Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 16 / Chapter 18 –>

He sleeps for two hours, maybe less. He doesn’t have a clock in his room. He was aware when he finally stumbled into bed that the gray light of dawn was filtering through the windows, but by that time he was so exhausted he didn’t have the energy to do anything but register the fact itself. He has a massive sleep deficit working against him about now, the insidious kind that sneaks up when you think you’re awake, leaves you just a bit muddled and slow. He suspects he isn’t thinking very clearly about the major issues. In fact, he’s not even sure he can name the major issues anymore.

And if it had been Jagiri who had awakened him after those barely two hours, Ray would have happily snapped his neck, dropped the corpse out the window and gone back to bed.

But it’s Emma, which is probably the only thing that saves her.

Emma, in his bedroom, backlit by golden morning sunlight. Casual Emma, which is something he hasn’t really seen before. In jeans and hiking boots and a flannel shirt, with her hair down, like any other frontier settler poking around a farming hab on a weekday morning. She leans across him so her face is only a handful of centimeters from his.

“Wake up, little rosebud,” she says brightly, as sunny and precocious as the morning itself. “Wake up.”

All he can do is blink at her.

“So it’s a myth then, this story that Marines are always up at the crack of dawn? Doing calisthenics and jumping jacks and plotting the best way to kill and rape and pillage? You’re really just a bunch of big sleepyheads.”

He groans. Distinct déjà vu. His mom used to play this game. “I was up at the crack of dawn, thank you.”

“You were?”

“Yes. On the understanding that fashionable socialites made it a point of etiquette or reputation never to rise before noon.”

“We should work on our communication skills,” Emma says. She begins to fold back the blankets in a sturdy, businesslike fashion. She doesn’t ask him if he’s dressed beneath all that linen. She probably doesn’t ask on purpose, given the events of last night. It would satisfy some feminine sense of fair play if he wasn’t, he suspects. “We have a big day ahead, in case you’ve forgotten. Jagiri has gone to warm up the car and pull it around. I think Amah wants him to play escort for the sake of propriety. But I’ve made him promise he’s just going to bring the car and then scamper out of sight for the rest of day.”

It takes him longer than it should to sort out what she means, but he eventually he remembers. He’s supposed to get the grand tour. Mother’s orders. Bah!

“Oh! You slept in your clothes.”

“I worked last night.”

She pokes him with her finger until he rolls out of bed. “Top secret, I suppose?”

On his feet, smoothing out the rumbles in his clothing, Ray arches an eyebrow at her. “Decorating.”

Emma turns and studies his clutter of terminals, chipboards, equipment. Pieces of Nomar are strewn across the desk surface in front of the diagnostic machine. He’s unrecognizable like this, a mutilated corpse.

“Amah will come after you with a pitchfork if you scratch any of the furniture. I’m giving you fair warning.” She smiles at him, teasing. “It took you all night to network your computing hub?”

She goes back to what she was doing, which is making the bed he has just climbed out of. It is a startlingly domestic moment. Ray is tempted to cringe.

“I had some problems with Nomar. They couldn’t really wait.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning.” God, she’s actually fluffing his pillows! Ray ducks into bathroom, unable to watch her anymore. “It went well, I hope.”

I had to blow his head off. It’s what he wants to say, because he needs to share it with someone. He’d like to share it with her, but there’s this domestic thing going on between them that he doesn’t understand. It would be like thumbing through a porn magazine with his mother.

Instead, he just tells her through the wall that it didn’t and leaves it at that.

But she doesn’t. He’s scrubbing the sleep out of his eyes in front of the mirror, trying to decide if he needs to take the obligatory morning piss just yet. Emma pokes her head inside the bathroom door, looks at him in the mirror. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world, to share a bathroom with an almost complete stranger first thing in the morning.

“I’m sorry, Ray,” she says. She looks sorry. Her lower lip curls out like a teardrop. “I know you were fond of him. Maybe someone at EED can–”

He just shakes his head. Shakes it hard; it probably looks to her like he’s snapping at her, but he’s really just hoping to dislodge the goggling look of horror he’s still wearing from having her barge into his ablutionary space.

Seriously, what if he had been pissing? Would that have stopped her? He needs to examine the bathroom door a little more closely. To see if it has a lock, just for future reference.

“I’ll lay out some fresh clothes for you,” Emma says finally.

“No, don’t.” Please. That would be completely too much. Really. “I’d prefer to pick out my own clothes.”

“Then I’ll run down and make you some breakfast.” She ducks out of the doorway.

Any moment now, he’s going to start screaming. More than likely continue screaming until they lock him up for his own protection.

“Emma?”

Pops back, like she was just waiting for him to call. “Yes?”

He turns, chewing his lip. “I love you desperately, but you are really freaking me out.”

“You don’t want breakfast?”

“I don’t want you to fix me breakfast. I don’t want you to lay my clothes out for me. You just made my bed, for Christ’s sake.”

“But…” She wrinkles her brow, parsing complaints that seem to have no meaning. “I thought you’d like that.”

And it hits him, the dreaded flash of inspiration, of understanding. Ugh. He concentrates on ratcheting down his Marine bluntness. It’s roughly the equivalent of taking his autonomic biological systems off-line.

These types of situations are, once again, the main reason men have historically paid for sex. Business transaction sex is so less complicated.

Ray grimaces at her, soft and apologetic. “I worked all night, Emma. I had to work. EED only lets me have access to their network system at night. You were not coming on too strong.”

“But I am now?”

“Just a bit.”

At once, she relaxes. Her shoulders slump; her smile returns. “It’s just as well. I can’t cook worth a darn.”

“You make a nice bed.”

“You probably couldn’t bounce a coin on it.”

“It’s the sheets. Promise me something?”

“What?”

“That you’ll never do that ‘wake up, little rosebud’ thing to me again. Swear on it.”

Emma giggles, hand over her mouth. “But it’s so annoying. Mother used to do it when I was little. It made me want to scream.”

“It makes me want to pull your spine out through your throat. And I like your spine and your throat right where they are. Okay?” She nods, which makes it a sort of tacit agreement, but he notes carefully that she doesn’t actually say she’s agreeing. She doesn’t form anything like a verbal and potentially legally binding contractual agreement. “I’m going to brush my teeth now and change my clothes, make myself presentable. Then I’m going to kiss you and make a proper good morning out of it. Until then, you’re going to wait in the living room, yes?”

“This really freaks you out that much? I thought all you military guys lived in barracks, showered and shaved fifty at a time.”

“In some instances. But those instances are not co-ed, and they’re not reflected upon with any degree of retrospective pleasure. Believe me, you would rather have the guy next to you bleeding all over your arm than trying to brush his teeth. It’s just a thing. It does no good to attempt to make any sense out of it.”

She leaves, taking his early morning case of the willies with her.

***

They shoot through the gates of the Whiston estate, Emma pounding though the manual transmission of the sleek, silver Manchiti Spider, goosing the gears so the tires squawk on the pavement. Ray sucks in his breath as she hits fifty kilometers an hour by the end of the driveway, squeezes through the gates with much less than a meter clearance on his side, blows past the crowd of media vans. They blunder through the flock of Eyelens cameras lying in wait; older models that don’t have the maneuverability to get out of the way tink off the windshield, spiral and crash to the roadside.

She laughs, accelerates, leaves behind a scene of disarray and scrambling reporters.

Ray tries to remember the last time he attended confession.

Ever faster, they plunge and dash through a series of sharp curves, skiing down the decline from Grange to city. The Spider hums along the road, greedy, powerful, startling. And Emma loves every moment of it. Top down, sun on her face, light sparkling in her eyes. They race through a wasteland of unsettled scrub grass and knobby hills, autumn brown, always gaining speed.

Then an abrupt curve, an outskirt, a suburb of pre-fab houses, small yards, fences. Emma mashes the brakes, barks the tires. The entire frame of the Spider shudders; the engine whines a complaint and then they’re tooling, prowling. She turns off the main road, onto a side street that looks suitably anonymous. She tucks the car into a parking area at a dead end terminus between two trundles large enough to hide the Spider’s profile.

She kills the engine switch; thumbs the security system, then reaches across Ray’s lap and opens the glove compartment. She tosses him a baseball cap and sunglasses.

“Incognito,” she says, looking embarrassed. “It won’t work for long. But if we walk from here, it might take them a while to locate us.”

Ray stares down at the cap in his hands, the familiar, stylized and antique ‘B’. He glances over at her. She’s already donned hers, a matching pair.

“You don’t like it?” she asks, noting his delay.

“It’s a Red Sox cap.”

“You like them, yes?”

“How did you know?”

“You named your drone after a ballplayer. It wasn’t hard to figure out. Finding someone to make the caps and get the job done in less than twenty-eight hours, now that was hard.”

He squints at her, suspicious. “You know baseball? You like baseball?”

“I love it. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Um, no.”

“Is it okay?”

He puts it on, folds the brim just right, the way he used to when he was a kid. “It’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

Not even his mom had liked baseball. Too slow, too arcane, grown men wearing short pants.

Ray sits for a moment, feeling dizzy, feeling overwhelmed. Thunderstruck. He really could spend the rest of his life with this woman. It’s the most alarming thought his mind has ever encompassed.

He clears his throat loudly, barricades his eyes with the sunglasses. “Let’s get going before I get all mushy.”

A girl who liked baseball? Unfathomable. Of course, he did have to travel to the farthest reaches of human space to find her, so it might not be completely outside the realm of possibility. But very close to it. Close enough to make him feel giddy all over.

They leave the car behind. Emma guides him through the parking area, past a neatly constructed split-rail fence to a small park. There are children here, toddlers and pre-school aged, rolling about in sand boxes, climbing jungle gyms, digging through the grass and leaves for bugs or other icky, appealing treasures. Mothers wave as they pass, and Ray can’t tell if they’re just generally friendly waves, or if they’re oh-my-god-it’s-Emma-Whiston waves. From the park, there’s a path between two level rows of shrubs that spills out into a different residential area, this one older, the houses more sturdy, more native. Buildings constructed from New Holyoke’s raw materials, developed in phases from small, utilitarian structures, gradually accumulating wings, rooms, space. Comfortable, middle-class dwellings. They stroll along the sidewalks, and Ray can hear more children tumbling about in backyards over the mutter of vid feeds whose constant gabble spills out open windows.

