Strings (26 page)

At last, though, she ran out of either breath or invention. “But you?” she asked. “That
big
young man of yours—never have I seen one so tall! Did you let him bed you again? Is he good? And tell me exactly what he looks like.”

Alya fought a tough withdrawing action before a barrage of questions, admitting to having been intimate with Cedric, but refusing to discuss his anatomy, stamina, or technique.

“Then I will borrow him and see,” Moala said complacently. She peered sideways into the holo. “There he is, no?”

And there he was, yes. As long as the window was open, then signals could relayed from the skiv, and at the moment the comset was showing the inside of the cab as if through a viewport behind the occupants. Devlin was driving, with Eccles Pandora beside him. In the rear seats, and only visible if one stood close and peeked in at an angle, were Baker Abel and the unmistakable shape of Cedric. This would be the third consecutive day that 4-I had dominated the world’s news, and Alya could not recall ever seeing a planetary excursion given such massive coverage; certainly not for a Class Three world.

Despite its cantilevered wheels and complex suspension, the skiv rolled and pitched. The view in the headlights showed the surface of Nile to be a jumble of boulders and ridges, largely hidden by the bloated globes and spires of fungoid vegetation, with only the steeper pinnacles emerging as completely bare rock. Some of the growths were as large as houses; some were shaped as grotesquely as floating seaweed. Any touched by the skiv exploded like puffballs into dust, which was whipped away by the wind, although Devlin had to keep using wipers to clear the sticky stuff from his windshield. Beyond the lurid, scabrous jungle, where the headlights could not reach, world and sky were black. The only thing similar on Earth would be a view from a submarine.

Somehow Alya had come back to the WSHB channel, and Pandora was piping a commentary in her sweet voice, occasionally flashing a question at Devlin.

Their destination lay about ten kilometers from Contact, Alya gathered, at the spot where the first skiv had been parked when the disaster occurred—it had been brought back to Contact by remote control. The detectors were picking up response from that area, from Gill Adele’s suit. So the sentience theory was looking shakier by the minute. Of course, if the suit had been moved—if it were set up on an altar, with offerings laid before it, for example—then a further search for stone-age beings might be justified.

Alya wondered if Cedric was regretting so much breakfast, with all that bouncing. And—

And the scene rippled
.

Pandora’s childish voice faded and returned, marred by a faint background crackling. Devlin must have seen the danger right away on his instruments, for he ripped out a screaming oath that stopped whatever his companion was saying. He revved the motors, spun the wheel, and the cab tilted almost on its side. Spires and trellises of fungus flashed by the windows, or erupted in blizzards of dust. The view shimmered again.

Then the scene was WSHB’s Nauc studio, with Frazer Franklin registering concern. “We have a minor transmission problem there, as you may have noticed. We…” He paused, raising a hand to his ear in a dramatic but completely unnecessary gesture. He let the suspense grow. “Apparently the problem is a little more serious than just—”

Alya knew how much more serious, but she was surprised to discover that she had her arms tight around Moala, who was in turn hugging her.

“
System
!” Alya shouted. “
Have you direct transmissions from that skiv on Nile
?” She wished Cedric were there, with his higher rating, but apparently hers was adequate. She had expected a refusal. Instead she was shown the cab again. If it had rocked before, now it was leaping, while the bloated jungle danced insanely before the plunging headlights, whirling from cellar to sky and back again. The motors’ roar was audible under Pandora’s screams. Could any machinery withstand such pounding for long? The transmission rippled, twisted, then stabilized again.

Cedric! Oh, Cedric!

Moala was shaking her. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

“It’s the string!” Alya said, fighting to keep panic out of her voice. There was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do. “The string’s become unstable.”

“Why?” Moala yelled, sounding prepared to go in search of whoever was responsible for the problem and make him stop it or rue his folly.

“
Insh’ Allah
!” It is the will of God.

