Infinite Day (13 page)

“Let's talk about something else,” he said.
Defer the decision.

So for a few minutes, they discussed their families. Eliza's husband had been seconded from general transport to evacuation and her two sons were now out on the fleet. Ethan recounted his own family news more quickly. His only son was doing defense admin work; as students, his two grandsons were exempt for the moment from the temptation to become soldiers.

As Ethan spoke, he realized that more of his loneliness and ill health surfaced than he had intended. And in the gaze of Eliza's brown eyes, he sensed a tender sympathy.

“My burdens, Eliza, seem to broaden and deepen. In mythology, Atlas bore the weight of just one world on his shoulders; I now seem to bear that of a thousand. And a trillion men and women.”

“It may seem that you bear it alone, but it is not so,” she murmured.

“Not long ago, it was a surprisingly easy matter. I was borne up by colleagues, things were done for me, I could accept advice without wondering what party would benefit.”

Suddenly he realized he had made his decision.
There is no other option.
“Eliza, I will make the broadcast.”

“So you agree with Andreas?”

“Yes. But I have my own reasons. The evidence has reached the point where not to declare to the worlds what happened would be to lie. That I cannot do.”

“Good. What about his very pragmatic thrust—that such news will unite us?”

“It is an undeniable attraction.” Ethan was now aware that he was going to win the debate that afternoon.
They will not be able to resist me
. “What a terrible,
terrible
irony,” he said and gave a long, humorless laugh.

Eliza raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“We need the enemy to keep us together.”

5

I
sabella Danol's journey to the Dominion was already under way as Merral was making his preparations. Seated at the back of the packed and claustrophobic cabin of the Dominion ferry craft, she was not enjoying it.

She unbuckled her safety belt, stretched herself upright, and peered over the headrest in front of her. The air was stale and fetid; someone near her had been sick. In the dull green light—was it meant to be soothing?—she could see that nothing was happening in the six lines of seats ahead. The rest of the delegates seemed to be doing exactly what those around her were; some were having whispered conversations, some were reading, and some were clearly praying. She detected an air of concern and resignation but nothing more.
Remarkable,
given that no one has the slightest idea what is in store for us.
Is it a virtue or a vice that we are so passive? Surely, it is a vice.

From the row ahead of her, she heard a man's voice use the word
hostage
.

No! I reject that word.
Isabella remembered the advice of those early-twenty-first-century books on personal management that she had downloaded from the Library back in Ynysmant.
“You must be positive about yourself. Avoid anything that portrays you as a victim of fate. You are not a victim. Despise weakness!”

She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
I am not a hostage. I will not use that term. I am the Ynysmant delegate on the liaison team.
She realized she was talking a lot to herself these days. Not audibly, of course, although some of the team were muttering. But privately.
I have to defend who I really am.

She heard a chime and braced herself for a new statement, but the message was a repeat. “This is to inform you that we have docked with the parent ship. You will shortly be transferring into it. You may use the washroom cubicles at the rear of the cabin. Otherwise, please keep to your seats for your own security.”

“‘This is to inform you'?” The words infuriated her; the reality was that for three weeks, they had been told almost nothing. With the sudden ending of diplomacy, they had been peremptorily confined to their rooms and relieved of their diaries. When, after two days, the diaries had been returned, they were useless for any communication. The next information had been shortly after the outbreak of fighting, when explosions had shaken the liaison base and debris had clattered down on the roof. Then a Commander Lezaroth (where had he come from?) had sent out a terse note in which he regretted to announce that, without warning, the Farholme forces had started hostilities and that, in an act of outrageous treachery, both ambassadors had been assassinated.

There had been a week of silence before yesterday evening, when they had been summoned, told to pack for traveling, and then in near darkness hustled aboard this ferry craft, and the gut-churning journey had begun.

And now what?
Isabella asked herself.
Must we be pushed around again?

She heard someone crying on the far side of the cabin. Isabella didn't open her eyes. She gave herself new orders.
I will not go down that road. I will avoid both self-pity and apathy
.

She felt a faint surge of acceleration. It was far more distant and without the wild and frightening vibration that there had been when they blasted off.
We are still moving, but where to? and why?

She recalled the whispered rumors that Merral and the Farholme Defense Force were advancing and that, as a result, the Dominion forces were retreating back to space. As she recalled the rumors, she remembered the way that whenever Merral's name came up, her colleagues had thrown her inquiring glances as if she knew what he was up to.

An accusing thought came to her.
I abused my friendship with Merral; I traded on his name.
But she rejected the thought with anger. It had been inevitable that, when she came to Langerstrand, they would all know that she and the commander of the Farholme Defense Force were more than friends. And why shouldn't she have used that relationship? After all, he had messed with her, so why shouldn't she derive some benefit from what had hurt her so much? She restrained a sigh.
Nevertheless, for all his weaknesses, I would be glad to see Merral and his troops burst right through that door.

