Offspring (50 page)

Then Kendi deflated. Getting proof was a major stumbling block. Kendi had no doubt that Sufur’s involvement had been carefully obscured behind a dozen veils. It might take years to dig up solid evidence, and by then Ched-Pirasku would be too firmly entrenched for a recall. Still, it was a possibility to explore.

~Father Kendi, are you coming soon?~
whispered the Silent voice.

Kendi shook his head and thumped the dermospray against his arm. The whole idea of meeting this Silent again made him wary, but he couldn’t turn down the chance. At least Ben would be there. Kendi hoped he wouldn’t conjure up another sledgehammer.

Colors swirled and some time later, falcon Kendi was circling in the dry air of his hot, sun-drenched Outback. Far below, his sharp eyes picked out Ben in his explorer’s outfit. Kendi dove down to land on a nearby rock. Without speaking, he cast out his mind and felt the presence of the other Silent.

~Approach,~
he thought.
~We meet on my turf or not at all.~

The dark-haired Silent appeared in a splash of Dream energy. For a moment he wore a business suit. Then the suit flickered into a loincloth. The man, Kendi noticed with some satisfaction, wasn’t built for such attire. He had a noticeable gut, and his pasty skin was hairless as a child’s. Ben, looking handsome in his brown khakis, flashed Kendi a half-grin. The man flushed, and Kendi clacked his beak. Here on his own turf, Kendi was the more powerful Silent. The lack of clothing reminded the other man of this fact, and also kept him off-balance in case he tried anything stupid.

“We’re here,” Kendi said. “Talk. Start with your name.”

“Uh, I’m Frank. Frank Kowalski.” The tear in his scalp had scabbed over, creating a dark blotch on his head. He wore a heal splint on the finger Ben had smashed.

“What do you want, Frank?” Ben said. “Out with it.”

“I thought about what you said about Silent Acquisitions and Padric Sufur,” he said. “I started...you know...asking around and looking at stuff. Uh, I guess...I mean...”

“Today, Frank,” Kendi said. “I’m a busy bird.”

“You were right about Mr. Sufur,” Frank said. “He has...he has plans for Bellerophon. For the Silent on Bellerophon. Salman Reza would have gotten in the way.”

“How, Frank?” Kendi said. “You’re beating around the bush.”

Frank wiped sweat from his face with one hand. “You have to promise me something, first.”

“Promise what?” Kendi said.

“You have to promise you won’t tell anyone where you got this information. I’ll be...punished if Mr. Sufur finds out I talked to you. You have to swear on Irfan herself, or I’ll leave right now.”

Kendi raised his right wing. “I swear by Irfan herself.”

“And the Offspring?” Frank said, turning to Ben.

“I swear on my mother’s grave,” he said without a trace of irony.

“All right.” Frank took a deep breath. “Mr. Sufur is behind the disappearances of those Silent and Silenced, just like you suspected. It’s part of a project he calls the Silent Corridor.”

“What’s it for?” Ben asked.

“Remember how you guys wiped out the Collection? It bankrupted the company and—”

A—and allowed Sufur to buy it,” Kendi finished. “I
know
. Where is this going, Frank?”

“I’m trying to tell you. Mr. Sufur decided that S” needed to fall back on what it was good at, get out of the communication business entirely and go back to what it had been founded on—the slave trade. He reminded the board that Bellerophon now has the highest concentration of working Silent in the galaxy. With so many in one place, it would be easy to grab them and ship them back to S” Station.”

“Why not just invade?” Kendi said. “Take over like Ormand Clearwater did when he invaded back in Irfan’s time.”

“Invade with what?” Frank sat gingerly on the ground, wincing as his nearly-bare backside came into contact with the hot, uneven earth. “We don’t have an army anymore, or much of a fleet. S” can barely afford to keep the air on, let alone pay a military. Mr. Sufur’s plan was a lot cheaper, especially since the profit margin on Silent slaves is so high these days.”

“What does this have to do with my grandmother?” Ben asked.

