The View from the Imperium (38 page)

Frantically, she searched her surroundings. Apart from the towel and liquids dispenser next to the cleansing station and a basic entertainment console—which she discovered, to her dismay, was not hooked up to the greater Grid—the room was empty of any item that could be used to free herself.

Her communication pad was missing, naturally, as she did not sleep with it. Her hand kept going to where it should have been at her hip. It felt as if someone had removed one of her eyes. She had never been without it for any length of time in her life. She activated the console again. It had no mail program, not even in the root registry.

“Help!” she cried. Her voice emerged in a thin whisper. It was coming back! “Help!” She planted her ear against the door, listening for footsteps. “Someone help me!” Her voice rose to a thin cry like a baby’s.

A grinding sound made her jump backwards. A noise! A noise in the door!

She pounded on the impenetrable panel, waiting desperately to see who was on the other side.

“Let me out! Help me!” she cried. “You can’t leave me here to starve.”

Apparently, that was not the intent of her captors. A hatch in the middle panel of the door slid upward and spat two objects into her hands. She held them up to the feeble light: a large bottle of water and a package of survival bars.

* * *

The entertainment console had plenty of content. DeKarn had worn her fingers raw over the course of three days attempting to undo the seal on the emergency hatch. Her voice was hoarse and ragged from screaming. Neither action had any effect. Fresh meals and clean clothes arrived at intervals, but no one and nothing spoke to her or communicated with her in any way. She was weary of trying, and tired of being frightened. Anything that took her mind off her situation would help. She browsed through the console’s drive, while letting her subconscious formulate an escape.

Sgarthad was behind this. She knew he or his minions had been spying on her for a long while. They had learned everything, including how to penetrate her household defenses. She should have asked for personal protection, but the constabulary would have asked why. None of them saw the visitor as a threat.
Obviously
. How she wished she had made a preemptive strike and put
him
in a prison cell. With a lock. Didn’t anyone notice she was missing?

Over and over again, she feared for Colm. Had he been intercepted? She dared to think of him on a tiny spaceship streaking outward past the first jump point, out of Sgarthad’s reach. Only that gave her enough hope to continue. By now, her enemy had found the speech she had written. Her perfidy—how could she think of it as that?—would be known. She had handed Sgarthad exactly the proof he needed that she opposed him.

She must not continue to berate herself.
Calm,
she thought.
Calm
.

How to Speak Wichu
caught her eye. She opened the file. It contained lessons on both Youngspeak and Adultspeak. She decided to try Youngspeak.

“Welcome to Galactic-Talk!” an earnest young human male said. “You are about to embark upon a fascinating linguistic journey! Youngspeak Wichu is a changeable and malleable language. New words and phrases, including imports from human, Cocomon and Uctu, are picked up by the curious youngsters and spread in days throughout a colony. Over time, those parts of speech take on Wichu characteristics . . .”

There were few Wichus in the Cluster. If she was ever released, she would undoubtedy be forced to leave government. Perhaps she would take up teaching on a faraway edge of the Cluster. Providing that she was allowed to live. But being in the cell left her with hope. They had not killed her, only imprisoned her.

She was afraid of what the stress might do to her blood pressure. That was it! Everyone in the Cluster was implanted with a med-scan chip that kept track of their vital signs. She opened her robe and examined her solar plexus. No sign of surgery. It must still be in her body. She dragged in a breath and held it as long as she could, until she could feel her ears start to pop. That always brought her blood pressure up dangerously. She waited, then did it again and again. She was on the edge of passing out, but kept trying. No response. No one came looking for her. Her communicator was probably buzzing like a beehive, but the chip didn’t send her location to the central computer along with her symptoms. Curse the privacy laws!

Over the course of the weeks that followed, she became fairly proficient at Wichu, even garnering praise from her prerecorded teacher. She listened to music programs, viewed countless digitavids, acquired new interests, but she remained desperate for news of the world outside her steel cage. No information came through the console system, nor any kind of access to the Grid. DeKarn tried over and over again to activate the communications portion of the console, but it never worked. The opening screen obligingly opened and presented itself to accept a message, but it did not work. Sometimes she cried from the frustration.

