The Thrones of Kronos (21 page)

“Must be one of those Douloi-Polloi polarities,” Derith
said. “Was in there once. Scraps of conversations without context, cut short
randomly. And someone wandering through singing old-fashioned plainchant. All
pointless, like fever dreams. Feh!”

Fierin laughed, and as the doors slid open, she went out
into the deepening evening.

Vannis was waiting. Seated on a bench shaded by a softly
tinkling chime tree, lit by the warm sky-glow reflected from marble paving, she
looked like a painting from the records of ancient Earth: a simple but elegant
walking suit in layers like the flow of a river, a strand of jewels threaded
through the complicated twist of her heavy mahogany hair, and the poise of a
queen.

She smiled in greeting. Like Derith, Vannis had brown eyes,
but they were lighter in shade, with glints of green and even gold in the right
light, or with the right gown.

“I was just confronted by a novosti,” Fierin said.

“Novosti?” Vannis repeated. “Ah. About your brother?”

Fierin turned her palm up in assent. “Wanted to know where
he was. Said she’ll find out.”

“She? Derith Y’Madoc, no doubt. Wondered if that might
happen,” Vannis said, rising to her feet and shaking out her floating blue
panels. She smiled slightly. “You told her . . . ?”

“Nothing.”

“Did she tell you why she would persist?”

“At first, she said, to follow up on the trial, then she
said that I’m in the center of things, and she gave me a lecture on how those
in power have no right to privacy.”

Vannis paused, standing so still Fierin could not see her
breathing. But her face did not change, and when she took Fierin’s arm and
began walking down the flower-lined pathway to the Gallery, her voice was mild.
“A challenge, then. Interesting.”

“A challenge?” Fierin repeated. “To me?”

“To those they don’t pester,” Vannis said.

“If you mean Brandon, they’d have to catch him first,”
Fierin said, laughing. “The only time I ever see him is at Ulanshu practice, and
sometimes at breakfast. And I live in the same house.” She studied Vannis, then
took a small risk. “Only time I see you anymore is when we take our walk,
except for those breakfasts. Does he have you doing war-planning as well?”

Vannis’s lips parted, and she laughed soundlessly. “My time
is my own,” she said presently. “What concerns me is what happens when the
Suneater attack is done.”

“Done,” Fierin repeated. “You mean, if we win the war?”

The shadows at the corners of Vannis’s smile quirked. “My
dear, we will be lucky if this war ends in our generation. If we lose at the
Suneater, then Dol’jhar will harry the remainder of us out to the Fringes and
beyond. And if we defeat the Dol’jharians at the Suneater, we will have all the
rest of their allies to find in Panarchic space. Then we’ll have to dig them
all out of the planets they’ve taken—despite the Covenant of Anarchy.”

They reached the Gallery doors. “How dismal you make the
future sound,” Fierin said, grimacing.

Vannis pressed her arm comfortingly. “So we will lay aside
the future, and divert ourselves with the wisdom of the past.”

They were inside then, and the rule of the game must
prevail: converse either on the theme or about what one heard. Just as well.
Fierin needed time to think it all over.

They strolled across a low tiled pathway. Glistening walls
of water fell at either side, splashing with a hissing roar at their feet.
Beyond, the paths forked, and Vannis led them one way, then another. Voices
came and went; some whispering, and once, the low laughter of intimacy.

Fierin saw Vannis’s perfect brow crease slightly in
distaste, and they chose another way, the sounds obliterated by another
waterfall, this one unseen.

“Ah.” Vannis smiled. “The metaphoric—a sign of
intelligence.”

“Then let us consider this statement,” a woman said in Tetrad
Centrum cadences, “made by a person of refinement some five hundred years
before our ancestors left Lost Earth: ‘Perfect happiness in this life is only a
state of tranquility that is enlivened from time to time by moments of
pleasure.’”

“I applaud the sentiment,” a man responded with a light
laugh. “But I am very much afraid I stand with those who feel that felicity
consists essentially in pleasure.”

“Ah,” sighed an older woman. “But—if you will honor me with
your permission to assume the pose of dissenter, for purposes of
discourse—happiness, or pleasure if one prefers the auditory harmony, is not
the same for everyone. Some prefer pleasures of the senses, others vulgar or
refined pleasures, some spiritual pleasures, pleasures of reflection, pleasures
of intense emotion, or the pleasures of virtue.”