“S”‘s people have been snatching up Silent, putting them into cryo-sleep, and bringing them up into a small cargo satellite in orbit around Bellerophon. The satellite used to belong to Mitchell Foxglove, but Sufur bought it from him. Once there are enough Silent on board to justify the trip, they’re shuttled out to a ship hidden in the Bellerophon system. When that ship is full, it’ll take the cargo back to S” Station for sale. Mr. Sufur’s Silent Corridor. Right now the Corridor is feasible because Bellerophon has dismantled a lot of its military, including its fleet of ships. Senator Reza planned to increase military spending, which would mean more ships patrolling the sector. The Corridor would be discovered. So Mr. Sufur had to be sure Senator Reza lost the election.”

Kendi thought for a moment. “This doesn’t match what Su—what we’ve learned elsewhere, Frank. Sufur wants to end the human presence in the Dream, not sell Silent slaves to increase it. And why would S” kidnap Silenced humans? They’re worthless.”

“Mr. Sufur lied to the board. His real plan...his real plan is something else.”

“What is it, Frank?” Ben said in a dangerous voice. “Let’s hear it.”

“Mr. Sufur has ordered the kidnapping of one Silenced human for every Silent one.” Frank wiped more sweat from his face. “He told the board they were decoys. He said too many people would figure out what was going on if only Silent disappeared, so they’d have to snatch up extra people. And the whole thing
is
a decoy—for Silent Acquisitions.”

The knowledge slammed into Kendi like a gravity beam. His skin prickled and his feathers rose. “No,” he whispered. “All life.”

“What?” Ben said. “What’s the decoy about?”

“He’s planning to trick Silent Acquisitions,” Kendi said. “Isn’t he, Frank? Gretchen and all the others like her will show up positive on a gene test for Silence. They appear on S” Station, go under the auctioneer’s hammer, and no one’s the wiser. A few weeks of...creative coercion and drug therapy will ensure the Silenced themselves don’t say anything about their real condition, and the new owners won’t figure it out until it’s too late. Meanwhile, Sufur still has the
real
human Silent locked away somewhere.”

“And he can do with them whatever he likes,” Ben finished. “Oh god.”

“He isn’t going to kill them, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Frank said. “He’s going to arrange an ‘accident’ in the cryo-chambers. “ll the Silent will come out of cryo-sleep with irreversible brain damage from improper thawing. They won’t be Silent anymore, and they can still be sold as general laborers to recoup costs.”

“This doesn’t make complete sense,” Ben said. “The people who buy fake Silent will raise a fuss when they figure out they’ve been tricked, and the scheme will lose money.”

“He never wanted to make money,” Frank said. His shoulders were turning faintly pink. “He’ll be able to make two or three trips down the Corridor before anyone at Silent Acquisitions figures out what’s going on, and by then he’ll have grabbed most of the Silent humans left on Bellerophon. He bails out of S”, the company takes the blame, and Sufur moves on to another scheme. Look, can you conjure me a shirt or something? I’m frying.”

Kendi considered denying the request, then settled his feathers in an avian shrug. The man had answered every question so far, and Kendi saw no need for continued discomfort. There was a slight shift of energy, and Frank was wearing a khaki explorer outfit similar to Ben’s.

“Thanks,” Frank said.

“We’ll have to stop him and his Corridor,” Ben said. “What are the coordinates for the cargo satellite and the ship?”

“That I don’t know,” Frank said. “I couldn’t find out. Mr. Sufur has other Silent besides me who run messages back to S” Station, and he uses one of them to keep track of the ship and the satellite.”

“Why are you telling us all this now?” Kendi asked. “Before you were ready to kill us.”

“I didn’t want to kill you,” Frank said. “I just wanted to get away. When we...talked that other time, though, you started me thinking and I did some asking around, and that’s when I found out what was really going on. It scares me, you know? If Mr. Sufur is going to give all those Silent other brain damage, I figure he’ll...he’ll...”

“He’ll do the same to you,” Kendi finished. “And here I thought you just wanted to do the right thing.”

Frank just shrugged.

“So why don’t you tell lots of other people?” Ben said. “Spread the word all through the Dream?”

