“No! There’s another choice. Your only real choice, Toby. You have to renounce your identity. Declare yourself an impostor. We’ll come up with a plausible story about how you controlled the cicada beds here on Thisbe. You become just another Toby impostor, the latest in a long line. You never interfere with the lockstep frequencies again, you never command a McGonigal bot to do so much as sweep the floor—and this all dies down. We go back to the way it was.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Come on, you know it makes sense. It’s the only way.”
“And what’s going to happen to me? Haven’t you executed all the other impostors?”
“Well, most of them took their own lives in the end…”
“And if you don’t do it, some Toby cultist fanatic will come after me sooner or later. You’re telling me to make myself a marked man forever—and you’re saying we never wake Mom up! Is that your plan?”
“Toby, at this point, letting her sleep is the lesser of two evils.”
She gave him a sad look, then shook her head and started to walk back to the checkpoint. “About Mom … this time it’s you who’s being unimaginative. You think we only have two options with her: let her sleep or wake her up. But there’s a third, and if you don’t do as I say, I’ll have to do it.”
A queasy feeling of horror was welling up in Toby’s throat. “What do you mean? Evie, what you are talking about?”
She paused at the checkpoint. “I’ve got about an hour to get offworld before your little army makes it impossible. So I’m leaving. You come with me now, Toby, or else when you get to Destrier, you’ll find that our mother can’t be awakened.” She saw his expression and sneered. “You can’t possibly believe that Peter and I never discussed this? —That we wouldn’t have built a switch into her bed that would make it look like she’s hibernating, long after there’s nothing left to revive?
“You’ve got an hour to grow up, Toby. I’ll wait as long as I can, but you made this deadline, not me.”
She turned and crossed the line into her own camp and ignored everything that Toby shouted after her.
Only after she disappeared behind a tent did Toby cough and sink to his knees. He nearly retched, and only Ourobon’s hand on his shoulder kept him from sinking all the way onto the grass.
Thisbe’s artificial sun chose that moment to change color, from solar yellow to bloodred. Toby stared at his hands in this light, shaking his head.
“Sir! What did she say?”
“She … she’s leaving.”
“We can keep her here,” said Ourobon. “It’ll be hard, but—”
“You’ll have to shoot her down. You’ll probably kill her. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. If she thinks we’re going to stop her, she might give the order from here.”
“We’re jamming her.”
“And can you guarantee you’ll be successful?” Toby brushed off Ourobon’s help and stood up. “No, let her go. She’s not going to do it until she absolutely has to.”
“Do what, sir?”
“Never mind.” At the far end of Evayne’s camp, her remaining flying bots were rising up and arrowing in the direction of the incoming squadrons. There was going to be bit of a dogfight before Evayne got out, but she had enough firepower left to get at least one lander back to orbit, where her ships waited.
“Ourobon, whose side are you on?”
The ex-officer in Evayne’s army looked startled. “Why, yours, sir.”
“Then I need you to gather some people you trust. People who’ll do what I say, not what the leaders of that army want me to say.”
Ourobon nodded slowly. There had been spotty communication in and out of 180; Evayne’s jamming transmitters fought with Thisbe’s, but there was little she could do to stop point-to-point laser comms. So Toby knew that Corva Keishion’s whereabouts were “currently unaccounted for.” He knew what that meant: she’d gone back to her family, and Halen or one of his friends had been waiting for her. Once Evayne was gone and her local forces mopped up, Toby would be able to walk through that checkpoint a conquering hero—or so it would appear. There was that little matter of leverage, though. If Halen’s people had Corva, if they threatened her … he had no illusions that he would be able to resist.
“I need a ship and a loyal crew, and I need to go straight from here to there. No interruptions, conversations, or debriefings.”
“A ship?” Ourobon looked puzzled. “You’re taking a single ship to Destrier?”
Toby shook his head. “Not to Destrier.
“I have unfinished business somewhere else.”
Twenty
NATHAN KENANI SAT UP, blinking, and swung his feet over the edge of the cicada bed. He rubbed his eyes, looked around the chamber, nodding in satisfaction as he apparently recognized where he was. Then his gaze fell on Toby.
“Hello, Nathan.”
To his credit, Kenani didn’t miss a beat. “And a fine good morning to you, too, Toby. I see you’ve been busy.” He squinted, taking in the deeply tanned and weatherbeaten skin, the new beard, and the uniform. “Been a long night, has it?”
His eyes were shifting around the room again. He’d registered the troops; now he noticed Shylif, and Jaysir, who slouched in one corner. He looked around some more, appearing puzzled.
“Where’s your girlfriend, Toby?”
“She … went home.” Damn him! thought Toby. Kenani was dangerously astute. Even freshly awakened from thirty years’ sleep he was able to instantly zero in on Toby’s single weakness.
He couldn’t have known about any of the events on Thisbe, much less anything about the veiled threats that had been radioed to Toby’s ship. Those messages suggested that Corva’s life could be made a living hell if Toby didn’t return there. He’d commanded his men not to acknowledge the messages in any way. The instant those who’d sent them knew he’d received them, he’d be on the hook of the Toby cultists.
Halen had given Corva up to them. That fact had provided Toby with the final lesson—as if he’d needed it, after Evayne—in just how badly family could treat family.
Toby couldn’t turn the whole planet over looking for her. He had known where Jaysir and Shylif were wintering over, and when he’d waked them he’d pleaded with them to look for her. To his surprise, they had chosen to come with him instead.
“You’ve not finished what you came here to do,” Shylif had explained. “Getting that done’s the best way to get her back. And, let’s face it, you’re no expert on the locksteps yet. You’ll need help.”
“Well, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Kenani was saying. “To help her get home?” He crossed his arms. “I’m a little cold, and hungry, Toby. Do you have…” Toby had looked back and nodded, and now somebody came forward carrying Kenani’s folded uniform. A bot entered the room pushing a rolling cart stacked with hot food.
Kenani stared at this little performance. “Huh. I always wondered how much like them you’d turn out to be when you grew up.”
“Them?”
Toby assumed Kenani was talking about his brother and sister, but the Guide said, “The trillionaires. Those bastards we left Earth to get away from. Seems you’re coming along quite nicely, the way you handle the servants and all.”
“You’re not my servant, Nathan, and I haven’t come to kill you or anything—in case you were wondering.” Toby smiled at him. “Look, I did my homework; there’re decades of news reports about you and the things you’ve done in the service of the lockstep. There’s nothing horrible—you’re pretty much the same man I met on that airship back when I was fifteen. I’m pretty sure you’ve been trying to keep everything together, just like your job description says.”