This Day All Gods Die (75 page)

Ciro's belt was secure. He wasn't crazy in a way that made him think he could hold on with just his hands.

"You know what to do?" Angus' voice gasped inside his helmet. "You're sure?"

Ciro understood that the Amnioni couldn't hear them on this channel. He and Angus were linked to each other, and to Trumpet and the command module, by specialized frequencies which the enemy wouldn't recognize. Still, he wished Angus didn't talk so much. The sound in his ears made him feel exposed, as if words might betray him to the defensive.

He hefted his impact rifle. It was secured to his belt by a flexsteel line. "The hatch is open," he breathed softly. Angus had opened it before they left Punisher. "Everything's ready.

I won't let you down."

To some extent that was a lie. He'd already figured out exactly how he would disobey Angus' orders.

Angus knew the truth, of course. He grasped everything else. But for Mikka's sake—

or his own—

he acted like he ex-

pected Ciro to do what he was told.

"Make sure you don't," he panted back. "I don't care how crazy you are. We can't afford any screwups."

Angus himself was only armed with a pair of laser cutters. He carried nothing else except an extra EVA suit strapped to his back and a heavy canister of plexulose hull-sealant clipped to his belt. If Ciro hadn't trusted him, the boy would have wondered how much damage Angus could do with such puny weapons.

"Leave him alone, Angus," Mikka muttered from Trumpet's bridge: automatic protectiveness, with no force behind it.

"If he does screw up, you won't die any faster than he does."

"You like the view out there?" Captain Ubikwe asked before Angus could reply. He spoke in a soothing rumble, trying to defuse tension between Angus and Mikka. "They tell me it's spectacular, but I don't enjoy it much. I guess I've spent too much time behind metal walls. Open space makes me want to puke."

"Then it's a good thing you don't have my job, fat man,"

Angus croaked. He might have been choking.

"Damn straight." Captain Ubikwe sounded cheerful; almost happy. "I'm fine where I am."

If everything else went wrong, he was supposed to cut Trumpet loose and try to ram Calm Horizons' proton emitter.

Apparently he didn't mind imagining that kind of death.

Ciro disapproved. He felt diminished by Captain Ubikwe's good humor. He was sure the captain didn't trust him.

"I wish you would all shut up," he put in petulantly. He hated his own voice. It was too much like a kid's. "I already have enough to think about."

To his surprise, both Mikka and Captain Ubikwe fell silent.

Angus didn't. But Ciro had heard it all before: to some extent he could tune it out. Instead of listening, he concentrated on Calm Horizons—

and on the woman, Soar's captain,

who had made him what he was.

In some sense he'd fallen in love with her. She'd injected a mutagen into his veins. She'd ordered him to destroy Trumpet. Now she was dead—

and he'd failed to carry out her

wishes. He was bound to her by attachments as intimate as passion.

He considered himself responsible for her epitaph; the way she would be remembered. Because she owned him, the outcome of her life was his to define, and he meant to do it justice.

He intended to follow her example in directions she would never have dreamed were possible.

by exhaustion—

a discon-

certing sensation for a woman who often lived on an exclusive diet of artificial stimulants. She hardly knew what to do with herself. Should she put her head down? Close her eyes? That was tempting. But then she would miss—

Instead she lit another nic, gulped down the remains of a flask of coffee laced with hype, and stumbled away from her console toward the lab foodvend for a refill.

Strange—

She could hardly keep her balance. Her knees no longer seemed to hinge normally, and her feet had an imprecise relationship with the floor. Had she ever been this tired? Ever in her life? She couldn't remember.

That, too, was strange. She liked to think of herself as a woman who remembered everything.

She must have been expecting some kind of epiphany.

Some small blaze of vindication. Perhaps just a little shaft of triumph. Maybe that was why she felt so disoriented. Nothing of the sort had happened. Her eyes had simply lost their ability to focus, and a minor vertigo had begun to tug delicately at the side of her head.

Reality as she'd always known it had just undergone a radical transformation—

and all she could think of to do about

it was lie down.

She needed hype. Caffeine. Hell, she needed IV stim.

