The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)

CHAPTER 15


Pearl Valley on Corcyra

Adele could have ridden in the truck’s cab between Captain Samona and his Navy driver, but she had decided that the cross-bench in the box was probably a better choice. The canvas sides were rolled up to the roof so the visibility was just as good in every direction except forward, and it would be easier to get out if they were ambushed. Spray which the four lift fans kicked up from the Cephisis River clung like a heavy mist to those in back, but she was used to that sort of thing.

The air-cushion truck was large enough to hold a platoon, but there were only four Navy personnel in the back with Adele and the other three Cinnabar nationals. The Transformationists—which in this case meant Brother Altgeld relaying Daniel’s decision—had directed the other three factions to come with only six people each.

Samona was holding rigidly to the limit. He probably felt that he couldn’t bring enough gunmen with him to make a real difference if everything went wrong, so he was gaining good will by obeying the rules. In front of Adele, he had ordered the Freccia’s sailing master—the destroyer’s highest ranking space officer with Samona gone and his lieutenant hostage on Ischia—to come in at low level in an emergency. After the Pantellarian ships’ attack at Hablinger, that was a credible threat.

Adele wasn’t expecting an ambush. Tovera, to her left on the bench, and Hale, on her right to the other side of Vesey, seemed to feel otherwise. Hale might not have been so nervous on her own, but Tovera’s alertness seemed to have infected her.

Adele’s lips quirked. Tovera was always alert and always expected an attack, but Tovera was a sociopath and not really human. An ordinary human being who acted the way she did would be insane. Hale would have to learn that.

Or go insane, of course. There were always options.

The truck slowed, then turned hard left with the S-bend skidding which was the inevitable province of air-cushion vehicles. Vesey half-rose and bent over Hale to look forward, clinging to one of the hoops which supported the roof and sides.

“We’re on the creek now,” she called over the fan howl. “The settlement should be less than a mile—”

Vesey jerked back and shouted, “Whoa!”

She’s been shot! Adele brought the pistol out of her pocket without thinking of what she was doing. The small weapon wouldn’t be effective at any distance, but it was what she had.

Branches banged against the cab and then along the hoops as the truck lurched onward. They would have slapped Vesey in the face, possibly blinding her, if she hadn’t dodged quickly.

The truck was pushing through foliage on both sides now, and repeatedly the skirts bumped over rocks above the surface of the stream. There was less spray, but leaves and occasionally living creatures were scraped into the truck box.

A bronze-colored creature no longer than an index finger flopped from a branch and immediately struck at the nearest object: Tovera’s left boot. Hale raised her carbine to use the butt as a pestle. “I’ll get it!” she said.

“No!” said Tovera, bending over.

Hale hesitated. Vesey put her hand over Hale’s, though her eyes were fixed on the creature. Adele thought it had tiny legs around the margin of its body, but she might have been seeing a flap of translucent skin. It was almost certainly poisonous.

“It’ll bite you,” Hale said, amazed that her companions didn’t appear to see the obvious.

Tovera’s hand moved; her fingers pinched the creature just behind the head. With the same motion, she flipped it over the side of the vehicle. It was still writhing and apparently unharmed.

There was a tiny splotch of yellow where the creature had been attached to the gray boot. Tovera looked at Hale and said, “Thank you. But I felt that professional courtesy was called for.”

Vesey chortled; Adele smiled. Hale, nonplussed, lowered her carbine.

“Six kept the ship on the surface all the way up the river,” Vesey said, looking sideways but seated firmly in the center of the bench with Adele. “It’s a pity he lifted here instead of clearing it for us.”

“There might have been people here in the creek that he couldn’t have seen until he was on them,” Adele said, following Vesey’s eyes.

And the foliage was alive and full of lesser life. Daniel was certainly ruthless enough to let his thrusters sear a lethal path across a forest, but it was the sort of thing he preferred to avoid. This far up the river, the Kiesche was beyond the slant range of anti-ship missiles from Brotherhood.

