A Talent for War (20 page)

"Jacob?"

The pad was in total darkness, out of range of the streetlights. We landed on a newly fallen layer of snow. The meter calculated the fare, and returned my card. "Thank you, Mr. Benedict,"

it said. "Good evening."

I was out before the door was fully open, walking hastily along the side of the house, climbing onto the porch. The door opened to my touch. That meant the power was off.

I fumbled my way to the kitchen, found a portable lamp, and went down to the utility room. It was cold down there. A few flakes were blowing in through a broken window.

Several electrical cables had been pulled out of their jacks. Just like last time. Who would have thought they'd come back?

I reinserted the lines, felt the reassuring hum of power in the walls, saw lights come on upstairs, and heard Jacob's voice: "Alex, is that you?"

"Yes." I climbed back up into the kitchen. "I can guess what happened."

"We did not take precautions."

"No," I said. "I meant to, but I never got around to it."

"We did not even reset the burglar alarm. This time, the thieves were able to work at their leisure."

"Are you all right? They didn't try to get at you again?"

"No. Apparently not. But I think we should consider providing me with a way to defend myself.

Possibly a neuric system."

"I'll think about it."

"Just something to put them out of business. I wouldn't want to injure anyone."

"Are they gone? Is anyone still here?" I'd been listening for sounds in the upper levels.

"I don't detect any movement of large animals in the building. What time is it?"

"About nine," I said. "On the twelfth."

"I've been down for about eleven hours."

"What did they get?"

"I'm doing an inventory now. All data systems seem to have maintained their integrity. I don't think they took anything. At least, anything that's tied in with me. All cataloged items respond.

Sensors show disturbance in your bedroom. Something happened there."

Upstairs and toward the back of the house. Jacob had every light in the place on by the time I arrived.

The bed was torn apart: sheets and pillows flung about, and the night table turned over. But nothing else was disturbed. "What?" I said. "What the hell's going on?"

"I can't imagine why someone would attack your bed, Alex."

The world seemed suddenly very stark, and very cold. "I think I'll sleep downstairs tonight, Jacob." I turned away, and then remembered something, and started back into the room.

"The book," said Jacob, understanding immediately.

Walford Candles's Rumors of Earth had been on the nightstand. But it was nowhere to be seen now. I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. "Do you see it anywhere, Jacob?"

"It is not in the house."

"How about the other Candles books?"

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Pause. "They're here."

"This makes no sense. Is it a rare edition of some sort?"

"No. At least not that I'm aware of."

"Then it could be purchased without any real problem?"

"I'd think rather easily."

I straightened the nightstand, picked up a couple of pillows, and went downstairs. Crazier and crazier.

"Jacob, what do we know about the Llandman expedition?" "I can provide numerous accounts.

Several excellent books deal with the subject at length." "I don't want anything else to read. Tell me what we know."

"Llandman was a respected archaeologist for forty years. He made his reputation on Vlendivol—"

"That's okay. I think we can skip that. What about the loss of the Regal?"

"1402. Did you know your uncle was along on that one?"

"Yes. But I assumed they just lost an artifact. Apparently, it became a major problem."

"The only Dellacondan frigate known to have survived the war was the Rappaport. It's on display at the Hrinwhar Naval Museum on Dellaconda. In fact, to a considerable extent, it is the museum. But it's been the subject of considerable controversy. Propulsion and data processing systems and weapons are missing. They've always been missing. The theory is that museum officials removed everything to ensure that no one would, say, fire a nuclear charge into the personnel office."

"Reasonable enough position," I said.

"Yes. But unfortunately, whoever removed the pieces didn't save them. There's a lot that historians would like to know; but without the works, the Rappaport is just a shell. No help to anyone.

"Consequently, the recovery of a bona fide Dellacondan warship would be a marvelous find."

I thought about Llandman and the Regal

Jacob guessed. "He was unfortunate," he said. "Nevertheless, finding the vehicle was a considerable achievement. He worked on the problem for forty years. When they found it, it was 175 billion kilometers from the battle site, which should give you a sense of the magnitude of the calculations."

