The Faded Sun Trilogy (83 page)

“Influence, Boz.”

“What have we been able to influence? Between
Saber
and the regul, invaluable sites have been blasted to rubble, the greatest cities of the world in ruins, an intelligent species maybe reduced beyond viability . . . and we observe, we take notes . . . and our notes provide information so that regul and mri can kill each other. And maybe we can join in. Duncan took his own way out. I look at this and suddenly I begin to understand him. He at least—”

A shadow fell in the corridor doorway. Boaz stopped. It was Galey, from
Saber,
with another man. Vague surprise struck her, that Galey should have come down: an old acquaintance, this man . . . a freckled young man when he had set out from Kesrith, full of promise; a man in his thirties now, with a perpetually worried look. Youth to man to senior by the time he could get back to human space again, Boaz thought; mortality was on them all. The thought began to obsess her.

“Dr. Averson?” Galey inquired, came with the black man into the main lab. He proffered Luiz a cassette, had it signed for, passed the tab to his dark companion. “Lt. Harris,” Galey identified the other. “Running shuttle up for Dr. Averson. Orders explain matters. Myself and my crew, we’re staying on down here; cassette explains that too, I think, by your leave, sir, doctor.”

There was a moment’s cold silence.

“What’s going on up there?” Boaz asked.

“Don’t know,” Galey said, and avoided her eyes. “Sir?” he said to Averson. “We have a limited access here.
Better move as quickly as possible.”

Luiz handed over the dispatch, received a signature in turn, from Harris.

“Suppose,” Boaz said, “you see him settled, Mr. Galey.”

Galey gave her that perplexed stare he could use; she did not relent. “Doctor,” he murmured, and took his leave with Harris, shepherding Averson along with them in some haste.

“My tapes,” Averson was saying. “My records—”

The door closed.

“Blast!” Boaz spat, and sat down.

“There’s no help for it,” Luiz said.

“His whole life,” Boaz murmured, shaking her head; and when Luiz looked puzzlement at her: “Theirs, mine, yours. Spent on this thing. More than just the years. We can go home. But to what? What’s the chance Stavros is still governor on Kesrith? No, new policies, a new governor—the whole situation years without our input. And what do we bring back? What do we tell them about what we’ve seen out here, a track of dead worlds—saying
what?
No one’s asking the right questions, Emil. Not we, not the regul . . . no one’s asking the right questions.”

Luiz wrapped his thin arms about him and stared at the floor. “We can’t get out there to ask the questions.”

“And now we’ve got the military.”

“We’re vulnerable here;
That’s
what’s on my mind. Boz, whatever’s afoot, I’m going to request all but essential personnel shuttled up. Fifty-eight people is too many to risk down here.”

“No!” She thrust herself to her feet. “
Flower
has to stay here, right here; we have to make it clear to them we’re staying.”

“We have to wait for Duncan as long as there’s hope of waiting. That’s our purpose; our only purpose. The Xen department has to understand that. There’s no chance of doing more than that, and there’s sure none of making gestures of principle with fifty-eight lives. Forget it, Boz.”

“And when that fails?” She stalked to the door, looked back at him. “We’ll lose the mri, you know that. How do we win, in a waiting game with regul?”

“We apply pressure . . . quietly. It’s all we can do.”

“And can’t they figure that out? It’s their game. Our generations are a fraction of theirs. Our whole lifespans are nothing to their three centuries. If you’re right, if there is an adult developing among them, they can even out-populate us in the long run. And if there isn’t one now, there will be, sooner or later, this year or the next. Sooner or later,
Saber
will give up and pull us out. We’re mortal, Emil. We think in terms of week and months. The regul will get the mri in the end. Do you see
Saber
tying itself up here for longer than a few months? And do you think regul wouldn’t wait fifty out of their three hundred years to have their own way with the mri? And we can’t. Fifty years . . . and we’re all dead.”

Luiz gazed at her, his dark eyes shrouded in wrinkled lids, his mouth pressed to a fine line. “Don’t you go on me, Boz. We’ve lost too many to that kind of thinking. I won’t hear you start it.”

