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Authors: Jr. L. E. Modesitt

BOOK: Adiamante
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“That's true enough.”
“That's also the problem. They're sitting in orbit with enough power to make a large mess, and they're looking for an excuse to do it without any understanding of the repercussions.”
“I think they understand,” interjected Arielle. “They
just don't care. If we use force to stop them, then we fuel another millennium of cyb-based technological development. At the end of that development, they'll have developed devices that will nova an entire system, or worse. If we surrender, they'll find an excuse to commit some range of atrocities or try to sterilize the whole planet. The Construct forbids either, in any case.”
“Like the way the Construct forbade what our forbearers did to Al-Moratoros?”
They both winced. That memory had not faded, though it was not ours, nor our doing. And that wince said all there was to say about why we wouldn't break the Construct, no matter what the cost.
“Either way,” Arielle concluded, “that's our payback for using power in forcing The Flight.”
“Thanks, Arielle,” I flipped back.
“You are most welcome, puissant mage Ecktor. And Coordinator,” she added ironically.
I continued to concentrate, but nothing new or original came to mind. I finally concluded, “We're still left with the fact that Old Earth is the planet of death where only demis and draffs can live. Proving that could be hard, if they still fit the typical cyb profile.”
The sense of a nod followed from Arielle, along with a sigh and a frown. “That's going to be hard. I'd estimate a twenty percent mortality, maybe as high as fifty percent for those in direct contact.”
I sent back a shrug, not a disinterested one, but a resigned one. So far, I didn't have any alternatives.
For a moment, stillness dropped across the net like a niellen shroud, and I could understand that.
“You're breathing hard,” Crucelle finally responded.
“I ran a while.”
“How far? How long?”
“Not quite thirteen klicks … in half a stan … but I'm not in shape, and I was scrambling through the woods.” If
I had been in better shape or followed the path, I could have done close to twenty klicks in the same time.
The dialogue box in my head pointed out that while I could run from grief, running wasn't going to solve the cyb problem. It hadn't millennia earlier, and it wouldn't now.
“T
wo before upper entry.”
The warning clipped across the lander's net, and the nav checked her restraints.
“It's all superstition,” snapped Commander Gorum, his words strong enough to flex the net. “That's why I'm here. To show that it's just that. To look at Old Earth and its demis logically and factually.”
“To send down the head marcyb does seem like overkill,” pointed out the second pilot.
“Someone with an overview has to see these people—if they're still people—before we act. That means me or Gibreal.”
“Marines are more expendable. Not much better than marcybs.” No one owned the thought, cold and direct.
“There's not likely to be any expense.” Gorum laughed. “Besides, Henslom or Ysslop or any of the majers could do the job. The demis retreated from all the systems of the Rebuilt Hegemony. As soon as one system revolted, and then another, they just folded. Then they created this myth of Old Earth as the planet of death as a last defense. Because the demis still had a fleet then, everyone bought it. It was a handy excuse for the old colonies—they didn't have to fight a war that would have been costly. So they
went along with it. There aren't any medical records that show anything because nothing really ever happened.” “What happened to Old Earth's fleet?” asked the lander's second pilot. “It was never broken.”
“Same thing that happens to all old fleets,” answered the marcybs' chief. “Fell apart and disappeared. You don't maintain weapons, you don't have them when you need them.”
“What about the shuttle craft we spotted?” asked the nav. “The one heading for that asteroid in the stable orbital position?”
“What about it? It's a nickel-iron asteroid. Energy dead even on EDI levels, both underweb and overspace …”
“Al-Moratoros,” snapped the nav.
“That was at least two millennia ago. At least.”
“And that asteroid up above us had to have been moved there.”
“Old technology,” answered Gorum.
The net crackled, cutting over the interchange, and pins shot through the net and the cybs as the lander slashed deeper into the ionosphere. Except for the static, the net was still.
I
should have run up to Parwon to watch the cybs bring down their welcoming groups in landers. You don't land a two-klick-long interstellar ship on a planet, not even a cyb-ship with an adiamante hull. In the shape I was in, I didn't even try to run the distance. I should have, but I didn't.
I rolled out the small flitter from the hangar attached to
the back of the house, then ended up spending more time on maintenance than it would have taken to run up and back. A strand of sandy hair on the second seat didn't help my mood, but spending more effort on cleaning the already spotless turbine exterior did.
The flitter was one of my luxuries—hydrocarb fueled, and that meant a special refining module for the joba processor—plus a few stans a week doing screen-pushing at the Deseret locial to compensate for my toy and the technology that supported it. Plus growing the joba, and that meant regular flights south to the Fireo Desert.
The flitter itself wasn't especially advanced—deployable rotors and turbines integrated into a lifting body—but it was dependable.
After a last check, including the knives and the rest of the survival kit stowed under the seats, I pulled on a one-piece coverall over my browns, donned the lightweight helmet, and strapped in. Again, I could have had a flitter with automated restraints and a full-sound-insulated hull, but that would have had me working half my life at Deseret in arduous heavy maintenance.
