Gammalaw: Smoke on the Water Read online

  That had been two months earlier. Now Sinnergy kissed Honeysuckle's pink head and fluttered her eyebrows. "She needs us both, Dex. Let me put her back in her crib, then I'll take you to bed and devour you. We'll forget about all this."

  Dextra was beyond regret or consolation. "I'm too old for these dramas. Give me my daughter."

  Honeysuckle stirred, waking, and Sinnergy came to her feet. "If I can't have you, you can't have her!"

  Faced with the bright glassiness in her eyes, Dextra went cold.

  "Say you love me!" Sinnergy screamed, abruptly holding a styrette near the baby's fat cheek as she struggled weakly and began to cry.

  "Baby, you know I love you," Dextra said, eyes fixed on the trembling styrette. "Why would I be trying so hard to drive you away if I didn't love you?"

  Melodramatic dialogue came easily to someone who had been selling fiction since she was a teenager and had been elected Hierarch three times now, and melodramatic dialogue was precisely what her violent ex wanted to hear. Sill, Dextra recognized her own Limitations and remained motionless.

  She had been born and reared in Crapshoot, the Periapt system's oldest and biggest O'Neill, where the essence of space colony survival was coexistence, equable conflict resolution, and nonviolence. Martial arts were neither condoned nor taught to average citizens; mere possession of a firearm meant years of punitive labor or even the termination of Life and the recycling of all biomass.

  Raised to be self-reliant and socially responsible—educated, like her mother and grandmother, at a women's academy—Dextra saw weapons and violence as more Likely to be the problem than the solution. On Periapt, confronting a less disciplined society, she had had to adapt to survive, though she had never overcome her aversion to mayhem. Someone else was going to have to handle that rough stuff; she'd known that even before she'd reached the gazebo.

  Now she let confusion and misgiving show on her face.

  "But you wouldn't hurt Honey, would you?" She leaned toward Sinnergy slightly, squinting at the styrette. "I don't even see a dose in that hypo."

  "You nearsighted old cow!" Sinnergy, brandishing the injector, startled the baby into crying louder. "You need an ophthalmic tuck—"

  It was Sinnergy's turn to be startled. A golden right hand had reached over her shoulder to snatch the styrette away. The left slipped around her throat, forearm locking in a choke hold that rifted her off her feet and made her loosen her grip on the infant. Dextra rushed in to grab Honeysuckle; Sinnergy didn't resist, understanding what might happen to her neck.

  Tonii, Dextra's all-around troubleshooter, chicken-winged and immobilized Sinnergy. The hands holding her were sinewy but had a longish grace.

  Tonii was wearing archery whites, as if fresh from some rec time on the villa's range. Power swelled the V of the torso, but there was also a flare to the hips. Fibrous muscle mass showed a graceful suppleness. The breasts that mounded against the archery shirt were small but nicely curved. Tonii's face could have been an exotic woman's or that of an imperfectly beautiful man, and the cropped tow hair had been combed into a unisex gutterglam cut.

  The style was fitting only for an engeneered gynander, a hermaphrodite with two functioning sets of genitalia and mixed secondary sexual characteristics. Optimization had endowed the gynanders with reflexes, physical strength, and coordination in the lead corner of the human performance envelope. Like the Manipulants, they were living artifacts of Byron Sarz's early LAW biogenetic research.

  Tonii looked to Dextra for instructions just as Ben came on-line to say that the Preservationist guests were getting impatient.

  "You broke the rules," Dextra told Sinnergy while she patted Honeysuckle's back. "The adjudicator's order gave you visiting rights under my supervision. My attorneys will be petitioning the court within minutes to sever all contact between you and Hon. Counterfile if you wish, but surveillance cams have recorded this whole scuffle." She paused to press the child to her chest. "In the meantime, if you try another stunt like this, Tonii'll book you on a one-way flight in an ambulance."

  Sinnergy could barely grunt, let alone answer. Dextra departed, looking to deliver the baby into MaripoFs care, while Tonii half carried, half pain-marched Sinnergy off in the opposite direction.

  * * * *

  The gynander took Sinnergy down past the motor stables and opened the personnel hatch of the villa's trade entrance. Sinnergy understood that the most faithful vassal in Dextra's little fiefdom was not susceptible to bribes or seduction, even though she had bedded Tonii once and troised with Dextra and the gynander several times.

