“Yes, and a stupid waste of infiltration,” she snapped, tired of Izak’s ineptitude. “Why install him in that position only to betray him at first opportunity?”
Izak stiffened. “I thought only of saving time.”
“Short time spans are not always the most efficient.” She waved a dismissal. As soon as Izak was gone, she unlocked a small, highly classified scanner and activated it with a feeling of excitement. It was new equipment, its existence known only to the upper echelons of security personnel. Recent leaps in cyborg technology had created several useful spin-offs. This optic scanner was one of them. Her agent did not even know that one of his eyes had been replaced with an advanced cam that linked directly to her scanner. Without her activation it operated according to normal optic functions. But she could zoom to incredible magnifications if she chose, and a corder preserved every detail for further study.
When she activated the scanner, initially she saw nothing but a dark blur. Falmah-Al frowned. Had she been misled? Was it not yet ready for field use?
Then the agent moved, and she realized his line of vision had been blocked. She released a small sigh at her own impatience and increased magnification. The area where the nairin and his men were standing was dark and poorly lit.
She leaned closer to the screen, longing for audio. She had expected them to be congratulating themselves on their small coup. Instead they appeared to be arguing. The nairin’s ugly face was thunderous as he gestured. She saw the serpent he carried lifting itself, ready to strike at…
She gasped, astonishment catching her in the throat. A Sedkethran male half-dressed and heavily bandaged was arguing back. She had never seen one of the species exhibit more than a token emotion. But this one looked as angry as Tregher. Her finger stabbed the magnification control again, and the picture leapt toward the Sedkethran’s face. Falmah-Al blinked and rubbed her eyes but the scar she saw on the creature’s cheek was not her imagination. It was the intricate mark of a dire-lord.
“On a Sedkethran?” she said aloud, and cursed her agents for never having brought her this information. It explained his elusiveness. He could vanish in thin air any time he chose. What a perfect choice for the bodyguard of a suprin. But she had never seen one of the spineless creatures who would fight before. This one was different, very different.
She zoomed back slightly to study him, noting the slope of his bones and the eerie paleness of his skin. Bloodless creatures, the Sedkethrans. Aloof, unflinchingly honest, dedicated to using their talents as empaths, they were among the few non-human species permitted access to the Imish Collective. This one was tall, as tall as the Chaimu shouting at him. His eyes, slanted and a pale grey-green color, blazed with vehemence as he gestured. One of the guards struck him, making the patrician features twist with pain.
“Gazal!” swore Falmah-Al. “Tregher, don’t you know what you have?” She twisted in her chair to reach for the intercom. “Technician Patterson, have you got your transender hooked up to any power supply?”
“It’s still on side generator four, Colonel. But operational.”
“Good.” She kept an eye on the optic scanner as she spoke, and nearly cursed aloud as her agent swung his gaze away. “I want you to grab someone for me. A Sedkethran at the following coordinates—”
“Excuse me, Colonel. A Sedkethran? They don’t scramble on normal transender signals.”
She’d forgotten. “All right, Patterson,” she said with a grimace. “Then a Chaimu.” The screen showed a female Sedkethran abruptly backing away from the dire-lord and gesturing what was obviously a command. One of the guards, a big new-human in charge armor, aimed his weapon at the dire-lord. “No! Patterson! Grab a human, coordinates seven mark five, eastern subsector two. Got it? Now!”
“Sending,” said Patterson. If he succeeded in grabbing the guard before he fired he would have had to file coordinates with extreme rapidity. There was a sudden blur, and the new-human disappeared. “Got him, Colonel. Further orders?”
“Have him disarmed and held in a security cell,” she said, grinning at the confusion moving across her screen as the nairin gesticulated and shouted and guards milled about. “Raw meat to your table, Patterson.”
“Glad to oblige, Colonel.”
Falmah-Al cut communications and called a deputy into her office. “Dispatch, priority,” she said, stamping her signet onto a flimsy and tossing it at the young woman. “I want Millen to personally lead a squad down to eastern subsector two. This message is to be given to Nairin Tregher. Millen is to see to the details. Go.”
