The Rifter's Covenant (47 page)

The two small parts
were in her hand. As she slid them into a storage bin below her console, she
said, “It could only benefit Lokri to have two lines of investigation
conducted.” You trust in your laws, she thought, but my crew trusts in me. And
we both have to honor our own covenants
.
And she saw again, in the lift of his chin, the widening of his pupils, its
impact.

She had thrust one
last time, after he had set aside his sword of command. He was no longer facing
her as the Panarch. This was just Brandon, whom she loved, had loved before she
knew him, whom she would always love. So she said at last, “I have found
evidence of the Archon of Torigan’s complicity in the murder of the Kendrians.
But I don’t know who actually ordered it, or why.”

The air stank of
carrion, sometimes faint and at the edge of perception, other times an
overpowering waft. And the Ur-fruit were changing. Barrodagh refused to look at
them anymore. He tried to remember the Dol’jharian ordinary that Lysanter had
fed to what seemed to be the Urian equivalent of a recycler. Had he had blue
eyes?

A thick patch of
coarse, curly hair had emerged on the wall near Lysanter’s office. Barrodagh
shuddered. That was even worse than the fleshy stalactites and mounds of slimy
connective tissue sprouting from surfaces here and there like giant
hemorrhoids.

Lysanter was
absorbed in a bank of graphs slowly mutating on his console. He didn’t seem to
notice the belching noise as the door dilated; he merely froze the display and
turned, inclining his head, but not rising from his seat.

“Serach Barrodagh.”
He was high in the Avatar’s favor since the second tempath experiment had
improved the station’s power incrementally, even though it had killed the
woman.

Barrodagh sat,
irritated by Lysanter’s assumption of additional status. But there was nothing
he could do about it now. He stared expectantly, willing Lysanter to speak
first.

He did. “I believe
we have a solution to the environmental problems. The nature of the new anthrogenomic
manifestations is the clue. The more common ones, such as hair or skin, are
from portions of the body that were still viable when it was ingested.”

Barrodagh’s cheek
twinged warningly through the slowly growing numbness the drugs were inducing.
Lysanter no longer made any attempt to avoid bio-analogies for the station’s
activities.

“The less common
ones, such as the eyes, appear to be genetic experiments of some sort. Usually
incomplete: the eyes had no retina, just a smooth reflective membrane, like the
tapetum of various predators.”

Barrodagh remembered
the way they had caught the light, their pupils glowing. His stomach lurched. “But
why does the air stink?”

“We’re fortunate
that the Ur apparently needed an atmosphere close to human norms.” Lysanter waved
his hand in a circle on the word ‘close.’ “Not to mention gravity. It could
have been much worse. I see too many people without breathers. That’s still
potentially dangerous.”

Barrodagh’s
irritation flared into anger. “Are you telling me how to serve the Lord of
Vengeance?” A colored fringe danced around the edge of the lights above
Lysanter: another migraine building. His patch must be depleted.

The scientist
jerked his head and blinked. “No, serach Barrodagh. Your pardon. It was merely
an observation, offered for your information.”

What frustrated Barrodagh
most was Lysanter’s apparent lack of fear, as though he could not sense the
weight of terror barely held in check that ruled everything Dol’jharian. Or as
though it was but another datum in an experiment. Someday I will arrange for
you an experiment with the mindripper, he thought viciously.

“Very well. What do
you propose to do about it? The Avatar is impatient for the return of clean
air.”

“The subject was
dead when ingested. The processes of autolytic decay were well advanced.”
Lysanter’s words slowed. “So the station is reproducing those as well as living
tissue.”

Barrodagh smiled
slowly despite the pain building behind his eyes. “So you want to do what I
suggested at the outset. Feed it a live body.” This was an unexpected bonus.

Lysanter nodded
reluctantly. “I believe it will then, well, understand what we are and stop
attempting to reproduce human parts. I do not think it can reproduce a living
body.”

Red banged
painfully behind the Bori’s eyes.

The scientist
sighed and went on. “As well, the experiment with Li Pung using a mindripper—”
He pronounced the word with distaste. “—for stimulation and control is yielding
no results at all. His mind is so badly damaged that we are not sure his
tempathic abilities survive.”

