The Braided World (39 page)

Bailey stopped reading and Anton stood at the sound of a screen sliding open. They saw Shim standing there.

He hoped that any business she might have could wait, and would have said so but for the look on her face. In his time among the Dassa he had learned to heed that too-quiet, controlled expression on people's faces.

“Captain, thank you,” she said. Her eyes flicked over the wailful of notes, but she didn't seem to disapprove of the defacing of the screens.

“Shim-rah,” Anton began. He walked over to her. Perhaps this could wait. Then, looking past her shoulder, he saw Vidori. Shim backed out of the way, and Anton moved past her into the corridor. Some meters away a clutch of viven were gathered; the king was standing alone. Anton felt sick at heart. He could never again be in the king's presence without remembering. Without being aware that human and Dassa would forever regard each other as mistakes …
modifications
, to the Quadi.

Vidori's face was dark with some burden. Anton and Nick had left the telescope with the terrestrial eyepiece attached. Maybe Vidori had discovered this, and suspected what they'd seen.

“Anton,” Vidori said. As Anton made his greetings, Vidori looked into his face with such compassion that a tremor of premonition touched Anton's skin. He hoped that the telescope was the matter at hand.

“I bear this news, Anton. But will you forgive me for what I have to say?”

I don't know.
He couldn't answer out loud, but silently, he answered,
I don't know if I have that much forgiveness. If you're talking about Mayipong.

“Maypong is dead,” came Vidori's words.

Anton turned aside. No, that couldn't be.

“This morning, so the Second Dassa has given me to know. She died in the varium.”

Anton looked down the long polished corridor, full of people with their errands, with their lives. Inside his chest hotness welled up, tight, and virulent.

Then he had a thought, that perhaps the king was mistaken. “It's a lie.”

Vidori's words emerged slowly. “I sent Shim, who has seen her. Maypong's body”

Maypong's body.
He could say those words so easily, but
they were terrible words. Anton remembered Maypong on the dock. She was alive then, and Anton had a gun aimed at Oleel's forehead. “I should have killed her,” he murmured.

“Do not say so, Anton. Not out loud.”

Anton spun around to look at him. “Don't say so? Don't say that I had it in my power to save Maypong? Don't say that you also, Vidori-rah, had the power?” He held the king's amber gaze, saying, “Did you not?”

“No.”

“You said Oleel would not keep her. You didn't honor Maypong enough to save her.” The viven stirred, murmuring among themselves. He looked up, and saw Shim standing by the screen, tears falling down her cheeks.

“Anton,” Vidori said. “Maypong took her own life in the varium.”

Anton tried to make sense of what he was hearing, but it wasn't registering. Oleel killed her; surely it was Oleel. But then the king repeated the terrible news: “Maypong killed herself.”

Another lie. Wasn't it?

Seeing the doubt on Anton's face, Vidori said, “Oleel would never allow blood in a varium. It is impossible for her. And she would never have killed her—in that way.”

“What way?” Now Anton needed everything to be spoken. By the king. He needed to say it all. And he did. She was allowed her morning swim. She had a knife. She cut her stomach open.

When he recovered himself, Anton looked at Vidori with loathing. “You ordered her to kill herself. Part of the great plan, the royal timing?”
To force issues, to find a reason to move on the uldia?
he thought, but didn't say, because of the viven standing there.

“No,” Vidori said. He hadn't moved from the place where he stood. He commanded the corridor from there. Indeed, he commanded the braided world from wherever he stood; he could order
thousands
to kill themselves, at any time. Maypong was expendable.

But, “No,” the king said again, gazing steadily at him. There was pain in his eyes, but not shame.

“Why, then?” Anton said, waiting for the spin, the politics of denial.

“Maypong had her own reasons; but they were not my reasons.” Vidori broke eye contact, summoning Shim.

“What reasons?” Anton kept asking questions he didn't want the answers to.

Vidori looked down the hall, anxious to be gone.

“What reasons?”

The king spoke softly. “I believe it was for you, Anton. Of her own volition. To deprive Oleel of her hostage.” He went on, “Because of the bonds between you.”

The bonds. Because of the bonds. Now it was Anton's turn to look away. Each revelation was a cut, slicing deeper. “What else?” Anton asked hoarsely.
Tell me everything. Don't parcel it out.

“Nothing else,” the king said, his voice a whisper.

As Shim came forward, Vidori said, “Shim will tell you of the funeral barge and what will happen next.” Then he said, “I hope you will forgive me, Anton. I do hope so.”

Anton walked away from him and his chancellor, back to the room where Bailey and Zhen stood at the open screen. By their faces, they had heard.

Bailey shook her head. “So young. Oh, Anton …”

He looked at her, and the grief welled up, almost spilling out. Bailey was a hard old woman, but she was a friend, too. “We need to go home, Bailey,” he said. He turned from her as Zhen wandered back into the hut and began pulling the slips of paper off the wall, as though the task couldn't wait. He looked back at Bailey Shaw, saying, “Don't we?”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe so.” She was watching as the king gathered his retinue of viven and walked away.

As Shim came up behind him, he turned to her. It might have been Maypong standing there in fine brocade and pulled-back hair. It might have been, but it wasn't. He
couldn't bear to look at her. “Leave me alone for a moment, Shim-rah. I will walk.”

“Anton,” she whispered, “I will wait here for you until you have a peaceful heart again.”

Then you'll wait a long time, Shim-rah.
He parted an outside screen and stepped out onto the walkway, looking for a place to be alone.

Coda Seven. Messaging Satellites.

Our satellites orbiting this planet sena radio signals to Earth to alert the human species of preserved data stored here. The satellites send redundant messages in case of radio failure. Messages are also sent to the other five worlds threatened by the entropie cloud, with the intention to disclose the presence of the respective salvaged information. In our interval of existence we have not yet had complete success in reanimating the biotic inhabitants of the depleted worlds, except on this planet. All information is here for safekeeping.

