The Cobra Trilogy

by Timothy Zahn

  "What other facts do you expect to find?" an older syndic put in. "Or should I say hope to find? It seems to me you've got nothing but a soap-bubble of—"

  "Gentlemen." D'arl's voice was quiet, but there was an edge to it that cut off the syndic in mid-sentence. "If I may make a suggestion, it seems to me you're putting too much emphasis on guarding my honor and too little on solving the genuine mystery Syndic Moreau's uncovered. If there is indeed clandestine activity underway, it must be stopped, no matter who is involved. If, on the other hand, what we have here is a purely natural phenomenon, you should similarly learn all that you can about it, and as quickly as possible."

  "Natural phenomenon?" Jonny snorted. "If the Committé will excuse my skepticism—"

  "Skepticism is a natural part of science," D'arl interrupted him calmly. "But before you announce your disbelief too loudly, I suggest you check on the following: one, are all the blussa plants in the Kaskia Valley coated by this drug; two, is there any trace of it on the surrounding foliage; three, are there any conditions under which the plants could themselves naturally produce such a drug; and four, are such conditions currently present. The answers to these questions might prove interesting." He stood up and nodded to Zhu. "With your permission, I will continue the equipment setup begun yesterday. If a later vote requires its removal, it can be done easily enough."

  "Of course, Committé," Zhu agreed quickly. "Thank you for coming today. Syndics: the meeting is adjourned."

  And that was it. In half a minute, D'arl had completely blunted his attack. An attack the Committé had been remarkably well prepared for. . . .

  Tight-lipped, Jonny collected his magcards and left the room.

  Halloran, still in Niparin, listened quietly as Jonny described the fiasco over the phone. "He sounded awfully sure of himself," he commented thoughtfully. "What chance that he's right about this being a natural phenomenon?"

  Jonny exhaled loudly. "It's hard to imagine him going that far out on a purely speculative limb," he admitted. "But if that's what's happening, how come he knew about it and we didn't?"

  Halloran shrugged. "You've been sending samples and data back to Asgard for a long time, and they've got far better test and computer simulation equipment than you'll ever see here. Or maybe it was something even simpler; maybe some of the live plants got dehydrated during the trip."

  "Dehydrated. So you think it's the drought?"

  "I don't know what other condition he could have been referring to. It's the only environmental factor that's new to you."

  Jonny gnawed the inside of his cheek. "The drought. All right, then. If that's the problem, we'll just have to eliminate it."

  Halloran cocked an eyebrow. "You know a rainmaker who specializes in getting clouds over mountains?"

  "Actually, I can do better than that. Hang on." He pressed the lock key on the phone and got a connection to Rankin. Chrys answered, the screen splitting to include her image. "Hi, Hon," he greeted her. "Is Gwen there?"

  "Hi, Jonny; Cally. Yes, she's in the kitchen. Gwen?"

  A moment later Gwen's face replaced Chrys's. "Hi, guys. What's up?"

  "Your vacation," Jonny told her. "I've got a little job for you and Cally."

  Describing what he had in mind took only a few minutes . . . and it turned out to be the easy part.

  "Jonny, that's crazy," Gwen told him flatly. "Do you have any idea of what you're asking?"

  "Syndic Hemner will be furious if he catches them," Chrys put in from off-camera.

  "Why?" Jonny countered. "They're both supposed to be in his district, remember?"

  "But under his authority, not yours," Halloran said.

  "So you leave your field phones off and plead ignorance," Jonny shrugged. "What's he going to do, bust me back to cee-five?"

  "Probably have you arrested and sent to the Palatine beachhead," Halloran said bluntly. "Especially if it doesn't work."

  "But if it does work he won't be able to do a thing without looking like a petty legalist," Jonny said. "And I have confidence in you two."

  "Well, I don't," Gwen admitted. "Jonny, you can't do something like this on ten minutes' notice. It takes time—time for studies, time for mapping and emplacement—"

  "Maps we've got—the Molada mountain range has been extensively studied. As to the rest, we can surely risk a little environmental damage."

