A Covenant of Justice (18 page)

“Do go on,” M'bele said.

“—but we have already committed ourselves to attend a Gathering with the express purpose of dissolving the Regency's charter and breaking the back of the Vampires' power. So, here I stand, struggling with my own dilemma. Do I break this trust or not?”

Sawyer glanced up from where he sat. “Should we care?”

“I have to make this decision,” Three-Dollar said. “I have to assume the responsibility and speak what I know. The information may save your brother's life.” He explained softly, “We have a contract. Your lives in exchange for your service. You provided service and gave us our escape from the custody of the Vampires. I must keep my part of the bargain and give you back your lives.” He stepped over to the console that displayed the progress of Finn's transfusion and studied the schematics and readouts. “I have information I can give you—but I don't know if I should.” he said to M'bele, and lowered his huge hands to the keyboard. Simultaneously, he began speaking softly to the computer, giving it additional instructions.

After several moments, he stopped and turned around to the others again. “The Regency has an ancient history. Most people don't know it, because the Phaestoric aristocracy has little interest in having this knowledge widespread. It might encourage people to ask too many questions. Sit,” he said. “Get comfortable. This will take a few moments.

“To understand the beginnings of the Regency, you need to know the reasons for the initial desperate pilgrimages out here to the Palethetic Cluster. A long time ago, we all lived in the Eye of God—that great whirl of light that looms over the entire Cluster. So very very near and yet so many years away. We lived in only a corner of God's eye, but we had already begun to spread in all directions. At that time, we had not yet created the many different species that we know today. At that time, humanity stood alone, a single race.

“Now I will tell you the great
shame
of humanity. In those days, just like now, great wars often raged for centuries; men fought against men, often for no apparent reason . . . except perhaps that the men who ordered other men into battle had the range of their ideals set for small.

“As humanity expanded its boundaries, so did we expand our capacity for finding new things to argue about, new reasons to scourge each other's cities and worlds. You may appreciate this, Sawyer—the Vampires have no claim on horror. Humans will always hold the record for atrocities because we wrought them on ourselves, over and over and over again.

“As we grew more powerful—not wiser, just more powerful—our capacity for war finally outgrew our ability to control it and a holocaust of unprecedented scale and ferocity broke out. This terrible great war raged across the western arm of the spiral, wreaking havoc and destruction that went far beyond the mere devastation of civilizations; it destroyed whole star systems. A chain of supernovas marked the fiercest battles. Worlds disappeared in cosmic fire. The waves of deadly radiation blasted outward one after the other, like ripples of a firestorm. The seething energy scoured planets for hundreds of light years in all directions for centuries afterward, and even today, all these many millennia later, those waves of energy still blast outward.

“In the silence that followed, the survivors knew that they could not allow this atrocity to ever occur again. The best way to prevent a repeat, the survivors believed, lay in the creation of weaponry so terrifying that no possible enemy would dare risk having it unleashed.

“So, of course, the next round of violence astonished even those who had created it.

“To this day, places exist in the Eye of God where time and matter no longer obey their own laws. Burning things still lurk in the darkness to trouble the sleep of distant astrophysicists. Eventually, the wars subsided, but the damage remains.

“The absolute worst of the nightmares, the predators, still exist. Nearly indestructible, these incredibly vast, deceptively frail, planet-killing webs still hide in the black places between the stars. They drift silently, hungrily, looking for new worlds to feed upon.

“Yes.
Humanity created the predators
.

“Sometimes, TimeBinders argue about the responsibility of this knowledge. Some of us argue that the fault belongs only to a brutal subset of the race, that those of us who did not create the horror should not whip ourselves with shame and regret. Indeed, those who hold that position, also believe that we should hate the ones who created the weapons that drove us from our ancient homes. But other TimeBinders believe that attitude a dangerous one; it allows us to think again in terms of
us
and
them
.

