Only two other first-class passengers were boarding at Gorley. Bryce let them go first, then led the boys through the carpeted, padded corridor onto the great ship, where they were greeted by a purser in formal livery. The now-familiar ritual of signing on to the ship—another check of identity, receiving the ship-taggers all passengers wore so they could be located any time and recognized by any crewmember—went smoothly. The purser accompanied them directly to their suite along a corridor carpeted halfway up the walls, decorated with real paintings placed in lighted niches behind a safety barrier. The boys were shown to their staterooms. Bryce turned to his.
“Excuse me, sir, but you have a visitor in the suite lounge who is anxious to speak with you.”
“Just a moment,” Bryce said. “Karl?”
“Yes?” Karl turned from the door to his stateroom.
“I bought you and Evan each a present for the trip—here—on top of the other things—something Mr. Henson might approve of.” He handed Karl his black case; Karl’s eyes widened slightly. Then Bryce followed the purser to the suite’s lounge.
He’d had the days on board the yacht to think his way through the whole sequence, so he was not entirely surprised to see his employer, Ambrose Delaney Stoner-Hall, at ease in the suite’s lounge, its lights turned low except in the conversation area, where the man stood.
“Well, Bryce,” he said. “You brought them home safe. Well done.”
White rage swamped Bryce’s vision; he fought it down and managed a mild tone to ask, “What do you know about it?”
Stoner-Hall chuckled. “More than you probably know. Here—sit down. I’ll explain.” He sat, and patted the couch beside him. A low table was set with a decanter of amber liquid and two glasses on a tray.
Bryce shook his head. “No, thank you, sir. You want me to report?”
“No, no need. Bryce, you told me about your past, and as far as I could tell, you told me the truth. But some truths people don’t know, even about themselves. You’ve been a good employee for almost five years; you’re on the cusp of being permanent. I had to know—know for sure—that you were loyal to me and the boys, could stay loyal under pressure. You understand?” Stoner-Hall tipped his head; the suite lights gleamed on his perfectly styled hair, flashed from the rings he wore on one hand, picked out the subtle pattern of his expensive suit.
“Not really,” Bryce said. His heart thundered in his chest.
“Before I promoted you to permanent status, I had to know. So I set up this little test. And you passed it, Bryce. Passed with flying colors.” Stoner-Hall poured himself a drink and sipped it. “You’re on the team now, Bryce. Permanent personal assistant, as of this date. No need to wait another few tendays; I know what I need to know.”
Rage, exultation, relief crashed against his mind like storm waves on a rock. Permanent status as a personal assistant to Stoner-Hall meant his life assured, security, recognition anywhere he went. He would have to do something stupid to be dropped.
“You put your sons in danger to test me?” he heard himself asking, in a voice colder than ice. Stoner-Hall stared at him, surprised. Bryce had a fierce internal argument with himself in the next split-second. Was he going to do something stupid? Surely not now, not with his life’s security in the palm of his hand? But the rage rose inside him.
“They weren’t in any real danger,” Stoner-Hall said, brows raised a little. “Of course not. Surely you understand that now.”
“I don’t think,” Bryce said, trying for a more reasonable tone but hearing his voice chip off syllables in flakes, “I don’t think you quite understand the people you were dealing with. The boys were in real danger.”
“But they’re fine,” Stoner-Hall said. His voice too had chilled. “Not a scratch on them, no broken bones. Maybe they were scared, but that’s nothing.”
Remembering Evan struggling not to cry, and losing the fight…Karl’s broken ribs and hand…even the four dead men, bad as they had been…Bryce’s fury broke his control.
“Nothing? You call torture nothing? Broken bones, nothing? You did not know—” He gulped back expletives from his childhood. “You did not know what peril you put those boys in. They could’ve been killed. They nearly were. Karl had two broken ribs, a broken wrist, blacked eyes; Evan was hit with a stinger—”
“What?! That wasn’t supposed to happen—I told my agent to tell the men—!”
“You weren’t there to stop it, were you? You thought your money would be enough to control men you’d never met…”
“My agent—”
“Your agent, whoever he was, was an idiot.” Bryce could not stop himself now. “People on Novice take the first deal and start trading it for a better one. Those men were going to mindwipe Evan and sell him to a brothel. They were talking about whether to do the same with Karl or send him back to you as a programmed agent.”
