Read A Working of Stars Online
Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
A Working of Stars (9 page)
“Well, are they?”
Natelth’s frown deepened. “Their performance is not deteriorating.”
“Not yet,” she said. “If our supervisors are any good, they’re spotting the warning signs before the decay sets in, not after.”
“We don’t promote and adopt incompetents. But we can’t afford to halt our shipbuilding efforts, either—not when the sus-Radal and half a dozen other families are fattening their fleets.”
“There’s always farming out the nonsecret work to commercial shipyards,” she said. They’d had this argument many times before, in one form or another, but she still felt obliged to try.
“No.”
“It works for the sus-Dariv.”
“We are not the sus-Dariv,” he said. “We are the sus-Peledaen. I don’t want outside interests getting involved in our fleet construction.”
“We’ve used commercial yards for repairs and refitting.”
“Only when there was no time and no alternative. If I’d had a choice, we would have brought all the work in-house four decades ago.”
“We don’t always get the choices we want,” she said. “And we surely didn’t get them back then.”
She hadn’t thought about those days for a long time. It had been a dark, violent period, when she and Natelth had been fighting hard just to keep the control of the fleet-family in the hands of the sus-Khalgath line. Their parents were suddenly, unexpectedly dead; their late-born sibling Arekhon was an orphaned infant thrust into Isayana’s care; and all of Hanilat seemed firmly of the opinion that Natelth sus-Khalgath was by virtue of his youth unfit to rule the sus-Peledaen.
Showing people otherwise had taken the greater part of a decade, but they had done it, she and Natelth against the world. He ran most of that world, these days, but sometimes Isayana thought that he had absorbed those early lessons in control and suspicion a bit too well.
In the service lot behind the Court of Two Colors, a Ridge Farms produce truck was backing up to Loading Dock 3. Inside the truck’s canvas-shielded rear compartment, five men sat beside a metal drum, some four feet high and two across. These were men who took no chances: they had their own handcart with them.
The truck did not contain tenderwort. That cargo had been dumped unceremoniously by the roadside some twenty miles outside the city limits of greater Hanilat—as had the driver and his assistant. They would not be found before dawn, by which time bigger news would already be filling the morning feeds.
“Hey, Gesri,” said one of the men in the back. His current name, adopted for the occasion, was Daryd—his mother had certainly never called him that, but then, he hadn’t used his birth-name in years. Daryd was an older man, dressed in the impeccable clothing of a legalist or an administrator. In addition to being the leader of the men in the truck, he also functioned as the team’s outside interface: If his people ran into someone officious, Daryd could official back until the others got clear. “What’s eating you? You’re sweating, man.”
“I’ll be all right,” Gesri said. “It’s the way this truck is moving. I get sick.”
“I hope that’s all it is.”
The truck eased to a stop with a light bump. The driver hit the back of the cab twice. Daryd stood up.
“It’s showtime,” he said.
“Then let’s move,” said the bombmaker. He also had a true name, but no one had called him by it for a long time now. In the shadowy world where the team functioned, he was known only by his expertise. “There’s three hundred pounds of nasty in that thing. Until it’s armed, we’re in deep if we’re caught, and with nothing to show for it.”
“Where do we want it?” asked another of the men.
“Down low as we can get,” the bombmaker said. “And as close to the center as we can get, over in the wing with the main ballroom.”
Two of the men opened the canvas back of the truck while the other two rolled the drum onto the handcart. Working together, they backed the handcart gently onto the dock. The metal door rolled up and they were in.
“Fish sauce,” the no-longer-ill Gesri said. He passed over a clipboard to the lading-clerk. “Where do you want it?”
“Larder A-Twelve,” the clerk said, not looking up from the work on his desk.
“This way,” Daryd said to his crew. The four of them, with Daryd leading, walked down the corridor to the right. “Ahead should be a door, then a ramp down to the left.”
