Eternity's Mind (32 page)

Hurrying back to their office, Jess and Cesca found a lanky, dark-haired Roamer waiting for them. Seymour Dominic wore a comfortable jumpsuit embroidered proudly with clan markings. Though he was withdrawing a student, Seymour did not look angry; in fact, he was beaming. “I need Kellidee, maybe for just a year, maybe permanently. I couldn't say. This is an opportunity we can't pass up.”

Jess remembered Kellidee, a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl with a sharp mind and a grasp of mathematics. “She was just about to start advanced mechanics and intermediate electric circuits. It's not a good time to pull her out.”

“But we don't know how much time we'll have,” said Seymour. “It's an ekti rush out there. Have you seen the reports of all the stardrive fuel? Clan Dominic got a sweet deal on pumping and transportation equipment, and we've staked our claim on a large bloater cluster. Nowadays you can barely find a bucket and a straw available, because every scrap is sold out, but our operations are already going full-scale. We could really use Kellidee's help.”

“Every clan has the right to withdraw their children,” Cesca pointed out. “But I hope you'll bring her back. We'll miss her around here.”

“Or I could just hire a set of tutors. We've delivered four loads of ekti-X to Newstation already, and our scouts have found two more bloater clusters. The faster we get stardrive fuel to market, the more money we'll make.” He was practically dancing with excitement. “With one delivery, my clan made as much as we earned in the entire past year. This is unbelievable.” He looked from side to side. “Do you know how many other clans have set up ekti operations?”

“A lot of them rushed off to get started even before they knew what they were doing,” Jess said.

Dominick groaned. “That means there'll be many more shipments coming in this week.” He glanced at the chronometer on the office wall. “Can we hurry up and get Kellidee, please? I need to get back out to the operations.”

“KA is bringing her right now,” Cesca said. “She'll need a few minutes to gather her things.”

Seymour fidgeted. “Leave it all behind. We can buy her a new set of everything ten times over.”

Jess softened his voice. “Give her a little time to say goodbye to her friends, Seymour. Think about your daughter. She's very popular.”

The man's shoulders slumped. “I'm just so excited … so anxious. At peak operation, we could drain the entire cluster in another two weeks. I'm already setting up our next extraction field.”

Cesca looked troubled. “Like loggers clear-cutting a forest. Do you even know what bloaters are?”

“Of course,” Seymour said. “They're an easy source of ekti-X.”

Kellidee Dominic arrived, flushed and confused, but she brightened when she saw her father. He swept her up in a hug. “We're going out into space, little girl.”

“But I'm in the middle of a class project.”

“You have more than a class project to worry about—we have our most important clan operations ever, and you're going to be part of them.” He pulled out a display pad and showed her images of the gray-green nodules drifting in space, hundreds of clan Dominic ships, arrays of ekti tanks.

Her interest was piqued, and in the end, Kellidee needed little convincing.

Jess compiled the young woman's class records, while Cesca gathered a year's worth of lesson plans, which Kellidee promised to follow in her spare time. Seymour was jabbering with infectious enthusiasm as he led his daughter back to the Academ docking bay.

After they were gone, Jess was both amazed and uneasy. “I didn't realize the operations were so significant. If there are fifteen or twenty extraction fields like that, how many more bloater clusters can there be?”

Jess touched the wall of their office complex, where he could sense the wental ice even through the insulating film. The water elementals were brooding and uncommunicative, but restless. Through the faint contact, he could feel something larger, something mysterious out there.

 

CHAPTER

53

ZHETT KELLUM

While at Newstation with nothing to do, Zhett had found a ship's log from Orli Covitz and Garrison Reeves, which had been automatically loaded without comment into the station database. Some months earlier, the
Prodigal Son
had encountered a large distribution of bloaters on the outskirts of the Ikbir system, long chains of nodules that extended into interstellar space. No one remembered that reference because, at the time, bloaters had been mere curiosities. Zhett hoped she was the only one who had spotted that notation.…

Now, she, Patrick, and an eager Toff flew to the Ikbir system to lay claim to all those bloaters before any other Roamer clan could. She'd had enough drama in her life, and she just wanted a nice quiet cluster of innocuous gas bags to harvest.

