House of the Wolf (Book Three of the Phoenix Legacy) (9 page)

No more could she stop her own, and she could only hope he was right. She found herself murmuring meaningless assurances, the words falling into a lulling, hypnotic pattern. It was still possible; Adrien might still be alive. She
must
be if these words, these tears, weren’t to be his last.

The weeping ceased at length; he was slipping away, but not into unconsciousness, only sleep. The brainwaves recorded a typical deep sleep pattern, all vital signs stable, reflecting only a general weakness due to long illness.

A miracle.

She tried to understand it both medically and psychologically as she went around to the other side of the bed to bandage the arm properly. She had to work carefully; several times he stirred and nearly wakened. Then she made careful notations on the chart, and it took an inordinate amount of time. Her thoughts kept wandering from past to future, from despair to hope. Her hands were shaking when she filled a fresh pressyringe with morphinine and put it with the others, ready for the time when he wakened again.

Reaction set in, and when she sank into the chair, she was crying. She propped her elbows on her knees, head in her hands, and let it run its course.

When Jael came into the cubicle half an hour later, the tears had spent themselves, but there was still evidence of them, and he had no way of differentiating relief from grief when it took that form.

“Erica? For the God’s sake, what happened?”

She rose, hushing him with an upraised hand. “Nothing happened—I mean, everything.” She was half laughing, half crying, but Jael’s anxious bewilderment sobered her. “I’m sorry. He’s all right; he’s
sleeping
now. He regained consciousness and recognized me, Jael. He
talked
to me.”

Jael’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank the God. I thought perhaps I came too late with the news.”

“What news?” she demanded sharply.

“Val finally called. I came straight from the COS HQ.”

Erica was hard put to keep her voice down.

“She found Adrien—
she found
her!”

“Who’s telling this spin, anyway? Yes, she found her.”

Erica looked at Alex with a chill of wonder. He knew. How? It didn’t matter; some phenomena could only be accepted, not explained.

She said absently, “Forgive me for ruining your story, Jael.”

“Well, you haven’t heard it all yet, and you’ll never glim the end of
this
one. I’ll lay any stakes on that. The Lady Adrien just gave birth to slightly premature, but healthy and hollering twin sons. Now, does that clear a few questions in your head?”

Erica stared at him, and at first it cleared nothing; it only created a blank void.

“Gave . . . birth . . . ?” As she said the words, it began to make sense, and for some time she couldn’t speak for all the questions and answers coming together in her mind. Jael was right; it cleared quite a few.

Again she looked at Alex, relieved to find him still deep asleep.

“Jael, he didn’t know she was carrying his—
sons
, did you say? Twins?”

“Identical twins. No, of course, he didn’t know. He’d have lined Val in on something that obvious, and besides, Alex is a gentleman born. He’d never knowingly let his Lady run that gant. She’s a straight blade, Erica.”

“So she is.” Then, with a frown, “A multiple birth and a first pregnancy—were there any complications?”

“Val says it went off without a catch. Val’s with her, by the way. In the hospital, I mean. The medal turned the card with the Lady, and she laid word with Thea. Val’s moved into the same room with her.”

“Thank the God. Jael, I must talk to Adrien—I mean at the hospital. Val will have to set up an MT fix for me. I’ll have to call her.” Then, with a glance at Alex, whose sighing exhalation of breath reminded her to lower her voice, “Can you get a medtech—”

“Carl’s outside, sister. As for Val, she can probably take a call now; it’s the night shift there.”

“Then, come on. I’ll have to talk to Carl first.” She was almost out of the cubicle before Jael stopped her.

“What about Alex? Don’t you think you should line him in? At least that his Lady’s been found?”

She turned and looked down at that gaunt face that seemed so much at peace in its repose now.

“I don’t have to tell him. He . . . already knows.”

