Joan Vinge - Heaven Chronicles

The captain's hand on the button cut him off. “Tell them to hold off, we have something more important to say to you.”

“Who is this?”

“This is …” She hesitated. “… the ship your Navy attacked two megaseconds ago … the ship from Outside.” She released the button.

No answer came.

“You've impressed them.” Wadie smiled, humorlessly.

A different voice came through, a voice that was strangely familiar to him, ordering the unseen tanker into a holding orbit. Welkin reached across the comm panel, by Bird Alyn's shoulder, and a new segment of the screen erupted into a blizzard of static now. “We're receiving wideband.” He input a sequence on the console; abruptly the screen showed a squeezed triple image. He ordered in a correction, and a single black-and-white picture re-formed. They saw a pinched face squinting from behind wire-rimmed spectacles: a middle-aged man in a heavy, quilted jacket and a thick knit cap. “We're transmitting compatible now, too,” Welkin said. The captain nodded, seeming to take the old man's skill for granted.

“What is it you want here?” The familiar voice matched a familiar face, harsh with anger or fear. With anger … Djem Nakamore was too stubborn and dogmatic to acknowledge anything else. Wadie pushed out of his line of sight as Nakamore glared at Betha Torgussen.

Her face hardened, staring Nakamore down. “We want one thousand tons of processed hydrogen, sent out on the trajectory I give you to our ship. If you fail to do this, I'll destroy your distillery, and you'll all die.” The hardness seemed to come easily; Wadie felt surprised.

He watched their expressions change, the two strangers in the background showing real fear. Nakamore stiffened upright, drifting off-center on the screen.

“You won't destroy us. Even the Demarchy would want you dead if you did that.”

“We're not from your system; you're nothing to us. The Demarchy is nothing. I hope you all go to hell together for what you've done to us; but Snows-of-Salvation will get there first unless you obey my orders.”

“… they meant it …” a blurred voice said in the background. Nakamore turned away abruptly, cutting off sound. He spoke to the others, their eyes still flickering to the screen, faces tense, their breath frosting in the cold air as they spoke. Nakamore turned back to the panel, out of sight below him, and punched the sound on. “We don't have a thousand tons of hydrogen on hand. We never have that much, and we just sent out a big shipment.”

Wadie shook his head. “They'd never let the supply get that low. The output is nearly three thousand tons per megasec, and they have at least four times that as backlog in case the distillery goes off-line for repairs.”

The captain twisted to look at him, cutting off sound in return. “You're that familiar with their operation?”

He nodded. “I told you—I spent almost fifty million seconds down there. I saw that distillery put together and saw it go into operation. I know what it can do. And I know that man …” He remembered Djem Nakamore's face, the bald head reddened by the light from a primitive methane-burning stove; remembered the amused face of Djem's visiting half-brother, Raul. He heard the hiss as water sweated from the ceiling to drop and steam on the stove's greasy surface, as he waited while Djem pondered his next painfully predictable move that would lose him his hundredth, or his thousandth, game of chess to Wadie Abdhiamal. Stubborn, didactic, and unimaginative … honest, forthright, and dedicated to his duty. No match, as Djem had told him, often enough and without resentment, for Wadie's own quick and devious mind—yet too stubborn not to go on trying to win. Wadie adjusted the earflaps of his heavy hat, put out a hand to move his queen. Checkmate .… “I know that man. Push him; he's not—devious enough to know whether you're bluffin'. And he'll do anything to keep that distillery intact.” He realized suddenly that it could have been Raul instead who faced them now and was glad, for all their sakes, that it was not. He looked away as he spoke, avoiding the bright image on the screen and Betha Torgussen's eyes.

The captain frowned slightly, then turned back to Nakamore on the screen. “I don't accept that. You have twenty-five thousand seconds to give us the hydrogen or be destroyed.”

“That's impossible! … It would take at least a hundred thousand seconds.”

“Lie,” Wadie said softly, shook his head again. “He's stalling; Central Harmony keeps plenty of naval units in this volume, and he's hopin' some of 'em will get here in time.”

Nodding, she repeated flatly, “You have twenty-five kiloseconds. I know you have a high-performance linear accelerator down there. Use it. I don't want any manned vehicles to approach us. Copy coordinates …” She spoke the numbers carefully.

As she finished speaking Nakamore looked past her, angry and beaten, but little of it showing on his face. “Are you there givin' her the answers, Wadie?”

Wadie hung motionless … speechless. He pushed away from the panel at last, out into Nakamore's view. “Yeah, Djem, it's me.”

“We picked up the broadcast debates from the Demarchy—how they've outlawed you. I figured maybe you'd—” Nakamore's face set, with the righteous anger of a man to whom loyalty was everything; with the pain of a man betrayed by a friend. “We were fools not to see what you and your … starship aliens would try. Why stop with a thousand tons of hydrogen? Why not take it all?”

“One thousand tons of hydrogen is all we need, Djem. And we need it bad, or I wouldn't put you through this.” Without fuel, the starship was trapped, prey to the first group quick enough to take it. And then the Grand Harmony, the Demarchy, and everyone else would be the prey. Then the threats would be no bluff. This was for the best; this was the only choice he could possibly make, the only sane choice. If he could only … He started, “Djem, I—” But no words would come.

Nakamore waited, his black eyes pitiless. At last he leaned forward, reaching for the unseen panel. “Traitor.” His face disappeared; and with it the last chance of asylum for a banished man. Discus alone lay on the screen.

The captain sat gazing fixedly at the screen, her mouth pressed together, a brittle golden figurine. Welkin glanced at Wadie, apologetic but saying nothing, saving him from the embarrassment of a witty response that wouldn't come.

“… think they'll do it?” Bird Alyn pulled at the flapping end of her belt. “What if they don't?”

“They will.” He found his voice, and his composure. “In fifty million seconds, Djem Nakamore never won a game of chess from me.”

“You were perfect, Betha.” Welkin turned back, his faded eyes searching the captain's downturned face. “Eric couldn't have put it more convincingly.”

“If Eric were alive, we wouldn't be doing this.”

Wadie nodded, relieved. “I almost believed you meant every word of that myself.”

She struck a match. “What makes you think I didn't, Abdhiamal?” She lit her pipe, facing him with the same hardness that had faced down Snows-of-Salvation. “What have the Ringers down for us lately?”

“Indeed.” He bowed grimly, looked back at Welkin. “I've learned my lesson—I'll never insult another engineer.” He pushed off toward the door.

Betha watched him disappear down the stairwell, shaken with the coldness that left her words of apology stillborn.

“Betha … would you … are you really goin' to … destroy the distillery?” Bird Alyn whispered unhappily.

Betha met the frightened face. “No, of course not, Bird Alyn, I wouldn't do that. I'm not really a—a butcher.”

Bird Alyn nodded, blinking, maneuvered backward and started for the door.