Earth 2788 (6 page)

“Let it be
formally recorded that the Eastreth clan refuse to withdraw their demand for
the expulsion of Lolek’s clan,” said Marissa Breck Thane. “Both clans have
agreed to submit this entire issue to the judgement of alliance council rather
than involve outside officials.”

That didn’t
surprise me. The Eastreth clan would find a police investigation embarrassing,
because they were highly respectable. My clan would find a police investigation
embarrassing, because we weren’t respectable at all, and couldn’t afford to
have officials nosing around some of our more questionable business affairs.

“We’ve heard
more than enough accusations and denials,” continued Marissa Breck Thane, “so
the witnesses will now take the stand and we will establish the true facts.”

Lolek caught my
eye, and gestured at one of several large metal discs in the centre of the
room. I walked between the chairs and went to stand on the disc, and was taken
by surprise when a second, much smaller, metal disc hovered up to float in
front of me.

“Put your right
hand on the disc, Lolia,” said Lolek.

I put my hand on
the disc, and the pulsing blue light of a scanner appeared. When I looked up
again, I saw Ardreath was standing on a matching disc, facing me. I fought the
urge to turn away, staring straight into his eyes instead. I’d done nothing
wrong. He was the one who’d broken our marriage, not me.

Marissa Breck
Thane took a moment to study both of us. “Alliance council will be basing its
judgement on the Betan laws regarding assault. Given the relative sizes of the
two participants, I think we can ignore the legal exemptions for brawls
involving equally matched and willing parties.”

There was a
ripple of laughter from the clan leaders.

Marissa Breck
Thane nodded at Lolek. “You may establish the truth of your accusation.”

“Lolia, did
Ardreath hit you?” asked Lolek.

I smiled coldly
at Ardreath, and was pleased to see the panic in his eyes. I carefully chose my
words to avoid the letter “b,” because that was always the most likely to
trigger my stammer. “Yes, he hit me.”

“Scans show that
Lolia is almost certainly telling the truth.” Marissa Breck Thane turned to
Arden. “You may counter the accusation.”

Arden frowned. “Ardreath,
did you hit the girl?”

Ardreath looked
down at the blue light scanning his right hand. “I may have accidentally
touched her.”

“And Ardreath’s
statement is definitely not true,” said Marissa Breck Thane. “I would advise
him to stop wasting alliance council’s time with lies, because such behaviour
will count against both him and his clan.”

Ardreath took a
deep breath. “Yes, all right, I lost my temper and hit Lolia, but Lolek’s
accusation of second level assault was a lie. I didn’t do anything that would
draw blood. That vid Lolek showed you, with Lolia’s face covered in blood, was
a fake.”

“Now Ardreath is
speaking the truth,” said Marissa Breck Thane. “Lolek, please respond to his point
about the blood.”

“Of course,”
said Lolek. “Lolia, did Ardreath’s jewel-encrusted ring cut your face and make
it bleed?”

“Yes, it did,” I
said.

Ardreath gave me
a startled look, which changed to one of pure apology. He’d been my husband for
two years. Despite Lolek’s orders, I couldn’t stop myself from responding to
his contrite expression.

“I’m sure
Ardreath didn’t intend that to happen,” I added. “He turned round and left
immediately afterwards, so he probably never saw the blood.”

“And that
statement is also true,” said Marissa Breck Thane. “I believe we have now
established the real facts. Does anyone have any additional questions for the
witnesses?”

She waited a
moment, glanced round the circle of clan leaders, and nodded. “The witnesses
may stand down.”

I went back to
stand behind Lolek’s chair. As I walked by him, he gave me a single harsh
glare, before returning his attention to Marissa Breck Thane. She was on her
feet now, looking solemnly around the circle of clan leaders.

“Lolek’s clan
made an accusation of second level assault against a member of clan Eastreth.
Clan Eastreth claimed the accusation was false and countered it with a demand
for the expulsion of Lolek’s clan. The accusation has now been proved to be
true, but it appears clan Eastreth had had genuine reason to believe it false.”

She paused. “In
any other case involving such a misunderstanding, I would ask both clans to
reconsider their positions at this point. In this case though, given the scale
of ill feeling demonstrated, I feel alliance council has no choice but to
debate whether the continued presence of both clan Eastreth and Lolek’s clan in
our alliance is either desirable or possible.”

