Trevor was still frowning. “So what? Dad was mission commander; of course he would have kept a visual souvenir. Hell, they catalogued every meter of its surface before they-” And then the color bled out of Trevor’s face, too.
Downing nodded. “Yes. They catalogued every meter of its surface before they used nuclear charges to bump it off course. And only nuclear charges. They didn’t have a mass driver with them: there wasn’t enough lead time to use it.”
Trevor was hoarse. “Meaning that the missing mass drivers were used to push it towards us.”
Downing nodded. “The Doomsday Rock was not a natural event: it was an attack. Some extraterrestrial power visited the Solar System and surreptitiously shifted the trajectory of a rock in the Kuiper Belt to swing in toward Earth and blast us back to the Bronze Age.”
Caine suppressed a shiver: there was no other possible explanation. Even if a terrestrial nation had been suicidal enough to conceive of the plot, none of them could have carried it out: at that time, humanity hadn’t had the ability to send major missions beyond Saturn. “So that’s what led to the creation of IRIS. It also explains how Nolan was so certain that an FTL drive could be built: the Doomsday Rock was proof that we had extrasolar neighbors who could get into and out of our system at will.”
Downing nodded. “He also knew that the threat of an exosapient attack wasn’t simply hypotheticaclass="underline" he had already fended one off, himself.”
Caine rubbed his chin. “Yeah, which means that whoever weaponized a chunk of stone into the Doomsday Rock almost certainly learned that their attack had been foiled.”
Downing kept nodding. “And so they would have to surreptitiously try to find out what had gone wrong. And who was responsible.”
Trevor added the final piece. “Which they couldn’t do by just by sitting at the edge of our space. And we all know who had legal access to our system besides the Dornaani.”
Caine felt his skin grow very cold. “That would be our good friends the Ktor, in their role as Auxiliary Custodians.”
Downing frowned. “Which makes it likely that they are somehow connected with the faceless adversaries that Nolan code-named ‘Circe.’” He stared at the tabletop. “I wonder: do you think the Ktor might have had a direct hand in the deaths of Nolan and Tarasenko, and in some of the other ‘odd events’ we’ve been unable to explain?”
Caine shrugged. “Could be. But how would they recruit agents among us in the first place, or even establish contact? As Thandla discovered, they’ve got a radically different biology: hell, their natural environment is so cold that we can’t even make use of the same planets. So how are we a threat to them? Why would they hate us so much?” Caine shook his head. “No: it still doesn’t add up. Something’s missing.”
“I’ll tell you what else is missing.” Trevor’s voice and eyes were hollow. “The reason why my Dad never told any of us why Elena was clinically depressed after she returned from the Moon. Or who Connor’s father was. He knew answers that could have saved all of us-but particularly Elena-a lot of grief.”
Caine nodded. “Yes, Nolan knew-but he had to keep those facts to himself.”
“Oh, c’mon. At least he could have told Elena.”
Richard shook his head. “Trevor, Elena is the one person Nolan absolutely could not tell about Caine. We can predict the course of events if she had learned the truth: Elena would want Caine removed from cold sleep. Your father refuses. She asks him how he can expect his own grandson to grow up without a father-and why is it so important to keep Caine in cold sleep, anyway? What was Nolan to say then? That even if Caine was cooperative, he couldn’t be released without a huge, smoke-screening story to throw the news jackals off his scent? That any detailed questions about Caine would have led back to, and unraveled, IRIS?”
Trevor frowned, ground his molars, and then turned sharply towards Caine. “So,” he snapped, “are you going to marry my sister?”
Caine blinked-and became aware of the scent of Opal’s shampoo on his shirt collar. At precisely the same moment, a memory-Elena moaning, sway-backed, hanging on to the bedposts as they moved together-tumbled newfound into his mind. “Hell,” Caine rasped, trying to fight his way out of the conflicting sense-memories, “would Elena even want to marry me? Besides, I have to straighten things out with Opal first.”
Trevor nodded. “Yeah. Okay. And given your-uh, situation-with Major Patrone, I don’t envy you your lady problems right now.”
“Me neither,” sighed Caine. “But I’m thinking that maybe Elena got over me long ago. She didn’t seem bothered by Opal-and she sure didn’t seem interested in my company.”
Now Trevor smiled. “Oh, brother-and I guess that’s almost literally true, now-you don’t know how to read my sister just yet. Yeah, she was dodging you, but probably because seeing the two of you post-corpsicle lovebirds together was making her crazy.”
Downing took a very deep breath. “Which brings up a touchy subject. About Major Patrone, Caine. Your relationship with her is not exactly a chance event. She works for me.”
“I know that.”
“Caine, I mean she has always worked for me-every second of your time together.”
Caine glared at Downing, felt his open hands becoming fists, and didn’t really care what happened next. “So tell me, Richard: is there any part of my life that you didn’t fuck with?”
MENTOR
Downing was beginning to worry that he might have to physically defend himself when Trevor intervened. “Hold on, Caine. Much as I hate saying so, this scheme with Opal sounds like it came from my dad. Am I right, Uncle Richard?”
Downing’s first impulse-to defend Nolan, to take the heat as he always had-faded. What is the use, here, in this moment, with these people? He swallowed, nodded: “It was Nolan’s plan. I didn’t like it.”
Trevor frowned. “I hate saying so, but Dad knew what he was doing recruiting a woman to be your guard, Caine. That would be the only way to control Elena once she learned you were back.”
“Huh?” said Caine.
Downing nodded. “Yes, I see what you mean. Knowing Elena, if Caine had shown up again unattached, I suspect she would have read your father the riot act and become thoroughly-and quite vocally-unmanageable.”
“Hell, she’d have called a press conference just to flip him a bird,” drawled Trevor.
“Er…yes, probably so. But if she saw Caine already in the company of another lady, then-”
“Yeah,” interrupted Trevor, “that’s my point: Elena’s a class act. She wouldn’t go barging in under those circumstances. I’ll bet that’s just how Dad set it up.” Trevor’s certitude sounded suspiciously like a lament: these were hard-very hard-things to learn and hear about an idolized father.
Downing suppressed a sigh: he had known this side of Nolan for over twenty years, and even that didn’t make today’s revelations any easier to hear. But it all made sense now, particularly Nolan’s understated pessimism about Caine and Opal’s long-term prospects as a couple. He’d never wanted a permanent connection between them, because then Caine and Elena could not be reunited. Meaning he had used Opal miserably.
Trevor was apparently reflecting on the uneven ethics of his father, as well. “Given all the family secrets Dad kept from us, and all the shady crap he pulled, I guess I’m no longer so surprised that he had you sneak his body onto that government clipper for out-shift to another system.”
Oh Christ; how did Trevor learn that? “Trevor, I-”
But Trevor wasn’t listening. “I get the charade of the cremation and the memoriaclass="underline" an empty casket would have prompted a lot of questions. But why didn’t Dad tell us he had found a way to be buried outsystem, Richard?”
Downing closed his eyes and hated each of the four words separately, ferociously, before he uttered them: “I cannot tell you.”