A Deepness in the Sky (84 page)

And now at last he had something concrete. His mind should climb into combat alertness; instead he was filled with panicked confusion.Damnthe fizz. If they were up against an alien force so deep, so crafty—what did it matter that Obret Nethering and now Rachner Thract knew the truth? What could they do? But Nethering had been permitted to talk for more than a minute. He'd spoken a number of keywords before the connection was chopped. The aliens might be better than Spiders—but they weren't gods.

The thought brought Thract to a halt. So they weren't gods. The word of their monster ship must be percolating across the civilized world, slowed and suppressed to one-on-one contacts between little people without access to power.But that couldn't hide the secret more than a few hours. And that meant...whatever the purpose of this vast fraud, it must be headed for consummation in the next few hours. Right now the chief was risking her life down at Southmost, trying to bail them out from a disaster that was actually a trap.If I could get through to her, to Belga, to anybody at thetop....

But telephones and network mail would be worse than useless. He needed some direct contact. Thract ran a weaving course down the deserted sidewalk. There was a bus stop somewhere beyond the corner. How long until the next one came through? He still had his private helicopter, a rich cobber's toy...that might be too network-smart. The aliens might simply take it over and crash him. He pushed the fear away. Just now, the chopper was his only hope. From the heliport he could reach any place within two hundred miles. Who would be in that range? He skidded around the corner. Grand Boulevard extended off beneath an endless row of trichrome lights, down from the Strip and through the Calorica forest. The forest was long dead, of course. Not even its leaves were left to spore, the ground beneath being too warm. The center had been cleared flat for a heliport. From there he could fly to...Thract's gaze reached across the bowl. The boulevard lights dwindled to tiny sparkles. Once upon a time, they had ascended the caldera walls, to the mansions of the Waning Years. But the truly rich had abandoned their palaces. Only a few were still occupied, inaccessible from below.

But Sherkaner Underhill was up there, back from Princeton.At least that had been the word in the last situation report he had seen, the day his career had ended. He knew the stories about Underhill, that the poor cobber had lost it mentally. No matter. What Thract needed was a sidewise path into Lands Command, maybe through the chief's daughter, a path that did not pass through the net.

A minute later the city bus pulled up behind Thract. He hopped aboard, the only passenger, even though it was midmorning. "You're in luck." The driver grinned. "The next one isn't until three hours after noon."

Twenty miles an hour, thirty. The bus rumbled down the Grand Boulevard toward the Dead Forest Heliport.I can be on his doorstep in tenminutes. And suddenly Rachner was aware of the fizz barf that crusted his maw and eating hands, of the stains on his uniform. He brushed at his head, but there was nothing he could do about the uniform. A madman come to see a senile old coot. Maybe it was fitting. It also might be the last chance any of them had.

A decade earlier, in friendlier times, Hrunkner Unnerby had advised the Southlanders in the design of New Southmost Under. So in a strange way, things became more familiar after they left the Accord Embassy and entered Southland territory. There were lots of elevators. The Southland had wanted a Parliament Hall that would survive a nuclear strike. He had warned them that future ordnance developments would likely make their goal impossible, but the Southlanders hadn't listened, and had wasted substantial resources that could have gone to Dark Time agriculture.

The main elevator was so large that even the reporters could get aboard, and they did so. The Southland press was a privileged class, explicitly protected by Parliament law—even on government property! The General did all right with the mob. Maybe she had learned from watching Sherkaner deal with journalists. Her combateers hulked innocuously in the background. She made a few general remarks, and then politely ignored their questions, letting the Southland police keep the reporters out of her physical way.

A thousand feet underground, their elevator started sideways on an electric polyrail. The elevator's tall windows looked out on brightly lit industrial caves. The Southlanders had done a lot here and on the Coastal Arc, but they didn't have enough underground farms to support it all.

The two Elected Representatives who had greeted her at the airfield had once been powerful in the South. But times had changed: there had been assassinations, subornations, all Pedure's usual tricks—and lately a near-magical good luck on the Kindred side. Now these two were, at least publicly, alone in their friendliness for the Accord. Now they were regarded as toadies of a foreign king. The two stood close to the General, one close enough that he could talk with her behind a screen. Hopefully, only the General and Hrunkner Unnerby could hear.Don't count on it, Unnerby thought to himself.