Marissa Breck
Thane sighed. “Expelling either or both of these clans would be a serious matter,
with significant business consequences for many alliance clans, so clan leaders
will wish to consult with their clan councils before voting. Alliance council
will therefore continue with the debate this evening, but votes will not be
cast until tomorrow morning. It is obviously inappropriate for the leaders of
the two clans concerned to be present during either the debate or the vote.
They will be summoned in the morning to hear alliance council’s decision.”

Lolek and Arden
both stood up, bowed to the Breck clan leader, and then turned to leave. Lolek
was closest to the door, so he went through it first, with Arden behind him. I
followed after them, and found myself walking down the corridor next to
Ardreath. I was startled to hear him whisper to me.

“I apologize for
hitting you. I was under extreme stress, but it was still an indefensible
action.”

I hesitated, and
glanced at Lolek and Arden. They were deep in conversation with each other,
speaking in low pitched angry voices, so I whispered back to Ardreath. “Our
marriage doesn’t have to end like this. Perhaps it doesn’t have to end at all.
A couple of days ago, the three of us were so happy. We could be like that
again.”

Ardreath gave me
a fleeting, sad smile, before his expression hardened into something cold and
calculating. “You’ve always been such an endearingly naive child, Lolia. Many
marriages are just about people and emotions, but some are heavily involved
with finances and politics as well. Two years ago, my clan had badly
underestimated the cost of a business expansion. Your clan was extremely
wealthy and could give us the bridging loan we desperately needed. In return,
we could negotiate your entry into our alliance.”

I stared at him.
“You’re saying you only married me to get a loan for your clan?”

“Hush.” Ardreath
pointed a warning finger at Arden and Lolek. “Our marriage benefited both our
clans, and it was an attractive prospect personally as well. You’re an
eye-catching girl, and Mack … He and I had already been together for a year at
that point, but my father was totally opposed to our relationship.
Understandably so. Mack wasn’t just clanless, but a convicted thief.”

Somehow those
words angered me even more than the comment about marrying me to get a loan for
his clan. “You know the truth about that theft conviction as well as I do. Mack
was barely 15 years old back then, and trying to find a way to escape that
ghastly orphanage on Janus.”

“Yes,” said
Ardreath, “but my father and my clan council were naturally unhappy about Mack
having a criminal record. I told them that you wouldn’t marry me unless you
could marry Mack as well, and that no marriage would mean no bridging loan.”

He shrugged. “They
gave in after that, and the arrangement worked very well for everyone
concerned. My marriage to you and Mack was a slight social embarrassment for my
clan, but the money compensated nicely for that until one of my clan’s vid
series became a runaway success and solved our financial problems.”

He paused. “Then,
yesterday’s … unfortunate event occurred. My clan council lost patience, and
threatened me with being made clanless unless I divorced the pair of you. In
those circumstances, I really had no choice but to end our marriage and
distance myself from you both.”

I glared at
Ardreath. I thought I’d been a fool not to work out that Lolek was using me as
a pawn in his political games, but I’d been even more stupid than that.
Ardreath’s clan had been using me to get a bridging loan, while Ardreath had
been using me to get his clan to consent to him marrying Lolmack.

I opened my
mouth to tell Ardreath to nuke off, then realized the implications of his last
sentence. “You’re not planning to start a new marriage with Lolmack then?”

“That would be
impossible in the circumstances. I’m deeply unhappy about that, but …”

Ardreath broke
off. Arden had glanced over his shoulder, and made an impatient beckoning
gesture. Ardreath hurried to join him, and Arden turned back to face Lolek.

“The loan will
be repaid in full by tomorrow.”

“With interest,
I hope,” said Lolek.

Arden nodded. “With
interest.”

He and Ardreath
hurried on to the portal, dialled it, and vanished. I wondered what Arden would
be saying to Ardreath now they were alone. Arden had trusted his son to tell
him the whole truth, and now his clan leader position might be in jeopardy. The
Eastreth clan council would be furious when they heard Ardreath had misled
them.

Whether Arden
hung on to power or not, Ardreath would be in a lot of trouble, but I didn’t
care what happened to him any longer. My mind was totally focused on one thing.
Lolmack wasn’t with me, and he wasn’t with Ardreath either, so where the hell
was he?

“Idiot girl!”
snapped Lolek.

I turned to face
him, but I was still thinking about Lolmack.

Lolek gave me a
withering look of contempt. “Aren’t you capable of following the simplest
instructions? We had the Eastreth clan totally defeated, we could have driven
them out of the alliance, but you had to open your stupid mouth and say
Ardreath probably didn’t see the blood. Now alliance council will use the
excuse that the Eastreth clan honestly misunderstood events to keep them in the
alliance and discard us instead.”

