Emperor of Dawn

CHAPTER SIX

Neustria (Epsilon Eridani II), 4328 C.E.

"So Tanzler-Yataghan is dead?"

"Certifiably," Garth assured. "After Roderick Brady-Schiavona wiped out his fleet, his officers suddenly discovered where their true loyalties had lain all along."

"It’s possible that you’re being too cynical," Corin cautioned. "I know a lot of those people, and I imagine many of them really were looking for an opportunity to turn on Tanzler-Yataghan—because, you see, I also knew him."

"Maybe you’re right. At any rate, I understand Brady-Schiavona wasn’t entirely pleased. He would have preferred a prisoner to a corpse. His father’s policy is to co-opt surrendered enemies—give them posts in his own forces and let them prove themselves. Still, he’s now got the Iota Pegasi Sector wrapped up tight, and is already starting to occupy the rest of the old People’s Democratic Union." Garth gazed shrewdly out from under heavy brows. "What’s the matter, Corin? I just confirmed what you thought all along: that Tanzler-Yataghan was living on borrowed time. Why the long face?"

"That’s right," Janille put in, doing her bit by refilling Corin’s wine glass. "This vindicates your decision to put as much distance between him and yourself as possible."

"Does it? I suppose so." Corin took a sip. The local wines lived up to their reputation; they’d even made a believer out of Garth. But unwelcome emotions came between him and full enjoyment of either the wine or the news. His eyes kept straying to the sleeve of his uniform. Garth had agreed with him that the Deathstriders’ new deep-space component needed a distinctive uniform to go with its distinctive rank titles. ("A separation of services is a sound idea," the big mercenary had remarked sagely. "Everybody needs somebody to look down on.") He’d done it by simply reversing colors; instead of red faced with black, Corin wore black faced with red. Either way, it couldn’t conceivably be mistaken for the Imperial services’ grays, with flashes of color to denote branches.

"Yes, I suppose so," Corin repeated, as much to himself as to his companions. "I did the sensible thing . . . like a rat leaving a sinking ship."

"Ha!" Janille’s bark of laughter held no humor. "The only rat on this sinking ship was the captain! You worry too much." Her only visible response to the news of Tanzler-Yataghan’s death had been one of profound satisfaction.

"She’s right." Garth nodded emphatically. "Anybody can see you made the right move. We—the three of us—make a good team. Haven’t we done well so far?" He underlined his rhetorical question with a wave that took in the elegantly appointed office and the view through the wide old-fashioned windows, which overlooked the planetary capital of Haulteclere.

It was certainly a prospect calculated to soothe anxieties. Only eleven light-years from Sol, Epsilon Eridani had been among the first destinations for slower-than-light interstellar colonizers. That early tide of colonization had tended to branch into streams of distinct ethnic character, laying the foundations of the multisystemic states that were to dominate the age after the Federation withered away to insignificance. The Eridanus region had drawn Western Europeans, who in turn had followed their various national affinities. The resulting planetary particularisms had, in the end, brought about the partition of the Greater Eridanus Combine—unfortunately at precisely the time when it had been the "Protector-State" of the moment, standing between the thirty-third century’s delicate interstellar order and total war. But Neustria’s settlers, mostly from an Old Earth country called "France," had left a mark on this world that still persisted even though the population was by now as mixed as it was everywhere else. That imprint was most visible in Haulteclere’s Old City, surrounding the capitol building in whose upper storeys they sat. Beyond, the soaring ramparts of modern towers gleamed in the afternoon light of Epsilon Eridani. Still further out, the land rose toward the distant peaks of the Massif Dornier. The lower slopes were covered with mixed vegetation; higher up, the bluish-green of Luonli plants predominated, legacy of the ecology established by this planet’s terraformers.

I’ve heard rumors that one or two Luonli are still alive, in the mountains. . . .

"Yes," Garth’s basso interrupted Corin’s reverie as the recently self-promoted general answered his own question. "We’ve got this system sewed up, and the feelers we’ve gotten from Chewning at Sol are promising. Pretty soon it’ll be time for our next move."

"It had better be soon," Janille observed dourly. Like Garth, she wore the original Deathstrider uniform—in her case, with lieutenant colonel’s insignia on the cuffs. "Brady-Schiavona is rapidly becoming the most powerful factor in the Empire. And when his son has finished consolidating the sectors beyond Iota Pegasi his power base will be in a different class than everybody else’s."