Patrick shut down their stardrive far outside the Ikbir system to begin their search. The ship had decent sensors, and they knew what they were looking for, but it was tedious work—something both Zhett and Patrick agreed was a perfect assignment for Kristof. At first the teenager considered it a reward, but after four hours of staring at nothing he started to complain. Zhett would hear none of it, though. He had volunteered for this mission, and he would have to accept his assignment as any adult Roamer would.

At last, Toff spotted a string of bloaters which led like breadcrumbs toward the star. “Look, if we connect the dots and follow them into the system, there's bound to be a cluster closer in.”

Patrick tousled his son's hair, then activated the engines to follow the line of bloaters down toward the bright white sun. Closer to the heart of the Ikbir system, they found exactly what they were looking for: thousands of bloaters drifting together like a globular cluster of fish eggs. Flares of light flashed from one nucleus to another in a seemingly random pattern.

Drenched in nourishing radiation near Ikbir's sun, the bloaters looked different, however. Rather than seeming inert like the other silent and drifting bloaters, these moved, rotated, pulsed, squirmed. Their nuclei became visible in the afterglow of the spontaneous flashes. And the crowded grouping began to
fission.

“What's happening?” Toff asked. “Those are our bloaters!”

Zhett guided the ship closer, but stopped at a safe distance as the nodules squeezed, swelled, and pulled apart into dumbbell shapes, which then split apart into two bloaters. The nodules doubled, and then each of the new ones swelled in the Ikbir sunlight, quickly growing to normal size. Before long, even the new bloaters began the same process of fissioning, quadrupling their original numbers.

“Look how fast they're reproducing,” Patrick said. “We'll have a larger cluster to harvest than we imagined. That's all stardrive fuel for the taking.”

Zhett began to map out how they would bring the refurbished Osquivel equipment here to begin extraction activities. She imagined how fast the fortunes of clan Kellum could recover from their current financial disaster.

After the nodules had multiplied and the cluster became a full swarm, the bloaters changed again. Their nuclei continued to flash with more frequent bursts of lightning, as if they were sending Morse-code signals. Then the newborn bloater nodules flattened, stretching out from roughly spherical sacks to spread their membranes into broad wings, like stellar manta rays.

Zhett's voice was tinged with awe. “By the Guiding Star, what the hell are those things?”

“It's a metamorphosis. Are they … alive?” Patrick asked.

Toff frowned. “How are we supposed to harvest them if they do that?”

The newly transformed bloaters became more active. They extended their enormous lobes and began to move in slow graceful arcs. The bloaters turned themselves, extending sail-like membranes to catch the solar energy. Then, like a flock of magnificent cosmic avians, they spread apart and soared away.

The entire cluster, and all of that potential ekti-X, simply flew off while Zhett watched.

*   *   *

Toff surprised them with an idea. Instead of following the line of bloaters
toward
Ikbir's star, he suggested flying in the opposite direction, tracking the breadcrumbs farther out into space. “If the sunlight triggered the fissioning, then we should just go into deeper space, catch them before that happens.”

“Worth checking out,” Zhett said. Actually, she loved the idea.

Patrick piloted them along the outbound line of straggler bloaters, and Kristof's face could barely contain his satisfied grin when they did indeed discover a new island in a sea of stars—several hundred bloaters bobbing along, and swollen with ekti-X … ripe for the harvest.

“Back to Osquivel, then?” Patrick asked.

“You read my mind,” Zhett said. “We haul our equipment here and start extracting as fast as we can.”

