Dark Foundations (21 page)

“Yes. I had more or less made up my mind on that when I had an unexpected visitor in Ynysmant who confirmed my decision.”

“Who?”

“The envoy.”

“Ah.” Corradon closed his eyes for a moment as if in pain. “Our angelic visitant. Who said . . . ?”

In as few words as possible, Merral told Corradon those things the envoy had said that he considered relevant. He omitted the specific warnings, considering them of relevance only to himself. As he spoke, he noticed how the representative's face lost its color.

When Merral finished, Corradon rubbed his face wearily and frowned. “You are making a habit of this. Just when I begin to hope, you present me with new bad news. ‘War will come to Farholme.'” He sighed heavily. “War. Casualties. More bereavements.”

He paused as if considering the matter and then shook his head. “Yet perhaps, just perhaps, it may not be so. Perhaps the danger may pass.” He paused again and his next words were little more than a whispered prayer. “Please, God, may it be so.”

“Amen.”

Tapping a finger nervously on his knee, Corradon stared at Merral. “So, given that we have so little time, you think Sentinel Enand's approach is wise?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was uneasy about it, but I felt there was no option.”

“What did Dr. Clemant say?”

“Lucian approved. Although I prefer not to go against his advice, I would have done on this.” Corradon stared out of the window. “It is strange, Merral, how this crisis has affected us differently. I always used to find him easy to work with. . . .” His voice was distant and distracted. Then, as if awakening from a daydream, he turned to Merral. “Yes, he approved. But you'd better go and see him.”

He rose stiffly from his chair.

“One other thing,” Corradon added, his face suggesting a vague unease. “Prebendant Balthazar Delastro. Dr. Clemant wants to him to be chaplain-in-chief of the Farholme Defense Force. On consideration, I approve. But it's your decision.”

“But I don't know him,” Merral answered. “And it was a post that I had assumed Luke Tenerelt would fill.”

“No. Luke is too young. Delastro is a senior figure and Lucian makes the valid point that to have Delastro on board might help us get support from the local congregations. Frankly, I am reluctant to cross Lucian on this. I think you'd better meet with the prebendant.”

“Very well.”

“I think that's all for the moment. You will just be downstairs. So, if you need anything . . .” Corradon's voice trailed off as he bent over a dwarf orange bush.

Merral realized the meeting was over. As he left the office, he glanced back to catch a glimpse of Corradon peering at the leaves and shaking his head sadly.

“Commander,” Clemant said, rising stiffly from behind his large, bare desk as Merral was shown in. “Thank you for coming. It is splendid to see you up and about.”

They shook hands.

“Please, take a seat,” Clemant said with a gentle formality as he lowered himself back onto his high-backed chair.

The advisor looked tired, Merral decided. There were bags under his eyes and he seemed to have put on weight.

Merral sat down and looked around, realizing that he could have predicted that Clemant's office would look like this. The room was no bigger than Corradon's, but the far fewer furnishings made it seem larger. There was a polished black desk, some cabinets and shelves, and the only painting in the room was a large abstract made up of neat geometrical slivers of grays and whites.

The main feature of the room was a large floor-to-ceiling wallscreen, subdivided into a dozen smaller panels, each of which displayed some sort of map, chart, or image, on a sidewall. Merral glanced at it, feeling almost overwhelmed by the quantity of information it revealed.
Clemant must feel that he can monitor all Farholme with this.

The view out of the window provided some compensation. It consisted of a mosaic of houses, fields, and orchards to the north.

“So,” Clemant asked, as Merral turned to face him, “how was Ynysmant?”

Merral sensed Clemant's dark gray eyes scrutinizing him. “Interesting,” he answered, feeling oddly wary. “There are changes taking place.”

“I know. I gather you and Sergeant Enomoto made contact with some unruly elements?”

“Your information is accurate, Dr. Clemant,” Merral said, noting without surprise that his aide's name had been discovered and forwarded. “Your police presumably told you.”

“Hardly
my
police, Commander.” Clemant's lips moved in a feeble attempt at a smile. “Although they do report to me. Oh, and I saw the broadcast of the medal ceremony by the way. You made a good speech, but—if I may make a suggestion—you could have been longer.” There was an expressive pause. “Anwar—” he gestured with his head toward the representative's office—“has done a good job on his tour, but people want to hear you. You reassure them.”

“I don't like this public role.”

“I understand; you are a reluctant leader. It is commendable. But your reluctance is a luxury. Incidentally, I haven't commended you for the battle at the lake. Well done.”

“We failed to take the ship and we lost a lot of men.”

Clemant's round face showed a renewed attempt at a smile. “Oh, come, Commander. You destroyed the ship and the casualty figures—while unfortunate—were, by historical standards, not excessive. You lost barely 20 percent of your total attack force. Against overwhelming odds, that is a creditable performance.”

Merral shrugged. “Forgive me if I just don't see it in those terms.”

“I understand, but in what lies ahead, we will need strong leadership.” Merral heard an odd but significant stress in the words. For a fraction of a second, Clemant's eyes slid in the direction of Corradon's office.

“I hardly see that as my task. I'm a man who has been entrusted with being in charge of a military force. I'm not a civil administrator.”

Clemant's gaze seemed faintly appraising. “Ah, Commander, we're entering uncharted waters. Who knows what any of us will be called on to do?”

“Indeed.”

The advisor steepled his hands and perched his chin on them. “So, you support Sentinel Enand's most interesting proposal?”

“Yes.”