He paused for a
second. “If there’s any way at all of staying in the alliance, our clan must
take it. If there are demands that we remove potential sources of future
conflict between us and clan Eastreth, we must agree to them. You understand
what that means, Lolia?”

I nodded. Oh
yes, I understood exactly what he meant. This whole argument was centred on my
failed marriage. Removing a potential source of future conflict, meant removing
me. Lolek was saying he’d happily sacrifice me to safeguard the clan’s position
in the alliance.

“You will return
to the doctor, and remain with her until we hear alliance council’s decision.”
Lolek dialled the portal and waved at me to go through.

I stepped
through into the hotel foyer and found Lolena waiting for me. She didn’t say a
single word, and seemed to be trying not to look at me as she led me down the
corridor. Had Lolek warned her about the situation? Was she already making the
mental shift from thinking of me as family to thinking of me as a clanless
outsider? Would the rest of my family and friends discard me as lightly?

Now I knew
exactly why I’d been isolated in a hotel suite rather than allowed to return to
the clan hall. The second Lolek heard about my marriage breakdown, he’d
considered the option of removing me from the clan. He knew it would be hard to
do that if I was staying at the clan hall with my friends and family around me,
but no one could contact me here. No one knew what had happened or where I was.
Lolek could make up any story he wanted to get people to accept his decision.

Lolena dutifully
delivered me to the hotel suite and then left. I was alone with the nameless
doctor again.

Part
III

The doctor gave me a look of
professional concern. “You’ve had a very stressful day, Lolia. You should try
to get some sleep.”

Sleep? How could
I sleep at a moment like this? At a word from the alliance, my clan would
discard me. I’d lose my family. I’d lose my friends. I’d lose my job too,
because I worked for the clan business.

How the chaos
could I survive alone, clanless, and with no income? I had a degree in Art of
Language from University Artemis, and I was a good vid script writer, but most of
the Artemis clans who made vids were members of the Breck alliance. Their clan
leaders had been in the alliance council meeting, where I was the centre of a
storm that threatened the unity of the alliance. They’d never give me a job
after that.

In fact, getting
any sort of job would be desperately hard. In Beta sector almost every business
was owned by a clan. They all employed their own clan members in preference to
anyone else, second choice was members of clans in their alliance, and then
members of other respectable clans. The clanless were only employed as a last
resort, because everyone assumed they must have done something dreadful to be
disowned by their clan.

I’d never had to
worry about money before. I wasn’t just paid a generous amount as a script
writer; I could ask for help from the clan funds as well if there was any
unexpected emergency. Now though …

All I had was my
share of the money that Ardreath, Lolmack, and I had in our joint credit
account. That might last for two or three months if I was very careful, but
what would I do after that? I was vaguely aware that it was possible to get a
subsistence grant if you had no other income, but I didn’t know how much it was
or how you claimed it.

I remembered
Lolmack’s stories of the orphanage on Janus. My guess was that subsistence
grants would be exactly like that orphanage, the absolute grudging minimum
provision given with as much humiliation and bullying as possible, because
things like subsistence grants and orphanages were only for the clanless. Any
clan with a shred of pride cared for its own members rather than let them ask
for help elsewhere.

“Take this.” The
doctor held out a glass of water and a tablet. “It will help you sleep.”

I didn’t need to
sleep. What I needed was my lookup, and there was an obvious way to get it. “I’d
rather have some juice. I think there was a carton left earlier. I’ll get it.”

I found the
carton, collected two glasses from the food dispenser, and filled them both
with juice. I carefully put my tablet in my mouth between my teeth and my
cheek, drank from one of the glasses, and swallowed the juice but not the
tablet.

The doctor
smiled, apparently totally satisfied. “You’d better go and lie down now. Which
bedroom would you like?”

I yawned,
covering my mouth with my hand for a moment. “Do they both have this dreadfully
old-fashioned glittery decor?”

The doctor went
over to open a bedroom door and look inside. “This one has, but it’s a very
nice shade of delicate pink.”

The tablet was
in the palm of my hand now. “I hate pink. What’s the other one like?”

The doctor went
to check the second room. I dunked the tablet into the untouched glass of
juice, and rubbed it between my fingers. I felt it soften, but it stubbornly
refused to dissolve.

“Blue,” the
doctor reported.

“I prefer blue.”
I yawned again. “Can you put my bags in that one please?”

The doctor
collected the key fob that controlled the set of hover luggage, clicked it, and
the bags floated into the air and followed her into the bedroom. I had another
desperate attempt to make the tablet dissolve in the juice, and this time I
succeeded. I peered into the depths of the juice. Fortunately it was bright
red, so any remaining fragments of tablet were invisible.

