The Thrones of Kronos (50 page)

Reluctantly he stepped off the dyplast sheet onto the
gray-painted floor as Anaris faced the wall. At a gesture, the Bori tapped out
the command to alert the worm, which responded by relaxing the stasis clamps to
make their exit easier. His stomach lurched, and the urge to pee intensified as
the floor humped up under his feet and forced him to sit down against a steep
hump vaguely like the back of a chair. He felt it press against his back, the
floor squirming under him, as he accelerated slowly after Anaris, who had
already entered the wall. His throat spasmed when he feared he’d be smothered
into a bubble by himself, then his bizarre conveyance caught up with Anaris as
the wall sealed behind them.

Morrighon sat stiffly, terrified by the closeness of the
livid red walls and the liquid way they seemed to ripple around him as he was
borne forward and up. The lack of anything his senses could treat as an
orienting horizon provoked waves of nausea. He concentrated fiercely on his
compad, where a window showed their progress on a schematic of the station—the
part of it that was mapped. Anaris was taking them by the most direct route to
an area only lightly salted with quantum interfaces and no stasis clamps.
Morrighon supposed the heir’s TK enabled him to move swiftly once he was away
from those interfering mechanisms.

The sound of their passage, a sort of soft gurgle, was so
like the grumbling of his stomach when he was hungry that bile spurted into his
mouth and he swallowed frantically: he had no desire to find out how Anaris
would react to being vomited on.

His compad rescued him by bleeping softly. A window bloomed,
revealing the readout of Tat’s new trace worm. Something was out there, its
presence betrayed by the stasis clamps and quantum interfaces that the tracer
monitored.

Anaris glanced back. “Is that the tracer?”

“Yes, lord. Something is following us.” Morrighon swallowed again,
his mouth still sour despite this distraction. He checked the compad again; the
other module Tat had installed was quiescent. “Not Norio,” he added.

“I do not need your compad to tell me that. His presence is
unmistakable.” Earlier Anaris had explained that whatever Norio had become was
slowly growing active again, as if recovering from its struggle with the
tempath.

Tat’s module was derived from the worm Lysanter had bid her
craft to track Norio and keep him away from the inhabited areas. He shivered.
She had recently reported that it was consuming more computer power as time
went on.

They accelerated abruptly, swinging around on a tight curve.
Morrighon clamped his jaws against the nausea; his compad indicated that they
were now outside the inhabited area.

“So there is something else lurking in the Suneater.”
Anaris’s tone was musing, showing no sign of his concentration on moving them
through the fabric of the station—or rather, Morrighon realized uncomfortably,
having it move them.

Or in the computer system, thought Morrighon, but he said
nothing. That would be too close to Anaris’s experiences with the “ghost”
loosed on him by Brandon Arkad, on Arthelion.

Tatriman had insisted that Barrodagh was not able to do
that, and she claimed to have fought his noderunner to a standstill. But if not
Barrodagh, then who? Lysanter? But then, why would the scientist have revealed
the fact that the quantum interfaces could serve as acoustic pickups, or even
crude interference imagers? Morrighon was sure that the Urian specialist lacked
the degree of subtlety to attempt such a finesse.

They decelerated so abruptly Morrighon pitched painfully into
Anaris. The heir’s body was like stone.

“
That
was Norio,”
Anaris said. “I fear him not, but I doubt you would enjoy our confrontation,
and we have no time.” With a stomach-wrenching jerk they accelerated off at an
angle.

Morrighon’s back prickled, and he resisted an impulse to
look behind him. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. But it was obvious from
Anaris’s unusual willingness to reveal what was happening that the heir
expected Morrighon to do whatever he could to deal with Norio. And that meant
working with Tatriman. And Sedry. Did the heir know of the ex-Panarchist’s
computer activities? No matter. It might well take both of them to deal with
Norio. That would be their next task.

By concentrating on what he would direct the two noderunners
to do, Morrighon managed to hold off the nausea until the bubble slowed to a
stop.

“There is someone nearby,” Anaris said. “We will wait.”

Morrighon looked thoughtfully at Anaris’s broad back,
wondering how he knew, and how he navigated. Either his TK had a telepathic
component, or else his assignations with Vi’ya had done something to him.

