Mallow (53 page)

One of the Wayward generals - Blessing Gable - cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and started to say, 'Madam—'

'No. Shut up.' Miocene shook her head, then warned everyone, 'I'm not interested in anyone's reasons. Not for this or for that. And frankly, the fate of one odd soul is not particularly compelling to me. What sickens me is knowing that someone made assumptions, not asking simple questions first. What worries me is my own simple question:"What else are my arrogant, inexperienced generals forgetting to ask themselves and each other?'"

Till stepped forward. This staff meeting belonged to him. For sturdy and obvious reasons, Miocene had given her First Chair responsibility over the war. She had too many new duties of her own to embrace just now. Besides, these events were too large and much too savage to directly involve a Master. Better her son than her, yes. Not one nanogram of self-doubt gnawed at Miocene now.

'You're right, madam,'
Till allowed. Then he showed the generals how to bow, saying to the foot-worn marble floor, 'It's too soon to call anything won, madam. Victory comes at a terrible cost. And of course the Remoras may only be the first of our enemies.'

She said,
'Yes. Yes. Exa
ctly
'

Because this wasn't her meeting, she was free to leave it. A show of power was her only agenda, and she turned suddenly, strolling toward one of several hallways leading into the back of the Master's mazelike apartment ... telling her son on a private channel, nexus to nexus,
'When you're finished here, come see me . . .'

'Yes, madam,' said a crisp voice. While the voice on the private channel promised, 'It won't be long, Mother.'

Miocene thought to glance over her shoulder. But no, that would do little good. She knew from experience that she wouldn't see unexpected emotions in those faces. Ask all the simple questions you want, she told herself. But don't waste precious energy when you know that the answers, pleasing or bitter, will simply refuse to show themselves.

T
he apartment had
always been familiar terrain, and a weaker person, infected with self-doubts, might have avoided these rather small, always comfortable, and purposely ordinary rooms. But the new Master had never considered living anywhere else. If she deserved the old Master's chair, then why not the woman's home? Indeed, after these first weeks, the hallways and alcoves, potted jungles and even the old expansive bed, made Miocene feel nothing but at ease.

Her bed already had an occupant.

'The meeting—?' he began.

'Everything is fine,' she replied. But to be certain, she linked herself to security eyes and ears, the constant bark and flutter of her generals interrupted by the quieter, more forceful growl of Till. After a moment of satisfied eavesdropping, she asked, 'Is there progress?'

'Of a slow sort,' Virtue replied. 'Yes.'

The Remoras knew how to damage the ship. It seemed that Wune's professed love for this machine didn't mean much, and they were attacking it with the same zest with which they fought her office and her authority. In an instant, Miocene consumed the latest damage reports and repair predictions, one of her nexuses failing to give her the data on her first try.

In a crisp, angry voice, Miocene said, 'That problem's surfacing again.'

'That's what I warned you about,' he replied. Virtue regarded her with bright gray eyes, too big for his face and too open to hide anything. 'What we're doing to you . . . well, it's never been done. Not to a human. Profound changes—'

"'—in a profane amount of time." I remember what you, and everyone, has told me.' She shook her head regardless, then casually told her uniform to melt at the shoulders, the fabric collapsing onto the living rug, leaving her wide and deep and lovely body shining in the bedroom's false sunshine.

She sat on the edge of her bed.

Virtue moved nearer, but it took him a moment to find the strength to touch her on the bare breast. Of course he didn't like her new body, and of course she didn't care. Nexuses needed room and energy, and her body had to increase proportionally to her responsibilities. Besides, Virtue's timidity had a charm. A sweetness, even. She couldn't help but smile, eyes dropping, watching those
little
fingers desperately caress the brown expanse of her left nipple.

'We don't have time,' she reported. 'My First Chair will be here soon.'

Virtue was thankful for that, but he had poise enough to make his hand linger for a moment longer, fingers feeling the nipple swell with blood and newer fluids.

When his hand vanished, she told her nightgown to dress her.

Afterward, speaking with a quiet concern, Virtue reported, 'You look tired. Even more than usual, I think.'

'Don't tell me to sleep.'

'I can't tell myself to sleep,' was his reply.

Miocene began to smile again, her head turning and her mouth opening, a compliment phrased and ready to be uttered. 'I wish you were as good with my nexuses as you are with my mood.' She fully intended to say those words, but an abrupt, unexpected urge became a coherent flash inside one of her working nexuses . . . and she hesitated after saying only, 'I wish . . .'

Virtue waited, ready to smile when it was his turn.

She focused on something no one else could see.

After a long moment, her lover mustered the courage to ask, 'What's wrong?'

Miocene said, 'Nothing.'

Then she rose from the bed, looking at her nightgown with a confused expression, as if she couldn't remember asking for it.

Again, she said, 'Nothing.'

Then Miocene told Virtue, 'Wait here. Wait.' She took a step toward the room's back wall, ordered her uniform to cover her body again, and for a third time, with barely a whisper's force, she said, 'Wait,' as a doorway appeared in what looked like polished red granite.

'But,' he sputtered, 'where are you—?'

The door closed and sealed behind her.

That the Master's apartment had secret places had been no surprise. As First Chair, Miocene realized that the complex layout of rooms and hallways left spaces for privacy, or avenues of escape. The only surprise was that these secret places were at least as ordinary as the public ones. They were blandly furnished, and more than not, without clear purpose. The largest of the hidden rooms had been improved already during her tenure, then filled with severed, slowly mummifying heads. It seemed an appropriate means of storing the disposed captains, cruelty and banality perfe
ctly
joined together. But the room behind her bedroom was much smaller, and no one, not Virtue or even Till, knew that it contained a hidden hatchway that the former Master had had installed during some recent attack of paranoia, the hatchway leading to an unregistered cap-car that had been built on-site, ready for this exact instant.

