Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (40 page)

“Right now, I’ll settle for an edible lunch.” Marc fed in the code and the egg began to descend.

She was still working on the balky gravomag generator of the big tractor when he called on the intimate farspeech mode:

Síondaire, a iníon ó!

Yes, Taoiseach.

Are you ready for the Grand Tour? This lot are nearly finished gabbing and I’ll want to be bringing them down in a half hour or so.

You caught me flat on my back and filthy under the Tadano T6. You might know the damned thing would break just because we want to make a good impression showing off the armlann … Well, how did it go?

Not as I’d hoped, Síondaire a leanbh. That bloody Marc Remillard looked the gift horse in the mouth and decided it had stinking breath!

Oh, Daidí. I’m so sorry.

The Council mostly sided with Marc and I couldn’t persuade them otherwise. I was shot down in flames and made to look a right prat. Shite, maybe I
am
one, thinking that I knew anything about starwar strategy.

No one will dare think that of you!… What was the objection?

Marc was afraid that Ed Chung, the Commander-in-Chief of the Fourteenth on Assawompsett, would somehow discover the clandestine armament on the new ships and come roaring after his arse. So all he’d agree to is having the shipframes modified, and putting in hidden hardware for the weapons system controls. No actual armament plug-in until some unspecified time later in the
game—never mind that it might be too late by the time they get around to it! Ruslan Terekev tried to assure Marc that the weapons could be effectively camouflaged, but the bastard wouldn’t budge. He was too cagey to say flat out that he was afraid that the Russians might try to bypass Owen Blanchard at Okanagon and command the ships themselves when the Rebellion started, but that’s what he was thinking.

Hmm. How trustworthy is this Ruslan Terekev, anyway? It’s less than two years since he had his great change of heart, after all. I don’t mean to take the side of Remillard, Daidí, but the man does seem only to be showing prudence and commonsense.

Maybe so. But this starship scheme seemed so
right
. The Rebellion with its own fleet of dreadnoughts at last! The armlann at the ready and human freedom within our grasp—

You’ve waited for twenty years, Taoiseach Ruairí O Maoldhomhnaigh. You can be patient a while longer.

Yes. It seems I’ll have to be.

Be proud that you’ve gathered a true arsenal. It’s more than any of the other Rebel leaders have done—hole&corner plotters most of them, doing nothing but squirreling away stupid brainbuckets.

CE is not stupid, my lass. Especially Marc Remillard’s sort.

I have no confidence in mental weaponry. But then, I’m prejudiced.

And a damned good thing … Well, do us both proud when I bring them down for the tour, Síondaire. We’ll be coming along soon.

It was time for a break anyhow.

Cyndia Muldowney slid out from under the big disabled machine on a rolling board. She gathered up the mess of scattered tools and diagnostic instruments lying about and stowed them neatly in her mechanic-tote. A good stretch eased her cramped muscles, and a cup of sweet tea from a nearby wall dispenser took care of her thirst. She carried the plass cup to the railing of the circular metal balcony and stood, one fist on her hip, looking down into a monstrous shaft that plunged into tenebrous depths. It was 120 meters in diameter and lined with tier upon tier of alcoves as big as barns. Inside each cell of the cylindrical hive lurked one or more bulky spectral shapes.

“Equipment bay lights on,” she commanded. “Deopaque pods.”

The cells were suddenly illuminated from within and the white
plass shrink-shrouds protecting the stored items became transparent. Like goods in Christmas shopwindows, the treasures of Cyndia Muldowney’s domain were put on display.

Moonslicers.

Orbit sweepers.

Comet burners.

Modified deep-space smelters.

Hundreds of different types of actinic-beamers, X-lasers, molecular debonders, and twiston projectors—ingeniously modified from their original benign industrial or astronautical function into engines of destruction.

She had not done the actual refitting herself. Others devoted to the cause had converted lawful machinery into war matériel, laboring patiently for two decades in clandestine shops scattered all over the Rebellious Irish planet. And in later years, when his world’s growing economy had permitted it, Dirigent Rory Muldowney had consorted with underworld suppliers, paying them to steal truly colossal zappers and twelve precious antimatter devices from the Krondaku. It was done without a trace, by methods that Cyndia preferred not to think about.

