Engine City (11 page)

“Very good,” said Volkov. “Perhaps, then, you are Fabians?”

“Yes,” said Ennius. “Just as Wells was.”

Volkov felt relieved that he’d got the connection right. It was about all he knew about Wells—another piece of trivia remembered from his philosophy classes. Other than that, the name of Wells conjured nothing for him but a vague image of heat rays and tentacles. Where did that come from? Ah, yes,
The War of the Worlds.
And there was something else, another title that had been mentioned in the lecture on the history of socialism . . . 

He raised his half-empty glass. “To the war of the worlds,” he said. “And the modern Utopia!”

Julia de Zama was inspecting him with a sardonic but admiring eye. She clinked her glass on his.

“To the new Machiavelli,” she said.

Lydia twirled, sending the pleats from the waist at the back of her chrysanthemum-print kimono-like robe flaring out, then tottered and grabbed the nearest pillar. She pushed away from it, recovering her balance and holding out her arms, the sunray-pleated sleeves opening like fans. She walked as though on a tightrope across the grass of the roof terrace to the table where Esias sat under a fixed umbrella with a jug of iced fruit juice and a stack of newspapers.

“The platform shoes take some getting used to,” she admitted, taking a seat.

So that was why she looked so tall.

“But the main thing I like about this,” she went on, “is that it’s office wear. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Very pretty,” said Esias. “Gorgeous, in fact.”

Lydia poured herself a drink and pouted around the straw. “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

Esias rocked his seat back and waved a hand. “No, no, nothing to do with you. You’re lovely. I’m a bit disgruntled, that’s all. Our friend Volkov is up to his old tricks.”

Lydia blushed, as well she might. Esias still simmered with disapproval over her involvement with Volkov’s intrigues on Croatan, a few jumps and a few months behind them, and he still harbored a deep suspicion that the Cosmonaut’s intentions toward his daughter were honorable. If they were having an affair, it was none of his business, any more than it had been when Volkov and Faustina had been going at it like rabbits. But if Volkov were to make a proposal, and Lydia were to accept, then he would find it difficult—in fact, outright embarrassing—to refuse it. And then he would lose his number seven daughter forever, unless—forlorn hope—Volkov’s project of remixing the elixir came to fruition in something less than a lifetime.

But Lydia’s reply showed she’d kept her composure. “Trying to assemble a coalition of progressive forces, is he?”

Esias groaned. The smatter of ugly jargon Lydia had picked up from the incorrigible ancient Communist was not the least of his bad influences.

“It’s worse,” he said. “He seems to have found one.”

He told her about the morning’s meetings. “This Modern Society”—he flicked at the stack of newspapers—“seems to be quite influential. It’s all talk, because the guilds and workshops are as conservative here as they are anywhere else—they’ll gladly seize on new machines, but not on great disruptions to their methods of work. Grand ideas about giant assembly lines don’t really appeal to them. But they have the most confused and exaggerated ideas about Earth, about the great independent achievements of mankind back in the Solar System, all based on the snippets that dribbled in from the ships that came back before we did. Heaven knows what’s going to happen when Volkov speaks to the Senate—they’ve already summoned him, and everyone knows it. There’s not a chance of that session’s being held
in camera,
and not a chance of his being discreet. The whole place is primed for Volkov to detonate.”

Lydia gazed out over the upper tiers of the city shimmering in the heat haze, then back at her father.

“I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “It’s not like Croatan was, with all that social discontent in Rawliston and their funny religions and unstable political system. This city’s pretty good at assimilating new ideas without changing very much. There’ve been times in the past few days when I’ve felt we’ve been away for two weeks, not two hundred years.”

“That’s just the trouble,” said Esias. “Volkov can completely revolutionize Nova Babylonia—Nova Terra, come to that—without a revolution. The Academy and the Defense Committee have been skeptical of his plans. No doubt the Senate will be, too. But in each case, there was a minority whom he managed to fascinate. And that minority can take it to the populace. Once the ideas get out that people can be as long-lived as saurs, and that they can get into space without the saurs, and that there is a threat from space that the saurs can’t help us meet, then—well, frankly, I’m glad we’ll be out of here in a couple of months.”

