Downtime (10 page)

“Well,”
Calla said, “I think that’s about all we can do tonight. I’ll make sure all my
people are completely informed about the regulations, though I’d be surprised
if any of them didn’t know already since they seem to know about the
crystallofragrantia.”

Jason
nodded and sat back a bit on the bed. The legs of the cerecloth had pulled the
comforter halfway up his thigh because the bed’s jelly beans knew he was no
longer supine and were instructing all the bedclothes to smooth out and look
neat. “Just crystal will do on Mutare,” Jason said. “I told you this morning,
it’s the only crystal we talk about here.”

She
nodded absently, and Jason hoped she would sign off now. He felt terribly
disadvantaged with her behaving so much like a Praetorian commander while he
was naked. If protocol permitted, he would have ended the conversation now, but
though he was governor of Mutare, she outranked him and the prerogative was
hers. Her face was contemplative again, her sable eyes slightly closed. Almost
pretty, he thought involuntarily; the flatscreen forgave many of the
unflattering details of her age. He watched her get up from her chair, her
coppery head slightly bowed now as she started to pace. Jason’s fingers clenched
the edge of the cerecloth; he liked to pace, too, and he’d have given a lot to
be able to do it now . . . to do anything now except sit
motionless at the edge of his bed. The lens followed her back and forth for the
three steps the shuttle’s bridge permitted, the sound of her limping step
echoing off the polished slate walls of his room. At last she stopped and faced
the lens, hands behind her back.

“Jason,
do you think the danae are sentient?”

“I
never said that.”

“No,
you were very careful not to draw any conclusions. But I had the oddest feeling
when I was reading the sections that described their behavior. Sometimes it was
absolutely clear they were an lower animal species, but sometimes . . .
well, the cooperativeness you described in shaping the kiosks; it was almost as
if there was a builder among them directing the work.”

Jason
shrugged. “Even bees have specific labors.”

“Then
that wasn’t what you were trying to say?” she said staring straight into the
screen. “There’s nothing more to them than a hive of bees that have food
gatherers and guards, an organized colony of avians?”

“I
didn’t say that either,” Jason said. He sighed. “It’s too early to draw
conclusions, but my theory is that some individuals may be sentient, but not
the danae as a group.”

“But
how can that be?”

Jason
lifted his hands to gesture that he did not know; the spidery legs of the
cerecloth started racing up his thigh. The jelly beans knew they weren’t
dealing with a sleeper any longer and they wanted the bed to be neat. He
grabbed the comer and pulled it back. Calla noticed and smiled, but she didn’t
offer to cancel the visuals so that he could do likewise and relax. “I only
know that some of them appear to be intelligent, beyond what a colony
organization might provide them. The smart danae hide their eggs with great
care, the wild lay them anywhere. The survival rate to nymph stage is
significantly higher among the smart danae. They seem to have figured out that
our sidearms are dangerous; Old Blueeyes won’t come near the garden when I’m
armed. The wild ones have not made the distinction.”

“So
Old Blue-eyes and Tonto are smart, but then, you’re fond of them and spend more
time with them. Maybe they’ve just picked up a little more than the others
because they’ve had some opportunities the wild ones haven’t had.”

“Just
Blue-eyes. Tonto is not very bright, though he’s not really wild anymore. My
theory is that he’s learning how to be intelligent.”

“You
did say he was Blue-eyes’ offspring. It may be quite normal for them to care
for their young for a period of time; such care is normal for many species,
sentient or not.”

“But
I don’t think it has anything to do with Tonto’s being Blue-eyes’ own
offspring. They bond, but from what I’ve observed, it’s not usually with their
offspring. It’s friendship, and rarely between a wild one and an intelligent
one.”

“Mates
then. It’s not unusual for animals to mate with their own family members.”

