Strings (30 page)

He wanted to say, You’re not the law. But maybe she was justice. Bagshaw had told him how the law had long before been strangled to death by lawyers. He just sat, meeting the old woman’s sinister gaze.

“Secondly, no, I don’t slaughter reporters who file unfavorable stories about me or my Institute. I’ve been tempted often enough.”

Nor did Cedric treat that remark as being funny.

“But people can be superstitious; it gets noticed that bad-mouthing the Institute is unlucky. She was not the first, I admit. There is suspicion in the air. I know this, but it wasn’t really a reason. That would make me worse than she was, and I assure you that my conscience is very clear.”

Still he did not comment. If personal grudge had not been a factor, then why deny it at such length? His lack of response was starting to annoy her.

“Secondly, therefore…” His grandmother sighed. “I’m crazy to waste time on you like this. Secondly, Pandora’s death was the price demanded by Frazer Franklin for his continued cooperation.”

“
What
!?”

She shook her head sadly, and sapphire earrings glittered. “Oh, Cedric, Cedric! The world is a much more complicated place than it must seem from Meadowdale. Now you know our big secret—that we’ve been finding Class One worlds, that we’ve been planting people on them. If Tiber goes ahead, it will be the thirteenth. So far we’ve transmensed nearly three hundred thousand. It’s not very many, really, when you think of the hundreds of millions in refugee camps, or when you think of the floods and plagues, but it’s been a superhuman effort, Cedric. My life’s work. And it’s given humanity a lot more chances to survive.” She sat back and folded her arms and waited.

So he threw the questions she expected. “Why you? Why keep it secret? Who are you to play God?”

She nodded approvingly. “You do understand how we’ve done this? We vet every candidate world as thoroughly as we can. We never plant a world unless it has passed every scientific test we can think of. Since the Oak affair, I’ve also required that one of the Banzaraki psychics approve it. We don’t know how their intuition works, but it’s never clashed with our final conclusions. And we don’t sell tickets to the rich, Cedric.”

For a moment he thought he detected an appeal in those cunning old eyes, an appeal for his approval. Absurd! He told himself not to be taken in by tricks.

“Our colonists are always drawn from the camps, the hopeless,” she said. “We send along everything we can think of that they may need to become established. I must seem an evil old woman to you, but I have nothing to be ashamed of in this.”

“But why you—you of all the world? Who are you to choose who lives and who dies?”

She had begun to tap fingers on the table. “Are you truly so naive? Can’t you imagine what would happen if the politicians got their hands on this? Are you so very innocent? The refugees would be marching though the transmensor fifty abreast, as fast as they could be shipped in here.”

Yes, he could imagine. “To where?”

“God knows. Class Two worlds are common as mosquitoes. And refugees more so—they’re a blight. Every authority on Earth is perpetually beset by refugees. The chance to ship them all off elsewhere with no complications later…that would be an irresistible temptation. It would throw us back a hundred years, to the death camps of the Nazis, but worse—not millions, but tens or hundreds of millions, and a slow death.”

Her voice had grown sharper, harder. Cedric had never known his grandmother to speak with such vehemence. She must believe very strongly in what she was saying, mustn’t she?

“And the real gems, the ones we call Class One—those would be reserved for the elite, and very likely for their clones. They would spread their own germ plasm throughout the universe on all the best worlds. They would use the others for dumping peasants. I know this! I know how they think! The Earth is very sick, but it’s still habitable. Just. It may remain so. The Banzarak intuition says it’s still a better bet than almost all the other worlds we find. Only twelve in thirty years—”

“Including Oak?”

She winced. “Not Oak. Eleven worlds, then. Even with the very best of intentions, at least one of our plantings was an error.”

For a moment there was silence. Cedric felt far too young and simple to argue with her. He stared morosely at his hands, clasped on his knees. He had been unconsciously picking at a callus with a thumbnail. He was glumly sure that he was about to be suckered again.

“That’s why Frazer Franklin,” his grandmother said. “The plantings themselves have been easy compared to the problems of keeping them secret. We have many sympathizers, in key places.”

“Spies? No, agents. You pay them with murders?” He did not look at her, just his finger.

“With many things. Money. Some, like Frazer, want favors. Some just approve of what we are doing. Many accept immortality.”

Then he did raise his head, and she smiled mockingly at his incomprehension. “The instinct to procreate runs very deep—as you should realize,
Grandson
—and I can offer them a chance to propagate throughout a universe. It’s often the most potent bribe of all. And it’s good for us—we gain valuable breeding stock for our plantings.”

“Cloning?”

“Sometimes. Nothing wrong with cloning if the clones are treated as people.”

“So you do sell tickets to the rich?”

“In that sense, I suppose I do. When I must. Or murder when I must. Or blackmail, or deceive, or threaten. But I have populated worlds that will bless my name for thousands of years.”

She was convincing, and he supposed he owed her his loyalty, even yet.

“If I refuse?”

“Don’t. Don’t ask the alternative, either.”

He shrugged. “All right. What do I have to do?”

