Starfire Saga, page 62
“And am I scheduled to address the dinner, or merely to be one of the participants?” I asked him.
“Of course there will be short speeches,” Pel Nostro said, “but we had hoped you might describe for us your time away—in whatever terms you wish, of course.”
So they were all curious. They wanted to know what Jemeret had done to me—in what detail, I could only guess. And whether they wanted to know because they hoped they could assume responsibility for the healing of talent in the future, or simply out of morbid curiosity—or, it occurred to me, because the more they knew, the more leverage they would have to manipulate me—I had no real way of knowing.
“I’d be happy to oblige you,” I said to him.
He inclined his head in the direction of the klawit. “Will the cat also be attending the banquet?”
“Mine won’t.” I swept my gaze over the crowd where holo animals still stood by the sides of some of the women. “I can’t speak for anyone else’s.”
Pel Nostro beckoned to one of the ceremonial honor guards who stood nearby. “Please show the Class—” He paused a moment, swiftly debating, then made the decision of a practiced diplomat. “—the talent team to their rooms in the Visitors’ Residence of Government House.” The guard braced and then nodded to us, his attention lingering briefly on Keli, before he turned smartly and started across the reception area toward the platform exit.
I deliberately waited for Jemeret to come up beside me before I started to follow the guard. Tynnanna fell in behind us, separating us from the other four. I wanted to take my lord’s hand, but I didn’t. They already knew I was utterly dependent on him; it seemed to me there was nothing more to prove by pushing it.
The floater was a large one, newly refurbished. I assumed it ordinarily carried guard units, trade delegations, or classes of students. A number of the seats had been retracted to give Tynnanna a place, and when the side doors slid open, I gestured to him to go in first, which was only practical, but seemed to scandalize the guard, for whom precedence was clearly a serious matter. I was pleased to see that Keli had recovered enough from her awe to snort at his reaction.
When Tynnanna was settled, I climbed into the floater and slid onto one of the double seats. Jemeret moved beside me, pressing his thigh against mine and resting an arm across my shoulders. I was instantly grateful for his warm strength, and while I didn’t turn and lean in against him as I wanted to, I stroked my sting over him once and felt the answering caress.
Coney and Sandalari got on and sat together opposite us, but Jasin Lebec paused at the floater entrance. “I’m going to meet with Pel separately, and he’ll bring me along later.”
Neither Jemeret nor I reacted to that directly. I wondered if he had stung his grandfather. Neither of us was certain that Jasin Lebec agreed fully with what we wanted to do, but then he’d agreed to help us, and he knew he could no longer do the things he’d once done. If anyone could build us a workable foundation in the Com, he could. This was his territory, and he knew it very well.
“I’ll come to your rooms when I get to the Residence,” he said, then went back into the reception area.
Keli floated her kit and our nomidars into the flat area near Tynnanna and slid quickly into a backseat. She appeared happy to be out of the pomp, and eager to see the Orokell city. We were all a little stressed from the end of the journey, the landing, and the reception, but it occurred to me that Keli might like to see the Macerates’ Tabernacle, the Orokell focus of her religion—and at the same time it occurred to me that I might like to see the religious centers again, too.
The guard came onto the floater, signaled the door to close, and started to press the destination into the panel. “Have you programmed our course yet?” I asked him.
He glanced over at me, startled, and braced, which was quite an accomplishment, sitting down. “We have a highest priority clearance, Class A Ronica McBride,” he said. “We would be able to take all major routes from here.”
“Um,” I acknowledged. “In that case, go past the Stadium to the edge of the wild, so Tynnanna can use the grass for a few moments before we close him into the Government House precincts. Then take the shortest route from there.”
His fingers were already dancing over the course input.
Jemeret looked at me curiously, but didn’t ask. Coney’s eyes lit up, and he leaned close to Sandalari, his mouth to her ear, whispering. He’d figured out what I wanted to do.
