I scan the area with my external cameras. There is no one else nearby."I trust you also understand that there is a significant probability that Melinda Cavanagh will not have survived the Zhirrzh attack."
Commander Cavanagh's jaw muscles tighten noticeably. The algorithms indicate dread."I know that, Max. But she and Aric got me out of this place. I have to try to help them."
I spend 0.02 second considering this comment, then spend another 0.04 second reviewing the previous conversation. At no time was Aric Cavanagh's name even mentioned."Where does Aric fit into this?"
Commander Cavanagh smiles, some of his dread masked behind forced humor."Oh, come on, Max. Where else do you think he and Dad have disappeared to?"
I spend an additional 0.05 second examining this statement. Commander Cavanagh's inference is obvious, but I can detect no logical pathway to such a conclusion."Are you suggesting they're also on Dorcas?"
"With Melinda in danger there? Where else would they go?"
"I presume the question is rhetorical. The conclusion is nevertheless extravagant conjecture."
Commander Cavanagh shakes his head, his expression indicating complete certainty."I know my family, Max. They got me out from under the Zhirrzh; now they've gone to get Melinda out. I'll bet you my pension they're there."
"I don't gamble, Commander."I spend 0.06 second reviewing Peacekeeper regulations. "Besides which, if you're convicted at a court-martial, you'll no longer have a pension."
Commander Cavanagh's expression puckers oddly."And they say parasentients don't have a sense of humor. Is Pemberton clear yet?"
Colonel Pemberton is 82.74 meters from the fueler."Yes."
"Then let's get moving."Commander Cavanagh takes a deep breath and settles himself inside his restraint straps. "My family's waiting for me."
17
Nearly two fullarcs had passed since her last visit when the Human named Doctor-Cavan-a finally returned again to the metal room. "You're back," Prr't-zevisti said, speaking the Human words carefully. "I was become worried."
"I was a little worried myself," Doctor-Cavan-a said, closing the door behind her.
For a few beats Prr't-zevisti studied her face. An alien face, its display of emotions dark to his understanding. Even so, there was something about it that disturbed him. "You were gone a long time," he said, trying hard to wring some meaning from that face. "Has something happen?"
"My commander thinks you are lying to me," Doctor-Cavan-a said. "He thinks you can talk from here to your commander."
Prr't-zevisti stared at her, the very bluntness of the accusation startling him into silence. "I do not lie to you," he protested. "Why does your commander think I do?"
"Your commander attacked a place they shouldn't have known about."
"Why shouldn't they have know about the place?" Prr't-zevisti asked. "Is it hid from the Elders?"
Doctor-Cavan-a turned her head back and forth to the side. "Sorry. I meant to say they shouldn't have known the (something) of the place."
Prr't-zevisti flicked his tongue in perplexity. "I don't know that word, the one before 'of the place.' "
"It means the purpose or possible purpose."
Significance: purpose or possible purpose.Prr't-zevisti tucked the word and its definition away in his ever-increasing Human vocabulary. "Why does your commander think Zhirrzh activeness at the place has significance? Commander Thrr-mezaz sees much, and is curious about all."
"That is possible," Doctor-Cavan-a said. "But my commander does not think we can take that risk."
"The risk is that the war continue," Prr't-zevisti snapped. "Does he not accept that truth?"
"He does not yet accept that it is truth," Doctor-Cavan-a said. "He sees that the truth might be different: that you are a spy."
For a handful of beats Prr't-zevisti gazed at her alien face. "What about you, Doctor-Cavan-a? What do you accept?"
Again Doctor-Cavan-a turned her head back and forth to the side. "I do not know," she said. "We will think more. It is possible we will yet accept that you do not lie."
Prr't-zevisti flicked his tongue, this time in exasperation. The Humans and Zhirrzh were poised for wholesale slaughter of each other; and here was their only way out, blocked by the paranoid fears of a minor Human warrior commander. What in the eighteen worlds did he think was up here that was worth spying on, anyway? "How can I prove my truth?" he demanded.
"I do not know any way," Doctor-Cavan-a said, her voice quiet. "I am sorry."
For a few beats the metal room was silent. The metal prison. "Then what do we do?" Prr't-zevisti asked at last. "How can we stop the war?"
"I do not know any way," Doctor-Cavan-a said again. "We must try to think of a way."
She turned around and pushed the door open just far enough for her to slip through. "You go?" Prr't-zevisti asked.
"I must go," Doctor-Cavan-a said. "My commander has ordered me to stay away from you until he decides."
"But-"
"I am sorry, Prr't-zevisti. Farewell for now."
She slipped out through the opening, swinging the door shut behind her. It closed with a muffled boom.
And Prr't-zevisti was once again alone.
"The fools," he murmured aloud. "The irresponsible fools."
The words echoed through his mind and faded into silence. So it was over. His own people had abandoned him here; and now the Humans themselves had rejected the truth.
Which made them doubly fools, because with that rejection they had resigned themselves to their own destruction. The Zhirrzh warriors would win this war, just as they always won. And it would serve the Humans right.
