Jahn Emlin had traveled from Antar through Tdega Gate four months ago in a fast tenpod drop ship. Fresh out of empath training and unburdened by dependents, Jahn had volunteered to work undercover—partly because no Antaran who studied a three-dimensional representation of the Tdega system, with that crazily skewed orbiting artifact, could say with assurance that the alien threat had ended.
And there were weightier reasons for accepting this assignment. Antar’s requests for duplicate food-production templates had been ignored for years. Besides performing surveillance, Jahn hoped to report the master templates’ location.
For all he knew, he was the only Antaran operative on Tdega. If others existed, he could not betray their presence. He did hope there were others. Antar’s future was too much for one young man to carry, no matter how well he’d learned his job.
Today, he was ready to move into position.
He braked a Tdegan maglev near the employees’ approach to the Casimir Residence alongside a smooth sweep of lawn. As the maglev’s hum dropped in pitch, a lifetime of whispers and sidelong glances rose out of his memory.
“Of course he did well in training. His mother coached him from preschool on.”
“Vananda was impossible to live with. Jerone Emlin went south to Pawson with a younger woman and became a seeder pilot.”
“The first time Jahn hits trouble, he’ll either fall flat or run away, like Jerone did.”
He silenced the mental whisperers. Second Regent Filip Salbari had asked Jahn to travel alone to Tdega, establish deep cover, and seek employment with the Tdegan government. That was what mattered. Most of the espionage equipment he’d been issued was back at his apartment, but not all of it. Today he carried two personal locator chips, which was highly illegal. All Concord citizens were injected at birth with one—just one—in the shoulder muscle.
He also carried one in a ring.
Approaching the palatial Casimir Residence, which occupied Bkellan city’s northwestern edge, Jahn guided his maglev up a grooved ramp. A tall metal gate, crested with the Tdegan emblem—a nine-pointed gold star ringed in black—stood shut. A guard stepped out of a stone blockhouse.
Jahn lowered his window. He handed out his ID and a folded slip of printout.
The guard scrutinized them. He eyed Jahn.
Jahn looked away. Antar’s best intelligence operatives had given him a new persona that included a new history. They had cross-matched his DNA to a registered Tdegan strain that was similar to his genetic parameters, so random detection of the insertion was unlikely. When he first arrived, his immediate task had been to insert his physical data in relevant streams of Tdega’s main i-net. He’d done the insertion himself, using the best information-flow training Antar could give him, a system leech unit, and a net code stolen by a previous Antaran agent. While inside the net, he’d also tried—unsuccessfully—to find out where those food templates were stored.
A chemical implant had turned his fair skin olive and his auburn hair black. He had sheared the front of his hair and grown out the lower back. This morning, he’d caught it at the nape and braided it in a long, thin queue, like most Tdegan men.
The guard’s shirt fit closely like Jahn’s, but Jahn’s was a nondescript pale blue while the guard’s was such a dark shade of red that it looked almost purple, with brass bars and stripes.
Jahn rubbed the smooth reddish agate in the ring that concealed his second, illegal PL chip. He could afford a nervous gesture today. This was his first day at a new job. Anyone might be edgy.
He altered his awareness slightly, as if turning a corner. The mental gesture came automatically, and he silently thanked the Antaran women and men who had trained him—including his mother and grandfather, Vananda Hadley and Athis Pallaton.
His grandfather was dead, his ashes scattered in space. Grandfather Pallaton had been a logical negotiator for Antar to send, and Jahn had hoped to see him from a distance. Last night’s news, announcing the destruction of both consular ships, had stunned him.
The gate guard felt alert but not alarmed, a professional peacekeeper. He slipped Jahn’s ID into a reader slot.
Jahn stared at the Residence. He’d checked that ID card against every kind of reader in Bkellan. If it did not scan unimpeachably, his career in Tdegan government would be short. Treason and espionage carried the death penalty here. Jahn Emlin would be no exception.
Jahn Korsakov, he corrected himself. He couldn’t afford to think of himself as Antaran anymore. He was Jahn Korsakov, perhaps for the rest of his life.
