Forge of Heaven (10 page)

But nothing about this arrival looked like an operations audit after all, as that message indicated. He couldn’t say he was exactly disappointed to hear there was a Mr. Gide with some sort of con-

6 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h

sultations in mind—mortally relieved, was more the point—but after a night and a day in the office, he was frayed, underinformed, and most of all frustrated.

A flood of inquiries had hit his desk early when this ship had turned up, local agencies wanting to know what everybody on the station wanted to know: what was going on and why an Earth ship was here off schedule. The price-fixing board had immediately swung into action, of course, and the securities and exchange people had put in a night of overtime trying to scotch speculation on ordinary goods and luxury items. Everybody was discommoded. The fashion shops likewise were probably organizing flood sales on their newest items. When the regular Earth freighter touched the station in its annual visit, information on the mother world’s fashions came with it, and things changed rapidly in the
haut ton
shops.

This unexpected midyear arrival created an economic flutter in the damnedest places.

Technology futures naturally went softer by the hour: Earth technology was also a wild card, and one never knew what would show up in that market when Earth injected its Inner Worlds creations, patterns, and patents into the station’s data files, extracting automatic payment as they went.

Every ship traded. Even warships traded. Earth couldn’t physically touch the physical goods of an Outsider station, but patents and patterns for synth programs went back and forth on a two-way trade, some of it in Earth-owned goods on another Outsider station, some of it in stock futures, some of it in actual substance off-loaded from an Earth ship, just nothing taken aboard. Earth always bargained hard for what they sold, and had a monopoly on the finest synthesizer patterns, those that enabled molecular synthesis on say, caff and fine wines, patterns that subtly changed from year to year, each variation available at very high cost.

In that trade, Earth had a bottomless gold mine, and the buzz was already out that there was, inbound, a new liqueur and a very fine Merlot pattern, not to mention an exciting and rare offering, the pattern of an aged wine from an estate collection: the ship’s command levels and the mysterious Mr. Gide might not have communicated a damned thing, but the trade office had certainly got-

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 6 3

ten communication from the ship’s trade officer, so ordinary business and moneymaking wasn’t beneath this ship, was it?

And what was currently going on in the substrate of the trade office was the ordinary flurry of intense, small-time negotiations, the trade board and individual license houses engaged by voicelink with the ship’s trade officer, who would work to obtain what he wanted and to pay as little as possible for it in goods and credit.

Reaux had sent a personal agent on a fast, discreet round of face-to-face meetings with key corporations, stating, quote, we regard this as ordinary trade and intend strongly to defend local interests—and implying, of course, the reciprocal, but unspoken:
if
you defend us if asked any nasty questions about our administration—just a little happy talk to confirm that, yes, the governor was certainly on the local corporations’ side, and they would all stand united, nobody being negotiated out of what advantage they held in their creative property, and nothing radically changing in the economic climate. Only granted they themselves hadn’t done something to bring on some sort of inquiry from Earth, the government would defend patents and negotiate for all companies equally, none sold out at disadvantage for the benefit of another no matter how Earth tried. He could be tough. Had been, on one notable occasion.

As for the stock market, the various moderating systems had engaged as they ought, and functioned as designed. Bulk commodity selling was impossible once those regulations went into effect: that was always the worst hit that could follow rumors of a new technology or a major sale, but the automatic safeguards had slammed that brake on the minute the ship turned up, and consequently there was no need to stop regular trading as that ship glided toward them. There was even a modest wave of profit riding the event, small speculative buying of certain companies’ shares.

So the ship looked to carry on ordinary business, midyear as it was.

So what was this oddly timed contact from Earth? A Mr. Gide?

And consultations?

When had Earth ever
consulted
its governors?

That unusual word was worth looking for. Reaux put the com-

6 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h

puter to searching all the Earth ship calls since Concord’s founding, precisely for
Consultations
. That took a few moments, during which he drank off the cooling cup of caff.

Chime from the desk unit.
“Sir.”
Ernst.
“Your wife is asking if
you’ll be home for supper tonight.”

“Put her on,” he said, and hearing the contact made: “Judy?”

“ . . . supper. Are you going to be home tonight?”

“For God’s sake, Judy.” It
was
past his ordinary quitting time.

He didn’t think he could make it through another overnighter in the office. “Well, I think it’s remotely possible, but I can’t think about that right now.”

“It would be a very good idea if you could come home this evening and
say how nice Kathy’s hair is.”

That bad, then. “I’m trying. I’ll try, Judy.”

“Dinner at 1900h. I’m cooking.”

Judy was
cooking
. And dinner was fairly late. She hadn’t made it to her job today, he made that a good guess. He remembered the prior controversy. Judy had snared their daughter Kathy, she’d have called the hairdresser in, heavily bribed to silence, and Kathy’s hair was still tearfully controversial. He could read between the lines. Kathy was recalcitrant and Judy wanted backup.

A message crawl hit his screen.
Brazis
was on his way up the hall at this very moment: Antonio Brazis, head of the PO, local Chairman of the Outsider Council, his opposite number in station authority.

Dortland, his own head of station security, and Redmond, from the Trade Board, were next on his agenda, and they were going to have to wait, clearly, if Brazis was coming in. Ernst had been tracking all these matters, and shot this vital information to his computer screen in bold letters on a black background before he could make a commitment to his wife—and have to break it.

“Dinner at 1900h is possible. Possible. I might be late. I have no way of knowing what this ship business is, or when they’ll decide they want to talk. And I’ve got meetings.”

“Setha.”

“I say I have appointments, Judy. People are on their way to my office. Heads of departments. We have problems. That Earth ship.

