Chapter Eleven
i
Exactly on schedule, six sol-pol elite guards appeared at the sealed receiving hatch of Guild Headquarters, bearing a new shipment of Veritas capsules sent down on the space elevator. Guild Master Tharion himself stood at the doorway to meet them, using his own access code. He waited on the threshold where hot air scented with baked dust from the streets met the cool mustiness of rarely used levels in the grounded spaceship.
“Standard shipment from OrbLab 2,” the lead guard said.
“And someone has accompanied it every step of the way?” Tharion asked. “Never been out of your sight?”
“Fully accountable, Guild Master. It has never left my own hand,” the guard said. His face was a stony mask partially covered by his dark helmet. “I personally received it from OrbLab 2 and counted the capsules. I rode down the space elevator with the case on my lap, and carried it here.”
Tharion nodded. “I don’t suppose there’s much chance of any having been stolen, then.”
The guard stood at attention. “I can’t see any way it would have been possible, sir.”
Tharion let the armed escort pass into Headquarters. It took only one man to carry the locked case containing a gross of the sky-blue capsules—a week’s production from OrbLab 2—but five other sol-pols guarded him. Though Franz Dokken had suggested that the black market activities would stop with the death of Cialben, Tharion had increased the size of the Veritas escort. Even so, neither the additional guards nor Dokken’s assurances had stopped the smuggling, according to continued rumors of the drug out in the populace in the past week. Tharion did not know what else to do.
He marched with the escort down the echoing metal corridors of the converted military ship, observing their backs, their dark armor, their scarlet gauntlets, boots, and kneepads. The Guild’s elite guard wore genuine old uniforms from the long-defeated SkySword soldiers, rather than imitations, as did the regular sol-pols.
Back before he became Guild Master, Tharion had spent much more time and attention getting to know the elite guards. The soldiers had been an important part of his upbringing, ever-present, impressive. Their loyalty fascinated him.
Eli Strone had been one of them, obsessed with duty, rigid in his awe and admiration for the Truthsayers, trustworthy to the point of being an automaton. Yet somehow he had cracked, and left the Guild, wandering aimlessly for two years until finally driven to murder.
Tharion tried to look at the ranks of elite guards objectively for a moment: armed with deadly weapons, padded with body armor, a powerful force entrusted with protecting the Truthsayers and the Veritas stockpile. He wondered how close any of these others might be to falling into a maelstrom of unpredictability. Like Strone. Though all the sol-pols ostensibly reported to the Guild, they could be dangerous assets.
Deep in the isolated central deck, Tharion used his access code again to enter the shielded chambers that had once been the military ship’s armory. Now, the armory held something more precious and threatening than any high-tech weaponry.
In tiny sealed bins along one wall, the Guild’s stockpile of Veritas capsules had been separated and stored, divided according to potency: the strongest dosages which were given to Truthsayers immediately before pronouncing a verdict; maintenance doses for himself and standby Truthsayers every three days; weekly capsules for the Mediators; and bodyweight-dependent doses of Veritas for children as well as the embryos growing in the infirmary sector of Headquarters.
Lengthy research by the Guild’s biochemists had shown that the drug did not deteriorate over time, and so the stockpile would last them through even a lengthy disaster. He had rarely considered it, but now it made him dizzy to think of how many vital capsules rested in airtight chambers behind their numerous security interlocks. Tharion drew a deep breath.
Truth Holds No Secrets.
He keyed in his access code again, used the SkySword’s thumbprint reader, and finally opened an empty bin to receive the current shipment. The elite guard carrier unlocked his case while the five sol-pols stood outside the armory door. Tharion recorded the control number of the shipment, a precaution he had instituted since the accidental poisoning of Klaryus.
Inside the case lay twelve dozen sky-blue capsules of fresh Veritas cultured over the past week in the isolated, orbital lab, wrapped in translucent packing material. Tharion stood by, counting out each pill to double-check the shipment. The total came out right, as it always did. He checked the documentation and appended his initials.
The entire process seemed so meticulous—yet mistakes continued to be made. Veritas was leaking into society somehow, even though every single capsule could be accounted for, from the beginning of the production line up on OrbLab 2 until it was sealed here in the Guild armory.