“Nobody would—”
“They would! They’ve done it before. They might, if they’d figured out who he was first—and you might consider what it cost Evan to keep his cover while he watched me being beaten up, and then they hurt him—they might have tried to get ransom from you and then sell him anyway.”
“But—but they were paid, well paid, just to give you a scare.”
“You don’t understand a thing about it!” Bryce couldn’t keep his voice quiet any longer. He was not surprised when the lounge door slid aside and two of Stoner-Hall’s own security detail came in, moving to active positions. He held his own body still; he might die before this was over but he had to make the man understand. “Novice isn’t your kind of place—they took your money and went looking for more, that’s what they do!”
Stoner-Hall had paled, whether with shock or rage Bryce couldn’t tell and didn’t care. “But—but you took care of them. That’s the important thing—you did well.”
“I did not,” Bryce said. “I got myself captured first, and there was not a thing I could do to save Evan from what he saw and experienced. Karl—Karl was able to escape at first. He didn’t do what I’d told him to do, but he did better. He took down two grown men who tried to capture or kill him, and it’s only because he used his head and made good decisions—” And stupid ones, but his father didn’t need to know that. “Only because of him that Evan and I are alive.”
“What had you told him to do?” Edgar, one of the security detail, asked. Bryce recognized an attempt to deflect him from his tirade but answered anyway.
“Go to a security kiosk and hit every emergency button. Instead, he went to a security office where they were no help at all. Probably—” Bryce looked back at Stoner-Hall “—because you’d told your agent to tell them it was all some kind of game. How anyone could be so stupid—!”
“You’re upset,” Stoner-Hall said. “I didn’t—you’re right, I did not anticipate that anyone would do something like that. And you’re upset, and I understand why. Let’s meet for dinner, and in the meantime Marcus will debrief you.”
And in the meantime he was supposed to cool down and remember that one did not call one’s employer stupid even if he was? Listen to a lecture from Marcus, who as security chief was his immediate senior? “I think not,” Bryce said.
“Gosslin,” Stoner-Hall said. “I don’t want to argue with you. You need to talk to Marcus. I’ll see you later.” And he was up and out of the lounge with one of his detail, while Marcus, without actually moving a muscle, radiated threat.
“I’m quitting,” Bryce said the moment Marcus relaxed his stance.
“You can’t do that.”
“I can. I’m not permanent.”
“He just made you permanent. And you know too much. You know the boys.”
A moment of shock. “I just went through hell for the boys—I would never do anything to put them in peril.”
“You know their real identities. You know their legal identities. How do I know you didn’t stage this whole thing, just to have the chance to defect and sell them out later?”
“Is that likely? A father intentionally risking his own sons? All I heard was you insulting him. You know, Bryce—Boris—whatever you really are—you weren’t my choice of hires in the first place. I’ve had my eye on you all along, just waiting for something like this…”
It was like seeing a humod for the first time, seeing Glia’s ordinary human skin flower into patterns of green and gold, blue and purple…what she called the chameleon effect, what she claimed everyone did in one way or another. Marcus hadn’t been waiting…he’d been planning…and Bryce knew too much now, had revealed he knew too much now.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Bryce said, hoping that Marcus would believe he was still defending himself. “I just don’t want to work for someone who puts his sons in danger. It’s like…like bad applejack.” Was anyone listening? Or were they glued to their entertainment cubes, plugged in?
“What’s that?”
“A drink we had. When it goes bad it leaves a bad taste…the thing is, he risked his boys and they nearly got badly hurt—”
“It’s not your fault,” Marcus said. “Someone else tripped up; you should realize the boss didn’t mean for things to get that serious. But you can’t leave—”
A vague movement near the suite door almost made Bryce look that way. He resisted the temptation. “If I could just believe that he was misled,” Bryce said, forcing into his tone a plodding earnestness. “If he was relying on someone else’s word, that he thought he could trust, then I could understand it better.”
“And stay with the team?” Marcus said.