I left the full
glass of juice on the table, and carried my own half-empty one into the
bedroom, moving slowly as if I was already half asleep. The doctor met me, and
hastily took the glass from my hand, putting it on the table next to the bed.

“Shall I find
you a sleep suit?” she asked, gesturing at the hover luggage.

“No, I … I’ll
lie down now, and change later.”

I stretched out
on the bed, and closed my eyes. There were a couple of minutes of total
silence, followed by what I thought was the sound of the doctor leaving the
room.

I opened my eyes
cautiously and looked around. Yes, the doctor had gone. Silly woman, letting me
fool her like that. Had she forgotten that my clan made vid programmes? Given
the type of vids they were, I didn’t act in them myself of course – my clan
hired the clanless or outlanders from other sectors as actors – but I’d still
learned a lot about acting over the years.

The question now
was if the doctor would drink the juice and be drugged by her own tablet. I
hoped she would. If necessary I was prepared to hit her over the head with her
own medical bag, but it would be a lot easier for both of us if she just drank
the juice.

I made myself
wait what seemed like an endless time, but was probably only half an hour, then
crept across to the door and opened it a crack. The doctor was sitting in a
chair, slumped to one side, apparently deeply asleep. On the floor beside her
was the empty juice glass.

My theory was
that the doctor would have given me a very strong sedative to make sure I
didn’t cause trouble, but I was still careful not to make a sound as I entered
the room. I remembered seeing the doctor put my lookup in her medical bag, so …
Yes, it was there!

I grabbed it,
retreated back into the bedroom and closed the door, then eagerly checked for
messages. There were some from my parents and friends, all saying roughly the
same thing. Lolek had told them I wanted to be left alone to recover, but I
should let them know if I needed anything. I got the impression everyone was
worried about the situation, but too scared of Lolek to argue with him.

I got to the end
of the messages and bit my lip. The message I wanted most was missing. There
was nothing at all from Lolmack. I frowned. My parents and friends had tried to
call me, and left messages when they didn’t get an answer. It was possible
Lolmack had called me too, but not felt able to leave a message. If he was as
uncertain about my feelings as I was about his …

I remembered my
lookup kept a log of calls, and hurriedly checked it. There was a whole list of
entries with Lolmack’s name! The first call must have arrived only minutes
after the doctor took charge of my lookup. There were a dozen more after that,
and several attempts to send recorded messages as well. Everything was flagged
as automatically rejected. The doctor must have set my lookup to reject any
contact from Lolmack.

I cancelled the
reject order, and tapped the lookup to call Lolmack myself. There was a long
delay, and I started panicking, thinking that after making so many rejected
calls he’d decided to reject mine, then he finally answered.

I felt a sudden
surge of emotion at the sight of his face. Lolmack wasn’t nearly as handsome as
Ardreath, but I’d always felt so safe with him to protect me. Even talking to
Lolek hadn’t been as frightening when Lolmack stood next to me. Just looking at
him now made me feel reassured and …

But I mustn’t
let myself feel like that. I mustn’t start counting on Lolmack, not until I
knew …

“Lolia!” Lolmack
had obviously been lying down when he answered the call. His image juddered for
a moment as he sat up, and brushed his hair out of his eyes with his left hand.
“Sorry to be so slow answering. I was fast asleep.”

Fast asleep? I
was surprised because it was still early evening.

“I missed your last
call because it came when I was portalling,” he continued. “You know how going
through a portal completely confuses the call system. I’ve been trying to call
you back ever since, but the calls kept being rejected.”

I pulled a face.
“That’s because Lolek took my lookup.”

Lolmack seemed
to hesitate for a moment, then nodded. “I guessed it was something like that.
Lolek sent me a message telling me I was banned from the clan hall, and would
be removed from the clan as soon as clan council had time to meet, so I knew he
wouldn’t want you contacting me. Where are you now?”

“Lolek left me
at a hotel with a doctor guarding me. I’ve drugged her, and got back my lookup,
but I don’t know how long the drugs will last.”

Lolmack looked
at me blankly for a couple of seconds, before his expression changed to a
mixture of surprise and amusement. “You drugged someone?”

“Yes. A lot has
been happening here. I’ll explain it all later, but …”

“What happened
to your face?” he interrupted me. “Did Lolek hit you?”

