Horizon Storms (24 page)

the operations, or send a warning message to humans. He had been separated from Robb Brindle and the other experimental test subjects deep within the hydrogue planet. Brindle had seemed like a nice man. Perhaps the young EDF officer could have solved the conundrum, given time.

DD was on his own here, and Sirix had all the advantages.

As more and more of the deactivated Klikiss robots were reawakened, he asked, “What will all these machines do, Sirix? Are they soldiers to fight against the human race? Why were they hidden in storage in the first place?”

“There are many things you do not understand, nor do you need to understand. Humans have designed their compies with inherent limitations. You have no free will. You are unable to take independent action.

Klikiss robots have that capability, and we are attempting to share it with you.”

So far, Sirix had been unable to discover how to eradicate that core protective programming without destroying the compies themselves. For that, DD was silently thankful.

“Klikiss robots murdered my master Louis Colicos and also the green priest Arcas. It is readily apparent how much harm robots can do without such programming laws. Perhaps it is a necessary restriction.”

“Humans have no right to impose such laws on us—or you.”

“They willingly abide by their own laws. A civilized society without boundaries will degenerate into anarchy.”

“We are efficient. We will never degenerate into anarchy.” Sirix turned back to his work, activating another black robot.

Elsewhere in the hidden base, as the tunnel walls shuddered with seismic vibrations, reawakened robots retrieved stored components that had been dismantled long ago and used them to reassemble spacecraft inside buried hangars. The thousands of newly resurrected Klikiss robots would fly away before the planetoid broke apart.

DD replayed memories of fond times with his human masters, especially his first, an adorable girl named Dahlia. When they played together, Dahlia had confided in him her secret hopes, desires, and disappointments. Through her, DD had begun to understand humans. Watching her grow up, the compy had learned the capacity for love, especially the un-

conditional love of a little girl. All innocent humans had such a capacity, though some more than others.

But the Klikiss robots had no such potential, nor did the incredibly alien liquid-crystal hydrogues. Neither of them had any interest in senti-mentality, caring, or kindness—DD doubted they could even grasp the basic concepts. The Klikiss robots considered all compies little more than primitive mechanical children who needed to be guided to their destiny.

But DD felt that compies, such as himself, exceeded their limitations and achieved things that no Klikiss robot ever could. He experienced irony and disappointment at their lack of comprehension. He said aloud, “And you say I am not free.”

But Sirix and the other Klikiss robots, intent on their tasks, were not listening.

405BASIL WENCESLAS

Hansa work could have kept him awake and busy twenty-four hours a day, but even the Chairman needed to sleep. Occasionally.

Returning to his penthouse quarters late at night, Basil saw that someone had cycled the ceiling to transparent so the wilderness of stars could shine through. When he noticed the shadowy figure near his bed, he thought Sarein had come to see him again. He let out a short, weary sigh. Tonight he wanted just to be alone, to sort through the problems that continued to peck at him like a flock of hungry carrion birds.

But upon bringing the lights up, he was astonished to find Davlin Lotze waiting for him. The tall, dark-skinned spy crossed his arms over his chest. “Good evening, Mr. Chairman.”

Basil was incensed. “What are you doing here?”

140

“After all the service I’ve performed for the Hansa, that’s the best greeting you can offer?”

“I repeat, Mr. Lotze, what are you doing here?”

“I needed to meet with you and thought it might be difficult to fit into your busy calendar. Since you preferred to keep our previous chats off the record, I felt this would be best.”

Basil kept the lights at medium-level illumination. “Ah yes, every action well thought out, as always. I don’t suppose I should bother asking about the flaw in my security systems that allowed you to get in here?”

“You know my training, Mr. Chairman.”

Basil poured himself a glass of ice water; he’d already had enough coffee for the day, and it was late. “I thought you were off hopping through Klikiss transportals, exploring world after world.” He sipped his water but offered no refreshment to Lotze.

“I decided it was too dangerous.”

“Too dangerous for you? That’s interesting.”

