“Ah … tactical channels are down, sir. The Ousters are jamming on wideband with—”
“Lieutenant,” snapped Theo in a tone the Consul had never heard his young friend use, “you’ve visually identified me and scanned my implant ID. Now either admit us to the field or shoot us.”
The armored Marine glanced back toward the tree line as if considering whether to order his men to open fire. “The dropships are all gone, sir. Nothing else is coming down.”
Theo nodded. Blood had dried and caked on his forehead, but now a fresh trickle started from his scalp line. “The impounded ship is still in Blast Pit Nine, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mueller, snapping to attention at last. “But it’s a civilian ship and could never make space with all the Ouster—”
Theo waved the officer into silence and gestured for Arundez to drive toward the perimeter. The Consul glanced ahead toward the deadlines, interdiction fields, containment fields, and probable pressure mines that the skimmer would encounter in ten seconds. He saw the Marine lieutenant wave, and an opening irised in the violet and blue energy fields ahead. No one fired. In half a minute they were crossing the hardpan of the spaceport itself. Something large was burning on the northern perimeter. To their left, a huddle of FORCE trailers and command modules had been slagged to a pool of bubbling plastic.
There had been people in there, thought the Consul and once again had to fight to keep his gorge from rising.
Blast Pit Seven had been destroyed, its circular walls of reinforced ten-centimeter carbon-carbon blown outward and apart as if they had been made of cardboard. Blast Pit Eight was burning with that white-hot incandescence which suggested plasma grenades. Blast Pit Nine was intact, with the bow of the Consul’s ship just visible above the pit wall through the shimmer of a class-three containment field.
“The interdiction’s been lifted?” said the Consul.
Theo lay back on the cushioned bench. His voice was thick. “Yeah. Gladstone authorized the dropping of the restraining dome field. That’s just the usual protective field. You can override it with a command.”
Arundez dropped the skimmer to tarmac just as warning lights went red and synthesized voices began describing malfunctions. They helped Theo out and paused near the rear of the small skimmer where a line of fléchettes had stitched a ragged row through the engine cowling and repellor housing. Part of the hood had melted from overload.
Melio Arundez patted the machine once, and both men turned to help Theo through the blast pit door and up the docking umbilical.
“My God,” said Dr. Melio Arundez, “this is beautiful. I’ve never been in a private interstellar spacecraft before.”
“There are only a few dozen in existence,” said the Consul, setting the osmosis mask in place over Theo’s mouth and nose and gently lowering the redhead into the surgery’s tank of emergency care nutrient. “Small as it is, this ship cost several hundred million marks. It’s not cost-effective for corporations and Outback planetary governments to use their military craft on those rare occasions when they need to travel between the stars.” The Consul sealed the tank and conversed briefly with the diagnostics program. “He’ll be all right,” he said at last to Arundez, and returned to the holopit.
Melio Arundez stood near the antique Steinway, gently running his hand over the glossy finish of the grand piano. He glanced out through the transparent section of hull above the stowed balcony platform and said, “I see fires near the main gate. We’d better get out of here. ”
“That’s what I’m doing,” said the Consul, gesturing Arundez toward the circular couch lining the projection pit.
The archaeologist dropped into the deep cushions and glanced around. “Aren’t there … ah … controls?”
The Consul smiled. “A bridge? Cockpit instruments? Maybe a wheel I can steer with? Uh-uh. Ship?”
“Yes,” came the soft voice from nowhere.
“Are we cleared for takeoff?”
“Yes.”
“Is that containment field removed?”
“It was our field. I’ve withdrawn it.”
“OK, let’s get the hell out of here. I don’t have to tell you that we’re in the middle of a shooting war, do I?”
“No. I’ve been monitoring all developments. The last FORCE spacecraft are in the process of leaving the Hyperion system. These Marines are stranded and—”
“Save the tactical analyses for later, Ship,” said the Consul. “Set our course for the Valley of the Time Tombs and get us out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” said the ship. “I was just pointing out that the forces defending this spaceport have little chance of holding out for more than an hour or so.”