Garth’s face wore that look of serene unconcern which could be maddening to people not blessed with his kind of certitude. "Brady-Schiavona could make himself Emperor, all right—if that was his ambition. But he doesn’t have the fire in his belly. Look at the way he’s saddled himself with a puppet Emperor instead of acting on his own. Besides, this is going to be decided largely by who’s best positioned; and that ‘power base’ of his is in the outer fringe areas."

"Not any more. He’s seized the capital!"

"But not the secondary capital of Old Earth. In the end, the game will go to whoever holds both capital systems, Sigma Draconis and Sol. And when I’m in control of Sol I’ll be able to—"

"Chewning might have something to say about that," Janille cautioned. "At last report, when he says ‘Jump,’ everybody at Sol asks ‘How high?’ on the way up."

"But he won’t be able to keep control there—not without my help. The first time somebody mounts a serious attack against him, I’ll be able to make myself indispensable to him, just like I did with old Delon, which was how I got my foot in the door here. You see, he’s got the same problem Brady-Schiavona does. Chewning claims to be acting in Oleg’s name, commanding the remaining loyalist forces around Sol and Alpha Centauri . . . some of whose officers actually take it seriously. This limits his freedom of action."

"Good thing for us you’ve got it all figured out." Janille finished off her wine and stood up, giving Garth a glance at which he had the good grace to look abashed. The three of them had evolved a relationship which Corin recognized as odd on the rare occasions when he stopped to think about it at all. He and Janille had become lovers almost as soon as the Deathstriders had departed 85 Pegasi with their new "escort." He was well aware of what had passed between Janille and Garth on the besieged planet of Ostwelt, and had been somewhat apprehensive of the latter’s reaction to the new configuration of things. But the mercenary leader and would-be Emperor had accepted matters with his usual equanimity. Corin had a pretty definite idea of what lay behind Garth’s customary good nature: a concentration on his grand long-term ambition beside which all else, especially in the interpersonal realm, shrank into insignificance. Still, he couldn’t help liking the big heavy-planet man.

He stood up, enjoying the ease of it—Neustria’s gravity was less than seventy percent that of the Prometheus he remembered, or the Old Earth his genes remembered. "And now, it’s time for us to be going."

"Right." Garth set his own glass down. "I’m not satisfied with Deong’s last couple of reports on the new construction at Val d’Argent Base. A personal visit from both of you ought to shake her up." He activated his desk communicator. "Is everything in readiness to transpose Captain Marshak and Lieutenant Colonel Dornay?"

"Yes, sir," a voice affirmed, speaking from only a few miles away, on the other side of Haulteclere. "And the reception committee’s waiting at their destination."

"Good." Garth signed off and smiled at the other two. "Nice that Oleg’s done something right." Neustria’s transposer network had come unscathed through the civil disturbances, and the provisional government was doing as good a job of running it as of conducting the rest of the system’s domestic business. Corin and Janille walked to the far end of the office and stood on a slightly raised rectangle of floor. Corin, a suspenders-and-belt man by temperament, reached into a pocket and withdrew his link, a specialized two-way communicator that provided the sensor contact the transposer would have needed had it not been focused on the known, fixed coordinates of the dais. "Ready," he spoke into it.

"Very good, sir," a voice replied from the link. And Garth’s office vanished.

For a split second, too brief to take in details, Corin glimpsed the stage on which they now stood, and the control panel behind which its operators sat. The transposer couldn’t send objects directly from one remote location to another; the process had to be through the device itself, which had brought them from Garth’s office and would now send them to the base they were to inspect, a continent away. So quickly that Corin might have missed it if he’d blinked, the transposer room was gone—

And Val d’Argent Base wasn’t there.

* * *

It took some small but measurable time before the fact sank home: they weren’t where they were supposed to be. Then they reacted simultaneously in their own ways, each with equal futility. Janille started to reach for a weapon that wasn’t there, then fell into unarmed fighting stance. Corin snatched out his link and rapped, "This is Commodore Marshak! Come in, anyone . . ." Then, as no enemy appeared and the link proved inoperative, they lapsed into silent staring at their surroundings.