Under the timeless
thwop …
thwop, thwop
of high speed rotors, I held the flitter steady on the ground cushion, then dropped the nose fractionally, letting the flitter build up speed as I eased it down the lane that ended in the dry snye of the creek. Before the point where the snye joined Kohl Creek, the lifting body was functional, and I turned the flitter northward, crossing the higher grasslands and the prairie dogs and flicking a pulse through the transmitter to Deseret station to lock our track into the traffic scanning. There was another new burrow complex on the north side of the prairie dog town. Before long the mountain vorpals would be raiding again, and the kalirams would be waiting for the vorpals' return.
For all my maintenance efforts and dependable technology, the faintest scent of hot metal and lubricants tickled
my nostrils. So I cracked the vent valves, and the whistling cold air removed the odors, and most of the heat, from the two-place cockpit.
I leveled off in the green zone, high enough to allow the safety seats to work with the rotors deployed, and
thwopped
northward. The trip was too short to retract the rotors and go high-speed, as I would have on a trip to the Cherkrik ruins or the Ellay locial.
No more than ten klicks north of the house, splotches of snow showed on the north sides of the cedar- and piñon-covered hills. A small herd of sambur grazed in one of the fire-meadows, and, despite the stolidity of composite and metal around me, I sensed a cougar slipping through the piñons toward the ruisines.
The sambur scattered at the sound of the flitter. Beyond the fire-meadow was a large stand of meleysen trees, thriving as they detoxified yet another remnant of either the Chaos Years or the decades that precipitated The Flight.
Then the flitter
thwopped
over a stand of ancient cedars, their age seeping into the cold blue sky, and left sambur and meleysens behind.
Parwon was less than fifty klicks north, but even the lower meadows on the south sides of the hills around the locial, and the shaded spots in the lanes, bore traces of snow.
After pulsing the station, I linked momentarily with the net, and began the descent. I could have flown the easy way, linked with the pilot module, but I used the old-fashioned stick and collective controls the whole distance, though I did have to link in the overrides for safety purposes on the approach. The transnet didn't even flicker—that's how smoothly I slipped the flitter onto the apron beyond the tower, and that smooth an approach would have been hard even for a demi whose collateral was transport.
The wind gusted around me while I secured the craft. I peeled off the coverall and folded it onto the seat before I sealed the flitter and walked across the permacrete toward the white spire that rose out of the oval locial landing building.
My eyes flicked up, along the invisible approach beam that the landers would follow down.
Cybs. Why now? Were they really bent on revenge, or was I projecting the face of a grim history on people who might be far different from those who had forged that history?
The rushing sound of a shuttle penetrated my introspection, and I glanced toward the slender tower that contained the beacons and a single controller. A second craft—a standard magfield shuttle version—settled right before the tower as I neared. The door dilated, and three figures stepped out: Crucelle, Arielle, and Rhetoral—a redhead, a dark brunette, and a blond. Rhetoral was the blond, tall and imperious, a genetic throwback in appearance, and, unsurprisingly, very much a rat-comp. If Crucelle was a formal dagger, then Rhetoral was an ancient longsword.
After the three cleared the shuttle, the pilot air-taxied the flitter toward one of the north hangars. Arielle led the way as the three walked toward the tower.
We met by the east portal.
“Elanstan?” I asked Rhetoral. Elanstan was his soulsymb and had hair so black it was almost nielle—that was what I remembered, anyway They were almost as close as Morgen and I were—or had been.
“Bringing up the ell stations.” He winced.
So did I. Although they were maintained in stand-down, the ell stations hadn't been used since dispersing the Jykserian Armada. Despite their pleasant appearances and their all-too-human origins back with the ancient Longships of NorAm, the Jykserians had minds as alien
as any found among the stars—or on Old Earth. Had that outlook been created by radiation? Or by economically influenced genetic self-selection? They had wanted to trade for technology and refused to understand that some knowledge was not for sale.
Of course, once again, we—our ancestors—had paid a heavy price, but not so heavy as the Jykserians. Unfortunately, the cybs of the Vereal Union appeared to have higher technology and a grudge, and we had the Construct, and the interaction could easily lead to catastrophe for us all.
“Who else?” I asked.
“Some of the senior locial coordinators will be at the Hybernium to add presence.” Rhetoral grinned, a smile warmer than his cool appearance.
We had learned over the generations. Too many apparent functionaries, and those who visited Old Earth received the impression that we lived on past glory. Too few, and the impression was contempt. The senior coordinators swelled the ranks, offered historical observations, and were excellent listeners.
“Why—besides pity—did you outlink me for this?” I asked Crucelle.
“Because there are only a handful of comp-intuits. You're rare, and the Council thinks the combined outlooks will be needed.”
“So do I,” added Arielle, midway through Crucelle's words, her smile flashing in my eyes and through the close-link, her dark eyes both warm and concerned, yet behind that concern was the cold rationality of a first class rat-comp, and the power of the untamed storm.
Rhetoral just nodded, pale blue eyes as cold as the snow on the mountains overlooking the locial station.