Still waiting, he sniffed the air through his open window. He’d lived on fertile Tdega for four months, but he still cherished its cool, dry breezes and blue sky. This morning he’d awakened to a heady new scent, clover fields starting to bloom. Tdega’s axial tilt produced deeper seasons than Antar’s. Summer was ripening the southern hemisphere, and Bkellan city twinkled with flower gardens.
On the minus ledger, Tdega’s gravity was about twenty-five percent stronger—and it had taken him two weeks to build up enough endurance to work through a Tdegan day. Tdega’s daily cycle consisted of thirty-two local “hours” and encompassed two planetary rotations, with two sunrises and two sunsets per working day.
At least the Tdegan week had just six of these cycles.
The guard handed back Jahn’s card and printout. “Park up there.” He waved north of the pale concrete Residence. “Your office is on the second floor, north.”
Relieved, Jahn closed his hands on the steering yoke and waited while the guard backed into his stone cubicle. A few moments later the metal gate swung upward, and he re-extended the drive magnets.
He was in.
From up close, the Casimir Residence seemed to sprawl. Ornate stone cornices decorated the old west wing. This edifice officially housed the ninety-nine-year-old Head Regent, Donson Casimir, but with Donson’s son the Vice Regent dead on board the Pride of Lions, real power had shifted to another generation. The Head Regent’s grandson, Gamal Casimir, would be strengthening his grip on the government.
Jahn found the north entry without difficulty and rode an elevator to the Residence’s information-flow office. He stepped through an open door into a foyer that looked universally Tdegan: more wood furniture, technology smaller, flashier, and more advanced than Antaran equivalents. Voices buzzed, and soft electronic tones beat odd rhythms around him. A woman wearing narrow green view-glasses sat at a desktop that slanted toward an ion-green multinet terminal. He spotted several doors and three open carrels behind her. A man sat at one carrel, pointing and sweeping his index fingers in midair while he mumbled, moving data as he processed it.
“May I help you?” the nearest woman asked blandly.
“Jahn Korsakov.” He presented his printout and card. “I’m your new information-flow person—”
“There you are!”
Jahn spun around. A huge man with round, ruddy cheeks stood beside another desk. “It is Korsakov, isn’t it?” The man’s boisterous baritone filled the office. His body bulged inside tight Tdegan clothing, and fleshy folds made his trousers bunch over his knees.
Jahn presented his hand palm up, in the Tdegan manner of greeting a superior. The big man covered it with his own hand and rotated their palms into a handclasp between equals.
“You’re Mr. Vayilis?” Again Jahn shifted his awareness, synching his inner frequency to the other’s mind. The big man was sincerely glad to get more office help.
“That’s right, Arne Vayilis. I’ll be your supervisor.”
“I’m hoping you’ll show me the net lines.”
“Of course. Excellent, your credentials, by the way.”
“Thank you.” Now, of course, Vayilis would grill him. Jahn had memorized pages of information to cover his alleged work experience. He’d supposedly trained as an information-flow condenser here on Tdega, using in-home programs offered through Bkellan University. His made-up parents farmed rock maize north of Bkellan.
Actually, he’d studied Tdegan geography and customs with the best tutors at Nuris University. He knew every centimeter of that Tdegan rock-maize farm from a planetary imaging system.
But instead of questioning him, Vayilis walked to a vacant carrel and grasped the back of its wooden chair. “This’ll be your stable for now. We’re so shorthanded that I have to monitor in-flo as well as personnel in the other wing, so you’ll probably get your own office soon. Our in-flo condenser is an important team member. We have to keep up with an incredible volume of news and surveillance. Deciding what needs to go uphill to the chief is going to be your job.”
Jahn eyed the closed doors on either side of his carrel. Shorthanded? That explained how he’d been hired—or so taunted the scornful whisperers. But why were they shorthanded?
He smiled up at Arne Vayilis. “I’m sure I’ve got plenty to learn.”
“We have three more hours of daylight. What if I showed you the rest of the office wing now, then settled you down with your tutorials?”
Jahn couldn’t have hoped for more, and he said so.
The tour covered most of an elongated Tdegan hour and more than the office wing, because Arne Vayilis also had access through the western guard station. Vayilis took him into the function area that separated the west wing from the genuine residential area.
“Meeting rooms,” Vayilis said.
Jahn walked toward one of the smaller doors. “May I look in?”