PHOENIX MEMFILES: DEPT HUMAN SCIENCES:
BASIC SCHOOL (HS/BS)

SUBFILE: LECTURE, BASIC SCHOOL 4 AVRIL 3252
GUEST LECTURER: RICHARD LAMB
SUBJECT: POST-DISASTERS HISTORY:
THE MANKEEN REVOLT (3104–3120)

DOC LOC #819/219-1253/1812-1648-443252

I think one of the most tragic figures in the Mankeen Revolt was Commander Scott Cormoroi, the tactical genius who gave Mankeen the might to make a Rightness of his ideals. I wonder at what point in the long war Cormoroi first realized it was hopeless. Fairly early, probably; he was a highly intelligent man, and his early training in science undoubtedly made him fully capable of recognizing hard facts. And I wonder at what point Cormoroi realized that the greatest impediment to the Revolt’s success was Lionar Mankeen himself.

Mankeen, like Pilgram and Ballarat, had a talent for motivating people, and despite the defections that plagued his cause in its later years, those who renounced him were in the minority. The devotion he inspired among his faithful had almost religious overtones, and it isn’t surprising that the Bonds made him a saint. But, unlike Pilgram and Ballarat, Mankeen had no talent for consolidating his gains.

He didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Time and again Cormoroi won territories by dint of tactical brilliance and courage, only to have them lost again months later. Mankeen couldn’t seem to formulate a consistent policy for the occupation of these territories. Too often he tried to initiate sweeping social reforms in situations where the immediate need was for order, not freedom, and the result was anarchy and unnecessary loss of property and lives. In some occupied territories, his administrators—usually League Lords—in desperation imposed order by harsh means that resulted in counterrevolts. Thus Cormoroi was continually in the position of trying to maintain an advancing front while looking over his shoulder for attack from the rear, and the tragic abandonment of many of the vacuum colonies can be attributed to Mankeen’s lack of organization and control. If there had been even one man among the League Lords capable of effectively consolidating Cormoroi’s gains, we might live in a very different world today. But there were none, and Mankeen, who should have taken the spiritual role in this campaign—should have been his own Colona or Almbert—constantly undermined himself and the Revolt with ill-conceived reforms and conflicting directives to his administrators.

I couldn’t hold it against Cormoroi if he had chosen to wash his hands of Mankeen. Yet he didn’t. Scott Cormoroi continued fighting Mankeen’s hopeless battles until the last one, the Battle of the Urals, and when that was lost, Cormoroi was among those who joined him in his death flight to the Sun.

Cormoroi was a man of honor. He was also Mankeen’s closest friend, and beyond that, he believed fervently in the ideals Mankeen tried, so ineptly, to realize.

Most of the passengers on that final flight left lettapes behind for friends, relatives, or posterity. Mankeen, oddly enough, did not. Cormoroi addressed his parting message to a brother, James, his only surviving relative, or so he thought. In fact, James had died a year before, but the news of his death had never reached Cormoroi; James was allieged to Reeswyck, a Concord House. At any rate, Cormoroi’s message was the most eloquent of the lot, and has since been the most quoted.

Cormoroi, at the age of seventy-three, facing his death and looking back on his defeat, tells his brother, “Human beings can’t go on forever living as slaves. That’s what it was all about. At least, for me. We lost, finally, and the price was high, both for the losers and the winners. I know that. But, James, we had to try. We had to try.”

The Concord was more fortunate in its leadership, although it couldn’t boast a military commander with anything like Cormoroi’s genius, but it had an administrative leader of extraordinary ability in the Chairman, Arman Galinin. He wasn’t as inspiring a leader as Mankeen—he left the spiritual aspects of leadership to the Archon, Bishop Nicolas III, who proved very effective at it—but Galinin was a strong personality and one of those men who seem to rise to adversity.