There wasn’t a great deal that Adele cared about; certainly not other living things, with the exception of a few human beings who had taken her into their friendship and protection. She appreciated people who did care, though. People should choose to behave well to their surroundings, human or otherwise.

“Surely Captain Leary didn’t come this far in surface effect?” Hale said. “Really, I don’t think that would be possible. Flying fifty miles in the atmosphere would be an amazing job in a tramp freighter, even at five hundred feet or so.”

Tovera leaned forward. “It’s possible,” she said. “From what I’ve seen, Lieutenant Vesey could do it. Not so, Lieutenant?”

Vesey looked embarrassed. “Not so well as Six, certainly,” she said. “But if I were forced to try, I believe I would have managed the business, yes.”

She gestured toward the open back of the truck to change the subject from herself. “As for what Six did, though, there’s no question, Hale,” she said. “The mud bar at the mouth of this creek had been baked to shale. You could see it broken into plates after we’d driven over it.”

Tovera grinned, still looking at Hale. “Stay with Vesey,” she said. “There’s no end of things you can learn. If you survive.”

Tovera returned to surveying the forest they were bucking through. Adele thought about the interaction she had just witnessed. Vesey was quiet and easily overlooked. Hale, a much more forceful officer, had probably been taking her as a cipher to be ignored or even elbowed aside despite her rank. Thanks to Tovera, that wouldn’t happen now.

An ordinary human being, Cory for example, wouldn’t have thought of correcting Hale’s mistake until it had flashed up as an open problem. I wonder if a smart sociopath who works at it isn’t better at being human than most human beings are?

Another aspect of the business occurred to Adele, though she kept the frown of doubt from reaching her face. Tovera worked at displaying herself as an intelligent, caring member of Adele’s circle—the intelligence was real—because she had attached herself to Adele. Tovera’s natural behavior was more similar to that of a weasel than to that of the caring pedagogue she had just mimicked.

Adele let herself smile broadly enough that a stranger would have recognized the expression. I’ve found a reason for living: to encourage Tovera to be a kinder, gentler person when kind, gentle behavior is appropriate. The universe being what it was, the natural Tovera had many opportunities to display herself—or itself—nonetheless.

Captain Samona slid open the window between the cab and the truck box. “I see it ahead!” he called.

A woman in coveralls stood by the riverbank. She waggled one of her orange paddles in the air, then pointed both paddles in parallel past herself.

“That’s the Kiesche!” Hale said, leaning out to look forward. Adele could see a starship through the windshield, but she couldn’t have sworn that it was the Kiesche. In any case, that was Daniel waving from the base of the ship’s ramp.

The truck slowed, hopped, and then stopped thirty feet from the Kiesche. The Navy personnel—at least two of the four were simply gunmen, not spacers—used the skirt for a step as they exited by the back of the truck. They jogged around on both sides to flank Captain Samona as he got out of the cab.

Vesey hopped to the ground and reached upward to take Adele’s hand and brace her as she followed. Hale watched with a slight frown. She hadn’t been a member of the crew for long enough to automatically offer the mistress help with any physical test.

Vesey smiled at Adele and said, “It’s good to be back.”

“Yes,” said Adele, walking toward Daniel. He had now been joined by a pair of middle-aged strangers.

She heard Hale saying, “I didn’t realize you’d been here before, Lieutenant.”

Adele smiled. It must be difficult for an outsider like Hale to work into an existing family, but she was trying.

Hogg stood by the ramp with his hands in his pockets, looking toward the ground car which was pulling into the clearing. Following it was a six-wheeled truck with a pintle-mounted automatic weapon. Hogg’s stocked impeller leaned against the outrigger beside him. It threatened no one and was easy to overlook—unless something unpleasant started to happen.

The ground car settled as the driver released the pressure in the hydraulic suspension which had given it an extra 30 centimeters of clearance. Administrator Tibbs got out.


Brother Graves had said that the road from Brotherhood to the Transformationist settlement was circuitous and occasionally rough. The Regiment didn’t have a full-sized air-cushion vehicle, so their envoys to the conference had decided to travel this way instead of coming upriver in a pair of air-cushion jeeps.

