Battleground (13 page)

“We've been hit by a composite electromagnetic beam, can't tell yet if it's sophisticated enough to recognize
Endeavor
as an artifact. No other data yet. We're working on it.”

“Source?”

“Got that right away. A quarter of a million klicks off at two o'clock. Can't tell yet if it's an orbital or a ship.”

“Any information coded in the signal? Any attempt to communicate?”

“No sign of that. Designed for detection, as far as we can tell.”

“Then it's transmitting something to somebody. Traced the destination yet?”

“We're on it.”

“I'm joining you. Get one of the damn telepaths up there too. Bassanio, if she's not still out in la-la land.”

“Ma'am?”

“Out,” Metra said.

•   •   •

—stands at the window, how long has he been there? The black is overhead now, shot through with lightning, it hangs low over a shallow basin in the land. A crèche was there once, now the basin is filled with shadows. The Holy Man recently ordered a crèche moved aboveground. A big one, its capacity tens of thousands, a primary target.

Balance.

From inside the train he does not hear, but sees, wind bending grasses and trees. Wind broke a train like this once and whirled the pieces away. When?

And when underground, his own command center, it can't be far—

•   •   •

If this was not precisely a Commission emergency, the situation certainly called for a Commission alert. Metra had not imagined how hard sounding it would be.

Mission protocol called for bypassing Fleet if she judged it advisable, communicating directly with the commissioner in charge. She spent a frustrating hour intermittently contacting Edward Vickery's night staff before she finally got them, through sheer force of will, to admit that they could not get a response to any effort to reach him, not even signals to the implant in his ear, which was supposed to make him accessible every min
ute of every day. The implant could be deactivated, but its user was on oath to keep it active unless it developed a malfunction that threatened to scramble the brain. Metra hoped Vickery's brain had gotten fried.

She gave up on his bewildered staff and tried to detour through Starr Jameson's offices. No response. There was no night staff at Contact; a director rated one, but Jameson had dispensed with it, moving the allotted funds to expand Contact Education and arguing privately, Metra had heard, that anything worth waking him for was worth waking Vickery first. Reluctantly, she tried his home. Oh-three-hundred hours on
Endeavor
was three o'clock in the morning at Admin, the standard for Standard time, and the house politely informed her that she was not on the list of people authorized to disturb the director in the middle of the night. “Who is?” she demanded, and the obliging house recited a list that began with Hanna Bassanio. That would do a lot of good! Edward Vickery—that too, under the circumstances. Mickey Bassanio, for God's sake, he was a baby! Portia Jameson, a relative, who Metra knew rarely left Heartworld. Commissioner Andrella Murphy. And Thera August, who, the house said, actually lived in it and actually could be disturbed at any hour.

So it was Thera August who went to get Jameson out of bed, and Metra was prepared for the worst. Vickery had warned her that at one time Jameson had habitually used psychotropics, and might do so still. He might be spaced—or he might be with someone he wouldn't want Bassanio to know about. She activated video; Bassanio had been authorized to use it just hours ago, and Metra appropriated the privilege.

But Jameson, though somewhat disheveled, looked fully alert and only worried, not angry or defensive. He said, “What's going on?”

Metra started her report and saw him relax at once. Had he expected Bassanio to go psychotic again?

Metra's people had learned a little more in that frustrating hour. Now that they knew what to look for, they had found satellites studding the system, sentinel beams crisscrossing it. One satellite was transmitting information to Battleground's surface, had probably started at the same time
Endeavor
registered the first hit from the beams.

“Is the transmission Inspace, or conventional?” Jameson asked.

“Electromagnetic only, like the sensor beam. Two-point-three hours, now, before it's received on the surface. I ordered diminished speed at once;
Endeavor's
almost at rest.”

“Good. The medium is interesting. I wonder if they've lost their Inspace capabilities? There was no reference to interstellar exploration in the datastream, and Hanna hasn't picked up anything about it. What does Commissioner Vickery think?”

“He is unavailable,” Metra said.

“I see,” Jameson said, but he looked puzzled. “Let me talk to Hanna, please.”

“She is also unavailable. She's been in that trance the Adepts use for hours. The others say as far as they know she's in no danger, and there's no way to force her out of it. If they're telling the truth,” Metra added. “Do you know anything about it?”

Jameson did not look alarmed. He said, “This time? No. I know she spent a couple of days in it once, but it was an extreme situation. Are her vital signs normal for trance?”

“They're fine.”

“Have the others tried to communicate with her?”

“They say she's blocking them. They say she told them to wait, and since then trying to reach her is like walking into a wall.”

“Then she's got a good reason,” he said, but abstractedly, as if he were thinking something over. “She might have connected with someone important. Good . . . What do you recommend next, Captain?”

