Downtime (26 page)

“You’re
serious about destroying all the elixir gardens in the Arm, aren’t you?” It was
Singh who spoke, and Calla glared at him. “No offense, ma’am,” Singh added
hastily when he saw her face, “but I continue to be amazed at the extremity of
the decision. Millions of people depend on those supplies, including the
decemviri themselves. It’s just hard to accept knowing that the Decemvirate
would order the destruction of its most precious resource.”

“I’m
not certain this is precisely what they had in mind when they told me to
neutralize the traitor. On the other hand,” Calla said in her mildest voice as
every officer in the center turned to stare at her, “I’m fairly predictable in
terms of their probability studies. They have forty years of documentation to
feed into their jelly bean-like brains, and it could be that they know exactly
how I will interpret their orders.”

Singh
was first to break the stunned silence, his face flushed with color. “They gave
you one companion-class ship with all forty bays filled with raiders. More than
enough to defend an outback planet like Mutare against a traitor’s takeover. It’s
nothing against a fleet . . . three fleets! Madam, you have
overstepped.”

“Nonsense,”
said Cinna. “Calla’s right. The Decemvirate knew how Calla would interpret such
broad orders. What they couldn’t know was who the traitor was, only that he had
to be stopped to prevent even worse calamity than they had already foreseen. It
won’t kill anyone to live a normal lifespan, including the decemviri. But
billions could die trying to take the gardens back from Mahdi, or anyone else
who has control of them.
Compania
with Calla in command was the perfect choice: Big enough to be self-sustaining
for a few years, powerful enough to do considerable damage to selected targets,
and if you’ll take the time and trouble to check, you’ll learn that it’s no
skin off any of our nine hundred noses on board
Compania
if we do destroy every elixir garden in the Arm.”

“What
is that supposed to mean?” asked Singh, not the least bit mollified.

“Not
one crew member is entitled to an allotment of elixir,” Calla said. “You and
everyone else failed in the lotteries, except me, of course. And in my case,
having succeeded doesn’t help at all.”

“It
is rather coincidental that you would have no one unwilling to strike garden
targets,” Singh admitted grudgingly. “I wonder what kind of edge that gave us
in the probability models?”

“No
edge,” Calla said. “Just evened the chances for success to fifty percent.”

“If
you know that, then you knew before we ever went to Mutare what our mission
would be.”

“No,
not for certain. This was one twig on the probability model I was shown. I
would give a lot to see what the same model would show with all this new
information.”

No
one said anything, each being certain that if new modeling could have helped
them, the Decemvirate would have found a way to get it to them.

“Look
at it this way,” Calla said. “No one is modeling us. We’re an unknown factor to
everyone, including Mahdi.” And that was true, at least for a while. Mahdi
would not be expecting anyone to destroy Dvalerth’s elixir garden, only to
attack with the intention of claiming it for themselves. His defenses would be
superb with an entire fleet at his command. He had only to pull in close to the
garden, and it would be as if a threshold had been erected that no one was
willing to cross . . . except Calla. One contact explosive —
she didn’t expect Cinna to have the time or precision required for lasering —
and Dvalerth gardens would be gone, some of Mahdi’s Fleet with it.

“How
many companion-class ships does Mahdi have?” Singh asked.

“Only
one that we know of,” Calla said. “The
Duenna
.”

Singh
apparently had concluded, too, that the
Compania
’s
raiders would have only one easy victory. Mahdi would race at full speed to
Trillevallen Solar System, the next closest system with an elixir garden.
Compania
could jump ahead with her
superior acceleration and velocity, but so could
Duenna
.
Duenna
’s raiders
would try to hold them at bay until Mahdi’s fleet arrived. But Cinna’s raiders
would be even less easy to find in the vastness of interplanetary space than
Mahdi’s fleet. The chances for success really were . . . even.

Now
Singh laughed, but it was a sardonic laugh. “I want to see that man on your
gallows, Calla, but I wish to Timekeeper’s hell that they had given us better
than fifty-fifty odds to succeed in playing him halfway across the Arm. It’s
going to take years.”

