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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


Our little get-together took a bit longer to get organized than I’d expected.

First, McKell decided we should go to the hospital and see how Floyd and Nikki were doing. Floyd wasn’t in great shape, but the news that Gaheen was alive and likely to pull through lifted his spirits considerably. His biggest concern was his need to get to a StarrComm center and send some messages to the rest of his organization’s top people. The medics’ biggest concern was his need to shut up, lie back in his pod, and heal.

He promised to contact me once he was well enough to leave the hospital. McKell wondered on our way out if that was a threat. I assured him it probably wasn’t.

Nikki was already gone. I could understand that she’d want to keep a low profile, a goal that by definition required that she be seen by as few people for as little time as possible. Still, I would have liked to talk with her one last time before she disappeared.

Especially since she’d left an envelope for me containing the card with Cherno’s name and the certified bank checks Nask had given me.

I toyed with the idea of going to the Trandosh ruins in a day or so and giving the money to whatever Patth was in charge, with instructions to return it to Nask. But on second thought I realized that would probably create more questions and trouble than even a million commarks was worth. Simpler to just hold onto the money until the next time Nask and I crossed paths.

That there would be a next time I personally had no doubt.

Given Nikki’s interest in not seeing any of us again, I had no great interest in following up on her departure. McKell apparently did. We collected Selene, who’d parked herself near the emergency room entrance where she could monitor people going in and out, and headed to the Barcarolle spaceport to see if we could pick up the trail.

It was quickly apparent that Nikki had been there recently and had in fact gone right up to the gate. But for some inexplicable reason the gate was closed and locked. We reversed along the trail for a couple of hundred meters, but Selene was unable to find any place where Nikki’s scent branched off. Our reluctant conclusion was that our quarry had passed a parked runaround along the way and then backtracked to it when she found she couldn’t get into the spaceport.

Continuing the pursuit would now mean slogging through the city’s runaround records. Given that Nikki was undoubtedly better at hiding and staying hidden than Selene and I—or even McKell—were at finding such people, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

As my father used to say, If you play hide-and-seek with a desperado, even if you win you’re probably going to lose.

My private assumption was that Nikki would go to the Patth to get a new face, as she had gone to them for her targeting implants. Something else to talk to Nask about the next time we met.

At first I’d thought that all these side trips were McKell’s way of stalling off the unpleasant moment when he would have to call the admiral and tell him we’d handed the portal over to the Patth. It was only as we finally made our way back to the Ruth that I realized the delay was for another reason entirely. McKell wanted to make sure we stayed well clear of the Patth in the Trandosh ruins, and that any surveillance they had on us would confirm that, and let them set up their portal retrieval system in peace and without the threat of gunfire from either side.

McKell and I didn’t always agree on methods, or sometimes even on goals. But when he finally came around he came around fully committed.

Selene was able to quickly confirm that no one had been inside the Ruth during our absence. Even so, I had Ixil send Pix and Pax on a thorough search of the ship’s ducts, nooks, and crannies, just to make absolutely certain someone hadn’t managed to plant a camera or microphone. The last thing I wanted was a leak of the news I was about to present to them.

“Let me start at the beginning,” I said when the outriders’ search had been completed and we were all sitting around the dayroom table with drinks in our hands. “Or at least, my speculation as to the beginning. Shiroyama Island on Popanilla was a prison camp for Icari political prisoners. However it happened—prison break, rebel activity, full-blown Tsarist-style revolution—the prisoners got access to the Gemini portal and went to Fidelio. They scampered across the Erymant Temple grounds to the Janus portal—”

“The what?” Ixil interrupted.

“The Janus portal,” I repeated. “That’s what Nask calls it. Anyway, they went to the portal, got through to Meima, and tried to storm the Icari facility there.”

“And during the attack they were shelled and destroyed,” McKell said grimly.

“Actually, we don’t know the final outcome of that battle,” I pointed out. “Or whether the rebels lost the battle but went on to win the war. All we know for sure is that someone or a group of someones got to the Icarus portal and went through to Alpha, leaving the two portals keyed to each other.

“The question is why.

“If it was the rebels, the answer seems obvious,” Ixil said. “They expected their comrades to follow them.”

“To Alpha?” I countered. “A portal sitting in the middle of nowhere?”

“More like at the edge of nowhere,” McKell corrected. “It is orbiting a habitable planet, after all.”

