Tropic of Creation (13 page)

“Hold fire, Lieutenant …” he said.

At that moment Colonel Tenering burst onto the flight deck, even as the event came hurtling through, taking with it chunks of what had been, until then, Eli Dammond’s life.…

Sweat dripping down his sides, Eli got up from his crouch near the door and paced his cell, walking nine steps in one direction, nine in the other, and back again. Sometime in that hour of pacing he thought he saw a movement. The gob of paste that he had thrown down was inching along the floor. Amoebalike, it scrunched itself up and extended its forward portion, drawing up the back.

Eli sat down and watched it. It was heading for the wall, where it stopped, wriggling in place, then disappeared inside. The wall closed up behind it, leaving a small bruise-mark.

He sat for a very long while, watching the bruise lighten. Then it began to swell. He watched with amazement as a white bubble half his size ballooned from the wall. From within the sack, a voice came, barely in hearing range. “Move closer.”

Eli probed the bubble with his finger, slipping it inside to no ill effect.

“Inside, inside, can’t you?” came the voice.

The bubble elongated, almost beckoning. With nothing to lose, Eli moved toward the wall, entering the bubble.

He found himself sitting in a small gallery, knee to knee with an ahtra in what must be a virtual environment, utterly flawless in its detail. The individual wore odd, patternless clothes that, in the folds, flashed iridescent green. It was, he suspected, the gomin that he had encountered in the PrimeWay.

“I can’t stay long. I hope you don’t mind,” the gomin said. “Would the words tend wrong? I’ve been studying.” The gomin spoke softly, the deep voice almost a purr. “Yours is Congress Worlds Standard, would that be wrong? I hope I haven’t been backminding all this span without success. I’ve worked hard to get here, Eli Dammond. Don’t waste my time. There isn’t much of it.”

“I can understand you.”

The gomin’s data tendril jerked in surprise at the sound of Eli’s voice. “This meeting verges on improper ways. Decide now if you will risk any consequences.”

Any meeting his jailers would find improper, Eli was most eager for. “I accept.”

The gomin relaxed her position. “You are conducive to our converse, then?”

“Yes.”

“That is very commodious of you. You give me two happinesses.” The gomin relaxed even further, slouching and drawing one knee up to support a languid arm. “Eli Dammond, do not tend to believe what Maret Din Kharon says about me. She inclines to be conventional. I will tell you about me. I am susceptible to censure for being like you.” She looked about her, her eyelids closing up for a moment. Opening her eyes again, she said, “We do not have much time. I have tried to find a way that would not offend.”

“Speak, then, if we don’t have much time.”

“Thank you, I take that for permission.” The robes
rustled, flashing colors in response to movement. “You are predisposed to be the enemy, Eli Dammond. But gomin like me have an—interest—in human ways. Because we tend like you in that we have no seasons. I would know some matters about you. How alike do we tend to be, how do you function without chaos, and is it a perfect life? You can’t answer all at once,” she said. “Start somewhere, please.”

Now, this might be exploited. Maret had said that information was not free among her people. So then, if the gomin wanted information, the gomin would pay.

“Let’s start with what I wish to know. Then I’ll tell you what
you
wish to know.”

“That would not be fair. I risk that you, as the enemy, will be unlikely to honor your side of it. Please realize I would not speak so bluntly if our limited time together did not preclude courtesies.”

“Then we’ll alternate, answer for answer.”

The gomin sat up, more attentive now. “Answer for answer. That would be fair. I begin.”

“You have already had one question. I answered that I am willing to converse with you.”

“Ask, then. But do not ask me about escaping. I tend to be a gomin, but I am no traitor.”

Jumping to the heart of it, Eli asked, “What is happening to my people on the surface?”

“That would depend on the … vone.”

“What are the vone?”

“They are … as they are.” The gomin fidgeted with her robes. “Objects of devotion, you might say.”

“Myth or reality, then?”