Vi’ya. “Lord, I ask only because a misstep on my part due to
ignorance could upset all, but do you have some sort of psychic link with the
tempath?”

Anaris glanced back, angry, then thoughtful as Morrighon
forced his own gaze down into proper submission. When he spoke, his voice was
wry. “I trust Barrodagh has remained unobservant?”

Morrighon bowed slightly, trying to hide his intense relief.
“I have done all I can to ensure that.”

“Then you need to know this. The link is not just with
Vi’ya, but it comprises the Eya’a and a trio of Kelly, hidden on their ship.
The red-haired boy is also a part of it.”

Morrighon wrestled with a haze of new questions. A Kelly
trinity, here? He shuddered to think of Eusabian’s reaction: the Avatar, like
virtually all Dol’jharians, loathed the very idea of nonhuman sentience.
Apparently Anaris did not.

But that was the least of it.

The
Telvarna
now
became a problem. The Kelly had somehow evaded both Barrodagh’s and their
inspections. And what about Eusabian’s plan to dispose of the tempath after
start-up? Did Anaris approve? If not, then what of Hreem, who was obviously
intended by Barrodagh as a counter against Captain Vi’ya?

He had to bite back his questions, for Anaris said, “Oh.
Here we are.”

The bubble opened up ahead, decanting them into the ship
bay, and revealing yet a new strangeness, Lysanter standing in its center
gazing around with evident satisfaction.

At first the ring of boot heels on the deck scarcely
registered with Lysanter. This could not be the Avatar yet, for the whine-thump
of the Ogres was absent. But there was no challenge from the guards with
Lysanter, and Eusabian had given strict orders that no one but the scientist
and his guards should enter before him on this occasion.

Lysanter peered over his compad, then stared in shock at
Anaris and his secretary. How had he gotten around the guards at the far door?

Lysanter made a hurried bow, not missing Anaris’s faint
smile. Fear tightened his neck muscles. There would be a confrontation;
Lysanter wished fervently he could be elsewhere when Eusabian arrived. But that
was impossible.

“My lord,” he said. “I did not expect you so soon.”

Anaris’s smile broadened into challenge, which seemed to
increase the worry in Morrighon’s face. He, too, was expecting trouble.

“No. You didn’t,” Anaris replied.

“If I may ask, lord, did you find another adit? If so, it
would indicate additional activity, and the sensors reported none.”

“That is interesting,” Anaris replied neutrally.

No answer, then.

Anaris looked around with an air of expectation, which
contrasted starkly with Morrighon clutching his compad much as the servant of
an ancient warrior might have grasped his master’s buckler in the face of an
enemy of unknown puissance.

Morrighon straddled what he evidently took to be a stasis
clamp. Lysanter, noting the lines stress had graven in the man’s face, forbore
to tell him it was only a quantum interface—clamps would only interfere with
the process of forcing the ships.

Lysanter followed Anaris’s gaze, his lifted brows echoing the
scientist’s own astonishment at the opening of the first ship bay, many years
before.

Womb
, he thought,
wondering how Anaris would react if he used the organic simile. But the
impression was inescapable: a vast egg-shaped cavern with a tall central mound.
The ruddy walls pouched out in glands and blisters from which the Urian
vessels—glistening spheres of pale translucence—were slowly emerging,
centimeters per day. Banks of lights hanging from scaffolding all around and overhead
sparked shimmering highlights from the webs of cable and quantum interfaces
festooning the nearest gland, from which a ship protruded almost halfway, more
than any other. But the glints from the Urian ships seemed subtly wrong, giving
the impression of a painting with careless perspective. Lysanter had never been
able to discover why.

Anaris gestured at the ship. “My father grows impatient.”

His tone was neutral; Lysanter couldn’t read its
significance. But he’d learned that Anaris tolerated, even sometimes demanded,
far bolder speech than the Avatar.

“It has only been a week since the bay opened, lord. And we
lost a great deal of time verifying the additional Ogres.” It wouldn’t hurt to
remind the heir of the priorities he, Lysanter, had to observe. “As well,” he
continued, “the forcing process is delicate.” He looked down at his compad,
linked to the array governing the interfaces on the ship blister. “This one
will be ripe in less than six minutes now.”