And there was the fool’s
weakness, Barrodagh thought
.
Lysanter’s compassion would eventually destroy him. But let him have Li Pung’s
release from whatever hell the station had plunged him into. Maybe the air
would stop stinking.

‘Then use him. Do
it immediately.”

“It will take some
time to prepare. And I will have to notify the heir, as well.”

“The Lord Anaris
has requested notification of attempts to activate the station with a tempath.
This is different. You will leave any such communication to me.” Barrodagh saw
that the man understood him. “Notify me when you are ready.”

After satisfying
himself that Lysanter was also giving the utmost priority to producing more
stasis clamps, and discussing the optimal placement of the new mind-blurs that
would arrive on the ship carrying Norio, Barrodagh left, a growing nausea
hurrying him toward his quarters and the surcease of pain. He only wished he
could leave anxiety behind as easily.

o0o

Anaris sat alone
in his quarters, his hands lying palm-up in his lap. A circle of bearings, each
a centimeter sphere of metal, spun in front of him. Willing the glittering
whirl of metal to tilt up and behind his head, he watched in the mirror he’d
propped up on the floor before him. The effect was dissonant, the steel halo
reminiscent of religious images he’d seen in the Palace Minor during his
fosterage, surrounding a face graven with Dol’jharian rigor. He smiled wryly;
the dissonance faded.

No more the
agonizing headaches, not since the second tempath had made her attempt to
activate the Suneater. Li Pung’s failed attempt, which left him a mindless
puppet, had merely strengthened Anaris’s t’kinesis. The woman’s death had done
that and also transformed the usual pain of psychic effort to a dull ache of
tension.

Her experiment had
evoked the same trembling from the station and flickering of the lights. But it
had added a t’kinetic tempest in his quarters, leaving objects strewn about
with such abandon that it had taken him two hours to clean up. He clenched his
teeth, remembering his total lack of control.

He let the bearings
pour into his right hand and closed his fingers over them, forcing himself to
relax. The ache dissipated swiftly. Perhaps the lack of control was just the
result of being stronger.

And the next
tempath was reputed to be very strong. Deciding that he would have Morrighon
procure a more powerful sedative before this Norio arrived, Anaris wished again
that he could talk to Lysanter. At the least, Morrighon would need to know of
this latest intensification of his abilities.

The annunciator
chimed: Morrighon’s report. Anaris tabbed the door open, and Morrighon hardly
noticed the ripe sucking noise. He’d made a horrible mistake; his life might
now be measured in minutes.

The heir was more
relaxed than Morrighon had ever seen him. The only tension showed in his right
hand, lying on his lap, closed around something.

Anaris looked up,
not moving from his cross-legged position on the floor. Morrighon noted the
mirror in front of him.
Chorei exercises
again. But where are the foam bits?

There was no time
for that. “Lord,” Morrighon said. “Lysanter is attempting a new experiment.”

Anaris eyed him
askance, wondering why Morrighon had gone pale as death. “Yes. So observe it.”

“You told me to
notify you of experiments with a tempath,” Morrighon said swiftly, past aching
teeth. “They are going to feed Li Pung to the Urian recycler.”

Anaris recoiled,
his color leaching away; the shock almost buckled Morrighon’s knees. He had
never seen fear in the heir before.

“When?”

Morrighon looked at
his chronometer. Why were the numbers changing so fast? “Ninety seconds.”

Anger hardened the
heir’s face back to normal. “Why didn’t you know sooner?”

Morrighon
swallowed. “I told Barrodagh that you required notification of any attempts to
activate the station with a tempath.”

And Barrodagh had
observed the literal meaning. It was mere spite. The Avatar’s secretary could
have no suspicion of the transformation Anaris was undergoing. But mere spite
could be enough to kill him.

Morrighon stuttered
on, his terror mounting parallel to the rage narrowing Anaris’s gaze. “This
experiment is merely to monitor the station’s response to the ingestion of a
living human body. In fact, Lysanter does not believe Li Pung still possesses
tempathic capabilities.”

Anaris came to his
feet without apparent effort. Morrighon stumbled back, clutching his compad.
“Do not fail me again,”
the heir had
said, back on the
Samedi
when
Fasthand trapped them in their quarters and left them floundering in freefall. But
he had.

