Gundhalinu looked at him, surprised by his vehemence. “It’s all right,” he murmured, trying to find the right words to make Kullervo ease off. “It’s government policy. They always provide the pilot and two troopers for security.”
“We’ve already got a pilot,” Kullervo snapped, nodding at Niburu. “And we have all the assistance we need. This is a risk-filled project. We don’t need bumbling total strangers getting in the way. You said yourself that the more people we have with us, the more dangerous the Lake is.”
“It’s a regulation,” the agent said flatly.
Gundhalinu watched the expressions harden on the faces of Ahron and the three troopers. If Kullervo lost his temper, they could very quickly lose the clearance he had so painstakingly put together too. “Agent Ahron,” he said, sending a sharp glance of warning at Kullervo. “Dr. Kullervo is right when he points out that a larger group would be potentially dangerous, given the unstable nature of the Lake. We’ve lost several teams out there in the past two years, as you know. We have a full team this time already—”
“It’s a regulation,” she repeated. She folded her arms. “A certified pilot and two troopers for security.”
“It’s bullshit,” Kullervo muttered. This time it was Niburu who caught at his sleeve and murmured something. “Security from what,” he added sourly, “ourselves—?”
Gundhalinu turned back to face him, said softly and swiftly, “This is the way it’s done here. I have no problem with this.” He put a hand on Kullervo’s arm, made Kullervo meet his gaze, and keep it. “What is your problem—?”
Kullervo went rigid under his hand. “I’ll tell you very bluntly what your problem will be,” Gundhalinu whispered, cutting Kullervo off before he could speak. “If you push these people any more, Reede Kullervo will be permanently banned from entering World’s End; or else this entire expedition will end up a beached klabbah, and I don’t know if even your gods or mine—” he touched the trefoil hanging at his chest pointedly, “will be able to get it back afloat. A viable stardrive now means nothing to those people over there. It means everything to me. How much does it mean to you—?”
Kullervo stared at him, and Gundhalinu watched the wild light fade from the other man’s eyes. Kullervo said nothing more; he shrugged off the contact of Gundhalinu’s restraining hand with an abrupt motion.
Gundhalinu turned back to face Ahron, glancing at the three troopers again. He knew the designated pilot from a previous trip inside—a corporal named Ngong, a capable man, but no more enthusiastic about making the journey to Fire Lake than anyone in his right mind would be. “Agent Ahron,” he said, “let me propose this. We use our own certified pilot, who is also one of Dr. Kullervo’s assistants, but we take the two others. That way our team will be slightly smaller, which somewhat reduces our risk from the Lake; but we will still have adequate security. I don’t expect Corporal Ngong will be too disappointed to take some other duty. Will you, Corporal?”
Ngong stole a slightly nervous glance at the sergeant standing beside him, before he answered. “No, sir!”
“I am a Police Commander after all.”
Ahron eyed him suspiciously for a long moment, as if she was trying to fathom whatever conceivable plot he was devising against her. “It isn’t in the regulations—”
“I know your only thought is for our safety. Agent Ahron, and the success of the project we’ve all been working on for so long together.…” He took a deep breath. “Of all the agents I’ve had to deal with, you’ve been the most dedicated and diligent—qualities I value highly.” Gods, he thought, lay it on with a shovel, you hypocritical bastard; hating the taste of his own words. “World’s End is a terrifyingly treacherous environment. I know you, of all people, would not want us to risk our lives, or the success of the stardrive project, needlessly—”
“All right,” she said abruptly, spitting out her decision like a clot of phlegm. “You may use your own pilot, Commander Gundhalinu. If it was anyone else—” she glanced at Kullervo, “I wouldn’t allow it. But you will take Sergeant Hundet and Trooper Saroon with you.”
“Thank you,” Gundhalinu said, with heartfelt sincerity. He dared to look at Kullervo. “I hope that’s a more acceptable risk to you, Doctor?” Kullervo looked at the two troopers with narrowed eyes. Gundhalinu followed his gaze. He had never seen either of the two men before. The sergeant was short and whip-thin, but all muscle, with a narrow, mean face and impenetrable eyes. Gundhalinu disliked him on sight. The private was hardly more than a boy, probably a conscript; he looked right now like the prospect of being sent to Fire Lake was about as appealing to him as his own castration. Gundhalinu sighed.
