Exile (19 page)

"There, there, Pel Front—there's no need for annoyance!"

"Annoyance at being here at all!" Pel Front answered in a huff. "I question the reason for this meeting in the first place—"

Before Pel Front could drive himself into further exasperation, the third of their party, Mel Sent, arrived with her customary loud entrance.

"Ah!" Kay Free said, as the huge carriage of Mel Sent's host, a whalelike creature half again as long and wide as the largest Earth whale, with bright blue and white stripes alternating down its length, and eyes large and luminously deep black like monstrous, polished stones, reared itself up before them, disturbing the mud around Kay Free to the point that nothing could be seen until it settled.

"I am here—finally!" Mel Sent announced. "Then we can begin—" Kay Free attempted mildly, knowing the futility of the gesture.

"We can begin nothing until I tell you what I wish to tell you!" Mel Sent said.

Pel Front's sound of impatience was audible—but ignored by Mel Sent. Through the settling murk, Kay Free made out another frown on Pel Front's whiskered face and secretly smiled to herself.

"I was
detained—forever,
it seemed!" Mel Sent
explained theatrically. "First there were matters to attend to at home, and then—"

"How
is
your mother?" Kay Free offered mildly.

The huge visage of Mel Sent's host turned ponderously toward her and the eyes, if possible, became even larger.

"Mother is Mother!" Mel Sent rumbled. "She always will
be
Mother!"

"I see," Kay Free said.

"And that is besides the point!" Mel Sent continued. "The point is that I was detained—"

"That's all very well," Pel Front snapped peevishly. "And I'm sure we're all very interested. Only we're here for business, and business is what I insist we get down to."

"When I say so!" Mel Sent roared.

Pel Front and Mel Sent faced each other silently for a few moments, and Kay Free was about to intervene in the coming argument when the calling came to her and the world went suddenly silent. Her two companions, also, had ceased even to breathe, their host bodies, absent of the movement of fin or cilia, responding in their own kind: Pel Front settling gently to the ocean floor and Mel Sent, buoyed by the air in her host's massive body, merely appearing lifeless as she hung in place.

In the moment of supreme silence, when Kay Free felt everything in existence lifted away from her—the duties of life, thoughts of existence or less weightier thoughts, worries, awareness of self—she felt now, as she always felt at these moments, as free as anything can feel. Free of everything save being itself.

"Yes, my Life," she prayed in an unapprehended whisper.

The moment of freedom extended, to the point that deep within Kay Free, in a place she was not even aware of, rose the vague thought that her host, deprived of oxygenated water, was dying. And in that small place she was alarmed.

And yet the moment of blissful emptiness went on.

"Yes, my Life," she repeated, knowing now that she was waiting for something that had never been said before.

Into her, into the others, came a knowledge, filling the void of bliss.

A kind of gasp escaped Kay Free.

Then suddenly the calling was over and Kay Free was pushed whole back into the world.

The moment of disorientation that ensued was extended.

"Oh, my," Mel Sent said, in an unaccustomed voice; it occurred to Kay Free that if Mel Sent had been hosted by a human creature at this moment, that creature's eyes would be welled with tears.

Oh, my... PcI Front said, barely audible.

"Yes . . ." Kay Free said.

And then she slowly became aware of-herself and her surroundings again. She had been in a shocked limbo, and now when limbo was left behind, the

shock remained, though of a newer kind.
    
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196
           
Al Sarrantonlo

Incorporeal, nearly invisible, like waving sheets of pale green-yellow light, like the aurora borealis, Kay Free saw now that she and the others had left their hosts and stood suspended and shimmering in their natural state.

"It's best that we leave this place," Mel Sent said in a somber, low voice.

"Yes, and immediately," Pel Front said.

They rose, curling, filmy, lighted expanses, up toward the undulating gray-green clearness of the ocean top above them. When they broke through, it felt like stepping through a mirror.

But before they penetrated the surface, Kay Free turned her attention a final time to the scene below her: the eyeless burned thing that had been her host; Pel Front's host, skin pulled back over its exoskeleton in a curl of execution, toothed mouth locked wide open—and Mel Sent's magnificent whale-creature, now rolling gently and dead in the current, over onto its burned back, its huge and beautiful black eyes now exploded from within, cavitied depths of nothing.

"I
don't understand this," Targon Ramir said, studying the report in front of him with furrowed brow.
"You
say three high-energy sources
left
the planet? We weren't attacked—we were unattacked?"

"Something like that, sir."

"Don't call me sir," Targon said to the young security force officer, whose scrubbed face reminded Targon of his own brief stint in Earth's Nature Scouts, where he had learned how to tie knots and contract poison sumac. Targon looked back at the viewer, trying to make sense of the data: the high-energy sources had apparently shot out of Clotho Tessera—which was the middle of a sea. Scanning had indicated that there were no facilities under the water at that location—that there was nothing there but water and fish.

Targon made the data go away with a flick of his finger.

"Right now it means nothing to me; let me know if it happens again."

The security officer saluted sharply. "Yes Mr. Ramir."

Targon scowled. "And don't salute me anymore."

"Yes . . ." the young officer said, properly confused.

"Send Mr. Sneaden in, please."

Fighting both his hand and mouth, the officer turned sharply on his heel and marched out.

In a few moments, Jean Sneaden came into the room, automatically closing the door behind him. He was youth to Targon's age, but Ramir had quickly learned that this young man with the shock of red hair was nearly as infected with enthusiasm for Venus as the old engineer himself was—which explained the pained look on his face.

