The D’neeran Factor (65 page)

He left the program running and went for a walk outdoors. He had bought the house and grounds two Standard years before from the heirs of a gambling magnate who had
finally died in spite of all that artificial organs could do. There was no satisfactory replacement for the whole of a deteriorating brain. The place was not a home, but it was the closest he had ever had to one. When he was tired of walking, he sat on a wooden bench and listened to the sea. He was high above it, but it was audible from here, a steady thump-and-rumble, the pulsebeat of a planet.

After a while Shen came to find him, unerring in the dark. She carried a light and a long printout. She sat beside him and gave the things to him without comment. He looked at the printout and saw that the computer had finished its search.

“The Rose: Colloq. Mt. Greene, near Thule, Montana, Heartworld.

“The Rose: ST. Biennial underwater race limited to modified human organisms. Town of Eiger, Nestor.

“The Rose(s): Colloq. Metatree forest near Hai, Co-op.”

There were more entries like that. He scanned them impatiently. Near the bottom of the list he saw: The Rose: ST (1) Stone venerated by The People of the Rose, Riordan's Revenge. (2) The People of the Rose.”

Shen saw his attention. “That it?”

“I don't know. I've been there. A long time ago, ten years maybe. I forgot about the ‘Riordan' part, I only heard it called Revenge. Come on, let's look it up.”

They went back to the house and got what they wanted immediately. Riordan's Revenge was obscure, but properly cataloged. Michael read:

“Riordan's Revenge is one of thirty planets visited and reported as habitable by Miles Riordan in the years 2463 through 2481, only two of which—Riordan's Revenge and Isle—are actually classifiable as such.

“‘Revenge' is little known and is seldom visited except by representatives of the Colonial Oversight and Protection Service once each Standard year, and by merchantmen on no fixed schedule. Though terrestrial in composition and atmosphere, the planet is locked in an ice age which may be permanent. (See Subfile 1.) Revenge is considered marginally habitable, under the guidelines of the Colonial Oversight and Protection Service, only in the following regions: (a) The so-called Long Archipelago, approximately 8N-12S, 60E-75E; (b) the southernmost portion of the planet's largest
continent, the habitable portion lying 6N-4S, 94W-113W. Even in these areas the growing season is short, and the population of Riordan's Revenge relies exclusively on accelerated-growth crop strains for agricultural sustenance.”

There was more, but Michael quit reading. His memory had gotten the jog it needed. The City of the Rose was not a city but a scanty town, ugly under a cold sun. Stone ranging rust to scarlet in brutal outcroppings of rock; rose-shapes everywhere and a temple whose interior no unbeliever could see; pathological rejection of outsiders, so that Revenge did not have Inspace communications, not even a single transmitter; veiled women he had hardly glimpsed, because they feared defilement if an infidel's gaze fell on them—

A man could hide on Revenge.

“Mike?” said Theo, reading over Shen's shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Why would he go there?”

“Stay out of sight. Stay hidden. Maintain a base? Where'd he dock that 'vette he got? Where'd he go to install the guns? You want to be hidden for something like that. Cheaper to do it in atmosphere.”

He spoke with authority; from experience.

“Think this might be it?” Shen said.

“Worth a try, maybe. It's his kind of place.” His breath caught. Shen looked at him narrowly. “God, yes, it's his kind of place,” Michael said with feeling. “Isolated, primitive, helpless—that's why I went there. But it wasn't the place.”

Theo had punched up a subfile. He said practically, “It's a long way out. That Riordan, he must have been right out on the edge when exploration slowed down. That was just before it did, wasn't it?”

“It was at the very end of the Explosion,” Michael said. He did not have to search his memory for details of the great age of exploration; he had made himself an expert on the topic. “I know about Miles Riordan. He was one of the reasons they put the freelancers out of business. Then the big colonies started breaking away, Heartworld first and then Willow and Co-op, and nobody had time for exploring.”

Shen folded her arms and stared at him without expression.
She said, “Catch up this time, maybe. Lousy place. No people. No people, no cover. You get spotted first. GeeGee's got no guns. Shields'll stop a meteorite. No more. Stupid.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Crazy man.”

“I want him alive. I want his records intact. The guns come later.”

Shen said to Theo, “Crazy man wins all the arguments. You noticed? Start packing.”

Michael nodded. They would be in space by morning.

There was a full moon the night before Hanna entered quarantine, the night she finally went to see Jameson. She rode under it in an Admin aircar, and the moon-frosted land below slipped past like water. The aircar made no sound. It homed in on Admin and guided itself. Hanna, with nothing to do but be carried through the silver night, thought she stood still over the turning Earth. She thought perversely that she could change course, fly away at random, look down on the busy towns and quiet countryside contemplative and unseen. Why not?—all her good-byes were said. Admin could not possess her much longer; her ties with Earth, with all of human space, attenuated. It was the same for Rubee and Awnlee. Of late they seemed more alien, not less; as if the days running past already brought them nearer to their home, and they could begin to take off a conforming skin they had worn politely through the months with humankind. The vast gulf waited for all of them.

The guards at Admin's rooftop hardly bothered to check Hanna's identity.
Not bad for a spacer from D'neera.
The tubes that wound through Admin shot her down, south, east, and spat her out at Jameson's door.
With luck I will not come here again,
she thought, saw in his puzzled face that some of the thought had escaped her, and to forestall a question said good evening hurriedly.

“What is it you want me to see?” she asked.

“Oh—” Her abruptness startled him. He drew her into Contact's deserted rooms and said, “It is an historical piece. In a manner of speaking.”

“It is about this man? This ghost who haunts I&S?”

