Old Town was that part of Angel City which had lain under the first settlers' dome. Today it was largely a warehouse district. It was the base of the city's small underworld.
"You think it's the Sangaree woman?" Kindervoort asked.
"Marya? A grudge like that is the only thing that would set Mouse off," benRabi replied.
"How could she be here?" Amy demanded.
"I'd better go dig him out," Moyshe said. "If it's all right with you, Jarl?"
"It's your shift. Do what you want."
"Amy, stay with Jarl." Moyshe told the messenger, "Find me six off-duty volunteers. Tell them to meet me outside my office. Armed."
"Yes sir."
Moyshe bent, kissed Amy. "In a little while, hon." He wished he could have been a more loving husband lately. Events had permitted them only the most brusque of relationships.
He caught Beckhart giving him an odd look. A baffled, questioning look.
What did that mean? Puzzled, he went to the door.
He paused there, glanced back. Kindervoort and Amy were sipping their drinks, lost within themselves. Poor Jarl. The pressures here were too much for him. He was becoming less and less active, more and more a figurehead. Was it cultural shock?
He would survive. He would make a comeback in his own milieu. He did not worry Moyshe.
His concern was the almost magical disappearance of the Admiral while his back was turned.
He hated to admit it. He loved that old man like a father. Their relationship had that attraction-repulsion of father-son tension. But he could not trust the man. They were of different tribes now.
He had to hurry if he meant to stay ahead of Beckhart.
He was a block from the restaurant when he encountered the first poster. It clung crookedly to the flank of a Marine personnel carrier. He trotted past before it registered. He stopped, spun around. His eyes widened.
Yes. The face of a woman, a meter high, smiled at him.
"Alyce... " he croaked.
Wham! Darkness slammed home. He no longer knew where or who he was. He staggered past the carrier, went down on one knee.
His head cleared. He was in Angel City... He looked behind him. There was a man following him... No. That was last time. Or was it?
For a moment he was not sure if he was Gundaker Niven or Moyshe benRabi. Somebody was trying to kill Gundaker Niven...
He shook his head violently. The mists cleared. Which name he wore did not matter. Niven. McClennon. Perchevski. BenRabi. Any of the others. The enemy remained the same.
He returned to the personnel carrier. The poster was gone. He circled the quiet machine. He could find no evidence one had existed.
"What the hell is happening to me?" he muttered. He resumed trotting toward his headquarters.
He encountered the second poster fewer than fifty meters from his office trailer. It clung to the side of one of the tents his people used for quarters. He reacted just as he had before. He came out of it clinging to a tree, gasping like a man who had almost drowned. The poster was gone.
Had it ever existed? he wondered.
The fragile stability he had constructed with Chub's help was fraying. Was he in for a bad fall?
He clambered into his trailer like a man carrying an extra fifty kilos, dropped into his swivel chair. His heart hammered. His ears pounded. He was scared. He closed his eyes and searched his mind for a clue to what was happening. He found nothing.
It had to be this contact with his past. The benRabi personality was not really him. It could not withstand the strain of the milieu of Thomas McClennon.
Then he noticed the envelope lying on his desk. The envelope that had been attached to the magazine Literati.
He stared as if it were poisonous. He tried to back away. One hand stole forward.
It was from Greta Helsung, the girl he had sponsored in Academy. His pseudo-daughter. It was a grateful, anxious, friendly missive, seven pages of tight script reviewing her progress in Academy, and her continual fears for his safety. She knew that he had been captured by enemies of Confederation. His friends had promised they would rescue him. They would get her letter to him. And this, and that, and she loved him, and all his friends in Luna Command were well and happy and pulling for him, and she hoped she would see him soon. There were several photographs of an attractive young blond in Navy blacks. She looked happy.
There was also a note from an old girlfriend. Max expressed the same sentiments with more reserve.
What were they trying to do? Why couldn't yesterday let him be?
Greta had such a cute, winsome smile...
He sealed his eyes and fought to escape the conflicting emotions.
He began to feel very cold, then to shake. Then to be terribly afraid.
Fifteen: 3050 AD
The Contemporary Scene
There were fifty ships in the exploratory fleet. They had not seen a friend in two years. It was a big galaxy. They were 10,000 light-years from home, moving toward the galactic core, backtracking old destruction.
There had been eighty-one ships at the beginning. A few had been lost. Others had been left at regular intervals, to catch and relay instelled reports from the probe. Most of the ships were small and fast, equipped for survey and intelligence scanning.
The fleet was near its operational limit. Three months more, and the ships would have to swing around, the great questions still unanswered.
The advance coreward had been slow and methodical. Still, space was vast and only a fragmentary vision of enemy territory had been assembled.
The stars were densely packed here. The night around the fleet was jeweled far more heavily than farther out The Arm. The skies were alien and strange. The worlds were silent and barren.
Where were the centerward people building all their ships? Where did the killing hordes spring from?
The Ulantonid explorers had detected convoys heading rimward. They had seen a parade of dead worlds. But they had located nothing resembling a base, occupied world, or industrial operation. They had learned only that the enemy came from still farther toward the galaxy's heart.
Then, too, there had been the tagged asteroids in the dead solar systems. Huge metallic bodies three to five hundred kilometers long, all similar in composition. Eleven such rocks, marked with transponders, had been located. The Ulantonid specialists had been unable to conjecture the meaning of the tagging.
The probe fleet had established five tracks along which enemy ships advanced out The Arm. Each was a river of charged particles, ions, and free radicals.
Contact was carefully avoided. The mission was one of observation.
Remote surveillance of the charged paths showed not only the occasional outward passage of a fleet but the regular back and forth of courier vessels. That suggested the enemy had no instel capability. Which was an important deduction. The allies would obtain a tactical advantage by being able to coordinate their forces over far vaster distances.
The centerpiece of the Ulantonid fleet was its only true ship of war, a vessel which beggared the human Empire Class. It bore the name Dance in Ruby Dawn.
Humans named their warships for warriors, battles, cities, old provinces, lost empires, and fighting ships of the past. Ulant used the titles of poems and novels, symphonies and works of art. Each race found the other's naming system quaint.
Ruby Dawn carried the liaison team provided by Confederation's Bureau of Naval Intelligence. Those people had been away from home even longer than their Ulantonid shipmates.
Theirs was a grueling task. They had to survey all incoming data and isolate those bits which justified transmission to Luna Command. They had to be diplomatic with their hosts. It was too much for twelve people eleven thousand light-years from the nearest of their own kind.
An Ulantonid officer stepped into their working compartment. "Commander Russell? We're getting something that might interest you."
Russell was a short black man built like a tombstone. He almost responded, "We'll get it in a while, won't we? Where's the damned hurry?" He did not. The Blues were so courteous it made him ashamed to think of giving them a hard time.