A Night Without Stars (46 page)

Jenifa hurried over to Chaing. A bone was sticking up out of his left leg, just above the knee, but he was still breathing. Medic-trained sheriffs arrived and started to sort out the leg. An ambulance was on its way, they assured her.

When she looked around she saw the abandoned tuk-tuk, completely unharmed by the bazooka. She walked to the end of wharf three, where she'd seen the Warrior Angel disappear, and peered over.

There was nothing there, no boat, nobody swimming. Just the calm brown water of the Crisp flowing smoothly past the disused docks. “Impossible,” she whispered.

The submarine's cabin was small, about the same size as the inside of a car, but with much more elaborate chairs. Florian sat in one, looking around with a goofy, delighted smile lifting his lips.
A submarine! The Warrior Angel! Great Giu, Essie will finally be safe.

The Warrior Angel was bending over Essie, applying a small green hemisphere to the side of her neck. Essie let out a long sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” Florian said. “For everything.”

The Warrior Angel turned to him. “I think that ankle of yours could do with some medical help, too. And then a shower—big priority for you there.”

He smiled shyly. “Yes, but don't worry about me. I know how to operate a medical kit.”

“Really?”

“The space machine gave me copies of all its files when it asked me to protect Essie.”

“So, let me get this straight. A Commonwealth spaceship just dropped out of the sky one day and asked you for help?”

“Um, well…Yes.”

“Ha! I had a day like that myself, once. Long time ago.”

“You did?”

“Yep.” She winked and dropped a medical kit box on his lap—a larger version of the one the space machine had given him. “I'll leave it to your
expertise,
then, while I concentrate on getting us out of here.”

“Where are we going?” Ry Evine asked.

“Port Chana,” the Warrior Angel told him. “You'll be perfectly safe there with me.”

Florian stuck a diagnostic pad on his badly swollen ankle. Even that featherlight touch was painful. Results zipped across his exovision. He selected a series of treatments for the medical kit to produce. “Essie, sweetheart, how are you doing?”

Essie gave him a sad little smile. She reached up and slowly peeled the shriveled memory organ from the side of her head. It left a nasty-looking weal on her skin. “I'm sorry, Florian. I know you meant well, but that's not actually my name.”

“Oh. What is your name, then?”

“Paula Myo.”

For three thousand years it had been called Walton Boulevard—a wide straight thoroughfare in the center of Varlan, stretching from Bromwell Park all the way up the incline to the Captain's palace. Although the capital's later residents had long forgotten its origin, it followed the giant furrow that the
Vermillion
had plowed upon its chaotic landing. Big ten-story government buildings flanked the broad road, each with its own neat skirt of grass and trees.

That was two and a half centuries ago. The statues and fountains that had once graced most of the intersections had been taken away after they'd been smashed and defaced during Slvasta's revolution. They'd never been replaced, thus allowing the new democratic city council to run modern tramlines straight and true up the center of the cobbles of what was now Bryan-Anthony Boulevard—named after some forgotten hero of the Revolution.

Stonal watched the long burgundy-colored tram carriages slide past as his official armored Zikker limousine drove up Bryan-Anthony Boulevard's gentle slope, leading a convoy of unmarked PSR cars, five Varlan Regiment troop carriers, and two big regiment trucks. The passengers inside the tram barely glanced through the long grimy windows at the government vehicles as they passed.

Typical of the capital's citizens,
he thought.
Stoic and jaded. Government officials were always racing around on some important mission. Who cares? Nothing changes. Life goes on.
He gave the bovine tram passengers a disgruntled sigh.
If only you knew.

A glance in the Zikker's wide wingmirror confirmed that the vehicle carrying the Commonwealth space machine was still moving. That was a mild surprise. He had no idea of the thing's capabilities, but he was fairly sure that if it wanted to stop the transport, it could. He'd spent the plane journey from Opole in a numb fear, thinking they would tumble out of the sky at any moment. The Air Defense Force people had thought him mad when he insisted they give him a parachute, which spent the whole flight on the seat next to him. Stonal ignored their poorly concealed amusement at his paranoia. In his profession, you didn't live to 132 if you didn't possess a very healthy suspicion, coupled with an exceptional political aptitude.

The Zikker arrived at the colossal People's Palace. Before the revolution, the wide parade ground in front of the palace had been protected by a fence of tall iron railings, allowing tourists and Varlan residents alike to watch the spectacle of ceremonial palace guards dressed in their splendid uniforms marching with amazing precision between their posts. Those rails were gone now, replaced by a thick four-meter-high wall. Steel-reinforced gates opened to allow the convoy through.

