Playing God (12 page)

Umat paced beside her, close enough so that their shoulders could rub reassuringly together. Umat's expression was intense. Her slender ears were completely alert. She had probably already pushed the memory of the morning's blast into the back of her mind and was concentrating on nothing except accomplishing their errand. Umat was like that, and Lareet envied her.

Silver lamplight illuminated a third-level terrace near the center of the hall. Their members, the Members Shavck, Ris, Pem, and Vreaith, sat at the circular worktable. Reflexively, Lareet fell back and let Umat precede her up the steeply slanting stairway (why did Arron call stairs
ladders?
Ladders were temporary, mobile things) to their workspace.

Lareet and Umat stood side by side in front of the Member's worktable. Umat extended her hand and received the touch on her knuckles from Shavck Pem.

“Dayisen Umat. Dayisen Lareet,” Member Pem greeted them. “The shades of night look well on you.”

Lareet let Umat return the greeting. No one who had hearing could miss the pride in Umat's voice as she said, “We were successful. Scholar Arron will speak to Manager Lynn.”

“Excellent!” boomed Member Vreaith, folding her hands on her belly. “I knew he would not refuse you after years of guestship and particular friendship.”

Lareet wished she could bask in the approval as fully as Umat did. “He did warn us, Members, that she might not be persuaded. He has not had contact with her for a long time.”

Umat dropped one ear toward her scalp in warning. “He did, however, complete his mating with her amicably. Our best research shows this can establish a pattern of favor and reciprocation, even if the parties involved are separated.”

Member Ris laughed quietly. “Do relax, Dayisen Rual, both of you. No one is expecting a blood promise. There is nothing to do now but wait and see what happens. If the schedule is changed, we can go ahead with our first plans. If it is not”—her ears dropped briefly and lifted—“alternatives exist.”

“Thank you, Members.” Umat reached out and quickly touched Member Ris's hands. “We stand ready for further assignments.”

“As is expected.” Member Vreaith dipped her ears approvingly. “We have nothing further in this special area for you until we hear about the schedule. Go home and spend the night with your family in health and peace.”

The Members did not bother with a parting touch. They just bent back over their table and sorted through the papers, talking in low voices about what was indicated by
this
missive and
that
note. Lareet politely folded her ears to muffle the conversation.

Umat, radiating satisfaction, tucked her arm into the crook of her sister's, pivoted them both around, and waved to indicate that Lareet should go first down the stairs. Lareet gripped the rungs tightly with her toes and tried to shake the unease that had settled against her skin as she climbed down to the main floor.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Umat softly, as they returned to the vaulted foyer. “You're as twitchy as a newt on hot concrete.”

Lareet nodded to the soldiers who opened the double doors. She did not speak until she and Umat had crossed the shaded lawn with its thick ferns and moss, been checked out through the gate, and walked five yards down the crowded street.

“I was talking with Scholar Arron this morning,” Lareet said finally. “He makes some strong arguments for the Confederation.”

Umat squeezed her arm. “Scholar Arron is our sister in all but blood, but he is naive. He believes the
devna
can be talked out of killing us.”

Lareet held her sister's arm tightly for a moment. “He also believes we can be talked out of killing them.”

Umat drew herself up short. She turned and faced her sister. “Listen to me, my pouch-sister. I agree with Scholar Arron that the wars must stop. We will all of us be dead if they don't. We are going to stop them.”

“You're right.” Lareet laid her hands over her sister's. “I'm just feeling we should be united in this. Our Members are not even acting for the full Defenders’ House…”

“Our members are constantly gathering support, Lareet. By the time everything's in place, they'll have the entire Parliament.” She blew across her palm, trying to send Lareet's worries to the wind. “We will make the world safe for our blood.”

Let that be true,
Lareet breathed silently to the ground.
Please, let that be true.

Boats crammed into the harbor. They jostled one another's sides and tangled one another's anchor cables. Little fishers and squared-off houseboats clustered around the sides of the big barges, freighters, and the two mammoth warships.

It could have been a harbor from any of a hundred times and places in the history of the Humans’ Earth. There were only so many shapes of vessel that could carry a biocular biped with two opposable thumbs efficiently across open water. Physics as much as body shape determined the way you built your ships, and physics varied a lot less than form.