It was Galinin who formulated the Charter of the Concord of the Loyal Houses and used it to forge a new order and cohesion among the Lords in the chaotic aftermath of the League’s initial military assaults. The Concord Charter is. of course, essentially the Articles of the PanTerran Confederation reiterated, yet it served to unify the Confederation at a crisis point when it was in very real danger of dissolving, and that was undoubtedly its purpose. The Court of Lords met in Octov of 3105 in Victoria—which became Concordia before they adjourned—to sign the Concord Charter, and from that point the Concord presented a united front to the League, and could thus take full advantage of its superior numbers and industrial capabilities. Galinin continued to be an astute and forceful leader, and was backed by an equally forceful Directorate, on the whole, and, as I’ve noted before, the power structure came through the Revolt virtually unaltered. There were only three changes on the Directorate during this period, which, considering the number of Houses destroyed, merged, or absorbed, is remarkable. One Directorate seat that changed hands probably would have done so under any circumstances. The House of Tadema was failing long before the Revolt began, and with Selasid backing, it was almost inevitable that Hamid should take that chair. Lagore Lao wasn’t exactly displaced; it simply merged with Shang, but certainly its First Lord was displaced. Adalay was the only undisputed victim of the war; that old landed House was forced to give way to the emerging House of Cameroodo with its multiple metals franchises.

One could wish that Arman Galinin had taken advantage of this time of crisis to slip a few liberalizing reforms into his Charter—and he
was
philosophically a liberal—but he undoubtedly realized that even a hint of liberalism would smack of Mankeenism and jeopardize the unity so vital to the Concord’s survival. In fact, to civilization’s survival. And Galinin can’t be held responsible for the reactionary attitudes on the part of the surviving Lords that have brought us to this new period of crisis nearly a century and a half later. That he managed to maintain order and the existing social structure through the catastrophic stresses of the Revolt is a miracle in itself and a tribute to his ability and foresight. There was really nothing he could have done to counteract the inevitable extreme conservative reaction to Mankeen’s extreme liberalism.

Above all, Arman Galinin can’t be held responsible for the Purge. That holiday for mass murder and unrestrained violence was in no way sanctioned by Galinin, the Directors, or the top echelons of Conpol and Confleet. Men and officers in both the latter were unquestionably responsible for a great deal of the destruction and slaughter, however, while House guards must take the blame for most of the rest of it, and they didn’t always act without orders from their Lords, although no Lord ever admitted giving such orders.

The Purge—which began immediately after Mankeen’s death and lasted a month—was as much a threat to the survival of the Concord and civilization as the Revolt itself. It is, in fact, an indication of how close we came to another dark age. And there was a lesson in that vicious and bestial exercise of vengeance that the Lords should have heeded, and that is how easily externally imposed (in contrast to internally imposed) behavioral controls fail. The lesson was ignored, perhaps because too many Lords themselves suffered a failure of internal controls, and of course had few external controls imposed on them.

At any rate, Arman Galinin brought the Concord through the Mankeen Revolt and the Purge, but both had taken a bitter toll. Not only were nearly a billion people killed—a quarter of the population—but humankind had retreated to Terra, all the extraterrestrial colonies abandoned, except for Pollux, which was for a time and for all intents and purposes forgotten. Civilization had taken a giant step backward to a stage of development approximating that of a century before, even though MAM-An, nulgrav, and SynchShift were available. But they didn’t make the war-shattered Concord of the post-Mankeen period any less a planet-bound culture. The Lords had to rebuild, both literally and figuratively, their Houses on Terra before they could consider rebuilding on the other planets or satellites. It was half a century before that became possible.

That was a crucial half century in Centauri, of course, and although the brave experiment of the Peladeen Republic was abruptly and cruelly culminated with the War of the Twin Planets, the very fact that it existed will have repercussions in the future. And, among other things, the Phoenix is a product of that experiment. It seems ironic in a way that if the hopes and potentials of the Republic and the Phoenix are ever realized, it must be attributed in an indirect, almost inadvertent, manner to Lionar Mankeen.

The bed, covered and curtained in satinet and silk, was an excellent example of Early Kao-rossic, with its cantilevered canopy. The chair Erica had pulled up for herself was carved ebony, and if it were in fact a Starenza, which Alex didn’t really doubt, it couldn’t be less than three centuries old.

Amik was a gracious host, as always, and Alex appreciated the apartment provided him for these last five days, especially when he compared it to the sterile, ticking cubicle in the infirmary. Yet in a short time he would leave these luxuriously appointed rooms for the rock-walled chambers of the COS HQ, and he couldn’t muster a grain of regret at the exchange.