Innocent-looking marine vessels transported the modified pieces from secret Hibernian workshops to a sea-cave on the rugged north side of Inisfáil, where there was a hidden dock. Before Cyndia’s time, old Tomás Daltún had taken each cargo consignment in charge. Working mostly alone, but assisted by the finest robotic construction and maintenance equipment that Rory Muldowney could buy or misappropriate from the tyrannical Galactic Milieu, the old man kept the cache of precious matériel in perfect condition, stowing it away in growing numbers of environmentally controlled storage alcoves carved from the living rock beneath Inisfáil.

Tomás Daltun was dead now, Lord rest him. But he’d lived to see the little girl who’d pestered and adored him during her summer visits to the island take over his job. Cyndia Muldowney was twenty-four years old. Her engineering education had only been completed two years earlier, whereupon her father had appointed her custodian of the armlann.

She finished her tea, tossed the cup into the recycler hopper, and went back to the Tadano T6 tractor. In operation, the huge machine moved freely up and down and around the shaft on a grid of rails, hauling the stored weaponry in or out of the cells. With luck, she might complete the repair before her father and the
others came down. It would be rather impressive to pluck out one of the podded comet burners or moonslicers with tractor beams, haul it up to the main holding area beyond the balcony, and let the members of the Rebel Council and the two Astrakhanians inspect the thing up close. Only Patricia Castellane and Owen Blanchard had ever visited the arsenal before, and that was years ago during Tomás Daltún’s time, when the collection was still a fairly modest one.

No one would call the armlann modest now. Not even
him
.

Cyndia Muldowney smiled as she retrieved the tools she’d need to finish the present job. She lowered herself down onto the wheeled trolley, turned on its worklights, replaced her goggles, and used her PK to slide on her back beneath the ponderous machine. An odd thought struck her, and she wondered if the paramount maistín himself was watching her right this minute, farsensing through the solid rock and the guardian sigma-fields.

What was he really like, she asked herself, this man who led the Metapsychic Rebellion on his own terms? He seemed to terrify and infuriate her stouthearted father while still earning his unwilling respect. Marc Remillard was as handsome as the devil himself and as charming, and he apparently thought nothing of freezing his body to ice while injecting his paramount brain with lightning.

Was he a man at all, if what they said about him was true? And why did she care?…

She found herself staring blankly up at the partially disassembled guts of the tractor’s third-stage power unit, her own heart pounding, breathless with anticipation.

“Never you mind about that one, Síondaire Ni Maoldhomhnaigh,” she told herself sharply. “Get back to work!”

Throughout the long luncheon, Marc’s mind had been divided. Almost all of his attention was devoted to the intricate telepathic discussion of Ruslan Terekev’s cogently presented proposal. But one small part of him stood aloof, watching Lyudmila Arsanova as she performed exquisite, undetectable mind-probes of all the Rebel participants … except himself. Her inspection only reached the intermediate thought-levels of the other eight members of the Executive Council, but it was sufficient to expose reasoning processes and prejudices, as well as providing a useful psychological profile of each individual.

Arsanova’s eventual scrutiny of
him
was something altogether different.

She had held off until the debate ended and the others at the table—replete with the magnificent meal of watercress soup, sea-spider mayonnaise in tomato aspic, grilled bluetrout with spinach-butter sauce, soda bread, and gooseberry fool with shortbread—were finishing their cups of coffee or tea. The conversation had turned vocal and desultory, confined to small talk now that it was inevitable what the decision on the starships was going to be. The disappointment of Intendant General Ruslan Terekev was palpable (only slightly mollified by his unanimous election to the Executive Council of the Rebel Party), which made it all the more peculiar that his female Chief of Staff seemed preoccupied with a completely different agenda.

At first Marc thought she might simply be coming on to him.

It was a tiresome phenomenon that had become more common since his entry into public life. As the charismatic new spokesman for the Rebel Party he was fair game for operant hero-worshippers of both sexes—most of whom had the good sense to back off when their subliminal overtures were rejected. But Lyudmila Arsanova apparently had more than mere dalliance on her mind. Her redactive touch on his invulnerable mindscreen was more fleeting than the caress of a butterfly wing, yet it carried an unusual urgency. Her own mental shield seemed to have diminished in spots, revealing intriguing glimpses of personality that struck him with an odd sense of déjà vu. He had never set eyes on the woman before, and yet he knew her: He had known her again and again, under disturbing—even humiliating—circumstances.

