The Octagonal Raven (9 page)

And I still didn’t have a solid clue. Or any thoughts about a more focused approach to find one.

Fledgling: Kuritim, 422 N.E.

My strokes were long and clean as I swam out toward the channel edge of the reef, an edge marked with the black coral that the HMudd bioneers had created over five hundred years earlier. I swam at about eighty percent of my capability, according to my internals. That was the best trade-off between speed and the energy I’d have left after the swim back for the long run to the west end of the liftway.

Stroke, stroke, breathe…stroke, stroke, breathe…easy strokes, long strokes…I kept the rhythm constant.

When I’d finished the first klick, with another three hundred meters to the black coral, no one was within a hundred meters. The closest was Wyendra, and she was pushing harder than I was—but for the same reasons. We both would need all the lead we could get for running through the fine sand.

Stroke, stroke, breathe…I touched the monitor plate on the extension from the reef and turned, careful not to push off from the coral. Most of it was worn, but there were patches that were newer, and knife sharp, and running through the salty sand with a cut foot would be about the last thing I needed. While I could damp the pain, it would still affect my whole body…and my overall performance and time.

Stroke, stroke, breathe…the rhythm was so automatic that my fingers almost brushed the sands of the shallows beneath before I realized it was time to stand and start running.

The only rule about the running was that you couldn’t hinder anyone else, and you had to run on dry sand. Each step on the wet sand after the first three steps out of the water added a second to your time.

It was hard to stick to my plans, but running was faster than swimming, and that meant I needed as much speed as I could spare in the first half-klick, then to settle into an even pace for the remaining two and a half klicks.

For the first two klicks along the soft white sand, I was well ahead…but I could sense the gap narrowing. Another three hundred meters, and there was the sound of footsteps and even breathing on the threshold of audibility.

With the course end less than two hundred meters away, I could hear clear steps in the sand behind me, not immediately behind me, but closing. I knew the steps—I’d heard them all too often in previous runs. They were those of Cyerla Arisel, and she’d always managed to catch me just at the end. My preselection profile hadn’t been for long-distance running. I had the wind, but not the right kind of legs. Few among the other candidates were faster in sprints, but three klicks was a long, long way for a sprinter/swimmer.

But I’d managed to grind out another ten seconds or more in the swimming leg, and if…if…somehow I pushed it….

Cyerla’s steps were louder, but I eased out my stride, listening to my internal monitors, trying to balance the anaerobics with the need for speed, trying not to tighten up. But those steps kept getting closer and closer.

With a little less than a hundred meters to go to the finish monitor, I ignored my internal monitors and pulled out everything. I knew I’d pay later, but I was tired of getting nipped at the finish. It seemed insane, but I decided to try to sprint.

Cyerla didn’t catch me, not this time, but only barely did I break the light beam before her, and my legs gave out a step or so past the monitors, and the two officers who watched impassively.

I had to sit on the hot sand for what seemed several minutes before I could stand, but it was really only about twenty seconds.

Wyendra had panted up third, right after I’d dropped onto the sand, and just ahead of four others.

Glancing back eastward along the expanse of sugary white sand, sand that had also resulted from the efforts of the long-ago bioneers, I watched the last ten runners struggling toward the finish.

“Daryn…” Cyerla was both panting and laughing as she eased her slight runner’s frame toward me. “You sneak…all week…you held…back…on the swimming….”

“…You’re too fast on the sand…” I gasped.

“Stop congratulating each other,” Wyendra said. She spoiled the growling effect with a smile.

Major Ngara broke up the conversation by motioning to me. “Alwyn.”

I forced my legs to carry me the few meters to where he stood. “Yes…ser?” The gasps I couldn’t help.

Ngara’s clean latte features were impassive as he studied me, probably gauging everything from respiratory rate to lactate overload. After a minute, he spoke. “Candidate Alwyn…you had that paced all the way from the first stroke, didn’t you?”

“Ser…as much as I could, ser.”

“You’re the closest thing to a professional distance swimmer that exists, aren’t you?”

“I’ve always liked distance swimming, ser. I’ve practiced a lot.”

“You sprinted the last hundred meters on the sand.”

“I tried to, ser.”

“Good.” He paused. “Try to remember that your body is not just a machine regulated by your mind and your nanites.”

“Yes, ser.”

He nodded brusquely and turned. “Candidate Garcya?”

“What was that all about?” asked Wyendra quietly.

“I think I got the modified lecture about not being too mechanical,” I had to take another series of deep breaths.

“You didn’t look that mechanical to me.” She grinned. “You just couldn’t stand the thought of her beating you again.”

I nodded, managing a wry grin. Even after standing there for several minutes, I was still heaving deep breaths.