  "Jonny, there's still one major point you're missing." Chrys moved back into camera range, and Jonny was struck by the odd intensity in her face. "What you're doing," she continued softly, "is planning to bypass legal channels, to take a major policy decision away from Zhu and the other syndics and handle it yourself. Don't you see?—that's exactly what you and Ken fought to keep Challinor from doing seven years ago."

  Jonny's mouth felt suddenly dry. "No. No, it's different, Chrys. He was trying to take over the whole planet, to totally eliminate the Dominion authority."

  "It's different only in degree," she shook her head minutely. "You'll still be setting a precedent that a syndic—or a Cobra—who doesn't like a legal governmental decision can simply ignore it and go his own way."

  But it's not the same, the words echoed through Jonny's mind. The government's doing something stupid just because an important outsider wants them to. My responsibility is to the people of Aventine—

  To the people of Aventine.

  Challinor's old argument.

  The three faces crowded together in the phone screen were watching him closely. "All right," he said with a sigh. "Gwen, you and Cally will head out for the Kaskia Valley, but to do feasibility studies only. I'll bring it up with the whole council before we take any real action, but I want to be able to at least show them a solid alternative."

  Chrys seemed to sag as the tension left her. "Thank you," she murmured.

  He smiled tightly. "Don't thank me. You're the one who was right." He focused on Gwen. "Chrys'll get you in touch with Theron Yutu, my assistant, who'll find you an aircar and pilot and whatever else you'll need. Check with Chrys for anything electronic—if she can't find it, she can probably build it. You can rendezvous with Cally in Niparin and go from there. As for you, Cally—" He held up a finger for emphasis. "No matter what Theron or Gwen tell you, any equipment you take is replaceable. If you run into a crazed gantua up there, don't hesitate to grab Gwen and run for it. Got it?"

  "Got it." Halloran hesitated. "If it helps any, I think you're making the right decision."

  "Not really, but thanks anyway. Chrys?"

  "I'll call Theron right away," she nodded, all business now. "We can probably have Gwen down to Niparin in three hours or less."

  "Good. Well . . . keep me posted, everyone, and I'll let you know when you're needed here. And be careful."

  They all signed off, and for several minutes Jonny just sat there, feeling oddly alone in the quiet office. As if his own career and Jame's weren't enough, he'd now put Gwen's and Cally's on the target range, too. Could he really be that sure he was right about all this?

  There wasn't any answer for that . . . but at the moment there was something he needed more than answers, anyway. Flipping on the phone, he called D'arl's ship. "Jame Moreau," he told the young ensign who answered. "Tell him it's his brother."

  The other nodded and faded; a minute later the screen lit up with Jame's image. "Yes, Jonny?" he said. His voice was casually friendly, but there was an edge of wariness to his expression.

  "I'd like to get together with you later," Jonny said. "Dinner tonight, maybe, whenever you get off duty?"

  The wariness deepened. "Well . . ."

  "No inquisitions, no favors, no politics," Jonny promised. "I'd just like to be with family for a while. If you've got the time."

  Jame smiled faintly, the tension easing from his face. "There's always time for the important stuff," he said quietly. "Let's make it lunch—that same restaurant in half an hour?"

  Jonny smiled back. Already the weight around his shoulders was lifting a little. "I'll be there."r />
  * * *

  It took a week, but at last the results of the various blussa reed tests began to coalesce . . . and they were indeed just as D'arl had suggested.

  "It seems to be a response to severe lack of available ground water," the senior botanist told the council, his hand trembling noticeably as he shifted graphs, complex formulas, and photos on the syndics' comboards. He'd probably never before addressed even a single syndic before, Jonny thought, let alone a group of them plus a Dominion Committé. "One of the components in the cutin—that's the layer that protects against water loss—alters chemically from this form to this one." The two molecular diagrams appeared on the comboards. "It turns out that this makes good biological sense in two complementary ways," the botanist continued. "Not only is the new cutin fifteen to twenty percent better at controlling transpiration, but the chemical reaction involved actually releases two molecules of water, which are then available for the plant to use."

  "In other words, the drier it gets, the crazier the gantuas become?" Syndic Hemner asked.