“So am I,” said Lydia. She twiddled ice in the bottom of her glass. “And back in a couple of centuries, by which time the dust should have settled.”

Interesting, Esias thought, that she still didn’t take the prospect of an alien incursion seriously. Perhaps that instinctive skepticism would prove Volkov’s undoing in the long run. On the other hand, there was something else she wasn’t taking seriously, and it was a good deal more important and closer to hand.

“Ah,” said Esias. “It won’t be the usual round trip this time. We could be back in one century, or even less.”

Lydia frowned her puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“Ninety-six years have passed since we left Croatan. Fifty or so more will have passed before we are halfway back. Time enough, I think, for the Cosmonaut clans of Mingulay to build more starships, to extend their operations, to expand their range. Even allowing for a long time to calculate the navigation for each new jump, I should not be at all surprised to find that they have expanded far enough to meet us somewhere
en route.
And if they do”—he rubbed his hands—“here is the beauty of the deal I made with the Cairns family: They will have wares from the outer worlds that we can exchange for our Nova Babylonian commodities right then and there. We can then transfer to another merchant vessel on its return trip—for a suitable consideration, no doubt, but that shouldn’t be a problem, we can cut them in on the deal—and return to Nova Terra much sooner than expected, thus stealing a march on our competitors.”

“Oh,” said Lydia, “very good!” She thought about it for a moment. “And what if they haven’t?”

Esias shrugged. “Then we’re no worse off. We return in two hundred years as usual and, as you say, the dust should have settled by then.” He smiled wryly. “Assuming the aliens haven’t invaded, that is.”

“What do you think of . . . all that?”

“Consider the probabilities,” Esias said. “The Second Sphere has existed for thousands of years, to our certain knowledge. For millions, according to the saurs, and I believe them. Earth has existed on the other side of the Foamy Wake for even longer, according to the books in the
Bright Star’s
libraries, and I believe them, too. In all that time, there has been no evidence of any other space-traveling species than the saurs. In fact, the only scraps of evidence that
Earth
has been visited turn out to have been because of the activities of saurs, and the saurs originated on Earth. The god in the Solar System with which the crew of the
Bright Star
were originally in contact gave them no hint of any other space-going species.”

“It didn’t tell them about the saurs, either,” said Lydia.

“That’s a point,” Esias conceded, “but it doesn’t affect the argument I find most persuasive in my own mind, which is—given how long the situation has remained as I’ve said, how likely is it that a huge change in it should coincide with our brief lives? The chances are at least thousands to one against, I should say.”

Lydia pondered this. “I suspect there’s a fallacy in that argument somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Hah!” said Esias. “It’s true, unlikely events happen, and that argument can’t rule them out—merely show that unlikely is what they are. But at an intuitive level, some such reasoning must account for my subjective lack of panic about Volkov’s, ah, ‘monkey-spiders.’ And everybody else’s, I shouldn’t wonder. Including yours, respected Number-seven daughter.”

Lydia let her eyes almost close. “You have something in mind for me to do,” she said.

“Yes,” Esias said, sitting up. “Show lots of enthusiastic interest in what Volkov is up to.” He raised his eyebrows. “If, that is, you can still stand his company?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lydia. “I can that.”

Peter Ennius had left. Julia de Zama tracked his departure with a cynical eye.

“Off to make a report,” she said.

“You mean—”

“Of course. There’s always somebody, isn’t there?”

Volkov agreed that there was always somebody. “A useful man to have on the inside,” he said.

“Exactly,” said Julia. She waved a hand, and fresh drinks were placed in front of them.

“So,” she said, “it’s just us.”

“Indeed,” said Volkov. He chinked his glass against hers. “Long life!”

She repeated the toast. “You know,” she said, “that’s a much more interesting prospect than alien invasion.”

“I know,” said Volkov. “I intend to make much of it.”

“A good idea, but not exactly what I had in mind. I have a strong personal interest in it myself.”

“You’re a bit young to concern yourself with that.”