“Well…I guess.” Bryce felt that he sounded like an idiot, but the struggle not to look at the wavering air, now behind the bar and ten feet closer to Marcus, destroyed his ability to lie convincingly. “I just got so mad—for the boys’ sakes. They were terrified; they were hurt—”
“My problem, Bryce, is that I don’t know if I can trust you,” Marcus said. His right hand twitched; Bryce knew it held a weapon. “I think you’re always going to wonder how it happened, and you’re always going to look for who’s responsible—” He stared at Bryce, forcing his gaze.
Bryce tried to look puzzled. “But that’s your job. You’re head of security; I’m just one of the boys’ team.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you have ambitions to take over my job, make me look bad, show me—”
A tiny glitter in the air. Marcus slapped at his neck, at the needle there. His eyes widened; he tried to whirl, but his balance was already off and he stumbled. Bryce charged, only to have Marcus’s body shoved into him by the unseen assailant. Marcus struggled, but with less and less coordination, as the other pounded on him, blows Bryce could barely follow but heard clearly, along with heavy breaths that were near sobs. He moved back.
“Karl! KARL!” The blows stopped.
“Turn it off, Karl.”
Heavy breathing, then Karl reappeared, the chameleon suit concealing whatever he wore under it. “I—I heard Dad! He planned it! And this one—Marcus—he betrayed Dad!” He took a deep breath. “And I got most of it on the ’corder.”
“Karl, you’re incredible.” Bryce clasped the boy’s arm. “Multiple times. I hardly dared hope—”
“You gave us everything we needed,” Karl said. “Your whole case—these suits—did you already know?”
“Not for sure,” Bryce said, as he secured Marcus’s wrists and ankles. “Not that it was Marcus. But I thought you’d be safer if you had the suits and could disappear, and the tools to find out what was going on.”
“Is he dead?”
“He’s breathing,” Bryce said. “People don’t breathe when they’re dead.”
Karl laughed, shakily. “Now what?”
“We go talk to your father,” Bryce said. “After you take off the chameleon suit and put it away. That’s your secret.”
“Are you really quitting? I don’t want—”
A mellow chime sounded three times, followed by a pleasant voice. “Attention please. Ship is sealed. Ship is sealed. Undock imminent. Be advised passengers may sense momentary variations on gravity…”
“I guess I’m not going to quit right this minute,” Bryce said. “I don’t have a ticket for fourth class.”
Karl grinned. “Let’s go break the news to my father that his precious head of security was a traitor. That should be interesting.” He looked entirely too confident suddenly. “At least it won’t be boring.”
TAD WILLIAMS
THE TENTH MUSE
To defeat your enemy, you have to know your enemy. Which can be a lot more difficult than it sounds…
Tad Williams became an international best-seller with his very first novel, Tailchaser’s Song, and the high quality of his output and the devotion of his readers have kept him on the top of the charts ever since as a New York Times and London Sunday Times bestseller. His other novels include The Dragonbone Chair, The Stone of Farewell, To Green Angel Tower, Siege, Storm, City of Golden Shadow, Otherland, River of Blue Fire, Mountain of Black Glass, Sea of Silver Light, Caliban’s Hour, Child of an Ancient City (with Nina Kiriki Hoffman), Tad Williams’ Mirror World: An Illustrated Novel, The War of the Flowers, Shadowmarch, and a collection of two novellas, one by Williams and one by Raymond E. Feist, The Wood Boy/The Burning Man. As editor, he has produced the big retrospective anthology A Treasury of Fantasy. His most recent books are a collection Rite: Short Work and the novel Shadowplay. In addition to his novels, Williams writes comic books and film and television scripts, and is cofounder of an interactive television company. He lives with his family in Woodsie, California.
When I first got to know Balcescu, I didn’t like him much. A snob, that’s what I thought he was, and way too stuck on himself. I was right, too. One of the things that drove me crazy is that he talked like George Sanders, all upper-crust, but I didn’t believe for a moment he actually knew who George Sanders was. Old Earth movies wouldn’t have been high-brow enough for him.
He also loved the sound of his own voice, whether the person he was talking to had time to listen or not.
“There you are, Mr. Jatt,” he said one day, stopping me as I was crossing the observation deck. “I’ve been looking for you. I have a question.”