He flicked his tongue in disgust. It would serve them right... but he knew perfectly well that he couldn't just sit by and let that happen. Not if there was any way to stop it. He'd been a warrior once, a warrior of the proud and noble Dhaa'rr clan. True warriors made war only in self-defense.
Which meant he would just have to find a way to convince Doctor-Cavan-a and her Human commander that he was telling the truth.
And hope that until then neither the Humans nor the Zhirrzh did anything that would inflame the war so much that nothing he could do would stop it.
Bronski shook his head. "I don't know, Cavanagh. It seems to me that if it was this easy, someone at Command would have come up with it by now."
"There's a good chance someone has," Lord Cavanagh said, running his eye over the numbers one more time. With access to Bronski's ship computer he'd finally been able to nail down the idea that had been floating nebulously around his mind during all those days stuck on Granparra. "On the other hand, maybe not. Peacekeeper Command may be concentrating on high heat-capacity materials. If they're even experimenting with ablative coatings at all."
"Oh, you can bet they're concentrating on pretty much everything," Bronski assured him, flipping through the graphs on the display again and stopping at a sharply rising hyperbolic curve. "These philo-plant leaves really behave like this?"
"Trust me," Cavanagh assured him. "The R-and-D group that first tested them thought they'd found the ideal circuit-board material: tough yet flexible, and with a better semimagnetic profile than even sloanmetal."
"Not to mention free," Bronski murmured.
"Right," Cavanagh said. "The Palisades Alps were practically covered with the things. Anyway, the team thought they had their bonuses already in the bank on this one. They had fifteen hundred boards made up and flown to Avon for further tests."
He smiled tightly at the memory. "And then someone tried laser-welding components onto them; and bingo: vapor defocusing."
"Yeah," Bronski muttered. "You realize, of course, that defocusing a welding laser is a far cry from doing the same to those big war lasers the Zhirrzh use."
"Of course," Cavanagh said. "These self-cohesion curves might easily break down under that sort of flash-heating. But I think it's at least an avenue worth exploring further."
"I suppose," Bronski agreed grudgingly. "Sure, get
it written up and we'll send it out on the next skitter headed for Earth or Edo."
"Brigadier?" Kolchin's voice called. "Nearly time to mesh in."
"Thanks," Bronski said, brushing past Cavanagh and heading up into the control room.
Cavanagh filed away his calculations and followed, arriving just as Bronski was replacing Kolchin in the pilot's seat. "I hope we'll be exercising a certain amount of discretion," he commented, sitting down behind the brigadier.
"I wasn't planning on charging in with shredders blazing and making wholesale arrests, if that's what you mean," Bronski said. "Don't worry, I know how to sneak into places."
"The ship has a false ID signal?" Kolchin asked.
"You'd be amazed at the assortment of ID signals it has," Bronski replied. "Here we go."
From somewhere beneath them came the rattle of multiple relays snapping open. The blackness outside the canopy became a brief illusion of a tunnel; and then the stars flowed back into their proper places surrounding the planet ahead. "Looks like we're about a half hour out," Bronski said, giving his displays a quick survey.
"What do we do about passports?" Cavanagh asked. "Or were you planning on leaving us on the ship while you snoop around?"
"Tempting thought," Bronski said. "But knowing you, you'd probably steal it. Here."
He tossed a pair of dark-green passports-Arcadian issue?-back over his headrest. Cavanagh caught them and opened them up.
They were Arcadian, all right, made out to a father-and-son merchandising team of Baccar and Gil Fortunori. Cavanagh's and Kolchin's photos and thumbprints were already imprinted beneath the tamper proofing. "Impressive," Cavanagh said, handing Kolchin his passport. "Who do you get to be?"
"Jan-michael Marchand," Bronski said. "Your pilot and cultural facilitator." He threw Cavanagh a look over the back of his chair. "Which means I do all the talking while you two stand in the background grinning like harmless innocents. Got it?"
"I think we can handle the roles," Cavanagh said, sliding his new passport into his jacket.
"Good," Bronski said, turning back to his board. "I tucked some background info on your characters into the backs of the passports. I suggest you get to know yourselves."
The Prime gazed down into the carrier box that Speaker Cvv-panav had just dropped unceremoniously onto his desk. "All right," he said, looking up again. "It's afsss organ. So?"
"It's not just anyfsss organ, Overclan Prime," the Speaker for Dhaa'rr bit out. "It's Prr't-zevisti'sfsss organ. You remember Prr't-zevisti?"
"It would be hard to forget him," the Prime said dryly. "Certainly not after all the Dhaa'rr petitions I've received calling for Commander Thrr-mezaz's removal. I was under the impression that the Dhaa'rr clan was preparing final rites for him."
Cvv-panav smiled. "You hide your disappointment well, Overclan Prime. I'm sure you would have preferred to have the evidence destroyed in the ceremony of fire. Tell me, did you and Thrr-gilag make the arrangements together to take an illegal cutting of thisfsss? Or was your role merely to assist in burying the crime after its commission?"
