Forge of Heaven (20 page)

And the wind, in the trick of that slope, came up in their faces, a different wind, that carried the warmer air off the pans.

“Auguste?” he said.

1 2 8 • C . J . C h e r r y h

His watcher, Auguste, had listened in silence through all this, not saying a word—usual, in Auguste. But now Auguste failed to answer him.

Perhaps the storm and tricks of the high atmosphere had made the relay uncertain. They were very near the outer range of the other relays. Once the wind sank and the boys ran up the antenna on the relay station and got the battery going, his watchers, he was sure, would all at once have a great deal to say, much of it exhortation to return to camp and wait for rescue.

But for now they were on their own. Ian and Luz could oblige them by warning of further hazards and advising them the extent of the damage . . . once they were back in contact. No doubt Ian already knew about the earthquake.

“The young bull thinks he is master,” Hati said. “But he is not easy about it. He knows the old bull is back here.”

Small chance that the young bull, having his prizes headed down land, out of scent and sight, would come back on his own for a fight. He followed the females, damn them, thinking he led them, and they had done what beshti would do, going toward graze and most of all, water, down to the pans, where beshti were always most comfortable. Once they smelled that warm wind, all thought of the camp would fly right out of their heads.

“We have no choice,” he said.

So they rode away down the slot, headed onto the spired terraces above the pans.

Silence in his head was a curious thing.

It felt like old times.

0 9 1 0 H O N A N E W DAY, and the Earth ship was now three hours at dock, all its attachments made. The
Southern Cross,
its name was, declared to be a research vessel. And carrying light armament.

Armament. That was uncommon. That might say something about the ship’s capabilities, but it still said nothing about its purpose here, in this most sensitive zone . . . inside what was, after all,
ondat
territory. If its arrival at Concord, even with light weapons, was in any wise a gesture aimed at the
ondat,
it was sheer folly, not even to be contemplated. If it was, as history indicated, a little ges-

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 2 9

ture aimed at the Outsider authority, it was still provocative of the
ondat
. Neither was acceptable.

Setha Reaux meant to make that point early and strenously—once he found out what the ship was up to.

Ambassador Andreas Gide held the explanation of what was going on, the only source of explanation that would reach Concord’s deck, and Setha Reaux, dressed in his immaculate best, had headed down for the main-level personnel reception area to meet him, as far as meetings could go, once the necessary connection was made. But just as he got under way, security called with an emergency advisement, informing him, to his great dismay, that Ambassador Gide had left the dock on his own, refusing all advice, and headed up in the cargo-area lift system. The exit that particular lift bank afforded would be a seventh-level public station next to the Customs administrative offices.

What in hell was Gide doing?

Reaux immediately changed his car’s destination. He was not that far from the offices in question. He reversed course and went up.

And, a little breathless from the requisite walkover from a 53rd Street station rather than try to route over the Customs Plaza, Reaux arrived, planted himself in front of the bank of lift doors at Customs Plaza, watched the levels tick off on the digital indicator of an inbound lift, and drew a deep breath as Gide’s car arrived. Intercept successful.

The lift doors opened. A chest-high ovoid vehicle trundled out.

A fog of melting condensation still hung about the vehicle’s cold plastic surface, a shifting mix of violets and blues that flowed like oil on water, showing no window.

Then, astonishingly, the machine extruded a violet bubble, which quickly swelled up into a head-and-shoulders simulacrum of a middle-aged man. It had a surly, heavy-jowled face and shoulder-length hair, all shining violet and fuming with cold.

The mobile containment was no surprise. Elaborate and heavy as it was, it
was
the suit which Gide would wear continually, but the usual mode of interaction of such containments was a simple holo cube on the front.
This
unprecedented innovation, this vanity, this shape it presented to the outside world, reminded Reaux of 1 3 0 • C . J . C h e r r y h

nothing so much as the fabled Sphinx of Earth—the head and forearms of a man on the body of a beetle, a smooth, shining carapace, both sheathed in that continually shifting oil-slick plasm.