Anaris towered over
him, countenance transformed by the
prachan
,
the fear-face, his white teeth showing in a rage-filled rictus. Then his eyes
widened and he looked through Morrighon.

The station
groaned. The deck trembled underfoot. Morrighon heard rapid clicking from the
tianqi console, and a faint buzzing from the stasis clamps, growing louder. The
lights flickered.

The heir swayed,
uttering a low guttural sound. Morrighon’s hair stood on end, not a
physiological reaction, but static electricity.

The room erupted in
a violent blizzard of objects. Books, reports, and datachips swirled round the
heavy carved wooden desk, which creaked weirdly. Bureau drawers shot open and
disgorged their contents into the growing vortex around Morrighon and Anaris.
The dark-imaged woven rugs underfoot humped and flapped like weird sea
creatures.

Without warning,
the mirror at Anaris’s feet darted into the air and swooped at Morrighon
edge-on, as if to decapitate him. Somehow he grabbed it, its momentum wrenching
his arms up over his head so that it stood on end directly above him. The
mirror quivered in his hands, growing heavier, pressing down like a blade aimed
to split his skull.

Terrified, he
shrieked, “No, lord. No! Please!” Anaris’s eyes were bloodshot, the bulging
veins in his temples pulsing. His nose dripped blood, drips that increased to a
trickle.

The pressure in the
air intensified excruciatingly and the station shuddered around them.

A loud ripping
noise tore the tough dyplast mirror out of Morrighon’s hands as a streak of
metallic light shot out of the Dol’jharian’s right hand. The mirror shattered
to dust, which whirled around the chamber and impacted the walls.

Then it was over.
The trembling underfoot ceased abruptly; the groaning cut off as though by a
switch. Anaris staggered back. He opened his right hand, and a few shiny metal
spheres fell to the carpeted deck. He reached out toward Morrighon, opening his
mouth, but no words came. He crumpled unconscious to the floor. Morrighon
looked down at him, his emotions gone full circle to a weird calm. Shock, a
portion of his mind noted. Anaris had tried to kill him with TK and had saved
him the same way. Morrighon felt an unfamiliar emotion, left behind so long ago
that it took him several breaths to identify it: pity.

Poor hybrid
.
Anaris, too, was caught between two
worlds. As he bent to check his lord’s pulse, Morrighon hoped Anaris was more
successful at integrating them than he had been.

He set about
cleaning up the room.

The newsroom
looked worse than ever, desks littered with food packets and sticky, dried-up
cups of caf and Alygrian tea. Drifts of discarded flimsies and empty brain-suck
ampules covered the floor. Over it all floated the reek of ozone and sweat.

But Nik and Derith
didn’t notice that anymore. Nik’s image on the screen was speaking; Nik noted
with relief that his image team had erased the lines in his face, and the
pouchy circles under his eyes, preserving the round, boyish face that nature
had given him. Nik believed that boyishness, and the fact that he had to look
up into most adults’ faces, had been responsible for launching his career.

It was his wits
that kept it going.

“This chamber, here
at the center of the Kamera, has seen many trials since the Temenarch Y’Lissa
vlith-Illyahin gifted Ares to the Navy in the reign of Brossinav I.”

The imager panned
across the high-ceilinged hall, the dark, age-blackened wood of the furnishings
stark against the white marble walls.

In a small window
on the screen the DL readout mounted.

As the POV settled
on the high, three-bayed desk in the center of the back wall, Derith turned to
Nik. “You really called this one, I’ve got to say.”

“Well, your
sequence on the Kelly and the Rifters that brought them in sure helped,” Nik
replied, feeling quite magnanimous. It was beginning to look like virtually
everyone on Ares was DL’ing the trial coverage now, and he had the low orbit.
Tovr Ixvan was being very cooperative, and many other doors were opening to him
as well.

“Yeah,” Derith said
with evident satisfaction. “With Lochiel on exclusive to throw right up against
99’s Rifter Rumor Hotfeed, everybody’s arguing about Rifters. The more Chomsky
bangs away at atrocities, the more people DL us—she’s doing our work for us!”
She grinned at Nik, tossing her tousled hair back. “That interview I snagged
with the Firehead boy sure didn’t hurt, either.”