The Seeds of Time (48 page)

A longish pause. “What do you want me to do?”

“Whatever it takes, Tandy. You have power. Use it. May cost you something; but whatever it takes, do it.”

“All right, Clio, I’m going to spend some chits on this one. Just remember, we don’t always control the things we’d like to control.”

“Bullshit.”

He broke contact.

“That’s not the kind of language we use,” she heard Petya saying softly, behind her from the passenger seat.

“We’re going to execute a slow one-eighty,” Voris said, turning back to business.

Clio sat back fuming, watching Voris go through her lessons.
We don’t control things
. Goddamn but Tandy had his little sayings that sometimes had the ring of truth. Brought Petya on board to protect him, ended up putting him in DSDE’s path, ended up giving DSDE a hostage so they could jerk her around at will. Ended up blowing it. Again. She put her hand to her forehead, trying to massage out the spike planted dead center.

Two hours later, when Voris considered Clio checked out on the lander craft, they redocked. Clio took Petya in tow and headed for Tandy’s quarters.

“Hey, Clio,” Voris said as they secured the hatch to loading bay. “You did good.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Voris beamed.

In front of Tandy’s door, Lieutenant Ryerson stood guard, and opened it for Clio and Petya as they approached. “Madam,” he said. A gentle mocking. Let it pass.

Tandy was standing at the windows, hands clasped behind his back. “I’m glad you brought Petya,” he said.

“You promised to do something about Licht.”

“Petya,” Tandy said, “do you play checkers?”

“I play checkers.”

“Good!” Tandy slapped his hands together, strode to the computer. Called up the checkers program. “Go ahead.” He swiveled the chair for Petya to sit.

Petya hesitated by the door. Clio nodded to him, which got him moving, but slowly. At last in front of the computer, he towered over Tandy. Sat down.

“I can do level two?” Petya said.

“Fine.” Tandy punched in the change, then took another chair to sit nearby.

“You’re not going to ignore this, Tandy.”

He waved her into silence. Watched Petya make his opening moves. Tandy turned to face Clio. “You’re off duty. Care for a drink?”

“Yes.”

Tandy made them each a stiff drink of scotch. “Not regulation aboard a ship, but rank has its privileges.”

“Its vices.”

“Perhaps. Petya,” Tandy said, turning back to the game, “how do you like being on the
Galactique
so far?”

“This is a nice ship?”

“I think that it is. How do you like being on board?”

Petya was silent a long time, just playing checkers. “I like it,” he said, finally.

Tandy looked over at Clio, raised an eyebrow. “How is everybody treating you?”

“When you’re an officer, people have to mind you?”

Tandy scratched his chin. “You could say that.”

Petya hit the keys, moving ahead of the computer, moving toward a win. “Do I have to mind the officers?”

“Like who?”

“Like Licht?”

“He’s not an officer.”

“Not an officer?” Petya watched without emotion as the computer took three of his checker pieces.

“No.”

“I don’t have to mind people if they’re not officers?”

“You don’t have to mind Licht.”

Petya’s face flickered with the silvery light of the screen. “Niang,” he said, “has blue trees? Chlorophyll works different there?”

“You won’t be going down to the planet, Petya.”

“I have to stay here?”

“You need to help take care of
Galactique
while some of the army troops are gone.”

“I get to stay here.”

“Any problems with that?”

Petya punched up another game. “A-OK,” he said.

Tandy left Petya to his game and walked over to seat himself across from Clio.

“Nothing like leading questions, Tandy,” she said.

“Then
you
ask him, Clio.” He waited a beat. “You are assuming that Petya is in trouble. Not true. It is true that he’s being harassed. But not true that it’s an untenable situation for him.” He took a long sip on his drink, regarding her. “You’re rescuing again.”

Clio slapped her glass down and jumped to her feet. “Goddamn it, Tandy, who are you to say what bothers him and what doesn’t, you in your cushy officer’s quarters?”

“Ask him.”

Clio looked over at Petya, deep into his game. “He’s not a stone.”

“I didn’t say he was a stone. I’m saying you’re overreacting. Just what Licht wants you to do.”

The air went out of Clio’s next comment. She sank back down on the sofa. “Son of a bitch.” Then: “Why does he hate me so much?”