Another gravitational field was interfering, some other mass approaching the line of the string. If it were very small and moving very fast—an asteroid, for example, close to either Earth or Nile—then the effect might pass in a few minutes, without damage. If it were larger, like a star, then the string was going to be broken. A broken string was never found again.

Alya began shouting orders at the set, switching views, jumping from the commercial channels to Cainsville’s own System and back again.

She saw the dome, vast and empty, but with the edges of the pit marked by a flicker of blue light like St. Elmo’s fire that could only be Cerenkov radiation.

Frazer Franklin was explaining about string instability and gravitational masses.

She demanded to see the control room and was denied by System.

On NABC, Goodson Jason was displaying a sim map showing the original destination and Contact and the present position of the skiv. At least ten more minutes to reach Contact, he said.

Alya tried to call Hubbard Agnes, and the call was refused.

She went back to the dome, and the pit was a seething mass of blue. She wondered if even a skiv could protect its occupants from radiation so fierce. If the window were still open when the explorers reached Contact, they might be fried coming through. The instability was growing.

Frazer Franklin was showing a sim map also. At least six minutes…

Alya wanted to scream.

She flipped back to the cab. Continuous stomach-churning ripples made the occupants look as if they were dissolving in turbid water. Pandora was mumbling in terror, not making sense. Devlin was doing little better, growling curses, fighting to make the best speed he could over the impossible terrain. Even a skiv had its limits. Even a skiv was not indestructible.

Pandora and Devlin were being bounced right and left and up and down in their safety harnesses, their voices being drowned by a steadily growing crackling roar.

Moala tightened her grip on Alya. “You love that long young man, then?”

Love? For a moment Alya was speechless, as though a dinosaur had appeared in front of her. Love? Was this love? “I must,” she said. “Yes, I must. I wouldn’t be sniveling like this otherwise, would I?”

“But where is he?”

Cedric and Baker had gone. Her eyes were so blurry that she had not noticed the two empty seats.

“
Show me Hubbard Cedric Dickson
!”

She thought it would not work. Almost she could feel that the response was slower than normal, as though System were mulling over confidentiality, weighing internal priorities against a visitor’s rating. Then she was granted a clear view back from the cab, toward the rear of the skiv. Cedric, followed by Baker Abel, was working his way along the corridor. There was a railing attached to one wall for just that purpose, but they were making slow progress, gripping with both hands, edging sideways. Half the time they must have felt as if they were standing on their heads. Cedric buckled and almost fell, then pulled himself upright, and a moment later Alya saw his feet leave the floor.

“Move it, fatso!” Baker’s yell was just audible through the scream of static. “You’re plugging up the works. Suck your gut in!”

Cedric grinned back at him. He did not look especially frightened. He never would. Oh, that grin!

Perhaps he was even preparing a suitably insulting reply. The scene was shimmering constantly, with patches of fog walking around in it, so Alya did not see exactly when it happened, but a door flew open between her and the two struggling men. Out hurled a pillow, a chair, and then another man. He came out half crouched, struck the opposite wall, rolled, and then spread out, flat on his back. He had no clothes on.

“Who’s that?” Moala barked. She was still hugging Alya like a hungry python. Baker and Cedric seemed to be wondering the same thing. They had stopped to stare.

And Alya certainly was wondering. The first skiv to visit Nile had been booby-trapped with poison. Now the second contained an unauthorized passenger. Why would anyone stow away on a trip to Nile?

Blur…shimmy…steady again. Whatever Abel and Cedric had said about the intruder, Baker was clearly urging Cedric on toward the rear, while Cedric wanted to go back and aid the unconscious stranger.

He was a smallish man, dark and hairy. Moala would approve of his chest, Alya thought irrelevantly, but probably not of much else, for he was thin-shanked and scrawny. As the skiv lurched, he was bouncing and sliding, at times coming right off the floor and then flopping down again like a tossed pancake.

