Curzon’s file and constructed a search program that would wander through his data, logging the location of key words like “Curzon,” “Prime,” “Prime-on-the-Right.” He implemented it, then leaned back in his chair and watched it run.

  The next few days were going to be long.

  *

  The next day Steward went into the commo room while Fischer was running his exercises in the gym and used the number three antenna to send a coded message to Griffith telling him that he hadn’t met Tsiolkovsky’s Demon on Vesta, but he’d come across some classified files on his own. He coded the first fifty files, keeping his own, and sent them out, making certain to erase any records of the transmission from Fischer’s instruments. It wasn’t hard—the radio was a simple commercial job, intended for ordinary use, and hadn’t been built with covert transmission in mind.

  Steward had vetted all the files, and they’d furnished him with no more information than he already had. He told Griffith that on no account was he to sell them to Brighter Suns or Consolidated agents. He also pointed out that the file on de Prey might give Brighter Suns’ client/owners s
ome knowledge of the mindset on Vesta and what Brighter Suns’ long-range intentions might be.

  The next day Griffith sent a one-word reply: Awesome.

  Two days later Steward looked at his bank account. It had increased by 8,000 Starbright dollars.

  He went through the files, looking for references to himself, de Prey, the Powers. He learned a great deal about the Byzantine nature of internal Brighter Suns politics and the various schemes by which outsiders tried, and usually failed, to make money off the Powers. Some of the files concerned known or suspected spies. Steward fired the files to Antarctica in batches of fifty or a hundred and watched his bank account grow.

  By the time the last file was auctioned, his cut of the action amounted to 56,000 Starbright and change. He was rich, set up for life. There was no point in keeping this job unless he just wanted to travel; he could buy himself out of his contract with ease. He moved the money to a series of accounts all over the planet and invested a lot of it in safe blue-chip policorporate stock.

  He was getting connected with things. Stock, money, whatever was implied by his deal with Griffith.

  It was a strange feeling, somehow unreal. He’d never been wealthy before.

  He went up to the docking cockpit and looked out through the armored bubble canopy at the universe of stars. They seemed closer now. He peered ahead, finding Earth and Luna gleaming white and gray against the diamond backdrop, each surrounded by its constellation of industrial stars, and he thought for a moment of New Humanity, where Natalie lived, and how close it was to Charter, a hundred dollars by intraorbital shuttle.

  Memories moved through him, laughter, distant song, supple skin. A body in a long controlled tumble across a tunnel of empty air. A phantom taste that he couldn’t forget.

  A question touched him as well as memory. He had knowledge now, knowledge bought with pain and cunning. It brought him closer to where he wanted to be. But he wondered if the knowledge implied action, if his coming closer to the Alpha also obliged him somehow, obliged him to finish the Alpha’s business.

  There was a knock on the airlock door behind him. A piece of politeness in case he was doing something strange here, floating in the velvet darkness and performing the act of Onan or something. He reached out from his couch and pressed the intercom button. “Come in.”

  It was Cairo, with a flask of pepper-flavored vodka. The door hissed shut behind her. She looked at him with her dark, direct eyes. “Are you troubled in spirit, Steward?”

  He grinned. “Can’t say I am.”

  The diamonds on her cheekbones winked soft starlight. “Too bad,” she said. “I often find that when people are troubled in spirit, they come up here to look at the stars.” She webbed herself onto the other couch and looked up. “I was born up here, Earthman,” she said. She tilted her head back, sweeping her eyes over the silent, awesome starscape, the cold and steady points of light.

  “What do you think of my home?” she asked.

  Thoughts of Natalie trickled over his skin. This was her home now as well. “I think it’s got possibilities,” he said. “There are, however, problems of scale.”

  She offered him the vodka, and he declined. “It’s a matter of perspective, Earthman,” Cairo said. “You have to get used to the big picture if you want to get ahead in this life.”

  “D’accord.” Steward thought his perspective was just fine. There was a memory singing in his ears. It was a memory that, later, he would have to make up his mind about—he would have to indulge it or exorcise it somehow. But now, it seemed to be what he needed.

  In the silent darkness, the memory sang on.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Images glowed in Steward’s mind. A bundle of cable brushed his cheek. He stuck it back in its clamp and it slid out again.

  “Station power coupling engaged,” Cairo reported. “The board is green.”

  “SHUT THE SHIP DOWN.” SuTopo’s voice came with overwhelming clarity over Steward’s interface disk, his tones broadcast straight to the audio nerves, very loud, almost an invasion of privacy. Steward winced. The cable touched him again.

  “Four-A and seven up,” Steward said. He mentally took command of the audio and turned down the volume. “Shifting to station power.”