Metra said, “Start transmitting a greeting now. Communication's worked on it for weeks; we can get it going right away. Give them some information about us before they have time to get worried and maybe mount an attack. These are not peaceful people.”

“I agree, on the whole—with the reservation that they seem to be so busy fighting each other that it'd take them a while to plan an attack. We haven't seen any evidence of fighting in space, remember; they could be ineffective there. And I'd like to give Hanna more time. But you need to be reporting to a commissioner, don't you? Sorry . . . I forgot I'm not one.”

Metra almost heard the unspoken
yet.
But Jameson smiled, the amusement at himself so clearly genuine that Metra wondered for the first time if Bassanio saw more in this man than the obvious advantages to herself. None of her business, but she said, “Could you get Bassanio to respond to you?”

“Possibly. Or not, depending on her estimate of the importance of what she's learning. Let her stay as she is for the moment. I'm going to sign off, but stand by, please. I want to contact Commissioner Murphy.”

“Can you reach her at this hour?”

“I'm on her most-personal list.” He looked away, touched something out of sight. “You are on mine, as of now.”

•   •   •

The rain begins without preliminary drops, driving down, blotting out the flat, battered fields. Thunder cracks audibly even through thick windows and the darkness is like night between attacks of lightning, or maybe there would be a little light, but the lightning blinds him and the intervals for recovery are short. Soon his own rooms, what's left of an image once painted on a wall, that place that was quiet and green and no work of Abundant God—

•   •   •

Dema was with Hanna and Carl now that Bella had gone to Communications at the captain's command. She started to rise, stopped on one knee. “I th
ought she was coming out of it—”

“I thought I saw her move.”

“I thought I saw her
think
. Something important, but I couldn't quite catch . . .” After barely a pause, Dema said, “Bella didn't feel anything.”

Carl said crossly, “Ordering a telepath to Communications seems like a waste of energy. What about Joseph and Arch?”

“Joseph's asleep. Sensible, that's Joseph. Arch is in bed with somebody. Not asleep.”

“Who?” said Carl, diverted.

“Does it matter? Arc
h is
always
with somebody.”

Dema settled down again. They waited some more.

•   •   •

—stumbling through corridors to his own rooms, the halls seem disconnected, it is like careening through a gray space made of cubes. At least there is no lightning, no rain, no wind, no hail—

Words in his ear, Prookt Commander's voice, a small object detected in space, outer limit of the system, potentially deadly asteroid they thought at first but no, manufactured and under power, the Demon has taken to space again—unless the not-Soldiers, thinks Kwoort, but he does not say so to Prookt, who knows nothing of not-Soldiers—

•   •   •

Hanna moved at last, convulsively.

They know we are here.

Carl blinked
; he knew what Hanna's thought felt like and this was Hanna, and her eyes were open now, but he wasn't much good at separating sense from affect—not when the medium was thought—and the package was an overload: urgency, thirst, weariness, all blurred the content for him.

Not for Dema. She said, “This is not news. You'll have to do better than that, H'ana, or you'll never hear the end of it!”

“Well,” Hanna said, dry throat making her hoarse, “they think we're the enemy. I mean, whatever side this one I was watching is on, they thin
k we're on the other side. Is that better?”

•   •   •

“Back me up,” Jameson said to Andrella Murphy and she said, “Just who is the commissioner here?” but there was no question she would do it. After that he made a fast (but not fast enough) contact with Iledra, Lady Koroth, on D'neera. Talking to Iledra was at rock-bottom of the list of things he liked to do, but he did it—a waste of time, because Iledra could offer nothing more than agreement that Hanna probably was not in danger, and probably remained in trance because she had fastened on something important.

It was worse than a waste of time—but Jameson had expected it to be worse—because Iledra t
hen informed him that it was all his fault that D'neera, specifically Koroth, had lost Hanna—but he had expected that, too; she always harangued him about it when he talked to her.

“She's not necessarily gone forever,” he said reasonably, but Iledra was not reasonable on this subject.

“For the foreseeable future, at least,” she said. “The Polity has her, Contact has her.
You
have her.”

“Mickey has her,” he said. “You can hardly blame me for her true-human child.”

Not this one, anyway,
he thought, a thought so unbidden and amazing that he simply sat where he was and stared at nothing, thinking
Where the hell did that come from?—
while Lady Koroth scolded on, unheard.

