Finity's End

“I don’t take Boreale’s turning up at Mariner total coincidence,” James Robert said, breaking a long silence, and JR paid close attention, but as the least informed, he’d kept quiet.

Not coincidence. “So,” he ventured, “what was the carrier doing at Tripoint?”

“Mallory’s business,” Madison said. “We think that Mazia

He hadn’t thought of Champlain’s alternative course. Blind spot. Major blind spot. He was chagri

“So it ran this direction.”

“Its chances were better with us. That carrier would have had it, no question, Boreale wanted it but couldn’t catch it, Boreale wanted them alive.”

It would be a source of information, one that Union science could probe with no messiness of courts, at least in the autonomy of the Union military operating in what was technically a war zone.

Maybe we should let them, was the unethical thought that raced next through his mind. Maybe we play too much by the law and that’s why this has dragged on for twenty years.

No. That wasn’t correct. Their playing by the law was exactly what this whole mission was about. Their playing by the law was the only thing that got the cooperation of hundreds of independent merchanters, who otherwise would have supported Mazian with supply at least intermittently and brought him back from the political dead the moment things grew chancy. The result would have been another, far deadlier war, with the whole human future at risk.

Cancel that thought.

“Various interests at Esperance aren’t willing to see Champlain answering close questions,” Francie said. “That’s my bet.”

“It’s mine, too,” Madison said. “I think it’s a very good bet. Champlain was dead if it had gone to Tripoint. It knew what was waiting there . It might stay alive if it ran this direction and threatened its own business partners. They’re here. On Esperance. At least one strong anchor for the whole Mazia

It made sense. It finally made sense, how the web was structured. And what the gateway was for the high-priced goods to reach the paying markets, at Cyteen. Cyteen officials didn’t like it. But they still drank their Scotch, not looking closely enough at whether it came via a legitimate merchanter or whether it meant rejuv and biologicals were getting to Earth, to the wellspring of all that was human, in trade for supply for Mazian’s war machine.

The other captains discussed technical matters. The new one was just filling out the holes in his understanding of what they were doing, and why they were doing it, and why certain Cyteen factions would support them and certain ones wouldn’t. Some Cyteeners were defending their world. Others were making money.

Say that also about the position of Esperance in this affair. It had existed by playing Union against Alliance, supporting and not supporting Mazian. It was what the Old Man had said at Voyager: Mazian was essential… in this case, to Esperance. Maybe even to them… because without him, Union would have had Esperance, and the Alliance would have gone down Union’s gullet. As it was, Union would let Esperance slip firmly into the Alliance in return for secure borders—secure from a threat Union itself was helping fund simply because Union had an appetite for what their sole planet didn’t produce.

Like lifestuff that wasn’t poisonous, or otherwise deadly. Cyteen had made a great matter over its rebellion from what was Earthlike; Cyteen wielded genetics like a weapon; but when it came to creature comforts, Cyteen, just like some this side of the Line, didn’t look too closely at the label.

Like Pell, he thought. Like Pell, and its dinosaurs and sugar drinks scantly removed from where thousands had died. People forgot. People were human and didn’t look too closely at what didn’t look harmful. No single person’s little purchase of black-market coffee could affect the universe.

That was the dream people had, that little things were ignorable on a cosmic scale.

Wind blew through virtual foliage. Moist air brushed the skin. It wasn’t one of those sims that you wore a suit to experience. You wore ordinary clothes, and just put on disposable contacts. And walked.

And climbed. And walked some more. It might have been Downbelow, but it was too green. They walked over soft ground, and around trees, following a hand-rope.

A tiger was resting in the undergrowth. It stood up, huge, and real, right down to the details of its whiskers and the expression in its eyes.

Vince yelped, and the virtual cat jumped, spat, and retreated, staring at them.

Fletcher had to calm his own nerves and slow his own pulse. “Don’t move,” he said. “Stand still.”

The tiger rumbled with threat. The tail-tip moved, and muscles stayed knotted beneath the striped fur. The place smelled of damp, and rot, and animal.

“It’s really real,” Linda said.

“Does a pretty good job,” Fletcher said. The junior-juniors clustered around him; and his own planet-trained nerves were in an uproar.

They edged past. The tiger followed them with a slow turning of its head.

A strange animal bolted away, brown, four-footed. The tiger bounded across the trail in front of them.

“Damn!” Jeremy said.

Fletcher concurred. They’d had a children’s version and a thrills version of the zoo, and he began to know where he classified himself.

Or maybe too much immediacy and too much threat had made them all jumpy.

They walked out of the exhibit with rattled nerves and went through the gift shop, spending money all the way.

Four hours to set up the meeting and then another hour while station officials drifted in from various appointments, in their own good time. Alan and Francie took charge and kept, contrarily, claiming that the senior captain was on his way. On his way… for another hour and a half.

“Just sit there,” Francie advised JR. “Just sit and be pleasant. Keep them wondering.”

So he took his place at the table beside Alan, and provoked stares from a long table occupied by grim-faced station authorities and minor Alliance officials.

“Fifth captain,” Alan introduced him. “James Robert Neihart, Jr.”

JR returned the shocked glances, and suddenly, in possession of the conference table, knew how hard that information had hit. These people hadn’t known he existed two seconds ago— another Captain James Robert, under tutelage of the first.

Now titled with the captaincy, at a time when, just perhaps, they’d been thinking the famous captain couldn’t last much longer and that they knew his successors.

Now they knew nothing.

“Gentlemen,” JR said. “Ladies. My pleasure.”

There was a moment of paralysis. That was the only way to describe it. They didn’t know what to do with him. They didn’t know what his position was, how much he knew, or why . In short, what they thought they knew had changed.

“We,” the first-shift stationmaster said, trying to seize hold of what had no handles, “we weren’t informed. Is it recent, this fifth captaincy? We hope it doesn’t signal a crisis in the captain’s health.”