“Candidates!” Ngara’s voice overrode all the murmured conversations. “You’ve got forty minutes to get back to quarters, clean up, and cool down before you’re due in class. Dismissed!”

“Ser!” came the chorused response.

I turned slowly to the walkway that was hard on aching legs, but easier than lifting feet through the sugary and clinging sand.

“See you two in a bit.” Cyerla smiled politely as she jogged past us back toward the quarters building.

Aaslyn strode by us right after Cyerla.

Wyendra took a deep breath. “You aren’t even breathing that hard.”

“Now…” I admitted. “My legs hurt. I’m not a runner, not really.”

“You could have fooled me—or Cyerla.”

“I’m not a long distance runner, then.”

“You could sprint by them now. You’ve recovered.” She grinned. “Do it one of these days.”

“Too much work,” I replied, smiling back at her. “Besides, I’d rather walk and talk to you.”

“Don’t you think that the observers will see through your façade?” She brushed her short dark hair off her forehead as we walked—quickly, but not at a jog, onto the second walkway, the one that led toward the quarters building.

In the distance, above the rustling of the palms, from somewhere out over the Pacific, came the dull boom of the mid-morning orbital lifter climbing through the atmosphere to Orbit one.

“I’m sure they do,” I admitted. “That was what Major Ngara was hinting at. They can monitor my physiological reactions and get an idea of what I feel. They do that all the time. I could behave like the modern equivalent of a male gorilla beating my chest the loudest. But what would be the point? Except to prove that I can? And dissout most of the class. Also, that sort of behavior isn’t exactly useful in the confines of a spacecraft. The machismo military hero went out before the Collapse.”

“You’re more machismo than you’ll ever admit.” She laughed. That was a sound I enjoyed.

All I could do was grin sheepishly.

All too soon, that walk ended, and we were both in separate quarters, scrambling into the pale gray summer singlesuit uniforms, and then on our way to class—the second day of classes, since we’d had nearly a month of physical conditioning before we started learning the knowledge basics.

This class was held in one of the rooms off the hall where we had first gathered. Wyendra and I sat in the second row. Everyone stood when the FS major walked into the classroom.

“At ease. Take your seats.” The dark-haired man in the black and silver singlesuit of the Federal Service nodded brusquely. He surveyed the class “I am Major Cheng, and I will be your instructor for engineering…. Before we get into the engineering basics, Commander Almyra has requested that I address one of the practical aspects of your training.” Cheng paused. “Why don’t we put you in space with a ship and keep you there until you learn? Because piloting doesn’t work that way. Neither do your bodies, and that’s another kind of engineering.

“First, we don’t have antigravity, and it takes gravity to keep people in top shape. Acceleration or deceleration at one gee is a fair substitute, but that’s only good for insystem travel. Once you reach orbit, you’re dealing with weightlessness again. Trying to spin ships or stations doesn’t work either. It plays havoc with designs and maintenance, especially with the mass requirements. It is extraordinarily expensive. Since the interstellar space program is a net resource drain, we design to optimize energy and resource usage.

“So the simplest solution is to train you under the same circumstances you’ll pilot and travel under. That means time on Earth getting in top shape, followed by a short period in weightlessness, followed by constant gee acceleration to a destination and then weightless. Then, in some form or another, you repeat the pattern.” He smiled. “Now that we’ve covered that for the major, we’ll get down to the engineering basics of why you’re here.” He looked out over the class. “Why do we have a basic engineering class at all? The guts of an LDD are very simple in theory, and impossibly complex in practice. That’s just the drive, and that doesn’t take into account the magscoops and fusactor conversion system that creates the reverse spin fields. Except for the three of you who are physicists and engineers…we’d have to take every hour of every day of your training period, and it still wouldn’t be enough. So…why?”

I had a good idea, and a better idea that it wouldn’t be the best thing to attempt an answer.

Apparently, everyone else thought the same way, because the classroom was silent.

Cheng grinned, not exactly pleasantly. “I expect answers. This isn’t status game-playing where withheld information gets you points and where enthusiasm is considered gauche.”

Several people nodded and offered hands, not raised enthusiastically. Mine was one of them, unfortunately.

“Candidate Alwyn, your answer?”

“Because we need a working knowledge of the power we control, ser?”

“Not just a working knowledge, but a practical and emotional understanding of exactly what an interstellar ship and Gate system are. You are expected to learn all that, and you’ll be tested on it, and not in just the conventional spit-back-the-knowledge ways, either. I don’t mind telling you why because those of you who won’t appreciate it never will, and those who do can pat yourselves on the back for the next three seconds.” Cheng paused theatrically. “The reason pilot training is so tough has nothing to do with mechanics. Mechanically, mentally, and physically, every single one of you has already been qualified as having the talent to be a pilot. That’s just the beginning. As I noted before, a space vehicle represents an enormous resource commitment that we cannot afford to lose except under the most dire of circumstances. Second, a space vehicle capable of going to the stars is potentially the most destructive weapon ever developed in human history. We don’t want just any brilliant young officer sitting at those controls. We want someone who fully understands that, and yet who can still make nanosecond decisions—the right decisions….”

