The One-Eyed Man

by Modesitt,, L. E. Jr.

  The Ministry of Environment view I’d been given earlier was somewhat different: Do an environmental assessment to make sure no one is altering the environment on Stittara, because the research of that environment has created and continues to create products that affect billions of lives … and supports billions of duhlars in research, investment, and healthcare products.

  Jared also sent a confirmation that he’d filed the documentation and the taxes on the proportion of my contract advance that I was transferring with me to Stittara. I’d learned from some of the old-timers that no matter where you thought you were going to go, it wasn’t a good idea to go somewhere, especially somewhere multiples of light-years away, without enough assets to last a while—or to give you the chance of a new start. I hardly planned on that, but it’s always better to learn easily from others’ experience than the hard way by making the same mistakes yourself.

  I sent back a query asking about anyone I should watch out for, and his response was, as usual, less helpful than it could have been.

  “Not until you debark on Stittara.” That meant he didn’t know or wouldn’t say, neither of which was useful. Or that nothing would happen onboard the Persephonya, which I’d already figured out.

  I sent him a simple “Thanks!”

  I didn’t expect a reply, but there was always a chance. In the meantime, I left my links open and went to explore the ley-liner … or what of it was open to “standard” passengers, which equated to “second-class” passengers, all that the Survey Service was paying for. Personally, I could see that standard meant second-class, and that was what I had expected, and the way in which I regarded all of us in “standard accommodations.” At least, I didn’t have to go under life-suspension. That was true steerage, with the added risk of long-term complications, which was why the Survey Service could justify the cost of standard passage for a consultant.

  Besides the cubicle termed a stateroom, there wasn’t much to explore—an exercise room, too small to be called a gym; the salon, with tables for snacks and talking and cards or other noninteractives; the dining room; and, lastly, the observation gallery, which I knew would be closed off once we entered translation space. At that moment, though, the gallery was where most of the passengers, all twenty-odd of those of us in second class, were located.

  From there, through the wide armaglass ports, Bachman hung in the sky like a huge sapphire globe smudged with clouds, poised against the sparkling sweep of the Arm. I got there just in time to see the umbilical from the orbit station retract—Orbit Station Four, to be precise, the smallest of the five. Several of the men standing at the back of the gallery looked slightly green. Ultra-low grav will do that to some people.

  At first, the Persephonya’s movement was scarcely perceptible.

  By the time we were moving out-system, I sat down in the salon, by myself. Once the ship was away from a planet, the view of the stars and the Arm didn’t change, not to the naked eye, anyway. An attractive black-haired woman in a tailored shipsuit that showed off her figure, just enough, settled into the chair and table beside mine. She had to be older, not that I or anyone else could tell by her appearance or her figure, but because her features were finely chiseled in the way that never happens with young women, and her dark eyes had seen at least some of life without shielding.

  “You’ve seen the Arm from out-planet before, haven’t you?” she asked in a way that really wasn’t a question.

  “A few times. I’m Paulo Verano, by the way.” That wasn’t giving a thing away.

  “Aimee Vanslo. What business takes you to Stittara?”

  “A consulting assignment. What about you?”

  “Family business. I’m the one the others can do without for now.” She laughed humorlessly. “Besides, it’s the only way I’ll end up younger than my children, and I do want to see them after they’ve realized that they don’t know everything they think they do.”

  “And you’re effectively single,” I replied, smiling politely, and adding, “and you don’t play on my side.”

  Her second laugh was far more genuine. “You have seen more than the Arm. You obviously are widowed or dissolved.”

  “Not single by choice?” I countered.

  She shook her head. “You’re not a beauty boy, and you’re obviously intelligent, and the only ones who would pay for you to travel to Stittara are the Arm government or one of three multis. They wouldn’t send a permanent singleton. No loyalties.”

  “Very perceptive. Do you want my analysis of you?”

  “No. You may keep it to yourself. My partner was killed in a freak accident three years ago. The children are all grown, but young enough to think they know everything. My ties lie in the family business.” She shrugged. “I like intelligent conversation without complication. Unless I miss my guess, you’ll do nicely.”

  I smiled. “So will you.”

  “I know.”

  We both laughed.

  “What are you comfortable telling me about your business?” I asked.

  “Only that it’s in biologics.”

  “And it’s very big,” I suggested.

  “It’s only a family business.”

  She wasn’t going to say. “And your expertise?”

  “Management and development. I’ll talk about theory and what I’ve observed anywhere outside the biologics field. And you?”

  “Ecologic and environmental consulting, and I’ll talk about anything except my current assignment.”

  “Which has to be on Unity business.”

  “Anything but my current assignment.” If she could limit, so could I … and I should.

  She nodded. “What do you think about the fiscal posture of the Arm Assembly?”

  “Mass-wise and energy deficient, so to speak.”

  At that point a steward arrived. Aimee ordered a white-ice, or whatever the vintage was that the staff was providing as such, and I had an amber lager.

  If she happened to be what she offered herself as, she was unlikely to be one of those who I needed to watch out for … but who was to say she was exactly what she said she was? And what sort of family business could afford to send someone as far as Stittara, unless it was truly huge? In which case, why was she traveling standard class?