“Lady Mundy,” said Daniel. “Allow me to present you to Coordinator Altgeld and the community’s military adviser, Sister Rennie.”

“Lady Mundy,” said Rennie, offering her hand after Adele had shaken with the coordinator, “I’d appreciate a moment to chat with you and your servant before the general conference gets under way. If that’s agreeable to you, Captain Leary?”

“Lady Mundy doesn’t need my approval to speak with anyone she pleases,” said Daniel, his tone minusculely guarded.

Adele understood Daniel’s concern. The unexpected is rarely a spacer’s friend. Or a spy’s, come to that.

Tovera stepped between Adele and Rennie. “Where were you planning to take us?” she said harshly to the Transformationist.

“I thought we’d step to the edge of the field there,” Rennie said in a mild tone. She nodded to the belt of waist-high grass between the mowed field and the natural forest. “That way we remain in sight of everyone, but we’re out of the line of fire of the impeller in the hummock we’ll be standing next to.”

Tovera barked a laugh. Adele had heard her servant laugh before, but the timbre of this sound was like nothing in the past.

“Sure,” Tovera said. “Let’s get out of the way.”

Adele followed Rennie and Tovera. When she got close enough she saw that what she’d taken for a natural swell in the ground was actually covered with chameleon fabric which mimicked the surrounding grass. She didn’t doubt that there was an automatic impeller concealed within.

Rennie nodded minusculely toward the hillock. “The man there is a former Land Forces sergeant,” she said, “and the best gunner I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine why the Pantellarians would want to attack us, but I’m not privy to their internal counsels. Colonel Mursiello and his cronies don’t need a reason to attack someone—just an opportunity. I want them to regret it if they decide they have an opportunity here.”

Rennie breathed deeply. “Lady Mundy,” she said. “I’ve told my colleagues, and your colleagues after the Kiesche landed, that I was an Alliance colonel in my life before I joined the community here. This is true, but I think I should add to you—”

“Because she’ll learn it herself!” Tovera said.

“Of course Lady Mundy would learn it—and would learn even if you didn’t know already, mistress,” Rennie said, her voice suddenly hard. Her eyes locked with Tovera’s for a moment, then flicked back to Adele. “That I was not a colonel in the Army of the Alliance but rather in the Fifth Bureau.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Adele. “I was a librarian before I joined the RCN, and those habits of thought still color my perceptions.”

Rennie nodded. “Yes, they do,” she said. In a voice that might have been wistful she said, “I was sent to Pearl Valley fifteen years ago, investigating. I pretended to be a convert, of course. To my surprise I found real kinship, a wonderful thing. Nobody cared what I had been or why I had come here, even after I confessed. It’s an amazing feeling.”

She smiled, her eyes on the past. “It transformed me,” she said. She laughed to make a joke out of what she had said, if anyone chose to believe that it was a joke.

It wasn’t a joke, of course. Adele said, “I understand what it means to become a member of a family after a lifetime of being alone.”

The thrum of powerful fans sounded, approaching from the north. “That will be the Garrison’s two armored personnel carriers,” Rennie said. “If they’ve been able to get both of them airborne, that is. Let’s head for the Chapel.”

Tovera said, “Let’s not get too close till the Garrison has landed, though.”

“Umm?” said Adele, looking from Tovera to Rennie.

“There are meter-high steel spikes in the bushes near the chapel,” Rennie said. “We’ve asked our visitors to stay at least fifty meters out, so it shouldn’t matter; but if someone did try to land an aircar too close to the building…well, you can’t tell how far a fan blade will fly.”

They walked toward the chapel as two APCs came in low over the treetops, one of them laboring. Adele joined the laughter as the Garrison vehicles suddenly jerked away as they started to land beside the Chapel’s porch.

***

Daniel followed Hogg through the wedge-shaped doorway of the Chapel and stutter-stepped before he regained his stride. He really disliked the habit of some people to stop in doorways with others—with Daniel himself—behind them, but the sudden wash of peace that came over him had almost made him do the same thing himself.

