The Rifter's Covenant (25 page)

Eloatri’s palm
tingled again. She looked at him questioningly.

“I believe,” he
continued, “that this ability is, at least in part, due to a significant change
in their relationship.”

Eloatri nodded
slowly. She hadn’t known that. She snapped the chip in and tabbed it on.

At first the views
of the interior of the
Grozniy
evoked
memories of her father’s tales of his Navy years. But Manderian’s voice
recalled her.

“Watch here. The
Aerenarch.”

The movement was so
subtle she might indeed have missed it had Manderian not spoken. Brandon—still
Aerenarch at that time—glanced at the imager, signaling his awareness of the
watchers.

Manderian reached to
freeze the recording. “You are sure the missing part of your polymental unity
is not Brandon Arkad?”

Eloatri shook her
head. “Yes. I mean, I’m sure. He is a part of my need to be in this place, but
he was not in any of my initial visions.” Once again she felt the futility of
language.

“Which we thought defined
the polymental unity,” Manderian said, his black eyes narrowed. “You thought it
was complete but for one: the Kelly trinity, the Eya’a, Ivard, Vi’ya, and a
man.”

Eloatri shook her
head, feeling helpless. Whenever she tried to grasp at the Dreamtime—to force
it into logical conformity—the meaning blurred. “I still do not understand why
I saw them the way I did: the Eya’a as children, the Kelly as a ring upon
Ivard’s hand. But Vi’ya’s face was clear, and so was this other man’s face—and
it was not that of Brandon Arkad.”

Manderian tabbed
the vid back on. He knows that the power of a vision lies not in what can be
communicated to others, but in the actions that flow from loyalty to its
meaning, she thought.

She turned her
attention to the vid, which unfolded inexorably to its terrible end. Even
though she knew the outcome of the battle with the
Samedi
, she felt her breath grow short as the
Grozniy
and the Rifter destroyer sparred between the narrowing
wings of energy generated by the fivespace fracture that had guarded the secret
of Gehenna for so long.

She watched as the
communications officer reported an incoming signal. “They ID themselves as
Acheridol
, Anaris achreash-Eusabian,
commanding.”

On the screen,
Captain Margot Ng hailed the Dol’jharian corvette. The main screen of the
Grozniy
, reproduced on the Cloisters’
console in miniature, resolved an image: a very tall, strongly made young man
with abundant black hair, and an intelligent black gaze in his sharply boned
face.

Eloatri’s ears rang
with shock, and her temples throbbed.

“I take it you are
Anaris, heir to Eusabian of Dol’jhar?” Ng said.

Eloatri did not
hear the reply, for Manderian tabbed the vid off and touched her arm, his eyes
full of concern. “Numen?”

After a long moment
the physical reaction released her, except for the tolling of her heart.

“He is the missing
part of the vision,” she said finally, and watched her shock mirror in
Manderian’s face. “The final member of the Unity. Anaris achreash-Eusabian,
together with these others, will bring us to a hinge of Time.”

From anyone’s
perspective it was a colossal logistical nightmare.

So thought Vannis
Scefi-Cartano as she watched from afar the tremendous energies exerted by the
awe-inspiring number of people laboring to convert the Ares Highdwelling, daily
more crowded with refugees of every conceivable culture and status, into a center
of government for a new Panarch who had not been trained to rule.

On distant
Arthelion, there had been thousands trained for the smooth, dignified transfer
of power from the dead to the living. There in the Mandala, the mystical center
of the Thousand Suns, the machinery of accession had been oiled with the weight
of centuries of slowly evolving tradition centered around the symbols of a
thousand years of Arkadic rule: the Emerald Throne, the Mace of Karelais, the
Phoenix Signet, and the Fleet.

But the Emerald
Throne had been usurped, the Mace buried in the radioactive ruins of the Hall
of Ivory, the Signet vaporized with the Panarch Gelasaar over Gehenna, and the
Fleet scattered through a billion cubic light-years, harried by an enemy armed
with weapons from a war that had ended before humankind discovered fire.