Frank looked horrified. “Do you know what Mr. Sufur would do to me then? Brain damage would be a vacation. I only told you two because you promised to keep quiet about me. Don’t forget you swore!”

“All right, all right,” Kendi said. “Untwist your knickers. Maybe Ben and I can leak the information instead.”

“I wouldn’t,” Frank told him. “Mr. Sufur has a whole shipful of hostages. If he thinks you’re on to him, he’ll just space the people he’s captured.”

“So how do we stop Sufur?” Ben said. “We can’t get him arrested. We can’t confront him with what we know. We can’t find the ship.”

Kendi clacked his beak again, this time with sudden inspiration. “Impersonation!”

“What?”

“You—or more likely, I—could pretend to be one of Sufur’s pet Silent. If Frank here can show me who to talk to back on S” Station, I could relay a message cancelling the entire program. We’ll have to word it carefully to avoid the whole ‘can’t lie’ problem, but we’ll figure something out. After that, we grab Sufur and make him tell us where the satellite and ship are. Hell, once we get into his house, we might be able to trace its location using Sufur’s own communications equipment. And then—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Frank said, holding up a hand. “You can’t just knock on a Silent back on S” Station and start yakking away. Every time Mr. Sufur gives me messages for Silent Acquisitions, he starts with a rotating logarithmic code generated by his computer. One of the computers back on S” Station has the same program, and the Silent who receives the message first checks the code. If the one I give him doesn’t match the one Mr. Sufur gives me, the communiqué is ignored.”

“Oh, great,” Ben sighed.

“It gets worse,” Frank continued. “Mr. Sufur sends a regular signal out to both the ship and the cargo satellite. If they don’t hear from him, they’re supposed to space the Silenced and run for it with the Silent.”

“He contacts ‘certain people,’ “ Ben muttered. “God.”

“We need to get our hands on that logarithm program,” Kendi said.

Frank stood up. “My drugs are wearing off. I have to go.”

“Tell me how to contact the Silent on S” Station first,” Kendi said. “Give me the pattern.”

“The one who’s usually on duty is named Marina Feldan,” Frank told him. “Female, late thirties, brown hair, brown eyes, heart-shaped face, average build.” He continued to speak, and Kendi listened carefully, letting the pattern grow. Despite appearances, Frank wasn’t actually speaking—he was transmitting his thoughts directly into Kendi’s brain using the Dream as a conduit. Kendi’s mind chose to visualize the process as a man talking to a falcon in the Australian Outback. Kendi “heard” Frank’s thoughts as words because that was how Kendi’s mind interpreted what was going on. After a few moments, something clicked in Kendi’s head, and he knew he could find this Marina Feldan on his own.

“Got it,” he said.

“Then I’m gone,” Frank said.

“Hold it.” Kendi fluttered a wing. “Before you go, I want to know something—are you leaving anything out about Sufur’s plan? Is there anything you’re holding back?”

Frank took a deep breath. “No.”

“All right. You better go.”

“Just remember that you swore not to tell anyone,” Frank said.

“We won’t,” Ben said. “Just go.”

Frank vanished messily, leaving heavy distortion in his wake. Kendi shuddered. The ripples tore at his Outback, and he could feel them washing over him like liquid nausea. It took several moments for the Dream to settle down.

“Sloppy,” Ben said with disapproval.

“I don’t like it,” Kendi said.

“Me, either. He needs to practice leaving without—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Kendi said. “I don’t like Sufur’s plan. It feels like I’m missing something about it.”

“Frank couldn’t lie to us,” Ben said doubtfully. “Except by omission. And your last question took care of that.”

“I know. But the whole thing sounds...wrong to me.” Kendi clacked his beak. “Let’s get out of here. I want hands again.”

Harenn tucked the soft yellow blanket more firmly around little Evan. Ben looked down at him. Evan breathed with his whole chest and stomach, and it was strangely compelling to watch. Ara slept in her own crib nearby, tiny limbs sprawled in four different directions. Although Evan preferred being wrapped snugly, his sister fussed and cried if her blankets were tight, and she protested being put into a sling. Only a few days old and she already had a personality different from her brother’s. Ben marveled at that. He seemed to marvel a lot lately.