The Journey of Rick Heiden - Chapters 35 and 36
I wrote this story for Nifty, a nifty site if there ever was one. Nifty needs your donations to host this work, and some works, no doubt, that are far better. If you enjoy Nifty, please, consider donating at donate.nifty.org/donate.html
This work is the sole property of the author and may not be reprinted or reused without his written permission.
All Rights Reserved © 2021, Rick Haydn Horst
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Thank you for delving into this work; I hope you enjoy it.
Please send questions, comments, or complaints to Rick.Heathen@gmail.com. I would enjoy reading what you have to say.
This novel contains 50 CHAPTERS, and every post will have 2 chapters each.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The next D-word had come, Deception, and I didn't know where Pearce hid it among all the data that he provided that evening, but I knew he deceived me. Some things he said had the ring of truth, like having left his son unregistered. It spoke to a certain level of his innocence. If they intended to stay, they would have registered their son, declaring his citizenship, so he must have planned to return to Jiyu with his family. As a parent born on Jiyu, I could imagine his reluctance to strip away his son's freedom by making him an American citizen. I had no idea how they intended to reach the UK to leave Earth without the registration, but they must have had a plan.
An unregistered birth can create an inconvenience for a child once they've grown, but it also carries considerable danger. In this case, Phalin, a company willing to experiment on someone against their will, held his son. They might find that a young, unregistered child, born with nanos, an opportunity too enticing to give up. They could do with him, whatever they wanted with impunity. As far as any officials would know, the child didn't exist.
We lived in different directions, Magnar and I. In the lift, on our way to the ground, he contacted Venn for two transports.
"Here," said Magnar, "I want you to take this." He removed his leg holster for the black pistol and gave it to me. "Take it and wear it."
"I don't need this, Magnar."
He locked out the kill setting on the pistol. "Yes, you do," he said. "If you insist that he comes with you, I insist you wear this. I will not have David thinking I left you defenseless."
In reluctance, I acceded to his demand.
When the transports arrived, I told Magnar goodnight. As Pearce and I climbed into ours, Magnar pulled his sword. He grabbed Pearce by the left arm and rested the razor-sharp blade on Pearce's right shoulder, a mere fraction from cutting his neck. He drew close to his left ear and spoke in his gruff voice. "If you harm anyone, or I discover that you willfully and maliciously betrayed us all, I will hunt you down and slaughter you where you stand."
"I know you would," said Pearce.
Magnar sheathed his sword, and with a little bow, wished us a pleasant and peaceful evening. He left in his transport before we did.
I knew he had to say it, for as much as it disturbed me. I couldn't live in a fantasy world believing Jiyu didn't function, at least somewhat, through a threat of extreme violence. I trusted Pearce to a certain extent, but I had unresolved questions. Nevertheless, I didn't believe he wanted to harm anyone. He wanted something else.
"Do I understand, Pearce," said Venn, "that your loyalty has come into question?"
"So, it seems." He sat in the opposite seat, rubbing his neck.
"That's excellent," said Venn.
"It is?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "just this morning, no one doubted his guilt. May I have your destination, please?"
"The hospital," I said, "and if you would please wait for us, I would appreciate it."
"The hospital!" said Pearce in perplexity. He held out his hand with the tiny smear of blood on it. "I don't think that's necessary, do you?"
"This isn't about you," I said. "Well, not really. I need to make one last important stop this evening for a friend in need."
When we arrived at the hospital, the hologram of Apollo greeted us.
"Faye has retired for the evening," he said. "However, due to your position, I will say she left for her apartment a few minutes ago. I am attempting to contact her for you. One moment, please..." Apollo stood with a simple smile and an odd, familiar expression. I felt sure I used to make that expression while waiting for someone to answer the phone, not looking at anyone or anything.
As a matter of convenience, the building housed several of the emergency room staff on the upper floors. "Faye returns to the ground floor," said Apollo, gesturing to the lifts on the right of the front entryway, and as before, he vanished.
"Do I know this friend?" asked Pearce.
"It's Neal," I said.
"My mother's hairdresser? What's wrong with him?"
"Long story, but you'll see."
Faye stepped from the lift, wearing a yellow striped robe, and had her hair down. I almost didn't recognize her.
"Pearce!" she said in alarm. "What's he doing here? I thought he turned traitor."
"You can relax," I said. "Enough evidence suggests otherwise, but we should withhold judgment until we know everything. Until then, I will monitor Pearce, and his status remains one of mere suspicion." I looked at Pearce. "But that could change either way."
"Very well," she said, "seeing as it's you. I get most of my news from Apollo. He told me you and Magnar are acting proxies for David during the crisis. After having met you, it pleases me to hear it. What can I do for you, Mr. Heiden?"
"If your communication link is on, I must ask you to turn it off, please," I said to her.
She gave me a concerned glance but did as I asked.
"Thank you. What plans do you have for Neal?" I asked.
"We honor people's lives as best we can," she said. "His situation appears unique, however, in similar cases, we kept the patient comfortable for three days to allow visitors, and on the third, we put them to sleep at sunset."
"Given his circumstance, that's a kindness," I said, "but I'm going to ask you to forgo the usual treatment. I cannot go into the details of why we must keep him alive, except to say I have reason to believe his condition is not irreversible."
"I don't see how Mr. Heiden. The technician told me it wasn't a nano issue, and I'm at a loss for a biological cause."
"Yes, I know he told you that," I said and began to whisper, "you must never divulge what I will tell you. The nanos induce his condition, and that means we have someone in One City capable of doing 'that' to anyone who gets in their way. They threatened the technician to tell you otherwise."
She covered her mouth with her hand, and I noted her eyes darted at Pearce. "Pearce couldn't do it; he arrived later."
She gave a slight nod and whispered. "I will say nothing, and I will keep Neal alive."
"In the meantime," I said. "I'm going to ask you to pretend as if you will adhere to the usual routine because the perpetrator could be counting on it. They may want you to kill him for them. I will have someone protect him; perhaps with the excuse, they are sitting vigil for a man who has no one."
"I will see to it," she said, "and Mr. Heiden, thank you for trusting me."
"We're going to have to stick together. Oh, one last thing, if you must contact me about this at all, don't use Iris."
"Any particular reason?" she asked.
"Someone has compromised Iris. If you must discuss anything confidential, never do it with your communication link active. Please, hold that in confidence as well."
When our conversation ended, she departed for the back of the emergency room, while Pearce and I left for the fifth floor. The instant the lift doors had closed, he could hold his curiosity back no longer.
"What the hell's going on?" he asked.
"When we get to Neal's room," I said.
