Lyon's Pride Page 12

  Shocked out of her self-denigration, her ripple of laugh bubbled up, slightly hysterical with disbelief.

  “You? Fail? Rojer, you couldn’t!”

  “Since I know as much as you know, then you couldn’t either. Or we both did. Pick your choice!” he added airily, grinning. Somehow he could usually make her smile back at him. It was a tired and tentative effort on her part, but it was a smile.

  He gave his head a shake to clear the tension of a long day’s concentration and exhaled sharply. He really didn’t think he’d done too badly, so there was no way she had. Certainly not on the spatial equations and the jo-junctions. They’d been snaps. He’d seen Commander Metrios work them often enough while on the Genesee…

  He pushed himself back from the workstation, compressing his lips. He hadn’t thought of Gil or Kat all day—even at the lunch break when they’d all been exchanging complaints about the severity of the testing.

  That is as well, Rojer, for you must move on now, he heard Jeran say softly, and not because there was anyone who would listen but because Jeran wanted to convey more than sympathy and approval. “Softly” expressed such multiples better.

  “You’re dismissed now, candidates,” Jeran said out loud. “The results will be tabulated and sent to your personal terminals later this evening. You’ve been diligent and I am certain that all who should qualify will.”

  “He says that every year,” murmured one of the boys Rojer did not know.

  “Rojer,” Jeran went on, though he surely had heard the cynical remark, “Raini asked if you’d care to stop by before you leave the City.”

  Rojer grinned at the implied invitation to dinner. Jeran’s wife was an extremely good cook and tonight would be one when he’d appreciate having a meal he didn’t have to prepare. He could even put up with the proximity of his cousin Barry’s ’Dinis.

  Jeran also caught that and nodded once again, his eyes so like grandmother Rowan’s, brighter with approval.

  “Not the fatted calf, but that casserole you’re so fond of,” Jeran said, after the others had departed. He was closing down the station, switching the messaging system to his house unit.

  “Can I help?” Rojer asked.

  “This doesn’t take long. Get a breath of fresh air, lad,” Jeran said and gestured for his nephew to leave.

  Just as Rojer reached the bottom of the stairs, he was astonished to hear the generators turn on.

  Find yourself a carrier, Rojer, a voice told him. You have five minutes to gather up any things you need from the cottage. Mother’ll send on the leftovers under your bed.

  Granddad?

  Speaking as such, let me congratulate you on the high scores you achieved on your exams. Honors, even. There was a chuckle. Speaking as Earth Prime, you’re to get your lazy butt to the Mars Moon Base. The refugee ship has just now assumed its assigned geosynchronous orbit and the technicians are thronging to get inside it. High Council has insisted that I assign Primes to assist in this venture into alien territory.

  Father, Jeran interjected, Rojer’s had an exhausting day. And you know perfectly well that we Primes can’t bear proximity to Hiver metals. The reaction on a tired mind will be all the more intense….

  Jeran, you fuss more than your grandmother over the boy. And it’s Rojer’s choice. Care to come?

  Suddenly mental fatigue vanished as the adrenaline of challenge swept through Rojer. Even the Moon Base had food dispensers. And sleep? At this moment?

  I got honors, Granddad! If he had, then Asia had.

  High enough to make Xexo impossible, according to your mother, and certainly Earth Prime wants one of his own there to keep an eye on things. You won’t be required to go “in” the vessel: just maneuver lights and rescue those who step into Hiver tubes.

  Rojer wasn’t certain if it was making Xexo proud or the challenge of investigating, even at a remote distance, the undamaged Hive sphere, that was causing his elation.

  Hell, Granddad, I could even manage going inside it—if I didn’t have to stay too long, Rojer replied.

  Then move it, lad, or the post’ll have to go to someone else.

  Granddad, did Asia Eagle pass?

  Asia Eagle? There was a pause. Yes. But don’t waste time.

  Rojer did not consider it a waste of time to try to give Asia that reassuring news but when he tried to reach her mind with the good news, she’d closed up tight as a pod in a misery of anxiety. Just like her, the silly clunch! She’d know soon enough and he’d tease her—gently—about her lack of confidence. Then he focused his mind on his room in Isthia’s cottage and started ’porting tapes, disks, oddments, belatedly remembering to snatch a carisak into which he dumped these belongings.

