If the end of doing nothing meant doing something, Val had decided he was ready for anything. Anything, of course, was anything but taking on, at some unholy hour, four international soldiers and a doctor, stealing their utility hauler, and striking out for Bhavaja. The urge to burn a trail toward the distant city was no urge at all. It felt mandatory, inevitable, and dizzying. As he did not sleep, he sat with his need to go after Libing, and he paced with it, felt the need sparkle along his nerves.
The last thing he wanted to do was kill Caspar Libing. Unfortunately, the list of things he wanted was depressingly brief. And what did want have to do with it? His father, he supposed, would have understood what he was going through. Sometimes, the desire to seek Libing hurt like fire hurt, but most of the time it felt cold and heavy, like a block of ice settling just above his stomach. When he thought about letting Libing live, the ice shifted and grew heavier.
He tried to reason his way through it. Remembered that after Celesta he'd grown intimate with stit and an injector. He couldn't smoke stit like any boy-o, no, he had to put the pain down a deep hole, shovel dirt over it, and cover the hole with stones. Mainlining stit gave what he needed but when his mother died, he'd found the pit again, only it was all dug up, and there was Celesta in it looking back at him. He hadn't done much thinking then. He'd followed his feelings and the rest just sort of happened. He couldn't make himself say Caspar hadn't loved him. He wasn't confused enough to go for self-deceit. He couldn't make himself hate Libing because Maria's life failed to equal the other man's need to follow orders. The pain came when Val heard his own words on Libing's lips, as Libing must have spoken them to Maria.
She would have trusted Libing after that, let Libing's words-- Val's words --serve as a password, a gentle key in an emotional lock.
When Maria transitioned, and while he was in that other place, Val had learned she'd died of pills mixed in a drink prepared carefully by the federal agent. She'd thought she was taking something to sleep. She'd thought, too, that she was alone. She hadn't suffered. Now, Val was alone, and within him was the means to teach Libing what that felt like.
He'll know already, Val thought. You'd be doing it for another reason. You'd be doing it because it's easier to hold on than to let go.
Would the feeling get better once he left Volodya? He knew the answer, but wished he didn't.
And then he felt Hephaestion's telepathy. It was different this time, potent and textured. The difference between looking at water and actually getting wet.
-- We're here.
We're here? What did that mean?
Val moved through the rooms of the farmhouse. The soldiers saw his face and got up to follow. The one outside saw him come out, looked at him curiously, and asked what was wrong.
"He said he was here," Val said.
The doctor was behind him. She made a soft sound, like a gasp but not quite. "Where?"
"Whoa." That was Dance, who skipped off the steps. "That's not ours."
A slender wing edged over the roof of the farmhouse. The wing's surface seemed to ripple, changing like the hide of a chameleon, absorbing the watery sunlight without reflecting it. Attached to the wing was a glider. The craft rotated above the farmhouse before coming down in a soft vertical landing. The grass reacted to it, but not the air. There was no smell of metal, exhaust. There was no sense of heat.
On the ground, the craft looked small.
* * *
"There's not enough room on it for all of us," Dr. Interlandi said.
Captain Skocz-- Zone --bet that everyone was thinking the same thing.
He strode forward. Step one, make an inspection of the craft, check the credentials of the owner. Step two, get his package-- the swords --over the border. As far as he was concerned, aliens or no aliens, if he got the doc, Hephaestion, and the Manegold out of Volodya, then things were looking up. He and his team could take the rest of the day off.
The hatch opened.
Skocz stopped.
A young woman in slacks and a sweater stepped out. She was dark like the women of Ussuria. Was she Ussurian? He wasn't sure. She wasn't dressed like a pilot or a player. She held a computer in her hand, the alien's version of a flexible hand-held. That made her Holland-Tchey. Shit. The Manegold and the good doctor had talked about aliens, and, no, he wasn't getting orders right now from HQ because he was dealing with portables and there was nothing to tap into. The sat phones were traceable; he'd ditched them a while ago. And there were no fly-overs by friendlies this far out in the boonies. How was he going to make this make sense to Kinder? How was he going to explain that Hephaestion had formed an independent alliance without, so he claimed, compromising Kinder-- no, that just wasn't going to read right.
Here was Hephaestion now. The captain looked up at subject 237, didn't realize how glad he was to see 237 until he saw him. He said, "Nice ride."