“Anyone currently inhabiting it?”

“Not that we’ve been able to detect,” McKell said. “But looking for lights on the surface is about all we’ve been able to do, so that’s hardly definitive. More important, whatever its status now there could well have been a whole civilization living there all those thousands of years ago.”

“But Alpha is floating in space,” Selene pointed out. “They’d need a shuttle to get to the surface.”

“Or a full-fledged starship to get out of the system,” I agreed. “If I were a rebel who found myself in that position, I’d hightail it back to Meima and try for somewhere else.”

“That might not have been possible,” McKell said. “Earlier you said that Icarus and Alpha were keyed to each other, but that’s not entirely true. Icarus was keyed to Alpha, but the Icarus address had to be manually fed back into Alpha’s console to return.”

“Perhaps they returned to Meima but were unable to shut off the Alpha preset,” Ixil suggested. “Though that still raises the question of why they then didn’t try to go somewhere else once they were in Alpha.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which suggests they couldn’t go elsewhere.”

“Why not?” McKell asked, frowning. “If they knew how to get to Alpha, they should have at least known how to get back to Icarus.”

“Unless the lack of such knowledge was why they left the link to Alpha open in the first place,” I said. “Whether they were defenders or attackers, they were expecting someone—they needed someone—to join them.”

“A friend?” Ixil asked. “A commander? Family?”

“No.” I braced myself. This was it. “The people who were supposed to bring them the directory.”

Ixil didn’t react, but the outriders on his shoulders gave simultaneous twitches. McKell just continued to look like McKell. “What directory?” McKell asked carefully.

“You know what directory,” I said. “The one that lists all the portals and their addresses. The one item anyone who’d gone to Alpha absolutely needed in order to get out again.”

There was another silence. “I see where you’re going with this,” McKell said. “But there weren’t any bodies in Alpha when we first arrived. Doesn’t that mean they did get out again?”

“Not necessarily,” Ixil said. “We’ve noted the portals have a certain degree of housekeeping programming. There’s never been any dust or corrosion in any of them, and they seem to recycle and replenish the air as needed. Alpha might simply have purged the bodies or bones.”

“And you think this directory is still on Meima?” McKell asked.

“Not just on Meima,” I corrected. “Right here on the Ruth.” I looked at Selene. “Selene?”

Silently, she stood up, her pupils a mix of hesitation and concern, and walked to the dayroom hatchway. I watched as she stepped through and headed aft down the corridor toward her cabin. Peripherally, I noted that McKell and Ixil were watching her just as closely as I was. “Where?” McKell asked quietly.

“Where I expected it to be,” I said. “In a vault-type room just a little ways off the battle line between the defenders and the attackers. The team was presumably heading toward the Icarus and their rendezvous when the roof collapsed and killed all of them.”

“And you got all this from the link to Alpha sitting open for a few thousand years?” Ixil asked.

I shrugged. “Sometimes I get flashes of insight. Sometimes they’re even right.”

“Yes,” Ixil murmured. “Though in this case, I almost hope you’re wrong.”

I winced at the dread in his voice. “Because a directory will open up a galaxy-sized can of worms?”

“Because a prize like that is worth killing for,” Ixil said bluntly. “Icarus was bad enough. This . . . ” Again, the outriders on his shoulders twitched.

“Ixil’s understating the case,” McKell said soberly. “Icarus was worth murder. A portal directory is worth genocide.”

“Maybe not,” Selene said, reappearing in the dayroom hatchway. Clutched in her hands like a piece of thousand-year-old crystal was a rectangular object, about twenty centimeters by fifteen, wrapped in one of her shirts. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you, Gregory, but—” She broke off. Crossing to us, she set the object down in the center of the table and sat back down. “See for yourselves.”

I raised my eyebrows at McKell in silent question. He hesitated, then gave me a small shrug and gestured for me to continue. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the object—it was heavier than I’d expected—and carefully unwrapped it.

I found myself holding an old-style book about two centimeters thick. The binding was made of black metal, with a thin, slightly raised reinforcing bar wrapping around the front, spine, and back at the top and bottom edges. Between the bars was a wide hasp attached to the back cover that sealed onto the front to hold the book closed. The edges of the pages were a shimmering gold. I looked at Selene, again noting the nervousness in her pupils, my thoughts flashing back to what Ixil and McKell had just said about it being worth genocide.