He sat on the side of the bed, while Erica, oblivious to the fact that she was occupying an heirloom, shaped a strip of gauze into an overlapping spiral around his right arm. His left hand strayed to his throat, encountering the fine chain that seemed so familiar to his touch, but it wasn’t Rich’s medallion that hung there now. The betrothal ring. Ten days ago it had been brought to him with a promise: when they were finally reunited, an exchange would be made. The ring was simply an assurance, proof of Adrien’s living, as the medallion had been another kind of proof to her.

He had wept when he first heard her voice in a static-ridden interconn; dust storms in the Barrens. It didn’t matter. All he cared about was her voice. Since then, he’d spoken to her at least once each day, and always found it difficult not to weep. For so many years he had considered himself incapable of tears, but they came all too easily now. He had journeyed too near death to return unscathed, and somewhere on that journey he had learned to weep again.

Erica glanced up at him, perhaps responding to some subtle symptom of tension, asking with the silent lift of an eyebrow if her ministrations were too painful. He responded with a shake of his head.

It
was
painful, even with the analgesics. The bandaging always followed fifteen minutes of what Erica called “exercise.” Alex wouldn’t dignify it with that term.
She
did all the exercising, moving the arm through short, repetitive arcs, turning it a few degrees this way, a few that, flexing the wrist up and down. He might call it therapy, but not exercise; that implied voluntary movement, and he was capable of no more than a jerking contraction of the thumb and a grand total of ten degrees flexion at the elbow.

He looked away from Erica and her work, his left hand seeking the reminder and solace of the ring.

Today was the promised day of reunion. A few hours. Adrien.

And Richard and Eric.

He pronounced the names in his mind as he had in every waking hour for the last eight days. Erica had waited two days before telling him about his sons, waited until he had recovered enough to dispense with the life-support systems. He wondered if she thought the shock of learning he’d become twice at once a father might precipitate a relapse.

It had no effect at all, as far as he could determine, and perhaps that was because he didn’t really believe it. It was so incomprehensibly incredible, it didn’t reach him.

The first born Adrien had already named. Richard. She told him the child had been named when it was conceived, and even now when he thought of the calculating risk she’d taken—that he
let
her take—the realization dizzied him.

She asked him to name the second born, and he did. There was no question in his mind about the choice of a name. It had come without conscious thought, as if the decision had been made long ago, and perhaps it had been; made when he first came to Fina and found Rich’s dearest friend waiting, made when that friend was forced to bring his griefs to him and bear them with him.

Yet Erica Radek’s namesake, an infant, a human being to be called Eric—Alex could accept that, and Rich’s namesake, as a premise in some system of reality as he accepted the existence of the electron, but it didn’t touch him as part of his own reality.

Time, Erica assured him; it will all make sense in time. And he had enough to make sense of out of the twenty-six days he’d absented himself in pursuit of death. On the table by the bed were ten tape spools; only ten out of the hundred capsule reports Erica had provided to bring him up to date on Fina, on Predis Ussher’s offensive, and on the crises that had occurred in the Concord.

He frowned, remembering that there had been more to occupy him in the last ten days. His body. He resented its weakness bitterly, yet Dr. Eliot kept using the word “miraculous.” Erica had set up a rigid schedule of rest, graduated exercise—
real
exercise for the parts of his body that still functioned at his command—and diet that included massive doses of vitamins and protein, and he had adhered doggedly to that schedule, but he refused to call the results of those ten days miraculous. Not when he was capable of staying out of this elegant museum-piece of a bed for no more than five hours at a time. Today it would be six.

He wondered how many hours his body would allow him by Concord Day. It was only fourteen days away.

Erica had reached the wrist, which had taken the brunt of the laser beam, and he was forced to concentrate on keeping the arm immobile. He would be glad to have it covered and dreaded the time when the bandages would no longer be necessary. He wondered if he would ever accustom himself to those riven scars, patched with sickly white grafts, etched with livid suture lines. He watched Erica’s face, noting the tightness around her mouth.