"No disrespect, ma'am, but we had hoped that your king would come in his own person." The politico wore a finely tailored jacket and leggings—and an air of spiritual bedragglement.

The General nodded reassuringly. "I understand, sir. I'm here to make sure the right things can be done, and done safely. Will I be allowed to address Parliament?" In the present situation, Hrunk guessed that there was no "inner circle" to speak to—unless you counted the group that was firmly controlled by Pedure. But a parliamentary vote could make a difference, since the strategic rocket forces were still loyal to it.

"Y-yes. We have set that up. But things have gone too far." He waved his watch hand. "I wouldn't put it past the Other Side to cause an elevator wreck and—"

"They let us get this far. If I can talk to Parliament, I think there will be an accommodation." General Smith smiled at the Southlander, an almost conspiratorial look.

Fifteen minutes later, the elevator had deposited them at the main esplanade. Three sides and the roof simply lifted off.That was an embellishment he hadn't seen before. Unnerby the engineer couldn't resist: He froze and stared up into the glaring lights and darkness, trying to see the mechanism that had such a large and silent effect.

Then the crush of police and politicians and reporters swept him off the platform...

...and they were climbing up the stairs of Parliament Hall.

At the top, Southland security finally separated them from the reporters and Smith's own combateers. They passed by five-ton timbered doors...into the hall itself. The hall had always been an underground affair, in earlier generations squatting just above the local deepness. Those early rulers had been more like bandits (or freedom fighters, depending on your source of propaganda) whose forces roamed the mountainous land.

Hrunkner had helped design this incarnation of Parliament Hall. It was one of the few projects he'd worked on where a major design goal was awesome appearance. It might not really be bombproof, but it looked damned spectacular:

The hall was a shallow bowl, with levels connected by gently curving stairs, each level a wide setback with rows of desks and perches. The rock walls curved in an enormous arch that carried fluorescent tubes—and a half-dozen other lighting technologies. Together those lights had almost the brightness and purity of a mid-Bright day, a light rich enough to show all the colors in the walls. Carpeting as deep and soft as father's-pelt covered the stairs and aisles and proscenium. Paintings were hung on the polished wood that faced each level, paintings done with a thousand dyes by artists who knew how to exploit every illusion. For a poor country, they had spent much on this place. But then, their parliament was their greatest pride, an invention that had ended banditry and dependence, and brought peace. Until now.

The doors swung closed behind them. The sound returned deep echoes from the dome and the far walls. In here, there would be just the Elected, their visitors, and—high above, Hrunker could see clusters of lenses—the news cameras. Across the curves of desks, almost every perch was filled. Unnerby could feel the attention of half a thousand Elected.

Smith and Unnerby and Tim Downing started down the steps that led to the proscenium. The Elected were mostly quiet, watching. There was respect here, and hostility, and hope. Maybe Smith would have her chance to keep the peace.

For this day of triumph, Tomas Nau had set North Paw's weather to be its sunniest, the kind of warm afternoon that could extend all the summer day round. Ali Lin had grumbled, but made the necessary changes. Now Ali was weeding in the garden beneath Nau's study, his irritation forgotten. So what if the park's patterns were upset; fixing the problem would be Ali's next task.

And my task is to manage everything together,Tomas thought. Across the table from him sat Vinh and Trinli, working with the site monitoring he had assigned them. Trinli was essential to the cover story, the only Peddler that Tomas was confident would support the lies. Vinh...well, a credible excuse would take him offline for critical moments, but what he did see would corroborate Trinli. That would be tricky, but if there were any surprises...well, that was what Kal and his men were here to handle.

Ritser's presence was just a flat image, showing him sitting in the Captain's chair aboard theHand. None of his words would be heard by innocent ears. "Yes, Podmaster! We'll have the picture in a moment. We got a functioning spybot into Parliament Hall. Hey, Reynolt, your Melin got something right."