Kullervo glanced away, down at Niburu. “I guess I can handle that,” he murmured. Niburu looked more uncomfortable than relieved; Ananke looked back and forth between them as though they were speaking some language he didn’t know. Kullervo looked up at Gundhalinu again. “Thank you, Gundhalinu-eshkrad.” He smiled, unexpectedly.
Something fluttered and dropped in the pit of Gundhalinu’s stomach, as if he were some form of small vermin that was being considered by a cat. He shook off the feeling, annoyed at himself. It was not the first time Kullervo’s unpredictable responses had set off alarms in his brain. He had been a Police officer for too long; he read other people’s body language almost instinctively. Kullervo’s body language was eloquent, and it read all wrong: His volatility and, when he wasn’t thinking, his manners and his speech, were better suited to a hotheaded young street thug than to a respected scientist. But he was, undeniably, a brilliant researcher.
Gundhalinu nodded, looking away. He reminded himself that he had grown up with Kharemoughi researchers, the men and women who had been his father’s friends and colleagues—scientists whose refined behavior reflected their position at the top of a highly structured, classist society. Kullervo was not a Kharemoughi. Gundhalinu had learned nothing more about his background, perhaps because Kullervo was ashamed of it. That was not an unreasonable response for a man with a mind so superior that it had lifted him out of the gods-knew-what kind of life and dropped him into a nest of elitists. But no one ever left their past behind completely; he knew that, if anyone did.
He looked back at Agent Ahron, at the troopers waiting beside her. “We’ll leave from the yard tomorrow at first quarter. I’ll expect you to be waiting when I arrive. I believe everything we’ll need has already been assembled there—?”
“Everything is in order, Commander,” Agent Ahron said. The troopers returned his salute perfunctorily, and he started for the door. Kullervo and the others followed him out without a word. He did not speak again, and neither did they, until they were safely back in the rover, and rising over the town.
“That was impressive,” Kullervo said finally. “You’re one slick manipulator, Gundhalinu-eshkrad.”
Gundhalinu looked up, frowning, as irritation and resentment took root in his festering self-disgust. But to his surprise, Kullervo’s face showed him no mockery, no emotion that he could name except perhaps curiosity. “It’s not something for which I hope to be venerated by my descendants.” He looked away again, out the window.
“You should,” Kullervo said. “You should be proud of it. It means you’ve got a real talent for reading a bad situation. You knew just how hard you could push them … and me. It’s not something I’m good at, obviously. I’m sorry. Bureaucrats make me nervous … World’s End makes me nervous.” He grimaced, shrugged. “I didn’t think you were that perceptive, frankly. It’s not a trait Kharemoughis seem to value highly.”
Gundhalinu fingered the trefoil hanging at his chest, and said nothing.
“That was a compliment,” Kullervo said at last.
“Thank you,” Gundhalinu murmured, automatically. He looked down at his hands, at the insides of his wrists, the smooth brown skin that had once been covered with the livid marks of his suicide attempt. His mouth pulled down. “I suppose I’ve come to deserve some sort of credit, these p
ast few years.” He looked out at the jungle, thinking about what lay beyond sight, beyond the distant mountains … what lay beyond spacetime, waiting for him.
NUMBER FOUR: World’s End
“What are you doing here, at this time of night?” Gundhalinu stopped in the prism of light outside the open door of Kullervo’s office, looking in.
Kullervo jerked around in his seat, blinking as if reality made no sense to his eyes. “Gods…” he muttered, “you startled the hell out of me.” He shook his head, stretching, as Gundhalinu came into the room. “I often work at night, when I can’t sleep.” He ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “But what are you doing here? I thought you always retired early, and slept the sleep of the just.”
Gundhalinu matched his ironic smile unwillingly, and shook his own head. “I can never sleep, the night before I go into World’s End.”
Kullervo laughed. “So you do have nerve endings, after all, Commander Gundhalinu-eshkrad-sibyl-Hero of the Hegemony.”
