Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter) (5 page)

“Was your trip pleasant, Lord Whaler?”

“To reaching New Augusta, I looked forward. Seeing your receiving hall, disappointed I am certainly not. Most impressive and suited to you.”

The Sovereign of Light chuckled.

“I gather that’s a compliment, Lord Whaler, and in our position as royalty, so shall we take it.”

The royal chuckle effectively stilled conversation around the Emperor for several instants, except for the fragment of small talk which drifted upward.

“…so devilish in that outfit, but what could you expect from Accord—”

The speaker, a lady in rust and yellow with a neckline which barely cleared her ample breasts, broke off in mid-sentence.

“Lord Whaler,” continued the Emperor as if he had not heard the interruption, “your frankness is refreshing. What do you really think of the Empire? Honestly now?”

Nathaniel could sense the indrawn breath from those listening around the throne.

“Your Highness, large groups of systems organized must be. People accept the government they deserve, and many systems accept the Empire. Wise is the Empire to accept and govern wisely those who wish such governing. Wise too is the Empire which only extends its rule to those who wish it.”

He bowed slightly to N’troya as he finished.

“Well chosen words, Lord Whaler. Well chosen.”

“Your service, and looking forward to these talks on trade I am.”

“So is the Empire. We trust you will fulfill our confidences.” The Emperor straightened. “During your stay in New Augusta and thereafter may you enjoy the peace of the Empire.”

The Emperor nodded dismissal.

Nathaniel bowed and waited.

The Emperor turned and climbed back to the Throne of Light.

At that, the Ecolitan marched back down the carpet toward the massive portal. Before exiting, he faced back to the throne and bowed again.

When the portal opened, he exited the receiving hall.

“Lord Whaler, your escort.”

The same Receiving Auditor waited as the portals shut behind the Envoy. The same four Marines swung in behind him as he walked back the way he had come.

“I didn’t catch your conversation with the Emperor, Lord Whaler, but you must have a way with words. That’s the first laugh I’ve heard during an audience in months.”

“Truth only I spoke.”

He didn’t offer more, and Cynda didn’t ask as the short procession made its way back to the Imperial concourse.

Once more the charade with the guards was repeated as he entered the crimson electrocougar. The car whisked him back into the depths and to the Diplomatic Tower.

Nathaniel sank into the red cushions.

Smoothly as things seemed to be going, he had the feeling that pieces to the puzzle were missing. Which pieces? That was the real question.

A
MUTED BROWN
tunic, slashed with irregular gold stripes, and matching brown trousers—with a sigh, the Ecolitan pulled the outfit from the closet. The clothes were common enough not to draw attention, and his utility belt was compatible.

Once he had the outfit on, he checked himself in the hygienarium mirror. The looseness of the tunic gave him an informal appearance, almost touristlike.

He straightened the belt before heading for the private exit.

Probably Mydra or someone would wonder where the Envoy had gone for the afternoon, but a little mystery would brighten their lives, if they even bothered to check. Besides, he was bored. Bored with waiting for things to happen.

He laughed. “With one take-out aimed at you, you’re bored.”

All told, the trip from his quarters down the drop shaft to the tunnel train level took less than fifteen minutes. Best of all, no one had given him a second look.

Like virtually everything else he’d seen, the tunnel train level was immaculate, sparkling and shimmering in the indirect light.

All the same, he missed the outdoors, the scent of rain or dusty air, the openness of a horizon stretching into the sky.

The second train was the one he wanted, running south toward the shuttle port. The short train—only four cars—whispered into the concourse so silently it nearly caught him by surprise.

Each car contained twenty-four individual seats and twice that space for standing room. Roughly half the seats in his car were full.

Nathaniel sat opposite the rear portal, where he could observe the entire car without seeming to.

Two seats away, carrying a slim folder, sat a blond Imperial Sublieutenant with her eyes fixed on the panel at the end of the car.

She had not looked up when he had taken his seat, nor did she move a muscle until the second stop after Nathaniel had boarded. At the Ministry of Defense concourse, the Sublieutenant snapped out of her seat, walked past Nathaniel and through the portal before it was fully open.

Nathaniel stretched, ambled to his feet, and barely escaped the train before the door shut behind him. The train was whispering its way out of the concourse toward the shuttle port within instants of his departure.

Muted brown with scarlet trim struck the color scheme for the Ministry of Defense concourse.

Unlike the Diplomatic Tower, the Defense Tower had two lift/drop shafts, one guarded by a full squad of armed soldiers, the other apparently unguarded and open to the public.

Nathaniel watched as the Sublieutenant marched toward the guarded shaft, flashed something, and was waved through. Then the Ecolitan settled down on one of the scattered wall benches, one that had a view of the approaches to both sets of lift shafts, with a faxtab in hand, giving the impression of scanning it while waiting for someone.

