The Rifter's Covenant (49 page)

The others lifted
glasses, and belatedly she lifted her own, but she only touched her dry lips to
the liquid without tasting it. This pain is jealousy
,
she thought, fighting for control, for clarity. I am jealous of a
Dol’jharian Rifter who has no manners.

Someone laughed,
proposing a second toast. Vannis’s arm ached but she raised her glass again,
forcing her lips into a smile.

“We’ll do this
again, after the trial.” He had moved away from the Dol’jharian and stood at
the table again. His smile hardened. “It’s time to discuss the interim. I have
attempted to protect the investigation by assigning Rear-Admiral Willsones to
equal status with al-Gessinav. However, Hesthar has shown us ample evidence of
her talents with data manipulation, and it is entirely possible she has
discovered at least in some measure the work you have done. I want every one of
you to carefully circumscribe your activities until the day of the trial. We
will shortly discuss the details of a protection plan that Meliarch Vahn has
come up with. He and his team will be your invisible guardians until the trial
is over.”

Fierin clasped her
hands tightly together under her chin. “Can’t you just arrest them now, Your
Majesty?”

Brandon shook his
head. “Without hard evidence, an attempt to move too soon could hurt us badly.
Everyone here knows how high emotions are running. There is abundant evidence
of tampering with the newsfeeds. We suspect that Hesthar has been behind the
heavy emphasis on the perfidy of the Rifter fleets. The ochlologists tell me
that the revelation of high-level Douloi complicity in the attack—remember that
everyone on Ares has suffered grievously from it—would inevitably trigger riots,
perhaps worse.”

“But why must
Jesimar go to trial, now that we know? Can’t we petition for Manumission?”

Although there was
no change in his mode of speech, abruptly Brandon was speaking as the Panarch.
“I’m sorry, Fierin, but justice must be seen to be executed. And the gnostors
of ochlology insist the trial is necessary to dissipate the growing tendency
toward baiting crowds. Its focus is Jesimar, and he will not be safe unless he
is publicly exonerated.”

Montrose had moved
closer and listened intently, his scowl deepening.

“As well,” Tovr
Ixvan murmured, “the evidence was obtained without let or warrant. It can be
used only to establish innocence, not to prove guilt.”

“Do you mean we
can’t touch Srivashti?” Montrose’s voice had lowered to a rumble.

“Nor Torigan nor
Gessinav. I’m afraid not,” the vocat said, “since His Majesty is unwilling—for
reasons he has explained —to expose this information to obtain Writs of
Nescience against them.”

“That’s exactly why
I became a Rifter!” Montrose shouted.

Brandon looked his
way.

“Srivashti
destroyed Timberwell. My family died in the ruins. And the authorities there
told me they could do nothing. Now we hear of an even greater betrayal, and
still you will do
nothing?
”
Montrose’s voice rose to a bellow that made the room ring.

“‘After the first
death, there is no other,’” quoted Brandon after the resonance of Montrose’s
anguish had died away. His voice was quiet, full of genuine regret. “You cannot
rank such betrayals. But do you think that it stops here, that there are no
other crimes in Tau Srivashti’s past? Would you sacrifice your crewmate for
vengeance? We deal in justice here, not revenge, and justice you will have,
Montrose. That I promise.”

The big man stared
at him for a long beat. Then, surprising Vannis with his grace, stiff though
his posture was, he executed a genuine deference in the proper mode, his face
was still florid with anger.

Brandon bowed
formally in return, sealing the promise. Then he drew attention away from
Montrose by pouring out more wine for everyone, and turning the conversation to
the vintages he’d found in the Enclave wine cellar.

The conversation
became general, moving naturally toward customs on different worlds. Brandon let
Ixvan lead. On the periphery Montrose sat there, silent and grim. Twice he
blinked and wiped his eyes. His manner relaxed incrementally.

As the wine flowed,
Brandon sent people over to Dyarch Vahn one at a time to discuss the details of
their part of the protection plan.

Vannis remained
where she was, thinking rapidly. Her political goal? She very nearly had it.

The personal goal?

She remembered the
night she brought him Fierin’s chip. Before Brandon and she had returned to the
ballroom, there had been that damped communication on his console: the
strange-looking little man Barrodagh who talked of needing tempaths for the
Suneater.
Vannis had read his lips,
and then Brandon’s as he put the words under seal.

