“Dear Lady, I do appreciate your call and your courtesy in keeping me informed.”
“Thank you, Lord Whaler.” The screen blanked.
The Ecolitan frowned. Beneath the facade, the Lady had been upset. Upset indeed.
Then it clicked. Obviously, her mother the Grand Admiral had briefed her on the warning and on the ensuing epidemic. Perhaps the information would last more than a generation. Perhaps… but all he could do was wait. Wait and hope.
He decided against any more great debates, mentally filed the information, and locked up his office to retire to his private quarters.
Dinner would be whatever he could get out of the tiny kitchen, followed by a full night’s sleep. Sleep he was shorter on than food.
Still… after he finished the small salad and meat patty smothered in a too-sweet sauce, he sat and watched the tower lights from the small and private study, punctuated as they were by the occasional shuttle flare, until he was tired enough to head for his bed.
He woke refreshed, despite the recurrence of the nightmares about the death ships and the Imperial fleet.
This time, the Imperial Fleet Commander had been Marcella Ku-Smythe, except she’d been older and black haired. Doubtless, his subconscious was picturing her mother, Admiral Ku-Smythe. What was her father like?
He dismissed the question as he got out of bed and staggered into the kitchen for a cup of liftea. A melon supplied by hidden means followed the liftea. Next came the hygienarium and a complete fresher. After dressing, he settled behind the small console in the private study of his quarters, turning to watch the early morning clouds scatter and the golden sun lift a silver dew off the towers. As he looked out through the wide window, he marveled at the fact that the day was basically his.
No matter how he’d gotten steamed up about things, the Empire was on its weekend break, and negotiations would not be held. Period.
At the Institute, somehow, he’d never gotten into the habit of a regular division between work and play.
Still… his time on New Augusta would be limited. Should he go sight-seeing? Alone? With whom?
Would Sylvia consider showing him some sights? He recovered her card from his pouch and studied it, checking the time on the console. Too early to call anyway.
He passed the next hour by studying the figures on the trade balances, mentally calculating the amount of increased Imperial tariffs Accord could absorb and which of its own tariffs Accord could realistically drop below the levels in the proposal to the Empire.
The parameters were simple enough, but he’d have to wait for the actual negotiations to see what the Empire might accept, assuming that Marcella was right and that he would see some progress in the next few days. He put the papers back into his datacase and stretched. Finally, after letting his fingers stray toward the console and onto the key studs and pulling them back twice, he punched out the New Augusta directory on the screen, requesting the listing for Sylvia Ferro-Maine.
A single number was listed. Private Tower Orange. He tapped out the number, wondering if she would stay on the screen once she saw his face.
The faxscreen chimed four times, but there was no answer and no recording. Could she actually be at work? He tried the Senator’s office. “Senator Helmsworth’s office.” The face that appeared on the screen was another woman, black, with curly brown hair, strong nose, and flashing teeth.
“Lord Whaler, from the Accord Legation. I was looking for Sylvia Ferro-Maine.” “Just a moment, Lord Whaler.” Sylvia appeared shortly, wearing her casual yellow-striped tunic, the top two buttons undone, and with her dark hair loose. “Working are you?”
“We work most days, Lord Whaler.”
“Is there any chance that I could persuade you otherwise? To show me a few sights later in the day?”
“I’ll be tied up until early afternoon.”
“That would be fine. Early afternoon, I mean. Should I meet you somewhere?”
“Why don’t I meet you at your Legation around 1400. You have a duty officer who can call you?”
“There is one. Always,” he added ruefully. “Then at 1400, dear Envoy.” Nathaniel found himself staring at a blank screen. He leaned back.
In the meantime, what could he do? Why was he so restless?
He let his eyes traverse the console. Stir the pot with a few more anonymous tips? He smiled. Snooped or not, his hidden watchers couldn’t stop his communications.
