The D’neeran Factor (5 page)

The ring that lay in her white palm was a plain gold band set with a blue stone. After a minute Hanna took it and slipped it onto her hand.

Iledra glided to the door, unhurried. Hanna stared at the Heir's Ring of Koroth, but when she spoke it was not about the ring. She said, “Lee? Why hasn't Jameson called you?”

“Rudeness,” Iledra said succinctly.

“What?”

“The privilege of power. We have no power. We need the Polity, but it does not need us. Whatever courtesy a commissioner shows us is ours by his sufferance.” She gave Hanna a long gray look and said, “I would like to see that change before I die.”

Hanna, left alone, looked at the ring's blue fire. The bauble felt heavy on her hand.

*   *   *

Stanislaw Morisz went to see Starr Jameson about the
Endeavor
project a day or two later. He did not know that the House of Koroth had given up its hopes of participating in the project. If he had known he would not have cared; he had other things to think about. Jameson made Morisz nervous,
and Morisz was finding out to his consternation that even approaching Jameson's residence was enough to produce the symptoms.

“I thought,” he said, “this was all wilderness,” and looked out the window of the aircar again at the great fields brown with stubble in the weak afternoon light. He felt lost.

The flier who had come to meet him at Arrenswood's only outport said, “No wilderness here. Farther on.”

“Where does Commissioner Jameson live, then? Closer to the forest?”

“No. Here's Starrbright,” said the man, and the aircar dove to the left and down. There was a knot of trees there and in the center half a dozen structures that grew rapidly as they went down. They went down fast. Evidently, Morisz thought, Jameson required speed from his subordinates when he was at home just as he did on Earth. They talked less here, however, if this pilot was a sample.

Morisz stood a little helplessly by the aircar when it landed, not sure of the protocol. You might or might not be expected to carry your own luggage, depending on where you were on which world and also on who you were. He did not know how Heartworld's respect for status applied to him; Jameson's status was very high indeed, and presumably so was that of his guests. On the other hand Morisz was a subordinate of any commissioner from a Polity world, and Terrestrials were not highly regarded here.

But the pilot began getting the bags out without a glance in his direction, and Morisz had a chance to look around. He had been on Heartworld before, even in Arrenswood province, but only in the cities, which were grim. This was a little grim too, he thought: windswept prairieland, further flattened to increase the efficiency of machines.

Morisz was a man of crowded Earth, not used to being far from centers of population even though his job had sometimes required it before he moved into Polity Administration. He was not sure how far the aircar had brought him, but he knew he was some distance from any town. Beyond the trees, fields stretched to the horizon. Everything he could see would belong to Jameson; the term “landed family of Heartworld” suddenly took on new meaning.

The main house was made of brick, and no doubt the bricks were handmade, though somewhere, probably underground,
there must be agricultural robots of great size and power. The house was three stories tall, shingled with wood—shingled? Yes—and also trimmed with wood. It was gaunt as the bare trees surrounding it. Nothing about it suggested it was the product of a star-traveling civilization. On the other hand it did not have the patchwork look of settlements on poorer planets, none of which were Polity worlds. The latter fact was largely due to Heartworld; its representatives to the Coordinating Commission of the Polity made a good case against letting underdeveloped societies enjoy Polity perquisites. Jameson had been the commissioner from Heartworld for eight years. And after all, Morisz thought, why should he want to sell the produce of these fields for less than the market would bear to customers who had nothing to offer but money?

He was still looking out over the fields, fallow in the dying year, when he heard a footfall behind him and realized his status was settled; Starr Jameson had come out to meet him in person. He turned a little hesitantly. Morisz was director of Polity Intelligence and Security, and knew more about Jameson than almost anyone else did. He rather liked the man, but did not understand him and had never seen him in this setting. He thought Jameson might be different here.

But the only difference he saw was that Jameson was smiling, the rare sunburst of a smile Morisz had seldom seen.

“Stan. Glad to see you,” Jameson said, and they shook hands and Morisz relaxed. There was no difference. It was just like Polity Admin on Earth, except for the smile and also that this was partly a social occasion.

