The Rifter's Covenant (41 page)

The trinity waltzed
forward. “Wethree have already proclaimed the suspension of Kelly neutrality.
Dol’jhar has made that choice for us. So yes, Admiral, wethree and allthree are
at your service.”

And with that,
Lochiel found it slightly easier to admit that she didn’t have any choice,
Riftskip or no
.
“I can do no less,” she
said. “I will report this conversation to the rest of the shareholders. If
anything changes, I’ll communicate at once.”

She rose, looking
with regret at the pastry with the single bite taken out, and the untouched
ones. She hated to waste food, but that Douloi training so long ago was tough
to break, and she couldn’t quite make herself swipe her plate into her pocket.

After brief thanks
and farewells, Cameron walked out with her, but he stopped in the hallway
again.

“You don’t want to
come aboard and make sure I do a fair presentation?” she asked.

“I have my own
meeting,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes.

Her insides did the
flipflop again.

“It was a hard
choice,” he said. “But you heard what Ares is like. You could still have said
no.”

“Could I?” she
asked, then winced at the pain in his expression. “I’m sorry, Camzie. I could,
and I couldn’t. I’m sure Nyberg plays fair—even Faseult. I just hate being
where I am, doing what I have to do.”

Cameron chuckled.
“You always hated being told what to do. Were you surprised when the Riftskip
ended up imposing its own imperatives?”

She nodded. “At
first. But they were my imperatives.”

He looked askance.

“Well, mostly,
anyway.”

“Same here,” he
replied. “So let’s make the best of them we can.”

“Right. I’ll do my
best to be fair, then. If anything changes, you’ll be the first to hear.”

She turned away,
pausing at the outer door as he trod back to the office. She shook her head,
and left.

Cameron returned to
Nyberg’s office. The food and coffee had been cleared away, all semblance of a
conference gone. More serious than that, he found Captain Ng present.
Shtoink-Nyuk2-Wu4 had withdrawn to the extreme end of the room, the trinity
tightly clustered, the head-stalks woven together, swaying gently.

Admiral Nyberg
exchanged glances with the others, then said, “Please sit down, Captain
MacKenzie.” Another exchange of glances, and he said, “You have probably
wondered why you alone haven’t been pulled in for your debriefing interview.”

Cameron shifted,
unsure what to say; Nyberg raised a hand. “Let me finish, please. You should
know before we go any farther that, in spite of the many—very many—problems
facing this station, this past week there has been one overarching subject of
debate among us.”

When he hesitated,
Captain Ng spoke up. “First I would like to reiterate our admiration for your
handling of the Barcan battle. We’ve all gone over the records. By ‘all’ I mean
Captain Koestler as well as myself, plus some other officers who have also
faced these Urian weapons.”

Nyberg said, “I
would like to commend you for the loyalty of your crew. Every one of them
testified to the excellence of your command.”

“And,” Captain Ng
said, “every one testified to the destruction of Neyvla-Khan’s ship by Hreem
the Faithless. In spite of the fact that the record appears to have sustained
damage, so that the crucial minutes are missing.”

Faseult said,
“Meanwhile, a rumor has gone through every naval ship on the Cap, and even out
to those doing perimeter duty beyond the Reef, that we, the Navy, got ours back
again against Neyvla-Khan for the atrocity at Minerva.”

Another pause, then
Ng said, “Because the record is missing, we are going to have to find the time
to bring every member of your primary crew in for intensive interviews—”

“I take full
responsibility,” Cameron burst out. “My crew was under my orders.”

Captain Ng ran her
small, neat forefinger across her bottom lip as she glanced in the direction of
the Kelly Elder, who had remained uncharacteristically quiet during the conversation.
And that was all it took: with a sick heart, Cameron remembered his Kelly
allies. Of course. They’d seen the entire thing. Maybe even had recorded it,
too. Obviously they had tech more sophisticated than that available to the
Panarchy.

Even less than
permitting his crew to take the blame for his action did Cameron want the Kelly
put into the position of informer.

So he forced the
words out. “Neyvla-Khan appealed to the Panarch’s mercy. I shot him.”

“And the record?”
Willsones spoke for the first time.