Within minutes, he could sense the pattern.

Younger Imperial citizens drifted in and out, seemingly at random, and took the public lift shaft. For all their leisurely appearance, a certain tenseness underlay their casualness, showing in a quietness, a lack of chatter.

Scarcely a handful of individuals presented themselves to the brown-clad guards at the smaller lift/drop shaft, and of that scattering, Nathaniel saw only one other person in uniform, another woman. Two other civilians were quietly turned away.

After a quarter of a standard hour, one of the guards glanced over at Nathaniel, studied the Ecolitan, and returned his attention to the console.

Nathaniel did not react, but kept his nose in the faxtab, with an occasional look around for his “appointment” while he continued to track the comings and goings.

Another quarter hour passed. The guard who had first noted Nathaniel looked him over again, this time giving him an even closer scrutiny and keying something into the console.

Nathaniel went on recording the arrivals and departures into his belt storage.

A quarter hour later, almost to the second, the guard at the console looked up and toward Nathaniel. At the same instant, one of the patrols turned toward the console operator.

The Ecolitan dropped the faxtab and folded it. Unhurriedly, he rose, stretched, peered around, looked at his wrist, shook his head, and finally crumpled the faxtab in apparent disgust.

He stalked away toward the tunnel train stage.

It hadn’t been necessary to stay quite so long, but he had been looking for a reaction.

Once in the train, decorated in pale golds and off whites and filled with the low murmur of music, he again took an end seat, this time to see if he could spot a tail. The train was half full, about as crowded as he’d seen any public transport in New Augusta, and he decided, since no one else had joined the small group waiting on the stage, that a tail was unlikely.

Back in the living room of his private quarters at the Legation, he first dialled some juice from the dispenser, then settled himself into the deep chair facing the window. He felt more at ease in the living room than in the expanse of the official office of the Envoy.

People assumed that you had to get inside a building to find out what was going on. Not always so. Sometimes a fairly good picture was painted just by who came and went.

What conclusions could he draw?

Despite the low profile the military seemed to have assumed on New Augusta, they possessed a great deal of real power.

Further, the “student” appointments implied one of two things: either the military career was respected and desirable or it was required of at least some of the population. The lack of uniforms also intrigued the Ecolitan.

New Augusta, in spite of all the apparent freedom, was a tightly controlled society.

How tightly remained to be seen.

T
HE MAN IN
black stepped into the drop shaft, angled his body out into the high speed lane, and watched the levels peel away.

Mydra had told him what she thought of the idea.

“After someone shot at you…going out alone, unescorted, Lord Whaler, is foolish. Very foolish.”

Foolish perhaps, but a Marine escort with crimson uniforms would have been like dropping a location flare.

On the way down, he smiled faintly as a Fuardian Military Attaché tripped over his dangling sabre and pitched headfirst into the slow drop traffic, almost colliding with a Matriarch from Halston.

Accord didn’t have lift/drop shafts, or the towers with hundreds of levels running from deep in the ground up into the lower cloud levels. For the scattered communities of Accord, such towers would have been an energy waste. Harmony was the only city of any size throughout the Coordinate, and the capital had fewer people than any single one of the New Augustan towers.

As the Ecolitan dropped toward the concourse level, he edged himself into the slower lanes, finally swinging off onto the orange permatile of the exit stage.

He walked briskly toward the private side of the concourse where the official tunnel cars and diplomatic vehicles waited. His eyes never stopped their continuous scan. His ears listened for any untoward sound.

“Lord Whaler?” called a young driver.

“From whom?” he asked noncommittally, still scanning as he approached.

“Lord Rotoller at Commerce.” She gestured toward the car and the seal on the open passenger door.

As he bent to enter the vehicle, he checked the energy levels but could find nothing overtly suspicious.

He settled himself into the overpadded seat as the electrocougar dipped noiselessly into the tunnel on its trip from the Diplomatic Tower to the Imperial Ministry of Commerce.

“How long have you worked for the Commerce Ministry?” he asked the driver.

“Two standard years, sir.”

“Like it do you?”

“It’s part of training. If you’re a student at one of the professional or nonmilitary service schools, you’re assigned a part-time job as well.”

“What school for you?”

“Government Service Academy.”

“A specialty you have, a favorite course of study?”

“Political theory’s the most interesting. But I like economic history the best.” The young woman half turned in the seat, without taking her eyes totally off the controls and guidelights. “Do you think the Ecologic Secession was based more on the imperatives of Outer Rift trade or on the political restraints imposed by the Empire?”

“An interesting question,” temporized the Ecolitan. “The factors which to the Secession led as in so many conflicts were doubtless many. Some of them are lost, I would suspect, and today scholars and politicians focus on what they see as important, not on what those involved saw as important.”