I’d forgotten
about the fluid patch on my cheek. “No, it wasn’t Lolek. Ardreath slapped me,
and caught me with one of those fancy rings he wears. It was only a slight
scratch, but Lolek insisted on me wearing a fluid patch to make it look bad in
front of the alliance council.”

I pulled off the
fluid patch. “See, my face is already healed. Forget about that. The important
thing now is …” I desperately needed to know if Lolmack still wanted me, still
cared about me, but I was scared to ask in case I got the wrong answer. “Ardreath
said he’d divorced both of us.”

Lolmack paused
before replying. “Yes, I got a cowardly recorded message from him.” He laughed.
“Isn’t it absolutely typical of Ardreath’s credit counting soul that, even in
the midst of disaster, he remembered to take a third of the funds from our
joint account before he divorced us?”

I would have
laughed too, but I was too nervous. “So … Where does that leave us?”

Lolmack kept me
in suspense while he thought about that, then he raised an eyebrow. “Where does
that leave us? Ardreath may have dishonourably broken his vows and left our
marriage, but I have not. Unless you choose to end our marriage, Lolia, you
remain my wife. Always.”

I felt a weird
floating sensation as relief hit me. I forced it away. If Lolmack and I were
going to be together, I had no time to waste. “Then I’ll come and join you
right away. What’s the code for your nearest portal?”

“Joining me
could be a little difficult,” said Lolmack.

“What? Why?” For
a moment I’d thought everything was all right, Lolmack still wanted me, but
maybe he didn’t after all. The way he kept hesitating, thinking things over
very carefully before he said a word …

“I’m not on
Artemis any longer,” he said.

Lolmack wasn’t
on Artemis! Now I understood the delays before he responded to the things I
said. He hadn’t been hesitating or thinking things over. He was on another
world in a different star system, so my call was being relayed through a series
of comms portals to reach him and there’d be a short delay before he heard what
I said. That explained why he’d been asleep too. He must be on a world where it
was night time.

“Did Lolek force
you to leave Artemis?” I asked.

Lolmack laughed.
“Both Ardreath and Lolek made it clear in their messages that I wasn’t welcome
on Artemis any longer, but that’s not why I left. Ardreath’s threats don’t scare
me. He likes to think he’s tough, but he’s been raised as a member of a highly
respectable clan. He’d have no idea where to hire thugs to beat me up, and he
wouldn’t last five seconds in a fight with me himself.”

I shook my head
anxiously. “I know Ardreath isn’t a real danger, but Lolek …”

Lolmack had a
habit of using a negligent, relaxed manner as camouflage, but now he let the
mask slip to look blatantly lethal. “It’s amusing that Lolek thinks he could
just order the clan enforcement group to attack the man who’s been their leader
for the last year, and they’d instantly obey. The truth is that they wouldn’t
openly defy Lolek, but they’d make very sure they kept looking for me in the
wrong places.”

Lolmack shrugged
and adopted his usual lazy posture again. “But it’s irrelevant anyway. Lolek’s
power is strictly limited to Artemis, so I’m safely out of his reach now.”

I was less sure
about that. Lolek had agents on some of the nearer Betan worlds, who helped
with some of our clan’s more dubious business activities. “Where exactly are
you?”

“I’m on Earth,
of course.” Lolmack smiled. “I have family here.”

He was on Earth!
Even when I was picturing what life would be like alone and clanless, it had
never occurred to me that I could leave Artemis, let alone leave Beta sector.
It wasn’t something a Betan would ever consider doing, but Lolmack hadn’t been
born in Beta sector. He’d lived on a dozen different worlds before he came to
Artemis as a 16-year-old orphan.

“How do I get to
Earth?” I asked.

“You’re seriously
considering joining me on Earth?”

I nodded. It
hadn’t occurred to me before, and even if it had I’d have been too scared to do
it alone, but with Lolmack …

“Do you realize
how your clan would react to you coming here?” asked Lolmack.

I pulled a face.
“My clan may be discarding me anyway. There’s a battle going on over whether we
stay in the alliance, and Lolek is willing to do anything to win it.”

Lolmack made a
sound of disgust. “The clan discarding me is understandable. I’m just a stray
they adopted, but you’re their own blood raised in their own clan hall. Have
they completely forgotten their oaths as Betans? Loyalty to family comes first
and foremost in that oath.”

“It’s Lolek
deciding this, not the clan.”

“No, it isn’t,”
said Lolmack. “Under Betan clan law, a clan leader can’t expel a clan member by
himself, he needs clan council’s agreement as well.”

“Betan clan law
only applies to officially recognized clans. Lolek follows the rules when it
suits him, but when it doesn’t …”