"The title 'Consul Assessor'," I told Rhodane, "is an amalgam. I'm ostensibly here to set up a Consulate on Sudoria, though it is quite possible I won't manage that very quickly. During the interim I am to assess the situation here, and report on it back to the Polity."
"How will you report to the Polity?"
"Through the comlink established on Sudoria."
"You could have set up a Consulate here, so why there?"
It was a rather silly question, but I have known for longer than I care to think that even silly questions can elicit useful information. I decided to be brutally honest. "Because the Sudorians nearly bombed the Brumallians back into the Stone Age and" — I glanced at her—"your new compatriots are no longer a power in this planetary system. To establish a Consulate here, the Polity would need Sudorian permission, which we would not get." I studied her for a reaction, but behind that visor her expression remained opaque to me. "Were we to establish a Consulate here without Sudorian permission, that would only lead to conflict." I left it at that, not adding that conflict was something we wanted to avoid, because I did not want this conversation to lead to questions about what circumstances might provoke us not to avoid conflict.
We passed on through the ridge below the two pylons, and slowed to a halt in the first of a system of locks. Below us lay an area forested on its further rim and circled by the distant jut of pylons like those behind us. Within this lower area were many mounds of spill, chimneys belching smoke or steam, and large oblate buildings muscling from the ground like fungi. Canals and roads, busy with barges and wheeled transport, networked all of this, in places disappearing underneath some of the buildings, or spearing off into the forest. I saw all of this only briefly, as once the first set of gates closed behind us, the water inside the lock began to drain, quickly raising twenty-foot lock gates to cut my view. These eventually opened to allow us into the next lock, from where I now noticed huge earth movers working the spill piles down below, before my view was again cut off. Another three locks followed before the system finally released us out onto the canals I had spied from above.
"Tell me about the Polity," Rhodane instructed.
This I did, though not painting the Polity in too glowing colours. The general populace of Sudoria must still resent the Brumallians, so I did not want this Consensus Speaker—and adopted Brumallian—enthusiastically advocating further contact with us, since that might cause just the opposite reaction from her 'former people'.
The canal cut straight through a muddy landscape on which grew fungal growths like those I had first encountered beside the forest river, but here speared through with stands of plants similar to horsetails. The bleach reek became stronger, but there were other odours as welclass="underline" a farmyard smell consisting of decaying excrement and warm animal bodies on a winter morning; something resinous as in a pine forest, probably from those horsetails; and other astringent odours usually associated with some sort of chemical plant. The air was also noticeably warmer—the temperature having risen by at least five degrees—which of course tends to make things smellier.
We finally drew into the shadow of one of the oblate buildings glimpsed earlier, chugged through an arch into the interior, which was lit by the pale sunlight shining through thin translucent walls. The building was filled with the sloshing, sucking racket of water being shifted. Great clams opened and closed rhythmically, spilling foot-wide pipes like a vomit of spaghetti, and all exterior smells were soon drowned out by one I recognised from home: the meaty smell of open molluscs. Our craft motored to a halt in a circular pool, more gates closed behind us, and the water level began to drop fast. Then down a mile-deep pipe we descended into the organic gloom and cacophony of the hive city ReconYork.
Harald
As he entered the Ironfist's Bridge, Harald observed with his uncovered eye crew-members becoming conspicuously busy at their stations. Many feared him, for which he felt both gratified and ashamed. From the moment of his arrival on Ironfist, Harald had climbed with almost unhuman brilliance through the ship's ranking system, so it had been quite predictable to Fleet commanders that, out of the many candidates, he would be the one to attain the rank of captain-in-waiting. Not so predictable had been his successful pursuit of the role of ship's tacom. He felt that most other Fleet personnel just did not understand the power inherent in the position of ship's communications, logistics and tactical officer. But perhaps, after he had finally centralised those various duties aboard Ironfist, creating for himself the rank of Fleet Tacom Commander, some understood too late. Harald's other eye—the covered one with its surgically altered lens, grid-division of the optic nerve and channelling in his visual cortex—gazed upon four separate scenes displayed on the eye-screen shrouding one side of his face. The earphones of his com helmet played audio information he could call up by using the control glove on his right hand, in conjunction with the eye-screen. He could play messages as text, and reply easily by using programs created in the computer modules imbedded in his foamite suit. The non-standard surgical alterations within his skull enabled him to multi-task to a degree unknown to the tacoms aboard other ships, for he could also easily interact with his immediate environment. Still studying those around him, he called up new displays from the multitude of satellites positioned around Brumal. Flicking through views showing nothing but cloud, he paused to study others showing Brumallians moving about on the surface, then moved on to find the one he particularly wanted. This showed a leaf-shaped craft settled down on the ocean, the waves hammering its outriggers.
"Com 324—status?" he whispered into the helmet mike, after selecting the correct channel for his demand.
"We are in position. Sonar indicates a depth of one mile and we have found the escape-pod. Difficult retrieval since the weather is kicking up and images from below not so clear, but we are lowering a robot now," replied the tacom officer aboard the craft he observed.
Harald paused, realising he was clenching his teeth, and deliberately relaxed his jaw before speaking: "Let me know the moment you find it," and was at once annoyed with himself for having issued a needless instruction. He offlined the relevant screens and comlink, did a personnel search checking the location of Admiral Carnasus, then resumed his walk across the Bridge to the spiral stair leading up into the Admiral's Haven—Carnasus spent much time up there nowadays, as Harald increasingly shouldered the burden of the old man's command. Since the Admiral's attitude to invasive new technologies was not the best, Harald removed his coms helmet and control glove, along with his side arm, and left them in the security box situated at the foot of the stair. Nothing he could do about his surgically altered eye, since it comprised no single pupil, but a honeycomb of fibre-optic lenses below its flat surface. He climbed up to speak with his superior.
"Ah, there you are, Harald, so what's the news?" Carnasus sat in an old wooden chair upholstered with hide that was now worn and cracked. He had moved it to where he could gaze out through the narrow windows overlooking the body of the hilldigger Ironfist. Harald eyed the Admiral's cooling hat, resting on the floor beside the chair, and surmised Carnasus must have removed it upon hearing him mount the stair. Sympathy and contempt for the old man warred for predominance inside him.