Whatever that substance was—and in his tenure on the edge of
ondat
space he thought he’d seen all there was to see—it gave off cold vapor, and didn’t encourage an exploratory touch.

The head, in its light fog of condensation, looked around, and one had to wonder whether Gide, inside, actually saw his surroundings via those eyes, or whether Gide was looking at him on screens through entirely different receptors. Whatever the medium, Reaux was willing to bet that the sensors in that carapace compared very well to an Outsider’s internal augmentations, that they saw into the extremes of the spectrum, that Gide could hear a pin drop—literally—if he wanted to. And he also bet that the apparatus recorded. Oh, depend on it, that shell recorded and eventually transmitted information back to the ship.

But the lift hadn’t delivered the ambassador to his office, and the ambassador had utterly ignored the official advisements to wait on dockside, as if to assert he went where he pleased and saw what he wanted. Maybe the ambassador
wanted
an official embarrassment,
wanted
to look around, and to be able to start their relations with an official fuss about protocols.

Well, he and the lift automatics had outmaneuvered that try.

“Ambassador Gide.” A little bow, a little out of breath and trying to look serene. “I’m Governor Reaux. Welcome to Concord.”

The sphinx-face stared at him. Liquid blue ice scanned him up and down. Blue lips drew further down at the corners. “A long,
un-attended
ride.” The ambassador
was
trying to provoke an incident.

And the thick Earth-ethnic accent jolted a compatriot’s memory, sowed self-doubt. “Well, well,” Gide said impatiently, “are we going to have to put up with tedious ceremonials here and now, at this late hour? Get on with them, if we must.”

“If you wish not, Mr. Ambassador, it’s certainly easy to dispense with them.” And give due notice to departmental heads, shivering in the dockside cold. “You’re welcome in my office, two levels up from here.” It would be pushing it to say the ambassador had mistaken his destination, or to hint that the peculiarities of the lift system, which needed a citizen code card on the dockside lifts, had Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 3 1

foxed the ambassador’s solo attempts to breach security and dumped him right on the plaza where any common non-citizen had to go.

The sphinx-face looked around the area, looked far to the left, and again to the right. “This is Customs Administration. Where is my residence from here?”

“This is the main foyer for those who have to file visa affidavits, Mr. Ambassador, who need a temporary card.” He refrained from saying, fool. “Customs is certainly superfluous in your case. We can go from here either to my office, or straight to your residence.”

Impossible to offer food, drink, or even a soft bed to their visitor.

What one of these rigs actually wanted was general connectivity and a secure place with wide doorways, which could be any apartment or office thus equipped, where there were adequate connector-slots. But Reaux had rather have this visitor well-protected. Constantly. And soon. And
hell
if he was going to issue Gide a code-card to let him come and go from docks to residencies at will. “If you’ll share a lift with me, I’ll escort you myself wherever you would wish to go.”

“My requirements?”

“Exactly as requested, a secure apartment with broad accesses, on the lesser-gravity deck, in the heart of our community. It has all the connections, a secure line to your ship.” The shell was, in its way, a bubble of pure Earth environment extended from the ship—a bubble that the ship extruded onto their dock and up into their station, since never, never, never could Mother Earth contaminate anyone, but the mere breath of station air would contaminate the purity of their visitor. Gide would leave that extravagant shell behind in a few days, discarding it like some outmoded chrysalis on the dock, as the ship took him in and sealed him behind its pure, uncontaminated hull, never having contacted the station’s air or water.

Then all the intriguing secrets of this simulacrum might be available to them to be extracted, if there were any secrets in it that they didn’t already have, and by the look of it, there might be plenty. Earth might not particularly care about the expense or the knowledge shed along with that carapace, not relative to the value of the awe it generated among mere station-dwelling provincials, 1 3 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h

and assuredly it wouldn’t want it back, no matter it was perfectly possible to decontaminate the thing. Earth and Inner Space didn’t covet a stray molecule of Concord’s air, let alone suffer its other mi-croscopic contaminations, ever, in any form, or in symbol, to enter their ships or their lungs. The fuel they bought on station all burned in an antimatter furnace, utterly annihilated. They traded, but they traded in programs and data. God forbid they ever, ever touched a damned thing.