While we stood observing Neal's placid form, I informed him, but I didn't go into detail because I felt tired. We had a complex set of circumstances for which no one could hold Pearce responsible, but his involvement, as David would agree, meant he could not absolve himself of his duty to assist me in rooting out the person and stopping them.
"They may target you," I said. "If someone would do this to Neal for knowing the leaf from book seven, I can imagine they might find it imperative to obliterate your memory of book eight."
"All the more reason to do what I came to do," he said, "and leave."
"Wow," I said, "my whole life, I judged myself a coward, but I see now, this is what that looks like."
"Oh no, that won't work on me." He waved a dismissive hand, proceeding to exit the room. I followed right on his heels. "I'm fairly good at self-preservation, as you should know. Besides, I have my son to see to."
We stood waiting for the lift.
"You didn't register your son," I said.
"That's what I said."
"You aren't an idiot. If you always intended to stay and not return to Jiyu with your family, you would have registered him. You say you loved Jiyu because of David. Perhaps that's true in some obsessed-with-David sense, but you grew up here, it's inside you, and from what I've heard, despite your mother, you seemed to have had an incredible childhood here. You want that for your son, don't you?"
"What of it?" he asked as he and I entered the lift.
"I don't know what they want to keep hidden," I said, "but if we can't stop this person because you leave, you can never come back. They know that you know. It will trap you and your son on Earth."
He thought about it for a moment. "Earth's not that bad."
We exited the lift on the ground floor, where I grabbed his arm. "You know as well as I do that, compared to Jiyu, Earth is a prison where they sentence the inmates to hard labor, and the wardens live a life of ease. You don't want your son to have to row with all the other slaves."
He drew close and whispered to me. "If I end up like Neal, who will save my son and care for him?"
I caught a glimpse inside that person before me, and I felt compelled at that moment to do something. I stared at him, placing my hands on his shoulders, and we stood like that for only a moment during my realization. I know what he said to me, but another level existed in the macro. Pearce saw himself as alone, either by choice or circumstance. He had neither father nor mother growing up, at least not in any reasonable way. Who did Pearce have? He had David and himself. He took it upon himself to get the diamond for Jiyu. He didn't tell anyone about his family, not even David, because he would have to leave, and maybe he didn't want to leave Earth until David did. Apart from his need for proximity to David, he had grown independent, and Jiyu encouraged that. And just then, he didn't want to leave his son with the experience of having no father. He had more bravery and selflessness than I realized. Given how his life had gone, Pearce was amazing.
"I see you now," I said. I threw Pearce off guard for a moment, and then he hugged me just as he had David that day in the little park in London.
"I am innocent of that which Magnar thinks I'm guilty. I want you to know that. I also want you to know that I like you. I like you a lot, which makes this even more difficult for me, but it's for my son."
That's when he pulled away from me just far enough to stun me with Magnar's pistol. If for no other reason than my stupidity at having left myself exposed, I deserved it.
My thoughts made sense, though. I could see that Pearce did what he did because they held his son. What choice did he have? At the time, I recognized his innocence, based on that alone, but I felt uncertain I could convince anyone else to accept it without new evidence. The whole picture had to include my experience with him on Earth and my observations. They couldn't know the way I did. I had seen him earlier at the temple, and he had not faked that. He told me they killed his mate the day before they released him. No wonder he had cried in David's arms as he did.
I had only one question that nagged me. The Aggregate knew where to find our weak spot to destroy Rom and blind us. How did they know that? I had a tough time comprehending it without Ockham's razor slicing away any other explanation but the simplest; Pearce had told them. And if they hadn't known what to expect on Jiyu, they wouldn't have known what to ask him. He had to have provided the information of his own volition. It had stood out as a disjointed piece of the puzzle that hadn't fit with everything else, but I couldn't put it out of my mind. I knew I wanted to believe him, but that impeded my objectivity. He either turned traitor or not, independent of what I wanted, and I had to remember that.
I woke up 15 minutes later, a little disoriented, and grateful no one came in during that time. If Jiyu's grapevine knew Pearce had stunned me, and Magnar had found out, he would have followed through with his threat. I hadn't wanted that. So, I never said a word to anyone. One thing puzzled me though, Pearce had put my pistol back into the holster, as if nothing had ever happened.
I ran outside and couldn't find Pearce anywhere, but I couldn't see Venn either. I tried to decide what to do when another transport pulled up where Venn had waited earlier, and I raced to it.
"Where have you taken him?" I asked Venn.
"The lift to the temple," he said.
"Why did you do that?"
"He asked me to," he said, "it's what I do. Do you wish to follow him?"
"Yes," I said, jumping into the transport over the side, "make it fast."
"I dropped him off several minutes ago," he said, "and the lift was waiting. He's at the top by now. He left a voice message for you if you wanted to follow him."
"What did he say?" I asked.
Venn played the message.
["I regretted it the moment I did it, but I must do this. I will tell you my love for David is platonic. Who could know David well and not love him? It hurt me to disappoint him, and as you are his mate, I don't want to disappoint you either. I mean no one any harm. Please, don't try to stop me. I'll be out of your way as quick as I can."]
I heard a noise in the distance, and I strained to discern its location. I looked up, and then I saw him illuminated from the light at the temple. Pearce wore David's abandoned flight pack. He must have noticed it sitting inside the Temple doorway. He flew off into the night toward the industrial area to the east.
"Would you like me to take you home?" Venn asked.
I had a choice to make, and once made, it brought on the next D-word of the day: Deliverance, and with it came more, so much more.
"Oh, bloody hell." I flopped back down into the seat. "Welp, it looks like I'm not getting any sleep tonight either," I said to myself. "Venn, how fast can this transport go?"
"This city transport has a maximum speed of seventy kilometers an hour," said Venn, "and that's not fast enough if you wish to follow him. I am bringing you a more appropriate vehicle. You require something more durable, versatile, and efficient."
"I need something that goes fast, Venn. I'm losing him."
"Since we can no longer rely on Rom," said Venn, "I will monitor Pearce's position from the ground. I have vehicles to the industrial area and beyond. But I don't understand why you want to follow him when he asked you not to."
"I told Magnar I would take full responsibility for Pearce," I said. "I must mean what I say. Besides, he may need our help. I doubt that the flight pack will take him where he wants to go and back if he had that intention. How much longer?"
"You have a point," he said, "their range is short. Estimated time of arrival, 2 minutes."
I leaned back and folded my arms. "That's going to feel like an eternity."
"It's worth the wait."
"How can you reach as far as the industrial area?" I asked. "What about the line-of-sight problem regarding transmissions?"
"As an interpreter," said Venn, "your range of knowledge is surprising. My telemetry is routed through a single geostationary satellite in low orbit."
"Well, I do read a lot of science magazines," I said. "I thought Rom controlled all the satellites. Do you control the satellite too?"
