The Night's Dawn Trilogy (38 page)

She took a step into the room. “Sure.”

He accessed the sensenviron file, and ordered his neural nanonics to open a channel to Helen. A subliminal flicker crossed
his optic nerves. Her sparse apartment gave way to the silk walls of a magnificent desert pavilion. There were tall ferns
in brass urns around the entrance, a banquet table along one side was laid out with golden plates and jewelled goblets, and
exotic, intricate drapes swung slowly in the warm, dry breeze that blew in from the crimson desert outside. Behind Helen was
a curtained-off section, with the silk drawn apart just enough to show them a huge bed with purple sheets and a satin canopy
which rose behind the scarlet-tasselled pillows like a sunrise sculpted from fabric.

“Nice,” she said, glancing round.

“It’s where Lawrence of Arabia pleasured his harem back in the eighteenth century. He was some sort of sheik king who fought
the Roman Empire. Absolutely guaranteed genuine sensevise recording from old Earth. I got it from a star-ship captain friend
of mine who visited the museum.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Old Lawrence had about a hundred and fifty wives, so they say.”

“Wow. And he pleasured all of them himself?”

“Oh, yeah, he had to, there was an army of eunuchs to protect them. No other men could get in.”

“Does the magic linger?”

“Wanna find out?”

Ione’s mind encompassed the entirety of Helen Vanham’s bedroom, the photosensitive cells in the bare polyp walls, floor, and
ceiling giving her a complete visualization. It was a thousand times more detailed than an AV projection. She could move through
the bedroom as if she was there, which in a way she was.

The bed was simply a plump mattress on the floor. Helen lay across it, with a naked Joshua straddling her. He was slowly and
deliberately tearing the body-stocking off her.

Interesting,
Ione observed.

If you say so,
Tranquillity replied coolly.

Helen’s long booted legs kicked the air behind his back. She was giggling and squealing as more and more strips of her stocking
were ripped away.

I don’t mean the sex, though judging by the way he’s turned on I’ll have to try wearing something like that for him myself
one day. I was thinking of the way he latched on to Erick Thakrar.

His alleged psychic ability again?

He has had twelve applicants for the post of ship’s general systems engineer so far. All of them legitimate. Yet the minute
Erick asked for the berth, he was suspicious. Are you going to maintain it was nothing but luck?

I acknowledge Joshua’s actions do indicate a degree of prescience on his part.

At last! Thank you.

This means you will be going ahead with the zygote extraction, then?

Yes. Unless you have an objection.

I would never object to receiving your child into me, no matter who was the father. It will be our child, too.

And I’ll never know him, she said sadly, not really, just for a few years of his childhood, like I saw Daddy. Sometimes I
think our way is too harsh.

I will love him. I will tell him of you when he asks.

Thank you. I shall have other children, though. And I’ll know them.

With Joshua?

Possibly.

What are you going to do about him and Dr Mzu?

Ione sighed in exasperation. The image of Helen’s bedroom rippled away. She glanced round her own study; it was cluttered
with dark wooden furniture, centuries old, brought from Kulu by her grandfather. Her whole environment was steeped in history,
reminding her who she was, her responsibilities. It was a depressing burden, one which she’d managed to avoid for a long time.
But even that would have to end soon.

I’m not going to say anything to him, not now, anyway. Joshua is the seventh captain Mzu has approached in the last five months,
she’s just testing the water, seeing what sort of reaction she generates.

She is giving all the Intelligence operatives a bad case of the jitters.

I know. That’s partly my fault. They don’t know what will happen if she tries to leave. There isn’t a Lord of Ruin they can
ask, all they have is Daddy’s promise.

And that holds true?

Yes, of course it does. She cannot be allowed to leave. The serjeants must be used to restrain her if she ever attempts it.
And if she does get into a ship, you’re going to have to use the strategic defence weapons.

Even if that ship is the
Lady Macbeth
?

Joshua wouldn’t try to take her out, especially if I asked him not to.

But if he does?