Maybe then she would be able to sort out the situation.

After a couple swallows of coffee, which the foodvend supplied hot enough to raise blisters on anyone else's tongue, she noticed that Hashi was ranting.

He stormed back and forth in front of Chief Mandich as if he thought Mandich might appreciate why he was so incensed

—

as if he'd forgotten that Mandich was Enforcement Division, therefore brain-numb almost by definition. For a moment all Lane heard were dissociated accusations like "irresponsi-bility" and "arrogance" and "monomania." Monomania, ha!

He was a fine one to talk. But then she concentrated harder and recognized several words in a row.

"—

refused to authorize a channel!"

Something like nausea squirmed in Lane's stomach. She felt her disorientation getting worse.

"I'm sure Director Donner has a good reason," the Chief of Security retorted stiffly. He should have been as tired as Lane was, but he didn't look it. Instead he looked like he wanted to hit Hashi.

"Of course she has a good reason!" Hashi fumed back.

"She is the acting director of the UMCP"—

he sneered the

words—

"and she's developed a passion for it. She adores control. Is that not what ED is for?" He flailed his scrawny arms. "Henceforward no one will be allowed to breathe or think or shit his pants without Her Lordship's authorization!"

Lane was vaguely amazed to hear herself ask, "What's going on, Hashi?" She hadn't realized that she could muster the strength for any more confusion.

He wheeled on her with such vehemence that his glasses slipped off his nose. He caught them expertly in midair, however, and slapped them back onto his face.

"Min Donner, in her vast wisdom," he snarled savagely,

"refuses to let me contact Koina."

Oh, dear. That was a problem. What was it all for, everything she and Hashi and Mandich had done, if they weren't allowed to tell the Council about it?

But Mandich snapped, "That's not true, and you know it." The brainless fidelity of Min Donner's underlings was legendary. "She didn't say you can't have a channel. She said you can't have a channel until she gives the word. Until she's ready."

"A distinction without a difference." Hashi seethed and spat with exasperation like a beaker of fulminating acid. "Our efforts are wasted. As is the ordeal Koina has been forced to undergo without evidence. And I can scarcely bear to contemplate the consequences for Warden, who has labored with such cunning to bring about precisely these circumstances.

"Min Donner," he asserted bitterly, "grasps neither the significance nor the urgency of what we have accomplished!"

The Chief's fists strained in front of him. Lane wondered whether he would actually strike Hashi. If he didn't, she worried that he might start to trash the lab.

If he did, what would she do? Call ED Security? Ha! That was a joke.

"Bullshit," he snorted. "I'm sure she understands it as well as you do. If she doesn't, it's because you didn't explain it to her. You're so goddamn cryptic"—

he punched at the

word as if it meant dishonest—

"you can't answer a straight

question, or tell a straight truth."

Hashi brushed that accusation aside. It might have been as insubstantial as the smoke from Lane's nic.

Suddenly he rounded on Mandich. "But you could req a channel for me. As Chief of ED Security, and acting ED director, you have the authority. Center will obey you.

"You need not tell them why you desire a channel. Your general duties will suffice as explanation." His voice snarled like a hive of wasps. "You have it in your hands to redeem the UMCP as well as Warden Dios."

The Chief stared back in disbelief. Then his face closed.

"Go to hell, Lebwohl. I'll see you dead first.

"Do you think I like being the man who let a kaze get Godsen Frik?" Dark fury gathered in his eyes. "The man who missed Alt? I've got so much goddamn responsibility for this mess I can hardly carry it around. If I screw up again, I might as well be dead. I'll sure as hell be useless.

"The only thing I know is my duty. I get my orders from Director Donner. I'm not going to betray my job and my oath by letting you pressure me into insubordination."

"But I must talk to the Council!' Hashi yelled.

To her amazement, Lane thought she heard desperation in his voice.

She sighed. Her gaze slipped out of focus. He and Mandich blurred into the background.

He wanted to talk to the Council. He loved to talk. Sometimes she suspected that he loved talk more than life.

Thinly she murmured, "Maybe she has a reason." Where had that idea come from? "One you haven't thought of."