“That’s what Professor Har-Ptolemkin says, that we project our own motives back onto history too much.” The driver stopped talking, waiting for a response.

“Trade, the political reasons, the personal heritages, all factors have to be considered. No one sat down and said, ‘For these reasons will we rebel.’

“No…doubtless said they something more like, ‘We are tired of the Empire and want to be free.’ And each had a somewhat different reason.”

“Do you think they really knew that clearly what they wanted?”

“People say they know what they want, but often when they must choose, they choose not what they asked for.”

The student driver did not continue the conversation, and the electrocougar began to slow and climb. After a sharp turn, the vehicle came to a halt. A man clad in a gold jumpsuit opened the door, and four others, wearing identical metallic uniforms, stood by the underground carved stone portal, ramrod straight in the artificial light.

At 191 centimeters, the Ecolitan didn’t consider himself particularly tall, but he stood nearly a full head above the five gold-suited guards. Two were women, and all wore long knives in silver scabbards and silver-plated stunners in gilded holsters.

A man and a woman near his own height waited for Whaler inside the portal. Both were dressed in the maroon of the Imperial Commerce Ministry. The man stood in front of the woman and, abruptly, raised his left hand in the open-palmed symbol of greeting used on Accord, almost as if he were being coached.

Whaler returned the greeting.

“Alden Rotoller, at your service, Envoy Whaler. May I present my Special Assistant, Marcella Ku-Smythe?”

“At your service,” Whaler returned stiffly in Panglais.

As he acknowledged the introduction with a slight bow and a direct look at Marcella, he was struck by the contrast between the two. Marcella was not beautiful, though her features were clear, clean, and attractive in a strong way, with a nose more aquiline than pert. Her eyes focused with an intensity common to few. Rotoller’s face was essentially dead by comparison.

“Your staff?” inquired the Lord Rotoller.

“The full disposal of the Legation for the purposes of any negotiation has been accorded me.”

“Of course,” responded Rotoller. He turned and motioned toward the ornate private lift shaft.

The dimness of the shaft surprised Nathaniel as he followed the Terran Minister, since the public shafts in New Augusta were so brightly illuminated.

Beyond the white tiled exit stage was a stark, semicircular hallway decorated with a maroon and white tiled chessboard pattern. The walls were white, trimmed with thin maroon molding that shimmered.

Two guards, facing the lift exit, wore stunners in black functional throw holsters and tunics and trousers of solid maroon.

Off the hall were four portals, but only the one on the far left was open. As soon as Marcella Ku-Smythe stepped onto the exit stage tiles, Lord Rotoller turned and walked through the open doorway.

Nathaniel followed. So did Marcella and the guards.

Did they think he was an ogre left over from the Ecologic Secession?

The chamber they entered resembled a private club in Harmony far more than a meeting room for the Deputy Minister of Commerce. Three deep chairs, each with a side table, were drawn up around a light fire, itself contained within flux bricks in the middle of the room. Each side table contained a napkin, real cloth, and a mug holder.

Rotoller suddenly dropped into one of the chairs.

“Take your pick.”

Nathaniel bumped into the one closest to him, trying to see if the furniture was either anchored or snooped. Neither seemed to be the case, and he eased himself into the maroon cushions.

The room was decorated in shades of cream and maroon, and the light fountain flared maroon intermittently.

“Would you care for something to drink? Some liftea, cafe, perhaps some Taxan brandy?”

“Liftea, it would be fine.”

Rotoller tilted his head at Marcella.

“Cafe,” she ordered.

One of the guards disappeared through another portal that had opened from a seemingly blank wall, to return a moment later with three beverages and three identical plates of pastries.

The guard, a woman with closely cropped brown hair, offered the pastry tray to Nathaniel first, letting him choose one of the three plates. She placed his liftea on the table, then served the Taxan brandy to the Deputy Minister before finishing up with Marcella.

Silence stretched out before Whaler realized that the other two were waiting for him.

He picked up the heavy mug and lifted it toward his host.

“For your hospitality and courtesy.”

“And for your kindness in coming,” the reply came automatically.

The Ecolitan took a small sip of the steaming tea and set the mug back in its holder.

“Such courtesy, for one such as I, most overwhelming is.”

“No more than you deserve, particularly when it is you who do us the honor of coming so far.”

“And on a small courier at that,” added Marcella.

“How was your trip?”

“As expected.” Actually, he had enjoyed it and the chance to compare the courier with similar class ships of the Institute. His enjoyment had been heightened by seeing the Imperial battlecruiser tagging along as an official escort.

