Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (23 page)

If there actually happened to be such a way, he could see why they wouldn't be interested in revealing it. He was more worried that he was just being set up for what amounted to a suicide launch. But … if that were the case … again, why the elaborate charade? And if it weren't a charade …

“Why don't you just defy the Federation?”

“We believe in offering first,” replied Hillis. “In technological societies, all conflicts cost more than they recover, even for the winner.”

“Historically, that hasn't seemed to matter.”

Hillis shrugged. “We hope that the Federation has learned something from that history. We have.”

“You seem to think that—”

“What we think is irrelevant to what the Federation will do. What the Federation thinks is what matters. Your job as an agent is to provide information. Your job as a human being is to provide insight and persuasion. Also, we'd like you to return to the
WuDing
in one piece. We'd prefer not to give the Federation any unnecessary excuses for stupid actions.”

“I'm just one agent.” Roget paused. “I'd be interested to know how the other scout is faring.”

“He isn't as adaptable as you. He attempted to attack a number of people. He's been restrained until he can be returned to the
WuDing
—or whatever Federation ship will handle your recovery.”

“You're sending us both back? How thoughtful.” Roget knew he shouldn't have been so sarcastic, but it was a measure of his frustration—and something else he couldn't immediately identify.

“You don't want to return to your beloved Federation?” Hillis's words matched Roget's almost perfectly in the degree of sarcasm. She turned to Lyvia. “He should see Manor Farm Cottages. Today might be best.”

For just a moment, distaste flitted across Lyvia's eyes. At least Roget suspected it was distaste. Whether Lyvia found another escort duty distasteful or whether she found going to Manor Farm Cottages unpleasant, he didn't know, but either was possible.

“Might I ask what these cottages are for?”

“You'll understand when you see them. If you have questions after you do, Lyvia will certainly be able to answer them. We'll meet again tomorrow sometime.” Hillis turned to Lyvia. “You know where to reach me.”

“Yes, Director.”

“That will be all for now.” Hillis stood. “Good day.”

As he rose, Roget's first thought was that he still didn't understand the almost disjointed interview/interrogation system the Thomists were employing. Was it merely to get him into a room where they could upset or confuse him and then use technology to pull thoughts and information out of his mind? But why would they go to all the trouble of putting together an information package and then design it so that its contents could be received without any Trojan horses? Or did the very words themselves constitute something like that? And then there had been the words about not giving the Federation any excuse for stupid actions. Had that really been the point of sending agent scouts in the first place? Certainly, the FSA had done that before, as Roget well knew … personally.

“We can go,” Lyvia said quietly.

Roget followed her out along the corridor and down the ramp to the main level. Then she headed through the building foyer for the walkway leading to the central square. Her steps were long and deliberate. Once they were outside, Roget drew alongside her. He got the definite impression that she was less than pleased with the assignment the director had ordered.

“How long will this take?”

“Several hours, at the least.”

“Where are we headed?”

“The regional subtrans in the square.” Her words were cool and clipped.

Roget decided not to say more, not for the moment. In fact, he said nothing at all until they were seated side by side in a half-filled car on the regional subtrans line heading northward out of Skeptos.

“How many stops before we get off?”

“It's the second stop.”

Roget sat quietly through the first stop and rose when Lyvia did at the second. From his internals, he calculated that the travel time had been approximately eleven minutes. When they stepped out onto the underground concourse, they were the only ones. Lyvia marched toward the ramp, and Roget matched her step for step.

“We're close to three hundred klicks from Skeptos,” he ventured.

“There's a reason for that. The cottages are purposely isolated, except by subtrans. You'll see why.”

“You people never explain anything before the fact,” Roget observed.

“That's not true. We explain whatever we can. Some things have to be experienced or observed for the explanation to make sense, and trying to explain them before the fact just creates false impressions and preconceptions.”

Roget couldn't help but wonder if overwhelming people with experiences that they were unprepared for did exactly the same thing but saw no reason for voicing the point, not given Lyvia's attitude.

When they emerged from the subtrans tunnel and ramp, Roget noted that there was but a single walkway leading due north out of a low circular grassy vale, totally without trees. At least Roget thought the walkway led north, but without a visible sun and with his questions about just how precise his internal monitors were, his directional senses were as likely to be assumptions as totally accurate. Beyond the grassy depression were trees in all directions, as if the subtrans station had been set in the midst of a vast forest.

“Can you tell me why the cottages are located in such an isolated locale?”

“For safety purposes,” replied Lyvia. “You'll see.”

“How far do we have to walk?”

“It's four klicks to the outskirts of the cottages.”

The forest held more deciduous trees than had the one on the peninsula, and the air was even more humid. The underlying scents mixed a richness with dampness, but without the hint of sweetness that had bothered Roget. “There aren't any butterflies here.”

“No. Their absence makes balancing the ecology more difficult, but it's necessary.”

“Is that because it's not that deep … literally?”

“There is an indigenous subsurface microbial ecology, but it never evolved beyond that, and it's not hostile. Not any more hostile than any bacterial or microbial ecology anyway, and there are some interesting things going on there. It's more a problem of balancing with people in a way that makes sense practically and economically. We've opted away from truffles, for example. If they eventually develop, that's fine, but introducing that kind of gourmet and economic temptation is just asking for trouble.”

Roget kept asking about the ecology as they walked, because that was an area where Lyvia was willing to talk, and information, any information, was better than no information. Besides, he could deduce some things from what she did say.

The forest ended abruptly, as if a line had been drawn, and a good klick ahead, Roget saw a series of low dwellings—cottages, in fact. Somewhere in the distance, the forest resumed, but the cleared area that held the cottages looked to be a rough oval about three klicks across. The cottage walls looked to be of local stone, and the roofs of something resembling slate, although Roget wouldn't have been surprised if it had been some form of composite.