“Thirteen
months,” Cinna said to the navigator.

“Years,”
Singh repeated. “That vandal is still the imperator general, and he didn’t get
his rank by being a fool. He will double jump somewhere because he will have
figured out what we’re trying to do. Then we’ll have to double back. It will
take years.”

“Dilation
is with us,” the navigator said. “Thirteen months of ship time.”

But
years on Mutare, Calla thought. Years for Jason to forget her again, years for
him to make another life for himself. Years for lovely Arria to grow into the
woman’s body she already possessed, so Calla couldn’t even be comforted by
knowing that Jason would exercise restraint even if Arria did not. The reasons
for restraint would pass, just as they had so long ago when Calla had been
young, too young by Jason’s standards. Calla felt her mouth go dry and she had
difficulty swallowing. He had been a simple mountain man posing as a prince to
escape Dovian poverty, at once unsophisticated and shrewd, and the combination
had finally stolen her heart. At first she had thought that if she let down her
guard for a moment he would come after her like a rutting stallion, for
mountain men were reputed to eat with their fingers and make love from sunset
to sunrise, and Calla had seen him eat with his fingers. But no. He was not
genteel in those early days, but he was gentle and he was patient, rebuffing
all but the quickest of kisses. It took her years to get up enough courage to
come to him in the dead of night, attired in such a way that he would know that
she had thought out everything in advance and had, therefore, probably also
thought out all possible consequences, as well. It wouldn’t take Arria four
years to mature, not with her ability to know what people were thinking.
Especially not with Jason willing to help her along in every way possible,
probably coaching her himself at every opportunity. It wasn’t Arria’s fault
that she had a crush on Jason from the first moment she saw him. And it wasn’t
Jason’s fault that he was so alone and vulnerable. But, Calla decided, it wasn’t
her fault either. So damn the Timekeeper and his drifting sands.

“There
he is,” Singh said pointing to the holoscan. A few new lights had appeared in
far-orbit above the southern pole. They were shooting down, as it were, making
ready to swoop through the southern funnel.

“Alert
your raiders,” Calla said to Cinna, her voice husky.

She
was aware that her officers were watching her without appearing to watch. “And
Cinna. Don’t waste any time.”

Jason and Marmion stepped out of the Red Rocks Round House
connecting tunnel into the Round House staging bay, their clothes still wet and
clinging from having walked through hip-deep snow, the aftermath of a spring
blizzard. Though it had been dark when they landed the shuttle, past midnight
by the clock, half the residents of Mutare were waiting for them to bring them
the latest news from the Hub. Even Stairnon, who rarely came to Round House
ever since Calla had built the gallows almost a year ago, was there. She was
standing by the fireplace talking with D’Omaha and Tirzah, both of whom were
sitting on thick cushions stuffed with nymph-cocoon thread.

“That
fire looks inviting,” Marmion said with a wistful glance at the blaze, “but I’d
better load this newsbean first.” He reached into his pocket, apparently to
reassure himself that the jelly bean the freetrader had given them was still
there. It was filled with the first news they had had since the regular supply
ship brought word last winter that the council’s decision had been in the old
worlds’ favor in opposition to the Decemvirate’s recommendation.

“Use
the big flatscreen over there,” Jason said, gesturing to the other side of the
gallows. “That way they’ll have to move away from the fireplace and we can have
a little peace before the questions start.”

Marmion
nodded and turned to walk briskly across the staging bay. His metal-soled space
boots clicked smartly on the shale floor. He was holding the newsbean up
between his thumb and forefinger. Few could really see what he held, but all of
them guessed what it was and quickly followed him, anxious about hearing what
had transpired in the last months. There were no miners in the hall, Jason
noted gratefully. Only the freakish blizzard had kept them away, but many would
come in the next few days to grumble over the tallies Jason had brought back
from the freetrader, still unhappy over not being able to do their own
bartering. The freetrader had been likewise unhappy, but only because Jason had
pressed the chief of the perfection engineers into representing the miners’
interest during the bargaining sessions. Marmion, who had already earned a
small fortune with his knowledge of merchantability, was not fooled or bluffed
as easily as the outback miners.