“Noted,” said the Consul. “Now take off.”
“I’m required to share this fatline transmission first. The squirt arrived at 1622:38:14, Web standard, this afternoon.”
“Whoa! Hold it!” cried the Consul, freezing the holo transmission in midconstruction. Half of Meina Gladstone’s face hung above them. “You’re required to show this before we leave? Whose commands do you respond to, Ship?”
“CEO Gladstone’s, sir. The Chief Executive empowered a priority override on all ship’s functions five days ago. This fatline squirt is the last requirment before—”
“So that’s why you didn’t respond to my remote commands,” murmured the Consul.
“Yes,” said the ship in conversational tones. “I was about to say that the showing of this transmission is the last requirement prior to returning command to you.”
“And then you’ll do what I say?
“Yes.”
“Take us where I’ll tell you to?”
“Yes.”
“No hidden overrides?”
“None that I know of.”
“Play the squirt,” said the Consul.
The Lincolnesque countenance of CEO Meina Gladstone floated in the center of the projection pit with the telltale twitches and breakups endemic to fatline transmissions. “I am pleased that you survived the visit to the Time Tombs,” she said to the Consul. “By now you must know that I am asking you to negotiate with the Ousters before you return to the valley.”
The Consul folded his arms and glared at Gladstone’s image. Outside, the sun was setting. He had only a few minutes before Rachel Weintraub reached her birth hour and minute and simply ceased to exist.
“I understand your urgency to return and help your friends,” said Gladstone, “but you can do nothing to help the child at this moment … experts in the Web assure us that neither cryogenic sleep or fugue could arrest the Merlin’s sickness. Sol knows this.”
Across the projection pit, Dr. Arundez said, “It’s true. They experimented for years. She would die in fugue state.”
“… you can help the billions of people in the Web whom you believe you have betrayed,” Gladstone was saying.
The Consul leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. His heart was pounding very loudly in his ears.
“I knew that you would open the Time Tombs,” Gladstone said, her sad brown eyes seeming to stare directly at the Consul. “Core predictors showed that your loyalty to Maui-Covenant … and to the memory of your grandparents’ rebellion … would override all other factors. It was time for the Tombs to be opened, and only you could activate the Ouster device before the Ousters themselves decided to.”
“I’ve heard enough of this,” said the Consul and stood, turning his back on the projection. “Cancel message,” he said to the ship, knowing that it would not obey.
Melio Arundez walked through the projection and gripped the Consul’s arm tightly. “Hear her out. Please.”
The Consul shook his head but stayed in the pit, arms folded.
“Now the worst has happened,” said Gladstone. “The Ousters are invading the Web. Heaven’s Gate is being destroyed. God’s Grove has less than an hour before the invasion sweeps over it. It is imperative that you meet with th
e Ousters in Hyperion system and negotiate … use your diplomatic skills to open a dialogue with them. The Ousters will not respond to our fatline or radio messages, but we have alerted them to your coming. I think they will still trust you.”
The Consul moaned and walked over to the piano, pounding his fist against its lid.
“We have minutes, not hours, Consul,” said Gladstone. “I will ask you to go first to the Ousters in Hyperion system and then attempt to return to the Valley of the Time Tombs if you must. You know better than I the results of warfare. Millions will die needlessly if we cannot find a secure channel through which to communicate with the Ousters.
“It is your decision, but please consider the ramifications if we fail in this last attempt to find the truth and preserve the peace. I will contact you via fatline once you have reached the Ouster Swarm.”
Gladstone’s image shimmered, fogged, and faded.
“Response?” asked the ship.
“No.” The Consul paced back and forth between the Steinway and the projection pit.
“No spacecraft or skimmer has landed near the valley with its crew intact for almost two centuries, ” said Melio Arundez. “She must know how small the odds are that you can go there … survive the Shrike … and then rendezvous with the Ousters.”
