The Rifter's Covenant (24 page)

Now he would have
to move his bed again, until the walls reacted to the new location. The
earliest Dol’jharian occupiers of the stations had had to move their quarters
from chamber to chamber, for the Urian construct’s activity increased around
concentrations of humans. In fact, its pace of adaptation had been accelerating
when the Urian specialist finally figured out how to control its substance.

Morrighon grimaced.
Although the scientist denied it, to him the stasis clamps seemed most like
instruments of pain. But Lysanter was not a Dol’jharian. He wouldn’t see how
apt that was.

The Bori watched
the walls and ceiling suspiciously as he dressed. He tried not to think about
the floor, where the clamps lay thickest. He turned his gaze to the extra
stasis clamps the techs had recently installed, his unease intensifying. Inspection
of the work logs had revealed that the order had come from Anaris—and the
clamps from his quarters. This manner of expressing confidence in an underling
was so foreign to Dol’jharian practice that it had taken Morrighon two days to
realize what it meant. And he could never say anything to Anaris, for the
unspoken message was clear: he was expected to perform flawlessly as his master
and Eusabian commenced the ritual duel of succession that would end in death
for one of them.

Morrighon grabbed
his compad off the otherwise empty table at the end of his bed. He missed the
weight of the coms on his belt, and their whispering to him at night, despite
the fact they were designed to force vulnerable acoustic communications. But
they weren’t used on the Suneater; Lysanter had insisted that all that RF
energy might trigger unusual behavior from the station. The Dol’jharians had
perforce to accept the use of compads by their menials, which were far more
secure. And powerful, a fact Tatriman was demonstrating almost daily.

He tabbed the adit
control. A flicker of energy lanced against a fistula-like cavity in the Urian
portal, which dilated with a nasty sucking noise. He winced.

The usual scurry of
technicians and gray-clad Dol’jharian ordinaries clogged the corridor outside;
the station ran on three shifts and was never quiet. He dodged a grav pallet
laden with a bizarre tangle of Urian devices dredged from some recess of the station,
almost tripping over one of the datacables on the floor.

Gingerly tabbing
the annunciator to Anaris’s quarters, he could not prevent another twitch of
revulsion as the portal sucked open.

Anaris’s chamber
had square corners and flat walls, like a normal room, an effect only possible
with dyplast panels and many stasis clamps. It was, however, Morrighon noted,
less square than it had been. Morrighon held his compad close to his side as he
stepped in. Waiting until the door closed, he bowed to Anaris, who looked
amused.

“Well, what do you
have for me this watch? You’ve powered up the station in secret?”

Morrighon ignored
the oddness of Anaris’s teasing comment, an increasingly common mode of address
that he’d never have expected from a Dol’jharian lord. It had to be the
influence of this place. It wasn’t meant for humans, and it was twisting them
all into distortions of themselves.

“An interesting
report from Lysanter’s section. Personnel stationed near the Chamber of Kronos
are reporting psychic disturbances with increasing frequency.”

The heir’s eyes
narrowed; Morrighon had already sensed that Anaris did not like the Chamber.

“Disturbances?” One
of Anaris’s black brows slanted sardonically.

“Among the
Dol’jharian contingent—insomnia, mostly. Among subject personnel—nightmares,
sleep apnea, somnambulism. A further investigation revealed that the frequency
correlates inversely with distance from the center of the station.”

Anaris was silent
for an uncomfortably long time. “Dreams,” he said at last. “The place engenders
bad dreams.”

“If I may speak?”
Morrighon said carefully.

Anaris waved a
negligent hand.

“I think the grays
and Tarkans dream also, but fear the mark of the Chorei.”

Despite Anaris’s
frequent instructions to speak frankly, Morrighon felt sweat pop out on his
forehead. Anaris had come close to killing him when he had stumbled upon the
heir practicing t’kinetic imagery. For Eusabian would not hesitate to execute
Anaris if he found out his son was tainted with blood of the long-vanished
Chorei, psychic adepts whose island had been annihilated by an asteroid strike
engineered by the mainland Dol’jharians early in that planet’s space age.

Finally Anaris
inclined his head, and Morrighon breathed again. “What conclusion has he drawn
from that? Or you?”