Was it someone from inside the Guild? Truthsayers giving up their own dosages, for sale to some high-paying users in the public? But why? Truthsayers had a golden life, given every luxury and amenity they could imagine. What could they be selling the drug for?
The Truthsayer Kalliana had made an error in her verdict of Troy Boren. Had she actively lied? And if she had lied, could the reason be because she herself was somehow involved in the black market smuggling? Had she convicted Troy to cover up any further search for the perpetrators, to conveniently answer all questions, sacrificing an innocent man in the process?
The only other alternative he could imagine was that some foolhardy ring had established a Veritas-culturing and processing station somewhere here on the surface of Atlas, though the horrifying probability of a Mindfire mutation and the dangers of contamination and plague made that unlikely. The simplest mistake could result in a plague that might wipe out thousands. Errors had been made before, and the current technology available to the colonists was far inferior to that originally brought from Earth.
Upon assuming the royal blue sash, Tharion’s first act as Guild Master had been to order a crackdown on the production facilities of OrbLab 2, tightened constraints, quality checks, and an overhaul of the process line, much to the consternation of station exec Dieter Pan and the OrbLab crew. They hated being called to task for a job they considered beyond Tharion’s authority—but the contamination of the Veritas capsule that had killed Guild Master Klaryus was simply inexcusable. The Guild Members—and the entire population of First Landing—had simply been lucky that the poison present in that pill had been merely the distilled toxin, not the wildly spreading plague organism itself.
But though all work on OrbLab 2 had been tightly watched for the past two years—the smuggling had been steadily increasing.
The lead guard sealed the bin containing all twelve dozen capsules. “Finished, sir,” he said. Tharion added his thumbprint lock to secure the bins, then followed the elite guard out into the corridor, where he sealed the armory hatch. Air hissed, draining the atmosphere from the armory vault. Frost crackled around the edges as the temperature dropped.
The Veritas was safe.
Supposedly.
Leaving, Tharion decided to place an extra guard at the door to the stockpile. Probably an empty gesture, but he ordered it anyway.
ii
Tharion searched out the most calming influence he could imagine. Qrista. He sat back in one of the audience seats, alone but certainly not unnoticed, as he watched the Landholders Council session in progress.
Qrista, wearing her Mediator’s sash, sat at the center of the gathered representatives. She looked icily beautiful and stern in her position. Qrista glanced up at him and smiled. Tharion smiled back, waiting for the warming influence of her presence to burn through the glacier surrounding his heart. His Guild was threatened, and he didn’t know how to fight it.
The next speaker on the agenda entered through the broad rear doors, and immediately all the representatives shifted uneasily. A tall muscular man with gray hair in long dreadlocks came forward, wrapped in a dirty brown robe with a ragged hem and patches on the elbows. The Pilgrims wore their uncomfortable robes all day, every day, during their hours of difficult labor, and when they relaxed. It was no wonder the fabric became stained and dirty before long.
“Speak,” Qrista said as the gray-haired man shrugged back his hood and stood silently in front of the Landholders Council, his head bowed. The skin on his cheeks was a weathered, ruddy brown from a lifetime spent outside in the harsh winds and desert sun.
“My name is Kindness,” he said. “Of the Holy Order of Pilgrims from Earth.”
“We know who you are,” Qrista said, glancing at her agenda. “Please be brief. We have no time for sermons or lectures on our sins.”
“Very well,” said Kindness. “I come again to request an allotment of land on Atlas, a barren area unworked by other landholders. Some fifteen thousand of our Pilgrims from Earth are a part of your Atlas society, scattered among the landholdings. We have worked diligently since our arrival here decades ago. We fled the evils of Earth and came to seek a land of our own—but instead you have taken us, separated us, made us your slaves.”
“Now wait a minute—that’s not true,” said the representative from Bondalar Holding.
“A matter of semantics,” Kindness said. “I have no wish to argue words, only to make my point.”
“I think we know what your point is,” said the hard-faced woman representing Koman Holding.
The Pilgrim continued as if he hadn’t heard, or didn’t care. “We Pilgrims have labored without complaint, but we deserve to reap the rewards of our own efforts, or suffer the burdens of our own failures.”
“In short, you want a homeland,” Qrista said, hoping to curtail any further embellishment on the issue.
“Yes,” Kindness answered. “That is exactly what we wish.”
