Forge of Heaven

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Hush," Ardath said, and a chair scraped. "Sit down. Sit down, brother, and catch your breath. Your mods are having a war with this thing. Help them settle. I'll get you something to drink."

  He fell into the chair he hoped was under him, finding a welcome table under his elbows. He was so tired. Sickness and fever buzzed in his veins. Mods, they said. And he didn't have mods this fierce. Not what the government had ever given him. Panic beat in his veins, riding his pulse.

  Commotion around him diminished. He heard his sister's voice somewhere, giving directions.

  A scrape of a chair. "Stupid brother." She was back. She shoved a cold baggette into his hand, and pulled out the straw, bringing it to his lips. "Drink it all down." Her hand was on his back.

  He drank it. The stuff didn't taste that bad. Tasted of salt, which he wanted, needed terribly, chased by the complex tang of other minerals.

  He grew dizzy. Put his head down on his folded arms. Didn't know how long he sat there, trying to keep down what he'd swallowed.

  A little improvement in the nausea. But the flashes in his skull multiplied, blinded him. The buzzing began to make words in his ears, flat-sounding words, like a synthesized voice.

  "Marak," it said, or he imagined it said. "Brazis." Over and over again.

  Then a different voice: "No question he's alive, sir. Procyon Stafford is the most notorious face on Grozny right now."

  "Procyon! Can you hear? Answer me!"

  Tap. Brazis.

  "Yes, sir." He sat up and tried. He tried desperately, and saw and heard nothing but static bursts.

  "Procyon," Ardath said, right at his ear, hand on his arm; and he blinked through the illusory lights and saw his sister's face inches from his, the blue and the gold cleared back, now, to show the Arden-mask. "Procyon." Cool, anxious fingers brushed across his forehead. "Who did this?" Anguish. "Who'd have dared do this to you?"

  Did he know that answer? Did he know anything, at all? But he remembered what he'd seen in the mirror, that mark, that horrid mark. He'd looked to her for help, and saw by the look on her face he'd brought her more problems than she remotely knew what to do with. Or should deal with. "I fell down. I think I fell down the rabbit hole." Child's story. "But it's not funny, Arden."

  "I know." A brush of her cool fingers across his wounded forehead. "I know it's not."

  "Somebody shot the ambassador. But I couldn't. I didn't do it. I didn't do it."

  "Idiot," she said. "I know that. But they're looking for you all over."

  "Down the rabbit hole. Only not full of rabbits. Scary things. Like the old story. Jabberwocky."

  "What's this mark?" She touched the wound on his forehead, which felt like a bad burn. "Who's our enemy, Procyon? Who's crazy enough to do this?"

  "Bad mods." It was all he could think of, the card that he'd been dealt in a quarrel he didn't understand. And then did. "The Earther. Looking for illicits." A sick feeling, his head aching with pressure and dizziness that seemed to center in that mark. "Found them, found them, haven't I?"

  "Algol," Ardath said. "Damn him, damn him."

  Algol was almost certainly in the middle of it. She was right in that. And if it was bad mods, if his body was trying to organize a defense, he was holding his own. Barely.

  "There're slinks out in force," Spider said, a voice from the shadows of the room. "Station security's grabbed a lot of Algol's people. They got Capricorn."

  And Arden: "Whoever the slinks haven't got, we get. Find Algol wherever he hides."

  "No." It was a government quarrel. Not hers. It was an attack on the Project, nothing his sister could deal with. Procyon reached out and took hold of Arden's hand. "No. It's too dangerous."

  "That fool's touched my brother," Arden said. "He goes down."

  "No. Listen." The stuff that she'd given him was the right thing, to supply the warring nanoceles trying to pull the chemicals they needed out of his bloodstream. Now the threat to his sister roused up his adrenaline, and he began to feel for two breaths as if he could think, as if, doing that, if he could just hold on to his focus, he might be able to function. "No, there's more, Arden. There's a lot more than that. Not street business. Not the Trend. You can't settle Algol. He doesn't care about us."

  "Trust me," his sister said, his little sister, his na‹ve little sister, whose little wars were fought with cold looks and whispers and the turn of a shoulder.

  "No, not with this!" He saw her turn away from him, and he seized her arm. "Listen to me. Listen, Arden: I work for the government."

  She laughed and patted his restraining hand. "Oh, brother, that's old news."

  "Listen. There's trouble you don't want to know, I swear to you, you don't want to know. The ambassador's shot, there's something going on with the government taps."

  "This ambassador person is alive, in hospital, sleeping off a not very major wound. He's been exposed to Concord now, poor dear, so he has to stay, and he's cursed all the doctors, but he'll have to come around to our view of the universe, won't he, or he'll be very unhappy in his life."

  Her information was newer than his, clearly. It made her too confident. "Listen," he pleaded with her. "Someone's shot him. That's the point, Ardath. Someone shot him. This is guns."

  "And we know who would bring guns, don't we?"

