Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Come now, how sane can one remain, in that kind of age? How can memory function? And, older than Marak, the Ila. An individual of questionable sanity and absolutely certain motives for getting her contamination off the planet and back into the universe."

  "I don't know that. I don't know any such thing. Marak's sanity is absolutely solid. And I don't deal with the Ila, but she's just-perfectly fine. I've never heard there's any question of her well-being."

  "Sane, and immortal. You maintain so, on your personal observation. Do sane, and immortal, possibly go together in any mind?"

  He was being backed into a corner. Harried. Distracted. "The church says it does. Doesn't it, sir?"

  "Blasphemy, Mr. Stafford?"

  It was like talking to his father. But you didn't get anywhere with him by backing up and backing up until you had no room at all. "No, sir, I believe immortality and sanity can coexist. I'm the one that believes that. Personally."

  "You think of Marak as a god?"

  "I can't talk about the job, sir. Sorry."

  "Nonsense. You've been discussing it. No reason to back off now. You have an intimate, personal acquaintance with one of the most unusual minds alive, and I ask you, does he impress you as sane?"

  Small breath. "As sane as anyone I know."

  "Ah, so you can talk about the job."

  "I don't want you to take a misconception away from this interview. I'm sure that wouldn't be useful to you or to the Director, sir."

  "So." The face smiled. "Do you like Marak?"

  Deeper and deeper. This man was doing exactly what Brazis had warned him about, gathering data by his silences as well as his statements, by the readout of truthers inside that shell. He wanted out of here.

  "I'm not appointed to like or dislike anyone, sir. I just do my job."

  "New to that job, as I understand."

  The predicted direction. The pressure went off. And he didn't dare trust it. "A year or so."

  "Two years, precisely."

  "Yes, sir, not precisely, but close to two."

  "Two years, three months, five days."

  "That could be right." God, now it was his life under the microscope. He'd gotten cocky for a moment, and wished now he hadn't.

  "I understand Marak himself chooses his contacts. And he chose you. Why choose an absolute novice, do you suppose?"

  "That falls under the job classification, sir, and again, I can't say, even if I knew, which I can't say I do."

  The machine rolled close to him, the simulacrum maintained at eye level. "So tell me about yourself, if that's more comfortable. A Freethinker, so I hear."

  Truthers, he reminded himself, and tried to keep his bodily reaction down. "A teenage curiosity. I quit them after a few meetings. They're fools."

  "And Brazis accepted you, with such a background."

  "A teenaged notion I rejected. The department put me through all sorts of truthers, and I cleared."

  "Did your sister make that personal decision, too?"

  His heart rate spiked. He couldn't help it. "She has nothing to do with Freethinkers. They're not in her social circle. I'm frankly amazed, sir, amazed and a little offended that you've researched my family."

  "She visited you last night. A sisterly visit?"

  "That falls under personal, sir."

  "But she did."

  "It's my parents' anniversary. There's a family dispute in progress. About a crystal egg."

  "I know when you're lying. I know when you're evading me. I know far more overall than you might expect. Tell me-an element of personal curiosity-why Procyon? Why that particular name?"

  "I just liked the sound of it."

  "Sirius would have been more ambitious."

  The greater dog star, Procyon being the lesser, the follower. "Procyon suits me, sir. I never have been an ambitious sort."

  "And you live very expensively on the Trend, a young man in such a responsible position, exposed to all sorts of questionable elements that come and go in that district."

  "In the Trend, sir, that's the term. I live in the fashionable district. You can tell by my clothing that I'm not in the Trend. And I haven't talked to anyone about what I do. Even my sister has no idea what my job is."

  "Come, come, Procyon. I've come all this way to talk to you. Specifically to talk to you."

  "To me, personally, sir, I doubt it. Maybe to the person you think I am, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't exist."

  The face smiled benevolently. "Clever young man. very quick-witted for your years. I say I know who and what you are. A Freethinker. Ah, pardon me: a former Freethinker. Marak's personal contact. And what more?"

  "A former Freethinker. That's all. Long past. Dead issue."

  "You say you have no more contact with those people. Yet your sister lives quite intimately with them."

  "No one actually in the Trend is a Freethinker, sir, that's absolutely contradictory in terms. The Trend is everything the Freethinkers despise, and I assure you, my sister wouldn't touch them with tongs."

  "No? I could have possibly mistaken this notion. Inform me how this is."

  "I have informed you, sir. The Freethinkers are yesterday's items. Last year. They're not well-thought-of these days in the Trend. They've blown whatever cachet they used to have."

  "I thought time never changed in this place."