I sighed, but not so he could tell. “What can I do for you, Mr. Balcescu?” Like I didn’t have anything better to do coming up on twelve hours ’til Rainwater Hub than answer questions from seat-meat. Sorry, that’s what we call passengers sometimes. Bad habit. But I hate it when people think they’re on some kind of a pleasure cruise, and that just because I’m four feet tall and my voice hasn’t broken yet, I’m the best choice to find them a comfy pillow or have a long chat about the business they’re going to be doing planetside. What a lot of civilians don’t get is that this is the Confederation Starship Lakshmi, and when you’re on my ship, it’s serious business. A cabin boy is part of the crew like anyone else, and I’ve got real work to do. Ask Captain Watanabe if you think I’m lying.
Anyway, this Balcescu was a strange sort of fellow—young and old at the same time, if you know what I mean. He had all his hair and he wasn’t too wrinkled, but his face was thin and the rest of him wasn’t much huskier. He couldn’t have been much older than my cabin-mate Pim, which would make him late thirties, maybe forty at the most, but he dressed like an old man, or like someone out of an old movie—you know, those ancient films from Earth where they wear coats with patches on the elbows and loose pants and those things around their necks. Ties, right. That’s how he dressed—but no tie, of course. He wasn’t crazy, he just thought he was better than everyone else. Wanted you to know that even though he was some kind of language scientist, he was artistic. It wasn’t just his clothes—you could also tell by the things he said, the kind of the music he listened to. I’d heard it coming out of his cabin a couple of times—screeches like cats falling in love, crashes like someone banging on a ukulele with a crescent wrench. Intel
lectual stuff, in other words.
“I can’t help but notice that much ado is being made of this particular stop, Mr. Jatt,” he said when he stopped me on deck. “But I went through four Visser rings on the way out to Brightman’s Star and nobody made much of it. Why such a fuss over this one, this…what do they call it?”
“People call Rainwater Hub ‘the Waterhole,’” I told him. “You can call it a fuss, but it’s dead-serious business, Mr. Balcescu.”
“Why don’t you call me Stefan, my young friend?—that would be easier. And I could call you Rolly—I’ve heard some of the others call you that.”
“Couldn’t do it, sir. Regs don’t allow it.”
“All right. How about something else, then? You could call me something amusing, like ‘Mr. B’…”
I almost made a horrified face, but Chief Purser always says letting someone know you’re upset is just as rude as telling them out loud. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just keep calling you Mr. Balcescu, sir. It’s easier for me.”
“All right, then, Mr. Jatt. So why is Rainwater Hub such a serious business?”
I did my best to explain. To be honest, I don’t understand all the politics and history myself—that’s not our job. Like we rocket-jocks always say, we just fly ’em. But here’s what I know.
When Balcescu said he went all the way out to Brightman’s Star and there was no fuss about wormhole transfers, he was right, but that’s because he’d left from the Libra system and his whole trip had been through Confederation space. All those Visser rings he went through were “CO&O” as we say—Confederation owned and operated. But when he hopped on the Lak’ to join us on our run from the Brightman system to Col Hydrae, well, that trip requires one jump through non-Confederation space—the one we were about to make.
Not only that, but for some reason not even Doc Swainsea can explain so I can understand it, the Visser ring here at Rainwater is hinky, or rather the wormhole itself is. Sometimes it takes a little while until the conditions are right, so the ships sort of line up and wait—all kinds of ships, the most you’ll ever see in one place, Confederation, X-Malkin, Blessed Union, ordinary Rim traders, terraform scouts out of Covenant, you name it. They call it the Waterhole because, most of the time, everybody just…shares. Even enemies. Nobody wants to shut down the hub when it means you could wind up with an entire fleet stranded on this side of the galaxy. So there’s a truce. It’s a shaky one, sometimes. Captain Watanabe told us that once, in the early days, the Confederation tried to arrest a Covenant jumbo at another hub, Persakis, out near Zeta Ophiuchus—the Covenant had been breaking an embargo on the Malkinates. Persakis was shut down for most of a year and it took twenty more for everyone to recover from that, so now everybody agrees that there’s no hostilities inside a hub safety zone—like predators and prey sharing a waterhole on the savannah. Once you get there, it’s sanctuary. It’s…Casablanca.
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