Cameron tried to
swallow, but his throat was too dry. “I erased that, too.” His voice sounded
false to his own ears, but he would go to his death maintaining that.

Nyberg turned his
head aside. Ng pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

Faseult said, “Captain
MacKenzie. There is not a one of us here who condemns you for that. I think
many of us would have done the same, had we been in your place.”

“But not all,”
Nyberg said softly. “Not all. There is still the matter of our oaths.”

Willsones shook her
head. “We’ve gone around this all week. Nearly came to blows. But the truth is
this: if we wink at this incident, then it sets a precedent. The next one might
not be so clear-cut. And you know there’s going to be a next. And another. And
another.”

Captain Ng dropped
her hands and said seriously, “You are a superb officer, and I would be honored
to have you serving with me. But we cannot let ourselves be motivated by
vengeance, justified as it is. Or we may as well contact Eusabian, and ask him
to send tutors in the Dol’jharian language.”

Cameron reached
with shaking hand toward his shoulder to pull free his tabs.

Ng half-rose.
“Stop! Captain MacKenzie. We did not begin this meeting by mentioning your
superlative handling of the Barcan battle without purpose.”

Faseult said, “Nor
have we forgotten that your Marines were the first volunteers out at the Reef,
when I needed them.”

Nyberg said, “Since
you’ve admitted to the truth that we suspected, there needs nothing more to be
said. The Panarch is going to be handing out promotions and decorations in a
few days, and you are going to be there, because everyone wants to see you
honored. But it’s going to be the Nova.”

The Nova.
Ironically, the single decoration made of diamond; the nickname ostensibly belonged
to the brilliance of the gem, but everyone knew that a nova flashed, then guttered
out. This decoration was only given to someone whose rank would be frozen for
life.

Cameron MacKenzie still
had his place in the navy, but whatever happened, he would never move up the
ranks.

He drew in a
shuddering breath, feeling as if he was shedding an enormous weight. Eventually
it would sink in that he was novaed, but he could still serve. It was fair. It
was even merciful.

Somehow he
performed a crisp salute. Somehow he got out of there.

It was fair, it was
merciful, and it was going to hurt for the rest of his life.

o0o

Ivard found Tate
Kaga busy at a data console set in a large, spherical room.

The ancient greeted
him with genial welcome, then returned to his task. The room was quiet,
harmonious to all the senses. Ivard was content to float amidst the drift of
small bubbles hanging motionless at random intervals. The polygonal viewscreens
scattered about the walls showed a series of desert vistas: barren dunes and
twisted rock formations under deep-toned skies and hastening clouds.

Ivard unfolded his
synesthetic sense, and surrendered to pleasure and awe. There truly was no
dissonance in this room. Everything fit! He looked down at the old nuller, so
shriveled and spare. Tate Kaga was a Prophetae, he knew, but he’d never
understood what they did. Brandon had tried to explain it to him, on the
Telvarna
:
“They dive into the collective unconscious, the nous, looking for
symbols that people can use to live together.”

Ivard hadn’t said
so, but he figured the nicks just made them up. Now, looking around, he knew
that wasn’t true.

Ivard watched the
nuller’s strong, corded hands moving without hesitation over the datapads. The
fingers reminded Ivard of a dance, one that had been refined over hundreds of
years. From his vantage point he could see the screen. To his surprise, it was
meaningless, worse even than the tenno glyphs the Panarch had pulled up out of
Telvarna’
s fire-control console, where
they’d been coded by Markham.

At the center of
the screen was a complex mandala, like a circle of wavy lines with a geometric
cross overlaid on it. In the four quadrants thus defined—no. Ivard’s awareness
shifted to three dimensions. Along the six axes of the mandala lay ranks of symbols,
strange and archaic. Complex patterns rippled through them in rapid evolution;
Ivard’s synesthetic sensitivity perceived patterns, but there was no guessing
what the symbols meant. Some of them were terribly ugly.

Ivard looked away.
Maybe they were some private language the old nuller had developed. He’d had
long enough. What was it like to be hundreds of years old?

Ivard dove up to
the long wide platform overhead. He pulled himself onto the prickly carpet of
living moss spangled with small yellow flowers, inhaling deeply of the fresh
scent as he thought about Tate Kaga’s immense age—and what it meant.

