"He doesn't seem any different than he ever was. He's still a crawling hypocrite."
"You can't read his face. I can, I grew up with him. He gets that gloating look when he has you helpless, when he's going to really hurt you and enjoy doing it. If the fleet invades this part of the Cloud, they will destroy the main place of government. That's Confluence Center. Myron didn't make up what he told me. After the fleet arrives here and takes what it wants, this place will be vaporized."
"They must not realize how big Confluence Center is. It's huge."
"And you don't realize how much firepower the fleet has." Jeff recalled the briefing materials that he had watched on the long trip from Earth to the E-K Belt. "Don't judge Sol by the Aurora, or the Dreadnought. They're like gnats. A big cruiser can vaporize a small asteroid. Use a hundred of them, and Confluence Center would be just another hot patch of gas in the Messina Dust Cloud."
"It's ridiculous to have anything so destructive. How can they justify building monstrosities like that? It must cost a fortune just to maintain them, when there is nothing to fight."
"The Space Navy is so big, it has its own political lobby. The ships are needed, they say, to protect Sol from aliens."
"But there are no aliens! Not that we've ever found—unless you count the sounders."
"You don't need real aliens. The threat of possible enemies is enough to keep the money flowing in." And flowing back out again—to industry groups, the most powerful of which is Kopal Transportation. Jeff, not for the first time, felt ashamed of his own family. Most people would give anything to be a Kopal. They didn't know the rest of the story. How, once you were born a Kopal, you could never escape. The name alone was enough to lock you in for life. If you didn't buy in to the cozy navy-industry connection promoted by the descendants of Rollo Kopal (What's good for Kopal Transportation is good for the Space Navy!), then you were doubly damned. You were envied or hated by outsiders for what you had from birth, and despised by the other members of your family because you would not fall in line. It had been that way as long as you could remember, and it would continue for the rest of your life.
Lilah touched him tentatively on his forearm, pulling him back to the present—and then jerked her hand away rapidly, as if the contact had burned her. "Are you all right, Jeff?"
"I suppose so. I'm just feeling ashamed of what they are planning to do." He gestured to the display, where the ceremony had ended and the group was dispersing. The ship members marched away in formation, not talking to or looking at the Cloud representatives. "Myron told me I was a traitor. I denied it, but I'm beginning to suspect that he's right."
"If it's being a traitor to oppose something evil, then hooray for traitors. "My country, right or wrong,' is nonsense now, and it was always nonsense. It's like everybody in the old wars claiming that God was on their side, because their cause was a just one." She laughed. "You never hear the losers explain why it didn't work. The winners write the history books."
"Don't joke about this, Lil. You may not be frightened, but I am. I've seen pictures of the fleet in action. And Confluence Center has no defenses."
"We've never needed them. God is on our side."
"Stop it, Lilah."
"I'm sorry. But we have never needed defenses."
"You need them now, and nobody seems to be doing a thing. I heard Simon Macafee tell your mother that it would be touch and go. He needed lots of Logans and the best jinners, and she said he could have them. On my way from the medical center I made a quick trip past the perimeter work zone, to see what was happening. I didn't find any sign of Simon, or of Hooglich and Russo. I thought they would all be frantically busy, adding drives to Confluence Center and making changes to the Anadem field rings. But they weren't there. And from what you say, Simon Macafee has been sitting in on the meetings with your mother and Captain Duval."
"Off and on. Don't assume Simon is doing nothing, even when he's sitting staring at the wall. Mother says that nobody ever really understands Simon Macafee. Have you ever noticed a faint star at the edge of your field of view, and then when you look straight at it you mysteriously find that you can't see it at all?"
"Of course. But it's not a mystery. The eye has two kinds of light-sensitive receptors, rods and cones. The rods are more sensitive to weak light—like your faint star—and the cones provide color vision. But there are no rods in the center of the retina. So although you see color and more detail when you stare straight at something, you are less sensitive to low photon levels. The faint star seems to disappear."
She stared at him. "How do you know all that?"
"I read about it."
"Do you have to find a scientific explanation for everything?"
"For some things, I wouldn't even try."
That seemed to fluster Lilah. She looked away from Jeff and said, "Now you've made me forget what I was talking about. Where was I?"
"Simon Macafee, and optical properties of the eye."
"Right. Well, Simon is like that faint star. You can be talking to him, and you think you understand him and know where the conversation is heading. Then you talk a bit longer and go into more detail, and suddenly he's incomprehensible. It's as though he's not there anymore. His mind has gone someplace that you can't follow."
Jeff didn't agree. Simon Macafee might be disheveled and scruffy, but everything he uttered through that jungle of facial hair made perfect sense.
"I'd like to talk to Simon myself. Do you know where he is?"