Ione’s fingers curled about the small silver crucifix round her neck.
Then you shoot her out of space.

I’m sorry. I can feel the pain in you.

It’s a null situation. He won’t do it. I trust Joshua. Money isn’t his prime motivation. He could have told people I exist.
That reporter woman, Kelly Tirrel, she would have paid him a fortune for a scoop like that.

I don’t think he will accept Dr Mzu’s charter, either.

Good. All this is making me think. People do need some kind of reassurance that there is an authority figure behind you. Do
you think I’m old enough to start making public appearances yet?

Mentally, you have been mature enough for years. Physically, possibly; you are old enough to face motherhood, after all. Although
I think a more suitable mode of attire would help. Image is the paramount issue in your case.

Ione glanced down. She was wearing a pink bikini and a small green beach jacket, ideal for the swim in the cove she took each
evening.

I think you may have a point there.

Tranquillity had no blackhawk docking-ledges on its southern endcap. The polyp which made up that hemisphere was twice the
usual thickness of the shell so that it could incorporate the massive mineral-digestion organs, as well as several lake-sized
hydrocarbon reservoirs. These were the organs which produced the various nutrient fluids circulating in the shell’s vast network
of ducts, sustaining the mitosis layer which regenerated the polyp, the starscraper apartment food-secretion glands, the ledge
pedestals which fed the visiting blackhawks and voidhawks, as well as various specialist organs responsible for environmental
maintenance. Access passages to the outer shell would have been difficult to route through such a tightly packed grouping
of titanic viscera.

There was no non-rotational spaceport either. The external hub was taken up by a craterlike maw, fifteen hundred metres in
diameter. Its inner surface was lined with tubular cilia, hundred-metre spikes that impaled the asteroidal rubble which ships
boosted out of Mirchusko’s inner ring. Once in the maw, the rocks were coated by enzymes ejected from the cilia and broken
down into dust and gravel, more manageable chunks which could be ingested and consumed with ease.

The lack of any spaceport outside the endcap, plus the circumfluous salt-water sea lapping around the base on the inside,
meant that there was little activity on its curving slopes. The first two kilometres above the coves were terraced like an
ancient hill farm, planted with flowering bushes and orchards tended by agronomy servitors. Above the terraces a claggy soil
clung to the ever-steepening polyp wall, a vast annular meadow land of thick grasses, whose roots strove to counteract gravity
and keep the soil in place. Both grass and soil stopped short three kilometres from the hub, where the polyp was virtually
a vertical cliff. Right at the axis, the light-tube emerged, running the entire length of the massive habitat: a cylindrical
mesh of organic conductors, their powerful magnetic field containing the fluorescent plasma which brought light and heat to
the interior.

Michael Saldana had decided that the quiet, semi-secluded southern endcap would be an ideal site for the research project
into the Laymil. Its offices and laboratories now sprawled over two square kilometres of the lower terraces, the largest cluster
of buildings inside the habitat, resembling the campus of some wealthy private university.

The project director’s office was on the top floor of the five-storey administration building, a squat, circular pillar of
copper-mirror glass ringed with grey stone colonnaded balconies. It sat on the terrace at the back of the campus, five hundred
metres above the circumfluous sea, giving it an unsurpassed view of the cycloramic sub-tropical parkland stretching away into
misty distance.

The view was something Parker Higgens was immensely proud of, easily the finest in Tranquillity, another fitting perk due
to the research project’s eighth director—along with the scrumptious office itself, with its deep-burgundy coloured ossalwood
furniture that had come from Kulu in the days before the abdication crisis. Parker Higgens was eighty-five. His appointment
had come nine years ago, almost the last act of the Lord of Ruin, and by the grace of God (plus an ancestor wealthy enough
to afford some decent geneering) he would keep the post for another nine. He had left actual research behind twenty years
ago to concentrate on administration. It was a field he excelled in; building the right teams, massaging mercurial egos, knowing
when to push, when to ease off. Genuinely effective scientific administrators were rare, and under his leadership the project
had functioned reasonably smoothly, everyone acknowledged that. Parker Higgens liked to keep his world neat and tidy, it was
one of his formulas for success, which was why he was particularly shocked to come into work one morning and find a young
blonde-haired girl lounging in the deep cushioning of
his
straight-backed chair behind
his
desk.