But Hashi didn't react with the same indignation he heaped on Mandich. She'd snagged his attention somehow. He stared at her with his mouth open; bit it shut. The smears on his lenses caught the light in streaks.

"A reason I haven't thought of?" With unexpected restraint, he asked, "Such as?"

He may have recognized that she was nearly comatose.

She levered her shoulders into a shrug. "Your guess is as good as mine." After a momentary lapse she added, "She knows more about what's going on than you do."

Mandich nodded fiercely.

Hashi peered at her as if he, too, couldn't focus his eyes.

Or couldn't believe what he saw. In an ominous wheeze, he inquired, "Are you suggesting that I must trust Min Donner?"

"I'm suggesting that," Mandich rasped.

Hashi and Lane ignored him.

"You picked her as acting director." Lane wasn't quite sure why she considered this relevant. "I didn't." She seemed to be speaking in her sleep.

"Is her high-handedness my doing?" Hashi protested querulously. But at once he flapped his hands to dismiss the question. "I take your point, however. Why did I ask her to assume my duties, if I was reluctant to trust her? If I was wrong then, I can hardly correct the error now.

"It follows, as you say, that I'm forced to guess what her reason might be. Otherwise I run the risk of undermining her"

—

he flung a glare at Mandich—

"presumably commendable

intentions."

"My God," the Security Chief muttered to himself, "an outbreak of reason. I can't believe it."

Hashi didn't reply. He might not have heard Mandich.

Hooking his glasses off his face, he held them with one finger while he rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to grind his vision clear.

Obliquely Lane remembered the flask of coffee in her hands. She lifted it to her mouth—

it seemed to come up from

an astonishing distance—

and emptied it. Damn, it was already

cold. She needed the burn to help her concentrate. Time for a refill.

She got as far as discarding the butt of her nic and lighting another. Then she forgot what she was about to do.

Hashi had put his glasses back on. "Very well," he said as soon as she looked at him. "If she claims the right to choose when the Council will be addressed, I will determine who speaks for us." He squared his shoulders. "Attend your pickup, Lane." He pointed toward her console. "When Director Donner allows us a channel, you will contact Director Hannish."

She nearly fell. Her flask did: when her fingers went numb, it slipped away from her and clanged plaintively on the deck. Had she dropped her nic as well? She must have. It wasn't in either of her hands. She couldn't feel its reassurance between her lips.

Without warning tears began to stream down her face.

"No," she groaned. "Hashi, please. I can't. I'm too—

"

All at once she knew exactly what kind of vindication she wanted. She wanted to sit quietly and listen while someone else used the results of her work to make a difference. If she took that risk herself, it would all fall apart.

"You're out of your mind, Lebwohl," Mandich objected.

"Look at her. She can barely stand."

"You must," Hashi insisted through her tears. "I am forced to guess at Min's intentions. Therefore I speculate that they concern credibility. She hopes to choose a moment when the Council will be receptive to our evidence.

"But if that is a valid concern, then it is also valid to consider how our evidence is presented. And I am—

"

He faltered. For a moment he couldn't speak. He had to move closer to her, stand right in front of her, before he could go on.

"I'm tainted, Lane." She had the odd impression that he was humbling himself: a sacrifice he made for the sake of something more important. "In recent days I've issued too many statements which the Council—

and most especially

FEA Cleatus Fane—

will deem falsehoods. No doubt I'm per-

ceived as Warden's creature, in service to him rather than to the facts. If he has committed treason, then I have also. That argument will be used to erode the impact of my testimony.

"Chief Mandich is similarly disqualified by his famous loyalty to Enforcement Division."

Mandich scowled at this assertion, but didn't argue with it.

"The truth"—

Hashi used that word as if it made him

uncomfortable—

"will carry more conviction if it comes from you."

He may have been right. Or not. She couldn't tell. But his appeal reached her all the same. The thought that the Members might refuse to believe the truth simply because they heard it from him was more than she could bear. The only part of herself she valued, the only part she took pride in, was her ability to sift through the rubble of facts until she found bed-rock. And she respected Hashi, not because he was admittedly brilliant, but because he'd never hampered or misused that part of her.