•   •   •

Lavatory first, urgently, and as long as she is here get the water on, make it cold, stand under it, wash off the staleness—there is the eerie trace of a connection with the being called Kwoort, although she has broken the conscious link. Overly sensitized, too open, now that the block is gone, to every thought, every thought of every human being near her

Carl afraid, afterimage of Hanna stumbling with muscle cramps, banging into a wall

Dema repeating her name and with it an old image, she'd once been thought of as Wildfire

Make the water colder, make it icy, freeze the racing thoughts

Fix on Dema
, calling aloud just outside the fall of water:
H'ana, you need to see the captain, Bella says it is urgent

Focus on the captain, oh, she is talking to Starr, I want to

A memory,
The worst mistake I ever made was touching you the very first time
but oh, you loved it, only forgot why you did it, I'd seen into your heart and you hate it but you need it

Dema, starting to worry,
This is no time to think of love affairs

Bella!
It was a scream in thought for Bella, the strongest

Calm down,
Dema again,
calm now, breathe, breathe, like the start of the trance

So she breathed, focus on the breath, the breath. The breath.

After a long time the cacophony faded.

•   •   •

“It was only a few minutes,” Dema said. Hanna was curled on the bed now, warm in a wrap of blankets, Dema gently brushing tangles from her wet hair.

“Drink,” said Carl, handing her water; he watched her drink, took the tumbler from her hand, refilled it and gave it back.

“Drink some more,” he said. Hanna obeyed.

“I'm sorry you were frightened,” she said.

“I wasn't.”

“You were.”

“Wasn't.” He grinned.

“I was observing a commanding officer.” She thought about that. “Well. Not observing. Living in his head. He was pretty agitated.”

“About us?”

“No, even before he got the news. Did he know I was there?”
she wondered, shook her head. “I have to go to Command. You'd better tell me first,” she said, “what's happened here.” And kept the breath slow and steady, holding on to calm.

W
RONG.

Too many people in the captain's briefing room.
Maybe that's all it is,
Hanna thought, standing in the doorway unnoticed. Metra and Cork and Cock. Bella. By holo, Jameson and Andrella Murphy.

No, not quite all. Jameson was a little larger than life, looming, the sensory effect enhanced too, color just a little richer than real. Why did he feel the need to loom when he didn't like using holo at all? And what was Murphy's apparition doing here instead of Edward Vickery's?

She looked back at Jameson.
Why,
she thought,
must he emphasize who's in command?

Bella felt her presence and tur
ned.
What?
said Hanna, and Bella said,
True-human politics? Something like that . . .

Reluctantly, Hanna moved into the room and into the holo pickup field. A flash of resentment from Metra. Nothing, of course, from the holo projections. It must be the middle of the night at Admin, Hanna thought; she recognized the ghostly fragment of background as Jameson's study, not his office. Murphy too must be at home because she wore a lounging robe. She wore it like a ball gown, though.

Hanna looked up at Jameson, prepared to smile until he acknowledged her only with a sharp, slight turn of his head and said impersonally, “Hanna. What can you tell us?”

It took a moment to detach herself and say, “First, most important, at the site where the signal was received, they think their customary enemy is attacking from space.”

Jameson said to Metra, “Start the greeting now,” and Metra said to Cochran, “So ordered,” and Cochran nodded and went out.

Hanna continued to watch Jameson. He had given the instruction immediately. He had not deferred to Murphy even with a look. Edward Vickery would have hesitated. Where was he?

Jameson's eyes came back to Hanna. “What else did you find out?” he said.

Gathering her thoughts was a slow process, and she began to understand how tired she was. Soon she would feel the full burden of it.

“I learned quite a lot, I think,” she answered. “But there hasn't been time to think about it.”

“Give us what you can. What held your attention for so long?”

She began slowly, “I finally found a ranking individual. The—chief military Commander—I'll speak of him that way—is named—”

The unpronounceable stopped her. “I'll call him Kwoort,” she said. “He just finished directing a battle, just before he got news of what they think is an attack from space . . .”

She spoke slowly, point by point. Kwoort's complete confidence in speaking with his Holy Man. No reverence there. The deliberate, planned loss in battle, tactics directed toward losing. She said finally, “He had wounded survivors. Some could have been saved. But he ordered them killed. His Soldiers did it, killed their own comrades. It's standard practice.”

After a long silence Jameson said, “It's not something we'd expect humans to do. But you've told us compassion is not part of their makeup, and they do not value individual lives. What else?”

Hanna shrugged. There was more. The remembered thought of a fading image, the recollection of something from some place
where everything was green
painted on a High Commander's wall, nagged her, but speaking felt like too much effort. The hours in trance were catching up with her, along with everything she had not felt while she was in it, and her legs felt weak. She fumbled with a chair and dropped into it. She closed her eyes for just a moment—a mistake;
Yes, sleep!
said her brain, and everything receded. She heard Jameson say, “How long before we might get a reply, Captain?”