“Long trip, I imagine,” responded Rotoller. “Can’t say I’ve been out to the Rift. In this job, you get tied to the faxwork, in the details, not that it all doesn’t have to be done. Marcella does all the real in-depth work, though, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

The Lord smiled faintly at his assistant, who smiled faintly back.

“Lord Mersen will be pleased to know you have arrived safely and will take great interest in what you have to offer.”

“Most kind, most kind,” returned Nathaniel.

“Did you bring any staff with you?” Again, it was Marcella.

“Ah…the question of staff. Such a joy, and so helpful are they, and so determined. A thousand pardons to you, Lady. Would I not mean to offend, in any circumstances.”

“No offense, Lord Whaler.”

“But your question…no…answer it I did not. Staff, besides that of the Legation, as you meant, have I none at this moment.”

Before the growing silence became totally oppressive, Rotoller jumped in.

“Guess something like New Augusta must be a new experience for you. Understand your government isn’t fond of large bureaucracies or diplomatic establishments.”

“Our government has not the numbers or the systems with which to deal as does the Empire. Our Envoys are not numerous but deal with more than diplomacy we do. Some other cities and systems have I seen, but none so large and impressive as your capital.”

He inclined his head toward the light-haired Special Assistant. “And none with officials so enchanting.”

Nathaniel took another sip of the liftea and began the last pastry, interposing nibbles with broad and idiotic smiles.

“Haven’t spent the time we should have,” continued Rotoller, “since matters between Accord and us have been going so smoothly recently. This trade imbalance thing sort of crept up on us, and I gather that’s been the same sort of feeling in Harmony, from what our Legate’s reported.”

“True. One hesitates to rock a boat floating with a smooth tide, not when so many other disturbances evident are. The Delegates were not aware of the extent of the problem facing the Empire and so the request caught many unprepared. Trade can be the lifeblood of an outer system, and what is a small imbalance to the Empire reflects more heavily for us.”

“Do you think some of the other systems are waiting to see what happens?”

“Trade affects us all, and Accord understands such effects, as do you and others in your Ministry. One thing does lead onward to another. That is known. Most important will be these talks to those affected.”

The pattern continued.

“Can’t tell you how pleased we are to have a chance to chat before the talks get underway…”

“Is your Legation here much different from the people back home, really?”

“Understand Accord hasn’t changed too much lately…”

“Is the Ecolitan Institute an all-around university now?”

Nathaniel responded in kind.

“Pleased am I to have such opportunities…”

“People they are people, and much help can be anyone.”

“The changes, they happen. Everywhere are changes, but on Accord we take the best of the old, we hope, and the best of the new…”

“Ah, the Institute…not exactly what you would call a university…nor even a training school…more an experience, a way of combining a look at the past and the knowledge of today.”

The atmosphere changed ever so slightly, and while Nathaniel couldn’t pinpoint it, the tête-á-tête was over.

“Regret we couldn’t talk all day, Lord Whaler. You’ve given us a most fascinating insight, but there’s far too much waiting for both me and Marcella at our consoles.”

The guards stiffened as the two Commerce officials rose from their chairs.

Nathaniel followed.

“So kind have you been in your courtesy, and much too much of your time have I taken today.”

“Our pleasure, Lord Whaler. Our pleasure.”

While the guards were alert as the three drifted to the drop shaft, their hands poised near their stunners, the Ecolitan almost found himself shaking his head at the sight. If he’d really wanted to dispose of the pair, holding their hands near their weapons wouldn’t have done them a bit of good.

“Hope to see you soon,” finished off the Deputy Minister as Whaler climbed back into the electrocougar.

“And I you.”

Ignoring the frescoes in the tunnel and the driver, an older woman who seemed to want to ignore him, Nathaniel leaned back in the cushions and tried to think.

Why had the two Commerce officials wanted to meet him?

He shook his head and waited until the limousine came to a stop in the private concourse. Rather than using the front entrance of the Legation, he took the back side exit from the lift shaft which led to his private quarters.

The corridor was nearly deserted. He passed a woman and two men on the way to his private door. The belt detector showed the snoops on the portal were still operational.

From the entry, he walked to the study where his datacase had been left. As he half expected, someone had been through the material, despite the privacy seals on the suite locks and on the datacase itself.

What surprised him most was that only a rudimentary effort had been made to replace the case and the material within in the same positions where he had left them.

On the one hand, great technical sophistication had been involved in analyzing the palm-print codes to open the doors and the datacase without destroying the locks or triggering any alarms. Yet the material had been replaced carelessly.

By angling his belt light at the smooth surfaces of the cases, he could tell that fingerprints remained, without any evidence that the intruders had attempted to wipe them off.

That confirmed the general identity of the intruders as government operatives of some sort or another.

He shrugged.

At the moment, there was little enough he could do.