“Father of all my grandfathers!” Gundhalinu said, exasperated and suddenly angry. He began to turn away.
“Wait.” Kullervo pushed up out of his seat. “By the Render, you are on edge. Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” he answered, frowning, without turning back.
“So am I. Leaving,” Kullervo said. And when Gundhalinu did not respond, “On edge…”
Gundhalinu turned back. Kullervo was gazing moodily at the display on the desk behind him. “What are you working on?”
“Nothing,” Kullervo said, with sudden bitterness. “A dead end.” He ordered the display into oblivion before Gundhalinu could get more than a glimpse of the constructs drifting through its screen. Gundhalinu stared at the suddenly empty desktop; he glanced up at Kullervo’s face, expecting to find the same impenetrable surface. But stark, unexpected hopelessness filled Kullervo’s eyes.
Gundhalinu hesitated as Kullervo abruptly looked away; knowing that he had seen that look before … seen it in the mirror. “Reede, do you want to talk about it?” he said quietly. “Can I help—?”
“No,” Kullervo snapped. He looked up again, as if he realized how it had sounded, and muttered, “But I appreciate the offer.” Something that could have been gratitude, or even longing, showed fleetingly in his eyes. But he shook his head. “Don’t waste your time; it’s too valuable. I’ve wasted enough of my own. There are some mistakes that can’t be erased. You just have to live with them.…” He turned away, striding toward the door; stopped, looking back at Gundhalinu. Waiting.
Gundhalinu accepted the invitation uncertainly, and followed him out of the room. They went up through the security levels and out into the fetid embrace of the night.
Kullervo hesitated, as Gundhalinu stopped just beyond the dimly glowing screen of the Project’s entrance to say a perfunctory good-night. “Share a ride?” Kullervo asked.
Gundhalinu shook his head. “I feel like walking tonight.”
“That’s a hell of a walk,” Kullervo said, looking surprised. “Or aren’t you going home?”
“I’m not going home.” Gundhalinu glanced away, mildly annoyed by Kullervo’s uncharacteristic impulse to camaraderie. He gazed out across the starkly lit artificial landscape, the deceptively open grounds that separated the Project’s semi-subterranean fortress from the old Company town. “There’s someone I have to see.”
“A woman?” Kullervo raised his eyebrows. “Personal?”
“Yes,” Gundhalinu said, growing more annoyed by the second. “Not what you’re thinking.”
Kullervo stared at him, his eyes shadowed by the night. “Then would you mind if I walked with you awhile?”
Gundhalinu hesitated; realized that he was trying to think of a way to refuse. His mind remained stubbornly blank, and so he nodded. “If you like,” he said, resigned.
They crossed the gentle vagaries of the parklands together. Gundhalinu looked up at the sky, able to see it for once; seeing an unremarkable scattering of stars on the utterly black face of the moonless night. He remembered Tiamat, where the stars were like glowing coals, where once he had seen his own shadow at midnight.… He looked down again, watching his steps as he felt himself stumble.
Kullervo walked beside him, looking down intently, with his hands pushed deep into the side pockets of his loose-fitting blue overshirt. Gundhalinu thought of a boy searching for lost coins; not an image he would have associated with Kullervo before tonight. It occurred to him again, as it had occurred to him before, how young Kullervo was. But then, most geniuses burned their brightest when they were young.
“So it’s not a tryst we’re going toward.…” Kullervo looked up at him, watching him back. “Are you married?”
Gundhalinu shook his head, watching his steps, suddenly uncomfortable again.
“Ever?”
“No,” he said softly. He glanced up at the sky. “How about you? Are you married?”
“Yes.” Kullervo looked straight ahead now, as if he were remembering someone’s face. “Gods,” he said fiercely, “I want to finish this, and get back to her!” His hands made fists inside his pockets. “She’s my life—”
“How long have you been married?” Gundhalinu asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
“Not long … forever,” Kullervo murmured.
