Tropic of Creation (44 page)

Maret put a hand on Eli’s arm. “Let her descend, Eli. After the youngster is born, I will send her back to you.”

“And the baby?” Eli asked.

“We will see what happenstances bring.” The deal, all unspoken, was:
If human, the progeny is yours. If not…

He watched Sascha crouched near her bot, probing it, perhaps looking for a way to turn it on.

Eli thought again how like her father she was. He didn’t know what Geoff Olander would have decided in his place; sometimes the price of command was to decide between two bad outcomes. Eli knew it was a terrible risk to let her go. He would not permit it, except for the child she bore, and the reception it would have among humans for whom ahtra were
pocks
and Singers would be … worse. And as for any
combination
—well, that possibility was beyond him right now. All he knew was that Sascha was too young to make this decision. But she was too young for everything that had happened.

The rules had changed. It was a different season.

Eli walked a few paces off with Maret. “I want messages from her, Maret. Regularly. I don’t care how they get to me. Every month, I want her to speak to me. Promise me.” She nodded, and he believed her.

Maret said, “Eli, take the robotics back to the ship. Few ahtra remain here. And you must survive. To tell your story.”

“When the general hears the part about his granddaughter, he’ll have my head.”

Maret’s eyes grew large. “That is a punishment among you?”

Eli smiled.

She nodded. “Figure of speech, one hopes.”

Eli shared that hope.

V
od stood with Zehops and Harn in the middle of the PrimeWay. The smell of burnt hab flesh threaded into his awareness, a scent that reminded him, more than the deserted Way, that their world was turned upside down. They had fought and killed each other, kin against kin. It was over now, but the eerie silence of the Way held the strong memory. Dwellers were slowly clearing out the barricaded portals, but most still avoided the late battleground.

Now Maret had come home, come home from ronid to this altered place, bringing with her the young human female, touched by Up World, passing its strict tests.…

They would meet here, in this most sacred of places where the great shaft to Up World bounced the captured tracked light of the red sun from mirror to mirror, and fell upon the hab: the sunline. It had grown smaller, now barely the length of Vod’s arm. The season was passing, so the ocular confirmed.

Two figures approached. Harn touched his sleeve. “This human is even uglier than the first one.”

It was true that the human sprouted long shanks of hair from her head, down over her shoulders, giving her a pronounced aspect of disorder and unpredictability. If he was not mistaken, there might even be bits of twigs and dirt in it. The female was not so disconcertingly tall as Eli Dammond had been. Vod tried to see her in a favorable light, but Harn was right. She
was
ugly. Still, it must be remembered that the vone took her as their own. And that she was bearing young. This had been confirmed, and when Vod released it into the flow, the response nearly shut down the Well.

A few dwellers could be seen hovering near portals, come to gape at the spectacle of a human, returned from ronid.

Dwellers began to gather along the walls of the Way, trickling in to watch what would befall. Vod suspected every other dweller Down World observed as well, plugged into the flow.

Now Maret was close enough that he could see her face. She was still the old Maret, Data Illuminator, and friend. But by her markings, she had changed: she was bearing young. Leading her strange companion, she stopped a few paces from Vod.

“Extreme Prime,” she said, so perfectly calm, so Maret-like.

A hitch caught in Vod’s throat. “Not yet, Maret Din Kharon. But I thank you. One has—I’ve missed you with two sadnesses.”

With a graceful turn, Maret brought the human slightly forward. She pronounced her name.

Vod heard the dwellers murmur, “Sazza Ol Ander, Sazza Ol Ander.…” There were many more than the last time he looked. They began to spill into the PrimeWay from the restored portals. Some still wore the uniforms of Red, but no one was armed, he was relieved to note.

This Sazza stepped forward. Zehops stirred beside
Vod, and he knew what caused her to lose her composure. It was the eyes. This human had eyes of the deepest ahtran blue. Small, certainly. Eyes like small stones. But so blue …

The human was handing him something, presenting him something with both hands outstretched. Maret indicated he should take it from the human. He did so.

It was a large implement, made of fiber and glass and metal. Though he didn’t know what it was, it felt strangely familiar in his hands. Harn whispered in his ear, telling him the thing he would have soon figured out for himself, were he not so nervous.

It was a lamp. Not so very different from a digger lamp. Larger, not meant to wear on the head. He switched it on. As the light bled across the Way, it struck the sunline on the hab. A collective sigh came from many throats at once. The lamplight was of the primary sun; the sunline was of the red. Combined, it was the light of Up World, as every veteran of ronid would attest.

A wave of emotion rolled through the spectators, cresting at the same time in the data flow. From all sides, the PrimeWay filled as dwellers left their viewing screens to come in person.

To her credit, the human remained calm. Perhaps Maret had coached her in ahtran ways. Or perhaps this was how such a one as a vone accepted would act. Vod passed the lamp to Harn for safekeeping.

“One is grateful for such a fine gift,” he said to Maret, who murmured a translation to the girl.

Footsteps behind him caused him to turn. One of his lieutenants whispered to Harn, and in the next instant the crowd began to move down the Way. Dwellers surged for the upways. It seemed everyone had heard a message of great import, everyone but their leader.

Harn nodded at him. “Nefer,” he said.

Vod bid Zehops take the human into the SecondWay
for safekeeping, and she led the girl away. Around them, the PrimeWay was rapidly emptying. Vod put dignity aside and ran to catch up.

The huge Paramount Borer came roaring down an industrial way. Behind the massive cutterhead, Vod could see Olton, the semiskilled digger, driving with glee. Others clung on to the machine, riding it in an extreme display of disorder. Vod stood in front of it, causing it to lurch to a halt.

“Stand aside, Vod-as,” Olton yelled, “we’re going to smash through!”