He heard Morrighon suck in his breath, and Lysanter wondered
if he’d gone too far, but Anaris showed no reaction at all to the organic simile.
He seems to accept the station as it is.

Lysanter made a mental note to check the record from
interface monitors. Perhaps Anaris’s arrival had left some traces: if he’d
found some new adit, it must have opened within the last quarter hour,
following the previous circuit of the guards.

Morrighon’s gaze shifted sideways a second after the Ogres’
whine-thump echoed from the other side of the tall mound in the center of the
bay. The swales and hollows of the Urian quantum-plast smeared the sound.

Anaris paid it no heed. “Does the speed of the process
correlate with the increase in station power?”

Lysanter glanced toward the entrance to the bay. It would be
better if the Avatar did not find them talking. He feared becoming a counter in
the confrontation between Eusabian and his son.
But I already am.
And Anaris was exploiting that fact.

Lysanter tried to hide his accelerating anxiety. “Yes, lord.
So it will continue to accelerate as the power increase the tempath set in
motion during the last probe continues.”

Anaris turned his attention to his father, who was rounding
that central structure, his tread heavy. He was flanked by a squad of uniformed
Tarkans; at his side Barrodagh walked rapidly, his shoulders hunched with
apprehension which appeared equally divided between the ship glands all around
and the two battle androids behind the Tarkans.

The scientist marveled again at the smooth synchrony of the
Ogres’ movement, so perfect that the sound of their progress gave no hint there
was more than one. Eusabian always operated them in the terror mode.

Lysanter bowed as the Avatar came to a halt by the emerging
ship.

“Lord, this one will be ready in three minutes,” he said,
hoping to deflect to Eusabian from Anaris’s early arrival.

From the look on Barrodagh’s face, he knew he could not
evade the questions later, and the Bori would not believe his protestations of
ignorance.
But I have a counter to that.

The scientist breathed in silent relief when Eusabian
addressed his first remark to Anaris, without a flicker of emotion. “You will
find these useful in rebuilding the fleet after the attack.”

So much for relief. Lysanter heard the order implied in
those few words: his already over-scheduled staff would have to furnish someone
to tear apart these ships for the hyperwaves and the other parts they could
use.

Anaris inclined his head, then looked around with a
proprietary air that could not fail to irritate his father. Sweat broke out on
Lysanter’s forehead.

“Odd, though, that this bay does not open to space.” Anaris
flicked a glance Lysanter’s way. “We are deep within the station here, are we
not?”

“Yes, lord.” He gestured at the mound. “That appears to hold
an adit opening into the well through the Chamber of Kronos.”

Anaris’s brows lifted. “Then you suspect these ships would
be launched into the crystallized fivespace at the heart of the station?”

Lysanter nodded, wondering what a passenger on such a
journey might see. Surely it could not be fatal—what would be the purpose?

Eusabian gestured impatiently, dismissing Anaris’s question.
“No matter, these will never be launched, no more than those in the first bay.”

The console nearby bleeped.

“One minute, Lord,” Lysanter said, indicating the luminous
yellow line painted around the gland where it swelled from the juncture of
floor and swaled wall. “There will be some movement of the quantum-plast inside
the line.”

Eusabian stepped back, behind the line. The Ogres stood so
still the highlights on their polished armor seemed etched in. The floor
trembled briefly underfoot, the suggestion of a groan. Then silence. The ship
appeared to grow larger, until it emerged from the gland, which withdrew into
the wall with a ripe smacking sound.

Barrodagh winced.

A pucker formed near the Avatar, closest to the ship. A
subtle modulation of the ship’s translucent skin suggested it was rotating
about its vertical axis, with the pucker moving against the rotation to stay
oriented, but the scientist knew this was an illusion. Experience with the
ships in the first bay, years before, had revealed this to be an indication of
the activation of the ship’s systems.

And then, as the Avatar moved forward over the line,
Lysanter remembered that Eusabian had never visited the first ship bay. He saw
the same realization dawning on both secretaries’ faces, while Anaris smiled
faintly. The scientist lunged forward, then froze as one of the Ogres swiveled
its head so one face looked at him. “Lord!” he squawked in a strangled voice.