Forge of Heaven (22 page)

“Your opinion of him?”

Opinion. He’d never formed an opinion of Brazis, nothing that he could put thoroughly into words. “Cooperative. Cooperative in station affairs—cooperative, actually, in administrative matters.” Was
Brazis
under some suspicion? He rated Brazis as too smart for that, too smart to create an incident. There was no motive for him to do that. But God knew what Apex Council might have done.

“A busy man, stretched very thin by all these powers, one would think.”

“He delegates, delegates quite a lot, in fact. His proxy routinely Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 4 1

sits on local Council and another, I suppose, though don’t know, at Apex. Chairman Brazis seems deeply involved with the PO. Handles it quite hands-on, as happens, as much as I know about his work. At least I never find him surprised by a situation.”

“A competent man, in your judgment. An active manager. I take it you view him somewhat as an ally.”

And this was preparatory to what? Going where?

“A scientific administrator,” Reaux said, “but not specifically a scientist. A political administrator, but not political.” He found no sense in this thread of questions. “Is there some grounds for worry about him?”

“In continual close contact with a world that has, perpetually, a member of the First Movement in residence. You might observe that, too.”

“Yes.” Meaning the Ila herself, immortal and changeless. He absolutely didn’t know now where Gide was going with this, but he didn’t like the direction. Not at all.

Again the hand extruded, and touched the pot, leaving condensation fingerprints. “Do you get pots from Marak’s World, too?”

“Pots and fabrics. Replicated, of course.”

“Primitive. Yet one is given to understand a certain portion of the populace is quite technologically skilled. Even sophisticated.”

“That’s so.” Ominous turn. If Earth was taking an interest in the PO’s domain, it was an outstandingly bad idea, bound to have repercussions clear to Apex. “The tribal arts provide a certain sense of identity. So I understand. A sense of community.”

“A certain persistent conservatism?”

“I don’t see that has any application to conservatism in our sense, Mr. Ambassador. The downworld inhabitants are fitted to their own world. They have their history. Their culture is not ours.”

“Yet stationwide, you share their language.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that provoke a feeling of community?”

“Among us, among stationers, yes, it’s a signal difference, us from other stations, but not one we share with them.”

“In fact, you share the Ila’s language, the language of the First Movement. And the culture you support down there is the culture of the First Movement—is it not?”

1 4 2 • C . J . C h e r r y h

Formless implications at every turn. And now this nonsense.

“Necessarily, I suppose, since it’s the one we have to deal with.”

“Necessarily so, because the language doesn’t change. There are living speakers of a dead language—down there.”

“Hardly a dead language, sir. As you observe, it also has a million speakers up here.”

“The language of the First Movement. A very, very dead language everywhere in civilized space. And freighting some very old concepts within its vocabulary.”

This was approaching ridiculous. “I’m not a linguist, sir. I speak it because I have to communicate with a station that speaks it. As the
ondat
themselves, I might add, have an investment of knowledge in it, and also speak it. Without it, we couldn’t communicate with them, either.”

“Do you possibly think its thoughts?”

“No, Mr. Ambassador. My
culture
is Earth. I assure you I think the thoughts of a person born in Paris.”

“While you support a living museum and collect pots from the Ruined Worlds. Immune to time. Literally immortal. Resistant to change.” The sphinx moved off, touring the room.

“Sir,” Reaux said to the sphinx’s back, “I gave Earth up, Mr. Ambassador, not because I don’t love Earth, but rather because I do.”

“A pretty speech.”

“I was born in Paris.”

“You married a colonial, however.”

“My wife, sir, is first-generation. Her grandfather, Martin Mandes-Callendish, is the second son of Astrid Jorgensdottir, head of . . .”

The sphinx turned slowly and faced him across the room. “I know the Mandes family. Very respectable.”

At last, a personal connection. Approval. Thank God. Dig long enough in the foreign service, and there tended to be some personal connection recent enough to touch. “She’ll be delighted to have any news of them, I’m quite sure.”

“Her grandfather is quite well placed, isn’t he? One assumes the family exchanges messages.”