"It's a black day, Jean," Targon said.

Sneaden nodded. "Black as they come."

"It could get blacker," Targon added quickly; and just as quickly regretted it. Though Sneaden was enthusiastic and loyal, his age sometimes precluded his complete understanding: in short, his lack of years prevented him from seeing the umbrellaed arc of any policy; with his impatience, he saw only the rain on one section, forgetting that the rest of the umbrella was getting wet, too.

"Has there been any response from Cornelian to our ultimatum?"

"I'm a little surprised. Especially after that speech he gave on Mars. It may mean he's not as ready as we thought he was."

Sneaden's frown was infectious. "It will at least give us more time to prepare."

"Prepare what? Our only weapon is the planet itself. Corneliari knows that full well. We know his shuttle forces have been gathering for the past week. We know the Martian Marines have been mobilized to full strength. We knew the only thing we could do to keep him away was prove that we meant what we said: that if he attacks, he'll win the race but lose the prize."

"Everyone loses the prize," Sneaden said.

"Yes . . ." Targon Ramir took a deep breath and turned to stare out the window. Already in the far distance, the brown stain from the detonation of the Aurelia feeder station was drifting high into the atmosphere and westward. The pictures from the sight had been painful enough to look at: the hole in the ground and in the sky. That it was in the most desolate area of the planet, totally unpopulated, made little difference: The thought of the stray animals and plant life alone which were vaporized in the explosion, not to mention the point oh four percent loss in total atmospheric oxygen that had already occurred—a wound which would take five years to bandage and heal—made Targon sick to his stomach. The sight of the poisonous smudge on the healthy skyline brought actual bile up into Targon's throat. He could well imagine the way it made his young friend Sneaden feel.

Or Carter Frolich. . . ."

Something like a shiver went through Targon Ramir. It would be hard to think of his old friend any longer without feeling pain, loss—and, yes, fear. For with Frolich's disappearance soon after returning to Venus, and his subsequent underground missives condemning Targon Ramir to death and proclaiming himself the one true leader of a free and independent Venus, the relationship between master and apprentice had mutated into something horrible, a deadly adversarial duel. Though Carter was thus far seemingly on his own made no difference: His stature alone was enough to make anyone listen to what he had to say, and there had been some grumblings in the lower ranks of the Engineering Corps about why Targon was taking the course he had chosen.

Which had prompted Targon to do something even more painful than ordering the destruction of Aurelia station: releasing the mental health records of Carter Frolich, defining and proving his instability and, in effect, assassinating his character in public.

That the tactic had apparently worked was nearly beside the point; the sour taste in Targon Ramir's throat was almost a constant thing these days.

Targon turned away from the painful scene outside to face Jean Sneaden, who was studying his face, looking for something he apparently had not found.

"Targon, what happens next?" Jean asked.

Targon sighed. "We wait. Hopefully, the Martians will get the message and not attack. The last thing
Cornelian wants is a Venus that is useless to him. He is a patient man, but not that patient—he knows that by the time Venus is cleaned up, he'd be in his grave fifty years."

Jean was silent for a moment; and then he asked the question that Targon Ramir knew he had come to ask.

"But will you really do it?"

Targon Ramir fixed a steady gaze on the young man's face. "Yes, I will, Jean," he said without a trace of hesitation. "Because it would be better to let a future generation fulfill our dream on Venus, rather than let it be realized by a man like Prime Cornelian. This is what Carter doesn't understand. To him, the dream itself is more important than anything. Throughout history, that has been a mistake that mankind has made. Men of vision have all too often ignored the consequences of their discoveries and realizations. What good would this planet do for mankind if it's in the hands of Cornelian? Would it be right to create paradise—if the only use for it is as a more pleasant setting for slaves to live?"

Targon found his passion ebbing into sadness. "The only weapon we have is the thing we love," he said. And though he felt more alone that at any time in his life, he added, "And we'll use that weapon if we have to."

O
n Titan, Saturn was rising.

At the lipped horizon of the world, the sharp thin line of the E ring, shepherded by tiny Enceladus, one of the Lesser Moons, pushed its curve into view, followed by ring G. But these thin lines were only a prelude. Soon F rose, at Titan's distance and without optical aid a flattened band separated by the deceptive black emptiness of the Encke Division. Wrath-Pei was well aware that the Encke Division was filled with millions of tons of material, all ground into tiny dust motes. He also had no interest.

From Wrath-Pei's vantage point outside the open dome of Schumacher Observatory, comfortably seated in his floating lounge chair whose gyros, similar to the ones enclosed in the nearby telescope's guide system, adjusted to his every muscle's whim of movement, the best part of the show was yet to come. For now the partial majesty of the A ring slid up the sky. Now the ring system was beginning to resemble the edge of a huge yellow-white scythe cutting up into the darkness.

"Ouch," Wrath-Pei said, smiling to himself, shifting sinuously in his chair, thinking of what the imagery meant.

Wrath-Pei's interest heightened as the smooth wide darkness of the Cassini Division rose into view. "Is that it?" 'Wrath-Pei said.

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Good. And we'll be able to see it when?"
"In four minutes and fifteen seconds, Your Grace."

"Excellent."

Lawrence, standing beside him, dressed in black to his eyebrows, bowed slightly, keeping his eyes to the inside float-Screens of the visor he wore. He was no more than ten, but had not seen anything without the aid of his visor since the age of three.

"Three minutes and thirty seconds, Your Grace."

"Very well."

Wrath-Pei's palms began to sweat with excitement.