Isabella heard the man to her right praying in a barely audible whisper.
How strange; I would once have admired that—praying in adversity.
The idea that she no longer found it admirable troubled her for a moment before she rejected the idea as irrelevant.
Somehow praying—at least like that—seems to me a sign of weakness, a giving up of control. There is a time for prayer and a time for action and initiative; this is surely the latter.
She wondered, not for the first time, who had picked this man, someone who had to fight away tears when he talked about how much he missed his family.

I didn't tell him what I miss—being at the center of things. I made it from sleepy little Ynysmant—the town where not only does nothing happen, but it happens very slowly—to the liaison center, the bridge between worlds, only to be marginalized even worse than before.

She clenched her fist.
Well, it won't happen again. What did the old books say? “Don't let yourself become a victim. Take action!”

I will.

She grabbed her bag, squeezed past the praying man, and walked into the washroom. She cleansed her face, brushed her hair, and adjusted her blouse.

She stared at the image in the mirror.
All things considered, you look okay
.

“I will stay in charge of events,” she said under her breath and left the washroom. As she walked past her seat she caught frowns.
Yes, I
am
breaking the orders to stay seated.
She forced herself to smile back and hide her scorn.
Passivity in the face of oppression. We have to do better. I will do better.

She saw other faces turning to her, some expectant.
Many of the younger delegates look up to me. They look to me to take a lead. I must not disappoint them
.

Isabella walked down the aisle to where, at the very front, she could make out the gray, wavy hair of Dr. Lola Munez, the woman they had elected head of the delegate team. There, partly so that she didn't have to raise her voice and partly to make her action less conspicuous, Isabella squatted beside the older woman.

“Isabella! Good to see you.” Both the voice and the dark eyes revealed a drained weariness. “Everyone okay back there? Was the flight all right?”

“They all seem to be okay. I'm fine.”

“Haakon here—” Lola nodded to the young man in the window seat next to her—“says that they have problems with artificial gravity.”

She remembered that Haakon had been in some sort of engineering.

“They can't seem to keep the G-value fixed,” the man added, his face pale. “It's crude.” Then he unbuckled his seat belt. “Tell you what, Isabella; you take my place. I'll sit at the back. We don't want to antagonize them, do we?”

That's the problem, isn't it? We are just too nice. Blessed are the meek, for they will be taken prisoner and not complain.

Lola gave a drained nod; Isabella saw the sagging jaw and the folds of skin on her neck.
She looks old and tired. She is not up to the task. Not under these circumstances
.

As Haakon passed by, she heard him whisper to Lola, “Tell her 'bout the window. See what she thinks.”

Isabella caught the worry in his voice. She took the seat. “I came up to see what you know, Lola. And whether there was anything planned.”

Lola gave a hollow laugh. “We haven't known anything worth knowing for three weeks. And what can we do? Now?” Her eyes briefly flicked to the shuttered window.

“We need to do something.”

“Are you scared?” Lola asked, and Isabella saw from her eyes that she was afraid and that she wanted to admit it.

Isabella gave a little nod. “I suppose so. A little.”
That's a lie; actually I'm more annoyed than frightened. Annoyed at having the opportunity of my life snatched away from me. Annoyed that someone is bungling this
.

“I'm scared,” Lola admitted. “I don't know where we are going.”

Isabella looked at her. “I thought the best guess was that they were keeping us in orbit pending negotiations. In the Ambassadors' ship? The
Dove
?”

Lola's pale lips pursed in some sort of denial. “Haakon has prized the shutter up a fraction. He says he glimpsed the ship we have docked with. It was big, gray, and ugly. It's not the
Dove
.”

So the rumors are true.
“That explains Lezaroth.”

“Yes.” Lola leaned forward. “Take a look yourself. And tell me what you think.”

Isabella twisted her head so she could see through the crack at the bottom of the window. At first she could see nothing; then, gradually, she was able to make out the dark bulk of a massive ship hanging over them with fins and ports, and far away, a line of yellow lights. It was far too big and too ugly to be the
Dove of Dawn
. But below it . . .

She strained her eyes and cupped her hands to eliminate any stray light from the cabin, but still she could see only a vast, formless grayness that seemed to deepen downward.
How very odd
.

She turned to Lola. “I don't see any stars.”

A tremor passed over the woman's lips. “That's because there aren't any.”

“Meaning?” A terrible sense of dread came upon Isabella.

“We have entered Below-Space. They are taking us to the Dominion.”

A bare hundred meters away, on the bridge of the
Nanmaxat's Comet,
Commander the Margrave Lezaroth was standing watching as Captain Benek-Hal and two crewmen worked at checking the ship out. On the main wallscreen was a 3-D image of the
Comet
with the ferry craft hanging underneath it like some strange parasite. On the subsidiary screens were various data outputs. Lezaroth could not fully understand all the symbols—civilian and military ships had different codings—but he was fairly certain there was nothing to give concern. And that was a source of gratification; they had executed a tricky docking maneuver at close to the maximum permitted speed and had safely descended into the shallow Nether-Realms without completing a full systems checkout.