 

CHAPTER

54

LEE ISWANDER

Lee Iswander was neither meek nor humble, but when he traveled to Newstation with a full load of ekti-X, he had to swallow his pride and straighten his backbone. The Roamer clans would try to shame him because he had stepped outside the bounds of what they considered acceptable or wise.

He would endure their scorn. He would face them, show them how strong and determined an Iswander was. Again.

He didn't care what they thought. They had insulted him repeatedly, brushed him aside. Even though he came from a once-respected Roamer clan, they didn't like his tactics, his attitude, or his ambition. He was not one of them. Roamers had always struggled against adversity, crowing about their successes and sharing their tragedies, but none of that seemed to count when Lee Iswander was involved.

They had celebrated his cheap and plentiful stardrive fuel, and now he would go to Newstation and see if they would do business with him, or if their grudge would make them even more stupid than usual.
Oh they hate me … until they need me.

Instead of taking his private yacht, he drove an unwieldy tug that carried a large array of fuel cylinders, a load that was more significant than any fuel shipments the upstart operations were bringing in. Even though he was no longer the exclusive provider, it would be enough ekti-X to draw attention.

And Iswander wanted to draw attention.

On approach, he transmitted to Newstation traffic operations, “Requesting a commercial dock for a load of ekti-X as well as a VIP landing berth for my personal ship.”

“Stand by, ekti transport,” came the voice over the comm. “This is Klanek from ops. Please identify yourself and provide your account.”

“This is Lee Iswander. I believe you can find my account.”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “I'm sorry, Mr. Iswander, but our high-end cargo docks are presently full. I can assign your ship a landing berth on level twelve.”

Iswander was annoyed. “Level seven or higher, please. I'll pay a premium.”

“Sorry, sir. There's nothing available.”

Iswander sifted through his mind and finally placed Klanek's name. He had dealt briefly with the man before, during his run for Speaker of the clans. “Tony, I know you can do better than that, and I'd hate to think you're being unprofessional. Wasn't I courteous and kind to you during the election? I believe I complimented you on your fine work and gave you a token of my support.”

Iswander couldn't actually remember the details, but he knew he had spread his wealth liberally while campaigning for the Speakership.

“I won't need a private suite,” he added. “My wife should already be here and well settled in.”

Klanek hesitated, and Iswander could imagine the man struggling. “Let me double-check, sir.”

After a few moments of what was surely just dithering and make-work delay—because there were likely berths available all along—Klanek came back on. “Good news, sir, I did find a small berth on level seven. It's just been vacated. That's the best I can do.”

“Thank you for your consideration. I'll take it. And what about my cargo?”

“The array will have to be tethered at one of the outer anchor stations. It's not an ideal commercial situation, but it'll be accessible should you find a customer. Good luck, sir.” Klanek provided the location and signed off.

Because he no longer had a green priest at his ekti-extraction operations, Iswander had no way of sending long-distance messages, so Londa wouldn't know he was coming. She would, no doubt, have an impeccable suite that she had converted into a fine home. He looked forward to seeing her soon.

He also needed to go to Academ to make sure that Arden was receiving an exceptional education. His son would not be having an easy time of it, and knowing that the young man probably had to defend himself against bullies and indignant crusaders made a knot in Iswander's stomach. But he himself had been bullied and stomped on many times. He didn't like it, but the experiences had made him strong. Arden was strong as well.

First, he had important business.

He went to the Newstation trade exchanges, where he listed his ekti-X, the quantity, and the price—which he knew undercut any of the new producers. He was discouraged to see how far the price of stardrive fuel had already fallen. He divided his load into three separate parcels, and quickly found a trio of bidders on the board who wanted to meet him.

He had used an alias as a designator so they didn't know the identity of the seller, but as soon as the three would-be buyers saw him, one man's face flared red and he stalked off without saying a word. The other two at least had the spine to confront him. “We don't want any ekti-X from you,” said one hard woman. “It's tainted with blood.”

Iswander masked his anger with ice. “And yet it still runs stardrive engines.”