Once they were out of sight of the people at the loading dock, Daryd brought out an inertial tracker. He’d gone over the Court’s floor plan before the start of the operation, but he hadn’t dared do a recon, for fear of getting caught. Getting caught would have boosted security, and maybe moved the sus-Dariv conclave to some other venue. So this live run was also the first and only.
The door they were looking for—which was not the door of Larder A-12—was where it should be, and the lock was simple. Now they were where no honest delivery man would ever be, so speed was even more essential.
They closed the door behind them, relocked it, and jollied the handcart and its burden down the ramp into another corridor. This one was all white, full of bright incandescent glows, with pipes for steam and chill-water running overhead, along with the gas lines and the communications feeds.
Down the ramp—to the right—another set of corridors. Daryd was counting the paces and watching his inertial. The main supports for the building would be near here. An explosion would take them out, would take out the building, collapsing it. An outside bang with much bigger fireworks wouldn’t have half the effect.
“Here,” Daryd said finally.
He stepped back, and the bombmaker stepped forward. “Take off the cover.”
Gesri whisked away the drum’s canvas traveling robe. Thus revealed, the metal of the container gleamed in the light. The drum had no top. Inside it was a simple circuit with a timer, and beside the circuit a chemical vial, and beside
that
a drop bolt. The electric timer was the main component. It had batteries and an electric blasting cap, sunk into the explosive bricks ranged around the inside circumference of the drum.
that
a drop bolt. The electric timer was the main component. It had batteries and an electric blasting cap, sunk into the explosive bricks ranged around the inside circumference of the drum.
“Time,” the bombmaker said.
Daryd checked his chrono. “Fifty-eight minutes.”
“Fifty-eight minutes, check,” the bombmaker said, and dialed in the number. He pressed the button.
Nothing visible happened; but slowly, internally, the timer began its count.
In fifty-eight minutes, if nothing went wrong, the hollow shape of the drum’s explosive load would turn into incandescent gas moving at many times the velocity of sound, with a volume far too large for the corridor to hold without cracking. And even if the timer didn’t work—things go wrong, after all, and luck holds for some people and not for others—there remained a second, chemical circuit.
“Fifty-eight minutes on the primary.” The bombmaker selected a sixty-minute chemical timer from a group in the leather roll he pulled from a pocket. The timer was a slender metal cylinder made of copper at one end and white steel at the other, divided at the midpoint circumference by a brass ring. He checked the printing on the chemical timer. “Sixty minutes, as advertised.”
Daryd checked his chrono again. “Let’s move it. We don’t have all night.”
“Patience,” the bombmaker said.
He pulled a pliers from another pocket and crimped the copper end of the chemical blasting cap. That would break the vial of acid inside. After a while the acid would eat through to where the initiator was, and much else would follow.
The bombmaker punched the steel end of the timer into a soft blasting brick, placed opposite where his electrical timer was counting down. Two initiators, more luck.
One more thing to do: the mechanical, the failsafe, the booby trap. In this case, a gravity bolt that would fall if disturbed. The bombmaker pulled back the spring-loaded hammer of a mechanical initiator, and held the hammer in place with a long piece of flat metal.
“Now,” he said. “And be careful. If I lose my grip on the shim, none of us will stay alive long enough to notice what happened.”
The other men—except for Daryd, who couldn’t get his hands dirty, in case somebody should notice that the grime under his fingernails didn’t match his respectable business garb—rocked the drum off of its cart and turned it over. Carefully, they lowered the open end of the drum, with the metal shim across it, down onto the floor.
Once the drum was in place, the bombmaker pulled the shim out. Slowly. Carefully. A click, and he held his breath. Then it was done.
“Right, then,” he said. “Anyone tries to moves that drum before time, up it goes.”