“Sam,” he began on the keyboard, “have you heard the latest about the Envoy from the black planet? His staff is losing their minds. At least one did, wiped all the way back to age eighteen, poor fellow. He’s the one who visited the Envoy’s office just before the fireworks exploded. Rumor has it that he was on three separate payrolls, and only one was Accord’s.”
Nathaniel knew it was weak, but it would keep Sam’s mind on the Accord issue and might get a phrase or two in the gossip section. He sent it off and found himself pacing around the study, which felt too small, looking at the time on the console, wanting 1400 to arrive.
He debated running through a workout but rejected the idea.
Compromising, he sat down back in front of the console and accessed historical information on New Augusta, deciding to see if he could learn anything new while he waited.
Surprisingly, the Empire apparently had no problem with open library files. The index alone was massive. That whetted his interest and encouraged him to dig in.
“Buzz!”
He barely resisted the urge to jump before tapping the plate on the screen. “Lord Whaler?” Heather was on the screen. He looked for the time. 1407. “Yes?”
“A lady in the reception area says you are expecting her.”
“Ms. Ferro-Maine? Ah, yes. I’ll be there shortly.”
He shut down the screen. So far he’d gotten through the founding of New Augusta and the events leading up to the creation of the Empire from the wreckage of the Second Federation.
Realizing he was still in a set of undress greens, he retreated to his bedroom for a quick change to a tan tunic and matching trousers.
Sylvia rose when he entered the reception area. Since the morning, she had changed into a short-sleeved, dark blue tunic trimmed with white, with corresponding slacks. The color imparted a fragile, almost elflike cast to her face.
“I understand you were hard at work.”
“Just background research. Not work.”
“Please don’t tell Courtney that,” she mock-pleaded. “Our secret.” He looked over at Heather and shrugged. “When I will be back, I do not know.”
“Don’t worry, Lord Whaler.” The redhead smiled. “You need to enjoy yourself.”
As they stepped out into the corridor, he turned toward Sylvia. “Where would you suggest we begin?” She came to a stop and faced him. “What do you have in mind this time?” He ignored the hint of bitterness in her tone. “To look, to sightsee, perhaps to have some dinner at a place you suggest. Just to enjoy the afternoon. Or did I not make myself clear?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure. Wanted to know where we stood. Have you seen the fire fountains at the Gallery?”
“I knew of neither. Where?”
“Let’s go. We’ll take the drop and the tunnel train. The Gallery is where the most noted art from all through the Empire is displayed. They change exhibits almost daily, and some of it is fascinating. There’s also a section of pre-imperial art dating back to the dawn.”
She reached for his hand and half skipped, half ran down the corridor toward the drop shaft. With the pace she set, it seemed only minutes before he was being dragged into the Gallery.
The circular main hall was larger than the receiving hall where he had met the Emperor and more than twice as high. In the center a bronze wall, fully three meters high, circled an area fifty meters across.
Behind and above the wall the fire fountains played, colors interweaving, shimmering, rising, falling—the rough image of a dying angel, superseded by the angry red b
ursts that suggested the usurpation of grace by a demon and the fall of the demon in turn.
Green, green, the first real green he had seen inside the corridors and tunnels of New Augusta, showered up in the eternal triumph of spring, measured in instants, followed by the darker green of summer and the red and gold of fall, the gold fading into the dead white of winter.
Standing there, entranced, the corners of his eyes filled with his reaction to the green images and the flow of seasons. “You miss Accord?”
“Yes. You have so many endless tunnels and walled-away vistas from the towers where one can see, but not touch.”
She reached over and touched his hand. “Let’s go see the old Hall of Sculpture.”
Again, she skipped off, catching him off balance as he watched her dancer’s gracefulness leaving him flat-footed.
He had to remind himself that she had once been and still might be an agent of the Imperial Intelligence Service.
No, he corrected, doubtless still was. How else could she have gotten the materials which gained them access to the Defense Tower?
“This one dates from before the age of atomic power. It’s called the Thinker.”