They drove through a huge archway in the palace's façade to the main courtyard, then under another archway to the smaller rose courtyard. The Zikker stopped there, while the transport vehicle slowly backed down a cobbled ramp to a set of open wooden doors and disappeared inside.

Stonal walked down the ramp to the old stables. Faustina was already waiting there at the head of a small team of assistants. The chief scientist of section seven's advanced science division was 154 years old, but still quite sprightly. Thinning white hair was styled to resemble a tight beret, framing heavily wrinkled porcelain skin that sagged around her broad features—an appearance that too many mistakenly believed reflected an equally declining intellect. Her eyes were gazing at the back of the vehicle, more alert than any twenty-year-old.

Troopers opened the transport's doors. Faustina peered eagerly into the gloomy interior. “Up you go,” she told one of her assistants.

A big forklift rolled up to the tailgate, the long prongs sliding slowly inside. The assistant inside waved directions to the driver.

“Director Stonal,” she said. “This is all very exciting.”

“I thought you'd enjoy it,” he said.

“And it's been inert since it landed?”

“Completely. Apart from the protection layer, of course.”

“Yes, that sounds like a Commonwealth force field. So it is still active. There's a functioning power generator inside, and also a computator of some kind that governs its systems.”

“Well, yes. We think it might have brought someone to Bienvenido.”

“Really. Who?”

Stonal almost smiled at the offhand question. Faustina hadn't even looked around as she asked. She was only truly interested in science. People, politics—they couldn't hold her attention like machines and electrical circuits. It made her ideal for her job. He had personally approved her appointment sixty years ago, bringing her over from the Varlan University mathematics department. She had an exceptional mind, but on campus she would never have risen farther than a tenured professorship. He didn't need someone who could play the academic advancement game, or who had party contacts; just someone who was focused on the job.

The advanced science division wasn't huge, but in those sixty years under her leadership it had produced a steady trickle of results. And he had no worries anything she discovered would leak to the Eliters. The world outside her domain simply didn't register with her.

“A child, we think,” he said. “One of my people is tracking her.”

That, at least, got her attention. “A child? Isn't that an odd thing for the Commonwealth to send to Bienvenido?”

“Very.”

The forklift truck started to move away from the tailgate. Stonal watched Faustina suck on her lower lip in anticipation. The space machine slowly emerged. In the glaring electrical lights, its sleek fuselage shone with a pearly sheen. Back in Naxian Valley, the regiment engineers had built a sturdy wooden frame around the cylinder, allowing the crane to hoist it up. The forklift's prongs had slipped under the planks, but the weight of the contraption was almost enough to topple the truck. A big flatbed trolley was hurriedly shoved into place, and the crate lowered onto it.

“Superb,” Faustina said. She beckoned one of her assistants over. The man was carrying several electrical boxes with silver aerials sticking out like strange insect antennae. “It's not broadcasting in any spectrum,” she said studying the dials on the boxes. “And it flew supersonically, too, the Air Force said?”

“So they said, yes,” Stonal agreed. “They tracked the sound it made.”

“Interesting. It's not very aerodynamic, is it? Those bulbous ends might make atmospheric entry easier than a blunt surface, but I can't believe that's their purpose. There isn't an aero-surface of any kind. What was the size of the impact crater?”

“There wasn't really a crater, more a scar in the earth. It slid along, like an airplane landing badly.” He held up a briefcase. “I have photographs of the landing site, measurements the engineers took. Anything we could think of, really.” He glanced at the technician who was now waving a Geiger counter around the cylinder. “We checked that, too. No radioactivity.”

“Interesting. Space is full of radiation, solar wind particles, high-energy electromagnetic waves from the sun. Any surface exposed to such a bombardment should have residual traces. Liberty capsules certainly do.”

“The force field protected it from radiation?”

“Undoubtedly.” She finally turned to face him. “So what do you want my department to analyze?”

“All of it.”

“Really. Not asking for much, are you?”

Stonal gave a modest shrug. There were few who would dare talk to him like that, which was why he respected the science chief. “I need to know what it's capable of.”

“I'll do what I can.”

A small tractor was coupled to the trolley, and began to tow it into a tunnel at the back of the stable. Stonal and Faustina walked behind it. After twenty meters the tractor turned off down a side corridor, which soon became a ramp spiraling down.

The lower level of cellars had vaulted ceilings just as high as the palace's staterooms above. Stonal always felt slightly uneasy down here—in part because of all the dungeons he'd been in, supervising increased interrogations. But this subterranean area of the palace was where the Captains had stored the Commonwealth machines that survived the landing—the core of the old order. And then there was the wormhole generator.

