Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Your candid recommendations could ease the way for a more easily accepted settlement.”

  “Wait a moment,” she commanded as she picked up the folder and rose from behind the console.

  Nathaniel nodded, but as she left, let the stunner slip down from inside his wide cuffs to a point above his left wrist.

  Courtney was on her way to contact Imperial Intelligence, the Noram microprocessors, or both.

  While she was gone, with one eye on the portal, he studied the office in detail, from the Cereberium eternal clock to the real leather desk pad to the all-wooden desk and matched credenza. He also took the liberty of leaning forward slightly and memorizing the two private line numbers on the console.

  Again, the nagging questions were piling up, but behind them was an obvious fundamental assumption, something so glaring he was overlooking it, something so common he couldn’t see the swamp for the water. He knew it was there. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.

  It wasn’t the arrangement of the office or Courtney Corwin-Smathers herself, as arrogant as she seemed to be.

  Courtney was absent fifteen standard minutes. By the end of the fifteenth minute, Nathaniel was ready to leave.

  She returned with a smile.

  “I was able to reach the Senator, and the general terms of your proposal, provided the facts are as we think they are, will probably be acceptable to the Senator and the External Relations Committee as a sound beginning point. The staff will have to work out more specifics, but by tomorrow I should have a better idea. Can you give me a fax then?”

  “That should be no problem. Do you have any objections to my giving the same information to Commerce?”

  “Why should I? We’re poor innocent bystanders as far as Commerce is concerned.”

  Nathaniel rose to his feet and gave Courtney a half bow.

  “I appreciate your candor and your willingness to work toward a mutually acceptable agreement.”

  “Lord Whaler, you have been most forthright and very gallant under what I know must be very trying circumstances. Appearances in and among the various bureaus and Ministries can indeed be complicated and deceiving.”

  That was the second double message.

  “I’m learning that.” He laughed as he turned toward the portal, keeping an eye on Courtney.

  “I hope we’ll have a chance to talk again before long.”

  “Sure hope you’ll come to see us again, Lord Whaler,” chimed in Charles, the receptionist, who brushed against Nathaniel as he returned to his console just as Nathaniel was trying to get past.

  For some reason, the Ecolitan felt on edge, the same way he had during jump training or when he’d been in the Trezenian Police Action, the time he’d avoided leading his patrol into ambush.

  This is the Empire, he told himself, not the outback of Trezenia. Out of habit, he checked the people in the corridor as he left the Senator’s office.

  Only a handful were in the throughway to the drop shaft.

  Dropping quickly into the high speed section, he plummeted toward the concourse level where the tunnels cross connected.

  The drop shafts were one of the few things he enjoyed about New Augusta.

  Swinging out onto the permatile of the bottom level, he looked for the flashing indicators of the tunnel cabs, rather than heading for the tube system. The tunnel trains reminded him too much of the Institute’s fast troop carriers.

  As he walked toward the tunnel cab dispatching point, which superficially resembled organized chaos with the cabs flicking in and out of wall tunnels in some sort of nearly random order as the passengers inserted their universal credit cards into the dispatch gate, he wondered how the system really worked.

  The tunnel cabs worked—no doubt about it—but the intricate traffic patterns leading up to the dispatch stations seemed decorative rather than functional.

  Nathaniel inserted the Legation credit card into the slot, punched in his proposed destination, the Ministry of Commerce, and waited.

  A silver electrocougar glided out of the third portal and whispered to a stop directly in front of him.

  The driver was a woman, dark hair severely cut, the Ecolitan noted as he bent and eased into the rear seat.

  “Ministry of Commerce?”

  “Right. Main Tower.”

  The electrocougar pulled away from the silver walls of the Senate Tower concourse and dropped into the cab tunnel.

  Nathaniel looked at the back of the driver’s head. From the back seat, he could see the high, dark brown collar of her tunic, so plain it almost resembled a uniform, and the squarish cut of her hair. She was nearly as big as he was, far bigger than any of the cab drivers he had seen so far.

  Something was wrong. Of that he was convinced, and it was linked to the growing feeling he had overlooked something so incredibly basic that he and everyone else in New Augusta took it for granted, whatever “it” happened to be.

  As the tunnel cab hummed through the frescoed tunnel toward the Ministry of Commerce, he tried to take stock, mentally ticking off the possibilities.

  Both Marcella Ku-Smythe and Courtney Corwin-Smathers were more powerful than their titles would indicate. Everyone deferred to a limited degree to him as an Envoy, but no one seemed to expect much from him.

  A small flashing light interrupted his reflections.

  “Destination approaching. Please insert credit card.”

  He complied, and the dispenser promptly burped the card back into his hand. He slipped the square plasticard into his belt pouch.

  Abruptly, the cab halted.

  Already tense, Nathaniel flipped open the door and stepped out before realizing he was not in the concourse area of the Ministry of Commerce, but in the flat area outside the tunnel, a good hundred meters away from the brightly lit portal where other tunnel cabs were entering.

  As quickly as he turned, the driver had been quicker and was pulling away before the cab door was fully closed.