At the time she had
attributed the reason for this inexplicable action to naval politics, as well
as the ongoing suppression of anything that might reveal Ares’s possession of a
hyperwave. She altered her posture, observing the Dol’jharian captain. This
woman was a tempath, and Vannis was morally certain that Brandon did not want her
to know about that call. Time to find out why.

Vannis launched
herself on one of her social circuits of the room, making certain she spoke to
everyone. The words were random, automatic after so many years of practice. She
waited until Jaim finished his conversation with Vi’ya and moved away. A quick
glance showed Brandon deep in talk with Omilov and Fierin, the latter still
hugging her elbows tightly against her.

Approaching with
leisurely step, Vannis said, “What is it like, being a tempath?”

The night-black
eyes lifted and considered Vannis coolly. Up close, she seemed much younger
than she first appeared. “What is it like not being one?” Her voice was low,
pleasant, with a subtle and faintly sinister accent sharpening the consonants.

“A foolish
question, for which I apologize,” Vannis said, gesturing in mercy mode. “But
you are a rarity, with a talent many consider quite formidable. I would like to
learn more about it.”

The tempath again
waited, her gaze steady and direct. Vannis felt her own gaze slide away, and
forcing herself to meet those eyes, she knew her own to be limpid as pondwater.

“It is a burden,”
the tempath said.

“Can you read
words?”

“No. Emotions
only.”

“Can you affect
others’ emotions?”

“Only as anyone else
can.”

“Curious,” Vannis
said. Her heart accelerated again. “If your talent is only reactive, not
proactive, why would it be necessary for tempaths to be involved with this
Suneater horror?”

“I do not
understand,” the tempath said.

Vannis gestured
toward Brandon’s console. “By accident I saw one of those broadcasts . . .”
And she saw in the woman’s comprehension that she knew about the hyperwave the
Navy had captured.
.
“The enemy seeks
tempaths.”

“I had not known
this,” Vi’ya said.

“Well, I believe
Brandon put it under his seal.” Vannis watched the dark eyes glance Brandon’s
way.

“Why do you tell me
this?”

Because Vi’ya the
Rifter was not just a personal inconvenience, but a political nightmare
.
“Does it matter?” Vannis countered.

“No,” Captain Vi’ya
said, her soft voice as impassive as her face. “It does not.”

Eloatri was
pleased to discover that when she requested a meeting with Sebastian Omilov, he
readily agreed, asking only that she and Manderian come to the Jupiter Project
labs. On their arrival—meeting along the way even stiffer security than during
her first visit—she again found the gnostor working with the stellar hologram.

This time she was
prepared. She felt only a faint frisson of unease as she stepped out into the
vast infinity of interstellar space. Manderian evinced no reaction; he stood
relaxed, clasped hands half-hidden by the sleeves of his robe. The stars
spilling thickly across the chamber silhouetted Omilov’s portly figure against
a drift of tortured gases glowing in a slash of darkness.

He greeted them
politely, though she sensed a lingering reserve in his address to her. Perhaps
he didn’t trust her not to catapult him back into the deep connectedness of the
Dreamtime again. Sebastian Omilov had put himself there, she thought; it would
never let him go.

The gnostor tapped
his boswell and spoke into the air. “Run temporal regression, minus ten
megayears.” He turned to Eloatri and Manderian. “I know you both are following
the discussions—increasingly heated, I fear—about the fate of the Suneater.
This regression reveals both the most damning and the most exciting datum about
that device.”

Lettering flashed
across the sea of stars: incomprehensible numbers and symbols. “I’ll have to
dress this up for my presentation,” Omilov murmured. “We used data from the
Telvarna’s
mission and older surveys
from the DataNet that I requested some time ago. The couriers are overloaded,
trying to keep us connected.”

Eloatri watched as
the twisted chaos of the Rift slowly straightened, the wisps of nebulae
raveling back into stars, as if a wound in the substance of the galaxy was
healing. When the motion stopped, the gash across the stars was still untidy,
but now it could be seen to be a narrow, twisted cone. A red point of light
glowed near the blunt point.

“The Suneater,”
said Omilov. “The regression supports my hypothesis that it created the Rift.”