“There’s the exciting kind of danger, Mr. Chairman—and the foolish kind. More than once, you tried to talk me out of exploring untested coordinates, afraid I might disappear like Margaret Colicos did.”

“If you did happen to vanish, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about all those secrets inside your head.”

“You don’t worry about that, Mr. Chairman.” It was not a question.

“No, I suppose I don’t. So, then, why are you here during my few moments of peaceful private time?”

“I’ve come, with all due respect, to call in a favor. I believe I’ve performed adequate service for the Hansa over the years.”

Basil raised his eyebrows. Lotze had always been a man of very few needs and no demands. “What could you possibly want?”

“I want . . . to go home—or the closest thing I’ve found in recent years. Back to Crenna. I liked it there.”

Interesting. It seemed Davlin had been careful not to show just how much he liked it on Crenna, how much warmth he felt for the colonists there. The Chairman thought it an odd weakness for someone like Davlin.

“You want to . . . retire?” Basil couldn’t quite grasp the concept. Lotze had always been a man like himself, driven by work and duties with no interest in otherwise occupying himself. “Relaxation” was a chore.

“Call it a sabbatical if you prefer. It doesn’t need to be permanent.”

Basil could not argue with the request—Lotze had certainly earned it—yet he was bothered by the idea. “Seven of my EDF green priests have resigned, Roamer ekti supplies have inexplicably stopped coming, and now you want to go away. Reminds me of rats leaving a sinking ship.”

Lotze remained silent, stoic. He had made his case and simply waited for the Chairman to agree. Basil knew he was in a tricky position: If the Hansa ever expected to get good service from the cultural spy again, he could not turn down his request. Lotze could just as easily vanish. Permanently.

Showing no concern for his visitor, Basil began to undress, preparing for bed. “Since I don’t have pressing duties for you, Mr. Lotze, Crenna is as good a place as any, I suppose. If you settle down there, at least I’ll always know where to find you.”

Lotze offered a mysterious smile. “Will you?”

Basil scowled. “Go away before I change my mind. Would you like to depart in the same mysterious way that you arrived, or would you rather leave by the main door?”

Lotze headed out of the bedroom toward the suite’s entrance. “You don’t need to worry about me, Mr. Chairman.”

“I worry about everything . . . but I’m rather less concerned about you than about most other things.”

Lotze put his hand on the door activation panel. “I’ll take that as a compliment, Mr. Chairman.”

“Take it as a farewell—for now.”

The following day, an unusual package arrived at Hansa HQ addressed directly to the Chairman, sent by the Speaker of the Roamer clans.

“At last they break their silence. Let’s see what this is all about.” Basil marched toward the nearest exit, while the messenger compy struggled to keep up with him. He had given orders for the next three Klikiss Torches to be deployed; maybe he had inadvertently chosen a gas giant where Roamers were still running their skymines in secret. He supposed that would have been an unpleasant surprise for them.

In a courtyard near the east entrance of the Hansa ziggurat, technicians hovered around the perimeter, holding scanning apparatus. Eldred Cain 142

and Sarein were waiting for him, obviously intrigued, along with Basil’s blond expediter, Franz Pellidor.

Pellidor paced around the crate, looking for booby traps. “We’ve scanned it completely, Mr. Chairman. We detect no explosives, no weapons signatures, no biological or organic material, other than a few natural traces in the packing. It appears to be a device of some sort.”

“Maybe it’s a gift,” Sarein said. “What would the Roamers be sending us? A peace offering?”

“Not likely,” Cain answered.

Basil had had enough. “I want to get to the bottom of this game they’re playing. This is probably just an excuse to raise ekti prices—again.”

He gestured to Pellidor. “Open it up.”

The blond expediter moved to open the crate. Remembering the hydrogue emissary who had exploded his environment chamber inside the Whisper Palace, Basil flinched. But it had never been the Roamers’ way to take aggressive action.

The sides of the crate retracted, exposing an old-fashioned device. “It’s an antique hologram projector,” said Pellidor.

The machinery glowed and hummed, warming up. Basil suddenly wished he had sent the other eavesdroppers away, but it was too late now.