Baker was roaring. With obvious reluctance, Cedric had begun moving rearward again.

Disconnection—

Silence.

The holo contained only a featureless whirl of gray snow.

“Transmission interrupted,” System said.

Alya wailed. Moala hauled her over to the bed and sat her down.

If needs be, almost indefinitely
—the skiv would keep them alive until they died of old age or went mad. Trapped in hell. But there were five people, if that fifth one was still alive and if he survived the beating he had been getting. How long would a SKIV-4 support five? And who was the stowaway?

Alya called for WSHB, and there was Frazer Franklin, gazing solemnly straight out at her.

“…by the authorities at the Institute that the window has been closed. The instability had reached the point where the string was unusable.”

He sighed. Behind him a mirage display showed a ghostly replay of the four explorers as they must have been shown earlier, lined up in front of the skiv door: Devlin’s unctuous toothy grin, Pandora’s simper, Baker’s leer. Behind them, shining over their heads like a sunrise, the juvenile glee of Hubbard Cedric.

“This means that the four explorers have been lost. You all know that a broken string can never be recovered. Even if Nile were by a miracle located later, it would be on a different string altogether, and might be removed by thousands or millions of years from the world that these four brave explorers were visiting. And, with or without a time anomaly, Contact could be half a world away from their present location.”

He observed a few moments’ silence.

“To me personally, and to all of us in WSHB, this tragedy—”

Ping
!

Override—

Alya found herself facing the December stare of Hubbard Agnes. “You know what has happened?” the director inquired.

“I offer my deepest sympathy on the loss of your grandson, ma’am.”

Hubbard pouted. She was wearing an elaborate outfit in cornflower blue, with a high lace collar, almost a ruff. Her hair, as always, was a perfection in ice sculpture.

Fifty-six years from now on Tiber, Alya thought, I will not look as good as that.

“It was unfortunate. More unfortunate from your point of view, Highness, is that we also lost Deputy Devlin and Ranger Baker, party chief for your mission.”

“What—”

Hubbard’s thin white eyebrows rose in ridicule. “You were mourning the wrong one, perhaps? I have no choice but to close the Tiber file, Princess.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes. Deputy directors are not readily replaced. Baker was in charge of all the arrangements. By the time we can reorganize for a planting, Tiber will be long gone. Maybe later in the year, or next year, some other world…”

“Who was the fourth man?”

After a perceptible pause, Hubbard said, “What fourth man?”

“There was a fourth man on that skiv. One woman and four men. He fell out into the corridor near the end, when Cedric and Abel were—why were they going to the rear, anyway?”

Hubbard shrugged narrow shoulders. “There could have been no fourth man, Princess. The imaging was very poor, right at the end.”

“I saw him!”

“No, you didn’t. There was no fourth man. You must know enough about our procedures to know that a skiv is never loaded above its rating.
Never
! There could have been no fifth person on board. I can’t imagine why the other two might have left the cab, if indeed they did.”

She would certainly have the records wiped, though, just in case anyone tried to check.

Alya bowed ironically. No one would ever know what sinister plans that iron-hearted woman had prepared for her grandson. But she had known about the fourth man, and she knew why Cedric and Baker had left the cab.

Cedric, oh Cedric! Who could think of a more hellish end?

“If you will please have your packing attended to as soon as possible, Your Highness?” the director asked icily. “The lev leaves in thirty minutes.”

“No!”

“Yes.” Vindictive triumph played over lips as old as China. “The planting is canceled. Cedric is lost forever, and you are going back to Banzarak.”

Nauc/Cainsville, April 9—10

WAY BACK IN 2042 or 2043, Hastings Willoughby had made a tour through Southeast Asia and called in on the sultan of Banzarak. Although young and still new on his throne, Kassan’assan had impressed the Secretary General as being already much more than the figurehead his constitutional position decreed.

