He waited until the green light lit up on the docking controls, showing that the primary air lock had mated and there was pressurization and oxy on the other side. Once it was safe to leave the confines of the scout, he released his harness and pulled himself though the command pod and over to the primary air lock.
He cycled through, and the air lock opened to a long, white, cylindrical corridor, the walls themselves the source of illumination. The shadowless white light combined with the featureless walls to give the impression of an infinite white universe surrounding him. The only visible spatial cues were the door to the scout’s air lock and a long cable floating unsupported in the center of the corridor.
Mr. Antonio pulled himself along with the cable, floating through the white. Slowly, weight returned, pulling him down, away from the scout. By the time he reached the end of the cable a slight sense of gravity gave him a definite downward direction.
The cable terminated in the floor of a small hemispherical chamber as white as the corridor that fed into its ceiling. The floor was flat, and slightly textured, which aside from the grayish cable, gave the only visual cues to the geography around him. If it weren’t for those two objects, he could have been standing in an endless white void.
The walls did not remain unbroken. A few seconds after his feet touched the floor of the room, an aperture appeared in the wall facing him. The walls withdrew from a circular portal. Beyond was ill lit, nearly black.
Mr. Antonio walked through, and to every appearance found himself standing outside.An unbroken star field wrapped around him in every direction, the view intense enough to be painful. One reddish dot glowed brighter than the others, but the star Kropotkin, even at only a light-year distant, was almost lost in the glare from the Milky Way that wrapped the universe around him. Having just been outside, he knew he was seeing way more stars than were normally visible to the naked eye, even in the emptiness a light-year from Kropotkin.
The aperture closed behind him.
Another man stood nearby, visible as a ghostly silhouette in the starlight. The man faced away from him, staring up at the ruddy star Mr. Antonio had just come from.
Mr. Antonio waited to be addressed.
“ ‘What a piece of work is a man,’ ” the other man quoted, without turning around. “ ‘How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty—’ Do you know that, my friend?”
“Shakespeare?”
“Yes, it is. Hamlet. ‘In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel. In apprehension how like a god!’ ” He finally turned and faced Mr. Antonio, a striking figure even in the starlight; tall, hairless, with flesh as sculpted and flawless as an ancient Greek statue. Apollo, was Mr. Antonio’s first thought, though Prometheus would probably have been a more apt comparison. “Is our mole in play now?”
“Yes, Adam.”
“You have done well. Your acts have helped ensure our success.”
“Thank you.”
Adam turned away to face the star field surrounding them. As he turned, the red dot of Kropotkin grew in size with vertigo-inducing rapidity. The stars rotated and twisted as their point of view shot around the star.
“I believe you are unsure about this,” Adam said as the planet Bakunin swelled in front of him, a white ball with a strip of blue girdling its middle. One green-gray continent cut from ice cap to ice cap dividing the single ocean. The landmass was in the process of rotating from light to dark, the half of it east of the Diderot Mountains shadowed and alive with city lights.
“I have no doubts in you,” Mr. Antonio said.
Adam chuckled. “You also know that it’s futile to try and hide your feelings from me. I see the pulse of civilizations. The workings of your mind are no mystery.”
Mr. Antonio nodded. “I am certain you know the importance of what I do. I’m afraid I do not.”
Bakunin grew quickly in front of them, mountains shooting by, and the darkened eastern desert zooming toward them. The lights around the spaceport/city of Proudhon swelled. “You wonder about the importance of Tjaele Mosasa.”
Proudhon moved off to the left and the image turned gray as it adjusted for the lack of light. It fell toward a monochrome section of desert filled with ranks of disabled spacecraft.
“If he is a threat, why not—”
“Destroy him?” Adam asked. “He will be destroyed.”
Their point of view fell toward a single hangar in the midst of the aircraft and stopped a dozen meters from the ground. The image was static, but Mr. Antonio could see a lone figure entering the hangar, the unmistakable form of Nickolai Rajasthan.
“I could have—”
“No,” Adam said. “Our actions have been precise for a reason. Mosasa would see an unsubtle attack and not only avoid it, but divine the purpose behind it. No. He has to be drawn from his lair to unfamiliar territory where he will be near blind.” The point of view shifted until they seemed to hover just over Nickolai’s right shoulder, the tiger’s massive foreshortened profile filling the universe in front of them. “Our agent will strike when the quarry is helpless.”
“I defer to your wisdom.”
“Now, though, with our pieces in place around Mosasa, we should retire our Mr. Antonio.”
“How next should I serve?”
“There are things on Earth that should be addressed as soon as my brother begins his tragic expedition.”
Mr. Antonio left Adam with a new name, a new appearance, and a new spacecraft.
Replacing the old Indi-built scout was a Paralian-designed luxury transport. Rather than the cramped one-person cabin, the Pegasus V craft had a lush suite with wood paneling, leather seats, carpeting, and solid brass controls. Instead of an ancient serial number, the side of the sleek craft bore a name, Lillium.
The person who slipped behind the controls of the Lillium bore no resemblance to Mr. Antonio, despite having been him until about fifteen minutes ago. Instead of the old wrinkled creature with wispy white hair who had hired Nickolai Rajasthan, the pilot who flew the Lillium from the bowels of Adam’s spacecraft was a middle-aged woman of African descent. Her hair was black and wrapped her head in tight braids, and her face was smooth except for the beginning of age lines around the eyes. She had the long, lithe form of someone who had grown up in slightly less than Earth gravity, and the musculature of someone who trained in gravity somewhat higher.
Her name was now Ms. Columbia, and she and Lillium were headed to Terra, in the heart of human space.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Portents
The Devil is in the details, and God is right there egging him on.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
—VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)
Date: 2525.11.21 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725
Mallory found Mosasa’s response to his question more unnerving than a confirmation would have been. He would have been more comfortable if Mosasa had at least given the impression he knew something of what was happening in the vicinity of Xi Virginis. Mallory looked at his fellow mercenaries and wondered if any of them, like him, had reasons for being here other than answering Mosasa’s ad.
There was the massive wall of fur and muscle named Nickolai Rajasthan. Mallory didn’t know exactly how he felt about working with someone whose ancestors were created specifically to wage war as a proxy for man. The fact that Nickolai existed was a testament to how unfit man was to play God, creating life not out of love, but solely as a tool for destruction. But according to half a millennium of Church doctrine, Nickolai was spiritually as human as Mallory was, despite his origins.