Transgalactic (13 page)

What seemed likely, however, was that, once back in space, she would have headed for Federation Central, seeking, as he did, information on the mysterious appearance of a human, or even hoping that he would come to the same conclusion that she had, and seek a reunion in a logical spot. The only problem was that he didn't know the location of Federation Central, and it wasn't available on any star maps for reasons that might have their root in Galactic paranoia or in legitimate concern that dissidents might strike first at the heart of the Federation. Secrecy might be a better defense than armaments.

Asha, on the other hand, might well know its location from her long imprisonment there and her flight from it with the navigator Ren, but no one else knew except those who had to know. According to legend. But in a crowded and corrupt Federation, secrets were currency, and nothing remained hidden for long.

Riley switched to the mythology section and scanned it with the same random method he had used on the news. In the vast treasure of stories from every species and from every generation of every species, myths about Federation Central were as common as myths about gods, matings, heroes, villains, death, and rebirth, but the storage area was huge, and he could not enter a search parameter without alerting the monitors. What he chanced upon, therefore, was of little use. Federation Central, the myths said, could be reached only after death. It was the heaven every species sought. It was located at the heart of the galaxy, in a splendid system blessed by a beneficent sun, with plentiful air and water and growing things, where the wise and modest representatives from each of the member species in the galaxy gathered to make peace and distribute goods and happiness to every deserving person.

Or it was located at the end of the galaxy, where only the gods were welcome.

Riley chanced a search of navigation charts, but it came up with only a statement that no such information existed and that asking for it was an act of treason punishable by imprisonment or death.

In rapid succession then, Riley asked for an account number and then made a substantial purchase. When he had been shanghaied into serving as the agent aboard the
Geoffrey
for a person or persons unknown and his commitment had been ensured by the insertion of an irremovable biological computer in his head, he had been promised enough credits to buy a sizable portion of a habitable planet. A portion of it had been deposited to his account. He had taken the precaution, before he left Dante, of transferring the funds to another account under a different identity, of which, over the course of his earlier assignments, he had accumulated several. He had no illusions that the people who had conscripted him would try to find his assets—they had found out everything else about him. But not this. Maybe it was not worth their trouble. Or maybe they left it alone as a way of tracking him down.

He got up from the booth and made his way through the crowd of drunk and half-drunk patrons toward a rear exit just as uniformed officers came through the front entrance. As he went, Riley elbowed one burly patron in the stomach and pushed another into a third. Someone threw a punch behind him, and another slugged the person in front of him. Before he had reached the rear, a full-scale brawl had broken out, and the uniforms had difficulty even reaching the booth where he had been sitting.

Riley made his way through little-used corridors and refuse-cluttered alleyways until he reached the outer ring near the port through which he had entered. There his luck ran out. Three ugly and dangerous-looking thugs were waiting for him. One of them had a knife. Another had a metal bar that he whacked against the palm of his hand. The third, the biggest of them, seemed to feel that his hands and bulging arms were weapons enough. He was probably right.

“Hello, guys,” Riley said. They growled and looked menacing without trying. “I really don't have anything of value.”

“Nobody enters and leaves Alley without credits,” the big one said.

“As for entering—” Riley began.

“You think we don't have monitors in the ports?” the big one interrupted. The man with the metal bar pounded it into his palm. “Give us your identity, and we'll let you go.”

“Well, as you know, I'm new here,” Riley said, “and my old identity isn't one I could keep. You understand that, I know. And I haven't established a new one yet. So—”

“Don't fuck with us,” the big one said.

“As to that,” Riley said, “I don't want to hurt you guys. You just go about your business, and I'll—”

The big one laughed.

Riley hit the one with the knife first. It was a blow just below the rib cage that literally took the man's breath away. He collapsed, trying to inhale. In the same motion, Riley turned and hit the man with the metal bar in the side of the neck with the edge of his hand. The man staggered to his knees, dropping his weapon. And, completing his action, he swung toward the biggest one, who had acted as spokesman. The man backed away.

“Say,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Just a stranger hoping to get along,” Riley said. He moved toward the big man. The man moved aside.

“Sorry,” he said. But he didn't sound sorry, just scared.

Riley knew what it was like to face greater speed, greater skills, greater motivation, but he had gained all of those in a lifetime of struggle, and now they were enhanced by the improved coordination and faster reflexes produced by his passage through the Transcendental Machine. He brushed past the big man, found his port, put on his breathing mask and coveralls, and went out into the eternal twilight.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Federation Central computer that had taken control of the Captain's Barge guided it into orbit around the planet below, where it joined a variety of other spaceships, mostly larger and more splendid but of different configurations appropriate to the physical shape and social evolution of the varied species who made up the Federation. No ships except those of the delegates themselves landed on Federation Central. The modest world that provided the records, regulations, and guidance that kept a galaxy of aliens from turning petty disputes into interstellar destruction had few open areas breaking the flat roof that covered almost everything, and the spaceport was one of them.

Orbital space was big, however, and Asha knew there were other ships in orbit only because her ship had sensed them as the Captain's Barge had arrived. The Barge had settled into orbit, waiting for the shuttle to arrive from Federation Central that would bring guards to transfer them below to present their case for the Squeal people's acceptance into the Federation, or, alternatively, to answer the charges to be brought against her for supplying a false identity. And they were confined to orbit, under control of the Federation Central computer, out of an excess of caution, or, perhaps, ordinary common sense intended to prevent a ship loaded with atomic explosives or toxic substances from attacking the planet itself.

The Federation was big and diverse and disciplined by experience, maturity, and example, but information took just as long crossing the galaxy as travel itself, and no one knew what madness lurked in unsuspected areas or unsuspected minds.

Asha told Solomon about all this while he listened with amazement and disbelief. “This,” he said, “is the great organization of many worlds that we Squeal people are applying to join?”