Supercilious sods. Had he been one of them—ever?

“My apartment,” Gide said curtly. “Now.”

“Certainly.” With an iron smile.

Earth didn’t speak Concord’s language—no one else, in fact, did that—as Earth didn’t breathe their air. And Reaux was very sure now not only that he knew what language Gide spoke as a native, besides that of the Commonwealth, but what accent.
They
shared a birthplace. Not that it won him acceptance from Gide. From the first time he’d taken a post outside Earth, the very first time he’d drawn the air of the Inner Worlds inside his lungs, he accepted being doomed to live no closer to Paris than the Inner Worlds.

From the first time he’d set foot on Serine, truly in Outsider territory, for a higher post, even the Inner Worlds became barred to him. That sacrifice was the only route to career advancement for a man of modest means—and in his case, the path to power, the ultimate that any station governor could reach, the most sensitive governorship, the highest, the most isolate. He was accustomed to making decisions on his own, dealing one-on-one with the Outsider authority at Apex.

He had power . . . until this higher breed of Earther, like Mr.

Gide, with his doubtless upper-class accent, showed up, a power whose incidental report could even conceivably damn a governor for removal. A long-sitting governor, and Reaux was that, inevitably lost touch, and Concord more than most. He had no complete guarantee what party on Earth Gide represented, what beliefs Gide supported, what faults Gide came here to complain of.

A governor’s sin might consist only in belonging to the wrong faction, the wrong dogma, as administrations rose and fell on Earth.

It was a hellish system, a system ages entrenched, vulnerable to slow corruption that no one on the outside had the power to fight Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 3 3

and no one on the inside ever understood enough to challenge—that was the absolute hell of it, and he had halfway forgotten that visceral fact of politics until he came face-to-face—so to speak—with this ostentatious display of Earth’s power. Good appearances were everything. Substance was rarely at issue. Any whisper of a governor sympathizing too much with the people he governed was grounds for suspicion. A governor getting along well with the Outside was suspect for that fault.

In Reaux’s own carefully concealed opinion, it was a system that hadn’t come to disaster only because Outsiders, who profited from Earth’s occasional confusion, lived very comfortably with Earth’s governors in occasional fear, and had no reason to push for anything different.

He’d been too busy to be panicked until now, now that he was confronted by a presence clearly designed to intimidate, and now that he found no hint of courtesy extended toward him or his station. He was very glad not to have begun their meetings by telling Mr. Gide his arrival in the Plaza was his own stupid fault.

The sphinx glided along beside him in surly silence, down the short distance to the next bank of lifts. For the moments it took to get Mr. Gide to safety, the whole lift system in this quadrant of the station had to be frozen, a condition they would have avoided had Mr. Gide routed himself where they wanted him. A few Customs supervisory staff stood back, watching, securing the area, not intruding. A few news recorders bobbed in the air, a carefully managed presence, no human agents intruding here with a babble of questions. Some powers even the news feared.

The sphinx entered the car, turned, facing the door. Reaux barely managed to get himself and his two bodyguards inside with it, where it had grandly placed itself.

“Code 12,” Reaux said to the system, and the car smoothly engaged and gathered speed. It wasn’t an address code that that simple number represented. It was a set of preset operations, instructions to the lift system, security moving to cordon off areas of transit as they passed and concentrating efforts in areas where they were going, getting them back where they should have gone.

“Remarkable technology, that of yours, Mr. Gide.” He wondered could there possibly be sensory input from the car’s surface that 1 3 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h

might appreciate the fine surroundings he had arranged for the man—as distinct from the utilitarian offices that might adequately have served the machine itself. “It’s certainly a striking application.”

“Useful,” Gide said coldly. So that conversation died, assassinated.