  "The Trend changes constantly, sir, it changes by the hour. You've affected it yourself. Believe me, gold and blue will be all the fashion for weeks after you're here. Then those colors will turn utterly d‚class‚, just that fast, and my sister will probably change her personal color scheme. Everything passes."

  "You speak a dead language. Your education, your culture replicate the past, endlessly-Concord in every respect is a living museum. But I forget. An Outsider's personal genetic information is as fickle as his fashion, dare I say? Without change yourselves, does Concord not perpetually traffic in change. to Orb, to Arc, to Apex?"

  "Concord trades licit change. Not illicits."

  "Do you like being modified?"

  "It's useful. It's convenient. I'd do it twice."

  "And you don't mind being contaminated?"

  "I'm not contaminated. They don't pass on."

  "Enlighten me. I'm told nanoceles can pass quite easily."

  "A mod isn't a nanocele. I'm sure you're aware of that distinction, sir."

  "No, no, go on. I'm sure you're going to tell me any moment that you're as human as I am, and that what makes you part of the Project is an ordinary modification."

  He confronted a monster, blue and gold and fuming with a cold he could feel, challenging his humanity. "About the Project, not a word, sir. But we're all human, if we're not stupid, and if we don't play with illicits. Which no one sane ever does, and those that do end up in hospital to have it cleaned out of them. I promise you, you could set any Concorder down on Earth and your geneticists could never pick us out of a crowd."

  "Not true. Concorders are genetically unique."

  "Only statistically, sir. Only statistically. Scatter us all across space, and you couldn't pick us out."

  "You know that for a fact, do you?"

  "It's what I understand to be true, sir."

  "And the Freethinkers? Where do they fit in your statistical theory of the universe?"

  "The same as the rest of us, if they're not fool enough to take illicits. Some do. Some have. Some are dead. But there's never been a runaway that I've seen, just some bad personal outcomes."

  "Freethinkers. Free thinkers. What do they think freely about, young Procyon?"

  "Is that a question, sir?"

  "It's a question. What did you hear them talking about?"

  "Supposedly about issues. Dislike of regulations. Opposition to surveillance. Freethinkers supposedly think for themselves. But they keep electing fools to run them."

  "Tell me, what attracted you to them in the first places-back in this forgotten past-if they're such absolute fools?"

  "I was s
ixteen, easily impressed. I didn't know what they were when I walked in. I thought they were, like you said, really free thinkers. They aren't. They don't like certain ideas. Like a job. Like doing anything constructive about a problem. They just sit and talk. I've no respect left for them."

  "What did you want them to talk about? What great change would you make in the universe, if you ran things?"

  "Not in the universe. Much more modest than that, sir."

  "What great plan did you have?"

  "Oh, I'd like more libraries. Better free schools. I'd like more free clinics. Better maintenance for the people spinward of Blunt. Then I found out someone actually has to pay for all that happening. So I vote for station improvements whenever there's a referendum, and I pay my taxes fair and square so what I vote for gets funded. That's what I do for civilization. It's slow, but it's more than they're doing."

  "Relaxation of import restrictions. How do you feel about that one?"

  The eternal Earther worry. "Tax on books and news? No. No tax on creators. No tax on food."

  "You're not a free-tax advocate, are you?"

  "No. I said I pay my taxes. I believe in taxes." God, he hadn't argued that particular politics since he was a Freethinker. It wasn't comfortable ground anymore.

  "Illicits do exist here, you say, in the tax-free underbelly of the economy."

  He feared he was sweating. He knew his pulse had jumped. "You should ask the police. I don't know about things like that."

  "But you live down there. Personally, financially, you can get anything you want."

  "I have no idea if I could, but I'm not fool enough to want any illicits."

  "What would a fool do, if he did want any?"

  "Oh, go shopping among the freelancers, if you want to die young. You can see a few fools walking around on Blunt. Too many lethals. Unintended results. People with common sense don't take just anything they can buy on the street."

  "These illicits don't. spread."

  Naive point. A laugh, from real relief. "Well, they'd be useless if they did. If you didn't have to pay to get killed, there'd be no profit in them. And if you got killed every time, the labs would all go broke."

  "Labs here?"

  "None that I know of." The honest truth. "I don't think there are any."

  "Genetic illegals-as well as illegal nanisms?"

  "Both are out there. Biostuff and mechanicals. But nothing originating here."

  "Any talk, for instance, of Movement nanisms among these illegals?"

  "No." Another pulse jump. Were they back to that? "Absolutely none such."

  "Nanoceles?"

  "No. Nothing of that nature that I know about. Absolutely nothing."

  "You don't know of any leakage coming off the planet."

  "Can't. Can't happen."

  "They have rockets down there, don't they?"

  "Nothing but surface-to-surface. Landing vehicles go down. Nothing comes up. I don't really think I'm qualified even to talk about this, sir."

