‘Zakalwe?’
He turned. His eyes widened in surprise. ‘Skaffen-Amtiskaw! This is an unexpected honour. Sma letting you out alone these days, or is she about too?’ He looked the length of the citadel’s long gallery.
‘Good day, Cheradenine,’ the drone said, floating towards him. ‘Ms Sma is on her way, in a module.’
‘And how is Dizzy?’ He sat down on a small bench set against the wall which faced the long line of white-curtained windows. ‘What’s the news?’
‘I believe it is mostly good,’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, floating level with his face. ‘Mr Beychae is on his way to the Impren Habitats, where a summit conference between the Cluster’s two main tendencies is to be held. It would appear the danger of war is lessening.’
‘Well, isn’t this all very wonderful,’ he said, sitting back with his hands behind his neck. ‘Peace here; peace out there.’ He squinted at the drone, his head to one side. ‘And yet, drone, somehow you do not seem to be overflowing with joy and happiness. You seem – dare I say it? – positively sombre. What’s the matter? Batteries low?’
The machine was silent for a second or two. Then it said, ‘I believe Ms Sma’s module is about to land; shall we go to the roof?’
He looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded, stooa smartly and clapped his hands once, indicating the way forward. ‘Certainly; let’s go.’
They went to his apartments. He thought Sma seemed rather subdued, too. He’d imagined she’d be bubbling over with excitement because the Cluster looked like it wasn’t going to go to war after all.
‘What’s the problem, Dizzy?’ he asked, pouring her a drink. She was pacing up and down in front of the room’s shuttered windows. She took the drink from him, but didn’t seem interested in it. She turned to face him, her long, oval face looking… he wasn’t sure. But there was a cold feeling somewhere in his guts.
‘You have to leave, Cheradenine,’ she told him.
‘Leave? When?’
‘Now; tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest.’
He looked confused, then laughed. ‘Okay; I confess; the catamites were starting to look attractive, but…’
‘No,’ Sma said. ‘I’m serious, Cheradenine. You have to go.’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t. There’s no guarantee the truce will hold. They might need me.’
‘The truce isn’t going to hold,’ Sma told him, looking away. ‘Not on one side, anyway.’ She put her glass down on a shelf.
‘Eh?’ he said. He glanced at the drone, which was looking non-committal. ‘Diziet, what are you talking about?’
‘Zakalwe,’ she said, eyes blinking rapidly; she tried to look at him, ‘A deal’s been done; you have to leave.’
He stared at her.
‘What’s the deal, Dizzy?’ he said softly.
‘There was some… fairly low-level help being given to the Empire by the Humanist faction,’ she told him, walking towards one wall, then returning, talking not to him but to the tile and carpet floor. ‘They had… face invested in what’s been happening here. The whole delicate structure of the deal did rather depend on the Empire triumphing here.’ She stopped, glanced at the drone, looking away again. ‘Which is what everybody agreed was going to happen, up until a few days ago.’
‘So,’ he said slowly, putting aside his own drink, sitting down in a great chair that looked like a throne. ‘I messed things up by turning the game against the Empire, did I?’
‘Yes,’ Sma said, swallowing. ‘Yes, you did. I’m sorry. And I know it’s crazy, but that’s the way things are here, the way the people are here; the Humanists are divided at the moment, and there are factions within them that would use any excuse to argue for getting out of the deal, however insignificant that excuse might be. They might just be able to pull the whole thing down. We can’t take that risk. The Empire has to win.’
He sat, looking at a small table in front of him. He sighed. ‘I see. And all I have to do is leave?’
‘Yes; come with us.’
‘What happens after that?’
‘The high priests will be kidnapped by an Imperial commando squad brought in by Humanist controlled aircraft. The citadel here will be taken over by the troops outside; there are raids planned on the field HQs; they should be pretty bloodless. If necessary, the Hegemonarchy planes, tanks, artillery pieces and trucks will be put out of action, should the armed forces ignore the call put out by the high priesthood to surrender their arms. Once they’ve seen a few planes and tanks laser-blasted from space, it’s expected the fight will go out of the army.’