“Indeed?” Clemant's tone and expression were scrupulously neutral.

“Yes, my decision was already made when we had a new piece of data.”

“Namely?”

Merral paused, suddenly remembering the skepticism that Clemant had shown when Perena reported the first appearance of the envoy and wondered how the report of the new appearance would be received. “The envoy has appeared again.”

Clemant's dark eyes widened. “Aha. The
envoy.
And what did
he
say?”

Merral told him what he had told Corradon. As he did, Clemant listened carefully and said nothing, his face showing little expression. He rose and paced slowly to the window and back, tapping his chin with a finger.

“An extraordinary experience, Commander. When Captain Lewitz said she had such an encounter, I was, perhaps, a little skeptical. I am much less so now. The cumulative evidence of a sudden irruption into our world of the supernatural on scale unparalleled in Assembly history is now so extensive, that it seems hard to deny it. So, how long do we have?”

“A maximum of twelve weeks. Possibly less.”

“I see.” Clemant fell silent.

“I think we need to prepare to defend the towns as a matter of urgency. Where we can, with regular forces; where we can't, with irregulars.”

Clemant nodded and then, apparently deep in thought, sat and stared abstractedly at the vast wallscreen. After several moments, he turned to Merral with a quite unreadable expression.

“Defend the towns, yes, but how? In what way? All of them? What about the smaller settlements?”

“We will come up with some ideas.”

“It will not be easy.” Clemant gestured at the screen. “Let me show you some disturbing data.”

He tapped a digital pad at his desk. The maps and charts vanished and were replaced by a single large map of Farholme showing all the main cities and larger settlements.

“Something very unpleasant has come into our world, Commander. Let me show you what I have found. Remember, if you please, that my expertise is in social matters. I now have a team of people compiling and categorizing all reports of social, psychological, or spiritual anomalies. Now, although we know that oddities occurred as early as Nativity at Herrandown, our earliest significant data is from about ten weeks ago. Watch.”

A cluster of tiny red lights flickered on the map. Merral recognized Herrandown, Ynysmant, and Larrenport.

“This is ten weeks ago. Now watch as we jump week by week.” He tapped the button again.

The lights grew and spread as if they were red ants moving out from a nest. Lights spread all along the southern coast of Menaya from Isterrane to Lariston, around the mouth of the rift, and then round the edge of the Varrend Tablelands.

“Last week.” More points of light appeared in new locations.

“This week, compiled this morning.” New lights glowed almost everywhere. It seemed as if there were new cases across the planet.

“How many cases have you reported in total?”

“There have been 8,731 definite and 15,232 probables. And as one of the tasks of the police force is to record these things, we can soon expect an increase. But that data is yet to come in. Are you surprised at this map?”

Merral again noted Clemant's probing gaze. “I'd need to look a lot more closely at the data. I suppose I'm not surprised, but I am alarmed. What sort of things are you recording as events?”

“Now? All sort of things. Fights, negligence, a school protest, graffiti—”

“What's that?”

“You may well ask. Graffiti is writing or painting slogans on walls, defacing property. What else? Petty theft—someone stole someone else's garden plants in Ganarat. Increasing sexual incidents. We had a rape the other day.”

“Are you serious?
Here?
”

“I'm afraid so.”

“It's appalling!”

“I agree.”

Merral stared at the map again. “Wait. Can you go back a bit, please?” he asked. “A few weeks. There, the cluster on the Anuzabar Chain. That's Ilakuma, is it?”

“Yes.”

“The legal disputes?”

“It's now worse. There was a brawl there the other day. Windows smashed, an arm broken.”

“It's odd. The other cases seem to spread out from points of contact with the intruders: Herrandown, Larrenport, Ynysmant, and so on. But what's the link with Ilakuma?”

“We have no idea.” Clemant paused. “My theory is that in the early days there needed to be some contact for this contagion to spread.” His face showed perplexity. “But now it seems different. Even the remotest places—isolated survey bases, remote mountain communities—are affected. And despite the destruction of the intruder ship a week ago, it is continuing to spread.”

“So it seems.”

“In light of this data and despite deep reservations, I have also backed our sentinel's suggestion that we create an irregular defense force. Your news just reinforces my belief.”

“Can you explain your reasoning?”

“Very well. As Sentinel Enand points out, creating a large armed force would take years to put into action. But based on the trends that this map shows, we don't have that time. Our social fabric is beginning to disintegrate, Commander.” His eyes were intense, troubled pools of darkness. “I foresee anarchy.” Beneath any pretense at detachment, the advisor seemed afraid.

“I see.”

“We have no option; we never did. And certainly not after yesterday's warning. But I have some conditions on defending the towns.”

“Which are?”

“However you—
we
—prepare our defenses we must tread carefully. Very carefully. Can you imagine what will happen if people start building—I don't know—forts and walls? In this state, they will panic.” There was a heavy stress on the word
panic.

“So what do we do?”

“I don't know, but you need to find a way to do it without causing a fuss. And I want what the envoy said—and what you saw—to be kept totally secret. This world is too volatile for any rumors of doom to be allowed to circulate.” He shuddered.

“Very well.”

“Now let me say some things about the defense strategy. First, these irregulars are part of the Farholme Defense Force. I want you to be in ultimate charge of them.”

“I gather that's what's planned.”

“Good. Second, I don't want them interfering with the police. We'll draw up some protocols as to who does what. Liaison officers for each district—that sort of thing.”

“Seems reasonable. I agree, again.”