“Four suicides and six on trank? It’s Galey’s sort who go that route . . . the young, who had illusions of a life after this mission is over. You and I, we’re too old for that. We at least have a past to look back on. They don’t. Only the jumps. And more of them to face on the way home. The drugs may not last; we were handing out doubled doses at the end. And what after that? You tell me what that voyage will be like
with no drugs.
”

“We’ll find something.”

“We can
try.
” She made a shrug that was half a shiver. “This world, Emil, the age, the
age
of it—one vast tomb; the seas dried up, the cities frozen and waiting for the sun to go out—and all space about empty of life. Dear God, what is it to be young among such sights as these? It’s bad enough to be old.”

Luiz came and took her by the arms, gathered her to him, and she held to him until the shivers stopped.

“Emil,” she said, “promise me something. Talk to the staff. Let me talk to them. We can hold
Flower
here, right where we sit, with all her staff. No lessening the stakes, no making it easier for them, regul or human.”

“We can’t. We can’t make gestures, Boz. Can’t. I don’t know what Koch has in mind up there or down here, but we can’t cripple our own side by making independent moves. We have to protect our people and we have to be ready to lift on the instant the orders come. We’re the other star-capable ship and we’ve no right to gamble with it.”

“We’ve no right not to.”

“I can’t listen to you.”

“Won’t.” Boaz turned aside, drew a long breath, glanced back again. “And what answer does Koch have for us?”

Luiz drew the cassette from his pocket, stared at it as at something poisonous. “I’ll lay bets what answer he has; that those overflights aren’t ours.”

“Play it,” Boaz said. She closed the door. “Let’s both hear it.”

He looked doubtful, frowning, but after a moment walked around her desk to push it into the player.

Gibberish filled the screens, codes, authorizations,
Saber’s
emblem. Boaz came and sat on the edge of the desk near Luiz, arms folded, heart beating hard with tension.

“. . . request Xen staff cooperation with military mission,”
the tape meandered to its point,
“in on-site recon if this should prove necessary. Your base is base for this operation; request your staff conduct advance briefings prior to start of mission. Mission head is Lt. Comdr. James R. Galey. All decisions mission Code Dante to be made by Comdr. Galey, including final selection among
Flower
staff volunteers for mission slot. Suggest staff member D. Tensio. Your full cooperation in this matter urgently pleaded. Mission is recon only, stress, recon only, effort to comprehend nature of civilization and establish character of city installations. Failure of
Flower
cooperation will jeopardize search for alternative solutions.”

She flung herself off the desk edge and started for the door.

“Boz,” Luiz called after her.

She stopped. The tape had run out.

“Boz,” Luiz said, his wrinkles drawn into lines of anguish. “You’re fifty-two years old. There’s no way you could keep up with those young men.”

She looked down at herself, at a plump body that resisted diets, that ached with bad arches and wheezed when she had to carry equipment in standard gee. She had not been good to herself in her life: too much of sitting at desks, too much of reading, too much of postponing.

And the sum of her life rested in the freckled hands of a whipcord young soldier with no sense what he was
about.

“I’m going,” she said. “Emil, I’m going to talk to young Mr. Galey and he’s going to listen.”

“Jeopardize the operation for your personal satisfaction.”

She turned a furious look on him, took a breath and drew herself up to her small height. “I’m going to give them the best they can get, Emil, that’s what; because I know more than Damon Tensio or Sim Averson or any three of the assistants put together. Say otherwise.”

He did not. Perhaps, she thought halfway down the corridor at as fast a pace as she could manage—

She glanced back, half-expecting to see him in the doorway. He was. He nodded to her slowly—too old himself, she realized; he knew her mind, knew to the bottom of his heart. He would be down the hall ahead of her if he could.

She nodded, a tautness in her throat, turned and went hunting Galey.

*   *   *

Harris kicked in the engines, took a cursory glance at the instruments, his mind wandering to
Saber,
to a hot cup of coffee; and to the next day off-duty, which was the reward of a down-world flight. Last of all he cast a glance to his right, at the little man who fussed nervously with the restraints.