The guard activated the seat fields; the floater lifted, and we were skimming among the huge complexes and small residential areas that made up the city.
It was too big.
That thought was almost alien to me, a revelation in its own way. I’d been raised to understand that humans had begun to be civilized when they gathered together and created cities all those long centuries ago, on the planet the Macerates called the Original World of the Preserver, and the Responsionists called the First Reflection. According to what we’d been taught, we carried our cities with us when we spread out to populate other planets—first in the immense transports, and then on the new lands themselves. One source even tried to define civilized humans as city builders, which created some philosophical arguments about levels of civilization, because there were verified records of preindustrial cities. The Com rule was that, if we really wanted to impress the worlds we were welcoming into membership, we built a major city around the spaceport, one fit to rival the best cities in the already established Com worlds.
Orokell’s central city, through which we now flew, was the showpiece, housing its millions of inhabitants in comfort, using them efficiently, and arrogant about it. Some cities had problems with poverty and violence—the contraband goods issued from or were rife in them. This city aspired to a beauty and perfection that would resonate throughout the Com. I’d been taught to appreciate the effect such a paragon among cities would have on its citizens; it was supposed to have such an effect on me as well. And all I could think of was that it was too big.
I’d been on Caryldon less than a year, and it had changed my perceptions of everything. I found the rhythms of life on the wilderworld utterly natural to sink into, and utterly difficult to rise out of. It stunned me, the pull of the simplicity. I hadn’t known until I was surrounded by all the Com had to offer, how I would miss it.
I laughed silently to myself as we circled the wide plaza with the Spire of the Founding in it. The Spire shot up into the deep blue sky higher than the tallest building in the city, and Keli goggled at it, for it seemed too thin and fragile to be so tall. Because of our highest priority clearance, everyone got out of our way, so our flight was uninterrupted. We banked slightly around the long curve of the Stadium, then sped up for the great linear run at the borders of the two main Orokell City University campuses, and drew to a stop at the edge of the wild.
The floater set gently down, and the guard opened the doors. Tynnanna, understanding very well what he was here for, stepped carefully out of the vehicle onto the grass and, tail twitching, raced over a nearby rise to attend to his needs in relative privacy. When none of the rest of us left the vehicle, he seemed to gather that he would have to return quickly, and we sat in silence for the few minutes until he came back.
The guard signaled the doors shut, and the vehicle rose and began the “shortest route” to the precincts of Government House. Our course took us, as I’d intended it would, through the square on which fronted the Macerates’ Tabernacle of the Preserver, the Responsionists’ Shrine of Reflection, the Essencists’ House of Aspects, the Epicyclists’ Core, and the garden of the Purists, which was called by no fancy name. The speed of both air and ground traffic was strictly regulated in the square, so as soon as it entered the expanse, the floater slowed. Coney took Sandalari’s hand and pointed in the direction of the Core; she turned her glorious smile on him, admiring the sleekly curved shapes of the huge bowl whose insides were carved in forms calculated to encourage meditation.
I looked from them to Keli, who had suddenly recognized where she was and was staring at the Tabernacle with wide eyes. When she swallowed hard and almost choked on her spit, I knew she was trying not to weep, which would have disgraced her uniform.
Jemeret touched me with his sting and I turned away from the MF guard and raised my eyes to his face. “Careful, love,” he said in a barely voiced murmur. “You never used to show any interest in things religious.”
“It’s the shortest route back to Government House,” I said, making my voice ring with both indignation and disdain. “I, for one, need a—” The last word didn’t get spoken, because just then the floater lurched and yawed to the right, pitching wildly as its automatic systems tried to regain control.
The guard’s calm vanished, and he stared at the bucking control panel helplessly, then was flung to the floor.
Jemeret threw himself over the seat in front of ours, and I was right behind him. Without either of us waiting for the unfortunate guard to clear the area, we slapped our hands against the panel and began to pathfind simultaneously. I heard Sandalari’s gasp just before Tynnanna began to growl, but I had no time to look at either of them.