Vod thought he would never live to see the day the Paramount Borer came from the digs to Nefer Ton Enkar’s apartments. But it was an interval of strangeness, all in all.

“I thank you, Olton-as. But it will not be required.”

Olton drooped noticeably. Boring through to Nefer’s gallery would have made Olton an instant celebrity in the flow. “Not required?”

Vod gestured for him and his fellow diggers to look ahead, where from their vantage point high in the borer, they could see over the heads of the throng gathered in front.

For word had just reached him that Nefer’s own static guards had brought her out from her impregnable lobe, where she had fled, for what little good it could do.

As Vod pushed forward, the crowd parted for him.

A small clearing lay between him and Nefer. She stood among her former guards. They had not dealt gently with her, or she had fought hard. Her clothes were torn, and she bore the sign of a bruise on her famous patterned cheeks.

She shook off the restraining hands of her captors, but stayed rooted in place, head held high. “One concedes you have won the grand wager, Vod Ceb Rilvinn,” she said, her voice husky, perhaps from an excess of shouting.

“It was never a wager. It was a revolution.”

Her teeth flashed very white for a moment as she savored her next words. “If you didn’t wager on yourself, you bypassed a very great fortune, one regrets to observe.”

“And if you
did
wager on yourself, you have lost more than power.”

She looked like she would have paid much for a wand of snuff at that moment. Or perhaps a mav.

“Now you will deliver us to our enemies, one is given to understand.” Nefer still acted her part, though she would be lucky to keep her life.

“Your sources were ever behind in the flow, Nefer-as. But the warships will not fly. We will find a better use for your great foundry. I envision a different time. We have tried isolation and war. Now we will begin something new.”

“New,” she sneered. “You would tend toward
new.”

Vod spread his hands. “I am a fluxor.”

At this, a cheer went up from the crowd, loudest from Harn, at his side.

“One has noticed.” She could dismiss with her tone of voice, and the merest hint of her face. “Pronounce your sentence, then, digger-fluxor,” she said. “One is in haste to be done with this.”

He was happy to do so. “You will leave, Nefer Ton Enkar, on a world hexadron, the next to come within shuttle flight of HomeWorld. It will be dispatched to the DeepReaches, for distant exploration. You are stripped of your resources, and you must earn your way into the flow of that ship by honest labor. With you goes Hemms Pre Illtek. You may work out between you any disagreements your actions have provoked. You will not return here ever again.”

If she was relieved at his leniency, she gave no sign. Rather, she looked to his side, at someone else.

“You,” Nefer said.

Maret had come up from the crowd to stand beside Vod.

“You.” A look of bafflement came over Nefer’s face. For the first time she seemed like a small static in custody instead of a high prime with her retinue. Vod heard her say in a whisper, “I thought you were a danger to my rule. Your genotype showed … it showed … but you are nothing.”

Maret spoke softly, but in the hush of the crowd, her words carried as far as Nefer’s: “I am all that I ever wished to be, mistress.”

Vod thought it was well said of Maret. Nefer had ever been blind as the hab to Maret’s true worth. He gestured for the guards to take Nefer away.

As the guards led Nefer off, he heard her say: “All the while, it wasn’t Maret, it was Vod. Vod. A
digger …”

Vod allowed himself to throw after her: “Diggers and gomin, Nefer-as. Don’t forget that part.”

Maret looked across the makeshift rug at Vod Ceb Rilvinn, seated opposite her. It would take many intervals for his kin net to be woven into a proper rug for an Extreme Prime. For now, a humble rug would have to do. Knowing Vod, he might prefer it. She hoped he would warm to his new role. Seeing Harn and Zehops sitting in firm support nearby, Maret felt he would not feel far out of category.

Vod was considering her suggestion. He had already retired with his lieutenants twice to discuss it in private. Always, he returned with more questions. Maret answered and waited. Down World, the idea seemed more audacious than when she and Eli considered it UpWorld.

She thought Harn would burst from indignation when he first heard the proposition. Zehops—the gomin that had done so much to help Vod—seemed more amenable.

The Congress World ship had landed. She trusted that Eli had done his best to explain happenstances. But neither she nor Eli—nor Vod—felt the armistice would hold. Who had first broken it could be argued, but who struck first in an act of war would be the only thing worth wagering on.

Vod cleared his throat. “Here is what we—I—have decided.” He looked at Maret with more calm than he might have felt. She herself was losing the markings on her hands, turning cold with apprehension.

“I will present a gift to the general of Congress Worlds.”

Maret closed her eyes. So. She smiled across at him. The technology of ahtran ships, their star speeds so desired by humans. It was the one thing humans desired—and never thought to receive from the ahtra.

“But,” he noted, “there is one condition.”

Condition? There was not much room for conditions, given their happenstances…

“That is, that we bestow an understanding of these star speeds—in increments.” He looked at Harn for a moment, and Maret discerned that Harn was the cautious one, and perhaps not inappropriately so. “An eight percent improvement in human speeds every eight-year increment, as they would measure it.”

“That is a cautious gift, Vod-as.” Maret said it respectfully, looking at the floor. He was, after all, the Extreme Prime.

“Yes,” came his voice. “But it will keep us in relation with humans over a longer span than they might otherwise tend.” He still wore his white rags, but already he sounded like a Prime to reckon with.

It was a conducive gift. The key to the FarReaches. On an equal basis, eventually, with the ahtra themselves. It would require that they come to know each other. And each would suffer change, as a result.

“They are the children of this world, as we are,” Vod said. “This is the ancient truth that Tirinn Vir Horat revealed. Kin, we might say, though distant.” Noting Harn’s scowl, he added, “Very distant.”

“Still …” Maret murmured. Kin was kin.