“They’re all right,” Harris said. Groundling, this Dr. Averson, a dedicated groundling. He decided, humanely, to make the lift as gentle as possible; the man had some years on him. Averson blinked round-eyed at him, the sweat already broken out on his brow. Harris diverted his attention again to the instruments, advised
Flower
bridge of his status, began slow lift.

The shuttle responded with a leisurely solidity. He watched the altimeter, leveled gradually at 6,000 m and banked to come about for their run.

“We’re turning,” Averson said; and when he gave no answer: “We’re turning.” Averson raised his voice well over the noise of the engines. “We never turned. What’s the matter?”

“We’re coming about, sir,” Harris said, adjusted the plug in his left ear to be sure he could hear warnings over
Averson’s clamor. He set the scan to audio alarm, wide-range. “Shuttles handle different than
Flower.
We’re just heading where we should be.”

They came to course. The desert slipped under them by slow degrees, with the indigo to pink shadings of the sky above and the bronze to red tones of the desert, the great chasm which might once have been a sea—passed the area of the recent storm and across the chasm. Scan clicked away the whole route, the instruments moduled into cargo. They crossed no cities this way and made no provocations. It was a tame run, toward a gentle parting with Kutath’s pull. He relaxed finally as Averson settled down; the man took enough interest to lean toward the port and look down, though with a visible flinching.

Quiet. Sand and sky and quiet. Harris let go a breath, settled for the long run out.

Suddenly a tone went off in his ear and he flicked a glance at the screen, his heart slamming in panic. He accelerated on the instant and their relation to the blips altered in a series of pulses as Averson howled outrage.

He angled for evasion and the howl became a choked gasp.

“Something’s on our tail,” he said. “Check your belts.” The latter was something to take Averson’s mind off their situation. He was calculating, glancing from screen to instruments. Two blips, coming up at his underbelly.

He veered again. The blips were in position to fire on the rise, could; might; he felt it in his gut. He increased the climb rate and the ship’s boards flashed distress at him.

For the first time the bogies separated, shifting position and altitude. His heart went into his throat and he flipped the cover off the armscomp, ready. “Hang on,” he yelled at Averson, and punched com, breaking his ordered silence. “Any human ship, NAS-6; we’ve got a sighting.”

He banked violently and dropped; and Averson’s scream echoed in his ear. The bogey whipped by and a screen flared; they had been fired on. He completed his roll and nosed up again as rapidly as the ship could bear.

“Get us help!” Averson cried.

“Isn’t any.” He punched com again, hoping for someone to relay to
Saber.
“Got two bogeys here. Does anybody read?”

The pulse in his ear increased, nearing. He whipped off at an angle that wrung a shriek from Averson,
climbing for very life, trying at the same time to get an image on his screen. The sky turned pink and indigo, the pulses died, went offscreen. In a little more the indigo deepened and they were still accelerating, running for what speed and altitude they could attain: the sound of the engines changed as systems began to convert.

Averson was sick. Harris reached over and ripped a bag out of storage and gave it to him. For some little time there was the quiet sound of retching, which did no kindness to his own stomach.

“Water in the bottle there,” Harris said. And fervently: “Don’t spill anything. We’re going null before long.” He devoted his attention the while to the vacant scan, to making sure all the recorders were in order. He heard Averson scrabbling about after the water, the spasm seeming to have passed. His own stomach kept heaving in sympathy. “Disposal to your right.”

Dayside was under them, and
Saber
was over the horizon. The instruments had nothing, not a flicker. Harris calculated. Somewhere on this side of the world lay regul
Shirug,
beyond their scan; and somewhere downworld were cities with weapons which could strike at craft in orbit, if they once obtained a fix on so small a vessel as themselves.

Or if they had it already.

Averson snatched at another bag, dry-heaved for a time. They were in a queasy wallowing at the moment. Harris gave them visual stability with the world, wiped at the sweat that coursed his face, trying to reckon where
Shirug
might be. He had a dread of her coming up in forward scan, and the bogeys coming up under him again.

“Going to go back on course,” he said to no one in particular. “At least that way downworld isn’t so likely to have a shot at us.”

Averson said nothing. Harris reoriented and Kutath’s angry surface swung under their forward scan.