Basq sighed inwardly. The easy work was done and the obvious conclusions drawn. Now came the test. Could he, from the available information, infer what patterns of resistance, if any, would be displayed by the artifacts remaining on the Home Ground? There was a wealth of carefully collected satellite data available, but the Historical committees had encountered difficulties interpreting it. There was no guarantee that he could successfully integrate Eric Born’s observed behavior into that greater, less well understood picture…Basq leaned forward and set to work.
Caril watched Basq hunch over the boards again. He was going to need a muscle relaxant before he slept, or his shoulders would be aching in the morning. She filed the thought away in the part of her memory that kept her household lists. She flicked her gaze toward the Witness. Winema had her camera eye trained on Basq, but her unaugmented eye took in the entire room, including Caril.
Keeping her face impassive, Caril rose and stepped through the privacy barrier. She moved carefully between the Beholden’s work stations. Since she did not stop to give any of them instructions, none of them gave her a glance. She looked back at the feverish, ordered activity that she had organized and allowed herself an inner smile. There was not one flaw here, not one thing out of place or left undone. It would run smoothly without her supervision for hours.
Caril left her home and crossed the park. The choreographers ignored her as she passed them, preferring to continue their argument about balance and light and shadow than to politely acknowledge another resident of the deck. The Imperialist treatise still glowed in green on the wall. She didn’t read it. She knew quite well what it said.
The corner of the park farthest from her door held a single user terminal. She sat in front of it and ran her hands across the board, shuffling the keypads into the position she wanted. According to public law, these terminals were unmonitored and couldn’t be traced, so you could say anything here, place any text or recording you wanted to in them. In truth, Caril knew, they were almost as tightly secured as Basq’s terminal was.
There were, however, ways to confuse the system. First she composed a message to the market vendors to order dinner for the Beholden and the family. Her own terminal had been co-opted by Basq’s team, so for now all the household work would have to be done from the public lines. Apart from the list, she recorded the other news briefly. Jahidh needed to know what had happened so he could plan his next move.
Then Caril arranged the keys into their new patterns with an ease that came from long practice. She waited a few heartbeats and arranged them again. Her news would flit through every park aboard the Grand Errand, bouncing back and forth for hours in the crowded lines before it finally hit a transmission point where it could be released from the internal lines and start on its real journey.
Let Basq strive for the honor of remaining a servant to the Quarter Galaxy. She would not make that her work. Once she had thought he understood the need for the Vitae to cut themselves loose from the overwhelming caution that had been instilled in them when the Ancestors had begun the flight, but he had been blinded by his promotions and paralyzed by responsibilities until there was almost nothing left of the person she had tied her life to.
Let him glory in his service to a Reclamation Assembly that spoke of standing side by side with civilizations of babies and monsters. She would not hear them. The Rhudolant Vitae were the First Born and the First Blood of all the humans, the head of the Family, not just another member to be tricked and controlled by the Unifiers. Jahidh had found the proof and he would soon bring home the power to make the Assembly recant.
But there was not now much time. The artifacts were lost and even the Assembly was taking that loss seriously.
She leaned back in her chair and, using a key-slip she’d learned from Kelat, Caril sent both transmissions simultaneously.
Caril tried to relax the cold, hard knot that was forming inside her. She’d heard one too many stories in Chapel about the duplicity of the Aunorante Sangh. She would have died before she admitted she was afraid of what it meant to have not one, but two of them free in the Quarter Galaxy, but she could not make that fear leave her. Uary’s decision to let them get completely away was rash in the extreme, but it might turn out to be the best delaying tactic they had. If their people could move faster than Basq, the artifacts might be recovered and stored for safe study.
It wasn’t likely, but she could hope. Caril tried not to listen to Kelat’s fretting that the Imperialists did not have the structures they needed to coordinate their activities. Kelat had spent too many years buried in contracts, she told herself.
Caril rose. She had learned to live with so much, she would learn to live with this new anxiety.
After all, now that the Assembly had found the Home Ground for themselves, there could not be that much longer to wait for the Reclamation.
Or, at the very least, the resolution.
4—Amaiar Division, Kethran Colony, Hour 09:20:34, City Time.
The survival of a single being is achieved by balance of forces, the same way a planet achieves a stable orbit around a sun, and although the system may be stable for a million years and more, gravity and motion are constantly tugging, straining, pushing, and pulling. If the balance breaks, one side or the other is in danger.
Sometimes it is the sun, rather than the planet.
Gan Perivar leaned his chair back too fast. The back whacked against the edge of the work counter, jarring his neck and shoulders painfully.
One more year and I can afford to rent some real space. Perivar twisted the chair and checked behind him to make sure that he would not hit any of the beveled, steel poles that broke up what little open space existed between the map table and the counters. One more year. Two at the most.
He leaned back, more carefully this time, and stared at the counter. The silver-and-blue keypads were laced with shadows from the webwork of cables strung across the ceiling. If nothing else unexpected happens between now and then.
A rattle sounded over Perivar’s head and the shadows shook. A silicate capsule about the size of his torso shot through a portal from the next room. Its hooks swung it from cable to cable toward the post beside his right ear.
Marvelous. When Kiv sent his kids to speak for him, it was always serious.
When the capsule’s occupant was stretched out, she was three times as long as the transport she used. She tucked eight pairs of her legs underneath her and used the remaining pair to manipulate the capsule’s controls. Her primary hands rested on the bumpy controls for the information terminal, while her secondaries folded in the polite greeting. Two of her eyes extended down toward her primary hands. The other two focused on her goal.
Perivar squinted at the pattern of grey blotches on her smooth golden scales. This was Sha, the third-named of Kiv’s litter.
Didn’t even send his first-named. Gods, gods, gods, he is mad.
Sha used the post to lower the capsule until she was eye level with him. She extended her snout and pursed her lipless mouth. The protective capsule shut in the actual buzzing sound of her voice, but its intercom carried the signal to activate Perivar’s translation disk and transmit her message.