The uncertainty of the future he saw had made him long to be in places like this room, with its sense of permanence and tradition and perfect peace. This room touched his memory, and fulfilled a need in him, in ways he had not experienced in nearly half his lifetime.
But since his return he had spent every single moment of his time up in space, involving himself in every aspect of the new stardrive technology that he had been able to insinuate his presence into—and the leverage his new prestige and his Survey contacts gave him was profound.
Because his Survey-guided sibyl Transfer had informed the leaders on Kharemough about his discovery, they had begun the work of planning and constructing ships that could utilize the new technology, as well as ways of converting the thousands of existing ships to the new drives, before he even arrived. And they had begun work too on the kinds of advanced weaponry that they had formulated plans for, but found small use for, when their only realistic means of control over the other worlds of the Hegemony was economic.
As a result, when he returned home he had been both relieved and disturbed to discover that the new drive units and the fleet already under construction were riddled with errors in design and function. He had seen an actual stardrive unit, had worked with the plasma, and knew things no one on Kharemough could have known. But with their access to the sibyl net, the engineers and researchers should have had flawless design data available to them. The sibyl machinery had shown signs of deterioration over time—hardly surprising, in such an ancient system—but he had been stunned to find error after error in the data he had been shown by the research teams.
The possibility of a major breakdown in the informational system upon which the entire Hegemony depended was almost entirely off his scale of disaster. He had seen the looks in the eyes of the people around him as they discussed the possibility, and told himself fiercely that the sibyl net, at least, was not his responsibility. He was here to build starships, and errors in data were things that could be corrected. The potential problems with the sibyl net only meant that they must make progress with all possible speed, in case a system-wide failure actually was coming. And in trying to bring home that point to the researchers and engineers, he slowly came to realize how the problems with sibyl-net data had become a source of excuses for inefficiency, bureaucratic mishandling, and a lack of rigor.
He had come home to this, hardly expecting to find such problems among his own people. The truth had struck him with the impact of a stasis field. But his hard-earned new perspective had let him look at the technocracy’s way of doing things with an outsider’s eye, and a stasis field was as good an analogy as any to what was wrong.
He admitted to himself alone the mixed emotions that knowledge had created in him: disillusionment and regret, when he thought of his people, his world’s heritage, his own pride … frustration, and relief, when he thought of Moon Dawntreader and Tiamat. Every year of delay that kept the Hegemony away from Tiamat gave her more time to do the work she was destined to do. Sometimes he had to fight down dis own urge to delay the process he had begun; half believing that that was the way ne could best serve the symbol they both wore.
But then he would force himself to remember her face—remember her ghost reaching out to him at Fire Lake, hazed in blue. A memory of the future, a promise of a moment they both had yet to live… the words I need you. And the realization that every day he was growing older, and she was… that nearly nine years had passed for him since they had parted, and sixteen for her, on Tiamat. He could not believe that it had been so long; the years seemed somehow to have dissolved, like the snows of Tiamat melting in the spring. He had not seen her face in all that time, except on a specter. He had spoken to her only twice, and only in Transfer; the first time half-mad with Fire Lake’s delirium, the second using Hahn as a medium simply to let her know that he had survived. Sometimes he wondered whether he was deluding himself, clinging to a dream of a love that had no right to exist, that had never existed in the first place. And yet his memories of his time with her—that extraordinary space outside of time, when he had been more alive, more real, than at any moment in his life before or since—were still as vivid as his face in the mirror: his face, which every year showed him new lines at the corners of his eyes that had not been there nine years ago….
And then frustration would drive out longing, goad him to more endless hours of work, of supervision and argument and adjustment. He worked now not only with the top researchers in the habitats, but with the practical engineers and construction hands out in the shipyards. He had come to see that he had as much in common with them now as he did with his own class, and often better rapport. Earning their trust and loyalty had doubled the measurable results his polite suggestions and solicitous modifications of data had won him among the Technicians who oversaw their work.
But his casual fraternizing with the lower classes had caused friction and unease in some quarters, particularly political ones. He was all too aware that he could not afford to offend his peers, particularly considering his clouded background, which was never entirely forgotten even if it was politely unmentionable among the highboms who held the power on Kharemough. He wanted to get back to Tiamat as soon as possible—because that was when the elite wanted to get there, to get at the water of life again. And he not only wanted to get there first, he wanted to get there controlling enough political power of his own to have some effect on what they would try to do to that world, to its people … to its Queen. Enough power to help her stop the exploitation. Because if he couldn’t, then he would have worked all his life only to betray her…
He turned away from the windows, from the dim points of the stars beginning to prick through the light veils on the darkening sky. He would not see Tiamat’s twin suns among them even if he tried—they were too enormously distant, at the other end of one of the random spacetime wormholes that joined the Black Gates. The Hegemony was in a sense an empire of time more than space—of worlds that could oe reached within a reasonable journey-time, due to the Gates, but which had no meaningful relationship to one another in physical space. But all that was about to change, too.
And he had better change his clothes, he thought wearily, before the party beyond this room’s flawless silverwood double doors became a memory, and BZ Gundhalinu, the guest of honor, missed it entirely. He was here to mend offenses, to charm and disarm, ingratiate and manipulate to the best of his ability—and thanks to his years of bureaucratic gymnastics on Four, his ability was now considerable. He knew the social codes, he knew what would flatter whom; and now that the new starships were making more satisfactory progress, his political progress would be measured only by his ability to stomach rich food and his own hypocrisy. This was the first of a number of intimate and large gatherings here on the planet—where most of the wealthy elite still kept homes—as well as up in the orbiting habitats. ‘He was using both his network of old family ties, most of whom were now almost painfully eager to renew his acquaintance, and his network of new Survey contacts to set them up. This was only the beginning….
Which was probably why he found it so hard to overcome his own inertia and move, to cross the room toward the private bath where a solicitous house system had left him a fresh uniform encrusted with all the appropriate honors, insignia, medals, orders, ranks and degrees, including his family crest, which he had not seen since he left home. Technically speaking, he had no right to wear it tonight, since he was not the eldest sibling of his generation. But the most rigid Technicians—the ones he most needed to make a good impression on—put breeding above everything, and this would at least remind them that his lineage was above reproach.