Voice of the Whirlwind (23 page)

Steward hunched toward her. “You think he died?” Navasky seemed startled by his intensity. He leaned back, took a breath and tried to relax, to ease the taut muscles in his shoulders and arms, act as if the answer didn’t mean anything.

“It seems reasonable,” she said, a bit subdued.

Navasky had all manner of training, as well as genetic adaptation, in reading people, in being able to persuade and manipulate them, and she’d seen something strange in Steward that had made her wonder. He had to get her to talk now, before she decided he was some kind of spy from her Starbright superiors who was trying to find out if she’d babble classified information. He grinned, trying to ease her suspicions. “I’d like to know,” Steward said, “a little about Power social organization. What happens when the Head of Legation dies?”

“They’re completely hierarchical.” The expression in Navasky’s eyes was wondering and a little suspicious. Her wording was precise, as if she were censoring herself, trying not to give anything away. Steward cursed himself for being so obvious. “Only Samuel was authorized to make certain kinds of decisions. If anything major came up now, the current Samuel would have to refer it to their superiors back in Power space for a ruling.”

“And their bosses are months out of contact,” Steward said.

Navasky nodded. Steward had the intuition that he’d got as much out of her as she was ever likely to offer. He drank from his squeeze bulb of water and considered. The Alpha’s biological strike had decapitated the Power hierarchy, left them unable to deal with any major issue or crisis that might arise. It had also devastated the Power population, lowering the efficiency of the colony as a whole, slowing the rate of goods moving into the waiting ships. Replacement personnel were probably on the way, and in the interim they were very likely drafting as many crew out of their ships as they dared for use as replacements. Steward wondered what issue had arisen that had made Curzon and Consolidated Systems so eager to make such an attack, and at that moment. They’d stunned Starbright for at least a year. Why, he thought, was this year so crucial?

Colorado’s voice was wondering. “Does this stuff
mean
anything to you? Why are you asking?”

Steward tried to shrug in an offhand way. “I know someone back on Earth who’s been around the Powers, who really loves them. And he can’t get into space because he’s got the disease, whatever it is.”

Navasky was still watching him, trying to read his body language, his tone. But Colorado seemed to relax. “Yeah. We have those kind of Power lovers here, too.” He shook his head. “Strange people. It’s not even love, I think. It’s like the Powers are something they
need.
”

Navasky quietly dropped her hand from the table and put it on Colorado’s thigh. He looked at her in surprise. She pursed her lips, gave him a quiet shake of the head. Colorado seemed startled, and then it seemed as if a shutter drew across his eyes, closing Steward out. He bent to his plate.

Steward imitated Colorado. He was aware of another set of eyes on him: Reese who watched as he busied himself with his meal, who had been watching all along. And drawn, no doubt, her own conclusions.

*

There was a group of them, each in a uniform jacket cut like the standard Starbright collarless uniform but a dark purple instead of gray, and with a bright red bar sinister sewn across their chests and backs, like the ribbon of a knightly order. They were at the next loading dock down, clustered around one of the medium-sized alloy shipping containers. They had opened the container and some of them were clustered around it, scooping out packing foam, bringing out small plastic boxes.

Steward saw them as he guided a six-tonne canister past them, his head swiveling as he alternated little bursts of his jets, blipping his horn to make certain the path was clear and that others saw him. The people in their deep purple jackets, held to the roof of the docking bay by grip pumps, hardly noticed him. One of them, a small, dark barrel-chested man, had taken one of the plastic boxes to the fringes of the group and had opened it. He was frowning at its contents.

Suddenly Steward was awash in a flood of recognition, images flooding in his mind in swift repetition. Sereng. Icehawks. Outdoor training. Hanging on a rope ladder, twisting in a thirty-knot wind, with the crampon-equipped boots of the Nepalese planted on a flexible rung inches from his nose. Sereng almost buried beneath his pack, smiling, on his belt the big inward-curving knife that looked like the shoulder bone of some prehistoric animal sharpened and turned to steel. His eyes glittering as sharp as the knife.