Just as Banzarakian culture was a mishmash of many elements contributed by its neighbors—Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and even jungle animism—so the people themselves comprised a blend of many races. Normally they tended toward a nondescript average, but occasionally the melt would throw up someone quite extraordinary. Kassan’assan was one such, and so was his youngest sister, Princess Alya. Her beauty had been obvious even then, when she could not have been more than twelve—slight and dark, already sporting a cataract of heavy midnight hair and eyes enshrining all the ancient mystery of the East. Willoughby had prophesied that she would break men’s hearts.

At the moment she looked more ready to break heads.

The U.N.’s new HQ building was provided with an imposing grand entrance for receiving distinguished guests: marble steps and high pillars of porphyry. Willoughby had selected the design himself and it was a fraud, being located safely indoors, out of the dangers of weather. Somehow that seemed symbolic. So far it had been reserved for ceremonial welcomes to heads of state or heads of government, but today he had decided that youth and beauty should be given the honor they deserved. To the great disgust of his protocol staff, he decreed that he would greet the princess there.

His life had been extremely hectic during the last few days, and he was feeling his age. He thought that a couple of hours entertaining a pretty girl was exactly what the geriatrician ordered. He had even indulged himself in a cane to lean on, but he rather regretted that as he watched Alya come striding up the shallow steps in a very unladylike march, her small entourage hurrying behind her and red-suited bulls from the Institute in escort. A bearded
hajji
, who must be her political case worker, was whispering urgently in her ear, undoubtedly trying to slow her down. Princess Alya was in no mood to heed his cautions.

Yes, a heartbreaker. She was clothed in skintight opal white, an outrageous choice and a stunning success. Tiny ripples of fire flowed over her as she moved—ruby and leaf green and kingfisher blue. She was taller than she seemed at first glance, and slender. She could almost have been taken for a boy, so unobtrusive were the curves of the hips and the conical breasts, but few youths could have ever matched that neck, or the tiny waist, or the raging arrogance that burned in every move.

Willoughby was amused. Agnes had warned him that there would be tempests.

Cameramen fluttered around like moths as he bowed over the royal hand. Age honoring youth—her slender beauty and his sagging decrepitude—he knew they made an incongruous picture. That, and Alya’s looks, would ensure them a few seconds on the evening news, which was all that mattered.

He had not prepared a speech; after the first few thousand, speeches came easy. He bid the princess welcome, as the honored representative of her brother. The bearded man held out a paper for her to read. She accepted it graciously, then crumpled it with one hand and threw it at his feet. Was he the cause of her vexation, or only the butt? Then she spoke clearly and in perfect English, saying no more than necessary and barely enough.

She was extremely mad about something. She was also very young. Willoughby decided that further ceremony would be an unnecessary risk. He led her inside and skillfully engineered her away from her companions and into a private room. As the door closed, he caught a glimpse of the hairy-faced hack grinding his teeth.

The Banzaraki royal house, as he recalled, was pretty well agnostic in private, in spite of its many public roles. “I would not offend if I offered a sherry before lunch, Your Highness?”

She was glancing around the little office. It was cozily furnished and cunningly littered as though in constant use. Probably no one had been in it for weeks, but the disarray suggested informality and invited confidence. And none of the imposing documents lying around was of any importance whatsoever.

She released a long breath. “A sherry would be very welcome.”

“Anything else?”

“Some answers.”

“As many as I can find.”

Her reply was a look of skepticism. Agnes had that effect on some people.

He saw her comfortably seated; he poured the sherry. Then he settled into an oversize, oversoft chair that disguised his height. He raised his glass. “Your health and that of your royal brother, and his family.”

They sipped. She was eyeing him like a fencer armed with a real saber. He smiled. Pretty girls had that effect on him.

“First question? No, I’ll start. Did you have a good journey?”

“No. It was a zoo.” The way she bared her teeth tended to confirm the legends of headhunters in her family tree, and not very many branches up, either. The lev must have been packed with reporters returning from Cainsville, and a beautiful princess would have been a welcome diversion.