"Quinda thought it was deliberately destroyed, Jacob. What do we know about what actually happened?"

"She may be right. Shortly after the research team boarded, one of the nuclear weapons armed itself and an ignition sequence started. Damaged systems, careless handling, sabotage: no one knew. Llandman almost lost his life trying to jettison the bomb, but none of them really knew much about the ship's systems."

"What happened afterward?"

"There was talk of another expedition for awhile. Another ship. But that died out. In the end, there was only laughter. Llandman became depressed, grew ill, and retired. He was a bitter man by the end of his life. Some of the mockery rubbed off on your uncle as well.

But Gabe was tougher material. He told his critics what they could do."

"What finally became of Llandman?"

"I'm looking at the record. He took an overdose of something. The autopsy was never released.

He was suffering from a variety of medical problems, and no one was ever prepared to say it was suicide. There was apparently no note."

"Why do you say 'apparently'?"

"Because a cousin claimed to have seen one. If so, the family never released it."

"Understandable."

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"Yes. An unfortunate end for a talented man."

I thought of him leading me through the lost places of dead cities. I could remember his smile, and his gnarled hand holding mine, helping me over slabs, past digging equipment.

"There were even rumors that he destroyed the ship himself. Deliberately."

"That's crazy!"

"One would think so." Jacob's tone dismissed the idea as unworthy of further consideration.

"On a different note, I came across more information on Matt Olander while you were gone."

"Who?"

"Olander. Leisha Tanner's missing friend. It turns out he's buried on Ilyanda. I was reading through a travel guide put out by their tourist people. Did you know that Ilyanda is a very popular tourist site?"

No, I didn't.

"It's still mostly wilderness, unexplored country, great fishing and hunting, and some ruins that no one has yet explained. They have a strong affection there for Christopher Sim, judging by the number of boulevards, parks, and universities named after him. The reason, I gather, is that, during the darkest days of the Resistance, he saved them all."

"The evacuation," I said.

"Yes. At the time of the war, the entire population of the world was concentrated at Point Edward. There were twenty thousand people, and Sim learned somehow or other that the Ashiyyur planned to bomb the city."

"Another puzzle," I said. "Neither side attacked populated areas at that time in the war."

"Except Point Edward. Maybe you could visit your friend S'Kalian again and ask why. In any case, Sim went in with everything he could collect, big commercial liners borrowed from Toxicon and Aberwehl, a fleet of shuttles, and his own frigates. They got just about everyone off.

But for some reason or other, Tanner's old friend stayed behind. The Ilyandans have a tradition that he'd lived in Point Edward as a young man, and that he'd met his wife there."

"Jill," I said.

"Yes. Jill. Who died during the assault on Cormoral. Anyhow, the Ilyandans say that he remained at Point Edward because he knew the city was going to die, and he thought it should have a defender. His grave is inside the spaceport. They've made a memorial out of it, and turned it into a park.

"There's something else you might be interested in. I've been digging into transportation records. This is technically confidential, but there's a unit down at Lockway Travel that owes me a favor. Your uncle left here for Dellaconda about two months before the disappearance of the Capella."

"Dellaconda," I said. "Christopher Sim's home world."

"Yes. Furthermore, it appears that Gabriel went there several times over the past year and a half."

"Jacob, it all keeps leading back to the Resistance. But I've been over it and over it, and I can't imagine what connection there could be between a two-hundred-year-old war and the Tenandrome."

"Nor I. Perhaps some one made off with a payroll and hid it somewhere in the Veiled Lady."

"Well, dammit," I said. "Something happened. Maybe it's time to get a look at the combat area."

Jacob complied, the lights dimmed, went out, and a sprinkling of stars flicked into existence.

"The battlefield can be defined as an area approximately one hundred twenty light years wide and forty deep, stretching roughly between Miroghol and Wendrikan." Two stars, floating near opposite walls, momentarily brightened, one blue, one white. "Minimum travel time between them, in hyper, would have been no less than six days."