Heat rose in Steward’s skin. His weariness vanished. His glance flickering from Sereng to the alloy pallet; he halted the container’s motion, spun it, dropped it gently into place. He signaled another crewman to turn on the electromagnets that would hold it to the pallet, feeling the solid impact beneath him as the container slammed down on its ferrous strips. Then Steward detached his maneuvering pack and kicked off straight for where the Nepalese was gazing into his box. He tumbled in space, reversing himself, and landed boots-first on the Velcro strip directly in front of Sereng.

The man looked up. His face was fuller than Steward remembered, his body softer. His eyes were distant, preoccupied, not at all surprised. He had grown a mustache. The voice was the same. “Captain,” he said.

“Hello,” Steward said. “It’s been a long time. What are you doing way out here?”

Sereng quietly closed his box. There was something that gleamed in it, with coils and a space for a tiny fuel cell, a little refrigeration unit smaller than a pack of cigarettes.

“I’m a member of the Power Legation,” Sereng said. “A Power citizen. Couldn’t you tell by the uniform?”

Surprise flickered through Steward. Sereng had been a soldier, not a trader or diplomat. He couldn’t see what use the Powers could have for the man.

“I don’t know Brighter Suns uniforms yet. I’m Starbright. It’s just an accident that I’m here at all.”

Sereng nodded. He didn’t seem to be surprised at all that Steward was here. “It’s a good job,” he said. “I’m with the Powers all the time. It’s where I want to be.”

There was something wrong with Sereng’s eyes. They were clouded somehow, turned inward. They weren’t the eyes Steward remembered.

A breathy voice sounded near Steward’s elbow. He jumped. There was an alien there, its lower voice box speaking precise, educated English, like a video announcer.

“Violation,” it said. Its arms moved in rapid patterns. Steward flinched from the sourness of the thing’s smell. “You are not to speak to Legation personnel. This is a violation of your contract. Your policorp will be fined.”

“My apologies. I know this man from years ago. I was not aware he was a Legation member.”

“Were you not briefed on the significance of the uniform? This man is a quarantined Legation member. I will file a protest with the Starbright consul.”

Wonderful, Steward thought. All he needed was to be the center of another incident crossing Lal’s desk.

“I do apologize. A protest will not be necessary now that I have been warned.” He looked over his shoulder. “Sorry to bother you, Sereng,” he said, but the Nepalese had already turned away, heading back to the group around the container.

“Away, away,” said the Power. Its long ropy arms were making scissoring motions at Steward’s knees, as if offering to slice at his hamstrings. Steward saw Colorado moving toward him, gliding with deliberate haste along the Velcro strip.

“Yes, yes. My apologies,” Steward said, and let the Power chivvy him away.

Colorado’s big hand reached out and slammed down on his shoulder. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. He was almost dragging Steward away. “Don’t you know about the goddamn redstripes?”

“No. I don’t. What’s the matter?”

Colorado was furious. “Somebody fucked up, that’s the matter. You were supposed to get a lecture about not talking to Power personnel.”

“One of them was an old friend. Are they really Power citizens?”

Colorado looked over his shoulder at the group, his fingers tightening on Steward’s shoulder. “Damn right they are. They’re the only humans allowed into the Power section of the centrifuge. They’re the crazy ones.”

“The ones who love them.”

Colorado spat. The globe of saliva traveled out into the room and vanished into the distance. “The ones who have cheese for brains,” he said.

Steward looked up as a shadow passed between him and the big bank of floodlights that illuminated this part of the dock. It was Reese, the straps of her maneuvering jets wrapped around her body, hovering over him with quick bursts of peroxide.

“Trouble, Steward?”

Steward looked up at her. “I knew one of those guys from before. I was in the Icehawks with him. But now they’re taboo or something.”

“The ones in the purple jackets with the stripe,” Colorado said. “Stay the hell away.” His eyes narrowed. “Icehawks?” he said.

“I’m older than I look.”

Reese had tumbled slightly in space, was craned over looking at the Power citizens through her wide-spaced legs. “I know one of those people, too,” she said in surprise. “The tall redhead. She was in a recce unit on Archangel.” She was silent for a moment. When she looked at Steward her eyes were questioning. “Can they
all
be ex-military?” she wondered. “What do the Powers need them for?”

“They work for Samuel,” Colorado said. “They build his media image, arrange for release of information from Power space, negotiate trade agreements.”