“They had trade negotiations then, I see.”
“Less of the diplomat, dear Envoy, and more of the artist.”
“I cannot draw even straight lines.” Sylvia drifted toward the next sculpture, a representation of a man breaking out of a sphere. Nathaniel studied the markings on the sphere momentarily before understanding, belatedly, that the sphere was Terra and that the markings were the outlines of the continents.
The sculptor had captured a steely look of determination, one that the Ecolitan had seen more than once on the faces of his Institute troops, along with the hint of hope, a suggestion of something faraway and unattainable.
“Flight, circa 100 A. E. F. F. Sculptor unknown. Recovered from ruins at DENV.”
The Ecolitan nodded. Sylvia, on her way to the next figure, didn’t fully appreciate what the artist had meant. He did. Maybe that was the problem between the Empire and Accord. The Empire stood for containment, whether in New Augusta’s corridors or within the sector boundaries drawn from star to star.
He left Flight and rejoined Sylvia at the next statue, a dancer poised on one toe, impossibly balanced on that single point. “You miss the dance?” he guessed. “You don’t ever get it out of your blood.”
“Why did you not continue?”
“I wasn’t good enough. Not for the Imperial Court, with its pick of the best from hundreds and hundreds of systems, Oh… I fought it, but in the long run, you accept the decision of the Arbiter.”
“Arbiter?”
“The Arbiters of the Arts, who judge who gets into the artistic professions.”
“That is important?”
“Dear Envoy, for an artist, it’s everything. If you aren’t accepted by one of the Arbiters for the arts or for a profession, you’ve got two choices—emigrate or join one of the services.”
“I see. And you?”
“Foreign Service… barely.” The undercurrent of bitterness was there.
“Why did you not emigrate to where you could dance?”
“It doesn’t work that way. Emigration is randomly assigned. Otherwise the children of the well-connected would all end up on places like Calleria and Einstein, and the unknowns and those out of favor would be out on the worlds of the Alparta. The one thing that’s been kept absolutely fair is the emigration lottery.”
Nathaniel doubted that, but kept his mouth shut. How the Empire kept order on New Augusta was becoming much clearer. He changed the subject. “Do you still dance?”
“As a hobby, a spare-time pursuit, but enough of that, dear Envoy.” ‘
He patted her shoulder, not sure exactly what else he could do.
She walked out from underneath his second pat, touched his hand, and was on her way to the next exhibit.
The rest of the Hall of Sculpture was a blur. His thoughts kept going back to the statues of the man emerging from Terra and to the dancer.
As they emerged from the Gallery, Sylvia halted in mid-skip, and pointed to the miniature garden they had passed on the way into the main hall. “Are the flowers on Accord much like that?”
“Those few we have are from Terra, but there aren’t that many except for the fruit trees.”
He hoped she would let the statement go, knowing at the same time she wouldn’t. How was he going to explain, without lapsing, into pedantry, that while Accord was a product of parallel evolution, the principal plant families were more like the year around, nonflowering gymno-sperms than the deciduous trees of Terra. After two millennia, the imported Terran stock was beginning to predominate over much of the Accord native flora. The hardier breeds and the crosses developed by the Institute could hold their own against the Terran plants, and, in some cases, were reversing the trend.
The drier high steppes were totally indigenous and would remain that way since Terran cacti and plains grasses had not been among the original imports.
“No flowers? Except on fruit trees? We’re limited because of ecological problems. You’re free to walk your planet, but there’s nothing bright to see?”
“Not exactly. The finger tree, with green and yellow striped fronds, can be spectacular in the dry seasons.”
“But what about flowers? Just plain old flowers beautiful to look at?”