ERAASI: HANILAT
H
is cousin Zeri, Herin decided, might look like nothing more than a nicely rounded bit of yellow-haired fluff—but she was quite a bit smarter than she appeared. She’d made a neat escape from a largely pointless evening, not to mention the remainder of the afternoon working sessions, while at the same time ensuring that her vote was counted on the only issue of any actual importance. The folded paper with her authorization on it crackled stiffly inside his jacket as he made his way to the banquet hall from a roundtable seminar on kinship parity. He didn’t have any interest in the subject—he was high enough in the inner family that the work he did was not done for rank or recognition—but he’d attended the seminar out of a sense of duty.
is cousin Zeri, Herin decided, might look like nothing more than a nicely rounded bit of yellow-haired fluff—but she was quite a bit smarter than she appeared. She’d made a neat escape from a largely pointless evening, not to mention the remainder of the afternoon working sessions, while at the same time ensuring that her vote was counted on the only issue of any actual importance. The folded paper with her authorization on it crackled stiffly inside his jacket as he made his way to the banquet hall from a roundtable seminar on kinship parity. He didn’t have any interest in the subject—he was high enough in the inner family that the work he did was not done for rank or recognition—but he’d attended the seminar out of a sense of duty.
The banquet, of course, would be excellent; the Court of Two Colors could hardly provide anything less. The debate to follow, on the vexed issue of private security forces, would be acrimonious, but would settle nothing, even with the weight of Zeri’s vote added to Herin’s own.
A flicker of motion caught at the corner of his eye outside the leather-covered double doors that led from the conference area to the banquet hall.
He looked in the direction of the anomaly, only to have it vanish; a second later, it was teasing at him again. This time he was more careful, using his peripheral vision to watch the thing, whatever it was. He was rewarded with a glimpse of what looked like pale, glowing thread, that sometimes trailed on the black-and-white patterned carpet and sometimes appeared to float in the air above it.
Very odd,
Herin thought. People who worked in the Mage-Circles spoke of the
eiran
as looking like silvery thread; but he had never been a Mage, or even trained for one. He wasn’t supposed to be seeing the
eiran
for the first time at a business conference in Hanilat.
Herin thought. People who worked in the Mage-Circles spoke of the
eiran
as looking like silvery thread; but he had never been a Mage, or even trained for one. He wasn’t supposed to be seeing the
eiran
for the first time at a business conference in Hanilat.
But now that he’d spotted it, the glowing line wouldn’t go away. It curled and snaked about, twisting in and out among sus-Dariv and syn-Dariv alike. Herin was seized by the thought that it must be trying to find him, personally, by some kind of touch. Before he could think better of his action, he stepped around a knot of gossiping life-sciences savants and let the questing silver thread wrap itself whiplike around his ankle.
An electric sensation passed through him with the contact. This was luck, all right—strong and real, the pulsing current of life itself. Next to it, the furnishings of the Court of Two Colors, and the chattering crowd outside the banquet hall, seemed diminished and pale, like objects from a lesser order of existence. He marked how the thread of the
eiran
wound away from him, through the room and out the farther door, and felt it pulling at him to follow.
eiran
wound away from him, through the room and out the farther door, and felt it pulling at him to follow.
This is definitely something new,
he thought. And because Herin Arayet sus-Dariv was an inquisitive man by nature as well as by profession, he gave in to the urge and let the silver cord draw him away from the banquet hall.
he thought. And because Herin Arayet sus-Dariv was an inquisitive man by nature as well as by profession, he gave in to the urge and let the silver cord draw him away from the banquet hall.
Chief Provisioner Tabbes looked at his chrono, then touched the intercom for Loading Dock 3. “Has the tenderwort arrived?”
The voice of the lading-clerk came back over the link. “No, sir.”
“No? Ridge Farms was supposed to get it here an hour ago at the absolute latest!”
There was a moment of silence, in which Tabbes fancied he could hear the lading-clerk shrug before answering, “Nothing’s come in at the loading dock in the last hour except a drum of fish sauce.”
“We didn’t order any fish sauce,” Tabbes said indignantly. He would need to have words with the people at Ridge Farms, if their order department had become capable of such confusion. “Where did they put it?”
“A-Twelve.”
“Leave it be, then. I’ll go over the order myself later and see if I can figure out where they went wrong. Fish sauce, of all things … .” Tabbes was still seething with irritation. “We don’t need fish sauce. We need tenderwort, and the menu’s gone to the printer already. Let me know if anything looking remotely like tenderwort happens to show up in the next ten minutes.”