Satisfaction thinned the pale lips. “Make yourself respectable. It will not be until late; midnight or after.”

“And then?”

“Just stay close to me. Be yourself, but don’t speak unless I ask you a question.”

“And then I can go with Alya?”

The smile grew wider. “Are you certain she wants you? You may have been only a passing amusement. But if you choose to go to Tiber, I won’t stand in your way.
Com end
.”

Not stand in your way
…Again she had slid around that point. But she had gone. He thought she had shown him one glimpse of a tree and hidden a forest.

He sat and picked at the edge of the callus until he made his finger bleed. He counted his troubles, and the list was crushing. His strengths were only two: that Alya loved him, and that System still obeyed his commands with very few limits.

“
I want to set up some codes
.”

“Stipulate whether codes are for general use or voice specific.”

“
Voice specific
.”

“Proceed.”

“
If the instructions represented by those codes require an override command, you will assume the override command, but not make it effective until I activate the code. Is this understood
?”

“Affirmative.”

“
First code word: ‘Palomino
’…”

Cainsville, April 10—11

ALYA, ALSO, HAD been placed under house arrest. The Institute had taken considerable pains to sever all public connection between itself and the princess, and was not going to let her be seen around Cainsville now. Like Cedric, she was confined to one floor of Columbus Dome. The impassive, impassable North Brenda guarded the spiralator, letting no one in or out. System refused to place calls.

A day of playing cribbage with Moala was relieved only when Alya was taken by O’Brien Patrick to view Usk—and that was the briefest planetary inspection yet. Binary suns cut Usk from the list and sent Alya back to jail.

She swore a lot, especially when she realized that Jathro must be wandering loose, not confined as she was. None of her brothers or sisters had been insulted in such a way by Director Hubbard, but then none of them had seduced Hubbard’s grandson, either.

And she worried intensely about Cedric. His unexpected fit in the night had terrified her. He was supposed to be the indestructible man, yet something had driven him completely catatonic for a couple of minutes—going cold, heartbeat dropping and fading. Then he had shuddered and sprung back in typical Cedric style. But something had done that to him. Almost certainly Alya had unwittingly said something to trigger a post-hypnotic code implanted very deep inside his mind. She could not have spoken the whole code, obviously, just enough of it to bring a partial memory up near the surface—and that partial memory had hurled him into psychic fugue and catalepsy. It was a tribute to his incredible toughness that he had recovered so easily.

Who had managed to tamper with his head? BEST? Or—Alya kept remembering Hubbard’s sneer that Cedric was only a pawn, and a pawn that might have to be sacrificed.

If what had sent him into that fit had been something Alya had said, then the only word that could possibly have done it was
kamikaze
.

She fretted more when she remembered her promise to call Kas and Thalia and the kids that evening. The time came and went with System still uncooperative. Kas would have certainly tried to call her, and had obviously been blocked. Frustrated, Alya decided that she might as well go to bed. Tiber was not due for hours yet, and the previous night had been strenuous in the extreme—Cedric had wonderful stamina, bless him.
Oh, Cedric
!

Much to her surprise, she felt herself sliding into sleep almost at once.

The disadvantage of that, of course, was that she felt so unholy awful when she was wakened by a
ping
! from the com, and Baker Abel’s voice.

“We expect Tiber in half an hour, ma’am. Transportation is standing by.”

“I want—” Alya said.

“Caller has disconnected,” System said.

Escorted by a squad of unfamiliar bulls, Alya was golfied over to Philby Dome and delivered to a big, pentagonal office. It was an exact replica of Hubbard’s office in Nauc HQ, or perhaps slightly larger. The big table was heaped with papers; a dozen men and women were slouched around on chairs, all looking totally exhausted. There was no sign of Hubbard Agnes. The two giant com screens were unrolling screeds of multicolored data: text and three-dee graphs, maps, and images. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention.

Alya sped around the room like a ballistic missile aimed at Baker Abel, who was leaning against a wall, rubbing his eyes. His denims were rumpled, his tawny hair mussed and limp.

“Where is Cedric?” she demanded.

Baker peered at her blearily. “I don’t know. System won’t tell me. I don’t know where his grandmother is, either. Or anyone.” He started to say something else and it became a yawn.

Suddenly Alya felt sympathetic. Baker was hard to dislike.

“You haven’t been to bed recently, have you?”

He shook his head. “Thanks for the invitation, but you’ll have to clear it with Emily. I’m supposed to be pairing with her, and it’s getting so I can barely remember why.” Then he grinned.

“Like hell you can’t,” Alya said, returning the grin. She glanced around and was annoyed that Jathro was missing. Where and what was he doing, and why? “What’s happening about Tiber, Abe?”

Baker shrugged and heaved himself off the wall. “About ten minutes until window. Another ten to run all the data into System. Most of it’ll be precooked already, so five for analyses. Then decision time.”

An unpleasant quiver ran through Alya. “Who makes that decision?”

He blinked bloodshot eyes at her. “You do. Unless there’s something obviously wrong, of course. Them’s my orders—go or no go comes from Princess Alya.”

“And I lead the parade?”