They were in an enclosed space that seemed too large to be enclosed, although there was nothing familiar to give a sense of scale. A smooth stone floor stretched away in all directions, until it met the rough-textured rock wall that curved upward to form a dome. Near the floor, depressions in the wall held some source of indirect lighting that was surprisingly effective, although the vastness was still fairly dim. There were no windows of any kind, but across the floor from them a great archway opened onto darkness. They could not discern what lay beyond.

Janille, combat-trained, did not panic. And Corin couldn’t let himself do so in her presence, for reasons whose archaism was not lost on him. "Where are we?" she asked in a small but steady voice. The acoustics were better than might have been expected.

"I don’t know. My link is dead. We’re still on Neustria—at least the gravity feels the same."

"Or in it." She looked around again. "If this isn’t subterranean, somebody’s gone to a lot of work to make it seem that way."

"You’re probably right—although if this is a cavern it’s a damned big one. The question is, how did we get here?"

"Some transposer malfunction, I suppose. The real question is, how do we get out of here?"

"There seems to be only one way." Corin indicated the cavernous archway. Janille nodded, and they set out across the wide floor.

They were halfway to the opening, when the darkness beyond it seemed to move and shift.

"Actually, the ‘malfunction’ to which you refer was an accident for which I am responsible."

Almost instantly, they realized that the accentless, asexual voice wasn’t really a voice at all, for they hadn’t heard it—at least not in the usual sense. And they knew what it must truly be. But they didn’t feel the shuddering horror they should have felt at unpermitted telepathic contact. Or perhaps they simply didn’t notice such trivia as the traducing of a cultural taboo. For the dim movements in the shadows beyond the archway had resolved themselves into the figure that now emerged into the cavern, walking on its legs and its pair of limbs that could serve as either legs or arms, so that its not-really-crocodilian head reached not much more than three times Corin’s height—half the total length of the sinuous body with its shimmering pattern of coppery-gold scales and its two pairs of arms and its pair of folded wings which at full extension would have spanned the full width of the chamber. . . .

Shock held Corin in a grip of icy steel, as his sanity ran about inside him looking for a way to get out. With some part of his consciousness, he heard a small, strangled sound emerge from Janille’s direction, slowly building as though it wanted to turn into a scream. His own vocal cords were as paralyzed as the rest of him.

Enormous amber eyes regarded them from far above. "Compose yourselves. I have no desire to harm you. I wish only to rectify this unfortunate occurrence and send you on your way." (Amusement.) "Although I can readily imagine that this is somewhat of a shock."

"S-s-somewhat?" Corin croaked, as he gazed up into the face of one of humanity’s predecessors among the stars. That face had remained immobile, of course—a telepathic race had no need of facial expressions as an adjunct to communication. But it was impossible to avoid the impression that the horny "lips" had quirked upward as that nonverbal emotion had reverberated inside their heads in tandem with the Luon’s "words."

"So you’re . . . you’re reading our minds?"

"Not in the sense you imagine. We have certain ethics in the matter of mental privacy, you know. I am only receiving those surface thoughts you actually verbalize." (Puzzlement.) "But why are you so shocked at the notion? You have, I believe, been aware for some time that our species possesses psionic capabilities as a matter of course, as opposed to the rare and relatively feeble talents that exist among humans."

"Yes," Corin managed to affirm. Janille no longer seemed to be building up to hysterics, but had subsided into stunned silence. "Or at least we’ve theorized that you have such powers—like the telekinetic levitation that enables beings your size to fly. And we’ve speculated that you can create a kind of . . . negative illusion that renders you effectively invisible. That would account for the fact that almost nobody ever seems to actually see you."

"But you are seeing me now," the Luon gently reminded him. "And surely there is nothing sinister about us. For one thing, I perceive that you possess an innate, genetically determined psionic resistance that precludes any kind of brute-force mental control, even if I were capable of it and my ethical system permitted it."

"Yes, I know." Like everyone else, Corin had been tested for such abilities at an early age.

"And beyond that," the Luon went on, "in more than two of your millennia we have never evinced any hostility toward humans."

"No . . . nor any desire to answer any questions." He felt rather than saw a nervous stiffening at his side, as though Janille thought he was being altogether too cheeky. "And besides, to us you look like a very formidable creature out of our mythology. In fact, there’s a theory that you’re somehow behind that particular myth."