“Virtue!” The word was distinct above a smattering of gentle
laughter.

“Virtue,” the woman repeated.

“How diverting,” a younger voice drawled.

Meaning, of course,
the opposite;
Fierin did not have to see the speakers to envision the
ironic gesture that accompanied the words.

“Having caught your interest, my dear, you will permit me to
expatiate,” the first woman said, her quiet irony an oblique reproach to the
vulgarity of the younger speaker. “I do not refer to virtue so rarefied that it
excludes all feelings of joy and pleasure. This kind of virtue repels, does not
attract. Though one might respect a virtue that is not accompanied by pleasure,
one is not drawn to it.”

A whisper of approbation greeted these words, then—as often
occurred in the Gallery—the speakers’ voices abruptly cut off.

Fierin became aware of a new voice, faintly heard, rising
and falling in a melodic line. Vannis turned her head as if tracking the sound,
but when they came to a nexus, she chose a pathway that led down behind a
complicated terrace of ferns, away from the singing.

A man drawled, “Nature seems to invite imitation.”

“Love diminishes,” Vannis said, her eyes narrowing. “And his
partner does not know it.”

How could she hear
that in his voice?
Fierin thought.

“Yes,” a woman—youthful, from the timbre and enthusiasm of
her response—answered. “So my tutor, an artist, maintained. She observed how by
means of light and shadow nature creates art on water or on polished surfaces.
In this manner, early in our history humans were thus inspired to imitate such
imitation.”

She might be young,
Fierin thought,
but she’s not stupid.

“Imitation of the Ideal,” the man said, and laughed. “Once a
divine notion.”

“At school we were told that the ancients maintained that
their divinities were better served by painters than by poets,” the unseen
young woman answered back.

“A nice strike against his pomposity,” Vannis murmured, her
eyes half-closed. “I don’t—quite—recognize his voice.”

“Shh,” Fierin said, smothering a laugh. “He’s firing back.”

“. . . the young who are sensitive but
untutored cannot at first distinguish the parts in a large chorus; in a
painting their eyes do not at first detect the shadings, the perspective, the
correct draftsmanship, the harmony of color which go together to impact the
senses . . .”

“Default,” Fierin said in disgust as Vannis laughed softly.
“Using her age is a weak shot—” Vannis’s hand squeezed her arm, and she fell
silent as they turned in another direction.

The next voice was immediately recognizable: it was Eloatri,
the High Phanist. “You cannot discuss the course of love without reflecting on
the impact of surprise.”

“’Tis our disposition to forever seek new objects,”
countered an older voice, one hard-edged under the smooth Douloi cadences.

“Not, if you will forgive my emendation—”

“Please.”

“The seeker sees or feels something not expected, but there
is also the more subtle surprise, the ordinary presented in a manner one did
not expect.”

The hard voice said, “So what you’re saying is simply this:
that some love what they know. Others love what they don’t know.”

The High Phanist said in tranquil measures: “We abhor limits.
We endeavor to widen the sphere of our presence. We derive great pleasure from
looking into the distance.”

They disappeared, and another turn and another fountain
passed by brought again that faint plainsong melody, sung by a distant voice.
Vannis drew in an audible breath. A few steps farther, and silence enfolded
them.

Fierin nearly uttered a reaction but remembered the rule.
Mentally recasting her question, she smiled at the game. “I had no notion that
love and religion shared any interest.”

Vannis’s head lifted, quick and sharp. “Neither did I,” she
said. “Neither did I.”

They continued walking until the third time they encountered
the singing voice, and then Vannis led the way out. She took her leave of
Fierin, graceful and smiling as always.

Fierin was nearly back at the Enclave when it occurred to
her to wonder how Vannis knew that Brandon had not been asked for any
interviews by the novosti.

o0o

Derith Y’Madoc dropped tiredly into her pod.

“Waste of time?” Tovi leaned across her console, her chin on
well-rounded arms.

“Which dead trace do you mean?” Derith asked innocently.

Tovi grinned.

“You should’ve talked to the Kendrian girl,” Derith said to
Nik leaning in the doorway. “You might have wormed something out of her.”

