The Alliance (35 page)

Why did she stand outside her class, observing them dispassionately
? She’d never sensed the emotion in another Adept. Even the Non-Adept didn’t see them as she did.

Non-Adept.

The word made her cringe, as if not reaching telepathic communication was a personal failure and not a genetic accident. They might as well choose the distance between an individual’s eyes to define status.

She could feel her companion’s mind preparing for the ritual greeting that opened the gathering. Originally designed to bond the four Tetrarchs and strengthen their ability to communicate telepathically across the distances separating their capitals, it had become a vehicle for impressing the Non-Adept with the majesty of their rulers. At its heart was the extension of the simple parlor trick of several Adepts standing around an object and using telepathy to build a composite picture in each mind, all details revealed. The exercise focused the minds, increasing their ability to communicate at a distance. This might have been the intention centuries ago, now it was just pomp and circumstance.

“Child, do not denigrate what you don’t understand.”
Her thoughts had leaked, catching the Tetrarch’s attention. “
These rituals provide comfort to others and a goal to some. The Adept are this world’s riches. We have little in the way of natural resources. Iron is our most precious metal and rare on Viridia. The stranger’s ship may have brought disease, but it was made entirely of materials we do not know. We fear the advent of more ships. Where one came, other may follow.”

Kayelle bit her lip in shame. She’d railed against these men without thought. The Tetrarch had mind-shared the terrifying truths discovered in the stranger’s ship. Its builders commanded immense powers, impossible to replicate here for the lack of raw materials. Muscle and sinew could do much, especially when focused by levers and pulleys, but, apart from windmills and domesticated beasts, they were the only source of power on this planet. The simplest device on the stranger’s ship could do what several hundred men couldn’t.

There was worse. One of the strangers had lived long enough for the Tetrarch to scan through the agony jumbling his thoughts. Thousands of worlds lay beyond the visible sky, every one rich in the resources Viridia lacked. The pictures the Tetrarch shared felt unreal. Vast structures made of precious iron, majestic mountains soaring to the sky, immense seas, and limitless deserts, all things unknown here, and frightening in their strangeness.

The Tetrarchs were right. More strangers would come. Viridia must be ready.

* * * *

“Why not?” Jean-Paul sensed Dael’s support and fought down a smile. Peter rarely gainsaid his wife, Jean-Paul’s mother. “Karrel fooled Belen, who was far better than the Tetrarchs and you did it regularly to the group mind. Jack could use the portal I’ve left in Limbo to drop me at the gathering without compromising the method. It’s perfect timing.” Peter didn’t interrupt him. This was a good sign. “Leave it too long and their fear will take hold.”

“What do you hope to achieve?” Peter dropped the gauntlet. Jean-Paul must pick it up or back down.

* * * *

Jack exited the portal above Viridia and engaged the display screens, giving Jean-Paul a superb aerial vista.

“It is green,” Jack said. “Are there any legends of space travel? The name is unlikely to be an accident, but you’d only see it from out here.”

“What do your instruments tell you?” Jean-Paul had other concerns.

Jack had acquired a Federation survey vessel and had the full range of exploration scans at his disposal. He’d used it initially to make a detailed survey of Feodar’s World, updating the work done by Gabrielle’s scout ship thirty-five millennia ago.

“Spheroid, flattened slightly at poles, maximum variation in surface elevation is six hundred feet. Homogenous surface layer of plant detritus carrying large reserves of water is twice this depth. The high vegetation levels have elevated Oxygen level by two percent from standard. Magnetic anomalies suggest large metal deposits in the bedrock, probably accessible only by deep mining except in three places where bedrock reaches surface.”

“Printouts?”

“Coming up.” Rachael, Jack’s wife and a former Federation agent, had insisted on accompanying them. “I owe these people,” she’d said, and Jean-Paul knew she was speaking about the imprinting.

“Mark the four capital cities on the maps,” Jean-Paul said. “It will give me a reference point.”

“Yes, sir!” Rachael threw him a derisive salute. “Three bags full, sir!”

“Please mark the four capital cities on the map,” Jean-Paul amended.

Telepathic communication carried so much more than words and Rachael was still new to it. She insisted the words contain the courtesies as well. The red in her hair was no accident and she didn’t entirely trust the Alliance. They took more risks than was logical for immortals in her view. Jean-Paul hoped she gave her husband more latitude than she gave the rest of the family. He’d heard her question Peter sharply more than once and Dael had whispered a secret to him just before they left. Pregnancy brought mood swings and Jack was in for a hard time.

“The gathering has begun.” Jack monitored more than the instruments. “It’s time for our entrance.”

* * * *

Kayelle stood at the rear of the balcony, hidden from the Great Square, as the four Tetrarchs projected an image with their minds, making the stone cube in the center of the Square appear to lift and rotate on its vertical axis so the different colors on each face blended into one, the green of Viridia. The reaction from the crowd proved the wisdom of keeping symbolism simple.

She’d had her audience with the Tetrarchs, sharing everything she knew about the diseases from the stranger’s ship, including her suspicions about the purpose of the device containing them. They’d had trouble accepting this concept and she could hardly advance the memory of a dream as validation.

Bored with the familiar ritual, a distant rumble distracted her. It sounded like thunder, but the sky was clear of clouds. It persisted, impinging on the ceremony enough for the Tetrarchs to cut it short. The stone cube appeared to return to its position on the plinth.

Heads turned now. The crowd collectively faced the East and the source of the approaching roar. It was a speck at first, but grew quickly to a bat-winged shape. Its color changed from black to silver as it drew near and then hovered one thousand feet above the square. The roar changed pitch. A beam of intense light sprang from its underside, striking the top of the cube and in its center a male figure formed, its features indistinct.

“Greetings,” he said. “May I land my ship here?”