Torches, candles, and lamps reflected their light on the black, trash-speckled water. The wind was choked with scents of salt, dead fish, hot oil, hot fish, smog, and charcoal. Voices called to each other in six or eight different dialects, punctuated here and there by the splash as someone dived into the water to swim for somewhere they couldn't walk to.

Cabal walked across the harbor by stepping from boat to boat. His boots clumped heavily against damp wood as he stepped on decks, chests, or boxes. Seawater soaked the cuffs of his work trousers, and more of it spattered his canvas shirt and short jacket. Sometimes heads turned as he passed. Sometimes someone shouted at him to get his poison off their boat. Mostly, however, he was ignored as an equal with the dozen or so Dedelphi who made similar zigzag paths to and from the shore.

Finally, he swung his leg over the side of a well-kept fishing boat. It was bigger by half than most of the others in the harbor, built for market fishing rather than just subsistence. He negotiated his way between ropes, chests, kegs, and nets.

“Who's home?” called Cabal in the major Getesaph dialect.

A hatch swung back, creating a square of yellow lamplight in the deck.

“Who's asking?” came the reply from belowdecks.

“Your
brother,”
Cabal used the English word. There was no true equivalent in Getesaph.

“Come in, then.”

Cabal descended the ladder. Belowdecks was a single room with bunks built into the walls, a galley area at one end, and a workshop at the other. Two Getesaph sat on the farside of a central table. They were both stripped down to canvas breeches and rubber boots, like fishers usually were.

“Advisor Tvir, Advisor Cishka,” he said quietly as he sat down on the bench opposite them.

“Trader Cabal,” replied Advisor Tvir. “The shades of night look well on you. What's your news?”

Cabal nodded. “Scholar Arron is contacting a friend of his on behalf of the members of the dayisen he lives with. They want to change the relocation schedule, and this friend, she's working on that part of the project.”

Advisor Cishka had lost an ear in some skirmish long ago. She rubbed the scar thoughtfully. “Do we know how likely he is to succeed in this?”

“I have no idea,” Cabal shrugged. “They were close once, but he hasn't seen her in years. He's not talking about it much.”

“Why is he talking about it at all? You and he are not true friends, you have said.”

“He asked me to take him to t'Theria to meet her, and I've also told you how he gets going about internal affairs at every opportunity.”

Advisor Cishka's remaining ear twitched. “You do not respect him, do you?”

Cabal shrugged again and thought a minute before he found a way to construct the sentence in Getesaph. “There are places where he is shaded by night in broad daylight. He doesn't always understand how people could not completely agree with him.”

“I hear you.” Advisor Tvir nodded. “At least I think I do. Thank you, Trader Cabal. You will let us know if he succeeds or fails? We need to know which of their plans the Defenders will implement.”

“As soon as I know, you'll know.” Cabal stood up, flexing his knees to keep his balance as the boat bobbled on the harbor's gentle waves. “Is there anything else, Advisor Tvir? Advisor Cishka?”

“Not tonight, Trader Cabal. Go with care.”

Cabal smiled and let his teeth show behind his face mask. “Always.”

Chapter V

T
he command center for the city-ship
Ur
looked more like an office than a ship's bridge. Captain Elisabeth Esmaraude and her section officers worked at a multiterminal table that had a dedicated AI of its own. The space around the walls had been divided into private meeting rooms, screening facilities, a flash-cook foodstore with an attached coffee urn and bread box, and a lavatory complete with shower stall.

When Keale stepped through the hatchway, Captain Esmaraude was at the central table, going over something on the screen with her chief gravity engineer, Rudu King. King was an ebony-skinned man wearing tan coveralls with no markings except a small, silver commander's insignia on his collar.