“Licht?” Tandy fixed her with his gaze. “I had him checked out. Jared Licht has a score to settle with you.”

Clio nodded. “I killed a DSDE gangster eleven years ago during a raid on my family. It’s old news.”

“The man you killed that night was his father.”

Clio stared at him. Jesus. Always did know how to make enemies. “A man like Licht actually had a father, huh?”

“Yes. And he’d still have one if it wasn’t for you.”

“Guess the event must have twisted the poor guy. Used to teach watercoloring to nuns. Now he’s a raging sadist?”

Tandy smiled and shook his head, slowly. “You can be tough, Clio.”

“Guess I’m just twisted. Like him.”

“Worthy adversaries, perhaps.”

Clio shrugged. A rivulet of sweat coursed down her left side, under her arm.

“Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.” Tandy emptied the last of his drink. “Ignore Licht’s forays against Petya, and pretty soon he’ll just come directly after you.” He smiled a small, ironic smile. “Just what you’d prefer, I imagine.”

“You’re just trying to weasel out of our deal.”

His hands went up, facing out. “I said I’d keep Petya happy. I have.” Tandy got up, poured himself another drink, leaning against the credenza. “Or is it
me
you want to fight with?”

“Jesus Christ. Why is everybody always trying to psychoanalyze me?”

Tandy smiled, completely relaxed now, damn him. “Maybe because you make such a fascinating study.”

Clio watched Petya as he tapped at the keyboard. All those things she thought she would never feel again, never
wanted
to feel again, all of them clamored up her throat as she watched her brother playing checkers. Rage, sadness, love, fear. All that stuff that could snare you, blow your cover, give people a handle to jack you around. Licht had that handle. Been waiting to use it these eleven years.

She draped her arm on the side table, looked down at the picture of Tandy’s wife, as the cabin lights blinked out, then on. She met his eyes, and he shrugged.

She looked down at the framed photo again and he noted her gaze. “I used to be like you, Clio. Looking for a fight.” His voice was as soft as a fog in the room. “She taught me there were other things to do with my life, other ways to feel. Never did figure out why she took me on. I was bright and scrappy and brittle as an iced-over puddle. And she loved me. I don’t think it was pity, although, God knows, it could have been. She was in her life in a certain way that’s hard to describe … like she was living it a little deeper than most people. Maybe she knew she had to experience things fully the first few times, because there wouldn’t be many times for her. Do you think people know these things? Anyway, I began to live that way, not like her,
not that—exquisitely—but a fuller way. Still picked my fights in the world, but fights worth winning.” He focused back on Clio.

“How did she die?”

“Badly. It was an assassination attempt on me. Old Greens, making some statement about army, the government, some pointless cause. The car blew up. But it was Suzanne in it, not me.”

Clio stared at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

Petya had turned from the computer and was listening to this story. Said: “You could fix the car?”

Tandy looked over at him. “No. Couldn’t fix the car.”

“It was broken?”

“Yes.”

“But the car didn’t matter?”

Tandy’s lips started to move, stopped. After a moment he got up from the couch and made himself another drink. Brought it to the observation windows, watching the starry far horizons. Niang’s sister planet commanded the upper left quadrant of Tandy’s sweeping view. A bauble of ice, glistening with the reflected vibrancy of the system’s hot blue star.

Clio sat for a time, thinking about Tandy’s story, her own troubles forgotten. Then: “We’ll be going, Colonel.” She stood up, hesitating when he took no notice of her. “Thanks for telling me.” She moved to the door.

“Come back sometime, Clio,” he said.

She turned back. “I will.”

Tandy tossed off the last of his scotch and poured himself another as Clio and Petya quietly shut the door.

Niang turned beneath them, filling the crew lounge viewports. The planet’s single great continent moved underneath them in serene parade, a long, unbroken world forest of blue-green, interrupted by an island-spattered ocean, and then jungle again.

Several crew were gathered at the lounge viewport, gaping at the immense continent Gaia with its botanic cloak, the cloak now known to be inimical to metal and therefore
to human civilization. Clio stood with them, rubbing her upper arm, tattooed with enough antiviral shots to keep a rhino healthy in a quarry.

“You been there, huh?” one of the techs said to Clio.