  "Algol's holed up in the Michaelangelo," Isis said, and others had gathered close, listening, a ring of shadows in the dim light of the bar.

  "I've got to tell you." He made up his mind to that, because she knew too much, and not enough. "I need to talk to you. You. I need to tell you things."

  "Back," she said to those hovering about, moving them with a wave of her hand, until there was a clear space, and he had to go through with it. "So say, brother. What? What do I need to know?"

  He took a breath, shaky, all over. "It's not just Earth. Marak's in a fix out in the desert, the Ila's breaking in on us, and these people, these people who shot the ambassador-we're dealing with the Movement."

  Ardath's flickering mask, gold and blue, actually retreated to her hairline and lost itself. "Honest truth?" Childish question.

  "Hope to die," he answered, childhood oath, making the old slight move across his heart. "I'm not lying. I'm a Project tap. I've got to get home, Ardath. I've got to call people to take care of this."

  "Well, if there's Movement, we know who they are, don't we?"

  "Ardath, for God's sake."

  "Your government slinks came looking for me, for me, brother. They wouldn't say why. They didn't say someone had done that to you."

  "This." He lifted a hand to the burn on his forehead. Flash of dark. Something moving. He didn't want to see that. "This-no. Not them." She started to turn away from him and he caught her hand, too hard. "Ardath, what I want you to do-what I want you to do is get word to Brazis. Tell Brazis. He'll send someone. He'll take care of Algol."

  "And I just drop my brother down another rabbit hole, where maybe he won't come out the same, or come out, ever. No thanks."

  "I'm already not the same."

  "You listen to me, brother. I know where our problems are. I know who'd be crazy enough to have done that to you."

  "You don't know! This." He touched the welt on his forehead. "This-I was in a place. I was in a dark place. And it happened there. Ardath, I don't give a damn about Algol. Help me get a message out. Let Brazis handle it."

  "No." She wasn't believing him. "Not to take you away where you may not come out. Not to come tramping through the Street, breaking up everything. You'll see, brother. You'll see what we can do about fools."

  "Ardath, no."

  "Movement? Entirely d‚class‚."

  "No," he said, and got up onto his feet, or tried to. And the buzzes accelerated, like a tap trying to come into focus. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. "Brazissss." Click. Click. "Kekellen." Hiss. Crackle.

  A dark gold mask, a purse-mouthed face in the dim light, with the smell of ammonia. Oblong lenses glinted silver, hiding the eyes. Cleaner-bots, all ar
ound him, the station's fearsome secret.

  And he was aware of something else of a sudden. Of a wild presence. a dangerous presence in his head.

  Hiss. "Braziss."

  "What is this?" Angrily. The Ila's voice. "Who is this?"

  Spike. Procyon felt it coming, convulsed, tangled with the chair and fell back into it, his head near exploding.

  "Procyon!" he heard his sister say. "Procyon! Hold on!"

  "Sir. Sir!" Ernst broke protocols, broke through the door, pale-faced. "Eberly, at the hospital. The ambassador's having a seizure."

  Reaux sat at his desk, stunned.

  "They say, sir, they say he could die."

  "Sir." Dianne sent Brazis a physical call. "Technical's on."

  "Who am I talking to?"

  "Hannah Trent," the contact said. Head of Systems. "We've been hacked, sir, major hack. We're on it. We'll get it back. The hack is mutating on us, hopping left and right, not from the uplink. It's coming from somewhere near 10th and Blunt. Shall we send out the emergency vehicles, show of force? We need to find the source."

  "Do it," he said.

  Their intruder had hit the system.

  Stop the Ila from her provocations? Impossible.

  Ian take preemptive action against another of their small fraternity? Never yet.

  Marak. Never forget Marak, or Hati, or Memnanan-you rule the heavens, they'd say. We rule the earth. Don't read us lessons. Don't give us orders. Don't bring us your troubles.

  Brazis raked his fingers through his hair, wondering if he dared leave the office and go out himself-wondering if he should rely on Magdallen or if he suspected Magdallen of a consummate double cross, maybe even being the problem he was hunting.

  Magdallen had been ill in the office in the prior incident, as powerfully affected as the rest of them when the Ila came blasting through the system.

  Dammit.

  "Dianne." He started to ask her questions by tap, as he did a thousand times a day. And stopped himself from what had become a life and death risk. He hurled himself to his feet and went to the door. "Dianne."

  Dianne was tight-lipped, alarmed. "Sir?"

  "Relay to Langford. Shut the taps down. Shut it all down, common and private. Turn all the relays off. Now, before we have more dead!"

  "Contact with the planet, sir-"

  "Shut it all down! Now!"

  The relays had never been shut down from the station, not for two seconds, in all Concord's several existences.

  But it would protect the taps they had left.

  It meant that Ian and Luz were on their own, except the local planetary net.

  If they, in reaction, shut that down, then everybody was on his own.