The tractor rolled slowly into the big brick-walled crypt where Faustina did so much of her work. It was the site of Mother Laura's triumph and sacrifice. Stonal had seen the old black-and-white photographs of the day Bienvenido defeated the Prime, with the Fanrith map table surrounded by junior officers, their poles moving squadron models to intercept spaceships; trestle tables of telephones and radio equipment. Armed guards stood by the doors, trolleys with Bienvenido's first crude atom bombs in a line before the eerie open wormhole. Slvasta himself had been there (he was the one who showed Stonal the super-classified photos), and his friends and fellow heroes were all present and correct—Javier, Yannrith, Andricea. A pivotal moment in history.

Today the crypt was very different. The wormhole still stood at the far end, unmoved since Mother Laura had shut it down. But not inert; its force field still encased it, like a layer of clear crystal stronger than the toughest steel, preventing any kind of analysis. The trestle tables had long gone, replaced by lab benches covered in strange chunks of machinery, analysis instruments, and chemical arrays. Half of the science department's investigatory power was devoted to analyzing chunks of Tree that were either held in metal clamps or hanging inside tanks full of liquid. They were splinters that had come whirling out of Treefall explosions to crash onto Bienvenido. Stonal always thought they looked like tarnished quartz, though Faustina assured him they were far more complex than that. They'd discovered channels of different molecules running through them, like seams in ore. Some conducted electricity, although most didn't.

“It's not the same as the Commonwealth's solid-state circuits,” Faustina had explained once. “They have different properties. One day we'll understand them. Once we have more refined instruments.”

Stonal had made no comment. Section seven's advanced science division had a lot of leeway when it came to researching and utilizing new technology, but he had to impose limits. Unrestricted technology had too much potential to impact on Bienvenido society, betraying all they had achieved for themselves. It was everything Slvasta had warned them of. To this day, Democratic Unity's core policy was to keep Bienvenido society stable, which meant very little industrial or technological development was licensed.

To remind him of the danger, right in the center of the vault, a new section of clean white flooring had been laid half a meter above the old stones—a perfect circle that always made him think of a club's dance floor. Sitting on it was the exopod that had brought Mother Laura safely to Bienvenido. A spherical space capsule only slightly larger than a Liberty command module, but
oh so
different in terms of capability. Nearly half of the fuselage had been gingerly removed to lie carefully on the floor, each bit in a precise relationship to the others, like mechanical orange segments peeled from their technological core. Some sections were original access panels, while other parts had been carefully cut away. The sophisticated machinery and electrical systems underneath had also been dismantled and extracted, forming a second jigsaw ring around the exopod. Each piece had a printed label, with an index and a brief description of the function it performed (where known).

The tractor left the space machine's flatbed trolley next to the exopod floor and trundled out of the crypt. Both large doors swung shut behind it with a loud
thud
; the bolts were thrown.

Faustina gave her new prize a thoughtful look for a while, then picked up a large screwdriver from one of the benches. She bent down to examine the wooden frame it was resting on, wincing as her joints protested.

“About a centimeter and a half clearance,” she muttered. One of her assistants started writing on a clipboard. “See the gap?” she asked Stonal.

He bent down beside her. There was a clear gap between the space machine's surface and the wood, as if it was floating. Faustina poked the gap with the tip of the screwdriver. The slim edge was unable to get through.

“Invisible glass or solid air,” she muttered climbing up again. “Take your pick.”

He glanced over at the imposing wormhole generator. “Same as that, then?”

“Yes. And the wormhole force field has remained functional for two and a half centuries. The Commonwealth builds their machines to last.”

“So what's your first step?”

“You tell me what you want me to do. How much damage do you want to risk? We know the wormhole force field is strong enough to resist an atomic explosion—from a distance. Slvasta himself witnessed that, when the Prime were detonating them all around Mother Laura.”

“So there's no way we can break through to find out what that thing is?”

“Everything has a breaking point, Director,” she said archly.

It surprised Stonal. He'd never heard her say anything remotely ambiguous before. “Meaning?”

“A nuclear explosion up close might do the trick.” She grinned at his disapproving frown. “But instead of a uniform blitz of energy, we can concentrate our assault on a tiny area, perhaps a centimeter across. We need to puncture it, not vaporize it. This is not something we've ever attempted with the wormhole.”

“Of course not. No section seven director is going to be responsible for the wormhole's destruction; it was Mother Laura's last gift to us. My dear father assumed she left it active as a warning not to meddle with the other planets again. What sort of assault were you thinking of?”

“We'll start with a simple electrical discharge and monitor the effects, if any. Next, a thermal lance, perhaps. Personally, I would like to use the maser beam we developed. That can emit a great deal of energy on a small area.”