Hephaestion was dressed like the alien female, all in black. He might not have heard Skocz, because he was staring in another direction, frowning.
* * *
Something inside the craft was thrumming, and the thrumming was moving. Instinctively, Val's power reached toward it. Like knows like, and the thrum was more than interesting. It was a heady blur of nourishment and ardor that sank through him layer by layer, promising to show things, and offering to hide others.
A woman came to the ramp first. Val got nothing from her. A curiosity, but he let it go.
There was something behind her. It blossomed at her back, slid into the hatchway, and took over the ramp. Free of the ship's shielding, it unfolded laterally a succession of luminous layers that extended beyond the ship. The source of the light flowed forward. Broad glowing panels, like iridescent wings, billowed, multiplied, and multiplied again. Val was slowly peeling back the barrier of his internal shield. The effect was galvanizing. It made Val weak in the stomach. With absolutely no instruction in the matter, Val knelt in the grass and hung his head in obeisance.
* * *
Hephaestion reached the younger man quickly, raised him up by the shoulders.
-- Ah, no, don't do that. Never do that. That is not how we greet our brothers and sisters.
The younger man was too stunned to answer telepathically. "I had no idea."
"Do you think there's a book for this? Never mind it. Your shield isn't satisfactory, you're too young. I can help with that. It's no good if it hurts you to look at me."
"Are you one of the gods?"
"That mistake's been made before, usually right before hell breaks loose. No, I'm not. I'm what you are, just older. I'm reaching toward you now, can you feel me?"
"Yes, this is different. I can see you ... Almost like you're one of them, a man."
"I am a man. Now, we need to go inside somewhere where we can talk, everyone together. It's important." Drawing John Manegold toward the farmhouse door, Hephaestion gestured to get the others' attention. "We need to talk. Zoa's aircraft can fool radar but this is an uptight country and she's deviated from her flight plan. We're on a tight schedule."
* * *
The farmhouse dining room. Siris settled in a chair, hands in her lap. She was across from the pilot of the alien organic glider.
The pilot was, for Siris, the second encounter with a member of the species known as Holland-Tchey. The first occasion had been seven years ago at a bio-technologies emporium in Coire. She was there to interview for an internship with ITAN. The ITAN board had seated two Holland-Tchey, a male and female. The male's skin had been splotched with bronze, but was, generally, ivory. The female's features, arms, and hands were all ivory. The Brianov delegate explained the aliens were, in terms of emotional, mental, and professional development, teenagers. Somewhat put out, Siris had wondered why ITAN would assign adolescents to question her.
It wasn't until after her interviews that she'd made the mental adjustment to grasp that a Holland-Tchey adolescent was somewhere between eighty and one hundred and ten standard years of age.
Hephaestion's female pilot was older than that, with skin that resembled the warm bronze of the southern lands. Her hair was gathered into a bun, and her eyes were the blue of sun-kissed tropical waters. Holland-Tchey biology was classified, so Siris had no idea what was going on behind the lovely skin and slender bones. On the surface, as the female lacked the ridged nose (sported by some among her kind) and possessed five digits, not four, on each hand, the pilot appeared human. Hephaestion's computer-aided sketch hadn't done the alien proper justice.
Grabbing a chair at the head of the table, Captain Skocz pointed at the alien with his chin. "We're not authorized to discuss our mission with you."
Siris inhaled. The window in the dining room was open, which was good. Too many tensed people. This wasn't what the room was for, and she tried to imagine the people who lived here coming in out of the fields, children home from school, fruit and home-baked bread in baskets on the table, a floral centerpiece maybe. She tried to hear their voices, to remember what it was like to feel safe.
Skocz had twisted his chair about, straddled his seat. "Nor are we authorized to change the mission," he was going on matter-of-factly. "With that said, Angel wants us to listen to you, so we're listening to you. But I'm thinking you should be speaking to ITAN instead of wasting your time speaking to us. Whatever problem you have, that's where you're supposed to be solving it."
The alien named Zoa scanned the table and lingered on Skocz. In a voice that rang a bit lower than a voice Siris expected from a human woman, "We are allies," Zoa reminded in Ollano.
Skocz made an attempt to look politic. "I don't decide what my mission's going to be, and that includes hooking up with allies for a party on the side. I'm not even supposed to be talking to you."