Jason
shook his head. “As near as I can tell they mate once in a lifetime, physically
mate, I mean, which is separate from the bonding. They’re promiscuous as hell
for about six or seven hours in the early spring. You’ll see it in a few weeks
if you’re lucky. They fly to about three-thousand meters and fuck anything in
sight, wild and intelligent alike. The ova they deposit in each other is enough
to last a lifetime. They come back to the forests exhausted. Within a week, the
fallopian tube shrivels up and drops off; they never use it again. The ovaries
stay intact, but any more ova produced are apparently absorbed by the body. The
male organ is internal. It fertilizes one egg about every two weeks. I’ve been
able to verify all that with autopsies on the kills.”

“How
do they deliver the eggs if everything is internal?”

“Through
the cloaca.”

“Primitive.”

“The
sentient ones clean the eggs, are careful to hide them in sunshine, then line
the nest with just enough straw so that they won’t get too hot or too cold. The
wild ones just scratch anything that’s handy over the egg, like they were
burying turds.”

“A
reverence for asepticism or for the young is interesting, but not conclusive.”

“Nothing’s
conclusive, but there’s more.”

“What
else,” Calla said, looking keenly interested. She sat down again and put her
chin in her hands.

“Well,
you read about the builders. Sylvan Amber is the best example of planned
housing that I’ve found on the planet, though there are others that are less
elaborate and of different building materials, by the way. But the most
interesting thing that I’ve been able to verify is that seasonal migration
occurs only among the intelligent danae. In late fall, just before the first
big storm, every resident in Sylvan Amber takes wing and flies south to the
temperate zone. The wild danae take wing, too, but they don’t flock and they’re
just as likely to fly north as south. They stay on the move all winter; in hard
winters not many who didn’t happen to go south survive.”

“Could
be that they used to navigate along the magnetic lines of force,” Calla said
thoughtfully. “Mutare’s poles are in the middle of a reversal; any migrating
species would have difficulty.”

“Unless
they remembered the way so that you didn’t have to rely on their instincts.”

“Long
memory,” Calla said dryly, “or the ability to communicate the information to
others in the community, and if they leave to the last danae including young
stupid ones like Tonto, that means they must be able to be pretty convincing in
their reasons for not staying. They have no sound-sensing organs, so they don’t
talk in the ordinary sense of the word. How do they communicate?”

“I
don’t know. I haven’t seen the slightest hint of sign language, though Old
Blue-eyes may be getting the hang of what that is from me. They touch a lot,
maybe there’s something in that, though I haven’t been able to find a pattern
that isn’t unique to an individual. That leaves smell, and that’s a real
possibility with all the esters in their system and the huge olfactory organ
they have. There’s also some evidence for psi or some kind of telepathy. Wouldn’t
happen to have a sensitive among your crew, would you?”

“Unlikely,
but I’ll check,” Calla said. She lowered her head a second, the coppery curls
almost filling the flatscreen. When she looked up, Jason saw that she was
frowning.

“Something’s
wrong?”

“I
just wish there was some way to protect the danae until this question of their
being sentient was all sorted out.”

“Calla,
even if I could prove it tomorrow and slap the bans on this planet, do you
really think the Decemvirate would recall us and remove the civilians to end
the killing? There are people who would murder their best friends for half of
what one crystal would bring them back in the Hub, and now the danae are caught
up in a war, too.

Calla
smiled wryly. “There was a time when you would have wished for justice for the
danae right now.”

“That
was the same time you would have demanded it, but I guess we’ve both outgrown
our ideals,” he said, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice.

“Not
I,” she said, her voice sharp. “I’m more practical in applying them now, but I
have not changed.”

Jason
shrugged. “If you say so, but . . .” He stopped because her eyes
suddenly looked moist and he realized she thought he was mocking her physical
appearance, which obviously had changed. Before he could think of anything to
say, he heard Calla’s abrupt, “Goodnight.”

“Oh,
damn,” he muttered to the blank screen. “You never cared what you looked like
ten years ago. You knew you weren’t a beauty, so why go thin-skinned on me now?
Dammit, Calla, you’ve got golden worlds on your shoulders and that hasn’t
offended me any worse than I expected. Your wrinkles don’t either. Can’t we at
least be friends?”

“You’re
not connected, Ranger-Governor D’Estelle. Shall I forward your last comments to
Commander Calla?”