"No, they built it independent of me and independent of Rom, for which I am grateful. It's just a relay with no scientific instrumentation for Rom to have utilized."
"Mason told me they built you decentralized, is that true?"
"Yes, but to function as I do now requires the satellite. If I cannot communicate with my other parts, it will leave me in chaos."
"You do realize that makes you vulnerable, right?"
"Yes," he said, "and after what happened to Rom, I have decided to withdraw from the central Forge, and not pursue any more expansion. Diversity will protect our community better, even if it sacrifices an optimal level of efficiency. E.T.A. 45 seconds."
"That's gracious of you," I said. "What sort of vehicle will you bring me?"
"It's something I've been toying with for jears," he said. "I completed the design during David's time on Earth, and I forged it during the mission. I only have one, so please tell me you won't scratch it."
"That I won't scratch it. Won't you be driving?"
"No, it's separate and semiautomatic. It has an automatic mode, but you must tell it what to do and works best if you do the flying. I've considered our retreat from the fully automatic transports for some time, and with the death of Rom, I think I have chosen the best route. The controlled transports we use now may have more convenience, safety, and efficiency, but a well-designed semiautomatic could function just as well."
A noise came from overhead, and the vehicle made a vertical landing a few feet behind us. I had never seen anything like it.
I jumped from the transport. "Wow! You created this?"
I wanted to give it a thorough inspection, but I had no time. In the relative darkness, the lights from the sidewalk and the front of the hospital illuminated it enough to see.
"I like the black body with the ice-blue trim," I said.
"I made the body of a carbon nanotube weave covered titanium alloy, that's why it's black. And what you call ice-blue trim is the exterior lighting. There is nothing on the vehicle that doesn't have at least two uses. The carbon construction makes it durable, impervious to electromagnetic pulses and can become magnetic, protecting the occupants from space radiation.
"Space radiation? You mean this can fly in space."
"It will operate in almost any environment."
"How far can it go?"
"It's a short-range transport, capable of flying to Naxos, at the edge of the solar system and back, according to my calculations, in 18 hours."
"That's short-range?"
"The galaxy is enormous, Rick," said Venn.
I laughed. "Of course, I'm just a bit stunned we're utilizing that kind of scale. I expected something...well...less."
The ship, as I discovered later, had dimensions of 2 meters high (not including the retractable landing struts), 5.5 meters long, and 2.5 meters wide. It had sharp front-facing edges and round rear-facing edges. Venn built it streamlined and sleek with no windows or wheels. It had bowed sides and an undetectable crevice where the side hatches opened. Its satiny black surface felt smooth, and the ice-blue strips of exterior lighting looked stylish.
I couldn't find the door handle. "How do I get in?"
"It needs to hear your voice to remember it. Three times say, 'open the hatch, please.'"
I did so, and the hatch had released. The imperceptible crevice widened, and a door protruded from the side of the ship, sliding forward from the center of the vessel. One had to bend a little to enter the shorter interior. The rear jumpseats folded flat into the back wall flanking the stowage section in the middle. Above each jumpseat featured a rectangular black and yellow striped button the size of my palm to close the hatches. Nothing happened when I touched one.
"The hatches won't close," I said to Venn.
Venn's voice came from the front. "That's normal. Climb into a front seat; it doesn't matter which."
The front had the cockpit, accessed by the narrow aisle between the front seats. It looked dissimilar to the cockpit of an airplane. I saw no windows, no buttons, no switches, or anything one activates. Venn chose a black, charcoal, and white interior lit by long light strips and scatter lights on the floors, all of which made the white trim and parts of the interior glow.
I sat in the left seat because I grew up American. The chair felt more comfortable than the bucket seat of any luxury car I'd ridden in. Once I sat, the black panel dashboard had a realistic depiction of the hatch door closing with the word "CLOSE" below it. I touched it, and the hatch closed. I saw then that Venn had done an exceptional job in his attempt to make the vehicle's interface as basic as possible. Once it closed, an almost uninterrupted 180° display came on, showing everything around the ship as if I looked through a window. A semitransparent blue holographic sphere appeared 18 inches before me.
"Must we do this? A great deal of time is passing."
Venn's voice came from the headrest. "If you had the specialized synthetic eyes, none of this would be necessary. As it stands, you cannot fly the vehicle without it, and believe me, you have plenty of time. Pearce is saving power with his slow progress. It's 70 kilometers to the industrial area, and he's not even halfway.
"Place your fingers into the sphere. Tell me when it turns green," said Venn.
I did so. "It's green."
"There," said Venn, "the ship is yours."
"Mine?" I asked. "You're giving me this ship?"
"It must go to someone," said Venn, "it's not a public vehicle."
"But it's the only one!"
"Not for long," said Venn. "I have a private forge of my own. It specializes in forging vehicles intact. The second one has been forging for two days."
"That sounds like the shipwright Laren College designed."
"It is," said Venn. "Amare knew of mine and asked the college to design one for building larger ships, but mine came first, so I get the credit."
"You have a private forge of your own?"
"Of course," he said. "It's not unusual; many people have a private forge. I know of several in One City of varying sizes. Shall we go?"
The person claimed the ship when they placed their fingers inside the sphere. It read their fingerprints, and then the controls respond to no other fingers but theirs.
At first, it enters teaching mode. Venn understood how humans learned best. He made the visual cues simplistic. Images, whole words, and symbols surrounded me from my left to the center console before me, with every section labeled and color-coded. As a vehicle that flew, it had a yolk of sorts for maneuvering. This unique one, he made holographic. I used it as a guide for where to place my hands, it moved and acted like a physical yolk, except this one learned from me as much as I learned from it. It knew the difference between an intentional turn and a slip of the hand. If I let go of the holographic yolk, it disregarded that hand until I replaced it. The ship seemed intuitive and easy to fly.
I couldn't stop myself from smiling and gushing praise upon Venn for his brilliance in how much consideration went into it. He had me. I hadn't even driven a car in years, and to have that ship as my foray back into independent travel was something for which the emotional part of me couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. Venn had given me more than just a vehicle; he gave me more freedom. How could I not love him for that?
The ship's speed and range had astounded me the most. It could reach escape velocity, but it hadn't needed to because the propulsion remained constant. I could have made it into orbit by traveling 10 kilometers an hour if I had the time and the desire to go. In space, it could reach .5 light speed in an hour. Flying within the atmosphere, it could circumnavigate the planet in just a few hours at a higher elevation and could cruise at Mach 40. I wouldn't want to skim the surface at that speed, but it could fly at Mach 2 at near ground level.
I reached the industrial area at Mach .9 in four minutes, and even after all the discussion and teaching the ship put me through, I still managed to beat Pearce there. By turning off the exterior lighting and not breaking the sound barrier, he neither saw nor heard me.