"The dragon. Yes. As a matter of fact, one of us did impart that bit of information—among others—to one of you, over four centuries ago."

"Basil Castellan? There were always tales that he had some kind of Luonli connection . . . that they told him things. . . ."

"Yes, I believe that was the human’s name." Momentarily, it seemed to Corin that the Luon eyed him in an odd way, and an indefinable emotion disturbed the placid surface of the pseudo-voice. But the moment passed. "He was never very forthcoming with the information afterwards. But from what he did occasionally say, stories and rumors spread. And it is true: the dragon legends originated in late-prehistoric times with two groups of my species, of very different character. Those in western Eurasia were, shall we say, not proper representatives of our race. The Far East’s experience with us was happier."

"Uh, beg pardon?" The thoughts had registered as verbal symbols in Corin’s mind because he’d studied Old Earth’s geography—but in a required course, long ago.

"Never mind. At any rate, that was thousands upon thousands of years before humans encountered us again—this time in the role of interstellar explorers themselves. On this very planet, in fact."

"Yes! I remember." Corin’s mind flew to whatever obscure bits of familiar knowledge it could find as it struggled to remain afloat in a sea of unreality. "It started back in the early space age." Just before the end of the quasi-legendary twentieth century, he recalled. "They discovered that Epsilon Eridani was a young star—its rapid spin proved that. So when it turned out to have a life-bearing planet, the discovery seemed to strike at the foundations of astrophysics. They guessed, correctly, that this world—and the others like it that kept turning up—must have been terraformed by a nonhuman civilization. And they wondered where it had gone. But then they met you, and . . . well . . . that is . . ."

(Dry amusement.) "You need not be embarrassed. I am aware of your race’s mystification at finding the mighty terraformers of prehistory reduced to a few scattered survivors. There was really no mystery. Our home sun—which had always been something of a stellar freak—abruptly flared into an intensity which meant the end of all life on our native planet."

"But . . . but, the planets you’d terraformed . . . ?"

"Even given the time, we could not have evacuated our population to them. You see, we had learned to our cost that we could not—save for a few rare individuals—survive away from the world that had produced us." (The dryness without the amusement.) "We might well have traded all our psionic aptitude for your species’ marvelous adaptability, had we been offered the exchange. All we could do was settle those exceptional individuals among the stars, in a desperate bid for racial survival. It was unsuccessful. The interstellar settlers could survive on their remade worlds . . . but after a while they ceased to reproduce. They grew too few to support the sheer number of specializations a complex civilization requires—always a danger to our race, for which a multitudinous population had never been an ecological possibility."

"I can see why," said Janille—her first words in a while, muttered in a small, stunned voice. "But . . . how is it that any of you are left?"

"Our lifespans are inconceivably long by your standards—thousands of your years. Even so, very few remain. And we are old . . . old. The remnants of our ancient technology—naturally built to last, given the length of our lives—will sustain us as long as we endure. And solitude does not have the kind of deleterious psychological effects on us that it would on you; our presentient ancestors were solitary animals. I am the last on this world. Soon we will be gone from the universe across which we blazed like a brief shooting star—one of evolution’s overspecialized dead ends."

For a time Corin and Janille were silenced by the sheer inadequacy of anything they could say. Finally, Janille cleared her throat and changed the subject. "Uh, you said something earlier about an ‘accident’ bringing us here."

"Yes." (Briskness.) "Our technology makes use of certain devices and effects which . . . stress the space/time continuum in such a way as to interfere with teleportation. It had never been a great problem for us, given the limited scope of that psionic technique."

"So you can do that too?" Corin breathed.

"Yes, but we are not immune to its inherent limitations. Now, however, you humans have learned how to artificially duplicate it, in a way which compensates for potential-energy differentials and thus makes far greater ranges practical. So I fear that incidents like this may become a problem—although this is, to my knowledge, the first time it has happened."

"So you’re telling us that somewhere between Haulteclere and the Val d’Argent Base, some . . . byproduct of your technology caused us to be—"

" ‘Caught.’ Yes, I believe the word you were about to form is accurate. We are inside the Massif Dornier, not very far from Haulteclere." (Contrition.) "To repeat, I regret that you have been, through no intent of mine, subjected to this inconvenience. And I have every intention of enabling you to return whence you came."