“Most of these people work for Whelemat,” Emma confides in a low voice. “Project managers, team leaders, middle management. The suburbs are general laborers, new arrivals. As we get closer to the city proper, across the river, that’s where the old money is, near the original settlement zone.”

They cross the river by a ludicrously arched footbridge. From the apex, Ray can see the entire valley, the neat collection of streets and zones, business and residential. Straight ahead, on the far horizon of the Blackheath promontory, there’s a cluster of new structures, glass and steel in the front, a slab of concrete behind. It seems to be stacked right up against the overhanging cliffs.

Emma points to it. “That’s the Whelemat facility. The new buildings in the foreground are the business offices, late construction stuff. The ones behind, most of which you can’t see, were the original operation structures. Back in Grandfather’s day, there was a fine run of platinum there, when Whiston Corp was still using Fredes Propulsion drives and platinum was scarce. That’s why we settled here rather than farther inland where the soil is better. It was our first cash export. It was a big step.”

“Do they still work it? The mine, I mean.”

“No, the lode played out almost fifty years ago. These days the actual mining is done in the outlying areas. Chilhebra, Julietta, Element, Platinum Town. They’ve got pits and sub-complexes as far as a thousand kilometers inland. Right now, the ore is shipped by air, but Whelemat is working on a joint-venture railway system with some major off-world investors. Currently it’s just a spur from Blackheath Grange to Chilhebra, but that’s almost half the distance to even the most remote habs. Townshend Wright thinks it will grow from there. One day we’ll have a real transportation infrastructure; then maybe we can start to spread out, actually inhabit this planet rather than just huddle and exploit it. That’s the key to our long-term viability.”

“But you don’t have anything to do with Whelemat anymore?”

Emma looks away, like a wince. “We own it, but we don’t manage the day to day operation. Father did, but when he died, Frederick was too young to take over, so operational control passed to Townshend Wright. He’s got a good head for it. He’s a shrewd and solid businessman, much better than Frederick or I would be, so we let him take care of it.”

“He seemed very comfortable in his proprietorship role last night,” Ray comments. It’s a gentle push.

“He knows it’s a Whiston operation.” For a moment she is harsh, defensive. “But he thinks he can push Frederick around. Frederick is weak, soft. Townshend pretends like he doesn’t remember where his paycheck comes from. I don’t really mind most of the time. Like I said, he’s good at what he does. And that’s good for the colony. If he became a liability, or his attitude outstripped his contribution, we’d have him removed.”

“I don’t think you like him.” Ray says it with a smile, to show he’s teasing. Partly teasing, at least.

“I don’t have to like him to recognize his talents,” she responds, chilly like the hiss of an adder.

And Ray remembers Townshend Wright, flushed and sweating, watching Frederick at dinner and the way he touched Emma. Erect, excited, anticipatory.

“It’s okay,” he says. Ray takes her hand, squeezes it. “I don’t like him either.”

They ramble on, approaching the downtown business district. Here there are shops, small operations, family stores. Grocers, merchantiles, fabric shops, restaurants. It’s like any small town Ray has ever visited, with narrow streets, wide sidewalks, yawning display windows with hand painted signs advertising goods, services, sales. Emma explains that the grocers stock local goods shipped downriver from farming habs carved out of the wilderness deeper inland, where the soil was rich, loamy, nitrogen rich and black as ground coal. This should probably appeal to Ray’s rural upbringing, but it doesn’t. He grew up around farms. He knows that the food has to come from somewhere and that the people who grow it, raise it, tend it are going to get raped in the transaction process one way or the other, be it on Terra, Strat or New Holyoke.

After awhile, they stop at a small café with light tables sprayed across the sidewalk beneath purple umbrellas. Ray drinks coffee and calls it breakfast. He notes that their waitress, who happens to be the daughter of the owner, chatters along with Emma like she has just returned from an interesting vacation. She asks curious questions about Paraclete‘s last moments, but not probing ones. She refers to Emma by her first name.

When the girl is gone, Ray says, “I figured the press would have caught up to us by now.”

Emma only shrugs. “No. They missed their chance. They’ve gotten bored and gone back to the Grange a long time ago.”

“Some famous starlet you are.”

“I’m a diversion, Ray. I prefer it that way.”

“I’m just teasing. I was given the impression that the Whistons were a bigger deal than this.”

Emma smiles wearily at him. “Oh, don’t fret, darling. You’ll see a detailed report of our movements today in the gossip sheets tomorrow. Most of it will probably even be true.”

“What interest is there to gossip that is mostly true?” Ray responds. “What kind of backwater is this?”

He’s joking, but Emma is completely earnest. “We’re a small town on a big stage. A lot of us have been here our entire lives; we’ve grown up together. People know me, like Clare. They aren’t interested in saying ugly or hurtful things, though we get the occasional newbie scoundrel who will try out a big, scandalous lie just to get his name in the paper. Usually the reporter will have the courtesy to let me read the story and make comments before they run it. It gets tiresome sometimes, but mostly it’s just part of the job. Part of being a Whiston in a small corner of space where not much of interest happens.

“I’m just being cautious today, and the media whores are being more aggressive because of the disaster. That’s why we’ve dodged them, and why I wanted you to be careful about what you say. It isn’t usually even this bad.”

Ray does laugh this time, shaking his head. “It’s like a perpetual high school fantasy where you’re always the Homecoming Queen.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“I’m sorry, Emma. But I’m a little overwhelmed. I never got to date the Homecoming Queen.” He’s not making things any better, so he takes her hand across the table and squeezes it warmly. “Honestly, I prefer things this way. I’d rather not have to be fending off cameras every time I started to feel a bit amorous around you in public. But I don’t mind a few old biddies watching us and saying ‘look at that lovely Whiston girl making whoopee with that stunning and charming young man. Isn’t she lucky?’”

“You’re outrageous!” Emma exclaims, but she flushes with pleasure at the same time.

Apparently she means it in a good way.

She adds, “You don’t have the disposition to be a celebrity, Commander Marlowe. I can imagine you constantly bashing reporters with their cameras or running print journalists through with their fountain pens, when they decided to ask you a question you found offensive. You would become quite notorious.”

She’s probably right about that, too.

When they’re finished, they meander farther along the narrow streets of the city. It becomes clear to him that she’s been sticking to alternate routes and byways for some time, waiting for the press hounds to give up the chase, because now they’re in the town proper. They stroll along the wide sidewalks of the fashionable business district where the buildings are older, more solid in their construction, frequently stone and unpolished steel. Here, the town fathers have done things with trees and faux 19^th century gaslight poles and creeping vines to relieve the urban monotony. There’s more noise here, too, as frequent cars and delivery trundles whiz past along the tarmac streets in clouds of rank diesel smoke because they can’t generate enough velocity to engage their compact nuclear systems, but most of the traffic is pedestrian. Most of the pedestrians are young women trailing children, looking suitably harried, or young men in business suits looking just as harried but less attentive to their general surroundings.

Too many people recognize Emma. Too many people recognize Ray, for that matter. They’re constant targets for friendly greetings, casual waves, chance conversations from bright eyed folk who seem to know them by first name, who want to ask questions about Paraclete or personal matters or simply to satisfy their sundry curiosities. For Ray, it is weird and disturbing and he constantly feels like he’s being rude. He probably is being rude, but Emma isn’t. She seems to have exactly the right answers for everyone, puffy and pleasant conversational bits that sound intimate and interested without conveying information of actual substance. She sounds, after a time, like a glowing public relations rep.

The women all want to know about Strat, about fashion, about how her mother is faring. The men want to know how Whelemat stock is doing in outer markets, about impending trade and finance treaties, about political issues that might not be filtering down accurately through the New H media conglomerates.

But everyone asks about the Dao.

How is Emma feeling? Is she getting ready? Has she been sleeping well? Isn’t she excited? Finally, one young man in gold-rimmed glasses and an expensive suit asks the question Ray has been expecting all along: Where will you be? What route will you be traveling? What time do you think you’ll make your appearance?

(Because I’ll be at the corner of such and such…)

And he says it with something like a leer and a vulpine gaze, and Ray thinks about knocking him on his ass, except Emma knows how to deal with this sort of attention. She loops her arm around his, straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin. It’s a withering, imperious stance, a reminder that the young man has just breached some unspoken code of etiquette.

He folds, apologizes, slinks away, and no one else dares to follow the trail he’s blazed.

But it’s good, in a way. Ray begins to notice things that had escaped his attention before. There are a number of workmen out, city employees hanging garlands of wildflowers from the light poles, stringing bands of multicolored bulbs along tree branches.

As they stroll downtown, the displays become more egregious. Business owners hanging paper lanterns and kerosene or oil lamps from hooks above their shop doors, clearing out window displays to make room for more. Near the green, whole streets are blocked off by vines, thick woven and budding with hothouse flowers, all strung like ropes delineating a runway. On the green itself, workers lay fresh rows of sod, trim the edges of a careful, meandering path of white pebbles, raise yet more floral ropes along the way. The green is actually a domed hill surrounded by old, brownstone buildings stacked shoulder to shoulder. There are no road access points, just footpaths slabbed at the corners of the square. Between the buildings and the green is a concrete berm and sidewalk, but Ray can’t determine what sorts of businesses the buildings house. They have no signs in their windows, though the entrances are wide, with glass doors opening onto spacious foyers. Probably government offices, he thinks, or Whiston private holdings.

At the crest of the hill is a statue, a bronzed man and woman of stunning proportions swinging a child between them. They seem to be peering skyward, their eyes elevated to the sun, but the child looks forward, inland, toward the continent, the future, New Holyoke, surging ahead as though he’s about to break into a gallop, to leave the adults behind. Behind them is another figure, an angelic being with wings and crown, that points inland with a stern, demanding finger, but its gaze does not follow its arm, but is directed at the laughing child attempting to tug free of the grip of mother and father.

Emma says, “Grandfather Fram commissioned it back on Terra. It’s a Garde-Freisling, exquisite in detail. It’s called Promise and Will.”