“I sympathize with the Pilgrims, but that will cause immeasurable damage to our fragile society at this point,” said a fresh-faced young Sardili representative. “As you know, Sardili Shores accepted a much larger proportion of the Pilgrim refugees than did any other holding. We are glad to have your labor, and we give you all the freedoms you ask for. I can’t believe you find the conditions too harsh.”
The Pilgrim nodded slightly, but did not comment.
“Much of the economy of our holding depends on the labor of our Pilgrim settlers. If suddenly five thousand of our hardest workers were to pick up and leave, Sardili Holding would collapse.”
“Your economy is not our concern,” said Kindness. “We have waited long enough for a homeland. You are stalling, and we have limits to our patience.”
“Very well,” Qrista said firmly, frowning at her chronometer. “We’ll set up a meeting to discuss the matter thoroughly. At that meeting we will consider a timetable for a gradual displacement of the next generation of Pilgrims. For now, that is all. On to the next matter.”
“But nothing has been decided,” Kindness said, raising himself up and tossing his graying dreadlocks away from his high forehead.
“Nevertheless,” Qrista said, her voice turning brisk, “that is all for today. As it was, we were hard-pressed to accommodate your request for an audience on such short notice.”
Two elite guards marched forward to escort him out. The Pilgrim stood like a statue for a full three seconds. From where he watched, Tharion worried that there might be violence—but then Kindness turned and allowed himself to be led from the meeting chamber. Tharion closed his eyes, heaved a thin sigh.
Qrista looked around at the other landholders’ representatives and sat up rigidly as she spoke. “Next, I must introduce a problem that concerns me greatly. As you all know—but many of you are loath to admit—the Veritas drug is being sold secretly to the holdings. The common populace uses it in ways that are morally offensive to us—for thrills, personal gain, spying.…”
She looked up and down the long table at the representatives, as if challenging them to deny what she had said. “It has crossed my mind that even some landholders may be using black-market Veritas for their personal advancement.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it.
“I will begin this discussion by suggesting that we look yet again into the process of packaging and delivering Veritas on OrbLab 2. With the establishment of the Guild a century ago, the landholders all agreed to a delegation of authority, a dispersal of responsibilities. Truthsayers, and Truthsayers alone, are permitted to use the telepathic enhancement. It is dangerous—physically, economically, and politically—for untrained people to dabble with its powers. We are justifiably concerned.”
Qrista raised her colorless eyebrows, and Tharion sat forward, wondering what his wife was about to do.
“I propose that we begin a new outside investigation, using representatives from several landholdings to study the chain of Veritas production and delivery, starting with a team sent to OrbLab 2. The Veritas begins there, so we will begin there.”
“I object, most strenuously!” said the representative from the Platform. The old balding man sputtered, but could not seem to put his thoughts into words. “Even this hint of suspicion—what evidence do you have? Look to the law of the Guild—not even a Truthsayer can probe into private matters without just cause.”
“The very existence of black market Veritas is certainly sufficient cause to suspect that something, somewhere, is not going right,” Qrista pointed out. “We have been dealing with rumors of lost Veritas for the past decade. Guild Master Tharion conducted such an investigation two years ago after the unfortunate Mindfire contamination killed his predecessor Klaryus. Many changes were implemented at that time as a result of the investigation—but the drug continues to slip through our fingers. We must find out where and how.”
Tharion sat back, nodding proudly at his wife, but she gave no sign that she saw him. He knew that he had already garnered a great deal of resentment from the workers and the station exec on OrbLab 2 because of his first probe two years earlier. Qrista knew the Guild had nothing to lose by calling for another investigation.
The representative from Toth Holding cleared his throat and spoke up. “It might be sufficient as a first step that Kareem Sondheim appoints an internal investigation to see if he can verify the existence of these alleged problems.”
Seated next to the Toth representative, the representative from Koman Holding agreed. “That might be best,” she said. “Let Sondheim poke around. If you’re not satisfied, or if anything concrete is found, then we can discuss more drastic solutions.”
Several other Council members nodded, and Tharion watched from the visitors’ gallery, studying the representatives and trying to sense the invisible threads of secret alliances between them.
Historically, the landholders had been notorious for their lack of cooperation, but here they showed some common ground. It encouraged him to see that they agreed on something, even if it might be at the Guild’s expense.