A restlessness seized him. Rain tonight, hardly low humidity. A whole shipment lost, possibly ruined.
Tabbes decided to walk down to the loading dock and check things out on-scene. It was always possible that the fatal error had occurred not in the order-processing department at Ridge Farms, but somewhere at the Court’s end of things. Perhaps the tenderwort had already arrived unnoticed, and was now being allowed to sit there wilting in the heat. If so, the parties responsible would need to be singled out and disciplined, perhaps even discharged with prejudice. The Court had a reputation to keep up.
He stood and left his office, heading for the loading docks by way of the managerial corridors. The restricted-access halls and stairways provided the Court’s upper staff with expeditious routes to all the key service areas, without the delays that might come of encountering other workers along the way. He was on the second level, and heading at a quick pace for the passageway that opened onto the general loading area, when he rounded a corner and saw a polished metal drum standing untended in the middle of the corridor.
Tabbes came to an abrupt stop. “What in the world?”
He looked at the drum. No markings on the outside. Nothing to show where it had come from or what it contained.
“This isn’t right at all,” he said to himself, and hurried to the belowstairs security office in one of the small rooms opening off of Loading Dock 1. “There’s a big drum of something-or-other in the managers’ corridor,” he said to the officer on duty. “And it doesn’t belong there.”
“Probably one of the janitors left it,” the officer said. “They’ll get it in the morning.”
Tabbes had a thin set to his lips. “No. It doesn’t belong, and there wasn’t anyone around. I want a qualified person to come take a look at it.”
“All right,” the security officer said at last. “I’ll come look. But it’s probably nothing but some trash that didn’t get picked up.”
Tabbes led the way back to the corridor with the drum. He unlocked the management-only doorway, and then went down the ramp, with the security officer following close behind. They could see the drum waiting for them up ahead, under the glaring lights.
The two men were perhaps twenty feet away from the drum when the timer’s fifty-eighth minute passed. The bombmaker was good at what he did: Both of his backups proved unnecessary.
By strict count—if victims are divided one from another by fractions of a second—Tabbes and the security officer were the first two victims of the blast. Could they have watched with slow-motion eyes, they would have seen the drum first bulge around its center, then split with great vertical tears, black against the yellow light inside. But they never had the chance. Instead, the overpressure from the expanding gas took them and hurled them down the passageway, stripping flesh from bone and pulverizing the bone afterward.
The
eiran
led Herin away from the private areas of the Court of Two Colors, and down to the pavement level. He let the silver thread draw him, unresisting, through the heavy glass doors and past the gatekeeper-
aiketh,
and from there to the street.
eiran
led Herin away from the private areas of the Court of Two Colors, and down to the pavement level. He let the silver thread draw him, unresisting, through the heavy glass doors and past the gatekeeper-
aiketh,
and from there to the street.
Night had fallen outside, and the glowing thread stood out against the darkness like a line of silver fire. Herin wondered if any of the passersby hurrying along to their transit connections or their evening appointments also saw the
eiran
as he did—or was that beckoning silver thread intended for him alone?
eiran
as he did—or was that beckoning silver thread intended for him alone?
He followed it across High Port Road, weaving in and out of the vehicular traffic and through the press of pedestrians on the other side. There, in the shelter of a recessed doorway, the
eiran
left him, dissipating like fog and taking its strange compulsion away with it into the night.
eiran
left him, dissipating like fog and taking its strange compulsion away with it into the night.
That was certainly peculiar
, he thought, in the instant remaining before the world as he had known it came to an end.
, he thought, in the instant remaining before the world as he had known it came to an end.
There was a noise—an enormous, unexpected noise—and the whole Court of Two Colors swayed as if struck by a giant fist. The right-hand side of the building, the side holding the grand ballroom, collapsed downward. Dust rose in a vast cloud; water spurted from broken mains; electricity sparked from severed cables. The high-velocity shock wave touched and killed everyone in its path, as far out as the middle of High Port Road.