But we were all allies here, I reminded myself firmly. Looking down at the book, I unfastened the hasp—it was held in place magnetically—and opened it.

The pages were flexible, but felt like thinner versions of the same metal as the binding. The first five pages contained close-spaced etched lines of alien script: some lines colored black, others colored red, the two seemingly randomly placed on the page. I focused on the letters, but they weren’t even close to anything I was familiar with.

Starting with the sixth page, the format changed. Now, there were a few lines of the alien script on the on the left side of the left-hand page, with an ordered array of squares facing the words on the right-hand page. The squares were colored, also apparently randomly, in yellow or black.

The same colors as on the squares of a portal’s destination readout panel.

I felt my heart sped up. I’d been right. There was indeed a portal directory, and Selene had found it.

I frowned. Or had she?

I flipped through another few pages. The script and color pattern changed, but the format remained the same.

And then I saw it, and my stomach tied itself into a knot.

This wasn’t the portal directory I’d hoped for. It was, instead—

“Hell,” McKell muttered, his expression that of a man who’d been handed a rare gem only to discover it was made of glass.

“Indeed,” Ixil agreed.

I nodded heavily. Icarus destination displays, I belatedly remembered, were four rows of twenty squares. The pages here showed four rows of ten.

This wasn’t a directory. It was half a directory.

“Which strongly suggests,” I added, “that the ones who got through to Alpha had the other half.”

For a few seconds no one spoke. “So that’s it,” McKell said at last. “Half a directory is like a draw at chess. Useless.”

“Maybe not,” Selene said hesitantly.

We all looked at her. “You think the other half’s still here?” I asked.

“If it is, it’s not near the spot where I found this,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking. If you had half the address for the Icarus, Jordan, and you thought an enemy might have the other half, and you were trapped, what would you do?”

“I don’t know,” McKell said. “Guard it with my life, probably.”

“But if you knew the enemy would simply kill you and still take it?”

“You’d do whatever you could to make sure that didn’t happen,” I said, watching Selene’s pupils change from concern to dark horror. “If you could destroy it you would.”

“It’s a metal book with metal pages,” McKell said. “Pretty hard to do without a plasma torch or industrial crusher.”

“Then you’d have to send it someplace where they couldn’t get it,” I said. “Even if it killed you.”

“There were no bodies in Alpha,” Ixil murmured. “If they had no ships or shuttles . . . ?”

“Are you suggesting they jumped?” McKell asked.

The outriders twitched again. “I can’t think of a better way to make sure their half of the directory wasn’t retrieved,” Ixil said. “If it came to that . . . ”

McKell exhaled a ragged breath. “If I couldn’t get out of Alpha and there was no chance of rescue . . . yes, I probably would, too. It would certainly insure it was never retrieved.”

“Maybe not,” I said, running my fingers thoughtfully along the edge of the book. Selene had said it was made of something akin to portal metal. If the book was as indestructible as the portals themselves seemed to be . . . “If it survived the fall, it’s probably still down there.”

McKell and Ixil looked at each other. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking,” McKell warned, “no. Not a chance in hell.”

“You sure?” I countered. “Selene can smell this stuff, remember. She found this under half a meter of dirt and stone.”

“That was the Trandosh ruins,” McKell said. “This is an entire planet. Huge difference.”

“Granted,” I said. “It might still be worth a shot.” I looked at Selene. “What do you think?”

She gazed down at the book, her pupils shifting between anticipation, hope, and dread. “A bioprobe survey would help narrow the field,” she said slowly. “But I don’t know how we’d get a bioprobe in there.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said, eyeing the growing dread in her pupils. “Maybe bring a couple of them into Alpha in pieces and assemble them there. The important thing is that there are options.”

McKell shook his head. “Personally, I think we’d have a better chance of finding a copy near some other portal.”

If we can find another portal,” I warned. “And if the Patth don’t find it first.”

“Well, we’re not going to solve any of this tonight,” McKell said. He closed the book and resealed it, then picked it up. “First thing we have to do is tell the admiral that we lost the portal. If I’m suitably angry and mortified, and if the Patth retrieve the conversation, that should keep them off our backs while we smuggle this out of here.”

“You could just leave it with us,” I suggested. “The Patth would never suspect we would have something that valuable on the Ruth.”

“Great idea,” McKell said with a hint of sarcasm. “And if your friend Nask drops in for a chat?”