But how? And where?

She seemed to remain passive. Aside from expressing a few pleasantries when they were first introduced she had said nothing to him, never once meeting his gaze. But now her mental barrier was like a perfectly balanced garden gate ready to swing open and welcome him at the slightest encouragement. The compulsion for him to enter was becoming more and more powerful. Christ! Was the woman actually able to coerce him?

She was. But the impulse had no exterior source. It was coming from the depths of his own unconscious mind …

Across the table, Lyudmila Arsanova slowly lifted her beautiful face and looked directly at him:
Of course we know each other. We have been destined to come together from all eternity
—

Abruptly, Marc pushed back his chair and stood up. “Rory, I want to express my appreciation to you for providing us with a
place for this meeting. Thanks to you and your liaison with our friends from Astrakhan, we’ve been able to clarify some very important policy considerations today. The physical implementation of the Metapsychic Rebellion has taken a great step forward.”

There was mental applause, and scattered affirmations of “Hear, hear!”

Marc continued. “Knowing that these starships are available to us opens new strategy options to us that were formerly unavailable. The store of armament you’ve assembled here on Hibernia will surely remain an important part of that strategy. I have no doubt that both the warships and the stockpile of matériel will prove invaluable, one way or another, when the final countdown to human independence begins … And now I’d be honored—and so would everyone else sitting at this table—if you’d take us on a tour of your famous armlann. You’ve got us all dying of curiosity.”

Rory agreed at once and asked his guests to follow him. Marc kept close on the heels of the Hibernian Dirigent as they trooped downstairs to the lodge’s handsomely fitted game room. The secret passageway leading to the arsenal’s passenger lift was revealed, rather ludicrously, when the billiard table was tilted on end.

Rory seemed to have regained his usual mordant good humor. “The principal entry into the armlann is from a cave at sea level on the opposite side of the island. But it’s a dank place, more often than not stinking from the carcasses of unlucky water-beasts zapped by accident by the security devices. This here is the family entrance that my daughter uses when she comes to have tea with her old dad. Kindly step into the lift car.”

It was a rather tight fit for nine people. Lyudmila Arsanova smiled up at Marc and apologized for treading on his foot.

“Not at all,” he murmured, shifting away from the too-intimate contact. Back at the table, he’d thrust her ruthlessly from his mental vestibule with the same unceremonious finality dealt out to other would-be lovers who had refused to take a hint. But she still hadn’t given up, damn her! The mysterious inner compulsion lingered in his mind as well, along with an elusive fragment from—of all things—Jack and Diamond’s wedding mass:

You have ravished my heart my sister my bride you have pierced my soul with a single glance …

The elevator door slid open. They emerged into an area resembling the receiving dock of a warehouse, undistinguished except
for the fact that its curving walls and ceiling were smoothly bored from limestone strata of a mottled pinkish-gray. Boxy ship-containers and plass pods stood about, some of them opened to disclose such mundane items as rolls of electrical flex, a brand-new ventilation turbine, D-water drums, and packages of buffing compound. The atmosphere was dry and warm. A nearly subsonic hum hinted at the operation of some machinery. From the distance came an irregular clinking sound, as though someone were pounding on metal.

“We’ll find my daughter this way,” Rory said, heading into a side passage. “She’s the sole guardian of the armlann.”

Professor Anna Gawrys said rather reproachfully, “Surely the poor young woman doesn’t spend all of her time here, down in the bowels of the earth?”

Rory laughed. “Not a bit of it, Annushka. The regular maintenance schedule takes only ten weeks out of each year, although extra work is required when fresh batches of equipment arrive and have to be mothballed. And from time to time, when we outgrow our space and new storage cells are required, Cyndia supervises their construction. The rest of her days are spent lolling around Tara Nua, giving me a hand now and then at Dirigent House when she’s not throwing parties. The lass insists her madcap socializing is a necessary smoke screen to divert suspicion, but I think she protests too much.”