“Oh, both, certainly. It is a continuum, you perceive.”

Eli waited. “But what
are
the vone?”

“I answered.”

“Poorly.”

“The vone,” the gomin continued, “are understood as
death and life, with the power over us all. They might be, in your view, our gods. Above, they may accept or reject us. Soon Maret Din Kharon will ascend to meet them.”

“Maret is going to the surface?”

“That is another question, Eli Dammond.”

Eli resolved to frame his questions more carefully. “Your turn.”

The gomin blinked again, this time keeping her eyes closed longer, as though listening to something. When she opened her eyes, she said, “Perhaps there will be no point to all this. When you leave, all will be disposed as it was. Knowing of human things, might I not be more miserable than ever before?”

“Is that your question?”

“No. Thank you for that allowance, Eli Dammond. I see you do not take advantage of me. My question: How free are you humans among yourselves with matters of close sexual contact, and knowing who is conducive to receptivity and when? Would it be wonderful? Would it be—this is your word—
paradise?”

Eli plunged ahead: “We can ask if the other person is interested.” He thought of Luce Marzano, and how he would have pursued her but could not, under the circumstances. “Sometimes we don’t take any action, because the other person is clearly not available, such as being someone else’s partner, or being under your power or command.”

“That would be complicated.”

“Sometimes.”

The gomin said softly, “You didn’t answer about paradise.”

Paradise is the place you used to have, that you can’t return to
. But he answered, “No, it’s not paradise. But maybe it’s good enough.”

The gomin blinked, long and slow.

Eli took his turn. “What does Nefer want from me?”

“One can’t know the Most Prime’s mind, certainly.”

“Guess,” Eli insisted.

“Nefer might want to punish you.” She plucked at her robes.

“That’s not much of an answer.”

“Neither was yours,” the gomin countered. “But perhaps she seeks a way to use you to gather power. It happens she is an important static, but thwarted. Hemms is only four years her senior, so Hemms Pre Illtek will live long, forever shading Nefer Ton Enkar in his leadership.”

The gomin posed her question: “Again about paradise, do your rules surrounding close sexual contact suggest that you are constantly unfulfilled and therefore not deeply happy?”

Eli answered: “Our ways are all we know. But I’m glad we aren’t—censored—as you are. For some of my people, sexual rules can be troubling. But we are freer than you. As for paradise, that changes with circumstance. For me paradise is rejoining my command. Do you see?”

The gomin hesitated. “Would that be your next question?”

“No.” Eli asked: “Tell me what it means to be static or fluxor, and why you set such store by it.”

“I think you may have asked two questions, Eli Dammond.”

He shrugged.

The gomin drew up her knees and folded her arms around them, as though lost in thought. “Static and fluxor. That is the slant of our lives. You see it all around you. By chance, I am a fluxor, for instance.

“Things are not separate and—fundamental—you perceive. They are in relation to each other, so we are taught. In relation to other fluxors, and certainly, statics, I am an extreme. I tend toward unusual interests. Curiosity—your word? This may entail risk and higher emotion. Sometimes one tends to bend the traditions. Statics will find this offensive. But I do not despise statics, though they
may despise gomin. Statics are our leaders of late—for the last thousand cycles. They are prone to administration of affairs. One would find weariness in such things. And of course, statics are not conducive to sexual converse, so one is grateful to be a fluxor.”

“It is confusing, these roles of static and fluxor,” Eli said.

“These are the ways we know,” the gomin said. “But now it is my turn …” Suddenly she closed her eyes. When she opened them, she looked alarmed.

The bubble evaporated, and Eli was aware once more of his cell. In the next moment, the door opened, and a guard entered, bringing food.

It was the chance Eli had been waiting for: a single guard, the door left ajar.

Maret’s face hovered in front of him. Someone had sawed off the back of his head. Her face came closer to him. “I have sent for a physiopath, Eli Dammond.”

They had bound him, arms and feet, where he lay on the mat in his cell. As his sight cleared, so did his memory.