Morisz, not thinking socially, said, “I thought you'd be glad. This is it, isn't it?”

Jameson seemed not to have heard him. He said, “You've come prepared for big game, I hope?”

“I don't know,” Morisz said cautiously. “How big?”

“Medium, I should say. Earth import. Nothing difficult.”

“I thought of bringing a combat laser,” Morisz said a little wistfully.

“Not here. Here you hunt with spears or bows or not at all. It'll be good for you, Stanislaw. Come on up to the house.”

Morisz wondered if he should pursue the matter of the report he carried or wait for Jameson to bring it up again. Well, that was like Admin too. He supposed ambiguity was a sort of immutable attribute, which Jameson practiced with guests as well as professional associates.

The house had a great central hall that made Morisz look around in wonder. The floor was made of polished wood. Of course; Heartworld was famous for its exotic woods. It would require a great deal of human, not robot, care, and Morisz was sure Jameson did no polishing. The rugs scattered on it would be handwoven. He stared at a gleaming brass chandelier and Jameson followed his gaze.

“F'thalian glowpods,” he said. “It only looks incandescent.”

“Doesn't that spoil the authenticity?” Morisz was surprised into bluntness.

“The Authenticist movement is very vocal but very small. And its spokesmen travel in aircars.”

He took Morisz to a room where a fire blazed in a stone hearth. Morisz did not like open fires but sat near it anyway. He took the drink Jameson handed him and without making a display of it stole a more careful look at the other man's face. Was he spaced? Did he, on vacation at home, indulge himself as he did at his leisure on Earth, with whatever interesting drug the purveyors to Polity VIPs might provide? With, of course, the tacit consent of Earthside Enforcement officials who did not like to antagonize men like Jameson.

But Jameson sat down with a sigh, said, “How does the roster shape up, Stan?” and Morisz might have been back in the big riverside office on Earth, preparing to report in the ordinary way.

He took a cassette from a locked pouch under his shirt. It was wafer-thin and almost weightless in his hand, and it held the final I&S reports on the proposed crew of the exploration vessel
Endeavor.
It contrasted so sharply with its surroundings that Morisz suddenly wondered if there were a reader in the house to put it in.

“It's not a bad list,” he said. “I question a couple of the names.”

“You've already had one shot at it,” Jameson said.

Morisz smiled faintly. “You're still showing a couple I could do without.”

“I know,” Jameson said. He brought a reader from a drawer built into the wall, reassuring Morisz, and slipped the cassette into it. He said, “Make yourself comfortable. This might take a while,” and began reading.

Morisz was not comfortable. The room was too quiet, except for the fire, which made distressingly irregular sounds. The place was full of light that seemed warmer than glowpod luminescence; presumably the shades around the pods accounted for the golden cast. The shades were made of glass. Glass? Yes. Morisz had not been to Jameson's Earthside home. He had heard it was something like this; not nearly so extreme, however. He would bet this house didn't even speak. It was free from the subliminal sounds of machines and the energy transformations that ran them, and it felt too much as if it had a life of its own. Occasionally human voices sounded through it; one was a woman's, and Morisz wondered who she was. Jameson's recent companion in Namerica, a spectacular creature, was still there, which was not to say Jameson had no companions during his rare visits home. But Morisz knew of none at present, and he would know. No doubt whoever it was was at home here. Jameson had relatives nearby, a steward to manage the great estate, a housekeeper—the whole arrangement reminded Morisz that Heartworld's first families still had things pretty much their own way, especially in Arrenswood.