“Some of us believe that it doesn't matter which branch of humanity created the weapon, we all share responsibility in the matter. Before the last predator dies, our species will have killed every life form in the Eye of God. We may very well stand throughout time as the most voracious, destructive, verminous form of life ever spawned in the universe. Quite a triumph, no?

“Some of us believe that we cannot hide from our own history. We must own it to transcend it. Otherwise, we condemn ourselves to repeat it.”

Sawyer waved it away with a frustrated gesture. “So, how will any of this save my brother's life?”

Three-Dollar looked to M'bele. “Do you see how limited our vision remains? We take the grandiose and reduce it to our most personal concerns. ‘What does it mean to me?' In this room, we have enough hatred to reinvent the predators. Don't try to deny it. Listen to yourselves speak. You all have someone or something you want to kill. What difference does it make on what scale you operate?”

The three other men in the room remained silent and shamed.

Three-Dollar continued, “Every time I see a death, I feel hatred too. But I don't have to act on my hatred. Do I?” He added, “If I acted on my hatred, I might initiate a process that would destroy the entire Cluster.”

The others looked up sharply at this. “What do you mean?” M'bele demanded.

“Nothing,” said Three-Dollar, waving it away with a hand. “I spoke from exhaustion and anger and frustration. Let me—” He wiped his forehead, then continued quickly. “—Let me get back to our real purpose here. At the first gathering, the survivors of the exodus from the Eye of God created the Regency to protect the Cluster worlds from the Predators. We created the Vampires and the Dragons. When I say ‘we', I speak from my memory, of course. My TimeBand carries the lives and the wisdom and the experiences of more than three hundred individuals already.

“We created the Vampires. They don't like that knowledge widely known; but we did create them. We wanted a hunting pack that could go out into the dark between the stars, waiting there forever if they had to. We gave them cunning, longevity, intelligence, hunger, and ruthless ferocity. We gave them the ability to turn themselves off for long periods of inactivity so they could wait and wait and keep on waiting without ever feeling frustrated; we gave them dreamtime as a compensation, to keep them focused, to keep them from going mad.

“We created better than we knew. But we didn't know that at the time. We believed we had done well. The Vampires went out into the great emptiness between the Eye of God and the Cluster and patrolled for Predators as ruthlessly as we had hoped and dreamed they would. The Vampires became our first line of defense against the scourge.”

“And we created the Dragons too?” asked Lee.

Three-Dollar nodded. “We gave them Dragons for their protection. The Dragons needed some wit, some cunning; but mostly we created them to give the Vampires strength where they needed it most. The Vampires themselves have a certain physical fragility that makes them extremely vulnerable—as we have all seen. But in compensation, their intelligence and control over the Dragons makes them formidable opponents in any battle—as we have also discovered to our great regret.” He shook his head. “I don't have to tell you the rest. You've seen it yourselves. Over the generations, the Phaestoric aristocracy has expanded its influence across the entire Cluster. Their internecine warfare has fragmented the peace and brought the Regency to the brink of civil war. The family fleets have already begun gathering to move against the remaining free worlds.”

Sawyer stood up then and confronted Three-Dollar. “But what does any of this have to do with my brother?” He had a profound anguish in his voice.

Three-Dollar tapped his head. “I have the knowledge of the Vampires' creation stored in my TimeBand. I have the memories of the men who designed their genome. Yes, the line of TimeBinders extends even
that
far back. The Vampires began on Thoska-Roole. You didn't know that, did you?

“Only three TimeBinders chose to carry the memories of the people who created the Vampires: the TimeBinders of Willowar, Thoska-Roole, and Burihatin. The Willowar headband disappeared years ago. We think the Vampires have it. Now the Burihatin TimeBinder has also disappeared; what's happened to that TimeBand?”

M'bele interjected thoughtfully, “Perhaps the Vampires fear that the knowledge of their creation also carries with it the potential for their destruction.”