“He says he does
not know what it signifies, but I think he is withholding his conclusions from
us for fear of Barrodagh. Unfortunately we have little leverage with him yet.”

“Then we will have
to wait until my father is informed. After that, Lysanter can have no objection
to my knowing.”

After a pause,
Morrighon understood that he had been dismissed, and withdrew. But he was sure
of it now: whatever it was in the Heart of Kronos that had startled Anaris on
the Fist of Dol’jhar was active here even more so.

o0o

For Barrodagh,
too, the summons from his Lord came as a relief. He had been kept awake for
hours by the random lip-smacking sounds from the fistula that had opened in one
concave corner. It had only lapsed into silence an hour ago.

He closed his eyes
tiredly, then jerked them open again and scanned the room. He could not control
the terror that trembled in his belly when he awoke and the dimensions of the
room had altered. If anyone else suffered nightmares about being slowly
suffocated in the digestive tract of some monstrous creature, they appeared to
control it—and so must he. Lysanter insisted that the Suneater was not alive in
any useful sense, merely highly adaptive.

“It is a
homeostatic mechanism, converging on Urian conditions. It’s really just trying
to make us comfortable.”

That was just the
problem. They were not Urians. And if this was Urian comfort, what did that say
about them?

Barrodagh sat up
and stepped directly onto his shoes in order to dress, avoiding any portion of
his flesh encountering the warm give of the construct’s floor, which was
undiminished by the thick, rubbery coating over it. As he pulled on his
clothes, he renewed with furious determination his vow to contrive, somehow, to
annex as many stasis clamps as he could manage. Materials being limited, only
the lords had enough of them now, but Barrodagh would find a way.

Dressed, he slapped
the medtab onto his back below his neck and pulled up the high collar of his
tunic. He felt a spasm in his cheek; his arms tightened in anticipation of the
overwhelming, almost electric pain, but it didn’t come. There was no need for
Eusabian to know of the
sansouci
and
other medications he was taking to control the tic. He breathed a fraction
easier and left.

In the crowded
corridor he moved in a bubble of avoidance. As he reached the portal to
Eusabian’s quarters he noted some warty Ur-fruit sprouting from the ceiling.
They were no particular danger, since these ones smelled vile, but the Bori
directed a passing gray to have them removed anyway. He still found it hard to
believe that anyone would sample such things, regardless of how good they
smelled—but the twisted bodies of the victims of such stupidity were
convincing.

The tic threatened
again when the portal to Eusabian’s quarters eructated. The Ur-be-damned things
didn’t even make a consistent noise. More than anything, Barrodagh hated the
changeability of the station.

He entered
Eusabian’s chamber, which was a physical relief from the weirdness of the
halls: except for the sound of the door, one would think one had been
transplanted to the Panarch’s personal library in the Palace Minor on the
Mandala. The two wing chairs, the ancient rugs, the wall hangings, all had been
carefully removed from Arthelion and brought here. The only other dissonant
note was the holographic window, which did not depict the serene gardens of the
Mandala, but a grim vista of Dol’jhar’s volcanic realm as seen from the tower
of Jhar D’ocha.

Reminding Barrodagh
of his ever-present danger.

He bowed deeply. Heavy-browed
and brooding, Eusabian glanced his way, then returned to studying that grim
vista. “Your report?”

As instructed,
Barrodagh reported new intelligence of Anaris first. But what was to him the
most damning information could not be shared with Eusabian: that Anaris had
yielded some of his stasis clamps, apparently for the comfort of Morrighon.
Barrodagh was not entirely sure it was not a feint portraying a non-existent
softness, but in any case, the Avatar would only interpret the report as a veiled
criticism of the fact that he had not done the same for Barrodagh.

Eusabian waved the
latest data away irritably as trivial. He was bored again, Barrodagh thought
with another gut-eating surge of adrenaline. Well, the latest report from
Lysanter would be useful in distracting the Lord of Vengeance from his
increasing concentration on the details that attracted his interest.

“Lord, Lysanter’s
latest experiments indicate a psychic component to the station’s activity. He
requests the procurement of a tempath for testing this hypothesis.”