Nik shook his head. “My instinct was, it had to be a female.
And no ajna.”

Derith said, “The poor thing is ridden by fear. Telos!
Spooked me, after a bit. Also made me disinclined to push.”

“She know where they are?” Nik asked.

“She sure does. I began with the assumption she knows, and
she didn’t even try to deny it. But you may’s well count her as a dead trace,
though I think the message will get through to the Panarch that we’re sniffin’
this one out.”

“Good,” Nik said. “Then it wasn’t a waste of time. At least,
not as big as most of our other runs.” He stretched and yawned, provoking a
spate of yawns from the others.

“But much as I hate to admit it,” he said, “it’s Chomsky who
broke this further open for us. Omplari snagged it.”

They saluted the noderunner, who acknowledged their
half-joking tributes, his face pale and drawn. Sympathetic ache tightened
Derith’s forehead and temples. She knew what brainsuck did to you after a
while.

“There was an experiment. Omilov sent them.” Mog pressed
fingers carefully to his puffy, red-rimmed eyes, then said, “Gessinav left
logic bombs all over, most of ’em aimed at the Navy. But she spared a little
venom for Omilov, and one of her little surprises blew an interesting hole in
naval security when one of Chomsky’s divers got greedy. It opened up a way into
the Jupiter project. That was my post, and I pulled this out of it.” He
gestured at his console. “You decide what it means.”

The whole group gathered around Omplari’s console. “Go on,”
Derith said, clearing away a half dozen dried-up containers of Alygrian tea.

“They were scheduled by Omilov to perform an experiment way
the hell out away from Ares, escorted by the
Emris
. A frigate. Couldn’t find out what the experiment was.”

“When was this?” Nik asked.

“Day of the trial,” Omplari said.

Jumec whistled. “Got themselves killed in the riots?
Gessinav tried to sic baiting crowds on ’em to cover her escape.”

Omplari shook his head, winced. “All of ’em were logged onto
their ship, nice and legal. But no one else. No Marines. Nothing but the Elder.
Departed with the
Emris
, all
according to plan. But only the
Emris
returned.”

Shock ran through the group. “You mean they took the
Telvarna
out and blasted them?” Liet’s
voice squeaked. “With a Kelly on board?”

“Don’t know. But using some of the shards of the Gessinav
worm, I sent it looking for the
Telvarna
crew’s movements through the logs. Most telling thing is, some of them were at
the Enclave the night before the trial, and the captain didn’t leave until the
next day.”

Nik smiled thinly. “Mog, can you use that worm to track the
Emris
on that date?”

“I can try,” he said. “If the system hasn’t found my
presence yet, I should be able to get back in.”

“Do it now, will you?” Nik asked.

“What’s it mean?” Tovi asked, turning from Nik to Derith. “I
think I’ve been working too long. None of this is coming together for me.”

Derith said, “Either the Rifters were shot—or they left.”

“In which case,” Nik said, “the
Telvarna
is the only non-naval ship to leave Ares since the war
began.”

“They trust them enough to let a
Rifter
tempath go? A Dol’jharian at that?” asked Nik. “With no
guards? That big story makes that sort of unlikely, don’t you think? The Dol’jharians
want tempaths on the Suneater, and a lot of people think it’s to help run it.”

“Here’s what you’re looking for, I think,” Omplari
interpolated, tapping his console. An ordered structure of windows blossomed on
the big screen. He tapped again, and darts of light flickered along flow lines
and links, highlighting certain items.

Nik drummed his fingers. “I knew it, I knew there was some
chatzing secret. Look at that! The order to terminate the mission came from the
Enclave—from the Panarch himself.”

“So I guess the Panarch didn’t send them,” Derith said,
frowning. “What does it mean?”

“Now you gotta make a choice,” Omplari said. “I figure I can
open one more node in here before we get dumped out, and maybe traced. What do
you want?”

Nik pointed at the log of the
Emris
.

With care, Omplari teased it open and they watched the
captain of the escort ship try to finesse the Rifter ship back, the laughing
denial from the
Telvarna’s
communications
console—the very same Rifter who had mere hours before been released from his
murder trial—and then the skip signature of the departed vessel.