“Very subtle,” Ray says, winking. “What are they building beside it?”

There’s a scurry of laborers dodging in and out of a large canvas tent just to the left. Echoing down from the hilltop is the sound of hammers, drills, the bang of lumber. “They’re assembling the stage for the weekend. Part of the Dao is a state of the colony address from the Governor and other functionaries. You’ll see.”

“Mmm. Political speeches. Yahoo.”

“I need you to try to muster a bit more excitement than that.”

“This is as excited as I get.”

Emma chews her bottom lip, gives him a look full of dread. “The Forum Representatives would like you to sit on the platform with them on Sunday evening, as the special guest of the city, a show of gratitude. It won’t be very entertaining, I’m afraid. Speeches and the ceremonial planting of the trees, the opportunity for our politicos to bolster their popularity ratings. I would have mentioned it to you earlier, but they just contacted us this morning.”

“Not interested.”

“Ray–”

“Nope.” He shakes his head fiercely. “I’m telling you; I am not in the least bit concerned with local political grandstanding. I’m not interested in being led out like somebody’s prize heifer for a public showing.”

“But people are expecting you to be seen. You’re something of a hero.”

“For what, Emma? What did I do? Because I certainly didn’t keep Paraclete from exploding. I pulled your ass and mine out of the fire. That’s it. Everyone else died. You tell me exactly what I did to be heroic.”

It isn’t fair, and he knows it. She doesn’t deserve his abuse, to have him snapping at her for what probably seems like a perfectly reasonable request. But he can’t stop himself. He rails at her, and she blanches like he’s slapped her.

He is such an idiot. Ray sighs and shuts his eyes so he won’t have to look at her. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t directed at you.”

“I understand,” she says, sounding entirely too reasonable. “It was hard on you, losing so many friends. Harder than you’ve allowed yourself to show.”

Ray pulls his eyelids apart, glances down at her. She smiles up at him, they type of expression you’d give someone whom you privately know is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“I don’t think you do understand,” he says, making an effort to keep his voice gentle. “I’m glad I got you out, Emma. I’m glad I got me out. But rescuing you and rescuing me happened for entirely different reasons. I’m not here because I saved you. I’m here because I have a mission to complete. I have orders on New Holyoke that take precedence over displays of public gratitude. Things are already complicated enough because everyone seems to have seen my picture and read my bio and knows who I am. I’m supposed to be anonymous–it’s the only way I can work effectively. And it’s only going to make my job more difficult if I’m perceived as some sort of government stooge.”

And on top of that, he really had no intention of sitting around exchanging pleasantries with local big dicks while Emma and the mhuruk-a strolled the streets of Blackheath Grange looking to share a little civic pride with anyone who might strike her ecstatic fancy. It is not a very culturally sensitive position for him to take, he realizes, but he can’t say he really gives a fuck about local customs, either.

Emma’s smile fades slowly. “You didn’t tell me you were working.”

“I told you what I do. You can’t believe I’d just let Paraclete go.”

“EED is investigating. What can you do that they can’t?”

“They don’t know the things that I know.”

“Then you should tell them.”

Which is a completely reasonable position for her to take, but Ray frowns. “That’s not the way it works. The information I have is not appropriate for inter-agency disclosure. I can’t really explain it.”

Emma peers closely at him, her eyes darting back and forth like he’s suddenly become impenetrable. “What are you looking for?”

“What?” It is a nonsensical question she has asked. “What are you talking about, Em?”

Ray has an abrupt, odd sensation, a tingle down his spine. He looks down at her, at Emma hugging his arm, then out across the green, at the blind eyes and stone faces of the surrounding buildings. And it’s all strange to him. Alien. A strange and intoxicating dissonance, as though he has stepped outside his own body, as though he perceives with sight and depth and sensations that are not his own.

Somehow he’s forgotten this essential point. He’s been wandering through this city, through this human habitation of streets and shops and structures, and thinking of Blackheath Grange and New Holyoke as though it was just an out of the way place, a distant and unremarkable corner of a world he knows.

But it isn’t. It is not a world he knows. It’s a completely different place, a different galaxy, a tiny island of human influence that daily steps farther and farther outside the bounds of Terran norms. And no matter how familiar it feels, how Terran it looks and acts, it is nothing within the bounds of his personal experience. In another generation it will be unrecognizable. It won’t be New Holyoke, Terran colony–just New Holyoke. A new world. A completely alien place outside the realm of his consciousness and understanding. Maybe it’s already beyond his understanding.

He looks at Emma again, her studying him, and he feels that distance.

“What is it that you seek?”

And it isn’t just New Holyoke anymore. It’s colonists, citizens, Emma, all in the process of becoming something that he doesn’t recognize, that he can’t relate to on any level except the basic biological similarity.

In another generation, they’ll all be strangers to him. Aliens in the classic sense. Beings from outer space.

She places her hand against his chest, fingers splayed, but not idle. She kneads his flesh softly through the fabric of his shirt, the way a cat would, purring.

Ray catches his breath, and on the exhalation, a word tumbles out, clumsy, tripping over his tongue and lips like a ball of mud. “Mhuruk-a.”

Emma’s lips curl, a satisfied smile like deep pleasure, like recognition. “You are the one. What is it that you seek?”

Not this. This is wrong, viscerally wrong in a way that stuns his senses, makes him feel like he’s reeling. The universe shifts on an axis that he has never known. New Holyoke pales around him, substance traded for essence, a place of shadows and darkness and whistling, vacant winds.

Because it isn’t what he expected it to be. Not eyes behind Emma’s, not a voice thick, seductive, raspy; a voice that is not Emma’s issuing from her throat, her lips. Looking at him in a way that is somehow vast and deep and ancient.

What he expected was music, communal chanting, public ecstasy. Something fake, like a weird voodoo psychological sublimation. Something vaguely Las Vegas that involved dry ice and smoke machines, hidden mirrors and puppet strings, convincing entertainment.

This, this is complete cognitive displacement. It is possession, body and mind and soul, like a randomized eruption of supernatural chaos. But it isn’t random at all. It is the experience of the vessel.

Ray narrows his eyes. “Where is Emma?”

Ponderously, maddeningly, as if he’s just being obtuse. “This entity is the vessel. You are the vessel. You are the one.”

He has a sense that he is lurching, stumbling away, but he doesn’t move. He can’t make himself move, and she clings to his arm–it clings–and the touch is rasping, vibrating, bacterial, like a bag full of hornets. He stares at her, and he thinks of mud and subterranean passages bored smooth by molten rock and stagnant, icy water.

“Give her back,” he says, sounding thin, breathless. “I want Emma, not you.”

“Emma is the vessel. It is she who has offered the invitation, and the vessel is adequate for our needs. And the vessel rises, rises in joy. What of you, would you rise? Would you become one?”

“Get away from me!”

“Become glorious, excellent, the father of a new race. To join, to live, to know. I hunger. You hunger.” The mhuruk-a knits Emma’s brows, thoughtful. “But you are closed. The hunger is blunted, hidden. What is it that you seek? Become the one, and take possession of all things.”

“No.” All I want is Emma.

“I am, and you are, and we will be one.”

In that moment, everything becomes clear to him. He trembles; his knees try to buckle. He forgets to breathe. And if he does breathe, it will only be to scream.

Because mhuruk-a, shed, they are one and the same.

Again, the universe shifts around him. The green, the city, his surroundings spring into focus with a sharpness and clarity that almost buries him beneath the weight of their reality. It leaves him gasping for air.

And Emma says, “Ray? Are you all right?”

He isn’t, not at all. He’s empty, a drained glass, clear and tinkling and dry as bone. He’s understood nothing, grasped at fistfuls of air.

“I’m fine,” he says, with a voice that sounds like choking. “I just–I was thinking.”

“About your mission?”

Close enough. “Yes.”

She gives him a look of pity, of understanding. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

Run away with me, he thinks. To the other side of the universe, away from Lilaikens, and shed and all of it. Just you and me.

But there are questions that must be answered, debts that must be paid. He’s seen the evidence assembled by the EED investigators after the Fortitude incident, case notes drawn up by men who didn’t have access to his knowledge base, men who didn’t know what they should be looking for because Jack Holcomb didn’t tell them. But they gave him a start. They showed Ray where he must begin. The first step on the path to enlightenment.

He says, “Can you take me out to the airfield?”

***

She parks the car in the small lot next to the office. It’s a small, blue rectangle of sheetmetal attached to a warehouse of hulking steel and massive frame. The name is painted along the side in letters three meters tall: Bass-Ingersoll TransGalactic Shipping. Overhead, the rumbling engines of a cargo plane accelerate from growl to whine and the craft lifts off from a runway on the other side of a chain link fence, springing airborne like a lumbering gull. Ray can see the glimmer of the airfield’s control tower off in the distance where the sun, high in the sky, strikes off the windows. Beyond it is the flat aqua sheet of the ocean with a breeze blowing inland. Smell of salt and sea, and that curious diesel stench.

Emma cuts the engine and Ray opens the passenger side door.

“Wait here,” he says. “This will only take a minute.”

She nods, but says nothing. She doesn’t understand. He hasn’t told her anything other than the name of the place and the general address. He can imagine her trying to make connections that don’t exist, wondering what part of their conversation she doesn’t understand.

Because she doesn’t remember. She had no awareness of the mhuruk-a. No memory.

And he doesn’t tell her.

He pushes open the front door. It’s steel, without windows. There are no windows, in fact, which he likes. Inside, it looks exactly like every other shipping operation he’s ever seen, military or civilian. Oil-streaked concrete floor, plastic chairs lined around the edges of the room, battered tables stacked with old newspapers, a vid terminal with the volume down. The sheetmetal walls are bare, except where there are pinup girl calendars or centerfolds tacked up with tape but still curling at the edges. A long, beaten counter that takes up half the room, dingy and sticky, with a grime covered terminal screen stacked at one end.

There’s a man behind the counter. Burly, dark haired, wrapped in faded blue coveralls. He looks both bored and annoyed, chin propped on hands, elbows on the countertop, flipping through a magazine. He lifts his head as Ray enters, gives him a nod.