Jameson glanced up at Morisz once, his face expressionless, and went back to reading. Morisz watched him covertly. Jameson was a big man whose face seemed to have been put together without regard for consistency. There might be Amerind blood in the jutting bones and dark hair, but his eyes and skin were incongruously light. His mouth was sensitive when he let it be, the strong face surprisingly pleasant when he smiled; but he did not smile often. By Standard count he was forty-six and, Morisz thought, aging well. Rapidly, but well. He looked—

Morisz hesitated, wondering not for the first time about standards for judging age. Jameson stubbornly kept trying all the usual anti-senescence procedures, and probably looked younger than the forty-six of earlier centuries; but he seemed older than Morisz, who was near eighty but might have been an untreated thirty-five. Today Jameson also looked pale and very tired—unexpected in a man
supposed to have been vacationing for eight weeks. He's tried A.S. again, Morisz thought, and it hit him hard. He looks like hell. And now he's waiting for the rest of the verdict.

Presently Jameson put the reader aside with an economical, final-seeming motion. Morisz came to attention.

Jameson said, “The alternate for Liuku. That's the only change.”

Morisz estimated his chances of prevailing and found them small.
Endeavor's
crew list had been thrashed out over several months by the Coordinating Commission, the Interworld Fleet, Alien Relations, and all the other components of a living bureaucratic network whose separate parts had their own goals to consider. I&S probably had exercised all its options. Nonetheless Morisz said, “Liuku's a hell of an Inspace technician. I'd rather see her out there than the alternate.”

“She's a Technocrat,” Jameson said. Without giving the word special emphasis, he managed to make it sound distasteful. Morisz was a man of moderate views, and he did not care for Earth's Technocrat enclaves either. Their children were machined and augmented to something more or less than human, and they came out of the enclaves slightly or severely bent. But Liuku had bent in the not-uncommon direction of becoming a superb technician. Morisz's report said so, but now he said so again, emphatically.

Jameson said, “I know. But any person on the
Endeavor,
including the engineering staff, might have to talk to whatever's out there. How do you think a Technocrat would get along with something like a Girrian?”

“Heartworld prejudice,” Morisz said.

“Possibly. But I won't risk it. Liuku's out,” Jameson said, and Morisz knew he had lost.

He hesitated, wondering if he should bring up his personal reservations about the man who would command
Endeavor.
Their sum, however, was only that at thirty-nine—half Morisz's age—Erik Fleming was too young. You never got anywhere arguing age with Jameson, and in any case it was Jameson who had bullied and cajoled Fleet into leapfrogging a handful of young officers upstairs.

Morisz decided to skip Fleming and move on to surer ground.

“The D'neeran woman,” he said. “Hanna Bassanio. Ril-Koroth. Whatever they call her.”

Jameson leaned back and put the tips of his long fingers together. He said politely, “Yes?”

“I think she's a very unwise choice.”

“I know you do. I believe she is the only person you strongly protested who will be making the voyage.”

It was a pointed reminder that Morisz had gotten nearly everything he wanted, but he said anyway, “They're erratic. D'neerans in general, I mean. This one's reckless. You saw what she almost did against Nestor?”

“Courageous,” Jameson remarked.

Morisz eyed him doubtfully, wondering just how much Jameson knew about it. He certainly knew the basic facts of D'neera's half-day war with Nestor—the only war in D'neeran history. There would have been no D'neeran defense force to fight it if Jameson, unofficially and personally, had not talked the D'neeran magistrates into creating one when Nestor's militarism had begun concentrating on the despised telepaths. It was supposed to be coincidence that D'neera was lush and prosperous, while Nestor's settlements were bleak and tired. Morisz believed in that coincidence just about as much as he believed the Interworld Fleet's timely intervention in the incident meant that the Coordinating Commission had acted on a wave of spontaneous, unanimous altruism. Jameson surely had been behind that too. But the official record included only a bare outline of Hanna ril-Koroth's part in the engagement, and there was no reason for Jameson to know the details.

Morisz said, “Let me tell you what really happened. This woman was left in command of the—the—”

He hesitated, searching his memory. Jameson's eyelids drooped; he looked half-sleep, or bored. He murmured, “The D'neeran corvette
Clara Mendoza.
”

“Uh—yes. She was in command because she was the only rank left among the survivors. The
Clara
's arms and shields were out, life support was half-gone, gravity was fluxing, the thing could just barely wallow around in realspace. She's called on to surrender. She decides not to. What does she decide to take on?”