The left side, where the public restaurant and the guest rooms were, swayed and canted but did not collapse and—judging strictly from its effects—the shock wave was more attenuated there. After the explosion, silence fell; though it could have been merely a temporary deafness. Tongues of fire began to lick at the wreckage. Emergency vehicles with lights and sirens—all the power of a city come to deal with a hurt—arrived soon after that.
Herin watched, unscathed. And all that he could think of, beyond the fact that the
eiran
for some reason wanted him alive, was that somebody else had definitely wanted all of the sus-Dariv dead.
eiran
for some reason wanted him alive, was that somebody else had definitely wanted all of the sus-Dariv dead.
Theledau sus-Radal had plans. Iulan Vai knew that as soon as his summons reached her Hanilat message-drop:
Come to the office tonight. The usual hour.
She wasn’t as high in Thel’s private councils as she’d been back in the old days, when she’d been his Agent-Principal and the sus-Radal’s eyes and ears in Hanilat. She was a private person now, and worked for the family only when asked, and only if she saw fit to do so. Nevertheless, her unannounced visit of the previous evening had apparently moved the head of the sus-Radal to a decision of some kind.
She came to Thel’s headquarters a little after dusk, slipping into the tall building through the service entrance with her dark hair wrapped in a day laborer’s kerchief. Here in the downtown business district, she didn’t need the concealment of a hardmask and Mage’s robes. If anybody noticed her, they would take her for one of the maintenance workers who followed after the building’s aiketen and took care of those jobs that fell outside of the servitors’ limited instruction sets.
Thel was waiting for her in his top-floor office. He nodded a greeting to her as she entered. “Vai.”
“Thel,” she replied.
He had the windows uncovered and the room lights dimmed, the better to see the last glow of the sunset and the first emerging stars. Vai knew that he hated working late—it meant taking a chance on missing the hour of lunar observance. Thel had always been devout, but his years in equatorial Hanilat had made him, if possible, even firmer in his adherence to northern ritual and custom.
“What have you got for me?” she asked.
“After our talk last night, I decided I needed to show you something.” He pressed a control on his desktop and an image appeared, hovering in the air above the polished wooden surface. “This is what the family’s engineers have been working on for the past five years.”
Vai frowned at it. “A
rock?”
rock?”
“An asteroid,” he said. “On the surface, at least. Inside—”
He pressed another control. Half of the image peeled away, leaving a cross section riddled with caves and tunnels like an insect mound. He plucked a stylus from the desktop holder and used it for a pointer. “Living quarters, docking and construction space, observation and recording equipment … even accommodations for a working Circle.”
“Is this a natural object?” she asked. “Or did your engineers make it from scratch?”
“Natural to start with. But they’ve worked on it extensively.”
“It’ll make somebody a nice observation post once it’s operational.”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Ah,” said Vai. “Who’s going to be observed? Our friends the sus-Peledaen?”
Thel smiled. “We already have agents in place for that. No, this is for watching the planets on the far side of the interstellar gap.”
She contemplated the floating model for a while in silence.
‘Rekhe would have loved to play with this thing
, she thought, with a rare pang of nostalgia. “Something this big, you’re never going to keep word of it from getting out.”
‘Rekhe would have loved to play with this thing
, she thought, with a rare pang of nostalgia. “Something this big, you’re never going to keep word of it from getting out.”
“It doesn’t really matter if people think that we’re building something like one of the sus-Peledaen orbital stations,” he told her. “We’ve already got one of those in progress anyway, as a decoy. What’s important is that nobody suspects where we’ve been building this one.”
“You built it all the way over there?” The plan, she had to admit, was alluringly audacious. Audacity, however, brought along problems of its own. “How did you shuttle the workers back and forth without being spotted?”
“One rock in space looks much like another,” he said. “The people on the transport ships know the truth, of course, but we’ve been sticking with family for this project—no hired crews and no contract carriers.”
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