"He wandered off early, so he couldn't be dragged into the formal farewells. He's not here, and you say you didn't see him at the perimeter work zone. We'll check there again, but if we don't find him I know only two other possibilities. Either he's in his secret den, or he's not on Confluence Center at all. Come on."
Jeff thought he knew the way. Lilah headed in a totally different direction.
"Farther but quicker," she said. "Of course you don't know it, you're a quick learner but you've only been here a week. Give it six months, and you'll be able to scoot from place to place without bothering with a route finder."
"Six months! Lilah, no matter what happens I won't be here in six months."
She halted and stood rigid. "You won't? Why not?"
"Suppose the fleet doesn't kill all of us—which is what I'm most worried about. I'll still have to go Sol-side, back to Earth, to try to clear my name. It's not because I'm a stupid Kopal, if that's what you're thinking. It's because I have a sick mother back there. I can't leave her thinking that I messed up my job on the Aurora, ruined the ship's drive, and then deserted. No matter what they do to me afterwards, I have to go home and explain."
"I suppose so." Lilah started moving again, much more slowly. "Back to Earth. The way you say it, it sounds like Hades. I know you don't think you're lucky to have been raised there, but I do. Did you ever have a parakeet, or a canary? I've always wanted one."
"No. Mother didn't approve of birds being locked in cages. When she first told me that, I thought to myself that I was one."
"No pets at all?"
"I had a pet rat once."
"Yecch. Gross. What happened to it?"
"I'm not sure. I think Uncle Fairborn's terrier got him. She was supposed to be a great ratter, out in the barns."
They were approaching the last ring of chambers before the perimeter and the catwalk. Lilah had never regained her first pace, and as they went on through the air-filled space between the hulls she went slower and slower.
"This is really odd."
Jeff looked around him. "I don't see anything."
"That's because you're not familiar with normal operations. After you've been at Confluence Center awhile longer . . ." She paused and shook her head. "Sorry, I know you have to go and I understand why. I have to get used to the idea. But it's what we're not seeing that's peculiar. It's far too quiet. We haven't encountered a single jinner, and I have seen only a couple of Logans. This area should be swarming with them. So where are th
ey?"
"Working deeper in the interior?"
"We didn't meet them on the way. In fact, I don't recall seeing a jinner all day."
"Then your mother gave Simon what he asked. The jinners and Logans are with him."
"Maybe they are. But that takes us full circle. We don't know where he is, and he's the one we started out to find. No point in wasting more time here. Let's try his hideaway. We start from the Ninth Sector, Fifth Octant. Do you know the way?"
Jeff shook his head. But two minutes later he realized that he knew where they were. Once again they were passing through the chamber with the dinosaurs and spaceships and the giant face on the walls. Today the smaller face that formed the nose had the eyes blank, and this way it somehow looked even more hideous.
He thought he knew what came next. When Lilah moved away in a different direction, he halted her with his hand on her arm. "Isn't the other direction the way to go?"
"If you want a good crawl through ventilator shafts, it is. Not otherwise." She started forward again. "I've learned a few things about this part of the Center since last time we were here. This is a lot easier."
Lilah's new route brought them to Simon Macafee's hide-out from a different direction. All the lights in the great room were full on, and the silver cylinder, with its halo of orange light, stood by the entrance. Beyond it was the miniature Anadem field generator, filling the air with a bass drone, and on the other side of that hulked the black cube. The cube seemed even darker than before, sucking in and destroying the light around it. Next to it sat Simon Macafee's great padded chair.
"Oh, damn," said Lilah suddenly. "I thought that with all these lights he had to be here."
Jeff didn't know what she was cursing at—until he saw a pair of little legs sticking out beyond the chair seat.
"Billy!"
The legs wriggled forward, and Billy's head came into view.
"You're too late," he said. "They left hours ago." He stared at Lilah with a mixture of disgust and satisfaction. "So they wouldn't let you go, either."
"Simon Macafee?" Jeff asked, while Lilah swore again.
"Him, and loads of jinners, and more Logans than you've ever seen in one place."
"Where did they go?"
"I don't know. It was somewhere outside Confluence Center, but they wouldn't tell me where. Everybody was acting all mysterious—even Simon. He said I had to stay, because I had a job to do. I was to wait here until you two came along—"
"How did he know we would?"
"He didn't tell me that. But he said that you, Jeff, are so nosy to find out everything that you'd be here with a hundred questions." Billy held out his hand. "He left this for you. He said it was in case things went totally wrong with what he and the jinners are hoping to do. If that happened, you were to hold on to this and never to lose it."
It was a small plastic card, about three inches by two.
Jeff bent over it eagerly. After a few seconds he shook his head. "Are you sure he said to give this to me?"
"Certain sure."
"I don't see why. It has nothing to do with me." Jeff handed the card to Lilah. "What do you make of it?"
"Well, it looks old. You can see where the edge has worn away." She touched the top of the card. "What about this number, 52-101-36-77? That could be a personal ID."