The room was not a rotunda though the interior floor plan was round. Daniel looked at the ceiling as he walked down the aisle toward the table at the far end The roof sloped upward to a central tower covered with a frosted skylight. The sides glowed blue, and the metal tracery which strengthened the translucent panels flowed in curves which were themselves soothing.

The tall windows between the wall buttresses were of colored glass. Most of them gave the interior a feeling of the blue depths of the sea, though there were swirls and blotches from the whole spectrum visible when Daniel looked directly at the panels. The wall opposite the entrance was red in emphasis but the light through it was nonetheless peaceful.

“This is the most lovely building I’ve ever been in,” Daniel said to Brother Altgeld.

Altgeld smiled. “It was a very peaceful spot from the beginning,” the coordinator said. “Our records say that was the reason the Chapel was built here.”

The table at the base of the central aisle was rectangular. Mursiello was presumably the man in an Alliance dress uniform with the hollow stars of a colonel on his shoulder-boards. He had appropriated one end of the table, and Captain Hochner sat to his right on the long side nearer the entrance.

Samona and Tibbs, each with an aide—the Regimental aide wore a Pantellarian major’s service uniform—were both on the opposite long side. Adele was seated on the right end of the near side, and Sister Rennie was beside Hochner.

Daniel started toward the seat between Rennie and Adele. “Please take the end spot, Captain Leary,” Altgeld said in a clear voice. “We’re gathered to hear your proposals.That place will allow you to address all the principals without turning your head.”

“I’m not here to listen to somebody telling us to make nice-nice with the Pantellarian oppressors because they’re friends of Cinnabar,” Mursiello said. He glared in challenge at Daniel. The room’s acoustics were excellent.

Daniel chuckled as he took the place offered to him, but he put his hands on the back of the chair instead of sitting down. “As best I know,” he said cheerfully, “my government doesn’t have a position on whoever’s in charge on Pantellaria—or Corcyra, more to the point. Certainly I don’t. I’m here as an entrepreneur, I suppose you’d say.”

Nobody at the table spoke. Beyond them, the ranks of curving benches would seat about six hundred people; most of the spaces were filled. Apart from the normal creaks and shuffling of a large gathering, the spectators might have been miles away.

“Now, I’ve got a military background as I’m sure you know,” Daniel said, “but it doesn’t take an expert to see that the present stalemate is ruining Corcyra. You’re shipping about half the copper that you were before the Pantellarians landed, and your prices are lower as well because of the perceived risk in case Pantellaria tries to enforce a real blockade.”

“They won’t,” said Captain Samona.

“Perceived risk, Captain,” Daniel said. “The reduced prices are a matter of record as you can check as easily as I—”

As Adele.

“—did.”

Mursiello muttered something under his breath, but no one interrupted again.

“The quickest way to break the stalemate in a good way, good for independent Corcyra that is, is to get anti-ship missiles from Karst,” Daniel said. “And the best way to do that is to get your envoys back from the jackleg pirates holding them and execute the deal which those envoys have already negotiated.”

He grinned at his listeners. “You won’t do better the next time,” he said, “and the folks ruling Karst may well be having second thoughts already. I’ve dealt with them, remember.”

“We can’t get the envoys back,” Mursiello said. “Those idiots on Ischia want us to gut the country, give away the next twenty years—”

“It’s not that bad!” said Tibbs, glaring at Mursiello like a bright-eyed bird. “They want the carrying trade, but their prices—”

“They want the trade, Karst wants the trade, everybody wants a piece of us!” Mursiello said. He slammed his fist on the table. “Well they’re not going to get it!”


“Colleagues,” Daniel said. “I think—”

“Mursiello, you were a police sergeant on Pantellaria before you decided to take Alliance money to beat up miners here,” said Captain Samona. “Prospering as a thug doesn’t make you a statesman!”

“You can shut your gob now, you stuck-up prick!” Mursiello said, lurching to his feet.

Hochner was standing also. He’d found a replacement for the pistol Hogg had taken away. Now he unbuckled his holster flap with his left hand and put his right on the butt.

