[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]collapsing his house of lies about his head. He had sat long there on the
smoky carpet, the ruined casting cradled in his lap. Of all he had brought
from Draconis and had had sent from Lorelie, only this pair of bookends meant
anything to him personally. He had had them since childhood. They had
accompanied him through everything, proud, indomitable, frozen in
mid-challenge. The man who had hefted one in anger and cast it was no man he
fancied becoming.
He had stopped lying to himself, ceased ignoring what could not be borne. But
he could not have done it ear-
lier: he could not have endured a harsh assessment of his difficulties white
no light shone at the end of his private tunnel. He would have crumbled. So he
had come out of his stupor out of endless pulse-pounding, skin-crawling days
of looking steadfastly only at that day's labors, never at the morrow's just
in time, or exactly at the right time, or at the first possible time he could
survey the shambles of his life and retain his sanity.
He did not know which, or care, except to the extent
that he must keep in mind that some of the things he had said and done,
especially in regard to his relationship with his wife, might not have been
quite as equitable as he would have liked.
What is not realized as error cannot be remedied, fu-
tures researchers claimed. He had a clutch of those
Delphis and problem modelers and every time he talked with one he was reminded
that if not for Bemice
"Delphi" Gomes's hatred for everything Kerrion, he would be Draconis consul
yet.
Never mind, never mind. But how could he not? He had tried to pretend that he
was just as effective here as he had been in Draconis, as proconsul when
before he had been consul, but since no one else believed it, it was time he
stopped believing that he must believe it.
52
JANET MORRIS
And though any rational man would look at Chaeron's prospects for release from
Earth's loamy embrace and glumly admit it impossible, the trick was simply not
to mind it: all right, cuddle up to disgrace, play dice with hopelessness,
harness despair. And beat the odds.
He was about it, as best could be. He had hurt some people who loved him:
Shebat, Gahan Tempest, RP. He would remedy his errors.
Now that survival was likely, he could set about it.
When first he had come to the Stump, most reprehensi-
ble of all habitational spheres, he was too beleaguered.
Three attempts on his life had come close; countless oth-
ers everyone prudently ignored. The populace of plat-
form dwellers had forced him to sweeping measures with their hostility, their
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intransigence, and their haughty cer-
tainty that he would never figure out what they were doing in time. To master
the Stump's ancient complexity, one needed to have been born to it. Without
the cooper-
ation of those who were, he had had only one alterna-
tive: scrap it, and start anew.
So now, the tables were turned. Every living being who had thwarted him in the
Stump was his tenant here in Acheron. No one knew the data sources here as
well as he: Chaeron was in control of every data pool and base and knowledge
base accessible to Acheron's public, and others which were not. He had spent
mightily to ac-
quire it, but he even had an independent orbital complex with redundant
matrices and personal resonances which gave him constant information updates
and had an effec-
tive range of two hundred million miles. On Earth or even from Earth space's
sponge-portal, he could conduct his business, contact his intelligencers
directly (and non-
verbally), monitor events in Acheron, all without an ac-
cessing terminal or the slightest twinge of worry that his programs were
compromised in their integrity or their
secrecy.
Never had he had such latitude in the area of computer protocals. He doubted
that his father had had it, in the old days: Parma Alexander Kerrion, though
an innovator in every other arena, had been of the opinion that direct-
accessing intelligence keys might in some insidious way
55
EARTH DREAMS
be harmful to the human mind. Chaeron, child of his times, had no such
compunction.
Through his intelligence keys, while still shuttling to-
ward the Danae, he had concluded the meeting in New
Chaeronea which he had interrupted to fetch Shebat- Si-
multaneously, without a word being spoken before
Hooker, he had detailed Tempest to arrange for the ground-dwellers' quartering
in the Acheron Earth town, and suitable surveillance of them in the person of
his new houseboy, the erstwhile young Mistral, as well as by stan-
dard electronics. In concert, Penrose was entering a log copy transmitted from
the Marada into the memory of the Danae, who by the time the shuttle reached
her bay had sorted out the highlights of Shebat's twelve-week journey for
Chaeron's perusal. In Danae's enlarged cargo bay, while Shebat strutted, eyes
shining with re-
membrances of her own first glimpse of the innards of a sponge-cruiser,
playing hostess to the ground-dweller
Thome and his ward, Chaeron made sure that RP ar-
ranged with the dream dancers and his pilots that
Shebat's welcome to Acheron would be warm, and ex-
tensive. The visitors' suite in the guildhall was readied, the guildmaster pro
tern informed that the Draconis con-
sul, Shebat Kerrion, D.P.G. 17 -(seventeenth rated pilot of the Draconis arm
of the pilotry guild), might well be taking up residence for an undetermined
stay.
All this was done without a vocalization, while Hooker glowered and Jesse
Thorne and Cluny Pope were shown such wonders as the Danae's water shower and
her con-
trol room's visual displays of the cosmos in multiple spec-
tra, and Danae set off imperceptibly toward Acheron.
Only once was this rule of silence for safety's sake bro-
ken, and this because RP yet smarted under Chaeron's dictatorial deployment of
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the talents of his cruiser.
"Shebat will not stay with you?" Rate disbelieved, cat-
tiness of voice augmenting his feline eyes so that invisible whiskers seemed
to twitch on his clean-shaven cheeks.
"We'll see, I'm sure. Let's give her the option. Now you give me line-in to
that log copy." They were standing at Danae's helm, Penrose by his seat and
Chaeron with one knee on the copilot's couch. Colored light played on
54
JANET MORRIS
Penrose's face from his ready boards, a timely mask. He stabbed about him,
causing the copilot's panels to come to life, then bowed from his seat,
exaggeratedly: "She's a-ready, Massa," and Chaeron wanted to smooth his taunts
away, or slap them gone, and knew not which.
He sighed, slipped down into the padded seat. "Rafe, I'll see you in the
guildhall at dinner, no matter what."
"I'll be busy." Shebat and Cluny Pope could be heard, giggling from the aft
station in the following pause.
"Lords of Cosmic Jest forgive me, I'll bite: busy with what?"
"With the drubbing I'm going to take for getting for stealing you that log
copy before my guildmaster's even seen it! Anybody finds out I helped the
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