He asked, “Is it so distasteful?”

She looked up at him, startled, until she saw his faint smile; her breath came out in a sigh as she made another spiral.

“Of course not, Alex. I’ve seen worse than this.”

“So have I. That’s . . . a little tight.”

She eased the tension as she worked a loop around the base of his thumb.

“Better?” Then, at his nod, “I’m amazed at how well you’re tolerating this. It makes me doubt every personality matrix I made on you.” The last of the scars disappeared under the bandages, and finally she cut the strip and taped the end inside his palm.

“Erica, did you count this in your data?” He touched the ring against his breast. “And Andreas? Andreas alive and free, and the LR-MT within days of proof?”

“Yes, I counted them, and that revives my faith in my science to some degree.” Then she rose and picked up his robe from the end of the bed. “You’d better get this on.”

He came to his feet, reminding himself to move slowly, and submitted to her help with the robe. Brocaded velveen in a deep blue; another offering of his gracious host’s. The arm caught in the sleeve and he winced as it treated him to a new spasm of pain.

“Damn. Retribution, Erica. Did you count that?”

She frowned, studying him. “What do you mean?”

“ ‘The Holy Mezion metes out justice in the mirror of injustice.’ ” He pressed the waistband closed awkwardly. “I hope Jael doesn’t forget to bring my clothes. I’d feel a little ridiculous parading around the COS HQ in this.”

“He won’t, and I won’t let you pass off that retribution business so lightly. Not when I think you really believe it.”

“Well, perhaps I’ve spent too much time with the Shepherds these last few years, and that reminds me, you didn’t bring the capsule on yours and Jael’s time with them. You won’t put
me
off on that. I must know which of the Shepherds you’ve seen, and which the Brother must see in the next two weeks.”

“I’ll discuss that with you tomorrow, but no sooner, and you won’t embark on any sojourns as the Brother for at least three days. Now, Alex, that isn’t just a medcal opinion, it’s an order.”

“Erica, we only have fourteen days until—”

“I can count, too, but I—oh, damn. Who’s that?”

The argument was cut short by the warning chime that meant someone was entering the salon. Jael, perhaps, Alex thought, or hoped, as he checked the vis-screen by the door. But he was wrong.

“Amik,” he told Erica. “Your face-screen.”

“Oh, Alex, I gave that up with Amik long ago.”

“There’s a servant with him.” He reached up to turn on his own ’screen, then fumbled at the doorcon with his left hand. Amik was crossing the salon like a brocaded mountain, streaming a fumerole of smoke from his jeweled cigar holder.

“Ah! Up and about, my friend. A small miracle, that.”

Alex was tired of the word and distracted by the youth trailing after Amik, carrying three slacsuits on hangars. Amik didn’t wait for permission as he led the way into the bedroom. “Come, Jaro, put them in the closet there. Thank you. You may go now.”

Jaro nodded and hurried out of the room. The three of them waited until the outer door closed behind him, then the face-screens went off, and Alex went to the closet.

“These aren’t mine. Jael was supposed to—”

“My dear Alex, a little patience, please,” Amik said in a pained tone. “It seems my son said something, very much in passing, about bringing clothes for your departure. Now, I’ve seen your wardrobe, such as it is, and I’ve noticed that you invariably wear slacsuits of a standard design in which the shirt is pulled on over the head. I’ve had some experience with laser wounds—vicariously, I’m pleased to say—and I’ve also kept myself well informed on your wound in particular.”

Alex found himself a chair, annoyed at the need for it, annoyed at the aching of his arm that seemed to intensify with the attention so offhandedly given it, and, above all, annoyed at Amik. He remained pointedly silent as Amik continued his exposition.

“Well, it occurred to me that standard slacsuit design would create unnecessary problems, even discomfort, for you, and it also occurred to me that my tailor was sitting about idly at the moment, collecting his ’cords, and wasting his time entertaining certain young women, and his imaginative powers creating self-dissolving veils.”