"That seems simple enough. Just turn off, or disconnect, whatever it is that interferes with the transposer—and which I assume is also what’s interfering with my link." A nonverbal affirmative confirmed Corin’s supposition. "Then I’ll be able to contact Haulteclere and they’ll just transpose us out of here."

"I am afraid it is not quite that simple. You see . . . not to put too fine a point on it, I do not know how to deactivate the device."

"What?" Janille was abruptly restored to her usual self. "What the fuck do you mean you don’t know how to deactivate it?"

(Embarrassed defensiveness.) "As I pointed out, this situation has never arisen before. And the equipment in question simply runs itself, indefinitely. And . . . well, I was never an engineer or anything of the sort." (Hasty change of subject.) "At any rate, what is done is done. The only remedy is for me to take you outside the radius of effect. This will involve a journey to the surface."

"I don’t suppose . . ." Corin shook his head. "But of course you can’t simply teleport up there with us, can you? Not here."

"Of course not," the Luon’s "voice" echoed in his mind. "The phenomenon is at bottom the same whether achieved by psionic or mechanical means. And both forms are—"

"Equally subject to interference," Janille finished grumpily. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, lead the way."

They walked through stone corridors scaled to accommodate Luonli. And walked. And walked. The ancient colonizers must, Corin thought, have hollowed out a significant percentage of the Massif Dornier. He didn’t particularly marvel at the achievement, for humans had known nanotechnology for many centuries, and took for granted its use in the manipulation and shaping of inanimate objects, however much they shrank from some of its other potential applications. So the question that occupied his mind was not how but why. The Luonli’s love of mountainous landscapes was well known. But why did they burrow under those mountains, where they must create spaces vast enough to accommodate their physical and psychological needs? It would probably remain a mystery, for he doubted the titanic being who walked ahead of them with a deceptively awkward gait would be able to answer the question even if he had an opportunity to pose it.

The inconceivable caverns went on and on. It was hard to even think of oneself as being enclosed when the walls were so far away and the ceiling could barely be made out in the dimness. Indeed, an agoraphobe might have had more trouble than a claustrophobe. (The latter phobia, at least, clearly didn’t afflict the Luonli.) But after a while the emptiness began to gnaw at him. The Luon must have been right about aloneness not posing a threat to his people’s sanity—and, indeed, the Luonli were known to be hermaphrodites and had therefore lacked one major source of evolutionary pressure toward gregariousness. Or, alternatively, the Luon might in fact be insane. It didn’t seem to be . . . but what did madness look like in an alien? Corin ordered himself to abandon that line of thought.

After a while the two humans began to tire. They were both in good shape, especially Janille. But the Luon’s pace, though deliberately held down in deference to their limitations (the reason for the seeming awkwardness), was difficult to keep up with over the long haul. And their bellies began to twist with the pangs of hunger, for they’d departed in late afternoon in anticipation of a buffet at the Val d’Argent officers’ club. And the footgear of their planetside service dress uniforms wasn’t exactly intended for hiking.

To hell with machismo, Corin finally decided. "Hey!" he called out in the direction of the Luon, whose name he didn’t know. "Can’t we rest for a while?"

"Of course." (Concern.) "I should have realized. And I imagine you are hungry as well. I can provide foodstuffs which you can consume without danger, though also without full nutritional adequacy. If you wish, I can go and—"

"That’s all right," Corin demurred as he sank to the smooth stone floor gratefully. He didn’t want anything to delay their departure. Janille’s silence as she settled to the floor beside him suggested that she concurred. "We can get along without food until we get back to Haulteclere."

"In that case, perhaps you should simply rest. In fact . . ." The Luon’s face remained as immobile as ever, but the great amber eyes held Corin’s with a disconcerting directness. "You probably wish to sleep for a little while."

"Sleep? Oh, no. We don’t want to lose any time in—" But Janille was already emitting ladylike snores beside him. And, for a fact, his own eyelids were heavier than the hour and the physical exertion could account for. It should have been worrisome . . . but as he continued to meet the Luon’s eyes, and gazed into those bottomless pools of molten gold, it didn’t seem very important. . . .