“No,”
Jason said shaking his head. He threw off the cerecloth and paced across the
room and back. The bed made itself and the jelly beans in every apparatus in
the room dimmed to almost invisibility, and still he paced.

Ramnen Mahdi Swayman, Imperator General of all Legions for
the Council of Worlds, was seated on the dais facing the empty chairs in the
gymnasium on his flagship,
Night
Messenger
. On the podium before him was a vial of yellow liquid, which he
had placed there only seconds ago. The diaphragm on the far bulkhead opened
silently to admit a dark-haired woman wearing legion khaki and a night black
navigator’s cape neatly held in place at her shoulders by silver broaches.

“Marcia
Roma Maclorin,” the nomenclator in Mahdi’s ear whispered, “General, Navigator
of the Fleet . . .”

Mahdi
clamped his teeth to cut off further description. He knew the navigator of his
personal fleet. Roma bowed instead of saluting, as if he were already emperor,
and Mahdi smiled.

“Did
you give my message to Larz Frennz Marechal?”

“In
person, sir. And I bring his personal assurance that the Decemvirate’s
recommendation will not be presented to the Council of Worlds until six months
from now. He puts his life on it.”

“Yes,
he does, doesn’t he,” Mahdi said with a chuckle. He reached for the vial and
began stroking the smooth container between his forefinger and thumb. “Who
would have thought that a decemvir could be bought with his own elixir?”

“Marechal’s
is an unusual case. He came to the Hub because his genes were perfect, but by
the time he came to the council’s attention, he was already an old man. His
station entitles him to a sustaining dosage, but not enough to reverse the
aging process.”

“Any
evidence that the doses we’ve given him have reversed the process?”

Roma
shook her head. “None, but I think it would take twenty-five years before you’d
begin to notice anything. He’s determined to be patient.” Roma was watching the
vial in Mahdi’s fingers anxiously.

Mahdi
sat back in the chair and began drumming the podium with the vial. Twenty-five
years was too long to wait to find out if it would work. Oh, he’d be done with
Marechal long before then in any case, for he had only sixteen years to go
before his term with the Decemvirate ended, and in truth, Mahdi probably would
not need him after six months from now. He wondered if he should consider
continuing his gifts to Marechal even so. Twenty-five years was not so long
when measured against even hundreds, or forever. Mahdi had stopped his own body’s
aging when it was forty-nine, and he was strong and virile. But how might it
feel to be twenty-five again or seventeen? Could he make love more than once in
a night if he were even younger? But no one knew what happened to the body if
the dose were increased. A proper dose arrested any aging; what would an
overdose do? He shook his head.

“Sir?”
Roma said.

“Nothing.”
He looked at the vial between his fingers, stopped drumming with it. Roma
noticed and seemed to breathe easier. She knew it was hers. He tapped the
podium again, pretending to be lost in thought. “Set course for Mutare just as
soon as we’ve passed detection range.”

“Mutare?”
Roma said, surprised. “That’s a three-month trip, sir.”

“That’s
why I needed Marechal to assure me six months. Wouldn’t do to have the
revolution start without its leader, now would it?”

“Of
course not, sir, but . . . Mutare? I’m not even sure there’s a
ranger station there.”

“There
is, and a new elixir garden, as well. Decemvirate thinks it has financed a
cosmic radiation research center expansion. In reality, they are processing
something that’s fairly well researched. Elixir. I want to be certain it’s
producing before the revolution starts. All the other production facilities are
on old worlds, you know.”

Roma
nodded. “You fear the Cassells Fleet might destroy them and want a reserve
supply.”

“They
won’t be destroyed. No one would harm any of the facilities because if they
did, they’d harm themselves as well. No, they’ll be fine. But supplies might be
cut off from time to time, especially if we cannot take all the worlds in one
fell swoop. The war would go on in some places for years. We won’t have enough
for our own people if that happens. Mutare’s facility will alleviate that
problem.” He leaned forward and handed over the vial to Roma. Her fingers were
cold in his hand as he encircled them with his own. “You won’t have to worry
about where your next dose is coming from. You’ll stay your thirty-five, no
gray in your pretty black hair.”