Three-Dollar nodded. “The Vampires fear everything. The builders designed the Vampire mind-set to include a substantial degree of paranoia. Considering the foe they went out to confront, paranoia represented a valuable survival trait.” He stopped. “I must violate a trust. I've sworn a sacred oath never to reveal information that compromises the integrity of the Regency. But as we stand here, the Regency has already begun to rip itself apart. Does my oath still carry weight, or do I have a larger duty to the future that even now struggles toward realization?”

“You promised to help save my brother,” said Sawyer.

“Yes, I did. And that fact troubles me so greatly that I have already considered suicide three times over. You have me trapped in a dilemma. Do I break the small promise or the big one? Do I keep my word or save a life? What commitment will I keep? The commitment to the Alliance of Life, which exists only as an unrealized ideal—or the commitment to the past, which has endured for over six thousand years?”

“You keep the commitment that will save my brother's life,” said Sawyer. “Because that exists as a specific, measurable result—a demonstration of the truth of the Alliance of Life.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Three-Dollar. “But you don't know the size of the oath I will have to break to keep that promise.”

“You speak accurately,” said Sawyer. “I don't know—and I don't care. Tell M'bele what he needs to know. Tell him now, while we still have a chance. Don't make me argue. Don't make me beg. I expect better from you.”

Three-Dollar sank to a chair and began speaking.

“The microorganism that causes the blood-burn lives in the blood and saliva of male Vampires. The creature has a symbiotic relationship with its hosts. When injected into a body, the phage produces a paralyzing enzyme. A large injection will produce paralysis within minutes. With a small injection, the paralysis will take much longer and will occur as a series of increasingly severe attacks, a condition we call the blood-burn. In either case, the same result occurs. The victim falls into a paralytic coma.

“Depending on the metabolism of the victim, the paralyzing enzyme produces a repertoire of effects to varying degree. First, it softens the blood and the tissues for the Vampire's delicate palate. Second, the enzymes also act as a preservative so that the prey survives for a long long time in its cocoon. This allows the Vampire to feed at leisure.

“The female Vampire has no poison in her bite, but she does have the same immunity to the enzyme that the male has. This means that Vampires cannot hurt each other with their bites—although I will admit that unsavory rumors of cannibalism among the young males continue to persist. Never mind that. The males cocoon the victims and present them to the females to earn the right to breed. The TimeBinders have kept this a secret to protect the Vampires from biological enemies.”

A look of understanding appeared on Lee-1169's face. “That explains the gift of the dog-children.” To M'bele, he explained, “Lady Zillabar brought six dog-children back from Dupa; she gave them to Lord Drydel. One of them escaped. We found the other five cocooned in a barn in the Lady's private nest. I understand it now. She didn't bring the gift for Drydel's pleasure alone; she brought them to him so that he could give them back to her ready to eat!”

Three-Dollar nodded in agreement. “You have most of it, Lee, but not all of it. She intended the children as a
mating gift
. She gave Drydel the children so he could present them as a wedding feast. The male enzyme prepares the female for mating. If the female accepts the gift and feeds, then her body becomes receptive to that male's sperm. Zillabar intended to mate with Drydel and begin laying her eggs. Your attack on the nest and the death of Drydel destroyed her carefully worked out plan. You have cost the Lady dearly.”

“But what about Finn then? What did she intend with him?”

“Letting Finn Markham walk around with the blood-burn in his veins represents an act of extraordinary cruelty on her part. I suspect that even she did not realize her own unconscious purposes; by keeping him alive, by drinking his blood, she also made herself receptive to d'Vashti's advances. She knows she must breed soon. But she did speak truthfully to you when she told you that no antidote exists. Why should the Vampires expend any energy in helping their dinner avoid the plate?”

Sawyer seemed to shrivel at this news. The color drained from his face. He sagged where he stood.

Three-Dollar added perceptively, “But at least she spared him the fate she obviously planned for you, Sawyer. She would have had you bitten and infected, and you would have hosted her eggs. After they had hatched in your paralyzed, but still-living body, the grubs would have eaten their way out.”