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"How about a modern vessel?"

"About the same. We've been using the Armstrong for about five hundred years, and you can't really speed it up. I don't know why, but I could produce an explanation if you wish."

"That's all right."

"We are looking at the area, by the way, from the human side. The leading edge of Ashiyyurean influence, as it was at the beginning of the war, is across the room." A bank of about a dozen stars glowed more fiercely, and then subsided. All but one: a dull red sun whose identity I could guess. "Yenmasi," said Jacob.

That was where it had started. A human colony, planted on Imarios, the fourth world of Yenmasi, had revolted over some trivial question of taxes. And there, nearby, was Mistinmor, the yellow sun which illuminated the skies of the parent world Cormoral, whose warships had intervened, and whose destruction had galvanized the frontier worlds.

It was all there: the blue supergiant Madjnikhan, home of the unfortunate Bendiri, who had sent their only ship to assist the Dellacondans; golden Castleman's, where several of Sim's frigates had been lost in the futile effort to save the City on the Crag; the solemn beauty of the dozen stars whose symmetrical pattern created a light-years-long cylinder known to history as the Slot, where a small force of allied vessels had inflicted a devastating defeat on an Ashiyyurean armada; the yellow sun Minkiades (so much like Sol), still despised because its two populated worlds, full of fear, had thrown in with the invaders; the white dwarf Kaspadel, home star to Ilyanda; and brilliant white Rigel, where Sim and his ship had died. . . .

"Let's see the Veiled Lady."

"Change of scale," Jacob said. The war zone shrank into a glittering cloud about the size of the fireplace, and retreated toward the windows. In the center of the room, a second luminous patch appeared. "The Veiled Lady. Distance from nearest point in the combat area to the nebula's leading edge is somewhat more than eleven hundred light years."

"Sixty days travel one way from Rigel," I said.

"More or less. It's a long way from the battle zone. I cannot imagine what sort of connection there could be between the Veiled Lady and that war."

"Somebody hid something out there," I said. "It has to be. Can't be anything else."

"I'm sorry to say, Alex, that I find it hard to imagine what sort of object could result in all this secrecy."

I was damned if I had any answers. But I kept thinking that Somehow it had to do with the Seven. So I pushed back into the cushions and propped my feet up and stared at the nebula.

The lights came back up. "It's late, sir."

The room was warm and solid. The pictures, the books, the liquor cabinet, everything was familiar and reassuring. A world that one could encompass and understand.

I poured myself some brandy. The crystal which carried the half-dozen scenarios from the library lay in its case on a side table.

"I think it's time I saw Sim's end," I said.

XII.

It is a curious fact that Sim, who ranks in the august company of Alexander, Rancible, and Black George, should accomplish with his death what he was unable to achieve with all his brilliant campaigns.

—Arena Cash, War in the Void

I LOADED THE crystal, sat down, and adjusted my headband. "Now, Jacob."

"You've had a long trip, Alex. Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait until tomorrow?"

"Now, Jacob."

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Pause. "As usual, you have two options: participant or observer?"

"Observer."

"Historical or alternative?"

"Historical. Let's see it the way it happened."

"Keep in mind this is a reconstruction of events from best evidence. Some dramatization is involved. Do you wish to observe from Corsarius or Kudasai?"

I thought it over. Experiencing the final action aboard the doomed ship would make for high drama. And there would be the challenge of seeing whether I could ride it out until the program itself snatched me from danger. On the other hand, the view from Tarien Sim's battle cruiser would be more informative, and less subject to the imagination of the writers. "Kudasai," I said.

The room darkened, and the texture of the cushions changed.

"The sons of bitches are out in force today." Wearing the uniform of the Resistance Confederacy, Tarien Sim stood before a large oval port, staring moodily at the swirl of boulders and dust circling the gas giant Barcandrik. Far in the distance, the rubble blended into luminous rings of haunting beauty, thick and full and bright as any I've ever seen. Three shepherd moons hung like antique lanterns along the track, one nearby, all equally spaced.