Our daughter’s hair, I’m afraid, is very much a side issue today.”

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 6 5

Silence on the other end. Judy knew when she’d pushed him absolutely too far. She wasn’t happy, but at least she didn’t sulk out loud.

“Likely 1900h,” he said, trying to mollify that deadly silence. “If not, be sure that something unexpected happened.” He had a dire thought, just before he thought she might hang up on him. “Judy?

Judy, whatever you do,
don’t
talk to the media.”

“Why would I talk to the media?”

“Because of that ship! I’m not talking to the media, I have no particular answers for them, and it’s remotely possible the media will hang around the apartment trying to get information or just the temperature of the household to have something to report. We have a serious matter here, Judy. Turn on the news, for God’s sake.

Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. And don’t let Kathy leave. As happens, it’s a very good night to eat in, and I’ve got to come home. I’m exhausted.”

Small pause. Not a happy pause.
“1900h,”
Judy said, and broke contact.

It wasn’t just a day. It was an unmitigated two days of hell. The ship came on, unhastened, uncommunicative, across several AUs of untenanted space.

The anole got up on his legs on his branch, expanded his throat, and displayed to a rival.

Damned well that’s what it was, that inbound ship: like the lizard, a display of power.

One Andreas Gide, ambassador with special powers. An off-schedule show of force, making them sweat. The simple ability to launch a ship this far, on a special mission. Lizard on a branch.

The context search had produced a result on his screen. Ships arriving for
consultations,
in the long history of relations, inevitably came because of tension between the
Apex Council
and Earth.

Scrolling through the dates, it had meant much the same even before the days of the Earth Federation, while it was still a question of Inner Worlds versus Outsider colonials.

Politics changed. But the stress lines on the charts, dictated by who lived where and where the trade routes went, didn’t change all that much. Location dictated politics, and
consultations
at Concord were always ominous, always, thus far, involving some ten-

6 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

sion between Earth and the High Council at Apex, several times because of some perceived misdeed regarding
ondat
relations.

Well, not at Concord. He’d heard of no problems with his onstation Outsider Council counterpart, the
ondat
representative was perfectly quiet, and he didn’t believe whatever brought Earth inquiry to them was a valid suspicion. Some sort of accusation could always turn up, instigated by politicians with an axe to grind, something could be going on elsewhere, but Concord was incredibly remote from most of human interest.

And, God, he didn’t need problems with Brazis, who was a competent, quiet administrator, to color his lifelong term of office.

He didn’t need any Ambassador Gide—political ideologues with ambitions were always to fear. Earth was known, occasionally, to stir things up on the fringes to make some political point at home.

Spies were also to fear, individuals who might have damning reports to give such a ship, but they were always present, people either sent here by various interests ranging from commercial to political—his chief of security, Dortland, had given him a small watch list—or persons born here and ambitious for advancement they couldn’t get under his administration: his personal list of the latter ilk started with one Lyle Nazrani, who had his financial fingers in the new station construction, who was high up in the banking industry, and who’d raised hell about the arena contractors and a dozen other issues in the new station construction, anything to get on the news.
There
was a man who’d lose no time getting a private interview with Mr. Ambassador Gide, and Reaux was equally determined not to let that happen.

Say what Earth would, however, and no matter what politicking might advance some party on Earth or some ambitious idiot on station—the
ondat
presence had a major say in matters on Concord, too. The
ondat
always had a major say at Concord, and might just very easily decide, for at least a decade, that they viewed Concord as still within their sphere of territory, in which case . . .

In which case the shadowy presence that existed within their sealed section might pull that section off, as they had done, once and twice in the worst times of Concord’s history, when the whole fragile peace had nearly shattered. Let Earth remember
that,
if Earth wanted to interfere with Concord’s smooth running. The Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 6 7

ondat
might suddenly move in a warship and exert a greater power over Concord administration and over what ships came and went, all Earth’s ambitions be damned, and never mind the local human economy. That had happened more than twice—economic disaster, from which Concord had taken decades to recover.

And no one wanted to think of a situation that might cause that quiet presence, that sometimes amusing, sometimes sinister presence, to wake up and become actively involved. They lived with the
ondat
. Concorders saw the sleek, frighteningly massive ships that slid up to the station at irregular intervals and did their business, saying nothing, having no intercourse with any human. They knew that, beyond the walls of that independent section, something lived that veiled itself in shadow, in ammonia-reeking murk, and carried on inquiries that made no human sense . . .
no one
played politics with the
ondat
. That was the very point of Concord’s neutral existence, was it not?

And, pressed to the wall, faced with a threat, as he’d reminded himself last night in the throes of the tax records—he did have good relations with the
ondat,
with (the only name they knew) Kekellen. Earth would be well-advised, would it not, to leave that situation undisturbed?

Kekellen had sent him a message yesterday through the symbol translator:
Ship Earth?
Meaning, roughly, What in hell’s this untimely ship doing here, and should we care?

His own linguists had replied:
Ship Earth unclear word. Reaux talk
this ship. Talk Kekellen soon.

Soon.

Well, that was a stall, no question, and sufficient to the day the trouble thereof. Those pesky abstracts like
soon, if,
and
why
had taken the linguists and the
ondat
ages to work out. He ordinarily hated it when his experts used abstracts to Kekellen. Stick to solids, he’d say. Keep it concrete, especially if it’s an emergency. Don’t seem to promise things.

We
have a situation with the
ondat,
he could legitimately say, however, carefully citing that message. Keep it quiet, please, Mr.

Ambassador Gide.

That
was the ultimate power of a Concord governor, after all, wasn’t it, the ultimate argument for keeping Earth’s fingers off 6 8 • C . J . C h e r r y h