  "Not qualified to tell me about information passed down and up by tap, little secrets committed to record utterly in soft tissue, no eavesdropping possible."

  "There's no way," he said, absolutely convinced, though rattled. Surely the truthers wouldn't misread his disturbance as guilt. "No way that's true."

  "You do doubt it, then."

  "The system isn't like that. I'm appalled anybody would even think it. I don't think you could do it at all. And if you pick up that I'm nervous, sir, I am. You're asking me things I don't know anything about, and I shouldn't have tried to answer you on this topic at all."

  "Marak still doesn't get on well with the Ila, does he?"

  "I can't say, sir."

  "So. by what I'm told is current fact. Ian risked the second most important person on the planet to go months out into hazardous terrain to set up a relay that one of your surface-to-surface rockets could have landed in a day. Why? Because Marak had rather take a long trip into the wilderness at this precise moment?"

  On this he felt far more confident. "Marak does what he wants. If you know anything about him, you know that."

  "Is he dodging the Ila this year, perhaps? Is something afoot he'd rather not countenance?"

  "I have no idea."

  "Mmm. So."

  "He took the relays out by caravan, as you seem to know, sir. There was no particular hurry about it. He does this sort of thing. He's done it every few years. We had no way of knowing there'd be an earthquake of this magnitude."

  "Yet you knew that there would be, eventually."

  "Fairly soon. We knew that. And maybe he hoped to watch the Wall go. I don't know."

  "Dangerous, would it not be?"

  "It seems it turned out to be."

  "Tell me: if there were ever a resurgence of the Movement-where, logically, would they like to be to start with, and what would they like to do?"

  "I absolutely have no idea, sir. Movement and Freethinkers aren't the same thing."

  "They were once."

  "Now they're not."

  "Oh, come, now, Mr. Procyon. The Ila is still alive. Memnanan her captain is still alive. All these people of that age are still alive. Therefore-so is the Movement, here, on the planet Concord watches."

  Spooked. Spooked and sweating. He couldn't find a reasonable way out of this debate.

  Flash of light. Of sound. A tap had gone active. A relay had turned on. nothing in the apartment, but maybe in Gide's rig.

  Something had just reached out and touched him. Electronically.

  He immediately maneuvered to the side, dodging a potted plant, putting distance between himself and Gide.

  The machine zipped forward, between him and the door.

  "Mr. Stafford. Whatever's the matter?"

  "Don't do that," he said. He was shaking, hands trembling, but he stood his ground momentarily, trying to salvage this interview.

  "Do what?" Gide asked.

  Now he was leaving. No question. He hadn't been Marak's tap for nothing. He knew a dead-end debate when he heard one. He'd heard Marak talking about the Ila, and about Ian. He knew he skirted continually on a volatile relationship that held civilization together, and he knew another determined power when he met it. He was in direct danger. Likely he was being recorded right now on a dozen levels-even the tap was being probed. They'd already gotten way too much from him. Get out, Brazis had told him, if that happened.

  "I can't stay here," he said, trying not to show his agitation. "Not when you do that, sir, I'm sorry, and especially not when you deny it." He remembered his instructions, what he had to do. "I'll report to my office, and if you want me to come back, maybe, but only if they say so. I'll get clearance for your questions before I say anything else."

  "I won't wish you good-bye," Gide said. "Tell them, among other things, that they want me to ask my questions. If I don't get answers, it could be the worse for this place. Tonight. Tonight at 1800h, you'll come back."

  "I'll tell them," he said, and headed past Gide, for the door.

  The shell trundled close behind him. He hit the door switch frantically to get out.

  "The door's on my lock," Gide said. "Do you want out, Mr. Stafford?"

  He didn't answer. Didn't trust himself to answer.

  He heard the lock click. He hit the switch again and the door opened.

  An explosion slammed him back, off his feet, skidding on his back on the polished tiles. Shock had hit all the way to bone and brain even before he slammed into one of the pillars.

  Smell of burning metal. Absence of sound. Hazed view of blinking lights and something gold moving. Gide had shot him, he thought in shock, scrabbling after leverage to escape. The outside door was still open, past his feet. He scrambled to get his knees under him, and his hands slipped on the tiles, something fluid soaking his knee. Acrid fumes stung his nose and eyes. His hand came down on something sharp, and he felt the pain.

  Sharp metal. A few feet away, Gide was over on his side, a livi
ng human body wriggling out of its gold shell and bleeding onto the tiles.

  Gide hadn't shot him. Gide himself was shot, struggling to get out of his confinement, injured, mouthing soundless words. Procyon stumbled up, dragged the man clear of the fuming plastics and torn metal of the shell.