Shock held everyone motionless, Tetrarchs, Adept, and Non-Adept alike. Only Kayelle retained the power of speech. “How much room do you need?” she asked.

The figure appeared to turn, facing her. “If you could ask the people to clear the square, it would be adequate.”

The Southern Tetrarch turned to her and nodded. He’d recognized the figure as the focus for a mind projection.

“We will begin immediately.”
Kayelle used her mind, not her voice.

“Thank you.”

The beam of light vanished, taking the figure with it.

The four Tetrarchs took charge of the operation and the Non-Adepts obeyed the instructions of the Adepts scattered amongst them, moving to ring the Square with a crowd twenty deep in places.

“Is this enough space?”
Kayelle asked, looking up at the ship hovering above.

“Yes, thank you. I am landing now.”

The ship descended, growing in size and detail. When it flew a hundred feet above them, the clothes of the people lining the square began to flutter in a strange wind. Kayelle had joined the Tetrarchs at the balcony and she felt the wind pushing her back. It was warm and vibrating with an intensity to set her teeth on edge. Three tubular columns grew from the ship’s underside, extending twenty feet downwards, the bottom sections pivoting to become feet. They touched the ground gently and the roar died away, taking with it the wind. The silence lasted for almost a minute before a door opened and a ramp extended to the ground.

A figure appeared at the top of the ramp and descended. He wore a one-piece body-hugging garment in Viridian green and Kayelle recognized him.

It hadn’t been a dream after all.

Kayelle watched her last patient leave and smiled. It was twenty-six days since Jean-Paul arrived. The first days were chaotic, but he’d charmed the Tetrarchs, exhibiting none of the one-way communication that had frustrated her in her dream.

“Kayelle,” Jean-Paul’s voice turned to her. “Could you come with me?” He stood at the steps leading down into the Square.

“Of course.” She smiled her pleasure and crossed to his side.

It wasn’t strictly necessary for him to take her hand to assist her down the steps, but neither of them commented. It was just another step on their way to becoming lovers.

He wouldn’t be her first. Her Adept tutor had that honor, a man imprinted in his forties and gentle with her. Her second was a Non-Adept. A boy her physical age when she was still nineteen, with more eagerness than experience. Others had followed, one of the privileges of an Adept fully trained in contraception, but none stood out in her mind.

“That’s sad.”

Jean-Paul rarely betrayed how completely he scanned them. She felt certain the Tetrarchs didn’t know.

“They don’t.”

“Why do you share these things with me?”
She felt genuinely puzzled. Jean-Paul was an astute individual, the perfect guest. He had no reason to share these things with her. Her first loyalty was to Viridia.

“I know.”
His thought was incredibly gentle. “
I would have it no other way.”

“Where do yours lie?”
It was more than curiosity.

“My family.”
She’d touched his lodestone. She could feel it.

“I’d like to meet them.”

“One day.”
Jean-Paul smiled.

She smiled. “Where are we going?”

“I thought I’d visit the mine.”

It was his one overt gift to Viridia, the knowledge to locate a massive body of rich iron ore accessible through the side of a low monolith, the site of a stone quarry, and twenty miles from the capital. His gentle prompting had started them thinking on the infrastructure required for the large scale smelting of the ore as a cooperative venture between the four tetrarchies so all shared equally in the output.

“Will we take your ship?” She’d been inside his ship and thought it amazing that he’d traveled across the vastness of space within its confines.

“I need to shift it from the Square,” he said. “The Tetrarch has given permission for me to move it closer to the harbor. There’s a plot of vacant land he’s set aside for my use.”

Kayelle felt her smile broaden. The land abutted her parent’s home and she’d shift home now her duties to the sick had ended. Her great grandfather was not without guile. He’d noted the growing attraction with approval and fostered it by every means. She let Jean-Paul lead her into the ship, noting the ring of Adepts appearing around the Square to keep the area clear.

“Take the surveyor’s seat,” Jean-Paul indicated the right-hand of the three full-length couches. “The computer will do most of the work, but I’ll ride the hot seat.”

He helped her to strap in and then took his place in the central pilot’s couch. Control columns grew on either side of him, and a console deployed from the ceiling, surprising Kayelle.

“Just relax,” he said. “Pre-flighting this beast takes a while.”

A screen on the console came alive with a list, which scrolled down in response to his activities, meaningless to Kayelle. A distant rumble, more felt than heard in the beginning, grew until her couch quivered with the ship’s eagerness to depart. The screen above Jean-Paul displayed the empty Square and she started when the buildings began to shrink, her only sensation was a slight increase in weight pushing her deeper into the cushioning of the couch. She felt Jean-Paul’s reassurance in the background of her mind, but it wasn’t necessary. The moment of surprise had passed and she was fascinated.

“We’ll level out at thirty thousand feet and start gliding toward the mine. It will reduce the noise footprint over the herds. We don’t want them stampeding everywhere.”

Kayelle hadn’t thought of the vast herds supplying the capital with meat, but she nodded her understanding, the habits of a lifetime of verbal communication asserting themselves.

The rumble died to a mutter as the ship tilted, raising her head a little above her feet, and then died away to a barely felt vibration. The Great Square, diminished to a dot by their ascent, began to move down the screen, slowly at first and then rapidly as the ship gathered speed.

“We’ll be there in twelve minutes,” Jean-Paul said. “I’ve programmed it below Mach 1 or the sonic boom would destroy my good intentions.” He supplemented his words with mental pictures of the effect of exceeding the speed of sound, neatly forestalling her questions.

His demonstration of how completely he sensed her thoughts triggered an impish impulse. Kayelle began to build a fantasy within her mind, drawing on glimpses of his mind and her memories of former lovers. She kept adding embellishments until he responded.