As Cheng continued, I began to understand. At least I thought I did, but that was also something I decided to keep to myself.

Raven: Vallura, 458 N.E.

I didn’t sleep well the night after talking to Mertyn, and I’d already been up early the next morning reworking some of the package for Klevyl, even though I didn’t have any feedback. When a methodizer doesn’t get feedback, there are usually only two reasons. Either you did a good enough job, and the client doesn’t want to pay for more work on that project, or it’s beyond them—unexpectedly good or even more awful. Being too good can be worse, sometimes, than being awful, because no one wants to admit that someone outside the organization came up with something that good. They’d prefer a modest improvement with which everyone is comfortable, and about which everyone can delude themselves that, if given time or budget, they could have done as well.

As I sat before my flat desk, headset on the wood before me, fingers tapping on the smooth surface, eyes looking at the East Mountains, my mind drifted back to Elysa of the clean profile and the charming blush. She hadn’t seemed like a killer. But I’d never known anyone who could have been said to be a killer, unless you counted the family…and that was different. Gerrat and Father made and killed parts of society, not people. Not directly, anyway.

Did Elysa belong to another family like mine? How could she and there not be any record of her existence? Or maybe that was proof in itself.

I tried to be more methodical in looking at the situation.

I looked out toward the east, squinting because the sun was barely above the East Mountains, then looked away.

In one sense Father had been right. There wasn’t a trace of anything…but what if I attacked it from the other side? Looking for what should have been there…and wasn’t. Could I build a picture of who was after me from what was missing—an old-fashioned negative, which, when completed, could be inverted to depict my attackers? Or reveal something about them?

First, there were no obvious trails. Second, while sophisticated techniques and resources were required, there were no public spending patterns that could be traced, even by UniComm. Third, nothing was last-minute. Fourth, no one had tried to contact me—except Elysa. Fifth, Elysa didn’t exist. Sixth, whatever motive existed…

I shook my head. The motive was power. I didn’t know what kind, and I didn’t know how an attack on me fit in, but someone wanted to use me as a way to power—or to destroy power. And that meant someone who already had power, and had it closely gathered, one way or another.

Elysa was the only known key. Everything else had led to the shore—it was like looking out at the ocean, where every minute was different, and no landmark stayed the same. There were the remains of the laser—every part stock, and all melted down. There were nanitic remains—very few, unique, and related to no known or registered enterprise or research institute. Even the nanite spray dispenser in my glider—I’d had it examined by a nanitic fabricating engineer I’d worked with a year earlier on a Gyster project—and he’d informed me that it was standard medical issue.

So I called up the VR of Elysa and me at Kharl’s, opaqueing the study windows, pulling on the headset, and setting the image for maximum contrast. Even in VR, she remained special, and I couldn’t see why. She had a clean profile, a strong but not overpowering nose, a determined chin, and very intent brown eyes. Trim, but not thin. Muscular, but not overly so.

I tried looking at her more analytically. She’d worn little adornment—silver-worked jade combs in her hair, small matching silver ear clips with jade stones, and a jade choker. No rings on her fingers, and a wide silver bracelet set with spherical-looking jade stones. All her jewelry matched. Not hugely expensive, if real, but certainly not apparently synthetic, and the style was too tasteful to be popular—and that argued that the pieces were real, and custom-made.

Could I set up a net routine to find who might make such a set?

It might come up null, but everything else had—or come up so broad and inclusive as to be just as useless. I readjusted the headset, and dropped into the net once more, this time hopefully for a more targeted foray through the various systems. I walked down my VR corridor and opened the second door—the searching garden with the boxwood hedge maze. I’d liked that symbolism.

Then I got to work. The first attempt was a disaster—as restrictively as I thought I had set the parameters, there were more than a thousand possibilities. I tried another approach, with cost and real stones as the principal determinants. That wasn’t much better.

In the end, I set up four different routines, each winnowing through each other, and left them, slipping out of the boxwood maze and easing off the headset.

I looked out into the noonday light. That was one of the problems with netting—it was all too easy to lose track of time. My stomach growled, not surprisingly, since I’d last eaten nearly six hours earlier, and most of my muscles felt stiff and tired.

Standing, I stretched gently, then more vigorously, then walked to the kitchen. I needed a break—and something to eat.

My eyes flicked outside, to the vacant expanse around the house, and I ran a systems and security check.

Nothing, as usual.

Nothing—except two attempts to injure or murder me.