Orion Shall Rise (53 page)

Wairoa brought his attention back from hypersensitivity, rose, waited. ‘The chief would like to see you,’ the guard explained. ‘Uh, if you want.’

The Maurai quirked a smile. ‘By “chief” you mean Mikli Karst, head of your intelligence and security group,’ he replied in the same Unglish. ‘I doubt the director would be that sardonic.’

The guard frowned. ‘Damn it, cut that out, will you? We try to be nice to you and – Oh, never mind. Will you come?’

Wairoa nodded and slipped on the undergarments, tunic, trousers, and sandals issued him. He had been naked, observing with his entire skin. The door opened and he stepped forth. Two armed men stood nervously aside. They were career soldiers, normally keeping watch against intruders aboveground, occasionally doubling as constabulary below, unused to the role of jailers. The captive
was a spooky sort, too, they thought.

‘This way.’ One before, one behind, they conducted him through coldly lighted tunnels. Ventilators whirred and gusted breezes which smelled a little of oil and chemicals. Beyond the detention section, folk went to and fro on their work. They cast startled glances at Wairoa. The official bulletin about the new arrivals had been terse. The sight of him turned voices off.

At the end of the walk was an anteroom where an officer was handling documents while a secretary typed letters. The former wore a sidearm. ‘Go in,’ she told Wairoa. ‘You fellows wait here.’

Past a door was a second chamber, not very spacious either, its rock similarly covered with soft, blue-gray material. The portal to a vault occupied most of the rear wall. A bookcase filled the left side. Across the right wall, above a large glass-topped desk, a pair of mammoth tusks curved mightily. On the desktop were a telephone, an intercom, an onyx penholder in the form of a yoni, a crystal ashtray, and several reference volumes between bookends made of human jawbones – no pictures anywhere, though Mikli Karst had a wife and children. The air was blue and a-reek with cigarette smoke.

‘Greeting,’ the Norrman said cordially from behind the desk. He waved at a chair opposite. ‘Sit down. Would you like coffee, tea, something stronger?’

Wairoa shook his head, lowered himself, crossed his arms, and leaned back.

‘You needn’t sulk.’ Mikli’s tone continued cheerful. ‘You’ve been pretty well treated for a prisoner of war – which you are, you know – haven’t you? A comfortable cell, your privacy respected, decent food and drink, plenty of books, exercise periods, a promise of medical care if you should need it. And human interaction, if you’d accepted the overtures of your guards. They were curious and wanted to be friendly. It’s not their fault that you rebuffed them.’

‘And you are about to offer me more,’ Wairoa said.

‘Shrewd, shrewd. Can you tell me why?’

‘You too are curious. Not being stupid, you do not expect me to let out any secrets, but you may acquire a few usable insights from conversations with me. If nothing else, they will be diverting.’

Mikli reached for a cigarette. ‘You might credit me with common humanity. You’ll be here for many months. I’ve arranged matters so that keeping you in close confinement any longer would be a pointless cruelty.’

Wairoa’s voice remained calm. ‘About that last motivation, you lie.’

Mikli narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t recommend insulting me.’

‘You cannot be insulted.’

Mikli cackled a laugh. ‘Good for you! Instead, I’m amusable.’

He ignited the cigarette, inhaled, blew a smoke ring, and said: ‘This
is
my proposal. You’ll be free to move about the residential-recreational sections. The critical areas are restricted, as you must have guessed; the sentries admit nobody without a pass. From time to time you may go topside if you like, under guard. Below ground, you may call on anybody you wish and talk freely, though you can also guess what kinds of questions will go unanswered. Nobody will accompany you on such excursions. We’ve better uses for personnel than to have them clumping after you.

‘The restrictions are these. You must spend the nights in your cell, locked up. By day you must report in person, every four hours, to the officer on duty in the anteroom here. And you must wear this gadget.’

From a drawer he drew a padded ring, hinged at one point and equipped with a locking mechanism where it stood open. ‘It fits around your neck,’ he said ‘It’s loose and comfortable, you can wash beneath it, but you see that it won’t slip over your head. Inside are wires, transistors, and a small but adequate battery. If any suspicion about you arises, the officer will press a button to trigger a radio signal which, in turn, will activate a transmitter in the collar. That will enable us to pinpoint your location. Would you like to examine it?’