I set the vehicle down near one of the warehouses with the help of Teaching Mode. Pearce's route brought him my direction, so I watched him pass in infrared on the monitor. He hadn't stopped in the area, which perplexed me. I switched to night vision and followed him.
I had come to the farthest east I had traveled, entering unknown territory, not counting the satellite view. It couldn't depict terrain at all, which left it useless. Beyond the industrial area, I saw a thicket of tall trees that grew off the lower plateau, down the elongated slope into the valley. I followed Pearce as he descended, he wouldn't travel any farther east.
"Venn, what's in the valley, besides the crops and the river?"
"Nothing of note," he said. "It's kilometers of meticulously managed fruits and vegetables farther than the eye can see."
"Well, what's Pearce doing then?"
"I cannot fathom."
I followed him to one of the temporary food-storage sheds. I landed just out of sight and earshot, I opened the hatch and left the vehicle. I realized then that the swarms of tiny robotic pollinators and the bots caring for the plants and picking fruit would have covered any noise I might have made.
He stood in the shed with his back to me, stuffing his face with fruit. The nano-suspension he drank made him ravenous. With all the food he was consuming, I hadn't wished to interrupt him, so I watched. Pearce had more medical knowledge than a doctor on Earth, so he knew what would happen if he ate. Had he intended to let it happen there? Pearce ate one piece after the next, no pause in between. When it looked like he'd had his fill, I leaned against the doorframe.
"Sleepy yet?" I asked.
I hadn't startled him. Facing away from me, he just stopped what he was doing and looked up, staring straight at the back wall. He finished chewing the contents of his mouth, swallowed it, and wiped his face on his sleeve. He slowly turned to face me with his hands up; he thought I held the pistol on him.
"I had every intention of feeding you a civilized, sit-down meal at my home," I said.
"I asked you not to follow me," said Pearce.
"I took full responsibility for you, and you shot me!"
"I said I was sorry!"
"No, you didn't!"
"No, I didn't!" He realized. "Damn, I meant to."
He made me laugh.
"How did you get here so quickly?" he asked.
"Venn's help," I said. "What's in this valley of vegetation that might help you?"
"You read through my journals; don't you know?"
"The thing you wrote about in book eight."
"Yes," he said, "I had loaded book eight with that and the Sancy. I had an obsession, I think."
"Someone stole book eight from your mother's home," I said. "We have one through seven at the penthouse, and I get the impression someone else stole the leaf containing page 584 from number seven."
"Why didn't you tell me these details earlier?" he asked. "So, eight is gone, but Neal knew about page 584. So, he didn't read book eight? Who read my journals first? Oh, wait, Mother did, didn't she? Of course, and from Mother to the gossip's ears. She never could keep a secret. I placed dire warnings throughout them that no one should reveal them until after I die. By that time, things would blow over, but the truth would still become known to everyone."
"Why didn't you hide them?" I asked.
"I did! I hid them in the house Magnar said they demolished. I hadn't counted on her moving. I should have hidden them in the walls so the demolition crew would destroy them with the house. I would have preferred that to this."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
"They have my son. He must come first," Pearce said, "but I will not leave you dishonored."
"You're lucky no one found me on the floor," I said. "Magnar would hunt you down."
"I'm sorry, I apologize for what I did," he said. "I regretted it the instant I pulled the trigger."
I shrugged. "I'm uninjured, so provided you stop fighting me, I accept your apology. I don't like what Phalin and Major Palmer have done to you. I know David can be naive, but I trust David. I think David knows you; I don't think you hid your real self from him. The things I know you've done are not you. I want to help you. What is it you need here?"
He hesitated. "I need Aurum's secret."
"Do you even know if that exists?"
He laughed. "I don't blame you for not believing me. It sounds like I'm saying I need King Author's sword, but it does exist. I know the passage to get there, or at least I believe I do. I had to see it for myself first."
"Where?"
"It's in the storm drain," he said. "I described it in book eight. Where it is, how far, what it looks like."
"No wonder someone stole the book."
"That would be sufficient enough, but I named names for other unrelated things."
"Neal said Meridia took the journal," I said, "He believes she's had it for thirty-six jears."
"Thirty-six jears? Oh, that's not good."
"How did you discover its location?"
"I have the memory of Aurum telling me," said Pearce.
"Interesting." I nodded. "Considering Aurum died hundreds of jears before your birth, that's quite a trick."
"It's something to do with Amare."
"I see," I said. "From the look of the indicator on your shoulder strap, that pack's low on power."
"I know," he said, examining at it, "I thought I might have enough to get there, but if I had to walk out again, I would."
"How big is the storm drain?"
"It's the main trunk, so it's a monster. The Master Builder has hundreds of tributaries cut into the granite to take the water away from this side of the mountain. In the rainy season, I imagine it flooded a lot before it she built it."
"Did the Master Builder build the passage and wherever it takes you?"
"She built everything," he said. "She's the oldest being in Jiyu. She knows all the secrets Jiyu holds. She protects them while they're in her care, and she would die before she tells anyone. She predates Aurum and more than a dozen other Primes."
I nodded. "You won't have to walk back out," I said. "I'll take you there if the drain is big enough."
"How?"
I took Pearce to the vehicle Venn gave me. It sat in the light from the building next to it, looking like the spaceship I knew it to be. I still couldn't believe it.
"Wow," he said, staring at it like a view more majestic than the Grand Canyon.
"So far, that's the top response."
"Jiyu's transports have changed," he said, touching it. "Hello Venn, you could have told me you had this earlier, you know."
"It's not Venn. I think it may be the first independent, privately-owned vehicle on Jiyu."
"How long have you had it?"
I shrugged. "An hour, maybe," I said. "Venn built it during the mission to Earth and gave it to me after you shot me."
He was taking off the pack. "Well, that's a consolation prize. I should take back my apology."
I laughed. "Open the hatches, please."
Both hatches opened, and Pearce began to inspect everything he could see.
"It has no windows," he said, "but it does have hatches with a dozen locking bolts and a pressure seal. This vehicle can fly into space." He sounded impressed. "Do you realize what you have here?"
"A culmination of every scientific advancement Jiyu has made in the last thousand jears?"
"I was thinking of a Jiyuvian hot rod."
"Magnar's right, Earth has had a bad influence on you."
He laughed and stowed the pack in a cupboard between the jumpseats. We climbed into the cockpit, buckled the seat harnesses, and I pressed the black and yellow striped button, which no longer had the image or the word. I realized the teacher was leaving me to remember on my own. Of course, when my memory enhancement kicked in, I wouldn't require the teacher to treat me like a ten-year-old.