“Things are different now,” said the Consul without turning to face the other man. “The time tides have gone berserk. The Shrike goes where it pleases. Perhaps whatever phenomenon prevented manned landings before is no longer operative.”
“And perhaps your ship will land perfectly without us,” said Arundez. “Just as so many others have.”
“Goddammit,” shouted the Consul, wheeling, “you knew the risks when you said that you wanted to join me!”
The archaeologist nodded calmly. “I’m not talking about the risk to myself, sir. I’m willing to accept any risk if it means I might help Rachel … or even see her again. It’s your life that may hold the key to humankind’s survival.”
The Consul shook his fists in the air and paced back and forth like some caged predator. “That’s not fair! I was Gladstone’s pawn before. She used me … cynically … deliberately. I killed four Ousters, Arundez. Shot them because I had to activate their goddamned device to open the Tombs. Do you think they’ll welcome me back with open arms?”
The archaeologist’s dark eyes looked up at the Consul without blinking. “Gladstone believes that they will parley with you.”
“Who knows what they’ll do? Or what Gladstone believes for that matter. The Hegemony and its relationship with the Ousters aren’t my worry now. I sincerely wish a plague on both their houses.”
“To the extent that humanity suffers?”
“I don’t know humanity,” said the Consul in an exhausted monotone. “I do know Sol Weintraub. And Rachel. And an injured woman named Brawne Lamia. And Father Paul Duré. And Fedmahn Kassad. And—”
The ship’s soft voice enveloped them. “This spaceport’s north perimeter has been breached. I am initiating final launch procedures. Please take your seats.”
The Consul half-stumbled to the holopit even as the internal containment field pressed down on him as its vertical differential increased dramatically, sealing every object in its place and protecting the travelers far more securely than any straps or seat restraints could. Once in free-fall, the field would lessen but still serve in the stead of planetary gravity.
The air above the holopit misted and showed the blast pit and spaceport receding quickly below, the horizon and distant hills jerking and tilting as the ship threw itself through eighty-g evasive maneuvers. A few energy weapons winked in their direction, but data columns showed the external fields handling the neglible effects. Then the horizon receded and curved as the lapis lazuli sky darkened to the black of space.
“Destination?” queried the ship.
The Consul closed his eyes. Behind them, a chime sounded to announce that Theo Lane could be moved from the recovery tank to the main surgery.
“How long until we could rendezvous with elements of the Ouster invasion force?” asked the Consul.
“Thirty minutes to the Swarm proper,” answered the ship.
“And how long until we come in range of their attack ships’ weapons?”
“They are tracking us now.”
Melio Arundez’s expression was calm but his fingers were white on the back of the holopit couch.
“All right,” said the Consul. “Make for the Swarm. Avoid Hegemony ships. Announce on all frequencies that we are an unarmed diplomatic ship requesting parley.”
“That message was authorized and set in by CEO Gladstone, sir. It is now being broadcast on fatline and all comm frequencies.”
“Carry on,” said the Consul. He pointed to Arundez’s comlog. “Do you see the time?”
“Yes. Six minutes until the precise instant of Rachel’s birth.”
The Consul settled back, his eyes closed again. “You’ve come a long way for nothing, Dr. Arundez.”
The archaeologist stood, swayed a second before finding his legs in the simulated gravity, and carefully walked to the piano. He stood there a moment and looked out through the balcony window at the black sky and the still-brilliant limb of the receding planet. “Perhaps not,” he said. “Perhaps not.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Today we entered the swampy wasteland which I recognize as the Campagna, and to celebrate I have another coughing fit, terminated by vomiting more blood. Much more. Leigh Hunt is beside himself with concern and frustration and, after holding my shoulders during the spasm and helping to clean my clothes with rags moistened in a nearby stream, he asks, “What can I do?”
“Collect flowers from the fields,” I gasp. “That’s what Joseph Severn did.”