  Reese was already stripping off her harness. “Indian Ocean this time, buck,” she said. “Kenya, the Seychelles, then Western Australia. Maybe the Barrier Reef for dessert. I’m gonna spend at least half my time underwater.” She looked at him pointedly. “You,” she said, “are not invited.”

  He pulled the plastic interface disk from his mastoid. “Fine, billie,” he said. “I’m sick of you, too.”

  Reese was grinning at him. “No offense.”

  Steward grinned back. “None taken.”

  Reese floated free of her webbing, turned an awkward somersault that spoke of strained muscles and complaining bones. “God, I hate gravity,” she said. She kept her eyes focused on Steward as she tumbled in slow motion. “Where you planning to spend your leave?”

  They had six weeks’ leave coming, and back pay to spend. Crews exploded off long haulers like shrapnel from a grenade.

  “I’m going to get some sleep,” Steward said, “then think about it.”

  “What else have you had to think about, the last fifty-two days?”

  Steward floated out of his webbing, stretched his muscles, kicked for the exit port. “My investments,” he said.

  *

  Steward didn’t see Reese leave, but she left him a sardonic farewell on his message recorder, along with a stock market tip just in case the remark about investments had been serious. An old friend she’d met onstation had mentioned that Brighter Suns stock might take a fall. It had already lost a couple of points, and Reese’s friend, who was a transportation executive, had told her about a charter shuttle of executives, originating in the policorps that actually owned Brighter Suns, heading for Vesta at a steady point nine g. Reese advised Steward to sell short.

  Fast work, Steward thought. Those dossiers had probably raised all sorts of questions concerning just why Brighter Suns thought it needed a military. Steward concluded that Brighter Suns might just release all its surplus cash in a big dividend for its stockholders, just by way of showing they couldn’t afford armed forces. Selling short might be the wrong thing to do.

  Steward drifted to the lounge to drink a bulb of coffee and punch up a Charter scansheet to see what exciting attractions the station currently had to offer. They seemed much the same as six months ago.

  His muscles were still aching from the deceleration burn, so he decided to find a quiet bar someplace and contemplate the stock market from over the rim of a trailing willow.

  *

  The sound of business rose around him as soon as he left the airlock, the purposeful bustle of life in Charter. The gravity was light here, and the air was filled with the liberated crews of commercial freighters, leaping from bar to hostel to bar in a continual, noisy celebration of their temporary freedom. Bridge and todo music bounced from metal walls. Laughter sounded brittle in the air.

  This seemed too sudden for him—Steward wanted to adjust a little more slowly to station life. He stepped on a Velcro moveway that would take him down to the original Mitsubishi spindle. A brain supercharger whined as it passed on the next moveway. Holograms burned overhead, advertising the station’s attractions. Gravity drifted slowly through him, growing until it stood at point nine g. The Vesta reflexes were still working; Steward found himself scanning ahead and behind, looking for faces, silhouettes. He came out of a tunnel to see a curved material sky over his head, the vast tent divided into squares and rectangles, reflecting day and somber night, bits of green shining here and there. Bright ultralight aircraft floated by the polished spinal mirrors in an aerial ballet. Habitats this open weren’t built anymore. Steward stepped off the moveway and knew he wasn’t alone.

  He was being followed, and a cold humming built in Steward’s nerves and blood, a hum like the
sound of Charter, the noise of something happening. There was one tail at least, a middle-sized man in a dark blue jacket with zips. Zippers suggested Earth origin: people who lived in space usually preferred Velcro tabs, which couldn’t jam or catch on things.

  Steward smiled. The Vesta reflexes were still working, but this wasn’t Vesta; this wasn’t enemy turf anymore.

  He noticed a bar built on a corner, something called the Kafe Kola. It had a lot of exits. He entered and sat with his back to a wall. A woman two tables away was smoking, and the taste in the air made Steward want a cigarette. He suppressed the longing and ordered his trailing willow.

  The man in the dark blue jacket came in, sat across the room, at an angle so Steward could see his profile. He seemed about forty, brown-haired, dark-skinned, clean-shaven, unremarkable. There was a delicacy to his hands that suggested genetic alteration, and his ears seemed too perfect to be real, but the hint was not reflected in his face, which didn’t have the sculptured prettiness so common among the altered. He ordered a cup of coffee and a biscuit. When they came he took them, stood up, and walked over to Steward’s table.

  “You spotted me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He was altered, Steward saw now, but care had been taken with the face. He’d been created with the intention of looking ordinary, blending in with a nonaltered population. Born into the trade, Steward thought. Like Curzon.

  “My name’s Stoichko. I was going to talk to you anyway. If you weren’t busy.”

  Steward sipped his drink. “About what?”

  “Can I sit down?”

  Steward put his trailing willow on the table. “About what, buck?” he asked again.

  Stoichko gazed at him quietly, thoughtfully, without offense. “About those files you stole on Vesta,” he said.