James P. Hogan (6 page)

Every eye in the room watched in awe and trepidation as ghostly white vapors rose around the motionless form in the alcove. They thickened to obscure it completely for a moment or two, and then thinned; but the form was still there. Attention remained riveted on it, the room breathless and silent, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did. Finally, Zileg turned back impatiently, his expression demanding an explanation. Others followed suit in quick succession.

But by then the front of the room was deserted, with no trace of Korshak to be seen.

Korshak caught up with Vaydien and Ronti where the side passage from the kitchens joined the palace’s escape tunnel. They emerged at a landing place on the riverbank, where Mirsto had opened the concealed gate and was waiting with a boat. They followed the river for a little over a mile downstream to a copse just outside the city, where four fast horses, watched over by Sultan, were hitched among the trees – saddled, provisioned for lightweight travel, and ready to go.

Tranth City, with the surrounding region that it dominated, which extended a couple of hundred miles or so in each direction, was located on the opposite side of Merka from Sofi. From a descending surface lander launched fifteen minutes previously by a mother craft from
Aurora
cruising in the upper stratosphere, Lois Iles contemplated the scene enlarging gradually below. At the far end of the cabin behind her, looking bored and indifferent in a baggy suit, his mouth working absently on a piece of chewing root, Quentago sat between two hefty escorts from the ship. Although Lois’s principal field was optical physics – she had played a major part in working out the functions of devices found in the ruins of several old-world astronomical observatories preserved in Sofi’s central mountain range – she was also active in recruiting for the mission, which meant being on the lookout for exceptional individuals. People like Quentago, with the contempt they displayed for every kind of principle in their pursuit of self-gratification, repulsed her. Not only did they debase everything it meant to be human; they bragged about it.

Tranth was ruled by a gangster faction that had come to power through violence and made law as expedient. They had rebuilt a hydrocarbon-based technology of sorts and were putting all else second to expanding their industrial base to achieve military dominance in the region. Mills, mine heads, and factory buildings disgorging smoke cluttered the outlying areas, with grimy houses growing denser farther in to become a belt of ugliness choking the urban center. After the open, airy townships of Sofi, the narrow streets hemmed in by tall, austere buildings looked airless and cramped.

From their earliest days, the Sofians had progressed quickly in deciphering old-world scientific texts, enabling rapid advances in physics that had resulted in a decision to move directly to nuclear techniques for power generation and supplying process heat for materials extraction, manufacture, and other needs. Such boldness of innovation was characteristic of the Sofian way of going about things, leading them through a succession of breakthroughs in the furthering of knowledge and its application to practical matters. This, and their policy of not making their discoveries widely available, had given them uncontested technical supremacy and made possible its culmination in
Aurora
.

The lander came down as directed in an open space behind a line of high, solid-looking stone buildings. It looked like a site being cleared for new construction, walled on either side and enclosed at the front by a chain-link fence with a wide gate. Maybe a dozen armed guards, who could have been police or soldiers, were stationed at the gate and outside in the street. A vehicle with two figures waiting in front of it was standing inside, clear of the touchdown area. As the lander’s power died, Lois picked up the document wallet containing her notes, unbuckled her seat restraint, and rose to her feet. The exit was forward from the passenger cabin, through a bulkhead door and behind the crew stations. Farther back, Quentago remained seated with his two escorts.

“Nice flight down,” Lois complimented as the pilot got up from his seat and moved back to unlatch the door.

“We try to please,” he acknowledged as he operated the control to open the door and lower the access steps. One of Masumichi Shikoba’s robots was sitting in the copilot’s seat, taking in the view outside. It had come down from the ship as an observer. A still-unsolved problem with trying to develop artificial intelligences was finding an effective way to equip them with the “world knowledge” that came naturally to humans as a consequence of growing up and living in it. One of Masumichi’s strategies was to expose them to as wide a range of experiences as possible as a way of getting them to form the conceptual associations necessary for inferential reasoning.