  The spot where he stood, datacase in hand, was lit sporadically, patches of light and shadow alternating.

  A low scrape registered. He ducked and whirled, dropping the case and letting the combat training assert itself automatically. Without thinking, he kicked aside the forceblade, grabbed the other’s arm, momentarily paralyzed the hand nerves with a grip above the elbow, snapped his left hand across the opponent’s opposite wrist in time to send a small hand weapon skittering across the plastistone pavement.

  He finished by sweeping the other’s feet and leaving the would-be mugger in a heap. Only after the fact did he realize his assailant was a woman almost as tall and heavily muscled as he was.

  He reached down and ripped the belt pouch from her jumpsuit, kicked her feet out from under her again, and flipped through the contents.

  Miniature knife, tube stunner, Caesar notes, change…nothing.

  “Any reason why I shouldn’t break your leg on the spot?”

  “Just like all men. If you’re going to do it, do it. Otherwise don’t talk about it.”

  Why hadn’t he seen it? In this crazy Imperial society, the women held all the real power. Why hadn’t he noticed?

  He gritted his teeth, pulled the woman to her feet with his right hand, keeping his weight balanced and ready for any trickery. As soon as she had full weight on both feet, he let go of her hand and with a fluid kick-through shattered her left knee.

  She collapsed without a sound.

  Deciding that retreat was the better part of valor, he pulled the tube stunner from the attacker’s pouch and turned it on the woman, who slumped back into a heap. He then wiped off all the items he had touched, replaced them in the belt pouch, and dropped it by her feet.

  Shrugging and taking a deep breath, he picked up his discarded datacase and moved quickly toward the tunnel portal.

  Was Courtney out to get him? Or had she been trying to warn him that the situation was beyond her control?

  As he edged through the cab portal, narrowly avoiding a spe
eding tunnel cab whose small driver gaped at him open-mouthed, he wondered just how many people wanted him out of the way.

  Several cab passengers stared at him as he vaulted over the barrier where they waited by the dispatch stations. Someone would doubtless report the incident, but, one way or another, his mission would be over before any investigation could be concluded.

  XXII

  THE LAST THING Nathaniel wanted was to stay around long enough for some public-spirited citizen to link the unconscious woman in the tunnel with the character in black who vaulted the public barrier in the concourse. Not that the linkage wouldn’t occur, but the later, the better.

  Cowardice was the better part of valor, and he walked quickly toward the lift shaft.

  With the time only 1200 local Imperial, he needed to kill some time before appearing on Marcella’s doorstep. And he was hungry.

  His stomach rumbled as he strode into the circular take-off area for the Commerce Tower lift shaft. He paused, turning his head to search for the directory. Surely, there had to be a directory for services in the tower.

  He found it on the far side, flashing in muted maroon, the ever-present color of the Commerce Ministry.

  Advertised on the directory were both a public foodomat and an official servarium. The public foodomat had the advantage of speed and relative anonymity. At the servarium, if he could use his official Accord credentials to get in, he’d have more time to think things over and a somewhat quieter atmosphere.

  Acutely conscious that he was beginning to react to situations rather than controlling them, he decided on the servarium, listed as being on the forty-first level.

  As he eased into the upward lift, he felt watched.

  “Come on, Nathaniel,” he muttered to himself, “you’re getting paranoid.”

  He shifted his weight enough to turn his body.

  Three quarters of a turn and ten levels later, he spotted the woman, rising in the slower outer lane. She was now wearing a light blue cloak, but the squarish face and dark severe haircut were the same. She had been the driver of the tunnel cab that had dropped him off outside the concourse.

  “Don’t they ever give up?”

  Before he finished mumbling the question, he realized the stupidity of it. And the irony. Here he was, trying to get the Empire on edge, and already they were harassing him, trying to get him on edge.

  One thing was becoming clearer and clearer. There were more players and higher stakes than Accord had anticipated. When he had a moment, if he ever had one again, that should be conveyed to the Prime.

  For the time being, he had another problem. First, was whatever faction of the Empire trailing him going to be content with merely keeping tabs on him, or would they attempt another put-away action? Second, was the driver an attempt to divert his attention from a more immediate and closer danger?

  He shifted his weight again, leaning to let himself slide into the highest speed central lane. Shifting lanes in mid-level was frowned upon but not forbidden.

  With half an eye on the well-built woman driver, he began to study the others in the shaft both above and below him. A front tail was certainly possible.

  Only a thin young man who was squirming into the high speed lane had showed any possible reaction to Nathaniel’s shift.

  As the Ecolitan passed the fiftieth level, he jumped onto the high speed exit stage and trotted straight down the walkway toward the drop shaft on the other side.

  Coming up on the drop side, he studied the drop lane, then jumped to the top of the side barrier, rather than walking all the way around to the entry point, and took a running dive down through the traffic.

  “Clang! Clang! Danger! Danger! Unauthorized entry!” screeched the automatic warning devices, slowing the drop shaft speed momentarily.

  Nathaniel let his momentum carry him to the far side of the shaft, reaching the exit stage and an upright position and the forty-first level all at the same time.