But the High
Phanist already understood. She remembered Tomiko and the chalice filled with
blood, saw again the strong-shouldered, dark-visaged man staring at her. Now
she knew that the image of the restaurant in her vision was multivocal, an
ingestion archetype confirming the terrible power of what they faced.

“Devourer of Suns,”
she said to Omilov. His eyes reflected points of starlight. “I, too, have both
damning and exciting news. As yet I have told no one but Gnostor Manderian. I
have found the last member of the Unity.”

“Ah.” Omilov was
politely curious but unimpressed.

“It is Anaris
achreash-Eusabian, the Avatar’s son and heir.”

The gnostor grunted
as though punched in the his chest. “He is on the Suneater, and our enemy.”

“As for the
Suneater, his father is calling for tempaths to control it. As for the enmity, he
seems to be his father’s enemy as well.”

Omilov gestured
absently, dismissing the topic of Anaris. “I doubt that control is the proper
word, considering the Suneater’s probable complexity. The hyperrelay brought in
by Captain MacKenzie is almost incomprehensible—a black box, if you will. I
have enormous respect for whoever designed the human-Urian interfaces on it.”

“Eusabian thinks
only in terms of control,” Eloatri stated, mildly irritated at Omilov’s
tendency to take refuge in pedantry.

“We do not know how
true that is of Anaris,” Manderian said. “The Ares replicates of his fosterage
records are incomplete. I have requested more information, but the fall of the
S’lift on Arthelion destroyed most of its links to the DataNet.”

Eloatri looked back
at the Rift. “In any case, Gnostor Omilov, you see that our goals converge. You
wish to preserve the Suneater for study.”

She turned away
from the terrible vision, her confidence in the path Telos had set her on
shaken.

“And you, Numen?”
Omilov prompted.

“And I,” she said
slowly. “I must ensure that the members of the Unity here on Ares reach the
Suneater before it is destroyed.”

Sebastian Omilov
stared at the High Phanist. Her face was shadowed; stars gleamed in her eyes,
giving him an eerie sense of looking through a pair of pellucid windows into
infinity. He recollected one of her titles: Gate of Telos.

He twitched his
shoulders, trying to dispel the . . . awe. It was too unsettling a reminder of
the Dreamtime. He could not discern whether she meant the Suneater would
inevitably be destroyed, or if she saw that as the outcome only if the
polymental unity were not assembled there.

But when he asked
her, she only shrugged and smiled wanly. “I have no idea why I phrased it that
way. It was appropriately Delphic, wasn’t it?”

Omilov sensed she
meant more than just “ambiguous,” and wondered if the term had once had a
religious connotation.

The penumbral gloom
of the hologram chamber had become oppressive. He tapped his boswell to bring
the lights up. “Why don’t we move to my workroom, where we won’t be disturbed?”
He could no longer deny the reality of the realm in which Eloatri moved, but he
needed the hard-edged rationality of his workroom as a counterbalance to the
mysticism that he could not quantify.

He seated them in a
comfortable circle of overstuffed chairs in one corner, cut off from the main
work area by a bank of consoles. A steward brought coffee; the cup looked
incongruously toy-like in Manderian’s huge hand. Next to him Eloatri looked tiny,
almost fragile.

Omilov dismissed
the steward and turned on the acoustic dampers as she left.

Then Eloatri spoke.
“Sebastian, I must be frank with you.” The familiar address underscored her
words. “I cannot guarantee that the Unity’s purpose may not be the destruction
of the Suneater, rather than its preservation. We call such a nexus a hinge of
time because it may either open or shut a door. But the Navy will seek only to
destroy it, you know that.”

Omilov sighed.
“Yes. I had hopes of persuading them otherwise, and will still attempt to do
so, but I will undoubtedly fail. Even Brandon—the Panarch—seems inclined that
way. But even though the Eya’a are determined to reach it, how do you propose
to persuade Captain Vi’ya and the rest of her crew, let alone the Kelly, to go
to the Suneater?”

“The Kelly are no
longer a problem,” Eloatri said. “With the arrival of the Elder, the genome of
the Archon has been transferred to threir sibling, so Portus-Dartinus-Atos are
free to go. I am sure that if Ivard goes, so will threy; and Ivard will go if
Vi’ya does.”