“Yes, of course. Also this is farewell, or nearly,” he added, and when they came to his inner chamber she was prepared to accept with courtesy a glass of wine, a stirrup cup—courteously, because Rubee and Awnlee had taught her more about manners than all her life before.

“You can regard the file as the evening's entertainment,” he said.

He had forgotten or chose to ignore the past days' strain. Hanna was glad to let it pass. She settled onto a couch that tested the contours of her body, shuddered and reshaped itself to her measure. Jameson sat beside her and the couch shuddered again.
Universal minor earthquakes,
she thought.

“Is it a pageant?” she said. “Like Rubee's tales?”

“How odd that you should say that.” He smiled; the parting near at hand might be a relief to him, too. “I haven't been immersed in the tales as you have,” he said, “but I must confess I find myself at times reinterpreting events as an Uskosian might, or as I imagine he might. What you'll see is interesting enough without adding an alien perspective, however. It's neither text nor pageant; it's a holo recording of an interview between an I&S investigator and the former head of the Abbey of St. Kristofik on Alta. The abbot is dead now; the monks believe an extended lifespan pleases the Deity less than a natural one. I'm told that shortly after he died an anonymous donor made a generous gift to the school in his memory. The source was Valentine; you can make what you want of that. The interview took place fifteen years ago, five years after the
Pavonis Queen
incident. It concerns events that happened even earlier, between the time Kristofik appeared on Alta and the time he left—ran away, the abbot said, to Valentine.”

Hanna started to say:
It seems irrelevant.
But Jameson spoke an order and the room went dark, and before she could say anything there was a new burst of light, the light of a holographic projection that took up most of the room. In its center, stone-still but three-dimensional, stood two men. One, cloaked and booted in black, had the look of assured competence that marked the men and women of Admin. The morning light left no shadows on his ebony skin. Surely he looked just the same today, performed the duties of the present with confidence. Fog lay on the fields behind him, as on a damp morning in autumn. Also he stood on
gray-white stone, so that Hanna's eye fell automatically on his darkness and solidity, drawn to the only thing of substance in that land of mist.

The other man was old and pale. His cropped hair was snowy, and the top of his head was bald. He wore a long white robe loosely belted with rope. He was frail beside the investigator, an aged wraith, part mist, part old white stone. More than age twisted his face, but Hanna did not know what it was until the figures moved; then she saw that it was sorrow.

“I am still trying to assimilate what you have told me…Accept it? No, not yet. I cannot accept it yet. I must forgive, but my charity falls short. In time. Time and prayer…”

The investigator listened, but the old man spoke to himself. They walked together on stone pathways, past twisted trees or treelike shrubs, stone walls, stone statues, white and ghostly.

The old man said, “To think the boy I knew could do that deed! And then you say he turned to evil long before!”

The other man said quietly, “There is evidence to support the theory that he was involved in the matter I spoke of. There is no doubt about the rest of it.”

“Oh dear, oh dear, how distressing this is! Please forgive me. You have questions, don't you? I'm not helping much.”

“I'm sorry to have such news to bring. Believe me, I am sorry. You were fond of him?”

“Yes. Yes, I was. It was a blow when he ran away. I always hoped to hear of him someday. To have news at last, and such news!”

There was a stone bench by the path. The old man sat down on it, gathering his robe with a wrinkled hand. His face was unabashedly grieved. “Oh,” he said, “his immortal soul! How I pity him!”

“I'm very sorry.” The investigator remained standing.

“Yes, yes, I know. Pray for him. I will, all of us will. That's all that's left to do. We failed, you know, failed at everything else we should have done. That's plain enough!”

The I&S man waited a moment. Then he said, “You understand that I must get as much information about him as I can. I hoped you could tell me how he came here, what he was like, what he thought about, why he left.”

“Oh dear, oh dear. What he thought about? Who knows?
Things I never guessed. There must have been things I never saw. His confessor, maybe—but that is out of the question,” he said, the old voice suddenly stone, and he looked at the investigator with eyes of iron.

“Of course,” said the I&S man mildly. “I don't think we need to worry about that. Just tell me where he came from.”

“I don't know where he came from.” The old man stirred; there was a new glint in his eye. “Do you want to hear a mystery?” he said.

“By all means.”

“Well, then, I will tell you a mystery. You can confirm it with the secular authorities. I won't say you can find out more about it; you won't find out any more. Eleven years ago—pardon, me, fifteen in Standard time—I came out of the rear gate one morning—have you seen all our grounds? No? The rear gate opens on an alley behind the sheds where we keep our tools. Sometimes we put food scraps in the alley. It doesn't happen often. We waste very little here. That morning Brother Cook burnt the bread. Some of it was past saving, and so it was put out for the dogs. Later I went out, I forget why I went, I forgot it then and never could remember. I found him in the alley. He was too busy eating to hear me. He was so starved there was no room in his belly for caution; there was only the hunger. When I spoke to him, he would have run away, but he would not leave the bread. I think he would have killed me if I had tried to take it from him. A wild animal. Nothing but bones, and at the time when a boy can hardly keep up with his bones, they grow so fast. His eyes were yellow, a strange sick color. Later it went away. Do you know how I finally got him to trust me? With food. Like an animal. And so we took him in.”

“Was he from Alta?”

“Oh, no. I don't know where he came from, but it wasn't anywhere on Alta. Listen to this. He did not understand Standard speech, and we could make nothing of what he said. We recorded it and sent it, oh, everywhere. To Earth; even to Earth. The report would be still in his file. It said the language he spoke came from Earth, originally, I mean. As long ago as the twenty-fourth century, they said, his people must have been isolated; just before Standard was mandated, or maybe just after, so they hadn't got into the habit
of using it. I don't remember what language it was. He learned Standard fast. He always learned fast.”