  "Basically, yes," the scientist nodded. "There may be a cutoff somewhere where the gantuas switch to a different plant species for food, but if there is, we don't seem to have reached it yet."

  Seated beside Gwen against the side wall, Halloran caught Jonny's eye and wrinkled his nose. Jonny nodded fractionally in agreement: if the gantua they'd fought wasn't fully berserk, he had no wish to meet one that was.

  "Well, then, our alternatives seem pretty clear," Hemner said grimly. "We either get Committé D'arl's new Cobras into service as quickly as possible or pull completely out of the Kaskia Valley until the drought ends. If it ever does."

  "There's one more possibility," Jonny said into the growing murmur of agreement.

  "And that is . . . ?" Zhu prompted.

  "End the drought now." Jonny gestured to Gwen. "May I present Dr. Gwen Moreau, recently returned from the mountains surrounding the Kaskia Valley."

  Gwen stood. "With your permission, Governor-General Zhu, I would like to present the results of a study Syndic Moreau asked me to make a week ago."

  "Concerning what?" Zhu asked suspiciously.

  "Concerning a proposal to break a pass in the Molada Mountains that would divert water from Lake Ojaante directly into the currently dry Kaskia riverbed."

  Jaw sagging slightly, Zhu waved her wordlessly to the table.

  "Thank you. Gentlemen," she addressed the syndics, sliding her magcard into its slot, "let me show you how easily this proposal could be carried out. . . ."

  And for the better part of an hour she did just that, punctuating her talk with more charts and diagrams than even the botanist who'd preceded her. She spoke authoritatively and coherently, slipping in enough about the basic methods of tectonic utilization to painlessly educate even the most ignorant of the syndics . . . and slowly Jonny sensed the silence around the table change from astonishment to interest to guarded enthusiasm.

  For him the changes went even deeper, as his mentally superimposed image of Gwen The Ten-Year-Old vanished forever from her face. His little sister was an adult now . . . and he was damn proud of what she'd become.

  The final picture faded at last from the comboard screens and Gwen nodded to the syndics. "If there are any questions now, I'll do my best to answer them."

  There was a moment of silence. Jonny glanced at D'arl, bracing for the attack the Committé would surely launch against this rival scheme. But the other remained silent, his look of admiration matching others Jonny could see around the table.

  "We will need more study, if merely to confirm your evaluations," Zhu spoke up at last. "But unless you've totally missed some major problem, I think it safe to say that you can start drawing up detailed plans immediately for the precise fault-line charge placements you'll need." He nodded to her and glanced around the table. "If there's no further business—" He paused, almost unwillingly, at the sight of Jonny's raised forefinger. "Yes, Syndic Moreau?"

  "I would like to request, sir, that a new vote be taken on Committé D'arl's proposal," Jonny said with polite firmness. "I believe the study just presented has borne out my earlier contention that our problems can be solved without the creation of a new generation of Cobras. I'd like to give the council a new opportunity to agree or disagree with that contention."

  Zhu shook his head. "I'm sorry, but in my opinion you've shown us nothing that materially changes the situation."

  "What? But—"

  "Governor-General." D'arl's voice was calm as always. "If it would ease your official conscience, let me state that I have no objection to a new vote." His eyes met Jonny's and he smiled. "In my opinion, Syndic Moreau's earned a second try."

  The vote was taken . . . and when it was over, the tally was eleven to seven in favor of D'arl's proposal.

  * * *

  Parked at one end of Capitalia's starfield, D'arl's ship was an impressive sight—smaller than the big space-only transports, of course, but still more than twice the size of Aventine's own Dewdrop. A sensor-guard perimeter extended another fifty meters in all directions, and as Jonny passed its boundary, he noticed an automated turret atop the ship rotate slightly to cover him. The two Marines at the closed entry way made no such obvious moves, but Jonny saw that the muzzles of their shoulder-mounted parrot guns stayed on him the entire way. "Syndic Jonny Moreau to see Committé D'arl," he told them, coming to a halt a few meters away.