A sudden imperative fended away the dark wings of slumber that beat slowly at the edges of his consciousness. "Uh, listen," he forced himself to say, "we’re grateful for your help."

"As I explained, your being here is due to—"

"Yes. But you could have simply let us starve to death in your caverns, and no one would ever have been the wiser."

(Primness.) "That would scarcely have been ethical." (Hesitation, underneath which roiled a complex stew of emotions, including something resembling calculation closely enough to have aroused Corin’s suspicion at any other time.) "However, if you insist on considering yourself in my debt, I believe you will be in a position to discharge that debt in the not-too-remote future . . . at a star on the outskirts of what your Empire calls the Beta Aquilae Sector."

"Huh? But I’ve never been there."

"No, but I have reason to believe you will find yourself there within the year. When you do, you will know what you must do to . . . but I have already said far too much. Now you must sleep."

Corin found he could not argue. He remembered nothing further, not even dreams.

* * *

The dawn light of Epsilon Eridani, peeking over the flank of a mountain, brought him awake.

He was instantly on his feet, oblivious to the chill, staring wildly around at the landscape of the upper Massif Dornier. Between the range to the east above which the sun was rising and the higher ranges to the west spread a vista of uplands, cut into canyons by rivers that tumbled from higher to lower elevations in spectacular waterfalls. They were on a crag which overlooked one such waterfall, plunging down into misty depths with a steady roar.

But Corin had eyes for none of it. He looked around frantically, until a coppery-golden glint of reflected sunrise caught his eye. He squinted at it and discerned the slow beat of vast wings, far away.

"Hey!" he yelled, trying to overcome the noise of the waterfall but knowing it didn’t matter if he did or not. "Where are we? Where have you brought us?" Beside him, Janille stirred into wakefulness at his shouting.

"Ah, you are awake." That which his mind interpreted as a voice was weaker than before, and gradually diminished as the Luon drew further and further away. "I belatedly realized I could carry the two of you more quickly than you could walk. I did so while you slept. You are now in a region where the transposer and your link will function. You’ll be able to return to Haulteclere . . . where I have reason to believe some very interesting news will be awaiting you."

"But . . . wait. Wait!" Corin screamed with a loudness that would leave him with a raw throat, not knowing whether it would do any good or not. But the Luon—either because it was out of its telepathic range, or by intention—did not reply. The metallic-seeming glint dwindled toward the southwest and was gone.

"We never learned its name," Janille remarked. She got to her feet and rubbed sleep from her eyes. "What do you suppose it meant about ‘interesting news’?"

"No idea." Corin activated his link, and this time it came to life. He spoke hoarsely into it. "This is Captain Marshak. Come in, please. Anyone, please acknowledge."

A screech of static resolved itself into a voice. "Captain, this is Haulteclere central transposer station. Is Colonel Dornay still with you?"

"She’s here, and we’re both fine. Can you get a fix on us?"

"Yes, sir. Your link is—"

"Corin!" A bass voice overrode the operator’s. "What the hell are you two doing up there? We’ve had a planetwide search under way all night, ever since you didn’t appear at Val d’Argent."

"It’s a long story, Garth. Right now, we just need to get back." Corin became aware of his empty stomach, his stiffness, the early-morning high-altitude chill. "On second thought, breakfast and a hot shower would be nice."

"Sure. Stand by."

Janille waited beside Corin, for a second or so. The waterfall, the mountains, and the deep-blue sky with its fleecy clouds vanished, and they were on the Haulteclere transposer stage.

Corin had expected to be instantly transferred back to Garth’s headquarters. But they stayed where they were, and the big mercenary strode out past the control boards. Never a dandy, the heavy-planet man looked exceptionally rumpled, as though he’d slept in his clothes—or, perhaps, not slept at all.

"Janille! Corin! What happened to you? Do you need to get checked out by a doctor?"

"No, Garth, we’re fine. When we get to sit down in private, we’ll tell you everything. It’s quite a story."

"Not as good as the one I have."

Corin gave the general a quizzical look. "You may change your mind when you’ve heard us."

"I doubt it," Garth said grimly. "We just got the news last night, via tachyon beam, while the search for you was going on. Oleg’s been assassinated!"

The stare they gave each other wasn’t the reaction he’d expected.