“Ah, not that one. That’s the Oak Room. It’s being set up.”
Jahn spotted a server’s station outside the huge wooden door, with several chutes opening over its length. He imagined a system for sending food directly from Residence kitchens.
“I wish you could see it, though. Inlaid table, parquetry floor. All oak. Check this one.” Vayilis walked on to another door. He touched a black panel at shoulder height and spoke his name. The broad door slid open.
They stepped into a massive grand hall with a vaulted ceiling. Tiers of light rods ascended like a huge candelabra and vanished into the ceiling. Jahn whistled in admiration.
Vayilis poked a rod at floor level. “Actually, they’re built smaller as they get closer to the ceiling. Creates an illusion of greater distance.”
“I’m impressed.” No harm admitting it.
“One more, then.” Arne Vayilis led up the grand hall to an open door. Two decorative guards in dark red uniforms stood in front of it, but neither spoke to Vayilis, whom they apparently knew. He probably authorized their salary deposits in Central Credit.
Vayilis beckoned Jahn into a room large enough to serve as a spacecraft hangar. Jahn’s childhood residence dome, near a mountain geothermal complex, would have fit between these walls—and this room smelled of greenery instead of sulphur. Vayilis’s footsteps echoed.
Jahn stepped out onto the floor and almost jumped back. Polished planks of glossy, straight-grained wood lay underfoot. Tdega hadn’t lost its forests to the Devastators. No wonder the first human settlement groups had had to divide the nine systems by lot. Each group had wanted Tdega, fertile and Earth-like except for its short rotational day.
But Antar had built its own wealth of culture, knowledge, and history. Also, on Antar, the new races—empaths, gillies, and seers—were not persecuted.
And Antar was the official capital.
“I thought you’d like to see part of what you’ll be working to uphold.” Arne Vayilis grinned. “Once you go on duty, you’re expected to keep to the west wing unless someone invites you out here.”
“I understand.” Jahn continued to stare. This gilded, wood-trimmed palace was Donson Casimir’s home.
Yet legally, it was also the property of every Tdegan. This might be a relevant insight into the Tdegan outlook. Compared with Tdega, Antar was a cloud-enveloped desert punctuated by spartan resettlements.
Yet those resettlements were monuments to human fortitude. Jahn followed Vayilis back up the grand hall. Pausing in front of a door, he glanced at his reflection. He’d applied dark toner to his temples and chin, de-emphasizing the square lines of his face. Even so, the reflection didn’t look satisfyingly Tdegan.
During their shipboard exile, Tdegan scientists had developed computer-randomized DNA to protect themselves against inbreeding and mutations. From that stock had come the uniformly oval facial type. Most Tdegans resembled the DNA stock’s chief developer.
“Will there be many changes in staff with Regent Casimir’s death?” Jahn asked. Vice Regent Aeternum Casimir had been a formidable leader.
Vayilis shook his head. “I doubt it. We’re busy these days. My personnel people won’t want to waste hours headhunting.”
“Where has everyone gone?”
“Oh, mostly to Lahoma.”
“Really.” Jahn wanted to ask questions, but Vayilis’s tone of voice hinted that “Lahoma” was a place he should know about.
“The plant’s Vice Regent Gamal’s baby. They hope to bring it up to capacity within a few weeks.”
Plant? Baby? Jahn synched and probed hastily. Vayilis radiated a sense of adventure. Jahn had caught it from others here in Bkellan. In Vayilis, it felt concrete, with inner reasons supporting it.
Vayilis grinned. “First ships should come off the line in just a few months.”
Shipbuilding! Filip Salbari had warned Jahn that Tdega might be turning toward seceding from the Concord, even though the other worlds urgently needed its resources. This could be proof on a platter.
Jahn maintained a light conversation with Vayilis until they returned to the office. Then, as Vayilis lingered with the man in the next carrel and while Jahn slipped on a pair of view-glasses, Jahn reached out again with his inner sense. Hesitantly, he ascertained which mental frequency Vayilis was using, and then he gradually matched his own to the Tdegan’s. He winced as he approached deep synchrony, when his mind’s electromagnetic waves almost matched Vayilis’s. They reinforced and then canceled, creating weird troughs and valleys.