“Why does he need former military?” Reese demanded.

“I dunno,” Colorado said. “They never leave the Legation, so far as I know.”

Steward said nothing. He was thinking about Sereng’s eyes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Steward had something new in his cabin. Like SuTopo with
his bonsai, Fischer with his mountain, and the former occupant of Steward’s cabin with the labia of anonymous women, Steward had refined his aspirations to a single image. He’d cut it from a magazine the day
Born
left Vesta behind.

It was a picture of a video set in a blue plastic case. The picture was a jagged haze of interference lines. Behind the interference, a vague image could be seen, or perhaps imagined.

The object of Steward’s desire.

The picture was in his mind, mingled with the patterns of the engine analogs that still pulsed in Steward’s brain, the images that lingered even after a six-hour sleep. The high-g engine burn out of the Belt was over, and
Born
was on its fifty-two-day return trip to Charter Station—Earth and Vesta were farther apart than they had been during the outward leg, and the return journey would be longer. To give everyone a break after the long three days of one point five g, the flora’s centrifuge was locked in place, and Steward floated weightlessly in webbing, his arms drifting out in front of him like the forelegs of a dead animal.

He was thirsty. His body was a collection of aches. The engine analogs wouldn’t leave his mind.

But Steward was alive. The assassin hadn’t come, and Steward rejoiced in the intensity of the aches, the thirst, the cold fire of the mental afterimage. He’d got in and out of Vesta, he had a dozen spikes of bootleg data, and he felt the touch of the Alpha on his shoulder, saw his image behind the interference pattern thrown in front of his eyes by the enemy, by their security. He was getting close to things.

Time to get closer. Time to see what was on the spikes.

*

He closed his cabin door and locked it, then disconnected his cabin comp from the ship’s central computer just in case Taler had some kind of surveillance program running on the Starbright employees who lived on their ships. Then he’d put in the first spike and scanned it till he found filesecur:stew ard.1 . He could feel the nerves in his fingers tingling. This was what he came to Vesta to find.

He took a deep breath and punched it up on the screen.

The first page was a warning of the penalties—imprisonment, behavior modification therapy, or execution—incurred by anyone of insufficient security grade who read the dossier. Some of the information contained in the file was accessible only to individuals of the highest security grade.

There was a rush of pleasure up Steward’s spine. He smiled. This was going to be good.

The first part was pedestrian stuff, medical history, vital statistics, early biography. The text was filled with endnotes referring him to medical and psychological analyses elsewhere in the dossier, and then the post-Sheol biography scrolled onto the screen.

Steward couldn’t read it fast enough.

The Alpha Steward had held a succession of jobs on Earth after returning from Sheol, none of them successful. He’d had trouble with the law, assault charges mostly. Just before the child was born, Natalie got a job in New Humanity and went into lunar orbit. A year later, still living in space, she had divorced him.

Memory moved through Steward like a long ocean roller: Natalie laughing, tumbling in a long arc across the gravity-free hold of a Ricot-bound freighter, her hair spilling about her face, her green eyes joyful and intent. New Humanity was a gravity-free world, Steward knew, an old second-stage Imagist habitat crawling in a slow orbit about Earth’s moon.

He knew where she was now. It was worth it, if only for that.

He read on.

The Alpha had gone into the security business then, for an outfit called SonnenSystem Elite. They did bodyguard and surveillance work for a number of small corporations that hadn’t achieved nation status and that didn’t have an apparatus for handling their own security and intelligence. The Alpha had been assigned to develop penetration security on behalf of a small cutting-edge company, Sivi Source, a group specializing in implant wetware enabling people to translate from one human or machine language to another. Sivi was a paranoid company—competition on that particular frontier was serious, and not always polite. After a series of well-exploited breakthroughs, Sivi sold out to Consolidated Systems, and its personnel moved into orbit, with the intention of working on the problem of human-Power communication. The Alpha Steward was recruited by the Consolidated Systems security apparatus at that time—apparently he’d made himself invaluable to Sivi by repelling a number of penetration schemes launched by the opposition, and his efficiency in defense of Sivi had caught the eye of Consolidated. They’d bought out his contract with SonnenSystem and taken him to their headquarters on Ricot.