Suddenly, in the middle of the night in her seventh week of captivity, the console turned itself on with a blare of sound that frightened her right out of the metal bunk. She approached the square of light with the greatest of caution.

“Prosperity in the greater Pthohannix sector increased by point-zero-three percent over the last sixday. The rise can be attributed to a gain in intrasector trading . . .”

News! DeKarn was thrilled. She kicked back the chair and plunged into the newfound bounty with delight. Opinion programs, business programs, documentaries, exposes and talk programs galore filled channels that had heretofore been inaccessible to her. A database, by no means as extensive as the kind to which she was accustomed, gave her an index of current Grid shows and clips dating back almost two months. No decision had been made by the council, which surprised her not at all. The contingent from Dree made a presentation describing their deliberations. It was as boring as a history recording. She read the subtext notes and went on to the next item.

To her despair, no one
had
noticed that she was missing. A single mention in the gossip lines stated only that she had left a recording for the council saying she had gone on sabbatical, and would be back once she had resolved “personal problems.” They had forged a message from her! When she got a hold of Sgarthad, she would make him sorry he had ever brought his pretty face to Boske!

DeKarn watched all that she could, never sleeping until she collapsed with weariness, and rising with alacrity to view and listen and read. Whatever glitch had prevented her from having this resource before had cleared. And a good thing, too. The Trade Union was becoming more open in its move to insinutate itself into Cluster culture. Sgarthad gave daily speeches, full of the nothing of goodfellow politics, just enough, she realized, to keep his face in the public view as much as he could.

“Trade will increase exponentially once the Cluster has formed a permanent bond with the Trade Union,” he said. “Be certain to notify your city-state and planetary representatives . . .”

Shockingly, the screen went blank. DeKarn pounded upon the console with both hands.

“Come back!” she cried. She struck all the keys and controls, trying to resurrect the report. “Don’t stop!” Nothing seemed to work. She pounded a fist on the keyboard.

“Welcome to Galactic-Talk! You are about to embark upon a fascinating . . . !

DeKarn muted the sound, just in time to hear footsteps. The hatch in the door opened. A bundle came through, and the one she had left, containing food wrappers, empty water bottles and soiled clothes, was extracted. She never saw the hand that made the delivery. The hatch slid closed, and footsteps receded into silence.

Just as abruptly as it had gone, the program returned. DeKarn flew to the console.

She remained glued to it as long as she possibly could. The Trade Union’s presence became less of a phenomenon to the opinion press, and more natural every day. Sgarthad’s face was everywhere on Boske. Several more councillors posted “sabbatical” letters. She was not surprised to see they came from Zembke, Marden, her friend Barba Linden, among others.

She began to receive feeds from other worlds, too, days or weeks behind, showing more Trade Union ships arriving, their crews greeted by parades and ceremonies of welcome. There was no news whatsoever from the Imperium. They were cut off. She was so frustrated that her hands shook. Sgarthad had succeeded in making the Castaway Cluster an outpost of the Trade Union, in all but name. That, too, could not be long in coming.

A brightly dressed, toothy announcer appeared on the screen and beamed at her.

“This show was brought to you by Nom-Num Snacks!” he exclaimed. “This foodstuff is Sgarthad-approved! Enjoy!”

DeKarn found that as unpalatable as the food bars on her tray. Oh, how she hoped Colm had made it off-world!

Chapter 23

Scot yawned and rubbed his eyes with one fist, the other hand resting on the control stick of his favorite skimmer. “That is three hours I would like to have refunded to my lifespan,” he said.

“How boring that was!” Erita said, peevishly. She reached over the back of the seat and into the chilled hamper of delectables we had brought with us for sustenance. “Wine, either of you?”

“Please,” I begged her. “After that excruciating hike I need a restorative. Every tissue is desiccated. I already had a hard morning, breakfasting with Mother.”

“Bad, was it, dear?” Erita asked.