  I doubted I’d be getting any answers soon, but talking with her was likely to be interesting, and if I listened more than I talked, which was often hard for me, I might learn more than a few things I didn’t know.

  5

  Aboard any trans-ship, time passes slowly, unless you’re in life-suspension, and the trip on the Persephonya was no exception, especially given that it would take more than a week to get far enough out-system that the ship could even enter trans-space. While I certainly spent a fair amount of time with Aimee, there were others in whom I had some interest, if only because their presence aboard the ship seemed in one way or another anomalous. One of them was Roberto Gybl, clearly of dark hispano heritage, and likely of an equally wealthy background from his mannerisms … unless, of course, he was playing a role. But, in some ways, we all were.

  He’d immediately insisted, “Call me Rob, please.” That tended to confirm the wealth, since all too many of those with enormous assets went out of their way not to be standoffish, but those who played roles would know that as well.

  My response had been, “Paulo Verano, and it is Paulo.” I’d said it dryly enough that he’d actually smiled.

  Gybl was one of those men whose original genes would have left them bald after thirty bio-years. Biologics have stopped that, but his natural thick black hair looked anything but natural. He probably would have liked to have adopted the skinner look, except that the skinners were all cyborg-enhanced, and Gybl definitely wasn’t their type.

  On the fourth day, we were back in the salon—late morning, ship-time, essentially waiting for a midday meal that would be filling, decent, and hardly inspiring—after I’d spent a good standard hour exercising in one corner of the so-called gym, and try
ing to brush up my Juchai, and another cooling off before I took what passed for a shower.

  Gybl was a permanent singleton and professional freelance documentarian. He claimed to be headed to Stittara to see if he could gain access to the forerunner digs. “There’s never been much published or on the links about them, and one of the multis actually has grandfathered exclusive rights to one site. It’s hundreds of millions of years old, if what I’ve been able to ferret out is halfway correct.”

  “Who would be interested in something like that?”

  “That sort of personal docu-trip never goes out of style. I know. I’m still getting residuals on a docu-visit to a piece of space-junk that no one ever identified—except that it was too young to be forerunner and too old to be human or Farhkan … and too strange to be Ansaran…”

  Too strange to be Ansaran? I had a hard time conceiving of that … unless it was some forgotten form of human space art … an artform that had died out thousands of years earlier when people had gotten over the idea of spending hundreds of thousands or millions of duhlars to see something they couldn’t even identify with.

  “… I’ve even got residuals on a piece I did looking into the original sewers of Smithsen.”

  “You came out here without any guarantee of access to the site?”

  “The rights are held by the Stittaran subsidiary. I’d grow old before the papers went out and came back. Besides”—Gybl laughed—“it doesn’t matter. If they grant me access, that’s one documentary. If they don’t, it’s another … and they wouldn’t like the second one very much, and if something happens to me, that’s a third, already in the hands of my advocate, and they’ll like that even less.”

  “You’ve thought it all out.”

  “Oh … they’ll let me do it. Done this more times than I can count. They get good PR for letting me say how odd and mysterious what they’ve discovered happens to be, and I go away, and we’re both happy.” He paused. “But you’ve always got to have backup. That’s the problem you technical consultants face. No backup. What do you do if you don’t get the information or the access that you need? Or if it’s the wrong information?”

  I smiled. “Usually … if they try to give me the wrong information, that provides all the assurance I need to get the right information.” I took a sip of the lager, more of a prop than a necessity.

  Gybl sipped his seltzer, then nodded. “Suppose we’re alike in that respect. You’ve been talking with Aimee Vanslo. What do you think of her?”

  “Intelligent, extraordinarily well informed, and not the sort I’d really want to cross.”

  “I got that impression. She didn’t exactly want to talk to me.”

  I almost laughed, but managed to nod. Gybl clearly hadn’t looked beyond Aimee’s firm femininity, but most singletons, of either gender or sexual proclivity, tended to believe that no one in whom they were interested could resist their charms, at least for conversation.

  “Oh … there’s Lars. I need a word with him, if you don’t mind.” With a quick smile, Gybl was gone.

  I’d met Lars earlier. Short, muscular, and trim, he was the very model of a multi junior middle manager, with always a pleasant smile and a charming laugh. His wife, Larissa—and that was her given name—at least seemed to be the type to be a permanent civil union partner, the feminine and supportive type. She’d even taken his last name, and that didn’t happen often. She wasn’t with him at the moment, most likely in the gym, working to keep her own figure trim, since from what I’d seen, she spent two to three standard hours a day there. Lars had made no secret of the fact that he’d been sent to update the Eterna facilities on Stittara—along with a cargo of tech patterns. That was the sort of pre-retirement assignment the multis gave middle managers. The time-dilation allowed elapsed time to swell their retirement assets while they were still being paid, and by the time they returned, if they did, they were effectively isolated from the current power structure.

  As I watched the two of them, I wondered what other angle Gybl was playing … and what Lars had in mind for Gybl.