“With every ship.” Reaux didn’t like this tactic—pretend igno-

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 4 3

rance, and then reveal a far deeper knowledge once he answered Gide’s question.

“Information flows throughout the system.” The sphinx glided back toward him and stopped. Extended fingers toward the vase.

“Information down to the atomic level.”

Now he had an inkling what this revolved around. “I assure you, anything that we replicate here is pottery or fabric, containing absolutely nothing else.”

“Replication that was not permitted, in the beginning.”

“We deal in fractals of reality. It’s completely reorganized in the process. It can’t transmit unintended information, and it relies on a technology which I’m told is extremely reliable in that regard, that there’s no more chance of accidentally replicating a nanism than there is of a five-year-old coming up with the formula for chocolate. Are you suggesting there
is
a hazard?”

“The information, Governor. The information of a pot still on Aldestra is in this pot.”

“Still not carrying nanotech. I assure you, those records reside down on the planet, and no nanocele and no nanomachine ever goes through replication.”

“Not as a contaminant in a pot. But the information that produces the pot—is just information. Are you so sure what you’re saying is true—is true?”

“Information doesn’t get off the planet. It does not come to our labs, sir, in any way, shape, or form.”

“Old Earth families still maintain their ties.” The sphinx moved toward him and rested. It had only a face, at the moment, no arms.

“One might say that, too, about old Outsider connections. One wonders if they ever go away, either.”

“There’s been no breath of it. Has there?” Reaux caught a breath and pursued the question to the end. “Are you suggesting—are you possibly suggesting someone might transmit something of that nature from the planet? The only people that communicate are the Project taps.”

“Exactly.”

“I can assure you they’re very thoroughly screened.”

“I’d rather have that assurance from the head of the PO.”

1 4 4 • C . J . C h e r r y h

“I have no authority to ask him to meet with you. I can’t guarantee it.”

“You can ask, however.”

“I can ask.” He was stunned, over all, with the implications in Gide’s assertion: information. Data, escaping the planet, not through replication, but simply through one of the taps physically writing things down. But those were not simple notations. Was that what Gide was suggesting? Was
that
crackpot notion what had brought a starship out here off schedule?

“The
ondat,
” Gide said. “
Kekellen.
Is that how he says it?”

“He or she, we don’t exactly know.” God, another threshold he had to defend, while his stomach was still riled from the last inane maneuver. “He, by convention. Let me say, Mr. Ambassador, I strongly discourage any direct address to his office. Even through our experts.”

“Come now. I’m told this entity sends out inquiries to local flower shops and food vendors. That he has robots making occasional forays out into the station.”

“And takes orange juice and liquid chlorine, the combination of which I don’t want to imagine. We don’t understand him, and this office has worked with him for generations. This entity surveys the entire station at random, for his own reasons. If he wants something, he takes it, and we absorb the cost. That’s Treaty business, and I have to stay by my understanding of my duty, sir. If he does contact you, I urge you in the strongest terms, consult with my staff, and we’ll gladly assist you.”

“You refuse my request to speak to him?”

“The
law,
Mr. Ambassador. I have no choice but refuse.”

“I’m duly impressed. The correct answer.”

Damn him. These were demeaning games. Exceedingly demeaning. And wearing very thin, considering the performance at the plaza. “If you’re satisfied with your accommodation, Mr.

Ambassador, I’m sure you’d like to rest. I have to get back to my office.”

“Premature, Governor. I assure you I have no designs on the
ondat
. But I do come with a purpose, and I do require your cooperation in achieving it.”

“In every regard, sir.” Pots. Fabrics. Nanotech replication. And Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 4 5

taps connected to First Movement tech, writing complex formulae by hand. “You have only to make the request.”

“The Outsider who deals with Marak. This is a new man.”

“Reasonably new.”

“I’d heard the old one had died. Natural causes, I assume?”

“Very advanced age.”

“Knowledge and prior agreements undoubtedly went with that individual.”

“The taps, Mr. Ambassador, are completely under the PO. And they don’t, to my knowledge, have any ability to conceal any business from their own authority. They’re intensely monitored.”

“This new man. I want to see him.”

“Mr. Ambassador, I can’t possibly promise that.”