Meanwhile, Ares and
what was left of the government prepared to deal with an accession for which
there was no precedent, which made it even more necessary to reenact as much as
could be contrived of the age-old rituals. Since Brandon’s return from the
unsuccessful rescue mission, the remnants of the Council of Pursuivance, under
the aegis of the College of Archetype and Ritual, had struggled to fashion a
new ritual of accession, adapting tradition to convey a symbolic promise to
war-wracked subjects: See, we can still impose order in a universe gone mad.

How to translate
the symbol into reality in the midst of a desperate war had consumed countless
hours of impassioned arguments to the point of duels, until at last the new
Panarch was consulted.

Through patient
listening and indirect questioning. Vannis monitored the preparations,
gathering snippets of much-repeated talk until there resolved a clear picture
of Brandon’s tastes and manner. Always with due appreciation to every side, he
made his wishes known: the Enclave would remain his residence. He would retain
his Rifter bodyguard and chef. There would be a new building for the
government, a balance of military efficiency and civilian elegance.

But no throne. On
that the new Panarch was adamant. There would be no enthronement until the
Mandala was retaken. For an accession without enthronement there was precedent,
but no one spoke of it, for it had not followed but preceded the death of a
Panarch, and that the one whose name was never spoken, whose image never seen,
for neither existed anymore.

All available cims
had been put to work on the assembly of the new building, as if in distraction
from that grim prolepsis, while all over the station accoutrements had been
busily fabricated or gathered, preparing for the day of Accession.

It was less than a
week away when Vannis paid a visit to the Whispering Gallery to relax, away
from protocol and politics, and found there the means to discharge a debt that
had disturbed her for some time.

o0o

“I’d better cut
this session short,” Pankar, Fierin’s co-volunteer, said before he touched the
console.

A bell chimed and
the children at the sims and booths looked up.

Seeing the row of
disappointed faces, Fierin forced a smile. “Time to change over. See how many
are waiting for a turn?” She indicated the growing group of youths standing
just beyond the circle, some shifting about impatiently as they sent glowering
looks at her and the other volunteers.

Her heart sped up; those
lanky Polloi looked so
uncontrolled
.

But those at the
sims got up obediently enough, despite their time having been cut. They formed
into a shuffling but orderly line, ushered by Pankar.

And then Fierin saw
trouble.

As soon as the
chime’s echo died away, most of those waiting straightened out into a ragged
line. When Pankar had seen the last child away from the booths, the first boy
in line started forward, then spun around when a girl from the back made her
way, her face preoccupied, for the first sim booth.

Fierin moved to
intervene, but the youth acted too quickly. Catching the girl’s shoulder with
one long, sinewy hand, he thrust her back toward the line. “I’m first, piss-face!”

The girl staggered
back, her mouth open. Two or three other youths reached for her, some with
fists. Their voices rose in shouts: “Wait your turn!” “Douloi nullbrain!”

“Stop!” Fierin
cried, but no one listened.

She watched in
helpless terror as a growing circle of boys and girls mobbed the Douloi girl,
one voice shouting above the rest, “We’ll teach you precedence, Douloi strut—”

The girl’s face
blanched yellowish, then her jaw set. A blur of movement and one youth fell
back screaming in pain, blood splashing from a broken nose, the other curled
over a broken arm. The girl whirled about, hands ready, her stance betraying
Ulanshu training. “Touch me again and you die,” she said unsteadily into the
sudden silence.

“We’re going to
have a riot if we don’t act now,” Pankar said, pushing past Fierin. The old man
stamped between the girl and the frozen line of youths. “Stop! All of you,” he
commanded. Over his shoulder he sent Fierin an impatient glance, tipping his
head, and she recalled the emergency code.

With shaking
fingers she tapped it out on the console, then breathed in relief when four
Marines appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and took charge: the injured were
borne off in one direction, the Douloi girl in another.

Then Pankar
motioned the rest of the line forward, and sober-faced children took places at
the booths, some muttering and sending angry glances after the girl—others
looking about fearfully.

Beyond the study
circle, Fierin saw other adults efficiently breaking up the crowd of young
spectators that had materialized.