In his own way, he
was more than human. Perhaps that explained how his home, alone of the humans’,
was the way it was.

“Ho, Little Egg!”
said the nuller. “The Douloi are used to seeing me overhead, but in the Fourth
World I’m underfoot.” He cackled. “Seen from beneath, the Douloi have no
clothes on.” With one strike the console went dark. “Not the best of views.”

Then, slapping one
of the little spheres, Tate Kaga propelled himself up to the platform and
pulled himself down against the moss facing Ivard, his legs folded under him.
“You are looking at my workroom for the first time again?”

“You can see!”
Ivard exclaimed.

The nuller blinked
at him. “Eyes I have, but that’s not what you mean.” He sniffed delicately.
“You have been with the Kelly.”

The words tumbled
out of Ivard as he tried to explain what had happened to him. When he ran down,
Tate Kaga spoke slowly.

“You have gone far
beyond me.” He waved one stick-thin arm around at their surroundings. “This is
nearly seven hundred years of life and dreaming. What I receive in the
Dreamtime, you walk with in daylight.” A wide grin lightened the nuller’s face;
his eyes gleamed amidst a mass of wrinkles. “So then!” he exclaimed. “Tell me,
what is the third meaning of my name, Little Egg, whom the Kelly are hatching
into something unexpected?”

Ivard gaped at him.
He could do something better that Tate Kaga had spent over six centuries
practicing? The thought made him dizzy. “Makes the Wind,” he said
automatically. He’d guessed one of the meanings at their first meeting, in the
garden of the Kelly enclave. “Your gee-bubble makes wind, and you like beans.”

“And?”

He opened himself
fully to sensation. Present perception of Tate Kaga and the room as a
synesthetic whole, and memories of past conversations, participated and
overheard, coalesced into a complex unity, and from it emerged something he’d
heard the High Phanist say, as she attended his sickbed on the long journey
from Desrien to Ares on the
Grozniy
:
“The wind blows where it will, but no one
hearing it knows whence it comes or goes.”

He repeated the
thought.

“Washte! Not the
words of the Shanungpa, but it is good!” the nuller said, turning a slow
somersault and remaining upside down from Ivard. “You are ready to begin
seeking your own name.”

Ivard basked in his
approval for a brief time, but then the memory of Tau Srivashti and his
bodyguard intruded. A terrifying frown creased the old man’s face as Ivard
reported his experience.

“Pah!” he spat. “He
sought to tangle you in his web. The yellow-eyed one thinks to be a spider, but
Ynktomeh knows him not.” Then he laughed, a merry, rusty sound. “Oh, to be a
fly above that web, to see his face when you broke free!”

Ivard sensed a deep
detestation in Tate Kaga, much stronger than at the Ascha Gardens, where he had
first seen Srivashti and the nuller together.

“Enough of prabhu
Srivashti,” he said. “The winds will scour his works away and him with them.
You came here seeking something else?”

“I’ve been
dreaming. I can’t stop. I’m scared.” He related the dreams.

“Ho! If you stand
against the wind, the dust it bears will polish your bones in time. Don’t fight
the Dreamtime, Little Egg.” Tate Kaga pushed himself off the platform and
slapped his way out of the room via the little spheres, beckoning the youth to
follow. “Come, we’ll sweat it out. You need a good cleansing.”

Some time later
Ivard left, flushed and invigorated physically by the Ynipi ceremony, his mind
and spirit moving along calmer paths. He yawned. He wasn’t looking forward to
dreaming again, exactly, but he didn’t fear sleep so much now.

o0o

Jaim adjusted his
stance minutely, no more than a slight shift in weight to ease tired muscles.
It was nearly four in the morning. The dancers had been at it since eleven,
when the supper ended. Jaim saw his own exhaustion reflected in the wooden
faces of the other support personnel in the room, bodyguards and servants alike;
they had to be counting the moments until the watch change, at which time they
would unobtrusively exchange places with their replacements, unnoticed by the
Douloi guests who danced, talked, flirted, drank, and wandered about the long
chamber that the Litsu-Frazhien family had turned into a ballroom by having two
walls removed in their domicile, decorated by borrowed banners and tapestries.