  Sitting at the table nearest me was an older man, not so much in appearance as in manner, the type for whom politeness and courtesy have been a way of life, and who have discovered that courtesy is often viewed as a manifestation of weakness. Men such as those, and it is usually men, because women tend to be more practical, either end up politely tough and cynical or politely world-weary. Torgan Brad looked as though he embodied both.

  “For which administrative colossus are you traveling to Stittara?” I had asked him cheerfully when I’d met him the first time.

  “The Ministry of Technology and Transportation,” he’d replied.

  “Advice on transport systems or contracts?”

  “Does it have to be either?” he countered with a smile.

  “Of course not, but it’s likely, given that technical advice or information and money are usually the greatest concern bureaucracies have with their far-flung constituencies, while power and position are the greatest concerns at headquarters.”

  He had laughed in a mannered way. “We’ll see when it’s all over, Doctor. Isn’t that always the case?”

  We’d had a dozen short conversations, after that, and I’d never gotten further, using either bluntness or subtlety. Still …

  “What pressing issue awaits you on Stittara?” I asked. “Ox-carts or wind-ferries? Or a long and painful audit?”

  “Doctor … you are pressing. That can be most depressing.”

  “Of course. We ecologists are insatiably curious, and we’re the practitioners of the secondmost dismal science. We have to press because no one wants to listen.”

  “And when you press, they listen less.”

  He had a point, and we both knew it.

  “Wind-ferries, it is, then,” I said cheerfully.

  He laughed and turned away.

  “Do you mind if I join you, Ser Doctor Verano?” Constantia Dewers eased into the chair that Gybl had vacated before I could say a word. Her silver hair was the product of age, if far more healthy than had once been the case for someone approaching her second century bio-time. Given the likelihood she’d traveled extensively, I wasn’t about to guess in what past century she’d actually been born.

  “Of course, your presence is always welcome.” I smiled and meant it, not that I totally trusted anyone her age or someone effectively slumming, since she was a first-class passenger.

  “You still wonder why I come down here, don’t you? It’s very simple. There are more interesting people in the second-class salon. In fact, there are more people. Half the first-class staterooms might as well be empty on this voyage, for all that I’ve seen of their occupants.”

  “You’re most interesting. I’m certain there are others—”

  She waved off my perfunctory protests with a gracefully dismissive gesture. “I can’t very well converse with myself. I’d always know what to say, and that becomes exceedingly boring rather quickly. You often have something fresh to offer, and more insightfully than one might expect from someone of your age.”

  “And you deliver the backhanded compliment—or the encouraging putdown—in such a charming fashion.” I said that lightly enough that she actually smiled.

  “You are so kind to a woman of my age,” came the reply. “You might even remind me of my grandsons and the way I wished they’d been, but then, if you’d been one, you’d likely have ended up as they did.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Splendidly successful … and quite boring.” She beckoned to the steward. “A dry bond, and do use the Excelsior and not the Jennings.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  “Boredom is the ultimate sin?” I asked.

  “The inevitable outcome of overwhelming ambition, great ability, and extreme caution.”

  “Then you were not extraordinarily cautious, just prudent?”

  “Not even always prudent. Prudence can also be dull, without even the dubious appr
obation granted to boredom.”

  “Then your tie to Stittara is Eterna?” I asked with a smile.

  “Oh … you’d like me to confess. When you’re my age, you have to confess nothing, and it’s far too late for regrets.” She accepted almost languidly the crystalline flute from the steward, who had responded to her request far more swiftly than to any of mine.

  “By the time anyone has realized the need for regrets it’s usually too late.”

  “Obviously spoken from experience, if the wrong kind of experience.”

  “Is any kind of experience wrong if you survive it and learn from it?”

  “If you learn the wrong lesson, it’s worse than no experience.” Constantia took a sip from the fluted crystalline.

  “Misguided learning being worse than naiveté?”

  “Naiveté is merely a euphemism for pretended innocence, used by and for those who fear the honesty of ignorance.”

  “So what, do you judge, was the incorrect lesson I learned from whatever it was?”

  “Men usually learn the wrong lessons from women, because most women prefer men not know women, but only an image of them. But then, all of us prefer others to admire our images rather than our reality.” She took another sip of the bond, whatever that drink was. “I’m vain enough to appreciate others admiring my image and old enough to know that’s what it is.”

  During that conversation, and several others, I never did learn why she was headed to Stittara, nor who she truly might be, since I doubted her real name was Constantia Dewers. But talking to her was never dull, if always challenging.

  6

  The crew members did eat with the passengers, that is, the captain dined with the first-class passengers, and the senior pilot, or once in a while the second pilot, ate with those of us in the Persephonya’s “standard” accommodations, at a two-sided table that was more than a semicircle and less than a full circle and that could have seated thirty, fifteen on each side of the presiding officer. With diners on each side of the pilot, no one was truly out of earshot of the pilot. The senior pilot was Sandrina Zoas, a thin-faced redhead with a firmly husky voice who was perfectly charming and managed to convey as little as possible in a warm and cheerful manner.