Under the Eye of God (11 page)

“A toast, perhaps?” d'Vashti invited the Lady.

“Give me something to toast.” she demanded icily.

Here, d'Vashti made a mistake. He should have let the matter drop. Instead, he allowed the merest fragment of his ambition to show; he said, “The service of Lord Khallanin's people, perhaps? Surely their performance has brought you satisfaction and pleasure?”

“The performance of your Lord's servants . . . ?” The Lady pretended to consider the thought. “The servants' performance always reflects that of the master, Kernel d'Vashti. Don't you agree?” The faintest edge of metal appeared in her voice.

d'Vashti nodded. “As always, your words ring true.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “I would apply the word ‘adequate' here, as an appropriate descriptor of the performance of your master and his servants.”

d'Vashti realized his error too late. He had given the Lady an opportunity to rebuke himself and his Lord—and in front of a wasp! Why not just announce it to the entire world? He bridled at her delicately phrased assault, but he held his silence and waited stiffly for her to continue.

The Lady Zillabar placed her wine glass on a table, the wine still untouched. “Have you located the TimeBinder of Thoska-Roole yet?” she demanded of Lord Khallanin.

The Prefect sipped from his goblet, appearing unconcerned. He had ignored the Lady's insult. What else could he do? He met her angry glare with equanimity. “The work proceeds. The task carries many complications.”

“Your answer lacks certainty,” the Lady replied.

d'Vashti put aside his own wine, untasted. He spoke up aggressively. “We have several historians in custody. Before many more days pass, we shall have the TimeBinder as well.”

“Oh?” The Lady raised her eyebrow skeptically. “And from where does all this confidence arise?” She exchanged a laughing glance with Lord Drydel. Drydel's eyes flashed with merriment as well as a suggestion of unashamed lust. But targeted at whom? Did Zillabar see it too? d'Vashti wondered again at Drydel's occupations.

Annoyed, he pushed the thought aside and turned his attention back to the Lady's question. “We have implemented an absolute security net. I believe you encountered it on your final approach. The forces of our most powerful ally—” Here, d'Vashti nodded gracefully to the Dragon Lord. The Lord of All Things Black and Beautiful merely grunted in response. d'Vashti continued, “—have done an excellent job of establishing and maintaining a global containment. Nothing goes up or down that they do not control it. In addition, we have authorized a generous bounty. I doubt that you shall have to wait much longer, my Lady.”

“I should not have to wait at all,” she said, furiously standing. d'Vashti expected her to confront him, but instead she advanced directly on the highest law of the land, the Prefect of Thoska-Roole. “I expected that
you
would have captured the eye-damned TimeBinder by now, Lord Khallanin. You've had more than long enough. How do you waste my resources?”

Suddenly, d'Vashti understood the elegance of the Lady's mind. She knew that d'Vashti's maneuvers had brought them all to this point, but instead of attacking d'Vashti directly, she would destroy his protector and leave the real architect naked, humiliated, and powerless to do more. d'Vashti realized with horror that if she dared to assault the Prefect directly, then she must have progressed much farther in her own ambitions than he had believed possible. d'Vashti had privately regarded the Lady's goals as unrealistic and unreachable. Now he wondered just what else she had accomplished on Burihatin.

Lord Khallanin refused to accept the Lady's anger as his own. He spoke calmly and with quiet resolve. “The wilderness of Thoska-Roole covers most of the planet. We could have scoured every square meter, but I felt a more intelligent use of our resources would please you more.”

“You may
still
have to scour every square meter. We cannot proceed without the TimeBinder's headband. You have wasted valuable days.”

Inwardly, d'Vashti stiffened. Her impoliteness had a distinct taste of menace; but Lord Khallanin continued to ignore her bad manners. “The days have not ended yet,” he said with cold strength. The Lady sniffed distastefully.

d'Vashti knew he couldn't let this argument cascade. He had to do something to deflect the Lady's wrath. He stepped forward briskly and offered an additional thought. “If we began the kind of search and seizure operations that you suggest, my Lady, we might trigger a renewed rebellion on this world. May I remind you that we have only too recently pacified this population.”