  You’ll need at least one change of clothing, lad, Jeran said with an amused snort and himself plucked several items of clothing from the cottage, more neatly folded than Rojer had left them. These were added to the carisak.

  Closing it, Rojer sprinted for the nearest single personnel carrier. As he stretched himself out on the narrow couch inside, he reached out a long arm to haul the lid down. He heard a brief second thump and grinned that his uncle bothered to check that the latches had caught. So methody of him!

  Please thank Raini for me, Jeran. I’m sure I won’t eat as well…

  Good luck, Rojer, the brisk kindly voice of his great-grandmother cut in.

  Thanks for ev… and then Rojer felt the indefinable sensation that told the experienced traveling Talent that he was no longer where he had just been. He heard a chuckle.

  Granddad? Now I’d call that cocky!

  Would you? And his grandfather’s chuckle renewed with a certain pleased edge to it.

  “Okay in there, sir?” a slightly less confident voice asked.

  “Fine!”

  The hatch opened to reveal a double domed darkness, well sprinkled with stars, but Rojer was too familiar with Callisto to believe that’s where he’d been ’ported. He sat up and saw the naval rating peering in at him.

  “Rojer…”

  Prime…his grandfather corrected him firmly.

  “…Lyon, Prime. Am I expected?”

  “Yes, sir, you are, sir.”

  Rojer grimaced a bit at the “sirring” since it evoked memories which still caused him to wince. He hitched himself out of the carrier, slung the carisak over his shoulder and gestured for the rating to lead the way.

  As he came round the carrier on his way to the air lock that joined the carrier depot with the gigantic Moon Base facility, he stopped abruptly. There, above him, half-lit by Sol, was the complete sphere of the refugee ship he was here to explore. She was appropriately equipped with regulation buoy lights.

  “She’s a beauty, sir, even for an alien craft,” the rating said with a odd ring of pride in his voice. “We were lucky to snag her to Mars Phobos Base even if now there’s as many ’Dinis here as there would be if she’d been sent to one of theirs.”

  “’Dinis bother you?” Rojer asked, bridling at the hint of intolerance in the rating’s tone.

  “Me, sir? No, sir,” was the almost startled reply as they entered the first of several lift shafts on the way to their destination. “Cute little bu…beggars, most of ’em. Better manners’n some I could name not too far from here. To starboard now, sir.”

  A quick scan of the rating’s mind showed Rojer that the man was honest enough—so long as he was not required to be much in their company.

  “Don’t they keep that Hiver queen here?”

  The rating visibly flinched and shot Rojer a nervous look. “No, she’s down on Earth’s Moon Base. Heinlein Buildings. No way she or anything she can make out of her eggs can get out of that place.”

  “Oh? Has she hatched more of the larvae?” Surely someone would have mentioned it to him, Rojer thought, if the matter had been noteworthy.

  “A couple of oddies. Small scuttling things,” and the rating gave a snort of disdain. “Vents got checked again, thinking she might be trying to send ’em out
side. No way she can!” The man had pride in his service’s security measures.

  As they traversed several corridors and took one more long ride upwards, Rojer wondered how soon he could wangle a chance to get down to the Moon and observe her. If, as the experts were now fairly certain, the queens controlled all ship functions, he ought to see her for himself as well as the attendants and other varieties she had finally allowed to hatch. As far as he knew, his cousin Rhodri was still on duty there.

  “Here you are, sir,” the rating said, stopping by a door and pointing to a palm-pad. “If you’ll just do the necessary…”

  Rojer obliged by placing his hand on the pad and felt the tingle that registered the quarters to his imprint. Then the door whooshed open on a good-sized, attractively furnished lounge area: a good few notches above the usual naval base interiors. Peering about, he saw that he also had separate sleeping and sanitary rooms. The rating was more concerned that he know how to operate the internal com unit, where emergency life support equipment was stored and which numbers to dial for which services. He had no sooner finished this briefing than the com unit blinked a message light.