At last Vayilis’s thoughts focused. His second son and the other man’s nephew had been hired at the Lahoma plant, reprogramming line androids. Within weeks, Lahoma would hire another flood of workers. Vice Regent Gamal Casimir had already put mines and smelters on double schedule. Something big was afoot, and Arne Vayilis couldn’t wait to see it.
Jahn wished Arne Vayilis would think more about the Lahoma plant, but he’d focused on his son and the economic stimulus of …
A wartime economy?
Startled, Jahn clung to that mental frequency. He rode tightly, but the big man walked away. The sensation faded. Jahn couldn’t feel certain that he’d touched knowledge instead of fantasy. To the mind, they felt identical.
Exhaling hard, Jahn opened his eyes. He’d already been awake for twelve Antaran hours. He needed a few seconds to focus his mind into his own sphere of thought.
His desk had appeared, projected in exquisite detail above the terminal. He should attend to business. Still, he couldn’t keep his thoughts on office work. War was being noised in Bkellan city—no peaceful secession, but ancient-style aggression. More people might die, an abstract possibility he had thought he understood until unexplained tragedy killed his grandfather.
Antar needed intelligence now more than ever. Whatever it took, even though he’d worked here less than a day, he must develop higher contacts in the Residence power structure—quickly. If he meant to serve Antar, he must penetrate the inner circle of the new Tdegan Vice Regent, Gamal Casimir.
Would his cover hold?
A serving woman filled Gamal Casimir’s wine goblet. One wall of the Oak Room displayed a constantly changing aerial view of the Residence. Flower beds side-lit by the setting sun, a shadowy hedge maze, breeding kennels, and darkening fruit groves appeared in random order.
Gamal Casimir eyed the image. To him, it looked like a genuine window. He’d been injured as a child and needed microsurgery to restore vision in one eye, and a secondary neural infection had recently robbed him of that eye’s vision again. His eyes looked normal, but he had no depth perception.
He was content that way for the present. He had his reasons.
His Security Chief, Osun Zavijavah, sat on the farthest end of the table with the best view of the display wall. “Fill his glass, too,” Gamal ordered.
The serving woman shuffled toward Zavijavah’s end, past the ringed-star emblem inlaid on the table.
Gamal’s nephew Bellik sat closer to him. Some people outside the family called Bellik Casimir the family buffoon—lanky and formal, vertical in all his features, and notorious for making superlative declarations. For today’s midday meal, he wore his charcoal-gray military uniform with a new Commander’s half-moon on each shoulder.
The woman filled Bellik’s goblet without needing to be told, then backed out of the Oak Room.
Gamal stood. “A toast. To my father’s memory.”
“Aeternum Casimir.” Bellik raised his glass. “He brought Tdega to the threshold of greatness.”
At the table’s other end, Security Chief Zavijavah also lifted a goblet. Thin-queued with a drooping mustache, he returned Gamal Casimir’s gaze through a handsome pair of wraparound dark glasses. “We honor him.”
Gamal savored the upcountry vintage. Bellik drank deeply. Zavijavah, on duty, barely tasted. Immediately he turned back to the security wall.
“Well.” Bellik set down his glass with a clunk and wiped his narrow mouth. “Aeternum gave me a job, and I did it. I hope he’s happy now, wherever he is.”
“Speak respectfully of the dead,” Gamal said. “You owe my father a debt.”
“I do.” Bellik picked up his glass again. This time, he drained it.
Determined to nullify the Antaran show of force, Aeternum Casimir had ordered young Bellik to destroy the Aliki as it emerged through Tdega Gate. When news arrived that Athis Pallaton would head the Antaran delegation, Aeternum had decided to go out on the warship Pride of Lions and observe the catastrophe.
That night, Bellik had approached his uncle Gamal. He had volunteered to destroy both ships, handing power to Gamal while negating the Antaran power play.
Gamal Casimir had survived numerous family plots by defending himself at long range. Others might take direct risks. He rarely encouraged them, but if he stood to gain, he never forbade them.
Aeternum—on the other hand—had brought Tdega to the brink of supremacy and balked.
“Was it difficult?” Gamal asked.
Bellik leaned back in his chair and stared up at the Oak Room’s beamed ceiling. He shook his head. “As soon as the Antaran ship emerged from our Gate, I signaled my robot on board the Pride. The transmission lag in both directions gave the ships time to dock.”