“You talk about your inquisitions. If there is anything I did in the last few months that she doesn’t know by now, it is because I have utterly purged it from my memory.” And, speaking of purging, I flicked through the numerous pictures and videos I had taken in our tour, deleting nine of every ten from each of my cameras. I picked the unwanted images out of midair, tossing them away as the trash they were. Some were marvels of focus and composition, but the subject matter was simply too mundane to waste storage space on. I had only taken them as a compliment to our hostess, and now we were out of sight. I mused over the perfectly framed picture of a slate-roofed shop, then flicked it out of existence. “One has to admit that the only thing that set Broch apart from any other of a million small, antique villages in the Imperium is that it belongs to our Jil. Alas, but that makes it interesting only to her.”

“I know,” Scot said, smirking. “She has had her fun with it. Now that she’s shown it off to all of us, she can dispose of it and move on to a more worthy pursuit.”

We all laughed at that.

“What worthy pursuit?” Erita demanded, hoisting her glass merrily. “We have gone through the required naval service, our last commitment to the Imperium. There is nothing for us left to do but marry—not for at least three years, over my rotting corpse—perhaps breed, and die.”

“Ugh, unfit subject for conversation,” I protested.

“Corpse? Sorry, dear.”

“No! Marriage,” I replied. We laughed again.

“I apologize,” Erita said, patting my arm. “It’s not my intent to be distasteful.”

“Forgiven, dear cousin.”

Scot’s handsome face twisted in an enigmatic expression that I could not have solved in a month of restday puzzle solving. “Where can I drop you, Erita?” he asked, casually.

She looked at the skimmer’s paired chronometers, one set to Taino time and the other to local time, which as we watched shifted to match the first readout, meaning that we had reentered the home city time zone. “I have a fencing match arranged this afternoon, dears. It’s been set up for so long with Jacque Mirz—you know, the pro that won the last Tour de Force championship? I’d like an hour or so to limber up before we play.”

“You fortunate thing, you!” I admit to taking in an audible breath of envy. She must have offered Mirz a fortune. I had had one lesson with a previous year’s winner, but none since had been willing to face one of us. Not alone, anyhow. I blamed Xan, who, I think, had tried to seduce the next one. Erita smirked.

“I’ll let you know how it goes,” she said. Scot entered the directions she gave him. The skimmer picked up speed and altitude, putting Broch far behind us. We all sat back against the upholstery to enjoy the small feast assembled by the Kinago chefs and one another’s company.

We landed before the salle, a grand sports emporium designed for the ancient arts where we had all taken lessons—I with my now-damaged antique sword. Erita alit, vaulting out of the low car with grace. She leaned back in to kiss us each on the cheek.

“See you later, darlings,” she said.

“Fight well,” I called.

Scot waited until she had disappeared through the wrought steel doors, then kicked the skimmer into operation. We zoomed over the buildings, attaining empty azure sky with a speed that propelled me backwards into the padded seat. I was surprised. Scot did not usually put his passengers at risk.

“Are you well, old fellow?” I asked.

“I just couldn’t take any more spouting of self-satisfied chitchat,” he said.

“That’s nearly all we do spout,” I reminded him. He looked preoccupied, which concerned me. “What is troubling you?”

“Nothing.”

I knew when to let things be. Perhaps he was jealous of Jil’s idea, but three hours of walking in a place where we were clearly not welcome should have disabused him of any pleasure we might have taken in following her example. I sat back to enjoy the fine weather in silence.

We followed the usual route toward the grand cream and rust-colored spires of the Imperium palace that echoed the stone towers of the surrounding canyon walls. I breathed an appreciative sigh. No landscape so delighted my senses as that of my home. Scot glanced up, then ran his hands over the controls. The car veered several degrees off to the left.

“I thought we were going home,” I said.

“I told you I have something to show you,” he said. He shot me a worried glance. “You must not tell anyone else. Swear it?”

“You need to ask
me
to keep your confidence?” I struck my thorax with a balled fist. “We who were so nearly brothers that our mothers suffered their confinements side by side? I am crushed.”