  “I’ll leave you to it, sir,” the rating said and, with another smart salute, left.

  Rojer depressed the “deliver” button. A mellifluous voice—much kinder to the ear than the usual “service” computer voice—informed him that Commandant Enarit del Falco would like to see him as soon as he was settled. A directional node dropped out of the message slot.

  Rojer checked the digital on the wall and decided, as he reset his wrist unit to the local time, that “as soon as he was settled” included attending to the rumbling in his guts. It was mid-morning here and he was far too hungry to wait till lunchtime.

  The dispenser unit was standard Navy; the menu that scrolled past Rojer’s incredulous eyes was anything but. Delighted, Rojer watched long enough to discover many favorite and esoteric dishes before he ordered the most unusual item he saw—a high protein described as “genuine beefalo steak” which tasted succulent enough to be genuine. Then he contacted the commandant’s office that he was now settled in.

  Donning the button which had been forwarded by pneumatic slot to him, he let it guide him through the maze of corridors and lifts. He knew that the Phobos Moon Base was as many levels deep in solid lunar rock as above it and equally as wide. He figured by the upward progress on which the rating had led him that he was housed in “executive territory” but he made another upwardly mobile short journey to an even more prestigious level, encountering more and more officers of high rank as he progressed—inward now, he thought. Though he was an obvious civilian, he was more often accorded a salute than a smile. Then, as he turned to a set of wide double doors, the node informed him that he had arrived.

  The commandant’s suite of offices was imposing—on a par with his grandfather’s level of the Blundell Cube. He sensed many minds not far away and wondered if stopping to eat a meal had made him late for an important meeting. The handprint pad was conspicuous enough to suggest that everyone put his hand there, so he did. One leaf to the door swung inward to a huge but empty foyer, walls and ceilings impressively decorated with naval ships, sea and space, down the ages.

  Damn, Rojer thought, I should have made some attempt to find out this commandant’s status in the table of Alliance organization.

  He’s not quite as important as Grandfather, said a very welcome voice, but he thinks he is.

  Where are you, Thian? Rojer looked at the many doors leading off this foyer.

  Come now, brother, surely that’s elementary!

  Rojer chuckled and confidently turned to the right-hand one of two double-doored entries. It opened to a huge, well-populated “operations” area, dominated by screens wrapped round the walls, with horizontal plotting boards at various locations on the floor space and two transparent spheres, one of which was fitted out with some internal components. All around the room workstations were occupied and equations and displays flashed their messages to those seated before them. He spotted five with engineering configurations. The room was full of Humans…and Mrdinis…and no one paid his arrival any attention whatever.

  Hi there, bro, said Thian, his voice buoyant with cheerful welcome. Did you like the beefalo? Smart of you to eat while you had the chance, because the admiral is unlikely to take into consideration that you’ve done a full day’s work already.

  Once his brother began speaking, Rojer located him at the far end of the chamber in a group of evidently highranking naval officers, to judge by their static positions and somber expressions. About them, like satellites, other uniformed personnel hovered, either busily checking notepads or awaiting assignment.

  As Rojer made his way toward his tall, self-assured brother, he noted the obvious fact that, while Thian wore a Navy shipsuit, there was an FT&T insignia on his shoulder and the Prime tab on his collar. He also thought his brother looked a lot older than he had when they had last met. Whenever that was. Ah, yes, when Laria had come home for her birthday. There were subtle changes in his older brother’s face and bearing.

  Watch the one who’s jabbering at me, Thian added as Rojer made his way across the cavernous room, although Thian gave every outward appearance of total concentration on what was being said to him by a shorter, black-haired man with a strangely taciturn face. If Prtglm had had the sense to get Human support to destroy Xh-33, Admiral Enarit del Falco, our base commandant, is the man who’d’ve given it and rejoiced. Del Falco is also extremely shrewd, intelligent and capable. There isn’t a thing that happens on this Base that he doesn’t know about within seconds. He’s got absolutely no Talent so we’re safe to say all the things we want right in front of his face. On the other hand, he’s got a natural shield as impregnable as a Hive sphere, which is very inconvenient. Even Granddad and Grandmother can’t winkle in.