“What can I do for you, buddy?”

Above his left breast pocket is a patch with his name on it. Stek.

“Are you Mr. Ingersoll?”

“Yeah.”

“You own this place?”

The guy straightens up, probably because Ray isn’t using his friendly with the public voice. “Half of it. Something I can do for you?”

“Four months ago, you provided primary shipping services for the cargo junk Fortitude. Among the items you moved would have been a container of considerable size and weight, something you were told to handle with extreme care.”

Ingersoll’s eyes narrow. “So?”

“I need to know where it went after you unloaded it.”

“Do I know you, buddy?” Ingersoll asks, grunting. “I don’t think so. That means you ain’t one of my customers. And if you ain’t a customer, I’m not telling you nothing.”

“You can tell me now, or you can tell me when I bring the EED warrant.”

He snorts, crosses his arms over his chest. “You can cram your EED warrant up your ass. Our customer records are confidential.”

So Ray could go through the entire, complicated rigmarole here. He could toss out some vaguely threatening legal language. He could remind the guy that EED technically oversees the New Holyoke Port Authority that grants his shipping license. He could identify himself as an EED agent operating within the bounds of investigative procedure under the auspices of the Congressional Forum and a whole bevy of other important FSA agencies.

Instead, he skirts the counter, bangs through the swinging half-door at the end. Ingersoll’s eyes go wide, fierce, and he tries to put himself in the way.

“Hey!”

Ray is careful, because he might need Mr. Ingersoll shortly. He doesn’t go for his throat, where a punch would incapacitate him instantly. He strikes the center of his chest instead, stepping into the blow with enough force to stagger, but not to break anything vital. Ingersoll backpedals, clutches his chest and starts to go down on one knee. Ray hooks him by the collar and slams him onto the countertop with enough force to drive what little breath he might have left from his lungs.

As far as Stek Ingersoll is concerned, the pistol Ray had tucked into his waistband appears from nowhere, with stunning speed and menacing solidity, which is precisely the effect Ray is going for here. He jams the weapon’s snout into Ingersoll’s cheek, digging the sharp flange of the sight into his cheekbone and thumbs back the hammer. It’s a loud and frightening click, at least if you’re on the barrel end.

With the threat of the pistol to hold him in place, Ray uses his other hand to slide out the tray with the terminal keypad.

“Is this system password encrypted?”

He glances over at Ingersoll, long enough to see that Ingersoll isn’t in any condition to answer him–he is too busy concentrating on the gun and his seeming inability to catch his breath–and even if he did not have these things to occupy him, the concepts of password and encryption were just going to make him goggle anyway.

Ray shrugs and goes back to work.

Basic system, using a creaky spinux-variant command line interface. He pulls up a system directory, locates files conveniently named things like warehouse, customers, orders.

Character search on ‘Fortitude’.

A whole string of entries by container shipping id. Manifest of contents. Dimensions. Weight. Shipped from. Recipient. Delivery date.

Ray skims for potential candidates, tagging them and scanning as he goes along, discards, scrolls to the next entry.

Then he stands there for several seconds, chewing the inside of his cheek.

Mechanically, he retracts he hand holding the pistol, tucks the gun away. He helps Mr. Ingersoll back to his feet and brushes at the grime the counter has left on his coveralls.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Ray says. “Sorry to have troubled you.”

A moment later, he’s out the door.

***

The car rolls up the long circular drive, beneath the shelter of the manor house’s stone portico. Emma prepares to shut the engine down, but Ray places his hand over hers. They haven’t spoken since leaving the freight company. They haven’t really spoken since the episode on the green. He looks at her in profile, her lips tight, staring straight ahead through the windscreen.

She knows something has passed between them.

Ray suspects she knows what that something is.

He says, “I need to take the car.”

Emma pulls her hands into her lap, drops her gaze. “You don’t want me to come with you.”

“It’s work.”

But that isn’t what she wants to hear. It isn’t the answer to the question she did not have the courage to ask. “She was there, wasn’t she? On the green. You spoke to her.”

“The mhuruk-a.”

“It’s not time yet. She’s early. I’ve felt it since we returned. She’s very strong this time, anxious. She’s anticipating something special, and doesn’t want to wait for the Dao.” Emma shakes her head, a tangle of windblown hair. “I’m sorry. Did it frighten you?”

She believes it did, that it has somehow fundamentally changed their relationship, otherwise she would not ask.

But Ray shrugs off the suggestion. “Not so much. She looks a lot like you.” Big grin, all teeth, trying to put her at ease. “I could kick her ass if I had to. She’s just a little bitty thing.”

The edges of Emma’s lips roll up, but she still won’t face him. “I can’t–I don’t know what she said to you. It takes some time, in the beginning, to synchronize our perceptions, if that’s the right word. For awhile, it’s either her or me, one suppressing the other, an uncomfortable habitation. Later, there is harmony, but…”

“But the body isn’t engineered for possession,” Ray finishes. “I understand.”

Now, now she turns to him, eyes downcast, as if to ask: Do you? Do you really?

Instead, she says, “I don’t know what’s happening, Ray. It’s never been like this before, this insistent. It scares me. It makes me afraid of what might happen, what I might do.”

“I’m sure she won’t let you do anything too crazy. You’re the vessel, right? It’s not like she’s got scads of other Whiston gals waiting in the wings to take your place.”

Emma lowers her eyelids, peering at him to see if he’s mocking her. “What did she say to you?”

Ray takes a breath. Serious moment. “She said I was the one. Just like your mother.”

A small, relieved expression. “She wants you.” Then a smile, oblique yet genuine. “Maybe it’s an accommodation? Finally taking my taste into account.”

“I notice, for the record, that she specifically said I was ‘the one’. As opposed to ‘one of the ones’, plural. I’m probably going to hold her to that, though I really should have gotten it in writing.”

“Does this not bother you at all?”

“I’m working on it.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?”

She has no notion of his concept of weird. It’s a broader horizon than most people’s. “What can I say? You meet a girl. Young, stunning, smart–perfect. You decide you really like her, that you wouldn’t mind spending some significant time with her. You save her from a disaster or two. That’s some serious relationship raw material there. You figure you take the good with the bad, okay? Now, my second girlfriend, way back in high school, she had it going on like you. Pretty little redhead…but I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that she was hot, but she had this thing she’d do with her chewing gum, this weird like inhale that made the gum pop inside her mouth. Loud. It was annoying, and she did it constantly. Believe me, if I can live with that for nine solid months, a little walk-in visit from some supernatural bugaboo a couple days a year is not going to phase me. Completely different ends of the annoyance spectrum.”

“You take the good with the bad,” Emma says slowly. “You’re comparing a girl who popped her chewing gum with the mhuruk-a?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I don’t understand you at all.”

“Men are like that. We’re complex. Mysterious.”

“You’d like to believe that’s true, wouldn’t you?”

“Can I have the car now?”

“Do you even know how to get where you’re going? I haven’t shown you that much of the city.”

“Hey, I’m a highly trained and sophisticated intergalactic agent of intrigue, of course I can find my way. Besides, I know how to ask for directions.”

***

Ray locates the offices of the Grange Guardian on a narrow side street well away from the downtown business district. They’re practically up against the docks, in fact, where the streets aren’t paved but some sort of gravel and concrete composite material prone to potholes and deep, jarring ruts. The Spider’s suspension complains as he jounces it over streets a finely tuned sports car was never meant to travel, and he imagines snapping struts and grinding, deflated shock absorbers. Between the hulking forms of warehouses, Ray glimpses ocean, docks, small watercraft shuttling in and out of the bay. Portable cranes drag nets bulging with flippered violence from shipping holds. Everything smells of damp and corrosion, rust and the raw, pungent odor of fish and fuel.

He can’t find an inconspicuous place to park, but it hardly matters. No one on the colony would have a Manchiti Spider but a Whiston, and he’s learning that no one touches what the Whistons own. So he leaves it, top down, right on the street, tucked up against the sidewalk.

The Guardian building is a disreputable looking, two story slab of gray stone and salt-rimed steel. Built to last, but not necessarily to wear its age with any dignity. There are plate glass windows on either side of the front door, heavily polarized so Ray can’t see inside. The name of the newspaper is painted on the outside of the glass. Above the door is another sign, old paint on stone: Bingenheimer Plastics. Ray pushes inside.

A bell tinkles overhead, announcing his arrival, but there is no one to greet him. The interior is gaudy, crumbling. Heavy metallic desks with battered terminals on top; poor quality and decidedly warped wood paneling on the walls; glaring overhead lights that give the room a purplish, bruised tinge. Everywhere, there is paper. Bundles of old newspaper, sheets, scraps, most with furious looking scribbles scrawled across them like arcane programming languages. Half a dozen calendars on the walls. Strat calendars, Terran, Holyokan. Between the desks is a lintel and a dutch door, from which issues a thunderous, mechanical pounding, a regular rhythm that is almost ear-splitting in its intensity.

Ray moves to the doorway. Beyond is a crammed space, made to look smaller than its considerable size by the wrenching, sprawling, jerking press that fills most of the room. Thomas Malcolm is there, winged by a young man and a matronly older woman, all of them print smudged and grime coated. He’s wearing a canvas apron that droops past his knees and halfway up his torso, and thumbing through a sheet of newsprint so fresh it leaves smudges on his fingertips.

Malcolm looks up, sees Ray standing in the doorway and holds up paper.

“Evening edition!” He has to shout over the clangor of the press. “Got to have it on the streets before the offices close!”

It’s a nice way of telling Ray to expect a wait.

Half an hour later, Malcolm emerges into the front office. He unties the strings of his apron and tosses it atop the nearest desk. The press has fallen silent, but Ray’s ears are still ringing, full of the roar and din of silence.

“Came to check up on me, did you?” Malcolm says, leaning against the front of the desk opposite where Ray is standing.

“Excuse me?”