“You say you have a tolerably good relationship with Chairman Brazis. Get his cooperation. I want this man here.”

A damned diplomatic disaster.

And did he confess to Brazis what the scope of this inquiry might be? “I’ll have to contact the Chairman. And I can’t at all guarantee he’ll consent.”

“This tap is a very young man, I understand. An untested young man. Jeremy Stafford is his name, isn’t it?”

“I’d have to look up the name. I’ll assume you do know.”

“The selection of taps is governed entirely from planetside, isn’t it?”

Was he implying something wrong or dangerous in that selection?

That a First Movement survivor, on the planet, might have affected that selection?

Impossible.

“I’m certain the Chairman doesn’t install questionable people in a position to be selected. Downworld may not run background checks, but I’m very sure the Chairman runs thorough ones.”

“You have great faith in him.”

“That he wouldn’t install someone who wasn’t under his orders . . . I have every confidence.”

The sphinx nodded. “Exactly.”

“What are you saying, Mr. Ambassador?”

“In absence of an interview with the principals themselves, Governor—which I wouldn’t expect you could arrange—I’ve 1 4 6 • C . J . C h e r r y h

come here specifically to see this young man. Get me that. Tomorrow morning at 0900h. I rely completely on your resourcefulness.”

God. Intrigues and accusations. He trusted Brazis’s essential honesty more than he trusted this stranger, this heartbeat-reading monster. Two years to get information to Earth and back. Two years. It was plausible, nearly, that the ambassador was telling the truth—that it was news of this replacement that had launched his mission. The time line could work. Just barely—if the ambassador had left Earth like a shot.

But it could work much better if the ambassador had been visiting worlds somewhat closer, and diverted here on the continuation of a mission. “I’ll talk to the Chairman,” Reaux said. “That’s all I can do. I can’t possibly guarantee you his response will be positive.”

A tone of mild surprise. “But I take you completely at your word, regarding this close cooperation. I expect it.” A hand lifted, an ancient emperor waving off a courtier. “Good day, sir.”

The man-half of the sphinx ebbed down, became featureless carapace. The whole surface turned from blue and violet to shining gold, smooth-shelled beetle.

Reaux hesitated, wondering if a good-bye would even be heard, and asking himself if he was possibly that great a hypocrite. In the end he said nothing, and, tight-jawed, let himself out the door.

His security escort was waiting, by the palm trees in the garden.

Talk to the taps. Talk to one of Marak’s taps, for God’s sake. Suspicions of First Movement tech leaking through their contacts with the planet. Subtle accusations, threatening the foundations of civilization itself.

God! What did a man straight from Earth know about Marak and Brazis’s staff? What judgment could Gide possibly make on what he had never tracked?

Except he came fluent in a language difficult to learn except on Concord, clearly prepared for this inquiry.

Knowledge, however, of what went on day to day in the life of a man, Marak, who’d personally seen the last gasp of the Gene Wars—or the woman the human worlds simply called the Ila, who might once have been Ilia Lindstrom, a combatant in those wars—what
could
Gide really know, when lifelong students of their biog-raphies were frequently puzzled by their actions?

Fo r g e o f H e a v e n • 1 4 7

And the
ondat,
mention of whom Gide had passed so casually, untroubled by threat? Fool. Earth came along periodically bran-dishing some new idea, confident it knew best, sure of the brilliance of some new theory of how the universe ought to run.

Now Earth wanted to get directly, hands-on, involved with a Project tap, because replicated pots and fiber were visually identi-cal to the originals and Marak’s newest watcher was exceedingly young?

The investigator seemed well-enough prepared he ought to know better—if he weren’t neck deep in some damn theory, some assumption or some set of orders that wouldn’t let him budge from his purpose. That was worrisome in the extreme.

Earth and its quarantine had frozen their own genetic type like a fly in amber, defining by exacting law what was human and what was not. Earth, they’d declared, didn’t evolve anymore, would never evolve again. Nor would the Inner Worlds. Any deliberate genetic change was anathema. Any natural mutation was examined with great suspicion. Natural change in the human genome was allowed, but . . . scrutinized.