“We—?” The Lady Zillabar regarded this last remark with deliberate contempt. “I don't remember seeing your Marauder squadrons engaged in the battle to secure the peace on Thoska-Roole. Indeed, if I remember correctly, during the days of the hardest fighting, you had not yet even announced your intention to base your squadrons here. If I remember correctly,
we
pacified this world, not you. Please tell me, Kernel d'Vashti; do I misremember?”

d'Vashti smiled generously. “My Lady, I thought you had a larger vision than just a single world. When I spoke the word
‘we'
, I intended it to include all of the members of the Palethetic aristocracy, regardless of origin—or species.” He said this last with a nod toward the Dragon-Lord. “
We
have greater goals in mind than the simple ownership of real estate. But my real point remains. The population of this world still carries strong resentment against us. If we push them to hard, they will not bother with the distinctions of class; they will make
us all
targets.

“We would win again, of course, but none of us eagerly seeks that task, do we? It would require a great expenditure of resources and none of us would gain anything worthwhile in return. Indeed, even after our victory, we would still have less than before—and a repair bill large enough to stifle economic growth for a decade. This planet hasn't yet recovered from the last war. Your people still carry the scars. Or do you forget how many of your own died before you and your Moktar allies finally achieved a tenuous measure of control here? With all due respect, you
need
the authority that I and my squadrons have brought with us.”

“I remember the events of the rebellion well. Better than you, d'Vashti. You don't need to remind me.” The Lady focused her chilly gaze on him. “Every war carries a price. We ourselves—the Phaestor—represent the price paid in the great war against the Predators.”

“I appreciate the history lesson, my Lady,” d'Vashti replied, adding a florid, expansive gesture that expressed courtesy, respect, and sarcasm, all at the same time. He met her eyes directly. “But if I and my commanders must go to war on your behalf—or
anyone's
—we want to fight in a war of advancement, not retreat.”

The arrogance of d'Vashti's presumption startled Zillabar. How dare he rebuke her! Inwardly, she seethed. She had not expected her opponent to have such a stiff backbone. Perhaps, in her absence, he had gained more influence among the Phaestor lords than she had previously considered possible. She would have to find out who d'Vashti had invited to his bed recently. Outwardly, she remained unmoved. “Do you have anything else to say?” she asked dispassionately.

d'Vashti looked to his mentor for support. Khallanin looked back at him, studying him oddly—as if he had never seen him before. d'Vashti realized that Khallanin had no intention of lending him support in this discussion. He would let d'Vashti stand alone to bear the hellfire of the Lady's wrath. d'Vashti put aside his surprise and bowed respectfully to the Lady Zillabar. He knew how to dance with the Dragon. He would dance again now.

“I do not speak for my Lord, only for myself,” d'Vashti began, “but I know that all of us entrusted with the responsibilities of your service have pursued our tasks as aggressively as you have come to expect. We have done all that you have asked of us and more. We continue to scour this planet, even as you and I speak. We ask for no gratitude from you, nor do we expect it. Our service alone carries its own rewards.”

“Yes,” the Lady agreed. “That much, you have correct. I will give you no thanks. And I will wait to see the quality of your service.” She stressed the word
your
. “And now, you may go.” She dismissed him with a curt wave. “I will speak alone with your master.”

d'Vashti bowed. Zillabar ignored his bow of compliance. She had already turned her attention back to Lord Drydel. They bent their heads together and laughed softly over some private joke while Lord Khallanin waited stiff and silent.

d'Vashti straightened quickly and exited, betraying no sign of anger. He'd miscalculated, but so had the Lady. She had clearly recognized the threat that he presented to her ambitions. She'd seen through his maneuvers—and neutralized them. He'd failed here, how badly he didn't know. Perhaps Lord Khallanin might even have to invite him to sacrifice his life before the Lady. He doubted that matters would go that far, but he also knew now that Khallanin would offer him little protection.