“Making sure I ran your article; the one we talked about last night. Bud Groening, my production assistant, is loading the bundles on the truck. It’ll be on the stands in another hour. I did some digging for you, back through the stacks, just in case we get an interesting response tomorrow to the article you have conveniently forgotten–you know, pipe bombs or something like that. I don’t want to be the only one who knows in that case.” Malcolm gives him a deprecatory grin that is only partially humorous. “You might want to poke around into the background and philosophy of our own Mr. Townshend Wright. He was quite vocal, once upon a time, about his opposition to Forum and FSA thuggery on the frontier. This was some years ago, of course, and once he ascended to the role of Director of Whelemat, he didn’t have much to say on the subject. Interesting history, though, when you stop to consider who would benefit the most financially from New Holyoke’s independence from the Forum and the profit-devouring charter. I’m not accusing him of being a closet Lilaiken, of course, but the parallels in rhetoric are interesting.”

For a moment, Ray comes up completely blank; no idea what Malcolm is yammering on about. When he thinks about Townshend Wright, the only mental picture that develops is of a crimson faced and leering man taking pleasure in Emma’s pain

Malcolm clears his throat. “You didn’t come about the article.”

“No. I need information.”

“That’s pretty good information I just gave you. Nothing I could do with it, of course, but I thought you’d find it interesting.”

Ray shakes his head. He’ll think about Townshend Wright later, when he can afford the distraction. “This isn’t about Lilaikens. It has nothing to do with Lilaikens, in fact. I need you to tell me about the Whistons.”

Malcolm arches an eyebrow, either curious or alarmed. “I don’t know how to tell you this, guy, but you’re closer to the situation there than I am. Or do I need to remind you that you’re staying in the Whiston guest cottage?”

Ray just looks at him.

Malcolm pushes himself off the edge of the desk and waves him toward the press room. “All right. Come with me.”

They push through the door, then follow the wall on the right until they reach a staircase. Malcolm leads him up, through a closed door at the top. These are Thomas Malcolm’s private rooms. Living area, kitchenette, a short hall which Ray supposes leads off to a bedroom. The setup is mildly untidy, with old coffee cups and stained dishes stacked on the end tables, more dirty dishes in the sink. Newspapers other than the Guardian folded and stacked on cracked imitation leather armchairs. A couch with uneven springs and lumpy cushions, whose impression of imminent collapse is only slightly mitigated by the addition of a threadworn orange and yellow afghan. A desk against the far wall, beneath the windows, with its own computer terminal, but the view is the same upstairs as it was down–the blank and dingy faces of industrial warehouses.

Malcolm clears a space on one of the chairs and dumps the now indigent pile of newspapers into the center of the coffee table.

“Something to drink?”

“No.”

Malcolm observes him for a moment, scratches at the day’s growth of stubble on his chin. “You’re disappointed. You thought the paper would be bigger. I told you I was a small fish.”

“Actually, I hadn’t given it any thought.”

“This really isn’t about Lilaikens, is it?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I figured you were just trying to throw me off with some mind-numbingly clever EED redirection.” Malcolm heads off into the kitchen, starts a pot of coffee, speaking over his shoulder as he continues. “I thought it would be best if we talked up here, with a door or two between us–not that I don’t trust Mrs. Miernicki completely, mind you. She’s been with me from the start, practically, but–well, people talking about the Whistons. That has a way of getting out. It’s not a blacklist you want your name on, at least not in my business.”

“Not in any business,” Ray corrects him. “Not around here. Isn’t that true?”

Malcolm returns. He flops onto the couch and the springs groan. “You’re learning.”

“I need to learn more. And I think you can help me. Off the record.”

The last bit elicits something like a wince of physical pain from Malcolm. “You’re killing me, Marlowe. Nothing that passes through my ears or in front of my eyes is off the record.”

Ray offers him a blunt, menacing scowl.

“But I can make an exception, of course. Since, I mean, you’ve already been so forthcoming, right? It’s the least I can do.”

“You expected last night to be a disaster. After Juliet Whiston appeared, I mean. Why was that?”

“Because she’s a kook. Or didn’t you notice?”

He had noticed. Couldn’t help but notice…in the same way he also couldn’t help but notice the anticipation with which Malcolm had witnessed it. Which is why he came here looking for answers.

“She hasn’t always been that bad,” Ray prompts him.

“No. And she’s not normally that bad, but it gets worse this time of year. It’s sort of a residual Dao event, I think. She comes a little unhinged, not that the family usually lets us see such things.”

“But there are rumors.”

“Oh, yeah. There’s always a grapevine.”

“What happened to her?”

“You’d really be better off asking someone connected with the family about that.”

Ray shakes off his protest. “I’m asking you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you know. Because you know and you’ll tell me. You don’t have anyone to protect with lies.”

“Sure, just me. Just my own ass, thank you very much.”

“You’ve exploited them for long enough, sold a lot of papers. You can afford to take a little risk.”

That gets him. Malcolm bounds half off the couch, his face red. “You really don’t get it, do you? What do you think is going on here? You think we just trot the Whistons out like our own pet celebrities when we feel like it?”

“Yes.”

Ray’s flat, implacable tone stops him, like running into a wall. Malcolm sits back down. “Then you’re more dense than I thought you were. Or you’re letting the smell of Emma Whiston’s fine ah, womanhood, cloud your judgment.”

“I think I’m seeing with more clarity than you realize.”

But Malcolm isn’t ready to let his point go. “We don’t run anything, anything at all about the Whistons without their approval. No one does. Not the vid crews, the net press, nobody. They control the media and everything we say, Marlowe.”

“The nebulous ‘they’.”

“Frederick, Emma, even their majordomo, Amah. All of them.”

“And how is that?”

Malcolm splays his hands in frustration, as if this should be obvious. “Where do you think the news feed comes from? Not the reports, but the feed itself. Where do we get it?”

“Along a relay beam.”

“A beam from beacon to beacon to satellite to network. Who do you think owns the beacons, the satellites and the network infrastructure?”

Ray nods. “The Whistons.”

“Right. And they can shut us off any time they see fit. They can drop a cowl of darkness over the entire planet. Information is power, Marlowe. Control the news and you control the population. You can’t even say that much without risking reprisals. We exist, just like everyone else, on the Whistons’ whim. I’m sure they’ve all told you about the trials they endure, about how we exploit their notoriety. That’s true, of course, but it’s not the whole picture. They exploit us just as ruthlessly. They threaten us with cutting off our feed if we don’t comply, if we raise our voices against them. It’s the same for everybody even remotely connected with them. They always have something you need to survive. They make certain of it.”

“Even Whelemat?”

“Especially Whelemat. Without the Whiston imprimatur, without the Whiston shipping network and Whiston cash to keep everything afloat, even Whelemat crashes. They’re decades away from a sustaining profitability. So you see what we’re looking at here? New H is an exciting new colony, attractive to settlers because it has space, jobs, opportunity–but nobody gets in, including competing business, because the Whistons have an exclusive charter. That means all the money, all the resources, all the infrastructure is funded from Whiston coffers. They own it. They can do with it as they see fit.”

“Their own private fiefdom,” Ray says.

“Which is why talking to you is not such a good idea for me, not unless you’ve got a hole I can hide in until the next starship comes though…oh, wait, that’s assuming it doesn’t get blown out of the sky before it gets here.”

“I’m not asking you to print this up as a news story, Malcolm. I just want to know what’s going on.”

“And you think no one is going to figure out who told you?” Malcolm snorts angrily. “You parked the Whiston car right outside my front door!”

Ray sighs. It comes to this, and it comes to this, and it comes to this. Always, and he hates it, because when he has to act like a CIU agent every time he turns around, it means that he’s starting to narrow his focus. It means that answers are close, and that events are going to begin unfolding with alarming speed. It means things are about to hurtle out of control.

He pulls out the pistol, sets it in his lap where Malcolm can see it.

“I appreciate that you’re in a difficult position,” Ray says, calm and savage at once. “Unfortunately, my mission parameters aren’t designed to accommodate your well-being. If they dictated that I sacrifice the lives of twelve thousand people aboard Paraclete…you see where I’m going.”

Malcolm glances at the gun, chuckles lightly. He rises from the couch and heads over to the kitchenette, to the coffee pot, without giving Ray another look.

It is not the sort of reaction Ray has come to expect.

“Do you want coffee?”

“Sure.” Ray slips the gun back into his waistband.

Malcolm returns, hands him a mug, then takes his seat back on the couch. “You’re not EED, are you? Not that I ever thought you were, by the way. You don’t seem to have a broomstick up your ass. What, some special, covert branch?”

Ack. “Yes.”

“I wondered as soon as I’d heard that the Whistons had escaped with an FSA officer. EED guys aren’t going to abandon the ship, but you covert ops guys are slippery.” Malcolm shakes his head, still laughing softly. “And that half-assed, ultra-cool crap you were serving at dinner last night about leading up some anti-Lilaiken investigatory team–that was just crap. I want you to know that. You should spend less time trying to convince people you’re something you’re not. It makes the legend weak when you have to explain it so much.”

“Maybe I should have just shot you to begin with and gotten it over with.”

“Hey, I’m just saying. It’s a professional critique.”

“Are you going to tell me what I need to know?”

“Now that I know you’re a secret agent, you mean? Like I’m supposed to expect that spook guys can keep secrets better than EED guys? Or is it because I know that as a spook guy you’re more likely to shoot me in the kneecaps for not being suitably cooperative? Why would I not tell you now, Marlowe? You’ve already ruined me. I told you that. You’ve probably been jumping through spooky little covert hoops all day long, leaving behind you a breadcrumb trail of raised eyebrows and excited suspicions. A path right to my door. Even if I didn’t answer you, people would assume I had and I’d still be ruined. At least this way I get some satisfaction that you’ll actually do something about the situation this colony is in.”

“The situation?” Ray asks.

“You want to know about Juliet Whiston, well that’s the situation. They’re the same deal. The same issue. What has gone on with the Whistons now and as far back as this colony remembers–probably even earlier than that–has everything to do with our current screwed up condition.”

Ray doesn’t even know where to begin. He isn’t prepared with questions that delve as deeply as Malcolm has already gone.

“Tell me.”

“You know that Juliet Whiston was a Trust baby, right? You heard her say that?”

Ray nods.