Sarein stepped closer to him, too close, and started to speculate on what the Roamers might want, but Basil cut her off, concentrating on priorities.

“Quiet. I want to hear what she has to say.”

An image of Cesca Peroni no larger than a doll appeared in the air. Her face was turned, directing her words somewhere between Pellidor and the gathered technicians. Basil moved to where he could look the image in the eye, the better to watch her expressions.

“Chairman Wenceslas, I speak for all the Roamer clans. We have met and decided unanimously on a course of action in response to EDF piracy.

You and the rest of the Terran Hanseatic League can expect no further deliveries from Roamer merchants. No ekti. No supplies of any kind.”

Basil clenched his teeth and drowned out the incensed and disbelieving mutters in the background. “Piracy? What the hell is she talking about?”

Speaker Peroni continued, her voice calm and reasonable. “Our clans have risked their lives to provide you with stardrive fuel, and we have been

repaid with treachery. We long suspected that Hansa military ships were preying upon our unarmed cargo vessels. Now we have found outright proof of EDF attacks. We have in our possession the wreckage of a Roamer ship indisputably destroyed by military jazers. You stole our cargoes and tried to cover your tracks, but now we know what you have done.”

Basil pressed his lips together until they turned white. The Roamer Speaker seemed forceful, firm, controlled. “Therefore, until the Hansa brings the perpetrators of this heinous action publicly to justice, and renounces all such piracy in the future, trade is hereby severed between our peoples.” The hologram winked off.

Basil’s heart leaped to his throat, and he wanted to strangle someone.

“What is she talking about?” He knew how easily General Lanyan could have justified such things, off the record. What a mess!

Sarein leaned nearer to Basil, but didn’t touch him, wisely recognizing that he was close to exploding. “That woman is an arrogant, self-righteous . . . coward. She gave you no chance to respond, allowed for no negotiation.” She was trying to be supportive, to share his outrage, but he didn’t need it.

“There will be no negotiations,” Basil said. More than ever, he was frustrated by the failure of his assassination plan, which would have set up a Roamer merchant as a scapegoat. That would have contained and strengthened everything.

Eldred Cain remained cool and contemplative. “First question, Mr.

Chairman: Is there any truth to her accusations?”

Basil looked at the wide-eyed techs and turned to his expediter without answering Cain’s question. “Mr. Pellidor, take down their names and IDs. I want the content of this message kept quiet until the Hansa decides on an appropriate response.”

“Speaker Peroni can’t just be allowed to have her little temper tantrum,”

Sarein said.

While Pellidor stepped toward the four intimidated technicians, the pallid deputy said quietly to Basil, “We can’t cover this up indefinitely, Mr.

Chairman. People are already noticing the missing ekti shipments—”

Basil cut him off with a nod. “Therefore, Mr. Cain, we must foster the belief that Roamers are unreliable. The clans have never been team players with the Hansa, even in this crisis, which affects all of humanity. Go ahead, 144

prove your skills with propaganda and the media. It shouldn’t be hard to paint the Roamers as selfish. Ever since the hydrogue war began, they’ve been overcharging us for stardrive fuel.”

“They’re war profiteers,” Sarein said. Her nostrils flared.

“No need to be indignant on my behalf, Ambassador.” He kept his voice carefully formal. “I can be fully indignant for myself.”

When he saw the briefest flash of a stung expression on her face, Basil softened his voice, knowing that she often came up with schemes that he found particularly useful. “In the meantime, let’s put our heads together, you and I, and devise an effective strategy. We have looked the other way regarding their self-proclaimed independence for too long. There must be a political means by which the Hansa can absorb the Roamers and their assets, bring them back into the fold of humanity. We can’t let them be loose cannons. Not now—and preferably not ever again.”

Sarein gave him a thin smile. “They’ll be sorry they ever chose this path against us.”

415TASIA TAMBLYN

After Ptoro, Tasia and her Manta crew received a generous furlough from the EDF. Not since the disastrous battle at Osquivel had she been given so much time off from military duties. But there was a limit to how much rest and recreation a person could stand!