Wairoa accepted the device, turned it over once, and handed it back. ‘Obviously any tampering will also switch on the transmitter.’ he said. ‘The frequency must be suitable for alarm circuits in this complex to pick up and carry, else the walls would screen so weak a signal. Above ground, it should be detectable by a sensitive instrument for a significant distance, independently of line-of-sight. Therefore I would judge the frequency to be in the range –’

‘Who cares?’

‘I am interested in the configuration that generates such a waveband, given its physical dimensions. Ingenious.’

‘I have no doubt you can redesign it in your mind. Myself, I just gave the specs to one of our electronic witches, and she delivered the goods two days later. Do you accept my terms?’

‘Yes.’

Mikli rose. ‘Then let me do the honors. Please bend over the desk. M-m-m … don’t try anything violent. I’m tougher and faster than you may think. Besides, where would you go?’

‘By resisting, I could deprive you of the sexual satisfaction,’ Wairoa replied, ‘but it would not be worth the trouble.’

Mikli stiffened. After several seconds he said, harshly: ‘All right, come on.’ Wairoa got up and complied. Mikli locked the collar around his neck. Both sat back down.

Mikli had recovered equilibrium. ‘Apropos your remark,’ he said, ‘I can introduce you to a woman who’d find you interesting. She’s no beauty, but then, neither are you. Or if you prefer a young man, I can oblige also.’

‘No.’

‘As you like. You could have said, “Thank you.”’

‘Why?’

‘Look, my time
is
reasonably valuable. I can’t waste it on your surliness.’

‘I am simply a precisionist,’ Wairoa said. ‘Let us by all means talk whenever you wish. You are an interesting creature.’

‘And you. How human are you, anyway?’

Wairoa made a slight shrug. ‘What is human?’

Mikli nodded and ground out the stub of his cigarette. ‘You and I have quite a few likenesses,’ he observed thoughtfully. ‘We both feel… detached … and at the same time, as if we had been born into a war going on forever … no? I’m not sure but what there
is
such a thing as ancestral memory. Certain nightmares – Do the races of man remember the wrongs they have done each other?’

‘Curious to hear you employ the word “wrong,”’ Wairoa remarked.

Mikli blinked, shook himself, and took out a fresh cigarette. ‘Well, even on a strictly scientific basis, it’s ridiculous to suppose the races have identical psyches. When everything else
is
unique, stature, proportions, color, tolerance of environmental factors, how could brains and nerves not be? Look at the temperaments of different breeds of dog –’

The intercom buzzed. Mikli flipped a switch. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘I need a file from the vault. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Mikli shut off the instrument. ‘Let’s get acquainted before we get metaphysical,’ he proposed. ‘Would you care to tell me something about your past life?’

‘Let me think about that for a minute,’ Wairoa said.

The outside officer entered and sought the massive, iron-reinforced oaken door of the vault. ‘Kindly look away while she dials the combination,’ Mikli ordered. Wairoa swiveled his chair around and sat silent until the door swung open. Then he turned back, which gave him a sidewise glimpse of a chamber walled with filing cabinets and the officer sliding out a drawer.

‘No, I believe you have the sequence reversed,’ he said. ‘My observation has been that people know each other somewhat before they exchange autobiographies. Why don’t we begin by talking shop today? What were our respective teams doing in Yurrup?’

Mikli puffed hard. ‘You’d tip your hand to me?’

‘No, of course not. However, a few details about what
is
obvious anyhow could be worth trading. For example, your primary mission was concerned with the coup d’état in Skyholm, wasn’t it?’

The officer caught her breath. Miklifrowned. ‘If you mean, were we a party to it, the answer is no,’ he replied.

‘We, our team, learned you had been in Espayn and later traveled about meeting with various high-ranking Clansmen – and you were not the first Northwestern agents in that area. In fact, it was word about earlier ones that decided my command on sending investigators.’