Nathaniel shrugged. While he enjoyed the finger trees and the spring greenbursts of the corran forests as much as anyone, he hadn’t placed the need for a large variety of flowers at the center of his aesthetics. “Maybe that’s why,” she mused. “Why what?” He was annoyed, not knowing why. “Why you don’t understand the starkness you present, why the black and the dark forest green you wear so often fit you so well. Flowers and dance go together with sunshine and open air. You have the open air but not the flowers. We have the flowers.” She looked down at the blooms. “Now’s not the time for any more philosophy. You need to see more before you go, and I can’t imagine you’ll be the one to stay and sightsee once your talks are complete. And it won’t be all that long now.” She started off, with more a brisk walk than a skip.
“Next, you ought to see the Maze of Traitors.” He repressed the urge to ask her how she knew the talks wouldn’t last too long and clamped down on his tongue. Sylvia seemed to flit from point to point and subject to subject with annoying rapidity, not ever quite finishing anything. Maze of Traitors? he wondered. Sylvia was still moving quickly, and he had to quick-step to catch her.
“Can tell your military background, dear Envoy, you know?”
“Military?”
“You don’t ever amble or skip or run. You march or quick-step, and if you really got behind, I’d bet on a military jog or a flat-out sprint.”
“Maze of Traitors?” he asked, not wanting to touch on the question of his background.
“Dates from the First Foundation. Legend has it the Directorate built it under Alregord. He called the fallen oligarchs rats, but any rat who could run the maze could emigrate. We can get there from the Concourse at the Ministry of Defense.”
The history of New Augusta hadn’t mentioned the Maze of Traitors, and the rise of the Directorate under Alregord had merited two brief paragraphs.
Sylvia flung herself into the drop shaft and assumed he would follow, which he did but without the same reckless abandon.
The Maze of Traitors had been sanitized and covered with permaglass, on which tourists could walk and trace the paths beneath the transparent flooring. The Maze was deserted, only a man and two children wandered ahead of them.
Each of the hazards beneath was marked with a plaque and announcing stand.
“Station six,” declared a disembodied voice as Nathaniel approached. “This is the delayed drop trap, which was counterweighted so that it did not drop until the body weight was a full meter onto the surface. According to the records, less than twenty percent of the criminal victims ever escaped
this section.
“Station nine. As you can see, this appears to be a gentle incline which leads to a cul-de-sac, but the surface is specially treated to be directionally friction sensitive, making a return climb back up the ramp impossible for all but the fastest.”
Nathaniel did not ask what happened to those who could not make the climb. The two paragraphs about Alregord had been specific enough.
“Station thirty-six. This is the false exit, identical to the real exit except for the seal of the Directorate beneath the lettering. Each victim was shown a picture of the real exit before being placed in the entry area, but no special emphasis was placed on the need for absolute identity. As a precaution, the incinerator units in the walls, like the other weapons in the Maze, were disconnected when it was restored by the Emperor H’taillen.”
Fast as he’d been in touring the maze, Sylvia had gone ahead and was waiting. “Why did you think I should see this?”
“Just did. Call it for my own reasons. No more questions, dear Envoy, please. Now, how about the observation platform at Tower Center?”
He’d heard of that—the circular permaglass platform on the tallest tower in the center of New Augusta where it was rumored that you could see three hundred kilometers. Unless the towers were taller than he suspected, three hundred kilometers seemed a bit far. He supposed he could have figured out the math, but assuming that the earth was flat, technically a two-kilometer tower would have allowed a look at flat ground more than six hundred kilometers away, although the angle would be so flat as to be useless. Probably the maximum distance would be closer to one hundred kilos. In any case, the view might be worth it.
As at the Maze of Traitors, he and Sylvia found few tourists or others on the observation platform, even though there were no restrictions on entry, no cost for entering the high speed lift shaft, and plenty of space atop the tower.
As the morning had promised, the sky was clear. In the growing dusk of the late afternoon, the shadows of the towers spilled over the Imperial Palace to the east. The western mountains were black, the sun behind them, with sparkles of light flashing from behind them. “You can see the glitter from the ice,” he observed.
The Ecologic Envoy Page 20