  "Brother," Procyon heard, felt the table under his face, felt the close physical press around him, a hand holding his against the surface. He tightened his fingers, gripped that hand, got a breath.

  "I'm all right." Deeper breath.

  "Get those damned things out of here." Ardath's voice. With fear. That wasn't accustomed.

  "How?" someone asked.

  Procyon lifted head and shoulders, freed his hand and propped himself on his elbows. Ardath was there, with Isis and Spider and a couple of others whose names he didn't know. He wiped his face, hearing a nightmare click-click-click, and looked down, beside the table.

  Two bots, two little lumps of metal and plastics, with winking lights, sat right at his feet.

  "Braziss," whispered the new voice in his head.

  "Yeah," he said to it, just him and it, alone, in an inner nightmare. "Yeah, I hear you."

  "Procyon?" Ardath leaned into his frame of vision, attracted his attention with a touch on his hand. She was sitting in the chair across the table. "You stay here."

  "You're not leaving."

  "I'm not waiting for you to die. Or be swept up into some government hospital. I'm not having it."

  "You don't remotely know what you're getting into." Brazisss, the inner voice said. And: Marak. Marak.

  "And you know?"

  And what good was he? What good was he, with whatever had gone wrong with him?

  Marak, the inner voice said, but he couldn't reach Marak. He was branded with the ondat keepaway. People were scared of the sight of him, that was what good he was.

  That was something.

  "I think this thing is real," he said to her. "I think this mark is real. There's a war going on. And I'm in the middle of it."

  "You stay here. We'll fix Algol, we'll settle with him, and then we'll talk to Brazis, if he wants you back. We'll negotiate."

  Brazis wouldn't give a damn for his personal wants.

  Marak might. Marak would want his own information. Somewhere between Brazis, the Ila, and Marak, there would be hell to pay.

  But if the mark was real, if that dark place was real, there was something else. Something with its hand on him. Its voice buzzing in his head.

  Something with an interest in him. Keepaway. Keepaway. Set aside. Claimed.

  Maybe he was still dizzy. Maybe he wasn't thinking clearly. But there was something going on in the understructure of the Trend, the shadowy places that fed the Trend with illicits and legitimates alike. The Ila, Gide, Marak, and now him, him, become an intruder in his own circles-it was Ardath's whole fragile world about to come under scrutiny because of him. And she would be involved. She was in that elite class that rested, like a thin, fragile skin, on the questionable things that, all of a sudden, would be the object of conflict and furor around, of all people who had never intended it, her brother.

  But if the Trend could purge itself, if he could keep her and him from being killed, there there was a chance Marak himself, given information, could find him. Could negotiate with the ondat, who regarded Marak, Brazis said, as the only honest human, the only one. He had his little robots, his link with that dark place. They blinked and buzzed beside him. They found him, where he went. He had that straight, now.

  Where he was, very powerful entities had ears and eyes.

  "If you're going, I'm going," he said, trying for steadiness in his voice. "If you're going onto the street, little sister, so am I."

  Waterfalls poured off the heights, and the beshti, on their feet now, in the passing of the gust-front, bawled protests about the weather-justified protests, with the racket of thunder. Marak held on to the tarp from one side, Hati from the other, and they kept the worst of the storm off, warming each other, but the beshti remained on their own, outside, in the lightning-lit downpour. Whether the cliffs above them or under them were stable-that was beyond any precaution they could take, but to stay clear of overhangs.

  The momentary confusion in the heavens of Brazis's domain seemed to have settled. That moment when they all, all, from the least to the highest, could hear each other-that was unique in Marak's experience, and not something he wanted to experience again.

  But it had passed as quickly as the front itself, leaving the thunder, the storm, and solitude-a sense of quiet for the first time since he was very young indeed.

  He hoped the boys up on the ridge had paid attention to the deep-stakes. The gust-front that had run ahead of this storm, particularly up on the exposed ridge, was a test of their skill. There was a knack to tuning the tent to the wind that gave it stability in weather. It had never been this sorely tested. He hoped the boys had learned what he had taught them.

  Equally, he worried about his youngest watcher, who he feared was isolated now in a different kind of storm in the heavens, and who had to fend for himself in the mess up there. He had made his opinions known to Brazis. But in this silence even from Ian, now, his watchers had to watch out for each other. He could no longer reciprocate the favor.

  He sat snug against his wife and listened to the beshti. Somewhere near them, loose rock gave way and crashed down the slopes.

  "I almost had him," he said to Hati, thinking still of Procyon, and that moment that everything had crashed open. "I almost had him. Then it seemed I heard another voice.
It made no sense at all. If I tried, I might still reach Ian. That way seems open, still."

  "Leave Ian to sort it out," Hati said, hugging his chilled limbs. "Clearly the boy is alive. Folly to move in this downpour. We might at least get some sleep, husband."

  Hati was never one to batter herself against the impossible. She snuggled close, and he shifted to increase the warmth.

  He heard the other beshti complaining in the distance below their perch, a trick of the wind, an echo, it might be.