“Who the bloody hell are you?” he shouted. Then he saw the five serjeants standing to attention around the room.

Tranquillity’s serjeants were the habitat’s sole police force, sub-sentient bitek servitors controlled via affinity by the
personality, enforcing the law with scrupulous impartiality. They were (intentionally) intimidating humanoids, two metres
tall, with a reddish-brown exoskeleton, limb joints encased by segmented rings permitting full articulation. The heads had
a sculpted appearance, with eyes concealed in a deep horizontal crease. Their hands were their most human characteristic,
with leathery skin replacing the exoskeleton. It meant they could use any artefact built for a human, with emphasis on weapons.
Each of them carried a laser pistol and a cortical jammer on their belts, along with restraint cuffs. The belt was their sole
article of clothing.

Parker Higgens glanced round dumbly at the serjeants, then back at the girl. She was wearing a very expensive pale blue suit,
and her ice-blue eyes conveyed an unnerving impression of depth. Her nose… Parker Higgens might have been a bureaucrat, but
he wasn’t stupid. “You?” he whispered incredulously.

Ione gave him a faint smile and stood up, extending her hand. “Yes, Mr Director. Me, I’m afraid. Ione Saldana.”

He shook the hand weakly, it was very small and cool in his. There was a signet ring on her finger, a red ruby carved with
the Saldana crest: the crowned phoenix. It was the Kulu Crown Prince’s ring, Michael hadn’t bothered to return it to the keeper
of the crown jewellery when he was sent into exile. Parker Higgens had last seen it on Maurice Saldana’s finger.

“I’m honoured, ma’am,” Parker Higgens said; he had come very close to blurting:
but you’re a girl
. “I knew your father, he was an inspiring man.”

“Thank you.” There was no trace of humour on Ione’s face. “I appreciate you’re busy, Mr Director, but I’d like to inspect
the project’s major facilities this morning. Then I shall require each division’s senior staff to assemble summaries of their
work for a presentation in two days’ time. I have tried to keep abreast of the findings, but remote viewing through Tranquillity’s
senses and having them explained in person are two different things.”

Parker Higgens’s whole universe trembled. A review, and like it or not this slip of a girl held the purse strings, the
life
strings of the research project. What if… “Of course, ma’am, I’ll show you round myself.”

Ione started to walk round the desk.

“Ma’am? May I ask what your policy towards the Laymil research project is? Previous Lords of Ruin have been very—

“Relax, Mr Director. My ancestors were quite right: unravelling the Laymil mystery should be given the highest priority.”

The prospect of imminent disaster retreated from his view, like rain-clouds rolling away to reveal the sun. It was going to
be all right after all. Almost. A girl! Saldana heirs were always male. “Yes, ma’am!”

The serjeants lined up into an escort squad around Ione. “Come along,” she said, and swept out of the office.

Parker Higgens found his legs racing in an undignified manner to catch up. He wished he could make people jump obediently
like that.

There
is
a third Lord of Ruin.

The news broke thirty-seven seconds after Ione and Parker Higgens walked into the laboratory block housing the Laymil Plant
Genetics Division. Everybody who worked for the project was fitted with neural nanonics. So once the instinctive flash of
guilt and the accompanying shock of having the director and five serjeants walk in unannounced ten minutes into the working
day had worn off, and the introductions began, professors and technicians alike opened channels into the habitat’s communication
net. Nearly every datavise began: You’re not going to believe this—

Ione was shown AV projections of Laymil plant genes, sealed propagators with seed shoots worming their way up through the
soil, and large fern-analogue plants with scarlet fronds growing in pots, and given small shrivelled black fruits to taste.