This Day All Gods Die (28 page)

nausea—

he concluded that the complex threats of Trumpet's escape could only be answered by an act of even greater desperation.

He decided nothing in isolation. The air of Calm Horizons was rich with communication of all kinds: information and analysis; emotion and commentary. Pheromones filled with language the sweet atmosphere which the Amnion craved. Marc Vestabule was an Amnioni,"alive to the scents and hues of nucleotidal communion; nourished by it.

Yet he was truly unique among his fellows. Furthermore they all recognized his uniqueness: they recognized its value.

Without that recognition he would not have been invested. The conclusions he reached were neither understood nor questioned. By a common consent of the most profound form, his uniqueness was granted scope.

The risks were great. Indeed, they were vast. If Calm Horizons failed and died, the costs would be terrible. And Marc Vestabule could do nothing to diminish them. Like symbiotic crystalline resonance transmitters, gap courier drones were difficult to grow; hugely expensive in time, effort, and expertise.

He was fortunate that he had been supplied with the former.

He had no access to the latter. Therefore if he acted on his memories of desperation he would be unable to inform or forewarn his kind of their peril.

Nevertheless when Calm Horizons re-entered normal space beyond the Massif-5 system, the defensive turned at once and began spanning the dimensional gap on a direct course for Earth.

the CO Room. Techs sat at

their stations nearby, linking him to every facet of his domain; listening to their respective communications traffic with receivers set into their ears so that he wouldn't be distracted by incessant chatter; studying the same displays and readouts he watched. He didn't concentrate on what he saw, however: he left that to his staff. While they worked, he focused his energies on trying to think like an Amnioni.

Some of his people—

especially those assigned to

UMCPHQ Center—

believed that he was prescient. They

didn't know how else to account for the fact that he so often seemed to be precisely where he was most needed in emergencies. Why was he there, if he couldn't see the future? His reassuring presence in his personal Command Operations Room minutes or perhaps hours before some crisis developed had no other obvious explanation.

But the UMCP director wasn't blessed—

or cursed—

with

foreknowledge. The searching IR vision of his prosthetic eye told him nothing in advance. To some extent his apparent prescience was simply the outcome of his gift for planning ahead.

For the most part, however, his knowledge was not of the future, but of himself. He did what he did out of shame and stubbornness—

which was to say, out of fear. He was probably no more fearful than anyone else. Unlike most of the people around him, however, he called his fears by their true names.

And he paid attention to them.

That was why he sometimes displayed an almost uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time.

This time he was in the CO Room because he feared the consequences of his own actions.

Lord knew he had enough of them to worry about. Holt Fasner had ordered him to turn Angus over to Nick Succorso, so that Nick might then be persuaded to kill the other survivors of Captain's Fancy; all except Davies Hyland, who would be delivered to the Dragon. Warden had obeyed that order—

and undermined it at the same time. Had his subterfuge succeeded? If it hadn't, he was finished. But if it had, young Davies might now have control over Angus. What would he do with that power?

According to Hashi, Davies may have been force-grown with his mother's mind. What would Morn do, after experiencing so much brutality from Angus—

and so much betrayal

from the UMCP?

Vital questions. At another time they might have dominated Warden's thinking. But the specific fear which had brought him here revolved around a different set of consequences.

Punisher had broken off her engagement with the Amnion defensive which had pursued Trumpet from forbidden space to Massif-5. That was exactly what Warden would have ordered the cruiser to do. He needed Trumpet's people; needed them desperately. And he wasn't likely to get them if Punisher risked her life trying to defeat a far more powerful enemy. He suspected that if Min didn't bring them to him, he would never see Morn and Davies, Angus and Vector.

Unfortunately one consequence was that there was an Amnion defensive loose in human space.

That vessel had failed to kill or capture Trumpet. What would she do now? How would Amnion minds approach the dilemma of Trumpet's escape?

Clearly they considered the gap scout worth an act of war, despite their demonstrated reluctance to hazard their genetic imperialism in direct combat. They made everything better than humankind did—

ships, weapons, computers—

but they

didn't make many of anything except more Amnion. They avoided open tests of power because they couldn't match humankind's capacity for mass production. In purely material terms, that defensive was more precious than any five human ships Warden could name.

So what would she do, now that her incursion had failed?

Would she retreat toward forbidden space?—

preserve her

value to her people? Or would she follow the logic of her intentions against Trumpet in some other direction?

Sitting in the CO Room surrounded by techs and screens, consoles and communications traffic, helped Warden think as if he were aboard a warship.

He found it difficult to imagine why the defensive would do anything except run for safety. He'd learned from Punisher's most recent drone that before Trumpet left Massif-5

she'd begun broadcasting the formula—

good God, broadcast-

ing the formula!—

for Intertech's antimutagen. Apparently

Vector Shaheed had made quick use of Deaner Beckmann's bootleg lab. As a result the mutagen immunity drug was now in effect public knowledge. The formula was recorded in Punisher's datacore. Inevitably it had been—

or soon would be—

picked up by someone around VI. And beyond question the defensive had received it.

Another consequence. Directly or indirectly Warden was responsible for Trumpet's broadcast. Now he considered its implications with a strange mixture of horror and hope.

In truth he hadn't foreseen that Trumpet's people might do something so extravagant. Despite his talent for planning, he hadn't guessed that they would take on the challenge of trying to undo decades of covert malfeasance all by themselves.

He was dismayed by the fact that the Amnion had learned the formula for the immunity drug before it could ever be put to its proper use. At the same time he was excited, almost exalted, by the sheer courage and daring of what Trumpet had done. If he was right in his belief that Holt Fasner and the UMC posed a graver threat to humankind's future than any alien enmity, then Trumpet's gambit was a veritable beacon of redemption.