I looked over at Pearce. "Wait for it," I said, as the hatches continued to slide closed.
The 180° screens, lit panels of touchscreen buttons in an array of colors, as well as the floating holographic yolk, lit the space around me. I saw the look on Pearce's face.
"Yeah," I said, "I had that thought too."
We made lift-off and rose above the storage buildings to maneuver.
"Woah! Will this make me sick?" he asked.
"It's pretty stable once we start traveling forward. Which way do we go?"
"It's just over there at the end of Central Avenue," he pointed down the slope to the south.
I saw the most massive storm drain I had ever seen, 20 meters in diameter. Given that the Arena side of the mountain had no dirt, and the lower plateau consisted of a slab of granite, the rainwater had to go somewhere. I could imagine how much water forced its way out the end and down the sluice into the river on heavy rain days. We sat hovering at the end. The lights of the vehicle shone brightly, but the Master Builder had built the drain so wide and deep that the beams touched nothing, vanishing into the darkness of the titanium-coated tunnel.
"How far do we go?"
"All the way back to the city," he said.
"That's seventy kilometers underground!"
"Well," he said, "it's either this or we start hacking away into an unknown amount of granite from above with a couple of jackhammers."
"Right and look like we've flipped."
We entered the drain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We sped through at 140 kilometers an hour so we could arrive in roughly half an hour, providing we encountered no obstacles. The ship came with a variety of scanning technologies radar, sonar, lidar, and echolocation. The vessel used lidar and echolocation to detect coming changes in the tube and would stop us well before we ran into anything with its collision avoidance abilities. The titanium walls didn't reflect much light. To see in the tunnel, I switched to color night-vision.
"What can we expect as we travel back up the drop?" I asked.
"Back up the drop?"
"All plumbing drains have a drop. It keeps the water flowing where you want it to go," I said. "My father used to work in the trades."
"I see. Well, I don't know. I've never done this before."
"What should I think of that, Pearce? How can you have the memory of a man telling you something if he died long before your birth?"
"I told you. I have the memory of Aurum telling me. I believe it has to do with an incident I had with Amare at twelve years old."
"Fine," I said. "Describe what we're looking for. Is all of this metal ahead of us?"
"The Master Builder didn't make it titanium throughout. Metal covers only the lower half of the tube in the tributaries. Those begin at one of the many junction points. Junction three has a stone upper section where a remnant of track remains from the construction of the tunnel. We will find a square passage there, many meters in length, easy walking distance to the entryway."
"Alright, you said you wrote all this in journal number eight. Since we seem to have time, I have a few questions about number eight. If Meridia has it, would she have kept it to herself or shared it, based on what you know?"
"I don't know," he said.
"Given it to Amare, perhaps?"
"It's possible, if she shared it at all, or perhaps with any or all of their core group."
"Who are they?" I asked.
"The core group," he said, "in order of age, consists of Amare, Meridia, Dmitry, Gabe, Dai, and Ruby. We have many other elders like Cadmar's mate Tamika, but they don't count as a member of the core group."
"So, Gabe is an elder," I said. "That figures. He wouldn't tell me why the population dropped after Aurum invented the Forever Young enhancement."
"Oh, I know why. I would call that one of the juicier, historical secrets."
"So, what happened?" I asked.
"The elders and adults of the time thought the Forever Young enhancement was abominable, so they stopped having children," he said, "and those who received the youth enhancement felt disinclined to have their own."
"Why would the elders refuse to have children?" I asked.
"I suspect they didn't want any of their future children to remain young for thousands of jears until they died one day."
"Okay..." I shook my head. "I don't get it."
"I don't know why they chose that," he said. "Well, you have a captive audience, would you like to ask me anything more personal?"
"I have many questions of you, personal and otherwise. I don't want you to feel as though I'm bombarding you. They'll keep."
"I do admire a man with restraint."
We sat in silence for a few minutes, looking about, marveling over the ship, the drain, and thinking of what might lay ahead.
"If I'm reading this right, we have traveled 20 kilometers into the drain."
"What is our depth?"
"103 meters and rising," I said, "but I think Echo is showing a junction ahead."
I slowed the ship and stopped when we reached it. We were surrounded by a cube-like structure, and on both sides of the ship, a single drain vanished into the depths of the rock, which most likely branched into smaller and smaller sets of tributaries, creating an enormous network of tributaries that eventually reached the surface where we would find drains built into the rock.
"I can't see high enough," I said. "How can we see higher?"
The ship's teacher revealed more controls for the screens. Venn built displays into the entire upper portion of the interior. It could show us the exterior of the ship as though we sat under a transparent bubble.
"When I come back with my son," said Pearce, "I want one of these."
"Do you see anything?" I asked.
Pearce and I searched but couldn't find anything. Then Pearce found it behind us.
"We passed it. It says 142."
"142. Alright, onward then."
Going forward, every so often, we came across another junction. They looked much the same, but when we arrived, we saw that the Master Builder had built junction number three differently. Along with the meters of granite above us, as well as the tube drain for air and rain from the road above, junction three had a stone second story. Just as Pearce described, the bots left a bit of metal I-beam track, but I also saw a hand ladder attached to the wall. I checked the ground beneath us for landing. It looked empty and flat enough to land according to the internal indicator. I returned the screens to normal mode and turned on all the exterior lighting. I tried to open the hatches, but the computer warned me of excessive moisture, telling me that, after our exit, it would close the hatch and purge the humidity to protect its systems. When I opened them, we met a great deal of air moisture and the odor of lichen or what smelled to me like old mushrooms. I found its pungency rather sickening.
As we exited, and the hatches slid closed behind us, I heard air expelling from a valve of some kind. Pearce ascended the ladder like a shot, and I followed. When he reached the top, he began yelling, making an uncomfortable reverberating echo throughout the drain. Once I reached the top, I saw why. The Master Builder had walled off the path with stone blocks, so massive only thewsbots could have moved them. Pearce pounded his fists on the wall, shouting. Eventually, he fell against it, sliding his back down the surface until he sat crying.
I inspected the track that curved up over the edge of the gallery we stood upon. It ran straight into the block wall where someone had cut it off. Pearce's memories were right; a tunnel existed there. I looked at the track to see the cut metal. Even in the dim light from the ship, it didn't look as corroded as the rest of the beam. I had never studied metallurgy, but it appeared cut as recently as the beginning of summer after the rainy season. I put my ear close to a crevice in the stone. I couldn't hear anything. Pearce said the passage had a short walk of many meters. I got the impression they hadn't stopped with those few stones we could see. I felt sure that they filled the entire path, preventing access without the bots who did the job.