“Waving your baton.”

Her palms were clammy. “And if I want more time to consider?”

He frowned and shook his head. “No instructions. My guess would be that Mother shuts the file. If you’re not certain, right away, then it’ll be no go.”

“I won’t leave without Cedric!”

Baker shrugged again. “I can do nothing about that. I’m telling the truth. I—you okay?”

She nodded, angry that a princess could be so transparent. “I think I need to freshen up.”

He pointed in silence at the wall beside them, and she saw the almost-invisible door in it.

The washroom was garishly bright and decorated in holographic tiles, a style briefly popular long before Alya had been born. Some of them had fallen off and not been replaced. Mother Hubbard had been economizing behind the scenes, obviously.

Alya washed her face and combed out her hair, and began to feel better. A couple of cups of coffee and perhaps some of the curly-dry sandwiches she had seen out there, and she—

The comb slipped from her fingers. She felt herself bowled over by a great cold wave of terror, and all the holo tiles seemed to gape and wink like fanged mouths as the walls rushed at her. She stuffed a knuckle between her teeth and fought for control.

Danger
! it was saying.
Go now! Escape
!

And the
Escape
! seemed to echo, over and over.

She backed up against the wall, sweat streaming down her face. Never had she felt a
satori
so strong. It was crushing, over-powering. She could no more think straight than if she had seen a bull charging straight at her, or a man coming with a knife—it was as irresistible as that. A screaming sense of danger choked her mind, making her heart race and her hands shake.

What had happened? Cedric? Was something threatening Cedric?

Or Tiber? If the window was open, then the choice was clearly available to her at last. That was it! All she had to do was walk out of there and say “Yes!” and she would be whisked away to a safer world. Relief! Cedric might be important, but obviously he ranked a distant second as far as the
buddhi
was concerned.

Alya forced herself to pick up the comb. She struggled to compose her face before the mirror—she thought she resembled a terrified coconut—and then she squared her shoulders and tottered back into the big, pentagonal office.

She sensed the satisfaction at once. The people had all collected before the two big coms. One was still rippling data, much faster now. The other showed three men in a very cramped interior. They wore denims, and the close cram of instrument boards and controls around them identified the locale as a skiv lab module. The men were laughing and all trying to talk at the same time. Sunlight was streaming through a window behind them.

One of the women in the office said something that provoked more merriment. Baker Abel slipped out of the group and came around to Alya. He was grinning broadly and had lost most of his tired look.

“Hundred percent on science!” he said. “System needs a few moments yet, but the team commander says it’s a big improvement on Earth itself! You ready to lead that parade now?”

It was the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.

“No!” Alya said. Every nerve screamed.

Baker’s jaw dropped, and for a moment he reminded her again of Cedric. “No?”

“I need Cedric to help me decide.”

Baker frowned, studying her, then gestured to a couple of chairs. Alya perched on one, and he pulled the other between his legs, so that he sat on it backward, arms folded, his usual flippancy gone.

“I swear,” he said quietly, “that I don’t know! She’s gone off on some mysterious project of her own, and Cedric’s probably with her. I know he was locked up on the top floor of Columbus. He’s not there now, ’cause I looked.”

“Keep looking. He hasn’t left Cainsville?”

“How should I know? System won’t talk. I can’t even get through to the deputies now. Something odd’s going on.”

Alya leaned back. “Then we’ll have to wait, won’t we?” She hoped her trembling was not too obvious.

“Alya, please! Believe me—I’m on his side! Truly, I want to help Cedric. I’m delighted that the two of you are pairing. He’s a great kid! But I can’t find him for you right now.”

“Then I shall go and look for him myself.”

He shrugged, baffled. “Swell! Meanwhile I’ve got two thousand refugees and three thousand tons of supplies and trucks and more teams of rangers. Three hours, ten minutes left on the window, maybe. What do I tell everyone? What do I do with them, Alya?”

Rising, she smiled her meanest smile. “Set them to work looking for Cedric!”

“Hold it!” He seemed to be thinking very hard, chewing his lip and staring at her with calculating gray eyes. If he made a wrong decision, Baker Abel was going to be in very deep trouble. “You can find him?”

“I can try.” Actually, Alya was not sure she could even find her left ear—the sense of imminent danger was beating on her like a steam hammer.

“You want help? Bulls? No—you don’t need bulls, do you?”

She shook her head. Baker was obviously looking for a solution and willing to risk his neck for her.

“If I call ’em off for—an hour?”

Alya nodded with sudden relief at having a workable compromise.

“You’ll come back and tell me in an hour?” he asked. “Promise?”

“Yes! Thanks, Abe. I—thanks!” She marched to the door, and he let her go. Bulls sitting in the corridor started to climb to their feet and then settled back, exchanging puzzled glances.

Alya headed for the spiralator. At ground level she climbed into a golfie. She closed her eyes for a minute to think—or feel, maybe.

“
That way! I mean—what way is this golfie facing
?”

“The personnel cart is pointed west.”

“
Then make it go north
.”

After that it was all either
right, left
, or
straight ahead
.