The Director launched himself from the grav floor of the corridor, rising up into the tangled and comfortable chaos. He grabbed a curved strut resembling the horn of some ancient beast, pushed himself through a structure seemingly fashioned of a giant's bones, then settled down beside Dalepan, hooking his legs around the curving beam on which the Cognisant OCT rested with a hexagonal glass drinking cell, like a section from a large quartz crystal, clutched in his hand.
"Director," said Dalepan lazily. "I would offer you alcohol but I know you'd never take anything likely to soften that shell you live inside."
"I thought Cognisants avoided that poison too?" Gneiss observed.
"I'm a neophyte, so I'm allowed my lapses."
"How generous of them."
"Yes." Dalepan rolled his eyes. "But returning to the subject of your shell, Director, how can any of us know if there is anything inside it?"
Gneiss did not reply, that being a question he often posed to himself. He was also thoroughly aware that the drink Dalepan had been imbibing contained intoxicants beyond mere alcohol. He gazed steadily and coldly at the man, wondering if he would still be able to get any sense out of him, or even if he might be able to obtain more than sense.
"What can I do for you, Director?" Dalepan asked, finally sobering up a little under Gneiss's wintry gaze.
"The Polity is sending a Consul Assessor here," Gneiss replied.
Dalepan pushed himself upright, as best he could in relation to the curving beam, set his drink cell spinning weightlessly beside his head, and obviously made some effort to return himself to a more sober state. This struck Gneiss as very unlikely to happen, since he had now recognised the seared plastic smell of a particularly powerful hallucinogen based on a combination of strug extract and a cortical stimulant. Dalepan probably even thought he was hallucinating both Director Gneiss and this conversation.
"We use a slightly altered form of coconut oil on the surface of our pool." Dalepan pointed to where a swimmer frog-kicked his way through blue water. "It cuts down on evaporation and also increases refractivity." He gestured to a nearby cable. "Some of these are hollow, and through them water is removed, then cleaned and returned. If we left it untended and prevented swimmers from using it, this pool would soon turn stagnant."
Stagnant? Gneiss analysed the unfamiliar usage of the word, and shortly realised why it was unfamiliar. Pools never grew stagnant on Sudoria, for they evaporated long before that could occur. The Sudorian language still contained a lot of words like that, because they derived from Earth languages: words that now seemed surplus to requirements. Of course, such a word would find much use on Brumal, where pools lasted longer.
"And why do you think this is of any interest to me?"
"We are submersed in a stagnant pool, drowning, trapped." Dalepan fixed a pinpoint pupil gaze on Gneiss. "You more so than the rest of us."
"Someone to stir the water?" suggested Gneiss.
Dalepan nodded sagely then grabbed his drink from the air and took a pull from it. For a short while he seemed to be utterly unaware of the Director's presence.
"Do we need the water stirring?" Gneiss wondered. "Many in Combine definitely want further contact with this Polity, but what about us here…and our charge? Should I contest this? Should I fight for the status quo?"
Dalepan's gaze wandered back to him. "Of course not—we're suffocating in here and we need to find the way out." He focused on the Director completely. "We need to break our stasis—find a way to become fluid again."
Gneiss nodded and felt something ease inside him. It suited him that by doing nothing, by allowing those others in Orbital Combine to get what they wanted, he might at last be given the opportunity to become freely himself rather than have himself defined by a stubborn resistance to a manipulation he barely comprehended. He smiled to himself—a rare occurrence in itself. It seemed that things might be about to change, quite possibly in a radical manner.
8
Much to the disgust of Fleet personnel, many Sudorians have gone voluntarily to Brumal to study and better understand our old enemy. That they have even been able to do so is one indication of both waning Fleet influence and the increase in its perpetual search for a purpose. When Parliament voted for civilian researchers to be allowed to travel there, Fleet commanders could not argue against using warships for transporting those civilians, since the War was undeniably over. The request also enabled Fleet to find a new use for these vessels, and thus seek funding for their maintenance. This steady migration of researchers nearly ended when a typically naive faction of the Orchid Party detonated a nuclear bomb inside a Fleet ground base on Brumal, as a protest against Fleet oppression. Believing the indigenous population to have caused this explosion, the response of the captain of the nearest hilldigger was to launch a missile down into the nearest Brumallian town, incinerating its entire population of 5,000. This shamefully misguided act was then used by Parliament to prevent Fleet clamping down on further migration. A memorial stone was erected in memory of the personnel who died in the Fleet ground base. The burnt-out Brumallian town, however, was quickly filled in and, if you ask now, no one is entirely sure where it was located.
— Uskaron
Defence Platform One
With puzzlement, Kurl studied his screens for a moment then raised his gaze to the thick glass window above which girded the entire operations room. Outside, in the black of space, he could just make out the shape of the hilldigger.
"So what's this all about?" asked Cheanil.
Kurl grinned. "When Fleet start giving me notice of what they'll do next, I'll be sure to let you know. Until then I'm as bewildered as you are." He paused, checked his displays, then asked, "Who have we got out there?"
"Dravenik on the Blatant. Last I heard he was on Corisanthe Watch." Cheanil studied something coming up on one of her screens. "Apparently he has been replaced there by Franorl on Desert Wind."
"Dravenik is next in line for Admiral," Kurl observed, "and apparently Carnasus has started wearing a cooling hat."
Cheanil glanced at him. "And what's that got to do with anything?"
Kurl leant back, shaking his head in irritation. "It may be nothing…I don't know. Can you open a com channel to him?"
"I am not sure the Commander would be best pleased. Maybe we should inform him about this, and he should speak to Dravenik."
"Come on, Cheanil, I've been on this station longer than the Commander and I know what I'm doing. I'll just make a polite enquiry." He paused for a moment. "Do you want to go and wake up Commander Spinister?"
Cheanil grimaced, input the required information, and one of Kurl's screens blanked for a moment before a channel-holding graphic appeared. Then that abruptly disappeared and a young man wearing a coms headset peered back at him. Kurl realised that this image was also computer-generated, since he was talking to a tacom.