“It is imperfect,” Asha said, “but it is all there is. Yet.” She did not explain the meaning of “yet,” the feeling that was beginning to shape itself in her mind into a concept, that the Federation had devolved into a tangled web of bureaucratic bungles, dead ends, and corruption. That was the best version. The worst was that the bureaucracy had been taken over by autocrats and oligarchs and other hidden and less obvious forces to subvert and control the direction of the Federation itself, for purposes that were not yet clear. Other than enjoyment of the ultimate pleasure, power itself.

“Humans, when they emerged into the galaxy, upset the balance that had existed for many long-cycles,” Asha told Solomon. “A balance that had settled into unexamined acceptance. That's why there was war. Nobody wanted it, everybody feared it, but philosophies clashed, and the Federation saw its fragile system threatened. The Federation did not know the system was fragile until a species arrived that questioned it. Nobody questions anything while things are going well.”

“Tradition is good,” Solomon said.

“Until new conditions emerge,” Asha said. “The Federation governed itself by consensus, a system suited to a galaxy of disparate species, which can come to agreement only when no one is so disadvantaged by a decision that it cannot go along. Everyone has to get something. But the result is only modest accomplishments, and consensus works only when there are no major issues. Which means that major issues never get addressed, and stresses build up until the system explodes. As the human/Federation war did.”

“That makes humans seem like a violent species,” Solomon said.

“And so we are, like the planet that gave us being, bombarded, erupting, with the land shifting beneath us and the winds tearing at us. We're young, unlike the other members of the Federation who have had technological civilizations for tens of thousands of long-cycles. Humans discovered science and technology only a bit more than a thousand long-cycles ago, and we faced all the challenges of evolving on a turbulent planet and learning to cope with that and our own developing ability to free ourselves from the tyranny of nature. We tried all sorts of governing methods—tribes, autocracies, conquerors, oligarchies, feudal hierarchies, divinely ordained kings and emperors, tyrannies, anarchy—before we settled on democracy, or majority rule with built-in protection for minorities. That has its problems, too, but it's better than everything else. It's better at dealing with change, which humans have seen a lot of.”

“And which you're recommending for the Squeal people,” Solomon said.

“Change is coming, no matter what the Squeal people do,” Asha said, “and maybe humans and the Squeal people can help each other make a better Federation.”

The Federation shuttle arrived and connected itself to the Barge's port with a clang that shook the smaller ship. As soon as the atmospheres had been checked and adjusted, the port was opened by the remote computer, and the shuttle's uniformed guards entered—two Xifora, an Alpha Centauran, and a Sirian. The barrellike Sirian seemed to be in charge. It—Sirian gender was always uncertain—and the Xifora ushered Asha and Solomon into the shuttle with only a limited display of authority, while the feathery Alpha Centauran looked on like a neutral observer.

As the shuttle spiraled down toward the metal-roofed planet below, Asha saw the reddish hue of solar-energy collectors basking in the feeble glow of the red-dwarf sun. The sight was magnificent and depressing at the same time—magnificent in its ability to replace inadequate nature with intelligent structures and depressing in the shoddiness of the replacement.

They landed at one of the few openings in the metal roof, a minor spaceport reserved for shuttles, and waited for a tunnel to be extended to their air lock. The atmosphere on Federation Central was breathable, Asha was informed by the Sirian, but just barely, and the Alpha Centauran found it stressful. So might the two of them.

No one seemed in any hurry, including the computer that controlled the port, but finally the connection was completed and they were ushered into the gigantic building that was the headquarters of the Galactic Federation. It was dismal—endless metal corridors, sometimes with metal doors on either side, sometimes painted, often not, with a single metal rail running down the middle. They waited for transportation to arrive. Minutes passed. No one stirred. Inefficiency, it seemed, was built into the system, and into the expectations of the people who lived and worked here. It was a sign, Asha thought, of the decadence that had begun to eat away at the heart of the Federation, and it had infected even the computers that ran the operation while the bureaucrats thought they did.

At last, however, a two-wheeled van appeared, guided only by some unseen instructions. The jitney had space on each side for seats that folded down or stanchions for species that stood, and a transparent shield that came down to protect them from the winds of their passage, and they began their long journey through the endless corridors to the other side of the world.

*   *   *

The trip seemed interminable, another sign, Asha thought, of built-in inefficiency. They were being sent halfway around the world to deal with an issue that any minor functionary could handle. They passed, with little more than a glance, offices with open and closed doors, service rooms, meeting rooms, living spaces, barracks, recycling services, and, infrequently, rooms filled with electronics, probably the computers that controlled everything, humming secret messages to each other. And they passed aliens of various origins and physiologies—alert Xifora, stolid Dorians, solid Sirians, feathered Alpha Centaurans, and dozens of other assorted creatures. It was like the agora of the galaxy, with the appearance of amity and cross-species acceptance, but Asha had seen enough of species interaction to know that the differences had only been buried under a blanket of necessity and that it concealed a thousand resentments and dozens of unsuspected projects tunneling their way toward the surface.

They stopped once at a food dispensary, where nozzles and spigots provided sustenance—mostly gruels and liquids—designed for the varied diets of different species but not for their appetites. The odor of the food dispensed for the Xifora was nauseatingly like decay, and that of the Sirian was almost too pungent to be endured, but Asha found something grainlike for Solomon, whose physiology had not yet been registered, and some fruit-based concoction for herself.

Finally, however, they were delivered in front of a door that opened for their vehicle as it slowed. They had been traveling, with only a brief respite at the dispensary, for half a cycle. Perhaps, Asha thought, the choice of location for their examination had been intentional after all. But if the treatment was planned to weaken her resistance or make her more susceptible to unintended revelations, they did not know who she was.