Clio swiveled to stare at the young man a moment. Thinking he meany
quarry
. Then she noted his gaze out the viewport. “Yeah,” she answered.

“What’s it like? Down in that jungle?”

An image came to her of the deep forest, with brush strokes of turquoise watercolor steeped across the canvas in ever-darkening shades, of the tall, leaning, frondy trees and the smells of candied resins.… Clio opened her mouth to say something, ended up saying, “Too many goddamn trees. If you’re not on the ground mission, just be glad.”

The tech nodded. “Something awful about that much wilderness. Like it would crush you.”

“It would eat up the
Galactique
as a snack,” Clio said, “Spit
you
out though.”

The tech laughed, with the others.

Clio smiled. “Spit us
all
out. Just eats metal.” Clio found a couch near the viewport and propped her feet on the table, on top of a pile of Voris’ pamphlets. Then, reflected in the viewport glass, she saw Timothy Ashe stroll into the lounge. When he sat next to her she made a stab at ignoring him. Two and a half months on board the same spaceship had not made her easy with the man yet. She maintained her gaze out the viewport.

“The planet of the nasty Nians,” Ashe said. Placed his feet on the table next to hers. “You getting your courage up to hit the battlefield running?” He spoke low enough to keep their conversation confidential, as other crew played vids, or read magazines.

Clio ran her hand through her hair.

“Nice hair, but I liked you bald. Something sexy about it.”

“Thanks. I think.” Droll as she knew how.

“Welcome.” He kicked her foot gently with his own. “The colonel working himself into a lather about the Niang war games?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Sure you would. Spend a bit of time up there with him, ought to know if he’s in a lather or not.”

“You jealous where I spend my time?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m finally ready to take you up on your overture.”

A twist in her gut, even though she knew he was needling her. “Get fucked, Ashe.”

He raised his good eyebrow. “Always lead with your chin?”

Clio took a deep, secret breath. The man wasn’t worth it. She looked back out the viewport, watching the top of a thunderstorm crawl over the great sea. What was it crew started calling Niang, first time they saw it up close, the first time? Eden. The fecund and unblemished verdancy of Earth, an innocent Earth, before the Fall. But how long had it taken the crew to throw aside human conventions of morality and charity? How long before the men were strutting with their hunting weapons and the women were vying for the sexual attentions of the leader? Three weeks, maybe four. Whatever innocence the Niang forest had, it ended when
Starhawk
’s crew set foot in it.

“Ever read any hostage stories?” Ashe asked.

Clio gave up on trying to get some private time.

“You know, stories of people, of women, who are kidnapped and held for a length of time?”

Clio shrugged.

“It’s a psychological tendency.”

“What is?”

“For women to fall in love with their captors.”

“Yeah. We just love to be abused. Lock us in our bedrooms, beat the shit out of us. A turn-on.”

“Why is that, do you suppose?”

“It’s just the perennial woman’s struggle to keep a man in performance mode. Throw in a little equality, a little affection, they go limp.”

Ashe was smiling hugely. Something about that damn smile, like he couldn’t keep himself from laughing about things, even if he was trying to be irritating and even if she
was being snotty as hell. His presence next to her made the tips of her fingers zing as though tiny amounts of electricity were escaping from her body. She wiped her hands on the thighs of her flight suit.

“You find yourself attracted to Tandy,” he said. “But you can’t admit it to yourself. Because he’s army, and you have those old grudges.”

“It just eats at you doesn’t it?”

Ashe turned, looked at her. Black eyes deep as the grudges he knew she held. Then a big smile moved across his face. “Sure I’m jealous. If I thought all it took to get you in bed was slapping you around a bit, I wouldn’t have to get into these excruciating talks with you. Most men’d walk a mile to avoid a conversation like this.” He was quiet a moment. Then: “So do you love him?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Tandy
is
using you, you know. And he
is
enjoying having power over you. His assignment was to bring you back from death, from the quarry, and make you want to fly again. Now that you’re here, you don’t owe him. You don’t owe him gratitude, you don’t owe him friendship or sex or love. Because the moment you agreed to Dive, he got what he wanted. Anything else is extra, and you decide what and how much to give. With eyes wide open, Clio.” He took her chin in his hand and turned her face around to look at him. “Wide open.”