The pilot glanced back at the cabin through the open door behind Lois, winked at her, and said to the robot in a carrying voice, “You did real well. Ten out of ten. Now let’s see how you handle docking when we take her back up.”

That got Quentago’s attention. “
What?!
” came his strangled voice from the rear. “
That
was flying us? I don’t care how the talks go. I’m not going back up.”

“Easy,” one of the escorts cautioned.

The robot turned its head to look at the pilot. “Please explain reason for asserting as true what must be known to be false,” it requested.

“I see they haven’t programmed you for getting a joke yet,” the pilot said, grinning.

“Please explain ‘joke.’”

“Catch you later,” Lois said and left them to it.

The air outside as she descended the steps was cool with a touch of dampness. It carried a whiff of sulfurous odor from somewhere, probably an industrial emission. The vehicle was some kind of oil-or gasoline-powered passenger car, shiny black, heavy, and boxy, with three doors on each side, large wheels with what looked like internally sprung tires, and a motor compartment at the rear. The Tranthians had a trading arrangement with oil producers to the south, on the neck connecting Merka to the southern half of the continent. They operated their own mines for coal, ores, and other minerals, most of them reopened workings from the old-world era.

One of the two men standing in front of the car approached. Lois assumed him to be Gratz. She hadn’t been given all the details of the Directorate’s prior dealings with Tranth, but apparently he was a state attorney. He struck her more as a hired bruiser or political policeman, with his blockish build, long coat of gray rubberized material, brimmed hat set squarely above craglike features, and expression of studied opacity. He drew up without offering a hand or other form of salutation.

“Lois Iles?”

“Attorney Gratz.”

“Quentago is not with you?”

“He will remain aboard the lander until I’ve met Clure and can verify the deal – as was agreed. I take it that Clure is elsewhere.”

“Not far from here. We will drive, yes?”

Gratz turned and let her follow him back. The other man, wearing an olive tunic with a black leather cap, held the door for them and then went around to the rear. The interior was quilted, with leather seats, the dash panel in front of the driver’s seat cut from wood or an imitation. Noises that sounded like a hand crank being turned came from behind, and the motor started, settling down after a few seconds to a steady clickety-clack chugging. Moments later, the driver reappeared, climbed in at the front, and engaged gear.

They drove out through the gate, past a gaggle of onlookers who had seen the lander come down and stayed to gawk despite shouts from the guards to move on. As they turned onto the street of drab stone frontages to what looked like official buildings, an escort car that had been waiting a short distance back moved out to follow them. The few people about were also drab, wrapped in dark, enveloping garb that insulated them from the world and conferred anonymity, their eyes turned toward the ground or trained straight ahead, avoiding contact that might invite attention. From ground level, the indifferent quality of architecture and the poor state of repairs on every side was obvious. Projecting the state’s power abroad took priority.

“This Clure, I have worked hard to protect him,” Gratz said. The tone sounded mechanical, as dispassionate as the countenance. “It is not easy. He has dangerous ideas that he does not keep to himself. It makes powerful enemies.”

Lois took it as an artless ploy to pre-settle the issue, regardless of what impressions she might form. Marney Clure had somehow come to the attention of certain people in
Aurora
as a person fired by the kind of vision, and with a flare for imparting it to others, that would enrich the venture. However – probably for the same reasons – Clure had fallen foul of the Tranthian authorities and was being held under detention as an agitator and subversive. Getting the Tranthians to part with him should have been an easy enough matter. But their ways of doing business meant that they never gave away anything that someone else wanted without getting some kind of return, even if it would cost them nothing to do so.

Quentago was a Tranthian thug who had been apprehended in Sofi, where he had come in pursuit of a fugitive math genius whom the Tranthian authorities considered to be state property and had explicitly prohibited from leaving. Quentago had connections among people who mattered in Tranth, and eliciting agreement from them for an exchange had not proved difficult.

“Well, let’s just hope that what I’ve heard was a fair assessment,” Lois replied. In fact, from the Aurorans’ point of view, there was little to deliberate over, since it was a convenient way to rid themselves of an unsavory customer. But Gratz needed to be made to feel that he was working for his deal.