Anne was up in the Hammerfest Attic. She was present only as a private image in Tomas's huds, and a voice in his ear. At the moment, her attention was split in at least three directions. She was running some kind of ziphead analysis, watching a Trixia Bonsol translation on the wall above her, and tracking the data stream from theHand. The ziphead situation was as complicated as it had ever been. She didn't respond to Ritser's words.

"Anne? When Ritser's spy pics come, pipe them directly to Benny's. Trixia can do overlay translation, but give us some true audio, too." Tomas had already seen some of the spybot transmissions. Let the people at Benny's see living Spiders up close and in motion. That would be a subtle help in the postconquest lies.

Anne didn't look away from her work. "Yes, sir. I see that what you say is heard by Vinh and Trinli."

"Quite so."

"Very well. Just want you to know...our internal enemies have stepped up the pace. I'm seeing meddling all through our automation.Watch Trinli. I'll bet he's sitting there diddling his localizers." Anne's gaze flicked up for an instant, catching the question in Nau's eyes. She shrugged. "No, I'm still not sure it's him. But I'm very close. Be ready."

A second passed. Anne's voice came again, but now publicly audible here and in the Peddlers' temp. "Okay. Here we have live video from Parliament Hall at Southmost. This is what a human would actually see and hear."

Nau looked to the left, where his huds showed Qiwi's pov in the temp. The main facets of Benny's display flickered. For an instant it wasn't clear what they were seeing. There was a jumble of reds and greens, actinic blues. They were looking into some kind of a pit. Stone ladders were cut into the walls. Moss or hairy pelts grew from rock. The Spiders crowded like black roaches.

Ritser Brughel glanced up from the pictures of Parliament and shook his head almost in awe. "It's like some Frenkisch prophet's vision of Hell."

Nau gave a gave a silent nod of acknowledgment. With the ten-second time lag, casual chitchat was to be avoided. But Brughel was right; seeing so many together was even worse than the earlier spybot videos. The zipheads' cozy, humanesque translations gave a very unreal view of the Spiders.I wonder how much we are missing about their minds. He called up a separate image of the scene, this one synthesized by ziphead translators from a Spider news feed. In this picture, the steep pit became a shallow amphitheater, the ugly splashes of color were orderly mosaics worked into the carpet (which no longer looked like scraggly hair). The woodwork was everywhere glistening with polish (not stained and pitted). And the creatures themselves were somehow more sedate, their gestures almost meaningful in human body language.

In both displays, three figures appeared at the Parliament's entrance. They climbed (walked) down the stone stairs. The air was full of hissing and clicking, the true sound of these creatures.

The threesome disappeared into the bottom of the pit. A moment passed and they reappeared, climbing the far side. Ritser chuckled. "The midsized one in front must be the spy chief, that's what Bonsol calls ‘Victory Smith.' " One detail of the ziphead story was accurate: The creature's clothing was dead black, but it was more a pile of interlocking patches than a uniform. "The hairy creature behind Smith, that must be the engineer, ‘Hrunkner Unnerby.' Such quaint names for monsters."

The three climbed out onto an arching spike of stone. A fourth Spider, already on the precarious structure, clambered to its pointed end.

Nau turned from the Spiders' hall to look at the crowd at Benny's. They were silent, watching in vast shock. Even Benny Wen's helpers were motionless, their gaze captured by the images from the Spider world.

"Introductions by the Parliamentary Speaker," spoke a ziphead voice. "The Parliament will come to order. I have the honor to—" Around the sensible words, Ritser's spy robot sent back the reality, the hissing clatter, the stabbing gestures with forelegs that ended in rapier points. In truth, these creatures did look like the statues the Qeng Ho had seen at Lands Command. But when they moved it was the chilling grace of predators, some gestures slow, some very very fast. Strangest of all, for all their superior vision, it wasn't easy to identify their eyes. Across the fluted ridges of the head, there were patches of smooth glassiness, bulbous here and there, with extensions that might be the cool-down points for its thermal infrared vision. The front of the Spider body was a nightmarish eating machine. The razor mandibles and clawlike helper limbs were in constant motion. But the creature's head was almost immobile on the thorax.