The officer took out the folder she wanted, closed drawer and vault, departed. Meanwhile Mikli said: ‘Such things could scarcely be kept hidden. However, use your common sense. Naturally, my corps wanted to know what was going on in the Domain, especially since you Maurai were expanding your presence there What
were you
up to?’ He bent lips into a smile. ‘An old saw goes, “Ever pointless are point-blank questions.” We had the unglamorous job of collecting the usual countless bits of a jigsaw puzzle which might or might not form a coherent picture. Oh, yes, we’d have been glad to see a regime come in that favored us and was hostile to you. But what did happen? A Gaean takeover, an ideology in the saddle that’s four-square opposed to us. Would we have promoted it? Come, now, man, come, now.’

‘You maintain trade and cultural relations with the Mong.’

‘Mutual expediency. If they find out about Orion, prematurely, we’ll have a two-front war on our hands, you from the sea, they from over the mountains. As
is,
they, like you, suspect us of being the uranium gleaners, and relations have grown strained.’

‘Somebody gave Jovain the help he needed.’

‘The evidence points to Yuan. Didn’t you fellows get clues?’

Wairoa nodded. ‘We can expect the new Domain government to start freezing us out,’ he said, ‘It will use its sizable resources in aid of converting the eastern Uropans to Gaeanity, which will bring their growing strength under its leadership. An intercontinental alliance – could that be the long-range hope of the Yuanese leaders? Could the imperial Soldat spirit be stirring again?’

‘You worry,’ Mikli said. ‘But Maurai policy has always been to uproot trouble at the earliest stage, before it’s had a chance to grow – eh? What do you propose to do about Yurrup?’

‘I am not in Her Majesty’s Cabinet or the Admiralty.’

‘No matter,’ Mikli said with the ghost of a sneer. ‘When Orion has risen, we’ll protect you, too, against aggression. You see, then it’ll be in our interest to preserve the status quo, while we proceed to shower the benefits of space upon all mankind.’

Wairoa regarded him. ‘You do not believe that. You never did.’

‘Oh, no.’ Mikli laughed. ‘Let Eygar Dreng and his think-alikes enjoy their fantasies. It stimulates their engineering genius, which you must agree
is
impressive. At the same time, it’s a textbook case of wish triumphing over logic.’

‘What do you predict, assuming Orion succeeds and the Northwest Union becomes the dominant power on Earth?’

‘Well, out of curiosity I’ve quietly commissioned technical studies, by people who have no emotional ax to grind where space is concerned. And I’ve done my own thinking.’

Mikli made a throwaway gesture. ‘Visualize,’ he said. ‘We can’t garrison the globe, and would not if we could. So we’ll need Orion, and an enlarged support structure, to maintain the upper hand, the threat in heaven. Little or nothing to spare for peaceful endeavors until a separate fleet has been built, and that will take a long while – especially when investment capital won’t be forthcoming very fast for such an expensive and unproven venture. Even if it were, Dreng is ludicrously optimistic about the possible pace of development. He closes his eyes to any economic or social hurdles. Meanwhile, every society, ours included, will be changing. Orion alone, and its check on the old Maurai balance wheel, guarantees that – but the changes are totally unpredictable.’ He grinned like a shark. ‘Except for this: we will never, never see Earth turned into a residential garden supplied by industrial parks throughout the Solar System. It is in the nature of man that he fouls his own nest.’

After a silence, when the ventilator alone had utterance, Wairoa stirred in his chair and asked softly, ‘If you bear so little faith in your cause, why do you serve it so well?’

‘It’s the liveliest game in town,’ Mikli said, ‘and it should lead to some glorious fireworks Why do you serve yours?’

‘Because I think you are right about what will happen if your side prevails.’

‘Why do you care?’

‘It
is
in
my
nature to be a watchman.’ The Maurai was mute for another space; then, matter-of-factly: ‘We were born to kill each other, you and I. On that account, we can be more open with each other than with anybody else in the world.’

3

Plik ended his song with a ripple of chords and put the guitar aside. His left hand reached for a glass, his right arm went around the waist of the young woman who sat beside him. He smiled down into her countenance, then lightly kissed her.