The deputy saluted and hurried out. Falmah-Al got up to pace about her office. She was close, very close to having the dire-lord in her possession. With the location of the godas to her credit, even Ton wouldn’t be able to stop her rapid ascent on the political ladder. She stopped in midstride, cutting off her own ambitious dreams, and punched the intercom.
“Library access,” she said. “Reference: Held culture. Specifics: Dire-lord. Function. Duties. And any bio material available upon individuals who have held that office.”
“Acknowledged. Ten minutes until relay.”
She returned to her pacing, keeping an eye upon her optic scanner as the screen cleared again to show a pair of Chaimu guards dragging the dire-lord through a doorway. Her agent’s attention remained focused upon the nairin arguing with the female Sedkethran. In disgust Falmah-Al switched off the screen. The dire-lord was a series of contradictions that intrigued her very much. Sedkethrans abhorred war. They committed no acts of violence. They committed no crimes. Able to walk through walls or appear anywhere they chose, they restricted themselves inside rigid codes of behavior. Deviations were not permitted.
“But you are a very large deviation,” Falmah-Al muttered to herself. “You are a warrior, pledged to protect the life of the Held Suprin. Yet Sedkethrans do not fight. Interesting. Very interesting indeed. I must know more.”
Ten minutes later the library began to chatter information across her viewscreen:
DIRE-LORD. HIGHEST HELD WARRIOR RANK BELOW ROYALS. CROSSREFERENCED TO HELD COURT ETIQUETTE. DIRE-LORD NOT SUBJECT TO COMMANDS OF HONORABLES. DIRE-LORD ANSWERABLE ONLY TO HELD SUPRIN. POSITION GAINED THROUGH RIGOROUS TESTS, INCLUDING TRIAL BY COMBAT. POSITION GRANTED FOR LIFE.
FUNCTION. DIRE-LORD RESPONSIBLE FOR PHYSICAL SAFETY OF HELD SUPRIN AT ALL TIMES.
DUTIES. DIRE-LORD ATTENDS SUPRIN AT ALL FUNCTIONS, BOTH OFFICIAL AND PRIVATE. DIRE-LORD TESTS FOOD. DETECTS ASSASSINATION DEVICES. SURVEYS ANY OFFICIAL SEEKING AUDIENCE WITH SUPRIN.
CURRENT DIRE-LORD. FIFTH IN SERVICE OF SUPRIN UTDI XII. AWARDED CHAIMU NAME BROCK AT INVESTITURE CEREMONY. SEDKETHRAN. ORIGIN FELCA OF STAR SYSTEM PRAXOS.
NO FURTHER INFORMATION.
Falmah-Al stared in frustration at her screen. No further information. But she needed to understand this creature. She needed a means of prying him open to her questions.
“Library access,” she said. “Cross-reference Dire-lord Brock to planet Felca. Data spill.”
“Acknowledged. No further information.”
“So you’ve been blotted from the official records,” she said thoughtfully. “Why? Even that seems too much for the secretive Sedkethrans.” She recalled watching the female healer who had seemed to actually be urging the guards to shoot the dire-lord. That was odd too. Oddities and contradictions marked a puzzle, and a puzzle marked a secret. A secret was something a chief of security should always know. Falmah-Al smiled slightly to herself. She would have the female brought in for questioning, too.
Across Impryn, trailer sleds rumbled slowly over the multiple layers of streets crisscrossing each other, devoid of anything but the most cautious traffic. Each trailer blared the same announcement in stilted Held dialect:
“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL CITIZENS MUST REPORT TO CENTRAL FOOD DISPENSARIES IN THEIR SECTOR TO RECEIVE IDENTIFICATION TAGGING. FAILURE TO REPORT WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION.”
“It’s started,” said Brock to one of the Chaimu gu
ards busy positioning him at the broken end of the bridge which had once spanned the Marupish. Brock could feel the sway of the structure against the current of the wind. Below him the river churned black and sluggish on its course. It was swollen with debris, and corpses bobbed and tumbled in the foam. Oily threads of orange or purple followed in the wake of crushed and leaking barrels of noxious chemical waste dumped in during the fighting. Beneath the bridge structure, folzone factories and glastel works stood silent, robbed of their usual noisy productivity along the water’s edge. The whole city was silent, except for the trailers blaring out their ominous message.