Once under way, Miocene made certain that no one was searching for her. And only then did she re
-
examine the message that had found its way to her on one of the oldest, most secret channels employed by captains.

'Here's what I propose,' said the f
amiliar voice, and the very fam
iliar face, speaking to her from a holobooth inside a certain way
-
station deep in the ship.

A booth she already knew well, it turned out.

The woman smiled, her black hair short and downy, her features bright and smooth as if the flesh and nose and the rest of her had just been regrown. She smiled with a mixture of smug pleasure and vindictiveness, telling Miocene, 'I know what the Great Ship is. And I really think you need to know, too.'
Washen.

'Meet me,' said the dead woman. 'And come alone.'

When she first saw the face and heard those unlikely words, Miocene had nearly muttered aloud,
'I won't meet you, and certainly not alone.'

But Washen had anticipated her stubbornness, shaking her head with a genuine disappointment, telling her, 'Yes, you'll meet me. You don't have a choice.'

Miocene closed two of her eyes, letting her mind's eye focus on the recorded message, on those deep, d
ark, and utterly relentl
ess eyes.

'Meet me in the Grand Temple,' said Washen.

'In Hazz City,' she said.

'On Marrow,' she said.

Then she almost laughed, and looking at the Master's imagined eyes, she asked, 'Why are you afraid? Where in all of Creation could you possibly feel as safe, you crazy old bitch of bitches?'

Forty-six

A
FLEET OF
old skimmers and sleeks and retrofitted cap-cars fled across the endless hull, dressed to resemble the battered hyperfiber beneath, their engines masked and muted, and every vehicle surrounded by false cars - holo-echos designed to be obvious, hopefully looking dangerous or weak, the projections begging the Waywards to fire at them instead of tormenting phantoms that might or might not be.

Orleans was steering one of those phantoms.

An EM pulse had pushed its AI pilot into insanity, leaving him no choice. The same pulse had killed its main reactor, leaving them depending on an auxiliary that whispered to the driver. 'I am sick. I need maintenance. Do not depend on me.'

The Remora ignored the complaints. Instead, he looked back at the passengers, a whisper-signal carrying his minimal question:

'How soon?'

'Ninety-two,' said a white-as-milk face.

Minutes, she meant. Ninety-two minutes, according to the latest projection. Which was too long, and what could be taking so much time . . . ?

But he didn't ask the question.

Instead, he spotted a Wayward dragonfly lifting up off the horizon behind them, trying to catch them. Too late, he whispered, 'Target.' Two baby men in the back of his skimmer had seen the enemy, and they were aiming at the fly's weakest centimeter. But their ad hoc laser needed too much time to charge up, and a burst of focused light swept away holoprojection - a column of purple-white light dancing along the hull with an eerie grace, searching for something to incinerate.

Too late, the boys cried out, 'Charged. Fire—!'

But Orleans had jerked the wheel, spoiling their aim, and where they would have been was blistered with the raw energies, a trailing EM scream stunning everything electronic within a full kilometer. Every lifesuit seized up for a horrible instant.
The skimmer's controls obeyed imagined orders, ignoring real ones. With his private voice, Orleans cursed, and he regained control after everyone's living juices had been jerked savagely by
the
gees, and he cursed again, sharing his feelings with the others. Again, a voice said, 'Fire.'

Their weapon was tiny compared to the Wayward's, but it had sighting elements ripped out of one of the ship's main lasers - elements meant to find and strike dust motes at a fantastic range — and the soft narrow bolt reached up into the bright lavender sky, then reached inside the armored target, bringing it plunging down to the hull, where it belonged.

There was a
little
cheer.

Pure reflex.

A dozen new phantoms appeared beside them, but none looked convincing. Orleans saw that immediately, and he realized that their projectors were mangled now, failing fast, and he erased the phantoms before the Waywards noticed.

Better to depend on your own camouflage now. And if he could, catch up with the rest of the fleet, then get lost among their coundess phantoms and deceits.

That seemed possible, for a
little
while.

The woman behind him, eavesdropping on a secure channel, leaned forward and shoved him on a shoulder, his suit's false neurons too fried to feel more than a slight pressure.But he appreciated the pressure, the touch. Orleans leaned back into it, and again, he asked, 'How soon?'

'Forty,' she replied.

The sabotage teams were back on schedule. And in twenty-two minutes, they would be inside the bunker.

The woman almost spoke again, but her voice was interrupted by the complaining voice of the skimmer's reactor. 'I am failing utterly,' it declared. Then with a prickly pride, it told Orleans, 'I will last another eleven minutes. I promise.'

He said, 'Fuck,' to himself.

Then with a whisper, he told the others,
'Sorry. No roof for us.' Then he asked, 'Any ideas? Anyone?'

There was no sense of surprise. What Orleans saw in the faces and could practically taste in the ether was nothing but a weary disappointment that evaporated in another moment. Two weeks of war had done it. Emotions were as flattened and slick as new hyperfiber. Then because it was expected, the gunnery boys said, 'We should turn around. Turn and charge the fuckers, and kill a few of
them!

They wouldn't kill anyone, except themselves.

Orleans turned in his seat, showing them his face. Hard radiations had blistered his flesh, leaving mutations and weird cancers that appeared as lumps and black blisters. Amber eyes dangled, and his tusks were misaligned. But his defiant mouth announced, 'That's not a choice.'