"It could. Or it might be a serial number, or coordinates, or all sorts of things."
"And there's this." Lilah was not looking at the card, but feeling it. She lifted and tilted the plastic. "If you hold it at the right angle to the light, you can see them. Dots."
"I see them. But what are they? They don't make the shape of anything."
"I know. Just sixteen isolated little dots. Billy, did Simon say anything else?"
"Only that he'd skin me alive if I forgot to pass it on to Jeff. And I didn't."
"I'd like Mother to see this." Lilah ran her fingers again over the surface of the card. "She's usually full of ideas. Let's go find her. Billy?"
"I'd rather stay here. This place is fun."
"Don't ruin anything."
"Simon says it's foolproof."
"Just as though it was designed for you. If he comes back, Billy, let us know. And we'll ask Muv what's going on with Simon and the jinners."
"Do you think she'll tell you?" Jeff reached out his hand to take the little card from Lilah as they started back toward Control, then restrained himself. He felt obliged to add, "Show it to your mother, but whatever you do, don't lose it." He trusted Lilah, but he was the one Simon Macafee had told to hold on to it.
"I'll guard it with my life. And if I nag her, she'll tell me." Lilah spoke as someone with many years of experience. "Don't worry, it's like wearing down a stone. Provided I go on long enough, and moan and groan and plead and whine hard enough—she'll tell me anything."
Chapter Twenty
IN normal times, Lilah was surely right; but these were not normal times. The first evidence of that was provided before they reached the control area. It came in the form of a sound, a deep humming that resonated in every bulkhead and floor and corridor of Confluence Center.
"What's that?" Jeff stopped dead. The vibration was so strong, the structures around him seemed ready to shake apart. "Emergency energy generation." Lilah didn't sound alarmed, but she moved faster. "They are pumping up the big storage rings. It's happened before when a big power draw was on the way, but I don't remember it ever being this strong."
"Why do we need emergency energy?" Jeff was hurrying along after her, entering the final corridor that led to the control room. "The jinners haven't added a drive, this place can't go anywhere."
"I guess that's another question we have to ask—we're getting quite a list. Mother!"
She had caught sight of Connie Cheever, hurrying along the corridor ahead of them. As her mother stopped and turned, Lilah called, "I'm glad to see you. We have all kinds of questions for—"
"Not now." Connie cut her off in midsentence. "Jeff, I'm glad to see you. I have a job for you."
"For me? What happened?"
"Treachery is what happened." Connie was shepherding Jeff and Lilah ahead of her into the control room. "The Dreadnought left half an hour ago."
"We know, Mother. We saw it leave."
"All the time they were here, we took our meetings with them seriously and did our best to be good hosts. We made it clear that we don't want trouble with Sol and we'll do anything we can to avoid it. Now I've had reports in from rakehells and harvesters at the other side of the Cloud, close to the node. The Space Navy fleet left there long ago, they're not sure when, but certainly well before the Dreadnought left here. All the ships are heading this way. It's obvious, no matter what we said, Duval would have found a reason why our promises were unacceptable. He was just trying to distract our attention from what they were planning. Thank God for Macafee. Simon knew. I don't know how, but he did. We'll have to scramble, but there's still a chance that we can be ready." She ushered Jeff forward to a seat in front of a big three-dimensional display. "Do you see that?"
"Of course." It was impossible to miss the image of the ship, hanging in black space apparently right in front of Jeff.
"Do you recognize it?"
"I recognize the type. It's a cruiser, Achernar class. We were briefed on all the Space Navy flotilla."
"Good. That's what I hoped. According to the reports I'm getting, that ship will be here in two days at the most. I want you to tell anything you know about it—weapons, power systems, drive, peculiar features, anything at all. Don't worry about repeating yourself, or the order that you say things. Everything will be recorded, and a Logan will put it all together. And don't be upset if you don't know something, either. We'll be merging your data with what we already have in our databases—not nearly enough, I'm afraid. It's not the sort of information we've worried about before."
"I'll do what I can."
"Have a break when you really need one, but don't stop. I need this information
for every vessel heading our way, as soon as I can get it."
"How many are there?"
"At the last count, sixty-four. Those are the ones on the way here now. If anything else comes through the node, we'll worry about that later. Do your best, Jeff."
"I will."
"And you, Lilah, come with me. He can't afford to have distractions."
Something in her mother's voice told Lilah not to argue. Jeff hardly noticed them leaving. He was staring at the display, trying to use what he saw to provide an exact recall of the fleet data he had seen or heard.
"Cruiser, Achernar class. Net mass, forty-eight thousand tons. Average crew, seven. Drive, Mark Six Diabelli Omnivores, maximum burst acceleration, eleven Gs. Main weapons: vacuum energy tap, field resonance, computer decoherence."
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