Metra said, “If they respond with no delay, four or five hours. But I wouldn't expect it that soon. I doubt they'll give up immediately on thinking we're the enemy. B—”
Bassanio,
Hanna heard, but what came out of Metra's mouth was “Lady Hanna could return to trance and keep us informed.”

“She won't be able to reconnect with the Commander, unfortunately.”

Hanna said without opening her eyes, “Oh, yes, I could. I could do it with this one. His personality is distinctive, we're almost on top of them, and I spent a long time with him. I could do it any time you want.”

“You'll need a stimulant, then—”

No,
said the D'neeran in her, the conditioned response to anything that might alter her personality, no matter how short-lived. But a more practical consideration made her open her eyes and say out loud, “If I did that I don't know if I would be able to enter trance at all, and then I wouldn't be able to conceal my presence from him. I've had stimulants before. I wasn't Adept then, but I remember how it felt.”

After a moment Jameson nodded, accepting it. “Rest, then,” he said. “We're closing in on direct contact and you'll need to be alert. I want a private word with you first,” he added.

She felt Metra tense, that underlying unease moving toward the surface. She heard Metra think—think of her, with some bitterness—
Handle with care.
But Metra and Corcoran left without protest. Bella was gone too. Hanna did not know when she had made her escape.

Hanna found herself slumped, oozing into the chair. Soon she would be horizontal. But she straightened when Jameson said to Murphy, “You too. No monitor. No transcripts.”

“I can't permit that. You'd say the same, if our positions were reversed.”

He was silent a moment. Then he said, “Close out the monitors but remain as a witness. Monitor us yourself.”

“Perhaps . . . unless you're contemplating holosex. Entirely too boring.”

“It is boring,” Jameson agreed, and Hanna said, “What?” but he went on, “It's something I'd rather Hanna heard from me. Not mission-related. Nothing you don't know.”

“The Commission situation? I suppose I could anticipate just a little . . . All right. I'll start organizing a search for Edward. Congratulations, Starr.”

“Premature,” he told her, and a bewildered Hanna wondered if they had started speaking a language she hadn't been taught.

“I think there might be some difficulty starting the monitor systems up again,” Murphy said, and her image winked out.

Hanna understood that. Murphy was giving them a chance to talk without listeners for the first time in months.

And she didn't care. She would have a few minutes of privacy, precious minutes outside Fleet discipline and mission protocol. She knew exactly how to use them.

“Mickey?” she whispered. “Can I see Mickey?”

•   •   •

It would
take Thera a few minutes to wake Mickey. Jameson took advantage of them. “Try to pay attention,” he said, because Hanna kept looking past him, where Mickey would appear. “Did you hear what Andrella said about trying to find Edward?”

She had heard but hadn't understood; she shook her head. Mickey was more important than anything about Vickery could be.

Jameson said with a trace of exasperation, “Please listen. It looks like Edward's cut his throat for good. There's been a move toward a council vote on dismissing him; some councilors who supported him agreed to change their positions tonight. He might have staved it off a bit longer, but he's disappeared. No one knows where he is, what he thinks he's doing—being out of touch with a first contact imminent! A commissioner must be able to respond to a crisis instantly. There won't be many crises if the Commission is a good one, but they happen. I'm leaving for Heartworld as quickly as I can.”

She knew what was happening then, and her stomach turned over. She was abruptly wide awake. She said, “Why are you going there?”

“There will be meetings. Some of them will be very private. And I must be physically present for the confirmation vote.”

“Don't take Mickey,” she said. Too many people on Heartworld thought poorly of her, even contemptuously. She didn't want Mickey exposed to them.

“Hanna . . .” His face softened, finally. “It will be better for him to come. He's done quite well with your absence, but I don't want another adult in his life to turn into archived holo. You won't either, when you've had time to think. I promise you he'll be perfectly safe. And Thera will be there, of course.”

“But . . .”

She hesitated another moment. And then she almost laughed.

“You are going to the most traditional, the most reactionary, of the Polity's societies, expecting to regain the highest position your council has to offer—with your D'neeran mistress's bastard son in tow?”

“They've gotten used to it,” he said with assurance. “Why do you think I insisted that you meet as many important people as possible? Including a number from Heartworld I didn't particularly enjoy entertaining? Besides,” he said, with a smile Hanna did not like, “I'm thinking of starting a rumor that you plan to leave me when you return to Earth, and take Mickey with you. That will allow people to feel sorry for me while being secretly relieved. What do you think?”

“I think it sounds exactly like you,” she said. “I think everything I don't like about being with you is going to get worse.” Echoes came back:
I must end this, I really must . . .

But then Thera appeared with Mickey, and there was no room in her mind for anything except the sleepy, beautiful child smiling at her as if she were a happy dream.