She gave him a severe look. “You need not flatter me.”

Volkov raised his eyebrows. “No flattery was intended, but”—he smiled—“if you say so, I must take your word against the evidence of my eyes.”

She flushed slightly. “The light is kind, if you are not.”

He smiled again, over the rim of his glass. “I expect progress in that area within, oh, ten years, even if half the Academy has to die of old age first.”

“Progress,” said Julia. “If you only knew how hard it is to find someone who understands the meaning of progress.”

Mother of God, he thought, if you only knew.

“Tell me about the Modern Society,” he said.

Lydia joined them, without pretense that it wasn’t deliberate, about halfway through the afternoon.

“I’ve been looking over some of the Modern Society’s ideas in the papers,” she explained, after introductions.

“Your father sent you,” said Volkov.

Several empty beer glasses had accumulated on the table; Lydia knew him better than to assume this meant he was drunk. Julia de Zama, on the other hand, looked as if her self-control was less secure. She was sitting back in a louche manner, one arm draped along the back of the seat behind Volkov, and she was giving Lydia a fiercely territorial stare.

“Of course he did,” Lydia said, primly arranging her skirts. “He’s interested in what you’re doing. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in it myself. This is my city you’re messing with.”

On reflection, she could have put it better than that. But there was something about Volkov that had always impelled her to be blunt. He seemed to like it. Julia de Zama didn’t. She leaned, or maybe (Lydia thought uncharitably) swayed forward and aimed a forefinger.

“It’s not your city,” she said. “The presumption that it is is half our problem. You people—the Traders—bring changes with every ship, and blithely depart before they take effect, yet always expect the city to be much the same when they return.”

Lydia could see the justice of this—it was after all what she herself had said earlier, but expressed in a hostile tone.

“That’s not a problem,” she said. “It’s a solution. We give the city stability without stagnation, progress without destruction.”

“No you don’t,” said de Zama. “You give it muddle and waste and cross-purposes, and evade both consequence and responsibility. And I’ll tell you something else. We don’t need you. We don’t need the Traders, and we don’t need the saurs. If we were to rely on our own resources, we should astonish ourselves.”

“I’m sure you would,” said Lydia. “But how would you do it, exactly? How would you cut the city loose from all the attachments of trade with other stars and other species? How would you manage affairs without saur mediation? Tell me. Go ahead, I’m all ears. Astonish
me
.”

And recklessly, passionately, eloquently, Julia de Zama did. She seemed even to astonish Volkov, who for once was acting the part of moderation. Lydia listened and watched the Cosmonaut and the Senator, their voices and eyes and hands, and realized something more astonishing than the Modern Society’s ambitions: Volkov and de Zama were falling in love.

Lydia felt nothing but relief.

Volkov had never before in all his long life seen a saur shudder. When Voronar, the saur pilot and translator from the ship, had finished talking, Volkov saw seven saurs shudder at once. Deleneth, the apparent speaker for the group, turned her head slowly to Volkov, and the other heads turned in unison, like caged lizards watching a fly on the other side of a glass pane.

“You
talked,
” she said, “to the
gods?
”

Evidently Voronar had given an accurate account. The saurs all understood Trade Latin and other human languages—their linguistic facility was something Volkov admired without being impressed with, vaguely relating it to the imitative knack of birds—but for serious matters they preferred the subtler nuances of their own speech. This meeting was the most important of any he’d attended so far; more so even than the Senate hearing tomorrow. Its calling had been on shorter notice and had been more imperative. He could finesse anything that happened with the Senate, there or afterward. This group of representatives of the saurs resident in Nova Babylonia could not be blindsided.

“Yes, we did,” said Volkov, trying not to shift in his seat. The tiny room was built for saur comfort, not human. A back room of a saur dive near the harbor, its lighting was dim, its furniture was made of something like cork and was so small his knees were higher than his waist, and it all stank of hemp and fish. He was the only human present, and the only person who might just possibly be on his side in any contretemps was Voronar, assuming that saur’s loyalty to his employers overrode his solidarity with his kind, something on which Volkov was not counting and hoped not to find out.