“Well.” Now it was Kenani’s turn to look uncomfortable. “Thank you.”
“Nathan, you’ve got integrity, that’s why I came back to you. I mean, you deliberately gave me a chance to escape, last … last night. Didn’t you?”
Kenani shrugged. “Let’s just say I decided to be a bit sloppy … I knew what those denners of yours could do, but most of my men hadn’t seen them before. So I just … overlooked something and neglected to warn them about it, too. I wanted plausible deniability in case you did get away …
“Hell, what am I saying? I thought you deserved a chance is all.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Toby gazed away at the awakening city, thinking.
After a few moments, he was able to summon the courage to ask the question he’d come here to ask: “Mom didn’t go to sleep to wait for me, did she? At least, not the last time.”
An ironic smile played across Kenani’s lips.
“Just tell me.”
Kenani looked put out. “I didn’t lie to you, boy—well, not entirely. She did start wintering over to wait for her search probes to report back. And that is what got the whole lockstep thing started.” He frowned even deeper. “What makes you think that last time was any different for her?”
“It’s a little discovery I made on Thisbe. It seems I can override Evayne’s commands to the lockstep system.”
“Really, now?” Kenani looked genuinely surprised. “I never thought she’d done that.”
That told Toby part of what he wanted to hear. “You’re not surprised that she could do it. Only that she did.”
Kenani pretended to be absorbed with the difficulties of dressing himself. Toby let him get away with his silence for a minute or so, then he said, “Tell me how it happened. How did my mother end up being trapped in hibernation like that? It wasn’t her own choice, was it?”
Kenani began to tuck into his food. He was obviously thinking about his options—what he could say, what he could leave out, what he could get away with. Finally he sighed and said, “I don’t know for sure what happened that day. None of us were there, just the three of them. But they’d been arguing pretty fiercely, that’s for sure.”
“About what?”
“This myth about you being some kind of messiah was part of it…” Kenani hesitated, then took the plunge. “But not all of it. Fact is, your mother’d been overriding their commands to the system. There were some new worlds that had joined the lockstep—this was, what, about eight years in, our time—and they wanted to use their own cicada beds. Break the McGonigal monopoly. Peter and Evayne were having none of that, let me tell you. So many services are tied to the beds that they could shut whole cities out of the system—and they did. Your mother brought ’em back in. She wanted to change the way the lockstep operated, but somehow the other two weren’t letting her do it. She wanted a democratic system, they wanted to keep control.
“Here’s the thing, Toby. If Evie did something, Cassandra would just shut it down; she could do the same with Peter. If both Peter and Evie both ordered something, Cassie couldn’t override them. But neither of them alone could override her, either.”
“Ah,” said Toby. It was as he’d thought.
“I don’t know how they got her into the bed. Might have knocked her on the head for all I know. But anyway, she wasn’t able to counter their command when they put her under. They came back and told us she was wintering over to wait for you, like she had in the past. We were suspicious, but what could we do? The time stretched out and she didn’t wake up, and then we found out Evayne had been sending people to worlds outside the lockstep, feeding them this rubbish about Toby being the messiah and Cassie some mystic figure waiting for the end of time. It was pretty clear at that point what had happened.”
Toby sighed, then glanced back at his people. Some of the former officers in Evayne’s private army were looking extremely uncomfortable. Well, if they hadn’t figured out yet that he was just a human being like them, then they’d better wake up fast. Things were going to get real uncomfortable for the Toby myth, real fast.
“Thanks for being up front with me. You’re nobody’s servant, Nathan. I’m not going to do anything to you, or order you to do anything … But there is one thing you could do for me—as a favor.”
Kenani looked relieved but cautious. “What?”
“You’re a Guide. That means you’ve got a direct line to Peter, right?”
Kenani nodded slowly. “Any messages I send will go straight to him. Anybody else’ll have to go through the bureaucracy.”
“Right. So you can forward a message to him for me.”
Kenani gulped. “You know, they sometimes shoot the messenger.”
“Don’t worry. Anyway, I’ll keep it short.”
Toby had been thinking about what to say to Peter, and he’d rehearsed several different speeches and declarations—but now he found he didn’t like any of them. “You know, Evayne, she … she fled Thisbe after we defeated her there. She said she was on her way to Destrier to kill Mom.”
Kenani blinked and went very still for a second. Toby watched him carefully, then said, “Now here’s the thing … she changed course. She’s not going to Destrier at all. It looks more like she’s on her way to Earth.”
“Ah. Really?” Kenani was visibly fighting to keep his cool look.
“I know my mother’s not on Earth, Nathan. But I also know she’s not on Destrier. She never was, was she? Destrier is a honeypot. It’s a trap to catch Toby pretenders. It’s a pit for drowning navies. She’s so sure I’m going to go there that she doesn’t think she has to show up herself. But she’s just worried enough that she’s on her way to where she and Peter really hid Mom.”
“Well, obviously, the capital is Mars now,” stammered Kenani. “They call it Barsoom these days, isn’t that hilarious?”
“I said it looked like she was on her way to Earth, but really, there’re a lot of worlds between here and there. You don’t know which one it really is?”
Kenani said nothing, but he was pale and just shook his head.
Toby shrugged. “I think you do—after all, you’ve been part of Peter’s inner circle from the start. If Peter and Evayne never actually moved her, then she’s where she had become accustomed to wintering over. I’m pretty sure I know where Evie’s going. I want you to send this message to Peter:
“Tell him Evie’s threatening to kill our mother, and tell him I have a better idea. Tell him I’ll meet him and we can work that out.”
“Meet him where?”
“Just say I’ve gone to finish the job I started.”
He nodded politely to Kenani, then (still stung by Kenani’s comment about servants) picked up his own chair and carried it to a nearby table. He clapped Jaysir on the shoulder, nodded to Shylif, and together with their officers in tow, left Nathan Kenani sitting with his forgotten breakfast.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” said Jaysir a few days later. “This is the most heavily defended place in the whole lockstep? I never even heard of it!”
Toby smiled sadly at the irregular, faintly starlit shape that they could just barely make out a few kilometers from the ship. “You know what they say,” he said. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em. Everything important about that thing was thrust upon it.
“Welcome to Rockette.”
Jaysir, Shylif and Toby hung weightless in front of a large curving window in the officers’ lounge of Toby’s ship. They were alone for now, as the crew bustled about reviving the vessel’s systems. Toby had chosen the fleet’s fastest courier vessel, and then they’d stripped it of its armor and weapons, sawed off and discarded the cargo container, even thrown out most of the furniture. With extra boosters bolted on, the fusion engine could edge them up to an impressive ten percent light speed. Even if Evayne were throwing her own furniture out the window, she hadn’t taken a particularly fast ship and had only the fuel she’d left Thisbe with. Peter had to come all the way from Barsoom, after a delay because of the time it would have taken Kenani to relay Toby’s message to him. Toby had the advantage over Evayne in speed, and the advantage over his brother in timing. So he’d gotten here before either of them—but just barely.