With the ease of many cyclics of practice, the Prime kept his gaze steady and his tail spinning serenely. "That's a very serious allegation, Speaker Cvv-panav. Have you any proof that Searcher Thrr-gilag was involved in any illegal acts?"
"I have proof that some of the semiliquid material from the interior of thisfsss was removed by needle," Cvv-panav said. "I can also prove that Thrr-gilag visited the Prr-family shrine shortly before the tampering was discovered."
"I see," the Prime nodded. "And for how many cyclics before Thrr-gilag's visit had thefsss been resting unexamined in its niche?"
"That's irrelevant."
"Is it?" the Prime countered. "Seems to me it's the first question a jurist would ask."
For a long beat Cvv-panav gazed at him, a mixture of speculation and irritation on his face. "This is the key, Overclan Prime," he said softly. "The key to bringing you down."
"Undoubtedly," the Prime said with a sigh. "And I wish you good luck when you've taken over the burden of running the eighteen worlds. For right now, though, that's still my job. If you'll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do."
Cvv-panav flicked his tongue in contempt. "Mock me while you can, Overclan Prime. But I will see you toppled. And perhaps the entire Overclan system along with you." With a haughty, sweeping gesture straight out of Dhaa'rr history records he turned and stalked away-
"Speaker Cvv-panav?" the Prime called.
The other paused at the door. "Yes?"
The Prime flicked his tongue at his desk. "You forgot Prr't-zevisti'sfsss"
Cvv-panav smiled tightly. "You may keep it for now, Overclan Prime. Study it; contemplate it. Therein lies the embryo of your destruction." Turning again, he pulled the door open and stepped through, closing it with a resounding thud behind him.
"I didn't think Zhirrzh talked like that anymore," the wry voice of the Fifteenth said from behind the Prime's shoulder.
"Say what you like about him, Speaker Cvv-panav does have a flair for the dramatic," the Fourth agreed, appearing just in front of the door. "Reminds me of the Speaker for Dhaa'rr when I was Overclan Prime."
"I imagine that's exactly the style he's trying for," the Prime said, carefully closing the box lid over Prr't-zevisti'sfsss. "How many Elders are there outside?"
"The Eighteenth is watching," the Fourth said. "I believe I missed your explanation as to why you think the Speaker will have Elders waiting for him."
"They're witnesses," the Prime said. "Cvv-panav will want to have someone who can attest that he brought Prr't-zevisti'sfsss organ into my private chambers but didn't have it when he left five hunbeats later, thereby proving he left it with me."
"To what end?"
"To the end of blaming the Prime for any damage that might occur to it, of course," the Eighteenth said, appearing in front of the desk. "You were right, Overclan Prime: there were five of them, waiting just outside the shadow region. At the Speaker's request they performed a rather complete examination of his person and clothing."
"Incredible," the Fourth murmured. "Does he really think you foolish or desperate enough to destroy evidence left in your possession?"
"I'm sure he doesn't," the Prime said grimly, opening the secure drawer of his desk and placing the box inside. "It's more likely he plans to discreetly steal thefsss back and destroy it himself."
"That would certainly fit the Speaker's slash-tongue style," the Fifteenth agreed. "As well as providing a certain symmetry to the way we trapped and blackmailed him over the theft of Thrr-pifix-a'sfsss."
"Indeed." The Eighteenth nodded agreement. "You'll want a triple guard on your chambers from now on."
The Prime flicked his tongue in irritation. There was a war for survival under way, with Zhirrzh beachheads under constant threat and an assault fleet poised for a make-or-break attack on the Human-Conqueror surveillance installations on Phormbi. He didn't have time for this political nonsense. "A guard won't be enough," he told the Elders. "Cvv-panav's got something else under his tongue. Do we still have a secure pathway to Dorcas?"
"Reasonably secure," the Eighteenth said.
"Open it," the Prime instructed. "I want to speak to Searcher Thrr-gilag."
"From here in your chambers?" the Eighteenth asked, frowning. "That's not recommended."
"We don't have a choice," the Prime said. "In this case-"
"The Eighteenth is right," the Fifteenth put in. "This chamber is supposed to be inaccessible to all Elders. That deception must be maintained."
"I'm aware of that, thank you," the Prime said. "However, in this case-"
"The secret nearly escaped once before," the Fifteenth continued as if he hadn't spoken. "During the term of the Twenty-second."
"I remember," the Fourth rumbled. "The Twenty-second opened a pathway from here, and an Elder eavesdropping at the other end noted the exact time and checked on when he was supposed to have been in his chambe
rs-"
"I'm aware of the risks," the Prime said sharply, cutting through the growing discussion. "But in this case it's a chance we have to take. Cvv-panav has allies all over Unity City, physicals and Elders both. I can't afford the risk that one of them might overhear this conversation. Now open the pathway."
"As you wish," the Eighteenth growled, still not sounding convinced.
He flicked away. The beats ticked by; and then he was back.
"The pathway is open, Overclan Prime," he said. "You may begin."