Erica laughed at that, but Alex was so distracted, he didn’t at first realize why.

She put on a mockingly sober expression. “Well, Amik, I hope you remedied that.”

“Naturally. I put him to work designing these slacsuits. One can’t, I suppose, do much about the pants, but Cobrik managed to improve on the shirt.” He went to the closet, and pulled out one of the slacsuits. “So. You see, he’s opened the shirt all the way up the front and put in simple pressure fasteners, and to further facilitate life for you when the bandages come off, Alex, I had him line the inside of the right arms with this rather exquisite material. Soft as sea air. I acquired quite a stock of it in a recent . . . uh, business transaction.”

Erica went to Amik and took the slacsuit. “The color is nice. That’s what I’d call a true Terran green. Terran moss, perhaps.”

More like Castorian barrengorse, Alex thought.

“Come, Alex, try it on. I’ll help you.” Her smile faltered then, as if she realized that wasn’t the best thing to say at this particular moment.

“I thought it was designed to relieve me of the need for help.”

Amik shrugged elaborately. “Did I say that? I simply assigned Cobrik the task of making it easier for you—’’

“To dress myself?” He rose and went to a drawer for underclothing—also provided by Amik—saying over his shoulder, “The break-point test, then, for Cobrik and me.”

Neither of them offered any assistance, which compounded embarrassment with discomfort, but pride precluded his asking for what wasn’t offered. Childish, no doubt, he chided himself, teeth set as he awkwardly pulled on the pants and fumbled at the waistband fastener. The shirt he managed with relative ease, pulling on the right sleeve first, aligning the front opening with the tab snap provided at the neck, then pressing the front closed. As he slipped on the shoes, he was grateful that he didn’t have to contend with formal boots, and wondered if he ever would again. Finally, he turned to the mirror on the closet door to see that he had everything on straight.

Erica said softly, “Very handsome.”

Alex felt all the resentment sagging out of him, remembering a night—how many years and eons ago?—Master Webster fussily draping the Lord Alexand, and Rich, looking on, making the same comment in almost exactly the same tone. Rich, watching from his nulgrav chair, enduring even then the chronic pain that would finally become unbearable.

Alex turned and met Amik’s eye with a smile.

“Cobrik has passed the test, Amik. I’m grateful to him, and to you.”

Amik flashed his golden grin and puffed out a perfect smoke ring.

“Well, perhaps I’ll reward him with a new challenge:
edible
, self-dissolving veils.”

That broke the tension with laughter, and if Alex was frowning slightly when he turned again to the mirror, it had nothing to do with Amik’s kindly presumption.

“I have a challenge for him, Amik. A uniform. Pale blue, trimmed in—in anything but gold braid.”

“You can have platinade, if it suits you. Of course, you understand that Cobrik is a man of rare talent, and his services carry a high tax.”

Alex reminded himself to smile at that, and, as he turned from the mirror, put the remembered image from the tape capsules out of his mind: the image of Predis Ussher in his gold-decked uniform. But Ussher was right; the Concord wouldn’t take an army in slacsuits seriously, or a man who still called himself First Commander of Fleet Operations. Costuming is a tool. Phillip Woolf’s words.

“Forgive me, Amik, but I’m not yet recovered enough to indulge you in haggling. Whatever Cobrik’s price, it will be paid, and silver braid will do. Let’s adjourn to the salon. I’m tired of looking at that bed.”

They followed him into the salon, another elegantly appointed room whose luxury only seemed oppressive. Amik found a chair that suited him and sank into it with a sigh. Then he straightened abruptly. “Ah! I nearly forgot half my purpose here.” He searched various pockets in his robes, while Erica watched him curiously from a couch nearby, and Alex, still standing, took a quick look at his watch. Jael was late.

“Ah. Here it is.” Amik proffered what seemed at first only a piece of cloth.

It was a glove. Alex took it, feeling his guard come up against resentment again. It was lined with the same downy material as the right sleeves of the slacsuits, but it was the outer material that held his attention. Black, with an opalescent sheen; it seemed to be some kind of thin, flexible leather.