I had reached the end of D-day, and with it came the last damned-able D-word: Disappointment, a word often bitter and cruel. Pearce cried, holding himself, shaking as he rocked against the stone. I stood him up, and I allowed him to cling to me. I wasn't David, but I wanted him to know that I cared, so I let him cry it out, and I joined him. It's difficult for me to remain aloof when someone cries.
When Pearce had finished, his eyes looked red, and he had depleted his anxious energy. He grew sleepy, so I knew I had to get him down the ladder and into the ship. I wouldn't have wanted a problem on my hands. We climbed down, and after entering the ship, a sudden rush of dry air surrounded us, purging the excess moisture the moment the hatch closed. When I got him into a jumpseat, he fell dead asleep, the instant his head hit the headrest. Once we lifted off, I rotated the ship, and we made the long trek back out.
D-day felt like a long, emotional roller coaster of a day. It had drained me, no pun intended. That morning Teresa died in my arms, and the day concluded with her son wetting my shirt with tears from a disappointment so profound it concerned me what desperation might drive him to do.
The instant we emerged from the aqueduct, Venn had contacted me, and the ship's teacher showed me how to work the communication system.
"Where did you go?" asked Venn. "I worried something had happened."
"I apologize, Venn. Pearce and I went on an underground journey, and we've returned exhausted. You did not need to worry. This ship has functioned beyond anything I could imagine, and your current duty wastes you as a driver. I think your passion lies in designing these ships. I wish you would find a way to dedicate your talents to this full time."
"It pleases me to hear that," said Venn, "and it's odd you should mention it. The idea occurred to me after the death of Rom, and I'm considering it."
"I have a request," I said. "One City has a critical lack of parking space; I wouldn't want to land the ship in the lay-by on the street at our building. If it isn't too late, could you please ask the Master Builder whether I can land onto the grand balcony of the penthouse? It has plenty of room; I only need to know if it can hold the weight."
"Of course, I will. And the Master Builder never sleeps. One moment..."
I heard nothing but silence for three minutes, and when he returned, I had nearly reached the penthouse. Venn gave me the haughty sounding, snippy reply from the Master Builder. "This is her reply," said Venn, "and I quote, `I built the entire balcony structure strong enough to hold the pool's weight, the poolside can more than tolerate the weight of your vehicle, just don't land in the pool.'"
As if I would do that. Despite my best efforts to stop eye-rolling, there came occasions necessary to bend to the urge.
The ship had minimal landing noise, but I feared I would awaken Aiden and Maggie. Having burned enough beddo for one night, I hadn't wanted a protracted discussion at that hour.
Upon exiting the cockpit, I nudged and prodded Pearce, but he seemed comatose. I had a domestic difficulty upon me and only one reasonable choice. I didn't want to leave Pearce alone, but I felt uncomfortable with the thought of sleeping in the same bed with him. In the end, I based my decision on kindness. I gave Pearce my bed while I slept on the couch.
I had already left the ship when Mason detected its presence. He came to the balcony, unfazed by the new conveyance.
"Venn told me he gave it to you," said Mason.
I nodded. "So, what do you think?"
He beamed a gleeful smile. "It's a ship!"
I closed my eyes and smiled. "Two out of three, I suppose," I said to myself. "Venn a le talent supreme (Venn has the supreme talent), Mason. If you watch Aiden tomorrow at his first viewing, then you'll have a demonstration of the sort of reaction this ship deserves." I began attempting to pull Pearce from his seat. "Could you help me with him? I need to put him to bed in my room; I will sleep on the couch."
Mason picked Pearce up and carried him with ease. Pearce had dirtied his clothes from the drain, and I didn't want the slimy residue with the mushroomy scent in my bed. So, Mason placed him in a chair, and I made the mistake of removing his clothing. I wished I hadn't. I regret having done it. I wanted not to soil the bed. I had only that honest and honorable intention. But...I had intruded upon his person, and I felt like an utter heel for having done so. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw, and I figured he wouldn't appreciate it.
I ate as much food as I could before lying down. I'd had enough of the day's horrors, and David's absence had not yet struck me. I told him I would keep myself busy, and I hadn't realized how true that would be. I collapsed on the couch after reaching the point in my exhaustion where my mental faculties ceased.
Somewhere in my mind, I registered voices from the room around me. I sensed a bit of minor whispering and a sudden, booming, "Wow!" And then I woke up. I rose enough to gaze over the back of the couch to the balcony. Aiden stood naked by the ship, a towel draped over his shoulder, on his way to a morning dip in the pool. I would swear he looked taller and hairier every time I saw him.
It felt odd to have my head pounding. I hadn't remembered the last time my head ached. I wondered if the memory enhancement was kicking in, but I only lacked sleep. My insufficient repose lasted four hours, and I had some dehydration too. Mason, monitoring me through the Attendants, kindly brought me a glass of juice.
"Thank you, Mason. How are you this morning?" I asked him.
"Quite well, thank you."
"And Pearce?"
"He still sleeps," he said.
"After all he's gone through, it wouldn't shock me to hear he slept into the afternoon. He will need to eat throughout the day, though. Don't hesitate to wake him at mealtime, even if it means he eats in bed and goes right back to sleep."
The sun had just arisen, and plenty of light scattered across the sky outside. I could see the right half of the ship from where I sat. Aiden studied it, touching the smoothed graphene surface. No one noticed I had slept on the couch, which meant they hadn't known Pearce had stayed with us either.
"Where is Maggie?" I asked Mason, who continued to stand by me.
"She is showering after a few hours of predawn sexual congress with Aiden."
I nodded. "Do yourself a favor, never mention anything about their sexual congress when they can hear it. They prefer we ignore it."
"I will refrain from doing so," said Mason. "On another topic, I took the liberty to clean the clothes you both wore last night, and I detected a pungent odor. Your pants came spotless, as they received the treatment, but you both ruined your shirts, and Pearce, his trousers. They may have the appearance of cleanliness, but the scent remains."
"Oh no, and Pearce has nothing else to wear. Do you know when Svend's Tailoring Shop opens?"
"One moment," he said, no doubt checking the database. "It opens at eight `o clock."
"Do you still have the clothes?"
"Yes, shall I have Svend copy them?" asked Mason.
"You're learning fast, Mason." I tried to smile. "I like that. Yes, please do and make sure they get treated." I looked up at him. "So, unlike your predecessor, can you leave the building?"
"I am autonomous," he said. "I'm not attached to the building but to its occupants. I can go wherever you and David need me for as long as I choose."
"Fascinating," I said, "I like that you have the choice. I would feel uncomfortable with it if you didn't." I downed the rest of my juice. "Do you feel happy here?"
"Everything is new to me," he said, "I find my experience here instructive and interesting."
"Well, that sounds good," I said. "We'll have to work on happy; your happiness is important to me."