  Opening the hatch let in a rush of noise and aromas from the nacre, trillion-faceted city just outside. On Dextra's idyllic hilltop, with its high walls and sound cancellation system, this might have been a quiet rural afternoon, but Abraxas—the unsleeping capital of Periapt and LAW—was going full-bore.

  Tonii took her through the surveillance and security vestibule and out to the springy green energy-return sidewalk nap beyond, where 'e released her. "Put Honey out of your mind and find your bearings, Sinn. Stay away from HauteFlash and from everyone who resides here. Don't make me hurt you."

  Rubbing her arm where bruises would appear, Sinnergy giggled eerily, then spit at Tonii's face. Tonii dodged the spittle by tilting 'ers head aside just enough. Something that was part grin, part storm warning moue crooked 'ers full lips.

  "Keep Hon, that little misconception!" Sinnergy rasped. "I didn't want a baby, I wanted Dex, you dumb-ass she-male synthia!"

  Tonii studied her stonily. "Many people want Dextra Haven one way or another. That's precisely why her defenses are so good."

  Sinnergy sniffed and wiped her mouth like a neurodyne addict in need of a wheeze. "Take me back inside, Tonii. I won't make trouble."

  "Trouble's all you can be for Dextra, Sinn." Something viri-descent came into the gynander's expression. "And please keep in mind that I'm one of her principal defenses."

  Tonii went back through the vestibule and the personnel hatch. The heavy valve closed, leaving Sinnergy dazed and bereft on the Abraxas pedway.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  Dextra had chosen the solarium to engage the Preservationists because of its atmosphere of openness and light. They wielded tremendous influence and prerogative, like Dextra herself, which was why it had seemed a good idea to pry them away from the Lyceum. There was a kind of natural law that made Hierarchs more reasonable as their distance from the Lyceum's pomp and grandeur increased. Today that effect was not helping as much as she had hoped it would.

  Returning from the confrontation with her ex, she was received with chilly stares and frozen smiles. Nevertheless, she gave them back warm for cold while rearranging her peplos and letting her varimorph executive chair recontour itself to suit her thin frame. The conference table was there simply to provide everyone with psychological space. Twirling auto-servers circled, offering tea cakes, sushi, cold beer, and more, but nobody was indulging.

  The data mosaics were continuing to flash the Scepter survey team's findings regarding the planet Aquamarine. Opti-cals of sundry Aquamarine throwback cultures ran on-screen with analysts' comments on the nature of the inscrutable Oceanic and cost projections for mounting a second LAW mission to the Eyewash star system.

  Most LAW bureaucrats felt otherwise, but Dextra had a growing certainty that Aquamarine could play a role in resolving the Roke conflict. Somewhere on or in that water balloon of a world was the key to accord or even victory. But Lyceum approval of an AlphaLAW mission to Aquamarine was going to require a host of Preservationist votes, and Dextra meant to have them.

  "I apologize for the delay," she began. "But since we've covered just about all points of disagreement, I think we can start cutting a deal here that'll make everybody happy."

  She showed confidence and charisma by political second nature, but she had a feeling she'd lost any chance of swaying them in the short time it had taken to rescue Honeysuckle.

  How now
, foul Tao? she asked herself.

  Old Albert P'ing, noble-looking and innovative as a treadmill, thumped the table with a hand more beautifully manicured than Dextra's own. "Dextra, the Hierarchate will not squander a full-scale Alpha mission to a planet with little usable surface area, medieval cultures, and no unique resources. Most assuredly, we've nothing to learn from people who live in terror of some soggy, overgrown cell mass!"

  "But the Roke seem to fear the Oceanic, too," she reminded him. "Or at least something about the place has made them keep their distance; we know that much. The Scepter survey team found debris consistent with Roke design elsewhere in the Eyewash system but no evidence of Roke presence on or near Aquamarine. Am I the only one here who sees the possible significance of that? If nothing else, Aquamarine could serve as a safe harbor for LAW forces."

  She did not mention peace because peace was not something the Human Preservationist Party had much interest in pursuing.