  He saw neither the woman nor the nervous man.

  The public fresher on the corridor to the official servarium served several purposes—letting him relieve himself, allowing him to catch his breath, and affording him some privacy while donning a thin gold film cloak to reduce the impact of his diplomatic blacks.

  Before leaving the fresher stall, he took from his inside thigh pouch a small wooden tube, a smaller version of the dart gun he had used earlier but with the same type of dissolving needle darts that rendered the victim delirious within seconds and which dissolved within minutes.

  The drug wore off within two or three hours but left the victims with scrambled memories and intermittent headaches for days.

  If those tailing him were as persistent as he suspected, at least one would be waiting somewhere.

  Both were—right outside the servarium and seemingly oblivious to each other.

  The woman stood by the main entrance, visibly consulting her timestrap and pocket calendar as if to call attention to the fact that her friend, contact, or lover had been delayed.

  The thin and nervous man, now wearing a rust cloak, sat on a public bench several meters away reading a faxtab. Neither had noticed him.

  Since the servarium was close to the lift shaft, the corridor was wide and foot traffic frequent—perhaps several people moving past the entrance every few seconds—but the spaciousness of the ten-meter width and the high ceilings reduced the visual impact of the numbers.

  Nathaniel didn’t hesitate. If the Empire wanted to play hardblast, he’d oblige them. Placing his locked datacase against the corridor wall, he slipped the tranquilizer tube, good for two shots, one from each end, just so he could trigger it without the action being obvious to others.

  The way the woman was positioned, the Ecolitan should be able to get within a meter or so before she would be aware of him.

  She saw him in the wide-angled mirror attached to the calendar and twisted it in an effort to line up the long axis of the calendar toward him.

  Nathaniel dropped, triggering the tube with the facility of long practice.

  The needle caught her in the neck and began to dissolve. At the same time, he was inside her guard and knocked aside the pocket calendar and whatever weapon it concealed.

  “You…” she muttered, as she began to shudder. “Told me you were slick…devils! Get the devils!” Her voice mounted to a shriek.

  She began to convulse. Nathaniel knew the muscular contractions were not exactly convulsions, but anyone not versed in the depths of Coordinate military medicine would not catch the differences soon.

  Three or four passersby immediately gathered. A chime in the corridor began ringing.

  Nathaniel had already left the woman and had covered half the distance to the bench and to the thin man.

  The nervous Imperial agent was better than the woman or took advantage of the slight warning he had. The glint of metal as the angle of the faxtab held by the sitting man shifted indicated he held something ready.

  Nathaniel stretched his arm toward the man, triggering the tube from three meters. On the range his accuracy was only about eighty percent. Here he needed one hundred percent.

  The Imperial twitched as the needle whistled by his ear, losing his concentration momentarily. Long enough for Nathaniel to cover the last meter at full dash and knock aside the short barreled weapon with his right hand as it discharged. The Ecolitan felt the surge of nerve pain in his right shoulder but clamped down on his reactions.

  Jabbing his left hand with force just short of crushing the larnyx, he silenced the bench sitter, who was trying to get to his feet. Despite the waves of pain radiating from his shoulder, he snapped three fingers of the man’s right hand in forcing him to drop the nerve tangler.

  A knee to the groin left the Imperial agent retching on the ground. After taking only seconds to snap another needle into the tube, Nathaniel fired it into the man’s neck while bending down as if to help the poor unfortunate.

  As the emergency medical unit, a low-slung s
ilent cart, pulled up, he kicked the tangler under the bench and slid the faxtab over it.

  “Here! Here!” he called.

  A health officer and a medtech appeared.

  “What happened?”

  “I was walking up to get something to eat. This man started yelling. He threw down what he was reading, got sick, and went into convulsions.”

  “May I have your name, citizen?”

  The new voice belonged to an Imperial Monitor, otherwise known as the Emperor’s Police, who was dressed in a silver tunic with gold piping and brandished a computab, all with the bored look of all police in all eras.

  “Not a citizen am I, but a visitor, and quite surprised, officer. I have an appointment up-level later, but I wanted to eat. This man goes crazy. Then somebody behind me yells and screams. I just don’t understand. Now you want to know who I am. He’s the one who started this business.”

  “I understand that, sir. But could I please have your name for the record? In case we need witnesses.”

  “Of course. Nathaniel Whaler.”

  “Whaler?”

  “W-H-A-L-E-R.”

  “I.D. number?”

  “Don’t have one, Diplomatic number.” Nathaniel pulled out the diplomatic I.D. “A-C-O-3.”

  “Very sorry to bother you, Lord Whaler. Can we call you if we have further questions?”

  “Certainly. I’ll be back at the Legation after 1500.”

  By the time the few questions had been answered, the two Imperial agents, if that had indeed been their calling, had been carted off in small and silent corridor buggies.

  Luckily, his datacase was where he had left it, apparently untouched.

  Getting into the servarium wasn’t nearly so hard as getting there had been.

  “Do you allow diplomatic credentials?”