Gundhalinu realized that he had never seen Kullervo look twice at a woman in all the time he had been here. He tried to imagine what sort of woman could hold Kullervo’s quicksilver temperament in that kind of thrall, when he knew that years would have passed for her before they saw each other again. What kind of woman … He looked up again, at the stars. “Is she Kharemoughi?”
Kullervo laughed once. “What? No! She’s on—from Ondinee. No offense, but Kharemoughi women aren’t my type.”
Gundhalinu glanced back at him. “No, I suppose not,” he said, a little shortly. “But we’re not all of us dead from the neck down, Kullervo.”
Kullervo bent his head, meeting Gundhalinu’s half frown with a mocking smile. “But you’re married to your work. There’s really nobody waiting for you out there, somewhere? No lovers—no regrets?”
Gundhalinu felt his throat tighten; he swallowed, and the ache slid down into his chest. “Yes,” he said at last. “There is a woman. There was. There is. And a lot of regret … Maybe I’ll see her again. After all this is finished.”
“Where is she?”
“On Tiamat.”
“Tiamat!” Kullervo said, incredulous. “Ye gods … Tell me that you did all of this just to find a way to get back to her—” He grinned suddenly, waving a hand at the Research Project behind them. “Go on, surprise me.”
“I did it all to get back to her,” Gundhalinu said, feeling a faint smile turn up the corners of his mouth.
“Liar,” Kullervo said, and his grin widened.
Gundhalinu shrugged. “Have it your way.” The warm night breeze kissed his face.
They entered the maze of streets that led into the old part of the town, the part that had been there as long as the Company, maybe longer. Cracked, time-eaten walls showed the scars of battle with the inhospitable climate. Here, beyond the protected parklands, mottled graygreen creepers and fleshy, spined shrubs left the jungle’s spoor everywhere; its living fingers, working with infernal patience to undo what humans had made. Gundhalinu had found the town and everything about it depressing the first time he had seen it; he still found it depressing. The streets were better-lit at night now, and the nighttime diversions more varied, although they held no more appeal for him than they had three years ago. The streets were noisier and more alive, too, because the credit flowed more freely. More outsiders passed them as they walked than the residents of this place had probably ever dreamed existed, before the Project had come into their lives.
“Who are we going to see?” Kullervo asked, looking from side to side with mild interest.
“Hahn—the sibyl who brought me to meet you.”
Kullervo glance
d back at him. “Why now? It’s late for a social call.”
“There’s something I need to give her before we leave.” Gundhalinu indicated the heavy container he carried in one hand.
“What’s in it?” Kullervo asked, when he did not elaborate.
“Something that belongs to her daughter.”
Kullervo frowned slightly, either annoyed or trying to remember something. “You said her daughter was a sibyl too … but she wasn’t meant to be? Does that mean she’s—” He gestured, his hand fluttering, touching his head. Crazy.
“Yes,” Gundhalinu said abruptly, looking down. The sibyl virus caused incurable mental breakdowns in people who were not emotionally stable enough to become sibyls.
“How did it happen? I thought the choosing places rejected anyone who wasn’t suitable material to become a sibyl.”
“She was rejected; but she wouldn’t accept it. Her mother infected her.”
“Gods,” Kullervo muttered; shaking his head. He looked at Gundhalinu again, glancing briefly, wordlessly, at the trefoil he wore.
Gundhalinu slowed his pace as they reached the corner of a cross street. “This is her street.…”
“I’d like to come with you,” Kullervo said.
Gundhalinu hesitated. “All right.” He shrugged, and entered the side street. It became quiet and residential as they left the main thoroughfare; one- and two-story buildings, some with new, intrusively ornate balconies, rubbed shoulders along the dim-lit, empty sidewalks.
Gundhalinu turned in under the arched entryway to a familiar apartment house. He stopped before the glowing ident plate, touched the proper name, let it register their faces. Hahn’s voice answered from the air, sounding surprised, asking him to come inside. The security screen at the building entrance faded.
They went in. Gundhalinu followed the hallway back, found Hahn waiting at the open door of her flat, dressed in a long, loose tunic that might have been sleepwear. Her curiosity was plain, but she gestured them inside without question; her eyes darted at Kullervo’s face, and away again.