“Whole right stabilizer group’s gone,” Jemeret said quickly, diagnosing before I could. I slid my questing along the connectors that should have allowed the left stabilizers to compensate and immediately saw the further problem.
“Connector’s cut.”
My lord was plunging ahead of me into the antigrav, which was still operational, adjusting the field to strengthen its push on the right, which, while an imperfect solution, saved us from crashing. He looked down at the still frozen guard, on whom I had stepped several times. “Can you actually fly this, or are you purely ornamental?”
The guard swallowed even harder than Keli had and scrambled up to his knees. “I can fly it, Class A. I just can’t repair it.”
“We’re compensating for the missing stabilizers,” Jemeret said. “It’s a temporary fix at best, so I suggest you take it manually, and don’t get more than two meters off the ground.” He watched the guard take over, while I slid my awareness into the antigrav to help him, and looked back at Coney, who had his arm tightly around Sandalari’s shoulder. I wanted to know they were all right.
“That wasn’t accidental,” Coney said sharply.
“So it begins.” I said it as calmly as I could. “If we’d been at normal speed or altitude when the stabilizers cut out, we probably would have crashed before we could have diagnosed it and compensated.”
“What do you mean, so it begins?” Coney asked.
Jemeret had assessed the situation the same way I had. He looked closely at me, his eyes burning silver with anger. “You have a point, love. If someone’s out to kill talents here in the Com, they will need to attack us.”
For a few moments the attention I was directing at the antigrav muted my outrage and fear. Then I made an adjustment that freed some of my conscious reasoning. With an easy calculation that astonished me, I realized that I could use the attack. I said, “We need to be very, very careful, then. Pathfind everything and sting to read everyone.” I couldn’t say much more. Pathfinding the floater consumed a considerable amount of energy.
Jemeret looked at Coney, his eyes still glittering. “Since you and Sandalari have no pathfinding or stinging abilities—” He seemed to warn Sandalari not to contradict him. “—I’m afraid you’ll have to share a suite with us while we’re here in Orokell.”
Coney caught on at once. “Not just here,” he corrected. “The children were killed on Werd. Whoever our enemy is, his reach is longer than just this world.” It was the first time any of us had used the phrase “our enemy.” It would not be the last.
“His or her,” Sandalari murmured softly.
Keli, sitting behind them and listening, frowned. I almost felt her radiating anxiety, and looked past the other couple to say, “Keli, if you’re worried about guarding us, it’s a bigger task than one woman should undertake. Are there any other MF guards you’ve come to know and trust?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, and then nodded. “There’s one,” she said. “He thinks kind of like me, and we were in training and first serve together.”
The guard piloting the floater, and sweating as he did it, still had enough ingrained formality to look shocked that she hadn’t used my name or title, and that I hadn’t in any way reprimanded her.
“Fine,” I said smoothly. “Get me his name, and I’ll have him transferred here.”
“Two of us won’t be of much more use than only one,” she volunteered hesitantly. “If someone’s truly out to kill you, you need an army.”
“No.” Jemeret’s voice was firm, some of his anger leaving. “An army is the last thing we need. But we need each other.”
“And the others,” I said quickly, now having the opening I’d needed. “Sinet Coleby, Lage N’Verre, and the other talents, including little Tial Borland. If we’re under attack, we need to be together.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it aloud, not quite yet. Of the six other talents in the Com, two were dead before we could assemble them. After we landed, Jemeret went back and pathfound the rest of the floater, but by then someone could have removed an independent listening device which, being unconnected to the floater mechanism, we might not have found in a cursory scan. Only then did we think to ask Anok Luttrell to locate the guard who had flown the floater to Government House with us, and by that time he could not be found.