  The admiral turned slightly just then and Rojer gave an inadvertent shudder at the closed face and took the final steps to his brother under the admiral’s scrutiny.

  “Ah, Admiral, speaking of the devil…” Thian said, as if he’d just noticed his brother’s arrival. He raised one arm which he then placed about Rojer’s shoulders, squeezing his hand in welcome. And continued a mental briefing while he effected the introductions. “Here’s Prime Rojer Gwyn-Lyon, Eng. Mec., top honors—Yes, you did get top honors today, which is exactly why you got snatched from the quiet of Deneb and Grandma’s cottage and thrust into this situation without a chance for a day’s rest—who’s assigned along with me to help you penetrate the interior of the Refugee—That’s her official designation, bro. Don’t let his manner get under your skin, Roj. He tries that one on everybody, even Granddad and Grandmother. Got nowhere with them so we have to keep up the family tradition. He doesn’t like Talents but he needs the help only we can give him. Fortunately both you and I are independent of his authority even if we are assigned to help. Good to see you, bro.” And Thian dropped his arm, smiling down at the Admiral in his charismatic way, much as their grandfather might have done in a similar situation.

  Having Thian in physical and mental support with so much coming at him all of a sudden made all the difference. So Rojer could smile, too, summoning up what Isthia had called the deplorable tendency of her male relatives to charm as easily as they breathed. Adopting a casual confidence, he inclined his head courteously to del Falco. The commandant did not offer his hand to the young Talent. Instead del Falco gave him such a piercing stare—he had the sort of large black eye that appears to see through to the soul—that Rojer was very glad of his brother’s warning.

  “Privilege to be aboard, Admiral del Falco.”

  “I thought you were younger than your brother.”

  “We’re not far apart age-wise, sir,” Rojer replied.

  Perfect response, Roj. He hasn’t had time to read your transcript because we had to wait to see if you passed the exams before we could snatch you here. The team that’s going on board the Refugee requires stiff qua
lifications. You got more than some, less than most. He won’t take long to assess you. He’s got an info-plant. And he’s accessing your file right now. His eyes flicker when he’s listening to it. Updates on demand. Don’t know why he isn’t schizo. Oh, and our birth years are not given. Granddad’s had dealings with this bird. Just as well you don’t look seventeen. That last was said in a rueful tone, acknowledging Rojer’s bereavement and its tragic circumstances, and accompanied by an affectionate mental hug. Steady on. He’s coming up with “the look”!

  The admiral was, and in spite of Thian’s warning Rojer very nearly rocked back on his heels at the intensity of that black and penetrating gaze. So he smiled as equably as he could until del Falco broke the eye contact, having evidently heard sufficient from his info-plant to place Rojer in the pertinent category.

  ’Dini coming up behind you, Roj! his brother said, his tone colored with apprehension.

  So Rojer had just enough warning to be prepared when a ’Dini voice spoke.

  “RJR LN, YOU WILL NOT MIND TO WORK WITH GREYS?”

  One of the good guys, Thian added, smiling at the newcomer.

  So Rojer kept the smile on his face as he turned and almost committed a solecism as he began to drop his eyes to the usual ’Dini height. But the ’Dini who had spoken was nearly as tall as Rojer. And not at all like the grey Prtglm.

  “GREY HAS ALWAYS BEEN AN EXCELLENT COLOR,” Rojer said, using the body language that expressed honor at being in its company while inclining from the waist with the bow deserved by a ’Dini of such size. The memory of Prtglm, or its color, no longer had the power to distress him. “WHAT NAME, PLEASE, IS ONE TO USE IN ADDRESS?”

  “THIS ONE IS KNOWN AS GLMTML.”

  “I’m glad that you two Primes have the chance to meet Glmtml,” the admiral said, observing the exchange. “It leads the Mrdini team that’s going to reveal Refugee’s secrets for us.” A smile that was not a smile but nearly a threat spread his lips just slightly. “Prime Lyon has just arrived, Glmtml, so he hasn’t been briefed….”