“Well, sir,” Major Brenehan replied with a smile of satisfaction, “any disruption to Ruby is a potential threat. And even you, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying so . . . are a disruption.”
The flight to the rendezvous point took twenty minutes, but Fortin suspected that part of the time was spent in direction changes which only security required. The instant the car touched down, its sidewalls hinged flat with a bang/bang and the platoon of infantry lunged out with their rifles and multi-discharge energy weapons pointed. The accompanying APCs had also grounded and were disgorging their troops.
They’d landed on a volcanic plain, patterned in grays and greens by lichen. Other troops were already in position, nestled into crevices between the ropes of cold lava. Fortin noted that the waiting troops were equipped with crew-served weapons as well as the lighter hardware which his escort/guard carried.
There was no sign of the Council, just troops.
Fortin rose with dignity and walked toward the other position. Brenehan’s men—the Inspector General’s men—ported arms and fell in to either side of him. Some of the devices being pointed at Fortin were scanners rather than weapons, peering into the visitor and his equipment to make sure no threat was intended.
There was no question about where the priorities in Ruby lay: the Council was greater than the Inspector General—but Security was greatest of all.
A colonel stood, gestured Fortin within the perimeter, and spoke into a radio like that which followed Brenehan. Then he saluted Fortin and said, “Good to have you with us, sir. It’ll be just a moment more.”
There was a heavy drumming from the western sky. Another squadron of armored personnel carriers swept in low and fast. Most of the APCs landed in the near distance, but one crossed the perimeter and dropped only meters from where Fortin stood. Its fans blew hot grit across his face and uniform.
A door in the side of the vehicle opened. The uniformed woman within looked like a hatchetfaced leprechaun. “Sir?” she said. “We’ve brought a mobile command post. If you’d care to join us?”
Fortin stepped inside and met the stares of the five members of the Council who waited in a formal at-ease posture around a central table/display console. The ceiling of the command-post vehicle was twenty centimeters higher than that of a standard APC; even Marshal Czerny, as tall and thin as North himself, bent forward only slightly.
Marshals Czerny, Kerchuk, Tadley—the tiny, sharp-featured woman—Moro, and Stein. They wore the gorgets of their supreme rank, but their camouflaged battledress contrasted with the pearl gray of Fortin’s parade uniform.
The arrogance of those in Ruby amused Fortin—and frightened him. If you’d care to join us? after they’d danced him to their tune—and would continue, in one way or another, no matter what the Inspector General said, to do whatever they felt was necessary.
He could order the Council to commit suicide now, in front of him without explanation—and they would obey. But if his orders threatened Ruby, or might threaten Ruby—if the Inspector General absolutely required to be taken to General Headquarters . . . then obedience would be very slow indeed, and all possible administrative means would be taken beforehand to limit the potential damage.
Arrogance, but the arrogance of duty. Nothing came before that: not life, and certainly not the Inspector General. The folk of Ruby believed with a frightening intensity, while their visitor believed in no one, in nothing, except perhaps in his own godlike cleverness.
“Sit down, comrades,” Fortin said, gesturing his hosts to the seats around the display but continuing to stand himself. “I have a technical problem for you.”
He smiled with chill humor. “I think you might find it amusing.”
Czerny nodded sharply, part agreement, part prodding.
“Let us postulate for the moment,” Fortin continued, “that Ruby is a segment of phased spacetime in a larger universe—”
“Yes, yes,” Stein murmured. “We accept that.”
“—but that you are balanced within the matrix of that universe with a precisely opposite bubble universe.”
Moro’s chubby fingers were gliding across his keypad. The air before him quivered with a holographic display, intelligible only from the aspect of the intended user’s eyes. “Balanced in what sense, sir?” he asked/demanded briskly.