Eusabian looked up
sharply, his black eyes reflecting pinpoints of light. “He believes that a
tempath can fully activate the Suneater?”

Barrodagh hastened
to mitigate his lord’s high expectations. “He says only that it is the most
promising avenue of further exploration.” He continued hurriedly. “I have
already identified a number of tempaths. The most readily available is Li Pung
of Rifthaven. With your approval I will requisition him from the Syndics.”

Although he would
not put it that way to them.
He’d
learned the hard way that even though their power had been sharply diminished,
the rulers of Rifthaven were more easily dealt with if outward respect was
shown.

“Do so. Procure all
you can find. What one cannot do, perhaps many can.”

Seeking to prolong
Eusabian’s interest, in the hopes of keeping him away from the hyperwave, he
described several other possible tempaths. He didn’t mention that it was very
unlikely that any tempaths they could find would or could work together.
According to Lysanter, in proximity tempaths’ focus would be on blocking one
another, rendering their sensitivity to outside stimuli the weaker.

“Very well,” said
Eusabian. “Is there more?”

Barrodagh hesitated
fractionally. With the hyperwave digest he had prepared, he judged this new
development would assuage the Avatar’s boredom for the rest of the day. So the
developments on Barca could wait.

Anyway, he didn’t
want to bring Hreem and Norio to Eusabian’s attention while the matter of
tempaths was in the forefront. Barrodagh was not at all sure he wanted Norio on
the Suneater, at least not until he was well prepared.

He bowed again.
“No, Lord. Today’s digest is ready for you.”

At Eusabian’s nod
he tabbed on the vid and withdrew. He would detail Anderic to pick up Li Pung
while he was at Rifthaven, and more cims with the raw materials to manufacture
more stasis clamps. And mind-blurs. Lots of them. Too bad those psionic devices
couldn’t be cimmed.

The thought of a
full night’s sleep made him sway with fatigue as the portal sucked shut behind
him, then, looking around to make sure no one had observed his moment of
weakness, he hurried away.

Eloatri, High
Phanist of Desrien, stood at the window looking out into the garden of the
Cloisters. Tall spikes of flowers nodded in the light of the diffusers far
above; an enormous, fuzzy black bee fumbled among the blooms, buzzing loudly.

The air breathed
with the vigor of spring, but beneath the heady scents she sensed a stale
quality, like a room too long tenanted without a thorough cleaning. Either it
was imagination or else some kind of psychic reaction to the terrible
overcrowding of Ares.

Her palm tingled,
forcing her gaze to the image of the Digrammaton burned forever into her hand.
The weight of the true vision that had accompanied the Digrammaton across
light-years of space pressed heavily on her now, and she looked back at the
console, where a tiny datachip lay near the reader.

On the chip was the
report from Gehenna: the death of the Panarch at the hands of his enemy’s son.

The annunciator
chimed, then Tuan ushered Gnostor Manderian into her study.

She clasped hands
with the Dol’jharian-born monk, noting the impression of tremendous strength
held easily in check. She wondered what Vi’ya’s grip felt like as he said, “I
did not see Ivard, but Vi’ya reports he is thriving. The Eya’a are still in
hibernation.”

“Coming back to the
population increase here must have been overwhelming,” Eloatri said.

“Vi’ya admitted as
much, though she indicated they are ready to reemerge.”

“Good.”

“The Kelly seem
unchanged. I will visit them all again soon, on the pretext of expanding the
semaphore system.”

“It is well,” Eloatri
said. “Please continue to monitor their welfare.” She turned to the console.
“Gnostor, I have here the report from Gehenna, which I’ve put off viewing until
you could be with me. I hope you can help me evaluate what I see, and draw my
attention to what I don’t see.”

“The vid shows very
little of what really happened,” he replied. “And there are those events I
witnessed which I do not fully understand.”

“Then we will
ponder them together,” Eloatri said, and he bowed his readiness to comply.

They seated themselves
side by side in comfortable chairs at the console. “What you will not see
here,” Manderian said, “are the actions of the Eya’a, a few minutes before this
record begins, revealing that Vi’ya had been trying to watch things through the
Aerenarch’s eyes.” He paused. “And succeeding.”