He turns away angrily, not realizing that even in my feverish, exhausted state, I was merely telling the truth.
The little cart and tired horse pass through the Campagna with more painful bumping and rattling than before. Late in the afternoon, we pass some skeletons of horses along the way, then the ruins of an old inn, then a more massive ruin of a viaduct overgrown with moss, and finally posts to which it appears that white sticks have been nailed.
“What on earth is that?” asks Hunt, not realizing the irony of the ancient phrase.
“The bones of bandits,” I answer truthfully.
Hunt looks at me as if my mind has succumbed to the sickness. Perhaps it has.
Later we climb out of the swamplands of the Campagna and get a glimpse of a flash of red moving far out among the fields.
“What is that?” demands Hunt eagerly, hopefully. I know that he expects to see people any moment and a functioning farcaster portal a moment after that.
“A cardinal,” I say, again telling the truth. “Shooting birds.”
Hunt accesses his poor, crippled comlog. “A cardinal is a bird,” he says.
I nod, look to the west, but the red is gone. “Also a cleric,” I say. “And we are approaching Rome, you know.”
Hunt frowns at me and attempts for the thousandth time to raise someone on the comm bands of his comlog. The afternoon is silent except for the rhythmic creak of the vettura’s wooden wheels and the trill of some distant songbird. A cardinal, perhaps?
We enter Rome as the first flush of evening touches the clouds. The little cart rocks and rumbles through the Lateran Gate, and almost immediately we are confronted with the sight of the Colosseum, overgrown with ivy and obviously the home of thousands of pigeons, but immensely more impressive than holos of the ruin, set now as it was, not within the grubby confines of a postwar city ringed with giant arcologies, but contrasted against clusters of small huts and open fields where the city ends and countryside begins. I can see Rome proper in the distance … a scattering of rooftops and smaller ruins on its fabled Seven Hills, but here the Colosseum rules.
“Jesus,” whispers Leigh Hunt. “What is it?”
“The bones of bandits,” I say slowly, fearful of sta
rting the terrible coughing once again.
We move on, clopping through the deserted streets of nineteenth-century Old Earth Rome as the evening settles thick and heavy around us and the light fails and pigeons wheel above the domes and rooftops of the Eternal City.
“Where is everyone?” whispers Hunt. He sounds frightened.
“Not here because they are not needed,” I say. My voice sounds sharp edged in the canyon dusk of the city streets. The wheels turn on cobblestones now, hardly more smooth than the random stones of the highway we just escaped.
“Is this some stimsim?” he asks.
“Stop the cart,” I say, and the obedient horse comes to a halt. I point out a heavy stone by the gutter. “Kick that,” I say to Hunt.
He frowns at me but steps down, approaches the stone, and gives it a hearty kick. More pigeons erupt skyward from bell towers and ivy, panicked by the echoes of his cursing.
“Like Dr. Johnson, you’ve demonstrated the reality of things,” I say. “This is no stimsim or dream. Or rather, no more one than the rest of our lives have been.”
“Why did they bring us here?” demands the CEO’s aide, glancing skyward as if the gods themselves were listening just beyond the fading pastel barriers of the evening clouds. “What do they want?”
They want me to die, I think, realizing the truth of it with the impact of a fist in my chest. I breathe slowly and shallowly to avoid a fit of coughing even as I feel the phlegm boil and bubble in my throat. They want me to die and they want you to watch.
The mare resumes its long haul, turning right on the next narrow street, then right again down a wider avenue filled with shadows and the echoes of our passing, and then stopping at the head of an immense flight of stairs.
“We’re here,” I say and struggle to exit the cart. My legs are cramped, my chest aches, and my ass is sore. In my mind runs the beginning of a satirical ode to the joys of traveling.
Hunt steps out as stiffly as I had and stands at the head of the giant, bifurcated staircase, folding his arms and glaring at them as if they are a trap or illusion. “Where, exactly, is here, Severn?”