"Fair enough," Zoa replied. "But in this case I ask you to see ITAN as a juggernaut that requires a vast amount of resource to refocus its energy. I'm coming to you, of course, on behalf of the Science Commission to achieve an end, quickly, that will save billions of lives."
"How's that again?"
With raised eyebrows Siris, next to Hephaestion, was thinking she should be in an office right now, coding data into her computer for the archivists. The interplay between Skocz and Zoa, it was all beyond her. She had more in common with the people who baked bread here once. Okay, maybe that wasn't true. But achieving something at ground level that affected the fate of billions of lives-- this was surreal and quite unnerving.
Hephaestion leaned toward her. "I'm here," he whispered, catching her hand under the table.
He'd sensed her panic and reacted. Oh, this was great, outstanding. She wondered if he suggested she leap from a cliff, would she do it? How compromised was compromised? Meanwhile, the connection, skin to skin, was potent and (in some odd way) familiar. She caught a flicker of his metallic eyes, tried to read what was behind them, tried harder, and got nothing. Then she offered a nod. This wasn't just about the alien, after all. Hephaestion, who was the subject, not the leader, had brought the alien to them. So this was about him, too, something he wanted.
"Before we tell you what has to happen," Hephaestion said, "you must know and appreciate the problem." His lips parted slightly. "There is a weapon. If it detonates, the weapon will create a crater the size of Prome. The blast radius will exceed two billion kilometers. The explosion will create a layer of dust between the sun and the planet's surface, and so a layer of ice will spread over the planet and last for many years. It is possible the shock swell, if the weapon is detonated in Volodya, will send a tidal wave ten meters high to the coast of Brianovia." Hephaestion looked around, and waited.
Siris looked around, too. Was it even remotely possible Hephaestion was right? The alien, Zoa, was watching her, but Siris ignored the alien and settled her gaze, somewhat unexpectedly, on John Manegold. She had never seen one person kneel to another person before today. What made him do it? Oh, he was young but was he, really? What had those eyes seen? What had those hands done? This has more to do with you, John, than us, Siris thought. What you were, and what you are.
Presently, John Manegold studied the blowing curtains in the dining room window with an expression that appeared eerily unfazed. He was slouching a little, but it was not a young man's slouch. He was like one of those scholars you found on a park bench looking away across the lake. There were no answers on the lake, only the surface of the water, and maybe the sky coming down to meet it. Such men had no questions, possessing, at least in their minds, the answers.
Siris tucked in her chin. Dance, Rock, and Edge, staring at Hephaestion so hard their faces looked like cement, seemed to be biting down mentally on the bomb problem. Zone, at least, looked like he was trying to reconcile mission directives with the new information.
"What kind of bomb is this?" he wanted to know.
The alien answered: "It is a device that uses antimatter technology."
Siris snapped to attention. "You've lost another one?"
Zoa canted her head. She wasn't just a pilot, Siris had to realize. The alien behaved like a treaty enforcer, and one mustn't forget that the only person at the table older than a Holland-Tchey adult was Hephaestion.
Settling her hand-held in her lap, Zoa said, "All right, we'll start at the beginning. Weapons that employ a matter-antimatter event have been banned among the worlds of the"-- Zoa said the name of her species in her native language --"greater than fifty of your years. Several explorer-class craft launched before the ban. Such craft were never supposed to land. We can only assume there was a malfunction. We tried to track them in a timely manner, but one had fallen into your gravity well where it seems the scientists of your world were able to disable its beacon. When we located the vessel, we formally discovered your world. Unfortunately, you had already attempted to reverse-engineer our point singularity canons and the antimatter missiles." The alien spread her hands and sighed. "That is our fault and we know it. We have stayed among you looking for the pieces that were stolen, and here and there we have found them. I implore you to listen to Bojidar. Especially you." She turned her head to look at John, who did not return her glance. "Bojidar insists the Volods put you to death without cause."
"They feel they had cause. But my government knows better than that I am an extremist or a man who has killed other men. I am not what they said I was, or what you believe me to be."
Zoa and Hephaestion turned to one another, making Siris wonder what she missed.
Zoa added, "What we know so far suggests an operative with ties to illegal arms sales recovered and then sold on open market a module from the debris of a collapsed research facility in the United Kingdom of Solona and Burtisa. The Manegolds are rumored accomplished arms traders."