“Okay, the backstory is that she was something like ten or eleven when she migrated. She was Terran, I think, or Martian originally. I don’t exactly recall, but the Trust found her, brought her in, educated her. By all accounts, she was stunning. Brilliant, sophisticated, beautiful. The Whistons lavished extra special care on her, this being Fram and Erina. They were very taken with her, some would say especially taken with her since their own daughter, Ann, was in serious physical decline already, even back then. I think Ann was in her early twenties when she passed away. So as Ann deteriorated, Juliet increasingly assumed the role of Whiston daughter. Erina or Amah–not the one you know, but her mother. Amah is a title, not a name–anyway, one or the other of them was always leading young Juliet about, managing her social engagements, exposing her to the colony’s elite social circles.

“By the time she was sixteen or seventeen, it had become pretty clear that she was being groomed not just as a replacement for Ann, who died in the interim, but as the future bride of Charles, Frederick and Emma’s father. Two problems with that: Charles was ten or fifteen years older than Juliet, so it was something of a scandal that she had been selected for him as early as ten years old. More importantly, Juliet wasn’t interested in him. When she migrated, she had developed in passage, a deep attachment to another Trust child, a young man named Martin Schmidt.

“There is probably something else you should be aware of. The Trust is not an orphanage system. They do not troll human space for any and every kid that becomes a ward of the state. They take the best kids. Bright, talented, top IQ’s, kids who are way above the norm. The Trust turns around and gives them the best education and training and developmental help that money can buy. The understanding has always been that the Trust was designed to churn out talent and abilities that the colony desperately needed to not only survive, but advance.

“Martin Schmidt was every bit Juliet’s intellectual and social equal. They were a lovely couple. You can see them if you look at some of the image archives at the large papers. He was dark, pale, brooding. She was light, vivacious, fabulous. Charles Whiston was nothing like them. He was more like his son, Frederick. Smart enough, but not exceptional. Slick. Shrewd. Charles was the first real sign to the colony’s leaders, I think, that the Whiston family was in decline. Fram was the last of the great ones, and Charles measured up very poorly indeed compared to him. That Fram and Erina would even imagine that Juliet was interested in Charles over Martin was ludicrous to anyone who observed the family.”

Malcolm pauses, grips his mug of coffee in both hands. He seems to be staring not at Ray, but through him, disturbed. “And then Martin Schmidt died. He was eighteen, apprenticing with the mining engineers at Whelemat. There was some sort of accident, a tunnel collapse, and Martin was trapped. It took them three days to dig him out, but the tunnel only held two days’ worth of air.

“Understandably, perhaps, Juliet went into seclusion for several months. She never left the Grange, was rarely seen even outside the manor house. She lost weight, energy, that signature vivacity that Emma comes close to capturing, but even she isn’t as splendid as her mother was. When she emerged–just a few days before the Dao, the one she told you about–she was a human shipwreck. Completely broken, it seemed. She surprised everyone by assuming Ann’s former role in the public ceremonies as the vessel of the mhuruk-a. That was a big shock, because it was laced with contextual meanings that might not be immediately clear to you. The vessel has always been a Whiston, as long as the colony has been in existence. It’s part of the ritual, this symbolic sharing of the Whiston women, the Whiston fortune, the Whiston largesse, with the community.

“So it was less of a shock afterward, within the month, that the announcement was made of Charles and Juliet’s engagement. Certainly, some people were scandalized, given that Fram had once again gotten exactly what he had intended all along. There was even the rumor going about that Martin’s accident hadn’t been much of an accident at all. But none of it could be proven, and no one knew what had gone on at the Grange while Juliet was in mourning. Perhaps it was nothing so sinister at all; perhaps Juliet was emotionally vulnerable and Charles stopped being Charles long enough to show her something of value inside himself.

“I do know that she seemed reasonably happy afterward. Not nearly as luminous as she had once been, but that’s understandable given the way her life had been touched by tragedy. She was much beloved in the four or five years before Frederick was born, then Emma a couple of years later. She performed all of her public duties, Dao and otherwise. She and Charles seemed to get along well enough, at least, you would assume so if you believe the media accounts–which you can’t, of course, because they were vetted by Charles before they were printed.”

“And all this time, she was going mad?” Ray asks.

Malcolm shrugs. “That’s open for interpretation. If she was crazy, it didn’t come out in public, and it was a closely guarded family secret. My guess is that she suffered some sort of breakdown when Charles died suddenly, shortly after Juliet’s pregnancy with Emma was made public. I think she was three or four months along, then. That was her last real public appearance, that announcement.”

“And Charles was killed how?”

“Construction accident, apparently. They were adding a wing to the manor house, the Trust administrative offices, I believe. They were placing one of the main slabs, using a crane. One of the cables snapped. Charles couldn’t get out of the way in time. So the story goes.”

Ray squints at him, curious. “But you don’t believe it?”

“I don’t have any reason not to believe it. There’s no evidence to the contrary, and Charles was very hands-on with all of his construction projects. It’s plausible.”

“But that doesn’t make it true.”

Malcolm hesitates, takes a long drink of coffee. “I could never confirm it. I couldn’t even set about trying. Who would I ask?”

“The construction crew, for one.”

“All internal labor. Domestics, Trust babies, Amah’s clan. They don’t talk about Whiston affairs.”

Ray remembers, something that Emma said to him once. “The Dag Maoudi are more Whiston than the Whistons.”

Malcolm looks at him strangely, but says nothing. Ray takes off on another track. “This other kid, Martin Schmidt. Do you think he was murdered?”

“There’s no factual evidence to support that,” Malcolm responds, but he tenses, and that’s enough for Ray.

“You think he was.”

“I think the Trust and the Whistons have an alarming tendency to lose kids to accidents. Perfectly reasonable accidents, you understand, given the type of careers they’re steered toward. Mine engineering, rail construction, planetary mapping. These are all fields that carry considerable physical risk.”

Ray nods in understanding. He knows a thing or two about the murder of Trust babies. “And if the Whistons or someone within their circle with sufficient authority says that there was an accident, there’s no one who can question them.”

“That, my friend, is the situation I was describing to you earlier. You want to know about Juliet Whiston. All I can give you is the public record as the Whistons have crafted it. Whether or not the details correlate at all with the truth is a matter beyond my ability to speculate. Would you like a bit of advice, Marlowe?”

“Sure.”

“If you want to know about Juliet Whiston, ask her. She’s the only one who knows the truth, and I think she’s been waiting a long time to find someone who she can trust with her secrets.”

Ray thinks he might just have to do that. And sooner rather than later. But he says, “One more question. What do you think of this whole deal–the Dao, the mhuruk-a? What does it mean to someone who actually lives here?”

Malcolm flaps his hands at Ray, spilling the remains of his coffee as he does so. He grins. “Hell, Marlowe, you don’t want to ask me a question like that. I’m just a crusty old newspaperman. I don’t have time for sentimentality.”

“Then you don’t believe in it. It’s just a public ceremony. Symbolic, like Christmas or the Fourth of July, just as Towshend Wright was saying.”

“I think it’s a way for the Whistons to get their rocks off without causing a scandal.”

“The Whiston women, anyway. Doesn’t that strike you as an interesting dynamic?”

“This is really bugging you, isn’t it? Emma has gotten under your skin.”

Which is true. “That’s not why I’m asking.”

“Really? Why is it, then?”

Because I’ve seen things you can’t even imagine. “I noticed an interesting thing at dinner last night.”

Malcolm stiffens a bit, exactly the reaction Ray would expect. “Did you?”

“There’s a look to the Whistons. Quite distinctive. All those portraits on the walls…”

“Which is why you came here. Why you’re asking me instead of someone else, and why you’d believe I’d tell you. I hadn’t realized my axe grinding was so obvious..” Ray doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t respond. Just lets him go. “I figured I had finally gotten old and flabby enough that it wouldn’t be so obvious anymore. It just about destroyed my father, raising Fram’s illegitimate son. Even with the stipend–the generous stipend–the family paid my mother, he never did get over it.”

Malcolm transitions from amused to quietly bitter in the space of a few heartbeats. “Of course, the disenfranchised heir would be more interested in Whiston family history. More prone to digging out narratives that aren’t exactly the public ones. It’s not like I’m the only one.” He laughs harshly, barking. Ask Towshend Wright who his father was. We Whiston bastards are everywhere. Children of the Dao.”

Father?

“Fram Whiston was your father.” He’s thunderstruck, dizzy.

“The mhuruk-a hasn’t always selected the Whiston women as the vessel. I guess an outrageous libido can run on both sides of the family. Sometimes both at once.”

Male and female vessels.

Malcolm goes on. “It is a strange rite, the Dao, completely alien in some ways to those of us who grew up so heavily influenced by Western Terran thought and concepts of lineage. Of paternity, I should say. The powerful have always generated their share of bastard children, pretenders to the throne, as it were. But it’s always been the men who did it, the men who guarded the virtue and the monogamy of their wives–because they were interested in heirs. Certainly, the Whistons want heirs. They want pure Whiston blood to inherit, but there are tests for those sorts of things now. The illegitimate children can be ruled out before they’re even born.”

“What are you saying?”

“Juliet Whiston has borne two dozen Dao children, exceptional children adopted by the Trust. That’s what it is, Marlowe. The Dao is genetic loading. It’s a eugenic experiment. The creation of a whole race of men and women bred specifically to enhance the Whiston line. To disperse the traits they value among the general population.”

Two dozen? Juliet Whiston had conceived two dozen children that she had turned over to the care of the Dag Maoudi? No wonder she was mad.

“It’s more effective, of course, when the vessel is a male Whiston. Two days of debauchery can generate quite a handful of offspring. The women are pretty much one shot deals, so they have to be more selective.”

“I don’t–”

Malcolm holds up a hand to stop him. “I know, you’re wondering about Emma. How many little critters she’s got running around the Trust? She’s quite the disappointment, honestly. Her and Frederick both. He, of course, was never allowed to be the vessel, and she’s either been unwilling or unable to produce any Dao children. There are whispers that she’s either barren despite the best efforts of medical science, or she’s doing something to prevent herself from conceiving. I lean toward the latter, myself. I like Emma. She’s a nice kid, different somehow than that chaotic mess of a family she spring fro, seems to have a good head on her shoulders. My sense is that she’d be more than happy for the Dao to just go away. She understands that its time has passed.”