The
fireplace was nearly clear of people, and Jason ignored the few who remained
and discouraged private inquiries by concentrating on taking off his boots and
rubbing his cold toes in the fire’s glow. The lingerers finally drifted off
toward the big flatscreen and Jason stared into the fire, wondering why he had
discouraged them that way. What difference did it make if he told them the news
of Calla’s victories on Dvalerth and Tancred or if they heard it from the
newsbean? Because he couldn’t keep the fear out of his voice, he thought, and
he didn’t want to meet their eyes when they realized that the woman he loved
was destroying the Mercurian Dream of perpetual youth. It had never occurred to
him that Calla would attempt to neutralize the traitor by incinerating his
power sources, one by one. With only two destroyed elixir gardens to judge by,
Jason could see the entire pattern, a trail of such gardens of rubble on the
known worlds that ended on a little known world, Mutare. He had had no
difficulty understanding, finally, how Calla could
play
Ramnen Mahdi Swayman from one side of the Arm to the other and
land him on Mutare, where his gallows was waiting. And if Jason could see the
pattern, some of the others would guess, too. Worse was knowing that Mahdi
would see it and was too good a strategist to continue following the pattern.
He would jump ahead somewhere, leapfrogging over one of the gardens. He had an
entire fleet to deploy; he could split his forces and go to two or three elixir
garden planets at one time. Calla had but one companion-class ship and she had
lost four raiders at Tancred. Jason was certain Calla was all but lost to him
already.

“Jason.”

It
was Arria’s voice. He hadn’t noticed her standing in the shadows. She stepped
into the fire’s glow, her eyes half-closed against the glare. She was wearing a
long skirt of handwoven fiber, the bright design faded from frequent
laundering, but the garment was flattering to her nonetheless, for it lay flat
from her waist to her thighs before the threads had been pounded into
ribbon-widths that made the hem so full and flouncy. She sat down next to him,
cross-legged. The sole of her foot was covered with red dust from walking
barefooted on the red sandstone in Red Rocks. She disdained shoes unless she
was walking in the snow.

“I
have something strange to report,” she said, her hand up to shield her face
from the radiating heat. Her flaxen hair glistened in the fireglow like a
melting halo.

“What
is it this time?” Jason said, curious in spite of himself, for Arria always had
something strange or important to tell him. She had dogged him since the
incident in his bed, reverting immediately to the childish innocence that he
couldn’t help responding to. She picked ground nuts out of her cereal when she
ate at his table, and seemed always to be just passing through the Red Rocks
tunnels when he was coming out of the elixir processing area where she was not
permitted to go, full of questions about the ranger station, indeed about
anything in the Timekeeper’s realm since she was so quick to learn and had
solved all the mysteries of the station’s technology to her own satisfaction by
first snowfall. She was too bright for Jason to tire of his teacher’s role, too
perceptive and imaginative for him to wish she would ask someone else, and so
unfailingly cheerful that he found he could not help being cheered himself when
she was near. Yet he sensed that all was not perfectly well between them, for
sometimes her smile seemed frozen on her lips and the happy flashes in her eyes
would give way to something more solemn.

“After
you and Marmion left in the shuttle, I went up to the lake. It was still warm,
not even cloudy yet. There was a new danae there.”

“That’s
not so strange,” Jason said. “Lots of them are still returning from the winter
migration. They’ve all come to the lake for a drink and a good look-see. Still
probably trying to figure out how it got there.”

“Yes,
but this danae was
in
the lake,”
Arria said, “and I don’t mean grubbing in the shallows for bugs. She spread her
wings like fins and swam from one shore to the other. It didn’t seem to bother
her at all that the water was like ice.”

Jason
looked at her intensely so see if she were teasing as she sometimes liked to
do, especially on subjects he treated with no humor. She would know that only
one other danae ever had been seen swimming, and also would know that that
danae had been special to Jason.