Gamal stared at his nephew. A hooked nose made Bellik’s face look even longer, with close-set eyes and a small mouth. Even his ears were long and narrow. “You’ll see to it that the investigating team explains the incident satisfactorily.”
Bellik nodded. “Tdega will miss him,” he added piously.
Bellik probably wondered whether his uncle would make him heir right away, bypassing Gamal’s son Siah. But Gamal must keep Bellik from playing a similar trick on himself—or Siah—one day. Siah was a fool, but he deserved a chance to demonstrate his abilities. “Yes. It will miss him greatly,” Gamal answered. Then he changed the subject. “Antar will eventually send another ship. They won’t give up yet.”
Bellik cupped his long hands around an imaginary object on the tabletop. “Our team will announce that unidentified malfunctions killed the Aliki, and that its wreckage rammed the Pride of Lions. That will also erode Antar’s confidence in its ships.”
“Good. The Concord’s fleet is aging.” Gamal nodded. Still, he disliked letting Antar think there’d been an accident.
Bellik wrinkled his nose. “Its leadership is aging, too. They’ve got too many mass-produced fifty-year-olds.”
Gamal, too, was almost fifty, although he hadn’t been conceived in a tube rack. Antar’s first in vitro generation, created immediately after resettlement, included two of its current Regents. The same situation existed on several other resettled worlds, where they had hurried to repopulate after the Devastator crisis. By contrast, Tdegan policy kept population regrowth steady and slow.
Feeding the rest of the Concord was an unjust weight on this world.
“So much the better,” Gamal said. “The test tube children don’t think originally. Antar should have reestablished its own food production years ago.” Hydroponics had fed the first colonists. According to Bkellan University, it ought to be feeding Antar and the other systems—almost.
Bellik stared into his wineglass. “After any global disaster, the first industries to recover generally involve simple raw materials. And small items for local markets, the kind of items the Concord is trying to steal from Tdega.”
“Who are you quoting?” Gamal asked, amused.
Bellik shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Whoever it was, he talked sense. What else did he say?”
Bellik furrowed his high forehead and dropped his voice. “Heavy industries take longer to establish. The Concord also depends on Tdegan technology for robotic and military hardware that would keep the Devastators at bay if they returned.”
Gamal no longer flinched when he thought about the Devastators. No human had ever spoken with a Devastator and lived to describe it, but Bkellan University’s archives contained unconfirmed speculations. The most popular theory described them as large, dexterous arachnids from a low-gravity world. They allegedly possessed a hive mind and had little respect for individuals of any species, even their own.
As for their abortive attack on humankind, they had supposedly struck the Concord a side blow, barely related to their real war. They had been fighting a race they feared so terribly that they’d tried to sterilize the Concord cluster just to keep those enemies from taking it.
After a lifetime of quietly searching, Gamal Casimir had found answers.
But he had not gone to the Devastators.
He had located their enemies. And those enemies might save Tdega from any future threat, either from outside the Concord or from greedy worlds inside.
“So,” he said, “do you think the Concord will let us secede, or must we prove that we’re serious? We’ll let them get hungry if we have to, but there’s no point starving them. And they’re too fearful to fight.”
Bellik chuckled. “We have thirty percent of the cluster’s population and its newest technology. I don’t see that Antar has a choice.”
Secession would lead, in time, to realignment of the cluster around Tdega. The Devastators’ ancient enemies would help Gamal weaken Antaran leadership from the inside. His father had known Tdega must leave the Concord for a while. He just hadn’t put teeth into taking the next step.
Bellik didn’t yet know about the new alien contacts.
Gamal eyed Osun Zavijavah over his shoulder. Zavijavah sat rubbing his left temple.
Zavijavah knew.
Gamal raised his wineglass. “Where will your bombers be, real-time?”
Bellik glanced at his reader, which lay on the table next to his goblet. “Halfway in from Antar and Ilzar Gates, crawling like Kocaban haulers. I’ve taped and transmitted my speeches. All we need now is your signal.”
Gamal folded his hands. He shut his eyes. Enormous power lay in three simple words. He wanted to savor speaking them.
He imagined his bomber captains listening eagerly.
“Send the signal,” he said.