Nick's blood reddened the twine. He had almost chewed through the bonds, but he'd lost one tooth doing it. His gums were too soft. To free itself from a trap, an animal would gnaw through its own bones, wouldn't it?

The voice from the corner came to him. “I'd help you, son, but I'm dead.” Sometimes Captain Darrow didn't have a positive attitude. That wasn't how Nick remembered him on board ship.

Nick yanked his hands apart, breaking the last strands of
the cord. He had to hurry. Now that Anton had the genetic information, they'd be leaving, bringing home the deadly code that, once brought into living form, would mangle the human race. Because, contrary to what they were saying, it wasn't human genetic code. It was just Dassa, Dassa, Dassa. A trick to raise up more like themselves, absorbing the human race, altering it past recognition. Nick knew that his thinking was a little garbled. But he had the gist of it.

He slipped into an unoccupied boat. Captain Darrow knelt in front, gun drawn. They might need that gun when they confronted Oleel. He could imagine her gloating about how she had duped them. But once she admitted her schemes, Nick would be vindicated. Captain Darrow would witness her confession, since he couldn't count on Anton anymore. Nick paddled, trying to concentrate, trying not to think how much he loved Anton, and how he'd have given his life many times over to save the mission, to be of service.

And now he was dying on this hateful world, with its twisted morality and corrupt alterations. No one saw it, not even Bailey, who, more than any of them, seemed to love the happy natives.

He went in the back way, under the mangrove tree, into the tunnel, bright with green fire as the day stoked up.

“Secret doors, eh?” Captain Darrow said, impressed that Nick knew the way into the forbidden compound.

“Yes, sir. No one guesses what comes in and out of here. You'll see.”

Because of the narrow confines of the canal, paddling soon became impossible, but Nick hauled the skiff along by grabbing aerial roots. Approaching the stone pavilion, he hesitated. Too crowded, with uldia leading groups into the forest, to their appointed variums.

“These where the monsters incubate, then?” Darrow asked.

“Quiet,” Nick had to say. Uldia were close by, sniffing.

Nick continued pulling the craft along, passing Oleel's
lair, probing deeper into her realm, until they came to a region of empty variums.

“Let's tie up here, Captain. We'll have to go on foot now.”

Darrow looked at him from the bank, frowning. “Where's your side arm, son?”

“Anton won't let us go armed.”

The frown grew deeper.
“Anton,”
he said. “Not a real captain. That should have been you, Nick.”

He was beyond caring who was captain. That contest didn't matter anymore. Nick secured the boat and scrambled up the bank. Through the bushes he could see the stone fortress in the distance. He thought he caught sight of Oleel standing in a high, open window. They'd have to be careful.

“This way. Stay off the paths, sir.”

Nick led the way through the thicket, skirting the edges of several variums, empty, perhaps gestating, he thought. His foot slipped on the mud and splashed into the water. Freezing, Nick listened for the uldia.

Captain Darrow waded out into the varium. “Ever wonder what it would be like, to swim? You know, the sex? Don't try to pretend you haven't wondered.”

“Don't go splashing, sir.”

“We could strip off our clothes and give it a try, Lieutenant. Just one swim. Couldn't hurt. How long's it been?”

Captain Darrow was kicking up muck from the bottom of the pond. Nick looked at the pond, and thought about the enfolding waters, and how it might not hurt, just for a moment. The jungle was full and warm like a woman's arms, like a woman's musky self, the whole world was heavy with sex and languorous with time and permission to do anything, anything at all…

“Get out of the water.”

Someone was talking to him.

“Shh,” Nick said. Captain Darrow was disappointing him; he didn't seem to realize how exposed they were.

“Get out of the water, Venning.”

Oleel stood on the bank.

Nick looked down and saw that he'd stumbled into the varium up to his ankles.

As soon as Nick set foot on the bank, a dozen hands gripped him and dragged him away from the varium and onto a path.

Oleel didn't look well. She shuddered, her glance flitting again and again to the varium. “Ruin,” she said. “Oh, ruin.”

The uldia were still holding him as Oleel looked at him with her usual expression. Loathing.

“Yeah, ruin,” he said. “It's what you planned, right? Ruin of Nick Venning and all his people. Hop from world to world, spreading yourselves, right? Go ahead, you can talk freely now, in front of the captain.”

Oleel looked at one of the uldia, the closest one, then back at Nick. “Captain Anton is here also?”

“No. Captain Darrow is here. Anton Prados was never really captain. We'll be taking orders from Captain Darrow.” He looked around, not seeing him.

“Captain Darrow. This is the name of the dead captain, yes?”

“No, not dead. Not anymore.”

Oleel stood for a very long time. Her attendants also stood, unmoving. Finally, she said, “Take him away and strangle him.”

She turned to go, murmuring to her attendants, “Send word to the king we had no choice. Remind him it was his duty to prevent sacrilege.”

It wasn't going to end like this, before he'd exposed her, before she confessed. Before his death meant something. “Wait.” Nick staggered forward, dragging his uldia guards with him. “We know all about you, about your plans. We figured out the messages, and we figured out it's you.”

She turned to face him. “You found your messages?”

“Your
messages,
yours.
You think we believe that it's human stuff inside those plants? Think we couldn't figure out
your schemes?” That damn quiet face—so good at hiding her thoughts. She was exposed now, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of showing any fear. He went on, needling her, “Oh, little ponds all over the place, all over the Earth, all over the galaxy Yeah, we figured it out just in time, before we brought the langva home.” He added,
“Thankfully,”
in a parody of their expression.

“Oh yes? The plants have messages? The langva plants?”