Aboard her a handful of men and women had recognized a worthy cause when they saw it—

and had committed them-

selves to it.

That didn't sound like Nick Succorso. It sounded like something Morn's parents might have done.

Her son must have received Warden's ciphered message.

Not incidentally, Trumpet's broadcast also didn't sound like the work of a genetic kaze. As far as Warden was concerned, Hashi's hypothesis had effectively collapsed. To the extent that Morn was a kaze, she'd been aimed at her target by Warden himself, not by the Amnion.

So of course the defensive would burn for forbidden space with all the force of her drives. Of course. The dissemination of Intertech's antimutagen was only a setback, not a defeat. For the present, humankind had developed a way to counter genetic imperialism. But the Amnion were magicians of biochemistry. Given time, they would certainly devise a way to neutralize the antimutagen. The alien warship would do everything in her power to provide that time.

Wouldn't she?

The logic of the situation was plain. Surely the greatest immediate danger to the Amnion was not the formula itself, but rather the possibility that humankind would use the temporary advantage of their immunity to launch a full-scale war.

And surely, therefore, the defensive would abandon her intentions against Trumpet in order to forewarn forbidden space.

That argument seemed reasonable enough on its face.

Nevertheless it was human reasoning. Warden Dios didn't trust it.

Instead of easing, his fear settled deeper into his chest; just behind his sternum. Apprehension seemed to gnaw at the bottom of his heart like buried skinworms.

What if he was wrong about everything? Had misjudged everything? What if the Amnion warship did something which defied human logic?

What if the entire elaborate edifice of his desires came crashing down right now, when by his own actions he'd made humankind uniquely vulnerable to disaster?

That thought scared him to the marrow of his bones. He already had all the culpability he could bear. He didn't want to carry any more crimes to his grave.

For that reason—

and because it was his job—

he'd pro-

vided as best he could for the defense of Earth and UMCPHQ.

Eight gunboats and pocket cruisers held various orbits around the planet, linked to each other by the vast scan net which covered the whole solar system. The battlewagon Sledgehammer was still a long way out; but guns as powerful as hers would be able to make a contribution within eighteen or twenty hours. The cruiser Adventurous—

old and under-

powered, but still spaceworthy—

was closer: the scan net

marked her approach from the far side of the planet. And the destroyer Valor would return home soon.

If the crisis waited a week to materialize, another battlewagon like Sledgehammer might be ready to emerge from the shipyards.

Unfortunately there wasn't much else anyone could do.

None of Earth's orbital stations had been designed as weapons-platforms. The charters of the commercial stations prohib-ited heavy armamentation. And UMCPHQ had been built on the implicit assumption that any war which came this close was already lost.

Warden Dios wasn't prescient. He was terrified.

Nevertheless he didn't show it. The techs around him would have needed prosthetic vision like his in order to catch any glimpse of his fear. He sat solidly in his command chair, as if he couldn't be moved unless he wished it. His big fists rested like stones on the arms of his seat. His breathing was calm; deep and even. His one human eye glittered with a penetrating concentration which most of his people had learned to trust.

The atmosphere in the CO Room—

and in UMCPHQ

Center beyond the walls of the Room—

was at once more ex-

pectant and more relaxed than it would have been in his absence. Because he was here, his people sensed that something was about to happen. At the same time they believed they would be able to handle it—

whatever it might be—

as long as

he watched over them.

Therefore he kept his fear to himself. It was transcended by his determination to fail no one who relied on him: not his own people; not the GCES; not Morn and her companions; not humankind. He'd played his game of complicity against Holt Fasner long enough; perhaps too long. Now he was done with it.

If he could manage it—

and if Trumpet didn't let him

down—

he intended to undo the harm of his life's mistakes.

His only reaction was a lift of one eyebrow when a tech murmured suddenly, "Director, I have a call for you from UMCHO. It's CEO Fasner."

Warden nodded an acknowledgment; but he didn't accept the call immediately. Instead he took a moment to consider whether or not he wanted to speak to Holt privately. In private his people wouldn't hear how his master treated him. But they also wouldn't hear how he responded.

It was time for him to begin showing where he stood.

"Put it on the speakers," he told the tech. "I'll talk to him here."

"Yes, sir." The tech tapped keys, and the CO Room speakers came to life with a soft magnetic pop.

Warden turned his head toward his pickup. "Holt," he said at once. "Can we keep this short? I've got my hands full here."

" 'Short'?" Holt snorted angrily. He may have assumed that Warden was alone. Or he may not have cared. "I'm your goddamn boss, Ward. You'll talk to me as long as I want, whenever I want."

"That doesn't make sense," Warden retorted. He spoke as if he didn't know that all his techs were watching him. "If I spend all my time talking to you, I can't do my job."

"Listen to me:" Beneath the surface of Holt's ire, a deeper passion boiled and spat. "Talking to me is your job.

You work for me. And right now you're hanging by a thread.

You're precipitating more disasters than I can manage all at once."

Not long ago, Norna Fasner had told Warden that her son fears death too much. It distorts his thinking. He wants to live forever. At the time the idea had baffled Warden. But now he understood it better. He thought he could hear a hunger for that impossible achievement in the UMC CEO's voice.

For years now, the whole thrust of Holt's policy toward the Amnion had been to maintain an uneasy peace. Peace was essential because it enabled trade; wealth. But if the peace became too secure, too safe, complacency would set in. The UMCP—

and through them the UMC—

would lose their moral

authority, their necessity. Holt's power over human space would diminish. And that in turn would reduce his leverage with the Amnion; his ability to extract profits. He'd pushed to obtain the passage of the Preempt Act for the same reason that he'd sanctioned the covert—

and only the covert—

use of In-

tertech's immunity drug: to disturb both the Amnion and humankind; keep the peace uneasy.