  Doll Van Houten, two years older than Dextra but as sleekly soignee as a fashion database icon, went "Phui!" dismissively. "It's as simple as this: The Roke don't consider Aquamarine as any more strategic than we do. Darling Dex, planet Hierophant is out there for the taking, a few light-years beyond Aquamarine but an industrial and technological powerhouse."

  Dextra frowned at her. "You're not intrigued by the thought of uncovering the technological wonders left behind by the Optimants' civilization?"

  "Archaeology?" Doll asked. "Please, Dex. Save your enthusiasm for two-hundred-year-old relics for the curators of the Museum of Interplanetary Studies."

  Albert P'ing sniffed, "Technology Assessment Bureau has reason to suspect that Hierophant antivirus research might allow us to return to neural interface cybernetting—pre-Plague style—in due course."

  Dextra shot him an arch look. "I'll believe that when I see it."

  Calvin Lightner, majority leader of the Lyceum and kingpin of the Preservationists, eyed her from across the table, showing only a polite disregard for her lack of faith. Now that he'd gone neutant—embracing the most ascetic manifestation of the asexual movement—his ageless face put Dextra in mind of a machine shop blank waiting to be stamped with humanity.

  In addition to courses of libido-deadening treatments, Lightner had undergone surgical excision of his genitalia. But since no right-thinking Preservationist would undergo permanent asexualization, his reproductive organs had been deposited in cryo-sequester. Intense population growth was considered sacred to the war effort, and party leaders had to at least give the appearance of standing ready to help carry on the human race if called upon. Power players who showed distaste for or even renounced sex at the same time legislated for larger families.

  "The point remains," Doll chimed in, "that we must move to annex Hierophant now, before they acquire military technologies and consolidate defenses that close our window of opportunity. Think lead time, Dex!"

  Lead time—a LAW preoccupation. Periapt had come through the Cyberplagues relatively unscathed, but it was a planet short on strategic resources such as metals and petrochemicals. Periapt's partially intact infrastructure had helped it climb out of post-Plague debility faster than had any other world, but a number of stellar systems were closing the gap. If Periapt's once-only edge in lead time were frittered away, if more resource-rich worlds achieved parity in military, industrial, and space technology, LAW's expansion and the new wealth of Periapt would be over. To perpetuate itself, LAW had to go on as a kind of virus—as opportunistic a one as possible.

  "At the very least Hierophant could be producing a new starship per year for us, and the same holds true for Zion and Shabash." Doll made the words sound like a serenade. "The Hierarchate hasn't the time or wherewithal to waste on Aquamarine."

  Dextra nodded as if considering those words, though secretly she was certain there was more to it than that. The Scepter team had not been sequestered simply because LAW was fretting about the allocation of assets. Everything pointed to the conclusion that Aquamarine's Oceanic was a rather powerful intelligent being. If the single inhabitant of the planet's only sea was intelligent, it would be only the second sophant life-form on record, after the Roke—or the third, if one counted the pre-Cyberplague AIs.

  The Preservationists were running scared, Dextra surmised, from the danger of the existence of an organism that might be more evolved than Homo sapiens. Revelations about the Oceanic could well alter the public's attitude about the Roke or quite possibly erode support for LAW hegemony.

  Dextra didn't want to be sidetracked, either. "Wouldn't we do better by considering all the facts? If Aquamarine has nothing to offer us, then the survey team is being quarantined for no good reason. I propose that LAW trot them in from the outback to attest to Aquamarine's worthlessness."

  Cal Lightner stirred at last. "I'm given to understand that the Scepter team will have all it can do answering charges of dereliction of duty. It's likely that the acting commander—this Claude Mason person—stands to be court-martialed."

  "For bringing back news that doesn't square with this year's fifty-year plan?"

  Lightner said, "No. For possible complicity in the deaths of the Scepter's original commander and the other personnel."

  Dextra simpered instead of grimacing. "From what I heard, Captain Marlon died in a misadventure of his own planning.

  Claude Mason and his people at least carried out a cursory reconnaissance and amassed data on the Oceanic."

  Doll flicked beringed fingers. "Those smatterings of data are disjointed and inconclusive."

  Dextra gazed back disingenuously. "Except as they prove your assertions?"