In the subsequent
quiet, Fierin and Pankar did a slow circuit, observing each youngster busy at a
console.

Pankar returned to
the control console and tapped at the pads. IDs appeared on the screen, and Fierin’s
heart contracted when she recognized the girl’s name: Haril vlith-Yamaguchi.
Fierin had been told that the entire Yamaguchi family had been victims of
Rifter atrocities when their homeworld was sacked. Haril survived only because
she had been at school.

But the name didn’t
mean anything to Pankar, that was clear. He shook his head. “Someone needs to
tell these Douloi youngsters that insisting on precedence just means shoving
ahead of one’s place to other people.”

Fierin said, “I saw
her—she didn’t insist. It was just habit.”

Pankar’s mouth
tightened. “It’s a habit she’ll have to break.” He tapped again, then gave
Fierin a straight look from under bushy white brows, raking from her elaborate
hair down her formal gown. “You Douloi would do better to take the likes of
young Haril into your villas and yachts. You certainly have the extra space.”

She started to say
“It isn’t that simple,” but the words “You Douloi” impacted her, and she stopped.
How to explain that those with no family ties on Ares had to rely on ties of
alliance—and that ignoring them could cause tensions that might take years to
undo? And how to explain that even though one appeared in the formal gowns of
Mandala fashion, one might not be any better off than untrained workslubs in
their borrowed scrubs? That to have extra people crowded into what seemed to a
Polloi a large space was just as intolerable to the Douloi as tiny rooms were
to the Polloi crammed into them?

How to explain that
she didn’t dare to adopt a child and bring him or her into a dangerous
situation that she would escape as soon as she knew how?

Fierin smoothed her
face, and said in her most diplomatic voice, “I’ll do another round,” and
turned away.

Her temples
throbbed when, three hours later, she joined the line at the transtube. It was
two hours past her usual departure time, but there had been problems in other
portions of the crèche, and all the volunteers were busy either with reports,
repairs, or mediation.

As she waited in
the crowded terminal, she tried not to listen to the tight-voiced, angry
conversations around her. But then she overhead her Family name.

“. . . and
not just Kendrian. I say they ought to try them all. Damn all Rifters for
murdering chatzers.”

They were talking
about Jes! Fierin sneaked a glance at the speakers, two slender Polloi women of
indeterminate age, their faces seamed by exposure to UV.

“But the Kendrian
Rifters did help the Aerenarch.”

“For a whopping
good price—looting the Mandala! And him just sitting there watching.”

“Missa! He’s the
Panarch.”

The other woman
looked abashed. “Well, I’m not saying anything against
him
, but what about their captain? She’s a tempath and a
Dol’jharian. And those little mindkillers always with her. They say—” She saw
Fierin watching and glared at her, turning ostentatiously away and lowering her
voice to a whisper.

Chagrined, Fierin
looked away, humiliated with the thought that her anxiety was eroding her
manners. But that was not the first such comment she’d heard. The novosti were
hammering on the Rifter role in the war. She didn’t know if it was aimed at
Jes, or at the Panarch, or both. And why. She had learned by listening to Tau
Srivashti, and especially that frightening Hesthiar al-Gessinav, that
multivocality was perhaps the most powerful aspect of symbolic communications.
Jes would have called it target-rich.

The first transtube
swept in with a hiss of compressed air, but when the doors opened, a solid mass
of humanity faced the waiting line. “No room, no room,” peevish voices shouted
from the tube.

One person squeezed
out from the back, almost falling onto the concourse. Two more tried to jam
their way onto the tube. Fierin watched numbly as one of them made it in,
despite enraged shouts and insults; the other, a weedy young man, was shoved
violently back. The doors shut and the pod disappeared. As the young man got to
his feet, several in the line snickered meanly.

The next tube
arrived full, but half of the people thrust their way out. Fierin was swept
inside with the first half of the waiting line. Nowhere to sit. Of course. Some
of the benches had three people wedged into a space designed to fit two. She
squirmed behind a seat so she could see the nearest destination screen.