“He’s not my friend,” I said stiffly. “And even if he was, I doubt he’d stoop to searching the ship.”

“Why not?” McKell countered. “They stoop to listening to private StarrComm messages. Sorry, but it goes with us. Ixil?”

“I agree,” Ixil said. He stood up and produced a collapsible bag from a pocket. “Here—we don’t want to steal Selene’s shirt.”

“Thanks,” McKell said. He took the bag and carefully wrapped the directory inside. “We’ll be in touch,” he said as he and Ixil stood up. “Congratulations to you both. Excellent work all around.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “You might suggest to the admiral that when he’s ready to shower us with praise he might want to sprinkle in a few extra commarks.”

“Considering that he’s just lost the new portal he was salivating over, I think we’ll skip any mention of money or praise,” McKell said dryly. “Fly safe. We’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks,” I said standing up. “Come on, I’ll see you out.”

* * *

Selene was still sitting at the table when I returned, gazing into her cup. “Well, there goes the Spiral’s only known list—partial list, anyway—of the Icari portals,” I commented as I sat down across from her. “I assume you made a copy?”

“Of course,” she said, still looking into her drink, her pupils looking distracted. “Do you really think we can find the other half?”

“No idea,” I admitted. “But it’s worth trying.”

“Maybe in principle,” she said. “But the mechanics and techniques will be a challenge.”

“That’s okay—the admiral lives for such things.” I ducked my head to look more squarely into her lowered face. “Something else on your mind?”

Her pupils twitched in a wry expression. “Have I ever told you that you’re nearly as good at reading me as I am you? And you humans have hardly any sense of smell at all.”

“True,” I said. “But we manage to muddle through. You want to talk about it?”

She lifted her cup, took a small sip. “I wasn’t very polite to Nikki while she was aboard,” she said. “I know you knew that. I think she did, too.”

“One of the downsides of being a professional assassin,” I pointed out. “A lot of the people you meet don’t like you.”

“It wasn’t her,” Selene said. “Not just her. It was just that she brought back memories . . . ”

She took another drink, a longer one this time. “We have legends, Gregory, we of the Kadolians,” she said. “Legends about where we came from, how we got to the Spiral, what it took to win our freedom.”

“Sounds interesting,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. Selene had never talked about her past before. “Which memories did Nikki bring back?”

“Those of the beings we once worked for,” Selene said. “Another species, creatures who prized our talents for tracking and for trace-scent location and identification. They hired many of us to be scouts and analysts. Some of us became their version of bounty hunters.” She paused, her pupils taking on a darker feel. “Some of us they made into assassins.”

For a moment the word seemed to hang in the air between us. “I’m sorry,” I managed into the silence. “I didn’t . . . it must have been horrifying.”

She shook her head. “Not to all of us. And that’s the problem. You see, for many of us . . . ” She took another drink. “We were good at it, Gregory. Good enough that many of us . . . they liked it.”

“I see,” I said, wincing at the banality of the words. “But that was a long time ago.”

“I’m still of the Kadolians,” she said. “I still have our strengths and impulses and weaknesses. I enjoy the hunt.” She raised her eyes and troubled pupils to me. “Would I also learn to enjoy the kill?”

“That’s not you,” I said firmly. “You wouldn’t go that direction.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I’m not. If I was offered that job, against someone I believed deserved to die . . . ” She closed her eyes. “I truly don’t know.”

I reached over and gently touched her hand. “I don’t know what drives your people, Selene, or what would happen if you found yourself in that position. But there are two things I do know.”

I held up a finger. “One: I trust you. I trust you with my life and the lives of everyone around me. Whatever situation we get into, whatever decisions you make, I will always back you up.”

I held up a second finger. “And two: late at night, when you’re hungry or tired or just finished with a case, is not the time to be thinking about things like this. So let’s get to bed. Things always look different in the morning.”

“I know,” she said.

But she didn’t, I could tell. Legends and memories were powerful influences in every culture. And even if the dark of night enhanced the emotions connected to them, emotions that would fade when the sun returned, the legends themselves were still there.

As my father used to say, Just because you’ve convinced yourself there are no monsters in the darkened room doesn’t mean you might not fall over a chair.

The universe, I’d long since learned, was very good at setting up chairs in darkened rooms. So were the Patth.

Maybe the Kadolians were, too.


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