"Let's not fool around here," Lupo said. "As long as we're wishing, why don't we do what Simon did and wish for our own Guardship?"
That stifled conversation. Lupo reactivated the viewscreen, contemplated the receding battle zone. They were killing each other there still, but it was harder to see. The massed firing was over. The surviving Guardship would take its time and do the job right.
Had he covered House Tregesser well enough? That was his main concern now. That he might have left something that would point a finger. Not something important, like someone who knew something, but something trivial that would scream House Tregesser.
He had it all covered. Still, he would be watching over his shoulder for a long time.
"Do we have contact with Simon's Voyager?"
"Way out on the edge."
"Keep it there. Don't reply if he tries to communicate."
Everyone looked at him. One asked, "What are you thinking?"
"Not yet. It needs time to ripen. Or rot."
"He'll get irritated if we don't respond."
"He won't see us. Our system is better than his. He'll keep his mouth shut. He won't want the Guardship coming after him."
Lupo stared into that viewscreen and wondered if he had what it would take to do what he was contemplating.
— 51 —
Jo broke a long silence to spit, "Chains! How absurd are these clowns going to get?"
Degas, AnyKaat, and Vadja—still groggy from drugs—burned with the same indignation. They wanted to bite somebody. Chains! In a pseudoprimitive cell, shackled with chains!
Only Haget was in a good humor.
Jo snapped, "What're you grinning about, you stiff-necked martinet? Are you getting off on this?"
His smile faded. It resurfaced quickly, though. "I can't help it. I keep thinking of the fun I'll have after the pendulum swings."
"The pendulum swings? You silly sack of shit, what do you mean, after the pendulum swings?"
Haget laid a finger to his lips. "Let them find out the hard way."
Jo muttered, "He's crazy. We're in the hands of savages and our fearless leader thinks it's a joke on them."
"It is, Jo. They played it on themselves."
Degas said, "Cholot was the krekelen."
Haget agreed. "Timmerbach wouldn't pull a stunt like this on his own. The real Cholot had the spite but not the balls."
"We've lost it. It'll get out of that Traveler and turn into somebody else."
"Maybe. But if you can figure it out, so can Timmerbach. We catch up with Glorious Spent, our krekelen will be there. Locked up. Bet?"
Degas mumbled, "You're right, Jo. He's got a wobble in his spin."
Haget said, "Two weeks at the outside, troops. Jo. Is that thing dead yet?"
Jo glanced at Seeker. It had not yet shown an inclination to recover. "It's still breathing."
"It'll come around. So let's lay back and enjoy the holiday."
"Listen to the man. Calls this a holiday."
"Fake it, then. It'll drive them crazy."
"Ha-ha. We've got a party now." Jo looked at Seeker. Had the damned thing gone into hibernation?
"Hi, guys," Haget told three humorless STASIS types outside the door. "Smile. It's good for you."
Jo pasted on a grin. "Eat, drink, and make merry. You don't have a lot of time."
They went away. Jo wished she felt as confident as she had sounded.
— 52 —
Turtle established them in an empty office overlooking that cavernous birth canal where new Guardships came to life. For him the location was no better than any other. But it pleased Midnight. She could launch herself on fanciful acrobatic flights in the inconsequential gravity of the construction channel. Her wings had gained color and luster.
For six days Turtle worked himself to exhaustion. If Starbase had secrets it wanted kept, he could not detect the blocks locking him out. If there were living beings anywhere, he could not track them down. He could locate none of the Deified supposed to haunt the system. There seemed to be no omniscient observer as there was aboard VII Gemina.
He could find no evidence Starbase was anything but what it appeared, a half-forgotten fortress where no one had remembered to shut the gate and the garrison were dozing at their posts. The neglect of absolute assurance.
No defenses were active.
Turtle could not focus on the monitor. He went to watch Midnight's ballet. "Castle Dreaming," he murmured, recalling a myth as Midnight looped. A fortress dire and invincible, defended by unkillable demons with claws of steel and fangs of diamond. But Tae Kyodo had entered unchallenged and had walked out with the Bowl of Truth because the demons were taking a siesta, confident their reputation would keep the bad guys away.
Up the cavern the automated factory went to work. Sparks flew. Midnight glided down. "That was beautiful," he said.
"It's easy where there's so little gravity. Did you find a way?"
"It's so easy it's pathetic. We just get on one of the shuttle ships. The Deified operating them aren't interested in what happens inside them. But once we reach the Barbican, we'll have problems. We'll have to change ships. And they will be alert for people who do not belong."
"I'm going to check on Amber Soul."
"All right." Turtle stared at nothing. Somewhere along his life path he had lost the fervor that had driven him in the days of the Dire Radiant.
All those years slinking through the shadows, peeking through the cracks, educating and arming himself against his next bout with the necromancers, and now his inclination was to lay his sword aside and declare peace on the Guardships. Revolutionary change would deliver Canon into the jaws of predators.
There was an evolutionary thing happening, and he'd just begun to recognize it—though he had listed symptoms for WarAvocat.
Canon grew as inexorably as a black hole. Growth would not stop while there were Guardships and Outsiders to offend them.
Give them that. The conquerers never struck first.
Within the ever-advancing Rims a vacuum was developing, consequent to human depopulation. The race was old and, maybe, beginning to fade from the stage of the Web.
The vacuum was pulling nonhumans off the worlds where they sulked, to fill empty shoes. Almost by capillary action, some were oozing upward into the hierarchies. This great empire, Canon, might be theirs to inherit. Ten thousand years hence, Canon law and the Guardships might be the only evidence of the human race's passing.
Circumstances argued that the greatest good for the greatest number sprang from the status quo.
How to get out? Just the one way. Stealth. Going without being seen, without leaving a spoor. But the Barbican stood athwart his path like a wall a thousand kilometers long and five hundred high.
"Turtle!" Midnight squealed. "Come here! She's waking up! For real this time."
He hurried into the office.
— 53 —
Blessed Tregesser paused before leaving the cozy Voyager for the uncertainties dockside. M. Shrilica 3A. Not exactly the hub of the Tregesser empire. A financial loser. The in-system station, 3B, unaffected by Canon regulations, was almost completely shut down.
The world, too, was a source of negative profits. To recommend it, it had nothing but its value as a place to dump exiles.
Rash Norym, whose governorship he would usurp, looked like a woman who had received an unconditional pardon. She waited dockside with the Station Master and a platoon of functionaries who looked like they were doing life without parole.
"If we're going to do it, let's get it done." Blessed started walking. Nyo and Tina Bofoku and Cable Shike followed, willing companions in exile.
Shike was twenty-two. He came out of the darkest dark of the Black Ring. His eyes were the eyes of an old man who had seen all the evils that men do. Blessed hoped to make Shike his own Lupo Provik. Cable aspired to the role.