“You realize that there are limits to how much I can do?” Gratz said. In other words,
What happens to him is in your hands
.

“Are you asking me to take responsibility for decisions that your government might make concerning its own internal matter?” Lois answered. Two figures in uniforms similar to those worn by the guards posted at the gate were swaggering along the sidewalk outside. An old man stepped into the gutter to get out of their way.

“Why put him to the risk? What is it to you?”

“The work I do is judged according to certain standards.”

Gratz raised his eyebrows and looked away. “As you wish.”

They turned into a narrow street with sooty row houses on one side and a high, windowless wall with metal barbs along the top lining the other. It ended at a pair of heavy wooden gates in an arch overlooked by a watchtower, with a guardhouse on one side. An officer came out and waved the car through as the gates were opened by guards on the inside. The arch opened into a cobbled yard enclosed by the wall on one side, and on the others by outbuildings in the shadow of a large, foreboding structure with small barred windows and steep gables.

An officer accompanied by a guard came out of an entrance to receive them as the driver opened the car door, and Lois and Gratz climbed out. No words were exchanged. The officer led them back in and through a lobby area of plain, yellow-painted walls, with a counter desk on one side, behind which was some kind of office room, visible through a window. A hallway at the rear of the lobby brought them to a stairway, which they ascended to a landing with corridors leading away on both sides. They followed the one to the right, and after a short distance the officer stopped at one of the doors and rapped sharply on it with a key ring. A guard within opened it, and the officer led the two visitors through to a bare room with a table in the center below a single hanging lamp. The only other occupant, sitting at one of the three chairs drawn up to the table, clad in a two-piece garment of light green, was presumably Marney Clure. The officer sent a perfunctory wave in his direction and withdrew, followed by the guard who had been posted inside the room. As the door closed behind them, Gratz lowered himself onto one of the empty chairs at the table. Lois took the remaining one, opposite Clure, laid her document wallet down in front of her, and opened it in readiness.

Marney Clure was younger than Lois had imagined, probably in his early thirties, or even late twenties. He had a fresh, boyish face with color in his complexion, straight yellow hair falling into a loose mop over his forehead, and a blond fuzz of several days’ growth softening his cheeks and chin. His eyes were a clear blue-gray, quick and shrewd, returning her gaze steadily with the depth and self-assurance of one twice his years. At the same time, there was a hint of mirth in them that told of an irrepressibility of spirit that even his present surroundings and circumstances couldn’t overcome.

“This is Ms. Iles,” Gratz began, addressing Clure. “She is sent by people who want to make you an offer. This is the best deal I have for you.” Clure shifted his eyes to her curiously, but more in a way that seemed to be weighing her up than asking what. It was as if he were looking for a measure of her first as a person, before getting into details of what she was selling.

“A new future, Mr. Clure,” Lois said. “A different
kind
of future.”

“Here, you have no future,” Gratz threw in.

Clure kept his eyes on her. “If it’s military, or some kind of troublemaking to provide an excuse for protective intervention somewhere, the answer’s no.” His voice was calm and deliberate, leaving no room for doubts. Then he cocked his head to one side. “But you don’t look like a military recruiter.”

“Why would you be so adamant, if I were?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t solve anything. Just causes a lot of hate and reasons for revenge, and makes problems worse. The wrong people get rich.”

“Who do you think should get rich?”

Clure took a moment to reflect. This probably wasn’t going in any of the directions he had expected, but he seemed happy enough follow it through. “Well, the way I see it is, nobody’s born with anything. So whatever they get on top of what they produce themselves must come from other people. And the only way other people are going to give it to them is if they get something worthwhile back in return. So the ones who should end up with a lot to show are the ones who can do things better when it comes to providing what other people need.” He rubbed his nose with a knuckle for a moment. “And when you look at it, most people who are rich never do much with the stuff they’ve got. It’s just a token to let people know who you are. But if you really had anything of value to offer, you wouldn’t need it. They’d know who you are.”