A Transformationist from the nearest benches gripped the back of Hochner’s neck with one hand. He twisted his wrist up with the other.

The pistol clanked to the floor. Hochner tried to turn but couldn’t. His face was turning purple, a combination of strain and fury. The man holding him was easily in his fifties and didn’t look particularly strong, but Hochner wasn’t going anywhere.

The Transformationist’s face was calm and expressionless. I wonder what he did before he found god? Daniel thought.

Altgeld touched the point of Hochner’s hip. “Please sit down, Captain,” he said. “We take seriously our promise to keep all our guests safe.”

You certainly saved Hochner’s life, Daniel thought. If Hogg—or Tovera!—had stopped the Garrison officer, it would have been messier and quite permanent.

“Siddown, Hochner,” Mursiello said, dropping back into his chair. He was angry, but he kept his eyes on the table in front of him. He must have realized that there were hundreds of people in the room with him, and scarcely a soul would mind if he were strapped to the conference table and flayed alive.

Hochner sat down beside Brother Altgeld. The man holding him moved back to the bench; he was so nondescript that Daniel wasn’t sure he could tell the fellow from those seated to either side of him.

Tovera is pretty colorless also, come to think.

“I understand your qualms about paying extortion to Ischia,” Daniel said. “Apart from anything else, you can’t give both Ischia and Karst the same thing, and getting your envoys back won’t help unless you have the missiles also.”

Everyone was looking at him. They looked like fish coming to the surface of a pond when they expect to be fed.

“Therefore,” Daniel said, “I propose to gain the release of the envoys by my own efforts. I don’t require any financial contribution from Corcyra, before or after the fact, but I want your agreement to ratify my actions if that becomes necessary. I want it clear that I’m not a pirate.”

He wasn’t lying, but he was allowing his listeners to believe things that he hadn’t said. For most of the parties it didn’t matter—though as a matter of course, Daniel didn’t like to discuss his plans with people who had no reason to know except their curiosity.

Mursiello and Hochner were another matter. It was important that they believe Daniel was going to attempt the impossible.

“Just how do you plan to do this?” Mursiello said. “I don’t think you can!”

“You may be correct of course, Colonel,” Daniel said, “but in that case you haven’t lost anything. I mean you personally and the independence movement also. As for my plans—”

He looked around the table again, still smiling.

“—I’ll say just that I hope to release the hostages without violence, but I will use any means which the usage of the civilized galaxy deems to be proper for dealing with pirates. As the Ischians have shown themselves to be.”

There was silence. Mursiello still glowered, but there was a cunning look beneath his hostility.

“It appears to me that an attempt to free the prisoners by violence,” said Altgeld, “may cause the Ischians to execute them. Or indeed, that the prisoners may be killed in the attempt?”

Daniel nodded. “Yes,” he said, “those are certainly possibilities. War has risks, life has risks. But I point out—”

He deliberately shaped his expression and tone on the stern models his father had used when urging the Senate to take a difficult course because the alternatives were worse.

“—that if you don’t achieve the return of the prisoners, the Ischians will offer them to Pantellaria. In fact, I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened already. And the Pantellarians will certainly execute them as traitors.”

“Leary’s right,” said Administrator Tibbs. “We have nothing to lose.”

Captain Samona nodded and said, “Yes, Leary’s offering the best chance we’ve had to get our people back and maybe to win this war. Go ahead, I say.”

Altgeld looked at the Garrison commander. “Colonel Mursiello?” he said. “Are you willing for Captain Leary to make the attempt under the auspices of the Independence Council?”

Mursiello’s face worked with suppressed anger. “All right, waste your time, Leary,” he said. “But it is a waste of time, you know!”

“Then I believe we’re done here,” Altgeld said. He and Rennie got to their feet. “All of you are welcome to stay with us as long as you like. No one will try to convert you, though I’ll warn you that our community here is a very pleasant place to remain.”

Adele was putting away her data unit. “Thank you,” said Daniel. “I need to prepare the ship for lift-off. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be able to return.”

Assuming we’re not all dead. But Daniel always assumed that he would succeed, and that had generally turned out to be true.