Keale suppressed a smile. If there was a man who loved his job, it was Rudu King. When Captain Esmaraude brought the
Ur
in, Keale had asked her for a tour, and she had handed him over to King to see the gravity deck. Rudu had taken him down the work shafts, seemingly oblivious to the weird pushes and pulls of the gravity fields. He'd delivered a nonstop commentary as Keale peered through thick glass at the forests of lozenge-shaped tractor units hanging in the yokes that controlled their slew and pitch. Each tractor contained the toroids or “doughnuts” of neutral particles that turned in on themselves according to equations that King reeled off like other people reeled off plots of simulations or paragraphs of regulations. He talked nonstop about angles of interference, field calculations, the need for constant spot checking of each and every “doughnut holder” in case a charged particle somehow got into the toroid, which would cause the toroid to start breaking down into heat and X rays, or, worse, if some irregularity developed in the particle spin, which could shake the entire doughnut, the holder, and its neighbors, and eventually the whole ship and …

Keale had watched the man carefully for signs of boredom or attempts to impress, but had seen neither. This was simply King's entire life, down here in this dizzying world of fields, neutral particles, and delicate, precise angles and calculations.

The only time Keale managed to make King pause was when he asked if one of the tractors could be shut down.

“Why?” King's eyes narrowed.

“Security precautions,” Keale had replied.

“You want a zero-gee section somewhere?”

“No, no, just a … an area of confusion.”

Standing on the work platform, King stared at his rows of tractors with his mouth pressed into a long, thin line.

“Yes, we can do that. Bleed off one of the doughnuts.” He drummed his thick, callused fingers against the platform's rail. “Rotate the field angles on a few others. We won't like it, the captain won't like it, and the ship won't like it, but we can do it.”

Now, watching the captain and the gravitor together, Keale folded his hands behind his back and got ready to wait. King was methodical in the extreme, and Esmaraude … Keale had known her for a long time. She did not rush for anybody.

His timing appeared to be good. Rudu's lips moved as he subvocalized something to whatever implants he carried and then stood up, nodding to his captain. Esmaraude nodded back and turned toward Keale. As Rudu disappeared through the hatch in the floor that led down to the gravity deck, Esmaraude waved Keale forward.

“Keale, so glad you could join us.” She kicked out a chair for him.

“You're top on my list of priorities, Esmo, you know that.” Keale sat down. Esmo was a short, square woman with thick brown hair cut short to keep it out of her way. Whereas most people who took on eye implants had cameras or video displays you couldn't tell from a natural eye, Esmaraude had a pair of old-fashioned looking wire-and-crystal spectacles connected to terminals at her temples. They gave her greater display range and flexibility, she said, and the extra memory space allowed her to book directly into the ship's info systems if she needed to.

The corner of Esmo's mouth twitched. “I am top priority only because I have something you want, Kaye.”

He shrugged elaborately. “I want to do my job and keep your people safe.”

She sighed. “You really think we're in for trouble?”

“I really think we could be, yes.”

All the humor drained out of her eyes. “Where from?”

Keale knew she didn't mean who'd start it. “Can you get me a schematic up on this?” He tapped the station screen.

Esmo preferred to give her commands with keys rather than her voice. She typed on the pad for a moment. The screen cleared and showed a 3-D white-line print of the
Ur.
Keale reached across and hit a couple of keys. The diagram resolved itself to show the ship as seen from above.

“Right here.” He laid his finger on the space between the city dome and the engineering dome.

Esmo peered at the screen. “You think they're going to get through the tunnels?”

“No. We can seal the hatches. The shortest, easiest way between their space and ours is straight across the hull. It's only thirty meters from the city dome to engineering, and us.”

Now Esmo was looking hard at him. “It's thirty meters of hard vacuum, Kaye. I know the pogos can hold their breath a long time, but …”

“They're going to have access to pressure suits that we're going to show them how to use.” He frowned at the schematic. “Maybe nothing will happen, Esmo, but if they're going to do anything in the heat of the moment, I don't want to make it easy on them.”

Esmo dropped her gaze. She pulled the command word out of its slot and studied it. It was a fragile glass and electro-optic key that decrypted all the command systems on the ship. Without it, even if you could get the engines going, you couldn't make any navigation calculations. You could not override any of the artificial intelligence's standing orders. You could not open any locked doors or databases. There were two other keys. Rudu King had one for the gravity systems, and the chief engineer had one for the ship's drive. But it was Esmo's key that controlled the minute, complex workings of the ship. The slender, sparkling artifact represented the real power of the captain. Keale wondered what was going on behind her impassive eyes as she looked at it.