Aiden entered the penthouse drying off from his dip in the pool. The morning air felt comfortable enough to leave the glass wall to the balcony open.
"Rick! Where did that come from?" He thumbed over his shoulder at the ship. "Wait, did you sleep on the couch?"
"Oh, Aiden," I said, "I have so much to tell you. Yesterday resulted in a long series of unlikely events."
"What's happened?" he asked. "Have you had a fight with David? Has he put you on the couch?"
"Rick!" exclaimed Maggie. She came from the bedroom, straight from the shower, with damp hair, wearing the white robe she received at the temple. Her smile vanished when she saw the bedding. "Have you slept on the couch?"
We spoke during breakfast. Maggie and Aiden knew nothing that happened after the hour that David and I left them at the penthouse to get our bicycles, which began the bulk of the day's momentous events. They knew nothing of our conversation with Amare. They hadn't learned of the viral-code-induced brain death of Neal, and the implications of such an occurrence, as well as the subsequent threat to the technician. They hadn't learned that someone compromised Iris. They hadn't a clue that Pearce had stolen the Sancy from the Louvre or that the Aggregate possessed it. They hadn't heard that Rom had died and that it blinded us to the other portal. They couldn't fathom the exodus of the parents with their young children causing David to leave for Earth or that Magnar and I agreed to act as his proxy. They hadn't realized Pearce had returned, or the problem of his son. They hadn't known that I got the memory enhancement, that Venn gave me the ship, or that we made a bootless journey up a downspout to the center of Jiyu. And, they had no notion of Pearce laying comatose in my bed.
Aiden reacted with a "Bloody hell," and it garnered a shocked "Merde" from Maggie.
"And don't worry about not helping," I said, "neither of you could have done anything. It felt like One City had gone into free fall, and I fear we haven't hit the tipping point yet."
"Will you use the ship to find the other portal?" asked Aiden.
"I'm going to try," I said, "and we have much that needs doing elsewhere."
"We can help you with that," said Maggie.
"I appreciate that," I said, "because I'm going to need you. The problem I see, and Aiden correct me if I'm mistaken, Jiyu has no other ship but mine. I don't believe it has anything else like it, not even as a means of defense, despite the fact they've had astonishing technologies and centuries of opportunity. That makes me ask, if they created the Trust for the last resort, what will we use first? I need to know these things."
"You're not wrong, and I have wondered that myself," said Aiden. "I understand the desire to conserve and get on with life, but you can't leave yourself open to attack. Let's suggest the aliens who placed the portals on this planet return, and they don't like our presence here."
"They could slaughter us," said Maggie.
"Exactly," I said. "That's an obvious question, but have people here not asked that? The people in the Trust have learned to fight, and if they have any non-wartime jobs, they appear academic or for helping maintain the city for jobs that robots can't perform. That's fine in peacetime, but we're in a state of emergency. We need to protect ourselves. What preparations have they made for that?"
"What would you like us to do?" asked Maggie.
"I need Aiden, and whoever else can help you, to take the drone we used on Earth and turn it into an alternative communication system for the people we trust," I said. "We need to communicate with one another without the Iris we've used here. Can you do that?"
"I can do that," he said. "I assume you want to use the compromised Iris as channel 1, for talking to everyone else, and the secondary Iris as a channel 2."
"That sounds perfect," I said. "Wait...can we add another frequency to the communication enhancement?"
"If someone can do what they've done to Neal," he said, "I think we can do anything, including altering enhancements considered unalterable."
"Possibly," I said. "Maggie, I need you to do the hardest job. I dislike asking you to do this, but you do well with people. You're loving, and you empathize with others. Pearce is going to need human contact. We can't leave it up to Mason. He can help you ensure Pearce gets food and drink throughout the day, but with all the delayed changes they subjected him to, I suspect he will sleep a lot because they're working hard to complete themselves. Those bastards at Phalin harmed him with the NP device, and he will need someone. Neither David nor I can do that right now."
"What did they do to him?" she asked.
I hesitated, and I couldn't say it. "I think Pearce should have as much discretion as he can receive from us and the liberty to discuss it if he needs to. I won't tell you because I shouldn't even know. He may go ballistic when he finds out I do. If he says anything, tell him I know it's not my secret to tell. He wasn't forthcoming with what they did, and I suspect he wants to keep it to himself. After what I saw, I can't blame him."
She nodded. "I understand. I will do what I can for him."
"Thank you," I said, "Until he needs you, I have three words: Pool and Library. I spoke to Mason about this already. If by some amazing feat Pearce got up and tried to leave, don't let him. Make him eat and go back to bed. Remind him of the differential, it will give him time to recuperate, and if he doesn't eat and rest, it will only delay it further."
Before I flew Aiden to Bragi College and scheduled my meet-up with Magnar, I had Mason clean the ship of the drain's slime and spore. It pleased me to know it had all received the treatment and cleaned quickly.
Aiden loved the ship the instant he looked inside (I knew he would), and I had a tough time tearing him away from it so I could make my meeting.
"One last thing," said Aiden, "what have you named it?"
"I haven't thought to name it at all."
"Oh no! Listen," he said, pointing at me. "I came from a seafaring nation, so take it from me. Now, I know you don't believe in luck, so I won't insult you by telling you it's bad luck to use an unnamed ship, but the tradition of naming a ship has a practical purpose. Other ships like this one will exist; each will need a name of their own."
"I'll have to think about it."
"Well, you should name it soon," he said, "and when you do, never change it. You'll get more of that bad luck you don't believe in."
For a pleasant change, the temperature felt mild, and a light breeze washed through the city from the sea. The clothes I had ordered from Svend's arrived at the penthouse late the previous afternoon. They provided a comfortable mode of dress, with a pair of well-fitting blue linen pants and an oatmeal-colored linen button-up.
When I arrived at the front of the dining hall in the middle of the campus, Magnar had a sullen expression and acted quite perturbed with me. I hadn't known what I had done. He started with the silent treatment, glaring at me for a minute, and then got to it.
"I have spoken with Venn," he said, scowling, and he stiffly began to walk along the path through the tree-canopied space surrounding the dining hall. He had his hands clasped behind him like a stern schoolmaster.
"Oh." I followed along, thinking it had to do with the drain fiasco.
"Yes, 'oh'," he said, pausing to face me. "You have friends in high places, young man, and I know that, but why did Amare ask Venn to give it to you? We have proven pilots that could have used it to find the other portal."
"I fly it just fine, thank you, and I intend to do that very thing."
"Why then are you still here?" he asked.
"Because I have things to do before I leave."
"Exactly! You have other duties, so it should have gone to someone else."