The housekeeper seemed so likely to faint when we informed her that we would all share a suite, thank you very much, that I actually stung her to shore her up, even though I was already tired. Fortified, she swung into action with the efficiency of a clock and had three large and two slightly smaller suites in the Visitors’ Residence opened to one another. It meant the removal of the adjoining walls, creating a living area so vast that Tynnanna was instantly tempted to charge around it. The five bedrooms opened off the huge room.
To accommodate Tynnanna, we had the carpet at the small suite end of the huge room exchanged for some tall grass—a request I’d bet the house systems never had to fulfill before—and the klawit was rolling happily in it as soon as it was finished. We eliminated most of the furniture that came with the outer rooms, then called for a three-sided couch with a table in the center, in the middle of the expanse between the grass and the far wall, and added a long dining table and chairs between the wall and the couch. Since there was plenty of room, we extruded the comsole.
Keli took the nearer of the two small bedrooms after leaving our nomidars on the couch. We sent Coney and Sandalari to the large bedroom beside hers, and we took the one on their other side, leaving the third for Jasin Lebec.
Jemeret and I exchanged one look as the lights came up and began a meticulous search of every system, mechanical or technological, anywhere in the apartment. It took almost an hour, and we found no other surveillance or listening devices than the MI ones we were expecting. We noted their presence and left them enabled.
Only then did Jemeret call Pel Nostro on the comsole and tell him about the sabotaged floater. The Com Counselor went so white at the news that for a moment I thought he was as likely to pass out as the housekeeper had been. He looked to the side and asked something, then looked back at us again. “I’ll see that Jasin Lebec is guarded when he leaves here to come to Government House,” he said, “and I’ll post guards on the precincts to ensure your safety when you cross to the Meeting Halls.”
Jemeret shook his head and said, “Thank you, Pel, but the fewer people who are alerted to the problem, the better, and I wouldn’t want anyone guarding us if we haven’t probed them first. Just send for all the other talent in the Com right now and gather it here.”
The Com Counselor frowned.
Jemeret went on, “I think this attack on us was in the nature of a preemptive strike, hastily thought out and sloppily executed. My guess is it’ll be a while before the next one.” He crossed his arms. “What haven’t you been briefing us on, Pel?” The anger was back, controlled, but apparent. “What wasn’t in the documents?” We waited.
Pel Nostro was silent for a long time. “I’ll send you the information,” he said grimly at last, “but not by comsole.” He glanced again to the side, and Jasin Lebec leaned briefly into our field of vision, nodding.
Jemeret cut the connection, called Keli, and went down to reexamine the floater.
Coney and Sandalari came to sit with me on the couch, and I bubbled us, to allow us to speak freely. “All right,” I said to them, “this is going to be more complex than we thought. Someone is out to kill us, and we don’t know who or why.”
“We can probably guess at motives,” Coney said in a low voice, as if there were still some chance of being overheard. “Someone wants the kind of power it’s not possible to have as long as there’s talent in the Com.” He sounded even harder, more cynical, than I’d imagined he could be, even when we were on Caryldon.
“Did you read the members of the Tribunal?” Sandalari asked, shivering. Coney noticed and pulled her against him.
“Of course I did,” I answered her. “Jara Deland doesn’t like me, but it’s personal, not directed at talent in general. Terrill Guthrie’s hard to read. I think I’ll have to do a full probe on him, and I’m not looking forward to it. He’s so icy, I might freeze in there, but I didn’t sense any strong hostility toward us. I think he just doesn’t like anyone.” I thought about the others. “Faucon Oletta bears some resentment against talent, but he gave no hints at all of tendencies toward assassination. Marga Morena and Petra Chantrey have worked with us too long and too intimately to spring into open hatred now, though Petra certainly has the brilliance and the energy for it, and Anok Luttrell needs us too much.” I thought about it a moment or two longer. “Besides, it’s unlikely to be the Tribunal. They already have great power.”
“True.” Coney nodded at me. “It’s more likely to be one of the people who are near to power without having as much as they want. But we shouldn’t rule out the Tribunal on an unlikelihood.”