“They said you fought harder than they thought a human would tend to do. Therefore they had to beat you harder. I am very deeply sorry, Eli Dammond.”

He turned his face to the rubbery wall, hating the sight of her.

His escape lasted as far as the third side corridor, where he walked among the dwellers, remaining calm, acting like he had business elsewhere. As he did. They tolerated this, it seemed. But at the next turn, the guards were waiting.

He had time to think that their markings were very pale, and thus they would be statics, who would be harsher with him. Then he took out the nearest ahtra, turning to the next.

They did not understand street fighting, which gave
him a considerable advantage for the first fifteen seconds. Then, once he was down, they set on him, beating him exclusively on the right side of his body.

Maret explained this was their tradition, not to hit on the left side, near the side of the head where the data tendril was seated. She seemed proud of the fact that the guards showed such restraint.

“Nobody ever taught you folks how to fight,” Eli muttered.

Maret was very quiet then. “You break the rules when you fight,” she said almost inaudibly.

So I’ve been told
.

M
aret sped through the chute, stretched out in the flattened car, making herself a fleshy bullet. The privacy of the chutes was worth paying for today. Although it was her right to purchase a Data Guide’s services, Nefer’s ire called for discretion.

Nefer had always paid, and now Maret saw the folly of handouts. By her patronage Nefer controlled Maret. Cutting off funds for training purposes, she forced Maret to access the few credits her first kin net had reserved for her.

Maret tried to remember how it was that she had become so dependent on Nefer. The Most Prime Nefer had sought her out when Maret was still a child. According to Nefer, Maret’s gene scans showed a promising scholar, and Nefer had need of a scholar-servant, finding meaning in the richness of the Well. Maret dispatched her role as Data Illuminator with scrupulous confidentiality—unlike the powerful Data Guides whose discretion Nefer did not trust. In her more cynical frame of mind, Maret thought it served Nefer’s interests to use her as an intermediary. For those tracing data draws could not tell whether Maret
accessed information for her own scholarly pursuits—which were many—or for Nefer’s secretive administrative and political needs.

Leaving the chute, Maret lost no time crossing PrimeWay. At this extreme end, a small crowd had gathered at the Meridian, watching as the sun line elongated increment by increment along the wall, informing the hab, from the remote ocular Up World, of the approach of the season. More than a tradition, light relayed from above was the hab’s last link to sidereal time, a link that must never be broken.

As she hurried across PrimeWay, the sun line seemed to point at her, saying,
Hurry, hurry…

Arriving at last at Tirinn Vir Horat’s imposing lobe, Maret found the forward gallery teeming with workers. Some were plugged into trunks clustered like cilia over the data pedestals. They moved about with the distracted look of those fully engaged, researching issues in backmind while developing heuristics and pattern searches in foremind. Tirinn’s Paramount Locator noted her standing there and motioned for her to enter. Nemon Es Marn accorded her his personal attention, graciously choosing to ignore whether Nefer paid or did not. He conducted her into a narrow way just outside the busy lobe, where they passed other dwellers seated on a bench along the wall, who looked up resentfully as she passed by the queue.

In front of Tirinn’s chamber, Nemon gestured forward a Second Data Custodian. She carried a tray bearing a small tube of water and a plate of lorel. For courtesy, Maret took a sip of water. Nemon and the custodian then retreated, leaving her to summon calm. She never knew what she would find in the chamber before her. Since it was a data stage, it could be anything.

Once it had been the surface of a traveling hexadron. They had conducted their lessons hurtling through space, with radiation setting off quick fires in their eyes. Other
unsettling exercises placed her Up World, with sky and things that swelled out of the ground. Down World was a place of routine and safety, but Up World was a realm of chaotic and shifting perils. Tirinn’s job was to accustom one to such an experience. For those like Maret, ascending for the first time, it was a daunting task. She had studied Up World. But she had not felt it.