Sma stopped pacing, came to stand in front of him, on the far side of the little table. ‘It all happens at dawn tomorrow. It should be fairly bloodless, really, Zakalwe. You might as well leave now; it would be best.’ He heard her exhale. ‘You’ve done… brilliantly, Cheradenine. It’s worked; you did it; brought Beychae out, got him… motivated or whatever. We’re grateful. We’re very grateful, and it’s not easy…’
He raised one hand to stop her. He heard her sigh. He looked up from the small table, up to her face. ‘I can’t leave right away. There are a few things I have to do. I’d rather you left now and then came back. Pick me up tomorrow; at dawn.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t desert them until then.’
Sma opened her mouth, then closed it, glanced at the drone. ‘All right; we’ll be back tomorrow. Zakalwe, I -‘
‘It’s all right, Diziet,’ he interrupted calmly, and slowly stood up. He looked into her eyes; she had to look away. ‘It’ll be as you say. Good-bye.’ He didn’t hold out his hand.
Sma walked to the door; the drone followed her.
The woman looked back. He nodded once; she hesitated, seemed to think the better of saying anything, and went out.
The drone stopped there too. ‘Zakalwe,’ it said. ‘I just want to add -‘
‘Out!’ he screamed, and in one movement turned, swooped, caught the small table between the legs and threw it with all his might at the floating machine. The table bounced off an invisible field and clattered to the floor; the drone swept out and the door closed.
He stood staring at it for some time.
* * *
II
He was younger then. The memories were still fresh. He discussed them with the frozen, seemingly sleeping people sometimes, on his wanderings through the cold, dark ship, and wondered, in its silence, if he really was mad.
The experience of being frozen and of then being woken up had done nothing to dull his memories; they remained keen and bright. He had rather hoped that the claims they made for freezing were over-optimistic, and the brain did indeed lose at least some of its information; he’d secretly desired that attrition, but been disappointed. The process of warming and revival was actually rather less traumatic and confusing than coming round after being knocked unconscious, something that had happened to him a few times in his life. Revival was smoother, took longer, and was really quite pleasant; in truth quite like waking up after a good night’s sleep.
They left him alone for a couple of hours after they’d run the medical checks and pronounced him fit and well. He sat, wrapped in a big thick towel, on the bed, and – like somebody probing a diseased tooth with tongue or finger, unable to stop checking that it really does hurt every now and again – he called up his memories, going through the roll-call of those old and recent adversaries he’d hoped he might have lost somewhere in the darkness and the cold of space.
All his past was indeed present, and everything that had been wrong present too, and correct.
The ship was called the Absent Friends; its journey would take it over a century. It was a mercy voyage, in a way; its services donated by its alien owners to help assuage the after-effects of a terrible war. He had not really deserved his place, and had used false papers and a false name to secure his escape. He’d volunteered to be woken up near the middle of the journey to provide part of the human crew because he thought it would be a shame to travel in space and never really know it, never appreciate it, never look out into that void. Those who did not choose to do crew duty would be drugged on planet, taken into space unconscious, frozen out there, and then wake up on another planet.
This seemed undignified, to him. To be treated so was to become cargo.
The two other people on duty when he was woken were Ky and Erens. Erens had been supposed to return to the ranks of the frozen people five years earlier, after a few months of duty on the ship, but had decided to stay awake until they arrived at their destination. Ky had been revived three years later and should also have gone back to sleep, to be replaced after a few months by the next person on the crew rota, but by then Erens and Ky had started to argue, and neither wanted to be the first to return to the stasis of the freeze; there had been stalemate for two and a half years while the great slow ship moved, quiet and cold, past the distant pinprick lights that were the stars. Finally they’d woken him up, at last, because he was next on the rota and they wanted somebody else to talk to. As a rule, however, he just sat in the crew section and listened to the two of them argue.