Wondrous! The three of them had put Old Earth's future on my shoulders as a rehab project.
So I was rare? Rare, like an extinct ratite lost in the Die-Out, one of the ones too fragile for the DNA to fossilize and too unknown to mixfill a genesplice. Rare, like a comp child born in a draff family. Rare, like an emote from a long line of rat-comps.
Rare, like all of those, that was what Crucelle had said—and so had my old tutor Mithres. I was rare, a dual mind, comp-intuit, and that was why I was all mixed up. Of course, my emote scale was below demi-norm, and that bothered my mother, but Morgen had had more than enough emote-intuit for the both of us.
“Here they come, ready to reclaim their heritage—as if they knew what it was.” Crucelle's words were dry, and underscored by the rumbling whistle as three black dots grew into smooth and ponderous wedge shapes that bore down on the locial from the north.
As I watched the three heavy landers caress the permacrete and roll ever more slowly toward us, I scarcely felt rare, only old—not that any of us, even Morgen at the end—looked old, except in the depths behind our eyes.
The landers were big—fifteen meters high and more than two hectometers long and massing who knew what—and black. Not the deep darkness of nielle, but black—plain, ugly black, black scarred by scores of atmospheric transits.
Once the orbit-to-ground craft had rumbled to a stop and a handful of cybs had begun to disembark, I walked across the permacrete toward the figures below the first lander's ramp, a perfectly human and normal set of motions that carried me toward the cybsens officers. I centered on the cyb with the most metal and one of the higher ENFs. The matched and glittering metal diamonds on each shoulder of the antique-appearing military blouse had to signify a certain position, as if any rigid structure ever conveyed anything meaningful except the ability to
exert power over those lower in the structure. Power without morality is disaster; morality without power is useless.
The brown-haired and brown-eyed commander—over two meters tall—looked down at me with eyes as soulless as any mech processor. After a moment, he spoke in rusty Anglas, his voice with the raspiness of a netdweller who seldom exercised the joys of speech. “I am Commander Gorum of the Vereal Union. It is a pleasure to stand here on Old Earth.”
“Liar,” flicked the netline from Arielle.
“It's called diplomacy,” came the silent rejoinder from Crucelle.
“I am Ecktor, current Coordinator.” I almost choked on the title. “This is Crucelle … Arielle … and Rhetoral.”
Crucelle bowed slightly, as did the others at their names.
“We greet you and hope your visit will prove fulfilling,” I continued.
“You're as bad as he is,” commented Arielle on the net.
“How might we help in your visit?” I added, ignoring Arielle.
For a moment, the commander paused, and I caught the pulses of information between him and the lander and the stocky brown-haired woman behind him and to his left, information boosted through the flat, short range net repeaters on their belts. Before long, I thought I would probably be able to decipher the protocols, but that would have to wait. I kept my expression one of mild interest as I waited for the commander's spoken response.
“Obviously, we have little data on what happened to Old Earth after our ancestors … departed, except for some vague details about the rise and fall of the Rebuilt Hegemony we obtained from the independent systems.” The tall commander forced a smile. “More detailed information would be welcome. We would also like to see what we can of our ancient home.”
“So you can figure out how to conquer or destroy it,” came Arielle's netline comment.
“Millennia of information … that will take some time.” I smiled, again ignoring, for the moment, Arielle's words, although I agreed with the thoughts behind them. “Perhaps we could begin at the Hybernium, with both refreshments and general background.” I pointed out the structure, its dome visible. It was scarcely more than a few klicks from the old landing field we still maintained at the Deseret locial for the released colonies—and for the handful of strangers that had straggled in from across the stars after the collapse of the Rebuilt Hegemony, strangers arriving in everything from standard shift-jumpers to bussard ramfleets to solar scows. They all came, and looked, and departed—one way or another.
“You seek to avoid providing details?” asked Gorum smoothly.
“Ask, and you shall receive,” I answered, disliking his extreme suspicion while understanding it. “But sometimes the details make more sense if there is a framework to which they can be attached.”
Gorum inclined his head ever so slightly.
As he paused, I inquired, “Might I ask of your colleagues?”
The faintest frown flicked across Gorum's brow before he answered. “This is Subcommander Kemra.”
The sandy-haired cyb subcommander nodded briskly. I concealed a wince, or hoped I concealed it. The woman looked far too much like the sister Morgen had never had.
“Careful,” cautioned Arielle, net-voiced in silence.
“This is Officer Mylera.” Gorum nodded toward the slender brunette with the slightly flat black eyes.
With relief, I turned to the modest appearing woman, without revealing that I had almost immediately determined that Mylera was MYL-ERA, the physical construct /extension of the Vereal fleet's net intelligence.
Rhetoral refrained from commenting, and I didn't have to worry about Crucelle or Arielle.
“Majer Henslom and Majer Ysslop.” The two marine officers glanced at me with the same flat eyes as MYLERA's construct, but their blankness came from wariness and training, unlike the blankness of their troopers. A quick comm burst flicked between them.

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