John said, "We were, and probably still are."
"The module is the containment system," Zoa went on. "The rest of the device can and apparently has been improvised with materials from your planet. You will not be the same people if it detonates. Your world will not be the same world."
Flicking glances here and there, Siris wondered, Do we believe this? Is this real?
Apparently so, for the Manegold sat up as though yanked, exasperated, pissed, or all of the above. He swiveled toward Zoa with blue eyes lowered and his thoughts veiled. "I'll do what you want. Why must everyone go with me?"
Hephaestion let go of Siris' hand. "It's the plan."
"Yes, I know it's the plan." He gestured to Zoa. "When she lets me, I can feel her thoughts. But I don't like this plan, especially the part where you say I need an escort." Looking at Zoa directly: "I don't need an escort."
Zoa said, "I think that your military partners would disagree."
"He wouldn't," Manegold said, meaning Hephaestion, "and while he was telling you what he knows to be true, he would also tell you that no one present, except him, can stop me if I decide to leave." There was an appropriate silence. "So," John said, "is there another reason the soldiers and the doctor must come with me?"
"Yeah," Skocz stepped in. "Wherever you're going, we're going because that's the mission."
Zoa said, "And there's a problem the soldiers and the doctor didn't foresee."
Skocz asked, "What kind of problem?"
"We're sure the people who are building the bomb," Hephaestion said, "or who have built it, know we're here."
"You said we're sure," Siris said. "How are you and she sure?"
"We made contact with them. Don't you remember Crivosin?"
"No," Siris said. "I wasn't with everyone outside Bhavaja."
"I remember him," said Dance.
"Nice fellow. Our intelligence gave us a man who wanted to help us prove the execution was a sham, that Wolf was alive and able to be rescued, but our side didn't know about the device, and we didn't know how well Holbek was entrenched in Volodya. I have seen"-- he tipped a nod in Zoa's direction --"their data, their intelligence. It's credible. Crivosin is part of the group that stole laser technology and programmed it to destroy a building. He didn't help us with our identification papers and just go away."
"No, of course he didn't," John said. "But I can still get away from the group and head into the mountains on my own."
Skocz shook his head once. "No, absolutely not. That goes against my mission objective."
John exhaled. "You haven't any idea what's being proposed."
"I think I do."
Siris looked at John, and at Skocz. "Will someone explain it to me?" because John wasn't exactly going pale but it looked like his skin was thinning. And a cord had started thumping the column of his throat.
"It's possible I'll be shot on sight, but if," John said, "I last ten minutes, or one hour, then, yes, I may be able to pull the location of the device from their minds--"
Hephaestion: "--we will."
"I don't think they'll shoot me. I don't think they'll want to take just one hour to kill me either."
What did he say?
"I think they'll try to make killing me last longer than that. The problem becomes," John was saying, "how do I get information out once I've got it?"
"A transmitter," Zoa said.
So this really was the plan?
Wastagh, on the other side of Dance, shook his head fast. "There's no transmitter in the world, I don't care how small, that'll get past a decent scan."
Zoa sighed. "That's why he'd have two. One will be of your world, and they will find it. The other will be of our world, and they will not find it." She leaned forward. "When they find the first transmitter, he will be ten times more interesting as a prisoner than he was before they got confirmation that his execution, escape, and flight into the Goraneg was a set-up. Once they think they've won, they'll want to debrief him." Zoa glanced around the table. "There are risks, but it is the only plan in the field that puts an operative right next to Holbek. Is it possible they'll call in an upper echelon operative, maybe one of your brothers or uncles, to question you?"
"That's not only possible, it's likely." John hesitated. He and Zoa locked glances. "It's our way."
Zoa sat back. "That's the easy part. Here's the hard. We can't assume they're not watching."
John tilted his head, mouth compressed. "No, you shouldn't assume. My family was piggy-backing spy sats and re-tasking commercial ones when I was a boy."
"If they're watching, they won't have missed you and your little aircraft," Siris said to Zoa.
"Actually," Hephaestion said, "the Holland-Tchey have pretty good disruption technology. Any sat pointed at this region is seeing nothing for now, but at the end of the next quarter hour, they'll want to to see the team and, assuming they've seen him already, they'll want to see Wolf. Too long of a delay and we may have undesirable company, at an undesired time."