He laughed aloud. “Your turn, then.”

She studied him for a moment. “Why do you not mourn your grandson?”

“Oi! Your claws draw blood, ma’am.”

“Is it thinner than water?”

“I commend your grasp of English idiom.”

“I admire your skill at deflecting inquiry.”

He regarded her while he took a sip of sherry, amused by the youthfully aggressive questioning. “Untimely death is always a tragedy, but I would be hypocritical to pretend any special sorrow for a young man I did not know existed until two days ago. I met him only once, for less than an hour. You had become friends?”

“Lovers.” She hoped to shock him, but Hastings Willoughby had lost all his shockability long before this razor-tooth tigress cub was born. Still, his grandson must have been an extremely fast worker. Or she was. He felt a pang of envy at the thought of being nineteen and admitted to her bed.

Her poise was remarkable for her age, but that was a family trait. Willoughby had met most of the royal Banzarakians who had passed through Nauc in the last twenty-five years en route to Cainsville and worlds unknown, and he recognized the innate arrogance—but who would not walk tall after being reared on royal jelly and guided by the
buddhi
, the finger of God?

Yet there had been exceptions. A few had still been unsure of exactly what their inner demon was demanding, and those had been very scared young aristocrats indeed, meeting the unknown for the first time in their lives. Alya’s eyes had borne traces of that dread two days before, at the press conference. It had gone now. It always did, as soon as they saw their path clear ahead again.

“Are you certain,” she inquired sweetly, “that Cedric is dead?”

Willoughby had not thought of that alternative, and did not try to conceal his surprise. “I had never…You think that the Institute can recover a broken string? They’ve always denied—”

She shook her head vigorously, spilling plumes of peacock and hummingbird over her shoulders and breasts. “No. I’ve seen the math. The solutions are infinite. A string is only straight in theory. In practice it’s bent by gravitational anomalies, just as light is. When they move, it moves. It wriggles, but you never know even which dimension to adjust, let alone—” She smiled, and for the first time she looked her age. “Sorry, Mr. Secretary General! Kas is always lecturing me for lecturing. No, when contact is lost, it’s lost for good. But the break could have been faked. Stability is hard to achieve, instability is easy. The next window may still be available on schedule, four days from now.”

Willoughby pondered that. “I swear to you, ma’am, that I honestly don’t know. Agnes rarely takes me into her confidence. Almost never. I can see why she might fake a disappearance for the ranger, if he was the one who was going to lead the colonization.”

“But the others are harder to explain?” The beat of Alya’s heart showed just below her left breast, a faint rhythmic violet twitch on the opal cloth.

“Yes. Well, I suppose Cedric had become an instant celebrity, so she might fake a death for him also, if she were planning to send him off to another world with you.”

“She wasn’t.” The violet beat had quickened. He waited, and after a moment she said, “And in four days I will not be on this world to find out—to know if he does come back.”

Willoughby shrugged. “And Devlin Grant? His ambitions are no secret. He hopes to succeed Agnes. If she sneaks him back in four days, he will not remain incognito. As soon as any one of them reappears, then the secret is out. Dr. Eccles? She would certainly not stay out of view.”

“No.” The girl sighed very deeply and averted her eyes. Young Cedric must have done a fair job of winning her affections as well as her favors.

Momentarily Hastings wondered what sort of man could ever hope to bind this wildcat to a long-term pairing. She would never tolerate less than equality in a partnership, and would then instinctively seek to dominate it. Very few men could ever hope to match her in brains; she had beauty and spirit galore. She might select a milksop, of course—he had seen strong women make that mistake often enough—but he rather thought that Princess Alya would know better. Yet she would have trouble finding a man with enough durability to tolerate her flame without being consumed by it. He wondered what she could possibly have seen in the Cedric boy. Only physical size, surely, and therefore she had been after recreation, nothing serious. Not lovers—playmates.