  It went on like that for another hour, with Dextra pressing hard but making no headway. She brought to bear what leverage she could, threatening to tie up or help defeat legislation and appointments they wanted, but they were adamant. The missions to Zion, Shabash, and Hierophant would enrich the dynastic groups to which Doll, Lightner, and even P'ing belonged. The building of those stupendous fortunes and the political careers that protected them were what LAW and the Roke Conflict were really about.

  When she holoed up proof that monies for an Aquamarine AlphaLAW mission could be shifted from other, overfattened budget lines, Lightner unbent enough to show some anger. "Kindly keep your hand out of my pocket, Madame Haven," he advised.

  She tried hard to resist but couldn't. "Why, Cal? Since the operation, what's down there to loot or damage?"

  In no time she was seeing them to their airlimo and watching them lift off into the traffic over Abraxas. She had never even gotten to broach the subject of the Sword of Damocles, now in orbit around Periapt, and the Concordance forces onboard it.

  * * * *

  Claude Mason, recently returned from Aquamarine, looked out on the Blades, the most forlorn of Periapt's high deserts.

  I never wished for this, he told himself. No, not for this.

  That wasn't to say that he had not looked forward to the glory and reward that he expected would greet his return. But uncertainty over the fate of his Aquam wife and child had plunged him into wretched sorrow earlier on. Then had come LAW's shocking condemnation of his survey team's conduct and results.

  It had become clear when LAW reassumed control of the starship that the higher-ups were not pleased with what Mason and the rest had to say about Aquamarine, the Oceanic, or the planet's regressed populations—the only legacy of Old Earth's techno-elite Optimants. No one cared that Aquamarine seemed to be anathema to the Roke or that the Oceanic was a being of unprecedented capabilities and importance.

  So here he was in the Blades, a stone-finned sweep of mauve wasteland, wild and raw and intimidatingly beautiful. Blades Station was his prison, and its sole saving grace was that it was far from ocean water.

  To finish off his will to endure, Mason had received news of death and financial ruin in his blood family and abandonment by his espoused several—his marital group. Verushka, Chen, and Monty had annulled Mason from the relationship in abs
entia and had signed on with the AlphaLAW mission to Tintaginel. The cosmic joke had a double punch line: The three embryos that had been his share of the settlement were among the tens of thousands destroyed in the ghastly Cybervirus slaughter of the Providence Clinic in Abraxas.

  Nowadays when Claude Mason wished, he did so in a vague and fatalistic way for divine intervention. He knew that wishing couldn't make it so, yet he was powerless to stop himself. He felt marooned in that final night on Aquamarine, on the walkway of the monumental lighthouse at New Alexandria. Mason and Incandessa side by side as the waves of Amnion crashed against the rocks and the Oceanic put on its overawing, unknowable show.

  He yearned beyond words to be back there, to hold Incandessa once more, to helo himself and her into hiding until the Scepter was departed on her preprogrammed voyage home, to see his wife safely through childbirth and raise their son or daughter to be kinder and stronger than Claude Mason had been.

  For all he knew, the child had been born an Anathemite—an outcast—affected by one of Aquamarine's countless mutagens and left exposed on a hillside for the jackjaws and rakefangs.

  Countless times each day he thought that Boon would have been able to straighten him out, tell him what to do and how to proceed. Boon with his candor, steadfastness, and penetrating mind. But Boon was dead, horribly unmade by the Oceanic in the sea swells off Execution Dock that final night on Aquamarine.

  He had not related the incident to the debriefing panels or quarantine authorities, had not even told everyone in the Scepter crew. There was enough peril from LAW's scrutiny as it was. He had absolved himself of blame for Boon's death but had yet to stop it from gnawing at him. What if the Oceanic could just… curse a man?

  An air cushion turbofanning made Mason look downslope: a helipod was coming his way, out of Blades Station. He'd switched off his plugphone, beacon and receiver both, so whoever it was had to have followed his bootprints in the mauve sand. He came to his feet, dusting off the seat of his wearwithal. As the helo began to descend, he could make out two individuals in the canlike airframe, one of them piloting with controls built into the armpit-high rests. The turbine whistle fell as the 'pod approached, grounding in a fierce fan blast of desert grit.