He gazed out at the setting sun, its light hazed above the desert like angel dust, and a weary sadness infected his mood as he reviewed recent events. His book had very much changed public—and thus parliamentary—opinion about the Brumallians and about Fleet. He understood how the effect of its publication had killed Fleet's political manoeuvring to have the U-space link closed down, and that, without that same effect, Fleet would have had the power to prevent the Consul Assessor coming here. But in the end it had been too late, for he calculated that if he had published it five years earlier, things would have been very different now.
"Oh, Harald, what are you doing?" he asked the desert, but the question was rhetoric into the abyss, for he knew the answer.
Had public opinion been swayed only a little more against Fleet and in favour of the Brumallians, Parliament would not have returned to Fleet its wartime prerogatives, and Fleet would not then have been able, without consultation and a vote, to bomb a Brumallian city. On such little things turn catastrophic events.
Orduval wished Tigger would return, but supposed the Polity drone was wrapped up in business more important than keeping Orduval informed. He did not himself believe the Brumallians had launched the attack that resulted in the Consul Assessor's death. He understood that many on Sudoria did not believe it either, and like him could not decide which of the two, Fleet or Combine, was the guilty party. Tigger could tell him, and had already told him so very much.
"I have finally ascertained the cause of your debility, and I am amazed," Tigger informed him during their last meeting, just before the drone's departure for Brumal.
"If you could explain?" Orduval suggested.
"You knew I was coming today, even though I did not tell you I would be coming."
Orduval felt a moment's bewilderment. Yes, Tigger was right. He had turned off his console, put it to one side and walked out here fully expecting Tigger to be waiting—and never questioned that impulse.
"Some structures in your brain are sensitive to U-space," the drone explained. "Interestingly, the first fit you ever experienced happened precisely on one of the occasions when I arrived back here from Brumal."
Orduval knew that Tigger contained in his sphere part a U-space drive which he used in order to zip back and forth between the two worlds.
"So it's all your fault," he wryly suggested.
"Not entirely. My arrival on that occasion may have triggered the first feedback loop that resulted in your fit, but the weakness was already there, and such a loop inevitable."
"I feel a bit more explanation is required."
"So do I. Far in the past, on Earth, there used to be a long-running debate, often quite heated, concerning so-called psychic powers. Those being the ability to see into the future, to move objects by thought power, to read minds or communicate from mind to mind. It was only some years after the advent of U-space technology that the debate was partially resolved. Most psychic phenomena were then found to be related to a brain configuration that made them sensitive to U-space, and theoretically able to cause localised phenomena related to it."
"Theoretically?"
"Cases of the strictly mental phenomena have been documented, but none has been documented regarding the physical phenomena."
"So I am in some way sensitised to U-space, and this causes my fits—a phenomenon you say is already known about in the Polity. Why then are you amazed?"
"Because the structures in your brain grew from your DNA blueprint, as do most basal structures in most human brains—meaning nature not nurture. Everything that forms afterwards is nowhere near so dramatic."
"Biology is not my main interest, but I do know enough to understand that."
"Without her knowledge, I visited your grandmother Utrain, and sampled her DNA. What I found there led me to a rather risky penetration of Corisanthe Main, where I managed to obtain a stored blood sample taken from your mother. I discovered that the difference in your DNA, resulting in those unusual brain structures, cannot be accounted for by your ancestry."
Orduval nodded slowly to himself, realising that at some level he already knew that someone had tampered with his DNA.
"This is something I must investigate further," Tigger told him, "but now I must prepare for the arrival of the Consul Assessor."
Their conversation continued for a while, as it always did, while they discussed current events and Orduval's eventual return to Sudorian society. But he felt himself to have shuddered to a bit of a halt, contributing only little to the conversation as on some other level his mind chewed over the latest information. After Tigger departed he returned to his cave and sat and thought for a while, then opened up his console and began to use programs provided by Tigger for research, in order to penetrate Corisanthe Main. He began looking at the time when his mother had first arrived there, and speed-read files feverishly, looking for some clue to what dangerous genetic experiments Orbital Combine had been conducting then. For two days and two nights he found nothing, and began to realise that his conjecture about experiments might be wrong. Then he found something significant—right near the end.
Combine claimed that a fumarole breach was merely when an energy surge from the Worm knocked out a piece of equipment, and like everyone else he had always accepted this. Now a simple manifest transference showed that Fleet occasionally boosted cargo crates, for Orbital Combine, towards the sun. Tracking this manifest back to source, because he thought Combine might have been destroying evidence, he discovered the crates contained equipment damaged by fumarole breach on Corisanthe Main. For a while he tried to believe that he had genuinely discovered the concealment of evidence, but from previous reading he knew that the crates did indeed contain such affected equipment. Why such caution about equipment merely damaged by an energy surge? Obviously fumarole breaches were something more than Combine was admitting to.
We were conceived during a fumarole breach. Tigger had told him how that conception, according to heavily edited and often hidden station records, had actually taken place inside Ozark One during the said breach. He wished Tigger had been here to ask more about this. He wished he'd asked the drone about fumarole breaches before, but it just hadn't seemed so important then.
Now the implications terrified him and he knew he must find out more, yet felt a terrible reluctance to do so. He now had to talk to someone, perhaps Yishna. Yes, it would all become clear…somehow. Orduval would have liked to share with Tigger this strange discovery, but the drone would not be returning any time soon. Orduval closed up his console and began to pack those belongings he felt he would need, then finally set out across the boiling sand. He had a tram to catch, and a story he needed to tell.
Harald
It was an awesome sight: including Ironfist, nine hilldiggers were now parked around Carmel, the gaps between them no more than a few miles wide and support ships scattered throughout like glimmer bugs about a herd of sand cows gathered round their barn. Harald regretted that he could not see the view entire, only through the quartz windows of the Admiral's Haven and on his eye-screen. Apparently Polity ships were not limited like this, or so he understood from what had been learnt from the Consul Assessor and from information imparted via the U-space comlink. Their Polity ships carried panoramic windows fashioned of the same chain-molecule glass as the spherical vessel in which the U-space comlink had arrived. Aboard them it was also possible to enter a virtuality from which ships could be viewed via external probes, so to the viewer himself he seemed to be standing out in vacuum. Harald had already instructed Jeon to allocate some of her research staff to investigate such possibilities. He considered further the implications.