“Don’t you realize what that means?” insisted Brock as his hands were shackled to the jutting rib of a girder. “Identification tags. Marked and labeled. Then off to labor camps.”
“Shut up.”
“The Colonids are old-humans. You know what they think about anyone who doesn’t belong to their species. You know what they’ll use you for.”
With a snarl, the Chaimu shoved Brock painfully into the bridge railing and stalked away with a gesture to his companion who followed him. Ellisne remained, a tall slender figure, graceful in pale silhouette against the gloominess of the cloudy sky. The wind whipped at her robes, plastering them to her body to reveal every feminine outline. Her features were set in a careful mask. Even the fire in her eyes was banked, muted down to a glitter.
Brock straightened with a wince and tugged at his bonds in one futile gesture. The shackles were fission locked, lightweight, but inescapable. If only he could flick, he thought, resisting the frustrated urge to jerk at them again. The limitations of his disability chaffed him more and more. He shoved away the fear that his atrox might never heal, that he would be doomed for the rest of his life to have to travel conventionally along distance instead of around it, that he would find walls and locked doors, that he would be hemmed in, trapped, frustrated.
“How can you participate in this of your own free will?” he demanded. “Everything the Colonids say and everything they offer is a lie. And if you help them, then you betray—”
“I am not the traitor, promadi!” she said, her stony facade cracking. “Tregher works for peace. He has made the agreement to submit in order to save his people’s lives. The killing must end. But you would do more than revive the killing. You would destroy Felca!”
He stared at her, cold with astonishment. Had she read more than he thought? Did she already know everything?
“Ellisne—”
“I have had mystic training,” she snapped. “In the Writings it is said that Felca is Goda Prime. We are devoted to peace. You know that. You studied the Writings too. But you fled your training. You rejected the teachings of the magstrusi, you who were destined to be a magstrus yourself. You threw everything away just to live among these Chaimu with their sybartic pleasures and their celebration of inward decay. You threw away the opportunity to restore life in order to learn how to kill. You glory in death, promadi. Your hands reek with blood. And now you are not content with bringing shame upon shame to your own people. You must also destroy us. Why?”
“Do not call me promadi” he said stiffly. “My name is Brock.”
“Lie,” she retorted. “It is a Chaimu name which you have adopted because your own was stripped from you by the magstrusi to shame you.”
His head came up. Memories of the shaming flooded his unwilling mind. He remembered the sticky, unpleasant warmth of a winter day and how the magstrusi had ringed him in the shadowy glare of Felca’s dim sun. He was supposed to cower beneath their contempt. He was supposed to quiver under the lash, to permit himself to be beaten back into submission. He was supposed to fear the awful loneliness of exile hanging over his head as a threat. But he had shunned fear as he had shunned repression. He had simply walked away from the circle, refusing to participate in their cruel ceremony. It was his last day on Felca.
“We Sedkethrans stand outside politics,” Ellisne was continuing. “What does it matter which empire rules the galaxy? Does such a trivial justification underlie your desire to destroy Felca? Don’t you realize what will happen to your people, your home, your world if Goda Prime is activated? The atmosphere will be sheared off. Everything will be laid waste. Forty million people will be murdered. And for what purpose? Your revenge, promadi? Your glory? Do you truly hate Felca so much?”
“Hate,” he said. “How swiftly you refer to the emotions which you refuse to experience.”
Her eyes became vivid beams of color, boring into him with astonishment. “You use the accusation of a non-Sedkethran. For what purpose? You know we control emotions only during our work, to protect our patients. You—”
“Olbin sent you here, didn’t he?” said Brock with sudden insight. “Why? To spy on me? To persuade me to come back? To make sure I die?”
Confusion and guilt spilled across her face before she turned away to face the emptiness of sky and river. Skiks dived and played in the air, chattering their cry.
“You were their best pupil,” she said quietly, keeping her back to him. “You gave them hope for the first time since the second Chaimu dynasty. You hurt them very deeply.”