Malcolm stops himself there, offers a wry, apologetic shrug. “I suppose that’s not much consolation to you, is it? It doesn’t change the fact of her experience with the Dao, but I also think it changes everything for her, Marlowe. That’s why she’s latched onto you so tightly. She’s tired of it. She’s tired of the things her heritage requires of her. More than anything else, Emma Whiston is desperate for you to rescue her from becoming like her mother. And I think her family is just as determined to stop you.”

***

Later, well after sundown, he parks the car in a small lot next to the glass and steel superstructure of the Whelemat buildings. They’re modern, low-slung blocks, ostentatious only because the rest of the city is not. The construction is neatly clustered to obscure the view of the more utilitarian and ugly concrete box of the original Whelemat facility, strung together by a series of elevated and enclosed walkways. Even from the ground, the network resembles a dense and faintly incestuous hive.

An hour ago, after he was done with Thomas Malcolm, Ray stopped at a public comm and sent a flare to the Whelemat office requesting an interview with Townshend Wright. The call was intercepted first by an automated response system, then shunted to a secretary who managed to be completely unimpressed with his celebrity credentials. Mr. Wright didn’t have time for an interview today. He would be tied up at the office well into the evening.

It was exactly what Ray needed to know.

He climbs out of the car, scanning the buildings. Most of the windows are dark, except for a few offices belonging to ambitious up-and-comers. But there are lights filtering out from the lobby of the central spire, and lights above, near the top floor.

Ray enters the building through the front doors. The lobby could belong to any corporate office on Terra. Elegantly tiled floors, vaulted ceiling, sterile concrete. There are planters along the walls containing conspicuous greenery, fern-like, obviously plastic. In the center, a gurgling, art nuveau fountain in which people have tossed loose change, and a sign posted on the low wall surrounding it asking people not to pitch coins into the fountain. Amusing.

Beyond is a security station softened up with cheerily polished wood and relaxed curving architecture so that it resembles a broad reception desk. But the man standing behind it is wearing a Whelemat security uniform and a pistol in the holster beneath his left arm.

Ray approaches him, smiling. “I’m here to see Townshend Wright.”

The guard looks him over suspiciously. “You have an appointment, I assume.”

“No. But flare him and let him know Ray Marlowe is here to see him. He’ll see me.”

His newfound celebrity seems to work on someone, at least. The guard stiffens when Ray says his name and immediately reaches for the comm unit. Ray grins at him like a man who expects nothing less. The conversation that follows is not a pleasant one by the indications on the guard’s face.

There’s a Ray Marlowe here to see you, sir. Frown, confusion. No, he says he doesn’t have an appointment, but that you would like to speak with him. Deeper frown, with a flick of the eyes in Ray’s direction. Suspicion that he’s about to be slaughtered. No, sir, I did not inquire about the nature of his business. Wince. Probably some shouting going on. At the very least, some coarse language. Then he sets his jaw, scowling. I asked him if he would like to schedule something for tomorrow, sir, but he’s quite insistent that he must speak with you at once. Ray decides he likes this guy. Security guards and secretaries are the sergeants of the corporate world. They can always fuck you harder than you can fuck them. And most of them know it. It pays to remember that; pays even bigger to remember and be nice about it.

The guard sets down the comm. “Mr. Wright will see you now.”

“Sorry for the hassle.”

“No hassle at all, Mr. Marlowe. The elevators are down the chute to the left. Go all the way up.”

As a plan of attack, it beats the daylights out of breaking and entering.

He takes the ride, clicking through a couple dozen floors that announce their passage with a merry ping. The lift doors open on the top floor, and he’s met by a young woman in dark skirt, tight blouse. Very pretty, very nervous, light hair tousled in a way that can’t help but be revelatory.

“You must be Mr. Wright’s personal trainer,” Ray says.

It confuses her. “I’m his assistant.”

“Same difference. Is it just the two of you?”

She understands then, momentarily looks outraged, then runs her fingers through her hair. “Yes.”

Ray says to her, “You should go home now.”

“I’m working, Mr. Marlowe.”

“So am I. Go home. I’ll make sure Mr. Wright is informed.”

He’s blunt, threatening. She gets the message. “I’ll just grab my coat.”

“And I’ll let myself in, if you’ll point the way.”

She directs him down the hall to his left, past another reception desk and the more potted fake plants. “The doors at the end.”

He nods his thanks and wanders away. The lift pings as she leaves a few seconds after. At the end of the corridor, Ray hits the doors at full stride, not bothering to knock. Townshend Wright, flushed and greedy and predatory, just as Ray recalled him, stands behind a large chrome and black metal desk, his back to the windows. Ray approaches swiftly, rolling his eyes around the room, taking stock. It’s a nice office, spacious. The desk, two chairs of the same motif in front. Off to the side, a conference table with a dozen more chairs, sophisticated data display terminal and wall screen. A well appointed bar beyond that. Pictures on the walls of Townshend Wright grinning beneath a Whelemat hard hat at assorted mining sites that look isolated, adventure prone, rough and tumble.

Wright makes a visible effort not to look annoyed. “Well, Mr. Marlowe, this is quite a surprise. I meant to make more of an effort the other evening to chat with you, but–well, you know how unscripted those social engagements can be.”

“Sure. You were too busy waiting to see if Frederick Whiston was going to rape his sister right there in the dining room to be much of a conversationalist.”

Wright freezes for a moment, unable to respond. He is probably not used to be spoken to this way, and stunned is the way Ray prefers him. It’s good to keep people who believe themselves to be heavy hitters off balance. You live and die on the inside half of the plate. Ray drops into the chair closest to him. “By the way, I sent your assistant home for the evening. I think she was rather relieved, to be honest.”

It’s interesting, watching Townshend Wright restrain his urge to erupt. He glowers at Ray, but only irritation seeps into his voice.

“You owe me an apology for that, then. Ms. Roswell and I were just beginning to get down to business prior to your interruption. A little pre-Dao transaction, you understand.”

He’s so cool, so shameless.

“Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Marlowe? I assume you didn’t come here just to insult me.” He returns Ray’s nonchalance with a hard-edged smile. “Or should I say Commander Marlowe. This is a business call, isn’t it? You’re on the clock, as it were.”

“You’re quick.”

“You don’t get to my position without being quick. Quicker than the competition, at least. And more ruthless. But most of all, less afraid than others to cut directly to the chase. So let’s do that rather than trading barbs, shall we? You’re with EED. You were sent here to investigate Lilaiken insurgency in frontier space. I have an interesting past notable for anti-Forum statements on the basis of their strangulating trade agreements with this and other colonial states. I also have the financial power to support a local Lilaiken effort, despite the fact that there are no records indicating that I’ve ever done such a thing, or any evidence linking me to known members of the Lilaiken separatist movement. Am I getting close?”

Ray frowns. “You left out the part about me despising you personally, but that’s probably just a bonus.”

“I’ve been quite thoroughly investigated by your colleagues here, Commander. If you would examine the relevant case files, you’d see that my politics fall well short of violence as a suitable means of provoking change. In fact, I’d bet my opinions on the Lilaiken movement align fairly well with your own, at least as they’re represented in Mr. Malcolm’s broadsheet ravings from this afternoon’s paper.”

Quick and well informed. Ray is going about this all wrong, he realizes. Townshend Wright isn’t impressed by bluster and bluntness, vague threats. Still a jerk of course, but an alarmingly competent one.

“It’s all business with you, then,” he says slowly.

Across from him, Townshend Wright takes his seat, leans back in his chair, completely at ease. “Not business. Money and power. I’ll admit that without mealy-mouthing it. Lilaiken violence is bad for trade, so even though I might agree with them in principle, I’m not fool enough to lend them any sort of assistance. There’s no profitability in it.”

“It must really irk you, then, to be just another Whiston lackey. You build it, they take the dividends. Forever just a big fish in a small pond, because just like everyone else, you subsist on the family whims. That’s got to be a real shot for the ego.”

Wright laughs. “Do you bother to do any research on your social environment before you go blundering in, Marlowe? I assume you’re trying to be clever, but you’ve obviously been drawing too many of your ‘facts’ from the local tabloids.”

“Then why don’t you enlighten me?”

“Do you honestly believe the Whistons have any control over me? Over this corporation?”

“Other than the obvious fact of their ownership, you mean.”

“You’re also apparently not a student of intergalactic corporate finance. I assume by ownership, you mean the fact that the Whistons are entitled to a generous dividend share of our profits. Or maybe you refer to poor, drunk Frederick’s inherited position as titular president of our Board of Directors. Or the fact that the Forum settlement charter was granted to the Whiston family.

“While that does seem interesting on the surface, let me share with you a little secret, something that might have escaped your notice given the intimacy of your ties to the Whistons and the insidious filtering effect they have on information relative to themselves and their affairs. The Whelemat Corporation will begin trading public stock on the Terran Exchange in just a bit more than six months from today. My idea, approved by the Board. Frederick didn’t even bother to attend the vote. At that time, the Whiston stake in this business, besides their contractual dividend payment, will be less than fifteen percent of the complete holding. They won’t be the majority stockholder any longer. They will have no claim to ownership. Would you care to hazard a guess as to who will possess controlling interest in this corporation?”

Ray shakes his head. He wonders what Thomas Malcolm would make of this piece of information. “My God, you’re an asshole.”

“You know, I am an asshole. Fram and Charles were assholes, too. It takes an asshole to be successful in this environment, which both Emma and Frederick most assuredly are not.”

“And since you can push them around, and you’re not above exploiting the trust they’ve placed in you, you’re going to push them out. For the good of the colony, I suppose.”