  "Are you expected, sir?" one of the guards asked. He could afford to be courteous; in full exoskeleton armor he was more powerful than even a Cobra.

  "He'll see me," Jonny said. "Tell him I'm here."

  The other guard glanced at his partner. "The Committé's quite busy, sir, with the departure tomorrow and all—"

  "Tell him I'm here," Jonny repeated.

  The first guard pursed his lips and touched a control at his throat. His conversation was brief and inaudible, but a moment later he nodded. "The Committé will see you, Syndic," he told Jonny. "Your escort will be here shortly."

  Jonny nodded and settled down to wait; and when the escort arrived, he wasn't surprised to see who it was.

  "Jonny," Jame nodded in greeting. His smile was cordial but tight. "Committé D'arl's waiting in his office. If you'll follow me. . . ."

  They passed through the heavy kyrelium steel entryway and between another pair of armored Marines. "I was hoping to see you again before we left," Jame said as they started into a maze of short corridors. "Your office said you were on vacation and couldn't be reached."

  "Chrys thought it would help me to get away for a couple of weeks," Jonny told him evenly. "Try to come to grips with what your Committé's done to us."

  Jame looked sideways at him. "And . . . did you?"

  "You mean do I intend to attack him?" Jonny shook his head. "No. All I want is to understand him, to find out why. He owes me that much."

  Ahead, two more Marines—this pair in dress uniforms—flanked an obviously reinforced door. Jame led the way between them and palmed the lock, and the panel slid soundlessly open.

  "Syndic Moreau," D'arl said, rising from the desk that dominated the modest-sized room. "Welcome. Please sit down." He indicated a chair across the desk from him.

  Jonny did so. Jame took a chair by the desk's corner, equidistant from the other two men. Jonny wondered briefly if the choice was deliberate, decided it probably was.

  "I'd hoped you'd come by this evening," D'arl said, sitting back down himself. "This will be our last chance to talk—shall we say 'honestly'?—before the tedious departure ceremonies Zhu has scheduled for tomorrow."

  " 'Tedious'? I take it it's not the public acclaim or adoration that makes all this worthwhile to you, then." Jonny took a moment to glance around the room. Comfortable, certainly, but hardly up to the standards of luxury he would have expected in a Dominion Committé's personal quarters. "Obviously, it's not the wealth, either. So what is it? The power to make people do what you want?"

  D'arl shook his head
. "You miss the whole point of what happened here."

  "Do I? You knew the gantuas would be going on a rampage just at the time you came dangling your Cobra bait in front of our faces. You knew all along it was the dehydrated blussa reeds, yet you said nothing about it until I forced your hand."

  "And what if I had?" D'arl countered. "It's not as if I could be blamed for causing the situation."

  Jonny snorted. "Of course not."

  "But as you said outside," D'arl continued, as if he hadn't noticed the interruption, "the important question is why. Why did I offer and why did Aventine accept?"

  "Why the council accepted is easy," Jonny said. "You're a Dominion Committé and what you say goes."

  D'arl shook his head. "I told you you were missing the point. The gantua problem helped, certainly, but it was really only part of a much more basic motivation. They accepted because it was the solution that required the least amount of work."

  Jonny frowned. "I don't understand."

  "It's clear enough. By placing the main burden and danger of Aventine's growth on you Cobras, they've postponed any need to shift the responsibility to the general population. Given a chance to continue such a system, people will nearly always jump at it. Especially with an excuse as immediate and convenient as the gantuas to point to."

  "But it's only a short-term solution," Jonny insisted. "In the long run—"

  "I know that," D'arl snapped. "But the fraction of humanity who can sacrifice their next meal for a feast two weeks away wouldn't fill this city. If you're going to stay in politics, you'd damn well better learn that."

  He stopped and grimaced into the silence. "It's been years since I lost my temper in anything approaching public," he admitted. "Forgive me, and take it as a sign that I'm not any happier than you are that this had to be done."

  "Why did it?" Jonny asked quietly. Two weeks ago he would have shouted the question, putting into it all the frustration and fury he'd felt then. But now the anger was gone and he'd accepted his failure, and the question was a simple request for information.