She turned suddenly, her eyes meeting his in a plea. “Brock, please. Put away the anger and hatred which lie within your heart. Do not destroy Felca for a cause that is not ours.”
He heard the sound of an airsled coming, and said, with a pleading of his own: “Ellisne, open your eyes to what the Colonids are. At least the Held left us alone. The Colonids never will.”
“I will have to probe you for them,” she said as though resigning herself. She, too, glanced toward the approaching sled. “I will have to tell them where all the godas are. It is the only way of stopping you from your madness.”
“And when you tell them,” he said grimly, “they will destroy the godas, Felca included. Felca most probably first of all. Enjoy that guilt, promadise.”
She flinched. “No. There will be no need to dest—”
“The Colonids had no need to destroy Mabruk either,” he said sharply, his words almost drowned out as the sled chuffed directly over them and began to descend. “A defenseless planet devoted entirely to producing children and to conducting medical research. Destroyed. Blown to ashes. Think about Mabruk when you betray me.”
7
Ellisne’s escort of armed guards fell back at the doorway, leaving her to enter the room alone. She had been brought through darkness and pouring rain from her spartan cell at the detention center to this small, elegant villa on the broad embassy avenue, which had somehow escaped the bombings. There had been no explanations, and since she was aware before she even entered the room that it was empty, it did not look as though she would be told anything soon.
The room was large, designed for receiving the plentiful number of guests normally gathered for embassy functions. Its furnishings were opulent, reflecting an expensive taste for tholan-woven fabrics, fist-sized jewels cut into intricate boxes by the court jeweller Muzl Obtar, long carpets, and living glow-tapes which gave off a soft light flattering to the complexion of court ladies and dalmas. Ellisne was surprised. She had not expected Colonids to know or care about maintaining glowtapes.
Glancing only once at the black monitor globe floating in an unobtrusive corner, Ellisne crossed the room to gaze out one of the tall, narrow windows. The soft warm light of the room reflected back at her from the black mirror of the night. Rain beaded down the heavily shielded glastel, blurring her reflection into a puzzle of rich colors and melting shapes. The room was not heated, but she found it too warm because of its stuffiness. It had the smell of having been closed off for a while.
Ellisne took off her wet cloak, laid it neatly over a footstool, and folded her hands within the wide sleeves of her simple robe. She had not seen Brock since the Colonids had picked them up at the bridge and taken them to the detention center. His parting words to her about Mabruk had been well designed to strike deep. Doubts had unsettled her for the rest of the day.
She was still uneasy. And he was as wise as the Magstrus Olbin had warned her. Those slanted eyes, grey-green like the heart of ice, were impossible to read. But they saw everything. And she had the uncomfortable notion that he had read her far more deeply than she intended anyone to. More deeply perhaps than even Magstrus Olbin had?
No! She moved away from the window in denial. She had come to Daijahl Imperial because it was her duty. The magstrusi had chosen her to control a potentially explosive situation. At the time she had been sent, she had not seen their wisdom. Now, after having read the mind of the promadi, Brock and seen the dreadful intentions within him, she realized that the instincts of the magstrusi were correct. Felca was in serious danger. She must not let the promadi deflect her from her purpose. She must close her mind to chaotic emotions. She must shut out the truths he had spoken.
But to deny a truth was to twist it. And that was a greater wrong.
Confused, she moved to a chair, but did not sit down. She longed to be with the promadi, asking him all the questions clamoring within her. Yet she feared him as she feared no other, not even the powerful magstrusi. For he was an attractive danger, fascinating in the mass of contradictions he offered, making blatant displays of forbidden emotions one minute before retreating behind a mask of formality the next, speaking with earnest persuasiveness yet foretelling the destruction of all she upheld. He revelled in that which was not permitted, yet his mind worked along the lines of a magstrus. She thought of that contact, trembling as she remembered the power of his mind which had so nearly swamped hers. Yet he was injured and lacking the amplification of his atrox. She drew in a breath. If he were well, what would be the range of his abilities?
“There is anger within him,” Magstrus Olbin had said at the council meeting where she was chosen to come here as a control, “but no evil. He refuses to focus his abilities into their full potential.”
The Goda War Page 7