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“When the people know me, know it’s all a—”
“They will not know you,” he interrupted. “Not the ‘you’ that you mean. They want to believe something else too much to stop them. Faith can do that.
“You must be careful, you must be quiet. And you must be a mystery. We need that mystery to beat Flattery. You will see plenty of need before very much longer, and I think you will agree with me. Eat the rest if you’re still hungry. We may not always be among those who have food.”
She was hungry, very hungry. She drank the broth from her soup, left the vegetables again and picked out the meat. She also picked out the meat from the sandwich he made her. She ate the bread in tiny bites to make it last longer.
She thought she could tell Ben, tell them all something of need. Touch was a human need and she was mostly human. At times someone would touch her by accident or quickly in a breathless dare. The daring ones, she recognized now, must be the religious zealots, the Zavatans that Ben had told her about. There was no way to know which way it would be: embarrassment or death.
When she let Ben kiss her the previous night she had known it was possible that he would die. She had the strongest feeling that she would die, too, and somehow that made it all right. For the first time she felt mortal, and risked it. When neither of them died, she even kissed him back a little. Her heart pumped something like fear, even at the memory. Afterward, in his green eyes so nearly like her own, she saw the glitter of laughter and a good dare taken.
He looked so happy!
She remembered that few people around her had ever looked happy, except the Director. Mostly, they seemed afraid.
“Why did you kiss me?” she asked. A flush crept out of her collar. She didn’t want to look at him but finally couldn’t help it. He was smiling.
“Because you let me.”
“You weren’t afraid … ?”
“Afraid you wouldn’t like it? Yes. Afraid of what you might do to me? No.” He laughed. “I have a theory. If people expect to go crazy when they touch you, then that’s what they do. It’s a hysteria, that’s all …”
She put her palm on his chest and said, evenly, “You don’t know anything about me. You were lucky … we were lucky.” She patted his shirt. “You didn’t sleep,” she said. “If it’s necessary that one of us sit up, I can do it from now on.”
Something dark passed over his expression.
“There were arrangements,” he said, “with some of the women we’ll meet upcoast—you were to stay with them. It was assumed that you would prefer …”
“It has to be you,” she insisted. “You have no woman in your life, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right, but it’s not a matter of …”
“What’s it a matter of?” she blurted. “Don’t you like me?”
Maybe surprise lifted the darkness from his face, or maybe it was the blush. “I like you,” he said. “I like you a lot.”
“Then it’s settled,” she said. “I can stay with you.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“It is if ‘The One’ makes it so,” she said. “Get some rest between now and then. If you really are immune to me, you’re going to need it.”
Chapter 20
Intervention into destiny by god or man requires the most delicate care.
—Dwarf MacIntosh, Kelpmaster, Current Control
Raja Flattery’s private bunker lay safely beneath almost thirty meters of Pandoran stone. High, domelike ceilings held back the psychological crush and some well-chosen holograms draped the walls with scenes from outside the walls. Above him, in the rubble of his surface compound, Flattery’s security finished the last roundup of resisters.
“Stand down the fighting and send in the medics.”
Thanks to the hylighters, there would be a lot of burns. He spoke the order into his console and didn’t wait for acknowledgment. His bunker area was honeycombed with cubicles, and those cubicles were occupied by the underlings who carried out his orders and asked no questions. Fewer than a handful had personal access to the Director.
Ironic, how a little fire can cool things down.
His security teams mopped up the carnage overhead and formed stark little shadows hunching under Pandora’s unforgiving suns. Though the sterile images of battle came into his bunker by holo, the Director thought he sniffed a distinct stench of burning hair beside him at the console. The imagination … the mind … what incredible tools.
His personal security team waited just outside his hatch, a precaution. There was no place on Pandora that he could flee to that would be as secure as his own compound. Certainly there was nowhere as luxurious. A brunch of sebet simmered in Orcas Red spread out at his left hand. There was a fine bite to these Pandoran wines that pleased him, even early in the day.
“Captain,” he spoke to the shadowy figure at his hatch, “that camera team, were they deployed as scheduled?”
“Yes, sir,” the captain’s back stiffened. “Captain Brood’s men have been at the launch site since daybreak. They know what you want.”
“And the HoloVision people, the ones the studio sent out to cover this … mess?”
“Captain Brood suggested letting them film, sir. When it’s done, his team can access their film, as well as their cameras and other equipment. He says—”
Flattery shouted at his attendant, “Captain, did anyone give this … Captain Brood … permission to start thinking? Did you?”
The stiffened spine stiffened even more. “No, sir.”
Flattery was thankful that the shadows hid the man’s face. There was no profile to it. Where the captain’s nose should be there were two moist slits that separated a very wide set of eyes. When Flattery talked with Nevi, at least he could focus on the man’s eyes. This man wasn’t that interesting, and Flattery had all too much time to dwell on the malformed face.
Flattery spoke in his most reasonable tone.
“I want nothing to go on HoloVision today without my prior approval. Brood’s team is to receive priority treatment, even if we have to replace the entire production staff, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get their manager into my office within the hour
, that puffy little maggot Milhous. We need cooperation and I don’t want any slip-ups. Tell him to bring some canned stuff that we can use to preempt today until Brood’s men get their tapes. No sense in the rest of the world getting inspired by what’s going on here.”
“Right, sir. Right away, sir.”
“Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re a good man, Captain. Your family will be pleased that you’re working with me.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
The man’s back retreated through the main hatchway to the offices. Flattery sighed. He watered the wine a bit and raised a glass to his own firmness under duress. He toasted his search teams, who fanned out even now to burn the last of the bodies up in the rocks. This was a Zavatan influence, this burning of bodies. It was a practice that Flattery welcomed and supported. The traditional burials at sea turned into a ghastly sight and a health hazard on Pandora’s few beaches.
Bodies washing up everywhere …
He suppressed a shudder at the memory. It was more than disgusting, it was a religious and economic disaster. Every nitwit who touched the kelp in the process came back a prophet. The entire Pandoran social structure was shattered by the recent geological changes alone, but this kelp business made it a madhouse.
Women of the settlements wouldn’t buy fish for a week after a traditional sea burial. They didn’t want to take a chance on eating fish that had eaten old Uncle Dak. There were times, early in Flattery’s rise to power, when he had seen hundreds of embroidered burial bags washed up on the beach at a time, and the local fleets wouldn’t fish for a month. Flattery’s answer was to buy out the importers, stockpile everything, and control the seaways.
“Control,” he muttered. “That’s the key. Control.”
Flattery toasted the holo that played in the center of his quarters. His men had been forced to inflict heavier casualties than he preferred, and it would raise hob with the work force just at a time when he needed things smooth. Still, their way was best. There were plenty of replacements, though starvation made them dim-witted weaklings. Things would be slow during the training period.