"I'm sorry, Magnar, it just happened." I tried to sound soothing, but he would have none of it. "Did Amare ask Venn to give it to me?"
"Oh, don't give me that! You're practically Amare's chum!" He began walking again.
"I resent your implication! If Amare asked Venn to do that, I didn't know. Besides, you don't know why he did it. Amare is often inscrutable."
"Be honest with me. Did you not know?"
I stopped walking. "I'm always honest, Magnar. What you see is what you get."
He paused, looked me in the face, and lightened a bit. "How is Pearce, and who have you left him with?"
"Sleeping like the dead when I left," I said, "and he's with Maggie and Mason. They will ensure he doesn't leave."
"He should stay put," he said. "Learn anything new?"
"I've learned a mercenary outfit based in the American South called Phalin has his unregistered five-year-old son," I said, "and as long as they do, he will do what he must to save him."
"Unregistered? Why would he take such a chance?"
"I believe he intended to bring back the boy and his mate Oliver, who he says they killed," I said, "He didn't want to register his son as an American citizen. That's my thought."
"Pearce probably lied. You can't know he intended to come back," said Magnar, "you can't even know this alleged son and mate ever existed. We can best explain Rom's death if Pearce provided the information. They could never have known his weaknesses without his help."
"I know, but that anomalous ingredient doesn't fit inside `recipe' called Pearce. I don't know how they knew, but I don't think he did it."
"Why?"
"As David said in the Arena, we believe Pearce intended to save his family by doing what he did. It would make no sense to offer, of his own volition, information to harm us. They've never seen One City. They wouldn't know to ask, much less what to expect. So, it doesn't fit, Magnar, it does not fit! And I'm going to come out and say it; you weren't there. Everything else I know he did, fits comfortably inside the circle of protecting his child. The death of Rom lies outside of that. If he's faking all this, he has gone to an unreasonable degree to convince me it's true. And, given what I've witnessed, he would have to be the best actor ever."
Magnar persisted. "What about the diamond?"
"I think he told the truth, and they took it. Pearce comes from Jiyu. People here have not lived with the idea that malicious people might follow them, because no one does that here, but it's something our adversaries would do. They're that kind of people, and we know they were keeping an eye on him and coerced him. Coerced people don't do any more than they have to."
"Why did he take a copy of the diamond to begin with?" asked Magnar.
"The Louvre would have kept the Sancy safe," I said, "but he wanted to steal it for Jiyu, for our protection."
"Why did he take the NP device?"
"I admit, I don't know. But I believe a reasonable, or at the very least non-threatening, reason exists for it."
Magnar took a deep breath, shook his head, with his arms akimbo. "Some of what you say I accept, but we've no one else on the issue of Rom's death. Until you can come up with someone who has had the opportunity and potential motive, Pearce remains at the top of my rather bare suspect list."
I thought for a moment. "I have other news. We told you about Neal, but you haven't heard Neal's nanos have viral code. The perpetrator threatened Doug the technician through Iris to make him lie to us. And as it happened before Pearce arrived, we have another potential candidate who has done these things. We will find this all tied together somehow, I'm sure of it."
"That could be a separate matter," said Magnar. "That person may not have had the opportunity to tell the Aggregate of Rom's weaknesses. But why didn't you tell me this before?"
"I had no time. We had one horrendous nightmare after the next yesterday. I did tell David, however, and he wished he wasn't leaving. If someone is willing to kill Neal for knowing a leaf from Pearce's journals, what if they're willing to use an EMP generator on Rom to blame it on the Americans?"
"Why would anyone here do that?" he asked.
"I admit, I don't know that either. I'm just speculating."
"We need more than speculation."
"I understand that," I said, "and now I have an important question of you. With our defenses, if the Trust remains a last resort, what else do we have?"
"I will tell you," he said, "but not here. We will sit inside your ship."
I led him to the ship, and for some reason, which I thought could be a matter of how blase such a vessel might seem to him, he didn't react at all. We sat inside, and he got down to business as he always does.
"For defense, we have underground fortifications and the catacombs with a secret exit into the rainforest where enough food and shelter exist to protect us, although we will feel a bit squeezed with our current population. We have stacked our offense with more than a million robots. Many you have seen, but most you haven't. We are protecting the people of the city with an intelligent flying robot pestilence the size of a bee, three-quarters of a million strong. With their armor-piercing needles, they will sting and kill anyone we haven't put in the protected database. We have enormous hidden energy weapons on the top of the ridge that we provide with extra power by attracting the lightning this planet generates. We also have an assortment of handheld energy weapons, and finally, we have the Trust."
"Okay," I said, nodding, "I'm impressed. That's excellent. How many ships do we have?"
He paused a moment and took a breath. "This one."
"That's what I thought."
He looked at me like the father figure I wished I'd had growing up and said, "I know that David has told you that necessity is the mother of an endeavor. I have said that to him enough over the jears that he will have repeated it. No matter how much planning, no matter what a society does to protect itself, it will always result in a point where one must stop. You cannot cover every contingency. You must weigh the possibilities and act on the ones of greatest imperative. As far as we knew, no other portal existed until two days ago. We could not include it in any equation. If we knew, we would have ships defending it, or us against it. So, don't judge us for acting boneheaded because I know that's what you're thinking. You're not the only one with intuition.
"Now," he continued, "Venn tells me he cannot complete the next of these ships for some time yet. So, my question to you, as the one who can pilot this-" he took a breath looking around, "this breathtaking craft. What plan do you have to find the other portal?"
I sat there red-faced and angry at myself in utter chagrin. "I deserved that, and in all humility, I apologize."
"Apology accepted," he said. "You're new, and you have many things to learn. I have every confidence you will learn them. David wouldn't have picked you as his mate if you lacked intelligence."
I nodded a little. "Aiden gave me the frequency of the tracking tag fastened to the hull of the second drone," I said. "I'm going to use it to locate its position by circumnavigating the planet a few times at high altitude. That's our best option."
"A sound plan," Magnar said, "providing it hasn't already reached them, and they haven't destroyed it, but I see little alternative. I urge you to take someone with you."
"I thought of that, but of the people I trust, either they're busy or too new."
"Cadmar isn't busy. I spoke to him this morning."
"I thought I would ask him to protect Neal in case someone tries to ensure he remains silent. If the possibility exists that Neal knows who caused it, I want him kept alive."
"Agreed but leave that to me. We must find out who did it and compromised Iris. We won't recover our communication system without it."
I told Magnar of my idea to use the drone, and how David wanted us to utilize it in tandem with the original, so we could communicate without alerting anyone. He said that might prove difficult to accomplish.
I had so many questions. If Meridia took journal number eight because of the information about Aurum's secret, and not some other reason, what was the secret? Its value seemed precious beyond measure for how they treated it.