Zoa shifted her gaze to Siris. "I'm sorry, but once we talked to Bojidar and he explained what you were doing, the first thing we considered was the possibility of satellite tracking. It's because of satellite tracking we decided not to pick you up or rearrange the composition of your team. We thought about the reason Holbek hadn't made a try for you yet. Satellite surveillance is the best explanation. You're headed north--"
"Excuse me, but that's a no-return mission for everybody," Skocz said. "And that goes for her, too." He turned to Siris. "Bloody hell, doc, she's saying we're headed for a trap but no worries, march along now and never mind it. She's saying to carry on like we're still trying to walk across the border into Alina. Like Wolf is stupid enough to let us keep going north up to the mountains, which, by the way, he wasn't."
"Based on our intelligence, if you drive into the Goraneg Mountains you will run into Holbek."
The captain hissed through his teeth. "The problem being that after about five minutes of slapping us around, Holbek is going to do the math. They want Wolf, but the rest of us, we're tag-alongs. We're expendable--"
"I'll be with you," Hephaestion reminded.
"No, no, I don't think your going with them is a part in the plan we should keep," Zoa said.
Hephaestion and Zoa locked glances.
Zoa said, "It is no longer necessary."
John turned his face to the wall, and very deeply inhaled.
Hephaestion said, "The hell it's not."
"We spoke about risks associated with you rejoining the team, but only briefly because we wanted you present to manage the asset. When we thought the asset was a terrorist."
"I told you he wasn't a terrorist."
"No, he isn't." Zoa sighed. "No, he isn't. Therefore, the risk to the mission caused by your return to the team is no longer acceptable. Bojidar, you were arrested in a public place in a major city."
"It can be managed."
"It doesn't have to be managed if you don't go. Holbek may be fanatical, but it is competent."
Hephaestion's brow wrinkled, and Siris saw his chest rise hard, and fall. "The doctor is a civilian."
Siris thought, Why is he worried about me? "I don't understand. What's the exit strategy?"
Skocz grunted. "Doctor, with stakes this high, you don't let a little thing like the absence of an exit strategy stop you. She's saying everybody is expendable and we win, body count aside, if the planet doesn't go boom. Some of us make it back, that's good, but us getting out isn't an essential element of the plan."
"That may be okay with you, but what about Wolf? He's a civilian, too."
Zoa faced her. "Without the man known as John Manegold, there is no plan. If Holbek didn't want him, we wouldn't be discussing this. It appears Holbek wants John very much. Among humans, John is a fluid telepath. This device has eluded every scanner known to your world and ours, yet it exists and it is here, on this world, and we have very little time to find it. He must make contact with Holbek if we are to get the device and the people who have it."
John flicked a glance at Hephaestion. "Why do you wish to go?"
"You don't know yet what I can do."
"Amen." This was Dance.
"Perhaps I don't, but I think I understand you a little now. By the way, your friend from the Science Commission is right. If you talked to someone who works for my father, that man and his people stayed with you, and they watched you, you just didn't know it. So, the question becomes, is the device as dangerous as you think it is?"
Hephaestion bit down, swallowed thickly.
It was Zoa who spoke. "Yes."
Siris assumed Hephaestion answered in some other way.
"Then I will do," John said to Hephaestion, "what the Science Commission is asking. You, however, cannot come. You were arrested in full view of the public. Everyone else can decide for him-- or her --self."
"I didn't bring you this far just to send you back."
John's expression shifted as though he was, for a brief moment, startled. But then the light sank beneath his skin, and he became stone. "Have you, my brother, lived so very long without companionship?"
Hephaestion, softly, as though the query was made in private and it was in private he intended to reply: "Yes."
"Then I am sorry for you." John allowed an abrupt but meaningful silence, after which he stood up. "The road we want is not through Skaja-Volz, but west through Montinia."
"What's Montinia?" Skocz asked. "Some kind of town? We saw no Montinia on the map."
"Nor will you ever. Montinia will put us on the Razgrada backroads inside two hours. I think our vehicle can manage but several hours upland, that is Serdice and the Goraneg skirt. Unless we find an ATT between then and now, we will have to climb on foot. I tell you this so you can prepare. I will look after everyone who comes along as well as I am able but know that the goddess is a better caretaker of human life than I am. Someone, please, alert me when it is time to leave. I'm going out now for some fresh air." And he left.
-- Next Chapter
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