But on the other hand . . . he'd also learned something equally important. The Lady's failure on Burihatin told him that she too had weaknesses. He intended to find them and exploit them. He would consult his spies as soon as he considered it safe to make contact.

d'Vashti hurried away, his mind racing furiously. His footsteps echoed up and down the corridor, ringing like metallic taunts.

The avalanche of time sweeps everything before it. Every individual instant hurtles into oblivion, drowning out the obliteration of the instant immediately preceding it, and then it too disappears under the onslaught of the next and the next and the next. When the avalanche has shuddered past for a long enough time, the perception of the past evolves. Distant events grow beyond mere history and take on the weight of legend.

For instance:

Many thousands of years ago, humans had spread across the great Milky Way galaxy. The bold diaspora, this tidal wave of sentience, rippled outward from the spiral arm, discovering, exploring, colonizing, and settling wherever life could make a stand. Human plows broke the ground under scores of new suns. Human children tumbled and laughed in alien skies.

The expanding sphere of humanity enveloped hundreds, then thousands, and finally countless numbers of new worlds. Necessity gave birth to grand technologies. A golden age of freedom had begun. Humanity grew and rejoiced in its growth.

And then, according to legend, the first
predator
arrived, floating silent and undetected out of the deadly night.

The first world died in puzzlement, without its inhabitants ever understanding what mysterious force had enveloped them. Comprehension did come easily. The hungry predators represented an order of
life
that lay beyond the limited comprehension view of common men and women.

Many years later, a second world died while still puzzling over the death of the first. The colonists on the third world had more time and much more warning, but little more understanding. As the decades slid away, a fourth and a fifth world also died. By now, a line of death stretched like a dagger aimed at the heart of human worlds. A seventh world also died, but in the process of extinguishment, gave up the identity of its killer.

The mysterious predator showed up on no displays; it didn't have enough mass to register. Instead, it drifted as a vast amorphous veil of spider silk, stretching across an area larger than the average star system. Those who finally discovered and studied the thing found it difficult to conceive of it as alive; not life as ever previously imagined. Nevertheless, it functioned like something alive. It searched, it fed, it reproduced—and perhaps maybe, it could also die.

No one knew.

Mindless and hungry, the predator seeks out the brightest sources of electromagnetic radiation in the sky, the kind emitted by technologies common to inhabited worlds. The predator moves through space like a cloud. It floats upon the cosmic winds, the ebb and flow of light and radiation in space. The pressure of photons across its vast, and nearly massless, surface gives it the motility it needs to soar from world to world. It steers itself by furling and unfurling itself like a sail, tilting its plane to catch the maximum possible push in the direction it wants to go. When a predator finds a world with a bright radio spectrum, it begins to wind itself around and around the planet in an ever-tightening shroud.

The extinguishment of a world lasts for many days, weeks, even months—as the sky becomes darker, the air grows thicker, and the filmy mass of the predator grows in monstrous accretions across deserts, lakes, mountains, forests, seas, snowcaps, volcanoes, and cities. When the predator pulls its entire mass into a single planet-sized shroud, it becomes a crushing burden—an envelope of desolation, gray and all-consuming. The predator devours energy. It feeds on heat.
²³

When the predator has fed enough, when it has satiated itself, consuming all the warmth it can from the victim world, it begins to expand, unwinding slowly, allowing its billions of separate layers to rise ever higher, pushing the topmost threads of the shroud high into space where they begin to slowly unravel. The predator pushes itself up as far as it can go, all the time fraying and unwinding and unfurling at its edges, and finally as it has extended itself in a vast silky corona out beyond the gravity well, it begins to pull the rest of its mass up and off the now dead world, strand by strand by strand. It leaves behind a bleak and blackened sphere. No life remains anywhere on the planet. And now, as the predator unwinds to its fullest dimension, stretching itself out again for its next long leap into darkness, it has grown substantially larger, spreading itself across an area of space many times greater than before.