“I had not thought of the accident being a fake, Highness. Certainly with Agnes anything is possible, but I really cannot comprehend how that particular fraud could have worked, or what it would have gained her.”

“There was a fifth person on board, a stowaway. A man.”

“How—I wasn’t watching, I was working. Are you sure?”

She nodded. “You wouldn’t have seen on public holo. I’d been given an honorary ranking on System. It let me see more than I was supposed to see, I think.” She had changed position slightly, and the cloth below her breast was no longer tight enough to show the violet beat.

A stowaway? She was waiting—waiting for him to catch up with her own thinking. He had not matched wits with anyone so young and unpredictable in many years. He was getting too old for it. The last couple of days had been crushing.

“There is—or was—a murderer on the loose in Cainsville?”

“And also a spy, who sold the coin to WSHB. Not likely the same person, but possibly so.”

Anyone could have worked out such things, given time. It was not this slender vixen’s comments that revealed her brainpower, but the way in which she made them. He had never had patience with stupid women, or women who pretended to be stupid, or men who preferred either.

“You suspect execution?” He shook his head. “If there were a murder, then I am sure Fish already knows the culprit. Certainly Fish and Agnes are capable of dumping the scoundrel on the first handy planet. I’m certain that they’ve done such things in the past. They’re quite prepared to take justice into their own hands.”

“But not with four others aboard?” She wanted to be convinced.

“Never! I mean, Eccles purchased a Cainsville secret, but that was her job. I can’t see Agnes being vindictive enough to kill her for it. The traitor who sold it—well, that might be another matter. Devlin has ambitions, but she could throw him out on his ear anytime. And the two youngsters…No. I can’t explain the stowaway, but I think you are pushing suspicion a little far, Your Highness.”

She sighed again and sipped more sherry.

“I have always understood,” he added, “that breaks were not predictable.”

She nodded sadly, keeping her eyes down so he could not see them. Even to him, unexpected death was always a shock, but the old had learned how to accept such things. Alya was much, much younger and was clutching at every thread of hope she could find.

“You seemed very annoyed when you came in,” he ventured.

“I was. I am.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “All the stupid mystery.” She looked up with the sort of smile that had once launched ships. “No—mostly I was mad at myself for being so dumb. I was halfway back here to Nauc before I realized the real reason I had been shipped out in that carton of monkeys. Hubbard Agnes lied to me, and I believed her!”

Willoughby chuckled, hoping to keep that smile alive a little longer. “She often does, especially if she thinks you should be able to work out the truth for yourself.”

“It was my own fault for showing up uninvited at her press conference, I suppose. But she told me that the Tiber planting was canceled and I was to return to Banzarak!”

“She’s a bitch,” Willoughby agreed calmly, remembering Agnes’s amusement when she had called him to drop this tangle in his lap. “When did the fog lift?”

Again a smile laid magic on the café au lait face. “Not soon enough! I should have known right away—if the Nile expedition had put Tiber at risk, I’d have got bad vibes as soon as it was suggested. I suppose I only notice when the
buddhi
speaks, and don’t notice when it stays silent. Even Jathro knew! He brazenly told me that I was to come here and make a speech—and I still didn’t catch on!” Of course, that was what was annoying her most—that the hack had seen what she had not. “Finally one of the reporters’ questions made me mad, and I began to wonder what I was doing traveling with a circus…”

She shook her head ruefully and drained her glass. “My fault—I advertised my presence at Cainsville. Now I must make an equally public exit.”

He nodded. “But my good fortune! We shall feed you a small lunch—about fifty guests. You will address the Refugee Authority, outlining all the priceless work that little Banzarak is doing for refugees, and tonight there will be a dinner.”

She groaned. “Can I settle for a public flogging instead?”

“You have stepped in at a moment’s notice to replace a South American vice-president suddenly indisposed. We are very grateful.”