Wright laughs. “For the good of the colony, indeed. But not nearly as financially beneficial to the unwashed masses as to myself personally. The Whistons are a dwindling root, Marlowe. The Terran Whiston Corp saw this early on and cut them off before they became an embarrassment. Now the New Holyoke interests have followed suit, and our Terran cognates were more than pleased to continue our previous business relationship. It has become abundantly clear that the Whistons no longer have the vision or the capability of creating meaningful social or business structures. Because they’re weak. They’re delicate of hand, rigid of mind, spoiled by wealth and status and entitlement. In another generation, even their cultural influence will be gone, and with it, all of the privileges and controls over this colony that they currently enjoy. With our new financial footing and revenue streams, Whelemat will be profitable inside two years. We won’t need Whiston money or influence to keep us afloat. Divorced from us, they have nothing. No control whatsoever. It’s only a matter of time after that before the citizens of our fair planet realize they don’t need the Whistons either, and that they definitely would rather not be under the Whiston proprietary charter. New Holyoke is grateful to the Whistons, Marlowe, for what they’ve done historically. But we’ve built them monuments. We’ve made them wealthy and famous and adored. We’ve paid the debt that we owed them with the sweat of our brows. But their time has passed; they simply haven’t realized their irrelevance yet.”

Wright stops, arches an eyebrow at Ray. “This, of course, seems to have nothing to do with the Lilaiken business that brought you here. But that’s not right, is it? You came to me because you believed I was part of the Lilaiken conspiracy, and as a Whiston lackey–as you so generously put it–my culpability would by logical extension implicate Frederick as a conspirator.”

“Yes.” If he should lie at this point, he doesn’t have enough sense to see it.

“Which is something you desperately wish to be true. And Frederick, whom you have met, operating as a Lilaiken agent or even as some sort of even quasi-effective tool of the Lilaiken movement…that doesn’t strike you as being a ludicrous proposition?”

“It’s possible.”

“Hardly,” Wright says dismissively. “And what makes you think there is such a burgeoning Lilaiken presence on New Holyoke in the first place? Have you asked yourself why, if such a presence exists, no one from your own department has been able to verify any of its constituents?”

“Aren’t you forgetting about Paraclete?”

“Not at all. Aren’t you making assumptions that aren’t warranted?”

“EED has gathered significant and compelling evidence that the Paraclete incident is causally linked to a previous Lilaiken attack on the cargo freighter Fortitude.”

“How nicely ambiguous.”

“You remember Fortitude, I assume.”

“Of course. Terrible tragedy. Lives wasted for no purpose.” Wright grins at him across the table. “And I assume you have a connection in mind other than the fact that the Lilaikens claimed responsibility for the Fortitude event.”

Wright is mocking him, and all Ray can do is snarl. “Look, if I’m asking the wrong questions, why don’t you tell me what you know about it, then?”

“Because I’ve told you everything I know. I’m certain my sources in this matter are much less knowledgeable than yours.” Ray doesn’t believe him at all, suspects that he isn’t even supposed to believe him. Townshend Wright is flaunting that fact that he is a man who lets very little escape his network of information. “Of course, if I was in your position, I would be asking myself why it is that the Lilaikens were so interested in targeting a rogue freighter piloted by a captain known to have had an extensive black market shipping reputation. One of their own most reliable mules, to put it baldly. Not interested only in removing one of their tested assets, mind you, but in claiming responsibility for it in advance of the other, shall we say, more politically productive targets that have followed. Uncharacteristic of them, to incur so much risk to make such a negligible statement. It is hardly a resounding shot across the bow if its significance only becomes apparent when considered in light of subsequent events.”

“What are you suggesting? That Fortitude wasn’t a Lilaiken attack?”

Wright holds his hands up playfully. “Not at all. I’m only pointing out curiosities that couple in interesting patterns with New Holyoke’s less than hospitable political environment.”

Ray shakes his head. “I have sources of intelligence that suggest otherwise.”

“Then you would do well to re-examine the conclusions reached by your intelligence. Or perhaps your sources in the first place.” Wright smiles wickedly at him. “But I’m not one to tell another man how to do his job.”

“Maybe you’d be more interested in telling me what Fortitude was hauling for you, then.”

The Whelemat director’s eyes practically sparkle. It does not constitute the bomb Ray had hoped it would be. “Now you’ve reached the compelling evidence toward which you have so painstakingly ascended. The glass becomes less clouded, yes? What makes you believe I had any dealings with Fortitude, Mr. Marlowe? With it, and by extension, these Lilaiken scoundrels.”

“A Terran shipping container that had been aboard that ship was delivered to Whelemat via Bass-Ingersoll. You might remember it. Large, heavy, fragile. Addressed to Frederick Whiston.”

“We take a large number of deliveries both for the company and for the Whistons, as you might imagine. Several large and heavy and fragile ones, as a matter of fact. And it’s a rare package that I sign for personally. Perhaps if you spoke with our receiving manager…”

“Fortitude was a Lilaiken mule. You just said so yourself.”

“Indeed. I should also have reminded you that we are a frontier colony. We place more importance on reliability of service and fee structures than political affiliations. Captain Karluk was very reliable and very reasonable when he wanted to be. Believe me, Whelemat felt the loss of Fortitude more deeply than most.”

“And that relationship places Whelemat under suspicion of having taking possession of stolen Terran historical artifacts. I’m sure EED and the Congressional Forum, as well as a number of federal oversight departments, would welcome the opportunity to examine your books for this and other business irregularities.”

“Wonderful! Now you are beginning to enjoy yourself! In my experience, nothing pleases a Forum agent more than leveling threats against the powerless.” Wright claps his hands together, gleeful and completely nonplussed. “You’ll start your investigation into our fiscal improprieties with a detailed survey of the Whiston holdings, I assume, since the package in question was addressed to Mr. Whiston in the first place.”

Townshend Wright would like that, Ray realizes. He would appreciate someone taking the time to cast a pall of doubt over Frederick Whiston’s legitimacy as president of Whelemat’s Board of Directors. It would make Wright’s assumption of control that much less complicated to have the Whiston obstacle removed in advance.

Ray is being whipped in this game so thoroughly, it has become embarrassing.

“The artifact in question was stolen by Lilaiken radicals. It was transported aboard a Lilaiken ship. It was delivered to Whelemat as a proxy for Frederick Whiston. And I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, unless, that is, you’re in the habit of receiving Lilaiken contraband.”

Wright stops clapping, presses his hands together, sighs. “Mr. Marlowe, I’m certain that you’re a very good field agent for the EED. I have no doubts that you have acquired a file full of citations and a chest full of medals, but you are out of your depth here. You are an anchorless vessel tossed from storm to storm and listing out of your proper depth. Three days you’ve been on New Holyoke. Three days! How can you expect to understand what goes on here? To take any of the facts you acquire in their appropriate context?”

Ray continues, fierce and adamant. Maybe he can bludgeon Wright into submission. “In this shipping container was a ring of stone. It would have been massive. A dozen men couldn’t lift it without a hydraulic loader. I need to know what was done with it.”

“As part of your Lilaiken conspiracy?”

“Yes.”

“Can I give you a piece of advice, Mr. Marlowe?”

“Fine, as long as you tell me about the ring.”

Wright frowns, his lips pressed together, disappointed. “Stop looking for Lilaikens here. They don’t exist. They’re phantoms created by the FSA to justify the existence of an otherwise useless EED outpost to Forum accountants. Whatever was inside that shipping container, and I claim no direct knowledge of it whatsoever, but whatever was inside had less to do with politics than with religion. You’ve been examining our world through lenses tinted by your experience. You are the proverbial man with the hammer, to whom every problem appears to be a nail–a Lilaiken nail.

“In two days, the Dao Maed Vitouri will begin, and you’ve made no effort whatsoever to understand its significance, to understand the grip it has on this colony, on our past, our future, on the Whistons themselves. I have told you that they are a family in decline, and their beloved Dao is the reason for it. But behind the Dao is the Dag Maoudi. They are the ones you should be asking about this stone.”

I am the vessel. You are the one.

“Yes, you’re such an opponent of the Dao.” Ray scowls at him. “I’ve seen the way you look at her, like meat, like a rape fantasy. You like what they’ve done to her. You participated in it.”

Townshend Wright shakes his head wearily. “And I’m a member of the local Masonic lodge, too. I sponsor baseball teams in the spring and football squads in the autumn. I contribute to the city’s fledgling college. I fulfill all the duties and expectations that come with my position. It’s about context, Ray. Social context, cultural context. And as long as that context exists, the Dag Maoudi have power.”

“Even over Whelemat?”

“Over everything. While we must, we make concessions. And when their time has passed, when the last of them has finally crawled away and died…well, that’s when things will change. But not until then.”

“Concessions like receiving their stolen property, or like facilitating the transport of those items through non-registered Lilaiken haulers? But not like wresting away control of the financial empire that supports them.”

“The Dag Maoudi have no interest in Whelemat. All that touches them is the Dao. The Dao and everything it means to them. In matters of religion, the Dag Maoudi do as they choose and we allow them to do so because the consequences would be disastrous.”

“That artifact is dangerous, Wright.”

The Whelemat director hesitates for a moment, chews his bottom lip. It’s the first time Ray has seen him look anything but confident. Quietly, he says, “And so are the Dag Maoudi. You’ll see that, I imagine. Sooner than you wish and too late to save yourself.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Towshend Wright offers a wan smile. “Because you are so obviously wrong.”

And because he is tired of being told what to do.

“Believe what you choose to believe, Marlowe. Maybe the Lilaikens did destroy Fortitude and Paraclete, just as you say. Maybe Frederick Whiston has secretly been using Whelemat assets to support the radical movement all along. I’m not part of the Lilaiken movement, so perhaps their logic escapes me. I am just a businessman, and I believe I have a certain sense for activities which produce counterproductive results. But it wouldn’t be the first time I was mistaken.”

What was it he had said? Why destroy Fortitude? It had done its job, delivered its cargo. What was there to gain?

Except…except, except. Nothing but attention.

Counterproductive attention in the grand scheme of things.

Ray rises abruptly. He’s done with this. He’s done with Townshend Wright.

“I get it,” he says.

Townshend Wright hardly acknowledges him as he turns and departs. But as the doors to the Whelemat director’s office close behind him, he believes he can hear him chuckling after him all the way down the hall to the lift.

It is not a happy sound.

<– Chapter 16 / Chapter 18 –>

Filed under: A Vessel for Offering Tagged: | A Vessel for Offering, blog novel, blook, Darren Hawkin, science fiction