“There are the Manor Farm Cottages, and there's the security station.” Lyvia pointed.

Ahead on the right side of the path stood a single dwelling, separated from those farther north by a good hundred meters of open grassy ground.

“That's the first security establishment you've pointed out.”

“It's been the only one to point out,” she replied.

As they neared the security cottage, a muscular man wearing a short-sleeved yellow singlesuit stepped out of the dwelling and stood on the front stoop, waiting for them.

“How many security agents are there here?”

“I'd imagine just a few, either a couple or a pair of partners. They're really here to deal with outsiders or illnesses or accidents.”

“Agent Rholyn, you're expected. I'm Mattias Singh.” The black-haired man smiled, then turned to Roget. “What you see in and around the cottages may be disturbing. Please keep in mind that no one there can physically touch anyone else without suffering. It would be for the best if you did not touch them either.”

Roget nodded.

“Take your time, and see what you need to see, Agent Rholyn.”

“Thank you.” Lyvia's voice was pleasant but cool.

Less than fifty meters past the cottage, Roget's internals registered a low-level energy field of some sort. Even without his monitors, he could sense something, a low sound that raised the hair on the back of his neck, but it passed after he'd taken another dozen steps.

Off to his left, a gray-bearded man wearing brown trousers and little else ran across the grass away from the cottages, then collapsed in a heap. Roget stopped and watched. The gray-beard rolled over, then crawled back toward the cottages before slowly standing. Then he again ran away from the cottages, as if trying to escape, before he crumpled onto the grass once more.

Roget turned to Lyvia.

“There's a subsonic fence around the cottage area. Didn't you sense it? All of those restrained here experience agonizing pain if they even approach it. Sometimes some of them will crawl halfway in and become so paralyzed with pain that they can't move. That's one of the things that Mattias or his partner have to watch for.”

“Can't anyone else…” Roget broke off his question. The immobilizing nature of the pain and the fact that none of the inmates could touch another supplied him with the answer to his uncompleted inquiry.

As Roget and Lyvia neared the first line of cottages, a woman wearing antique hoop skirts with her hair piled into a conical shape that looked like the tip of an ancient artillery shell waddled toward them. “I dare say that you be visitors, and unwelcome you are. Please cease and desist, and depart henceforth.”

“We'll depart soon enough.” Roget didn't want to walk over her, but she was blocking the middle of the walkway, and he took another step.

She scuttled back. “Begone, evil one.”

On the side porch of the next cottage, a painfully thin woman sat rocking on a makeshift rocker. Her eyes were fixed on the porch railing, even as she rocked herself methodically.

Roget blinked. A man hurried toward them, wearing a Federation shipsuit.

“You're not one of them, are you? I can see the difference. We're all prisoners here. Can you tell the Federation about us? Please! Anyone who's different they lock up here, and they say we're maladjusted, but we're not. I've been here years and years. I just want to go home. Please. I don't belong here. I really don't.”

Roget couldn't help but stop, but when he looked more closely at the shipsuit, he could see that it was well-sewn but poorly designed, and with insignia and devices he'd never seen and that mixed officer and enlisted emblems.

“You have to tell them. You have to get help.”

Roget looked at Lyvia.

She smiled sadly.

“You're no Fed! You're one of them. You're just trying to trick us…” Tears ran from the corners of the man's eyes, and he turned away.

Roget moved on.

“Come to the circus … come to the play, for all the world's a play, and the play's the thing…” Those words came from a thin-faced man who sat on a stool before a small table at the west side of the walkway, under an open window to a cottage. His fingers flicked out oversized cards onto the polished but battered wood surface. “I can call up Madame Sosotris for you, or even Tiresias … for you, sir, are the hanged man. You may not know it, but, that, you are … and you will return to your people, an alien people who clutch alien gods…”

Roget repressed a shiver. Mad as the man clearly was, Roget might well end up a hanged man, figuratively, of course, if dead all the same.

A woman of indeterminate age sat on the ground, leaning back against the wall of the next cottage, her feet splayed across dirt that might once have been a flower bed. She just giggled, then giggled again.

An odor of rancidness and outright filth crept more tightly around Roget the deeper he and Lyvia walked into the cottages.

“Doesn't anyone take care of them?” he asked in a low voice.

“Why? They've chosen not to be taken care of. We keep the replicators full and the houses functional. They can go to the clinic if they choose, or not, as they please. None of them is of exceptionally poor intelligence. All of them have chosen to remain here, and they did so while their minds were stabilized. We used to do stabilization once every five years and ask again, but the results were the same.”

Everywhere Roget looked was madness, from glittering bright eyes to dull or vacant ones. What the inhabitants of Manor Farm Cottages wore ranged from almost any kind of clothing Roget had ever seen to nothing at all. Those who wore nothing tended to be painfully thin.

Abruptly, Lyvia turned to Roget. “You've seen enough. We need to head back to Skeptos. I'd like to pick up Aylicia before it's too late.”

“That's fine with me.” It certainly was, because it hadn't been Roget's idea to visit the cottages. Besides, both the sights and odors were beginning to get to him.

Lyvia turned. “We can go back this way. It's the other main walkway. That way, you can see a different view of more of the same.” Her voice remained cool.

Roget frowned as he neared another cottage. The stones of the walls glistened. The windows sparkled, and the trim was even painted. An angular man was scrubbing the stones of the north wall of the small dwelling vigorously. He didn't look up or sideways as Lyvia and Roget walked by. Roget had the feeling that his scrubbing was what had polished the stones. He wondered how many years it had taken.