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CHAPTER 1
Augus 3258
1.
Erica Radek checked the S/V screens to see that they were on total opaque from the outside. A hulking man stood guard near the cubicle; from all appearances, he hadn't moved a muscle since Jael posted him there. A "blade," Jael called him, a paradoxical term; the man wore the usual Outsider's knife, but it was obvious he didn't depend on that to carry out his duties, but on the imposing X2 holstered on his hip and the metal-studded gloves covering huge hands that curled menacingly even in relaxation.
She turned and went to the chair by the bed. As a psychosociologist, she should be making use of the fund of information available to her now on the Outside, its customs, traditions, behavioral codes, and people. "Members" would be more apt. Like Dr. Cedric Eliot. What had brought a man so skilled and dedicated to his work into the Brotherhood? She'd been apprehensive about the staff in Amik's infirmary; this wasn't a case to be trusted to incompetents. But Eliot had been a pleasant surprise — if anything in these last four hours could be called pleasant.
She sagged back in the chair, letting her eyes close.
Three hours in surgery, and there was so little they could do. The muscles and tendons had been repaired to some extent, bone cultures implanted, skin grafts made. But Alex needed vascular and neural implants if the arm and hand were ever to function at anything close to a normal level. Dr. Eliot didn't have the facilities or the expertise for that kind of surgery. It was all they could do to save the arm.
And what was so bitterly galling was the knowledge that the specialists and equipment necessary to treat this wound properly were available in Fina.
She opened her eyes and looked up at the biomonitor screen on the opposite wall. The moving lines spelled a general state just short of deep shock. Dr. Eliot had hesitated for that reason at giving Alex a sedative after he came out of the anesthesia, but it became a necessity, the lesser of risks. It was imperative that his arm be kept immobile, but even restraining straps didn't contain his desperate thrashings. Eliot had been at a loss to understand the uncontrollable emotional reaction, recognizing it as a response to something more than physical pain. Erica hadn't tried to explain it, but she understood it.
The cubicle still seemed to echo with those agonized cries. She looked at Alex, half her mind still operating on the level of a physician. He lay in a nulgrav bed, enveloped in an invisible bubble of controlled warmth, a respirator mask covering half his face, mechanically pacing his breathing. Taped on the inside of his left elbow was a tube to supply saline and nutrient solutions; electrodes for brainwave monitoring and emergency cardiac shock were attached to his forehead and chest; a biomonitor cuff was strapped to his left wrist, its readings projected on the wall screen. His right arm was bandaged from the knuckles to the deltoid muscle, tented in bacteriostatic gauze, a rack of inverted plasibottles mounted above it with eight tubes looping down, disappearing under the bandages, meting out protein-enzyme solutions.
Barring infection or rejection of the grafts, the arm would heal. How well it would function, she couldn't guess, but she doubted he'd ever be capable of full digital apposition.
But the arm wasn't her real concern.
She had seen Alex Ransom weep, and knew what that meant. The locks on the mental chamber where he'd jailed his grief for Rich, for his mother, and even in some senses for his father, had broken with this new grief. Erica had warned him years ago that the locks wouldn't hold forever, but he'd been unwilling — or unable — to open them himself and endure the natural process of recovery.
Now he was under a double assault, both mental and physical, and the rigidly disciplined control crumbled in the face of that devastating combination. His last coherent words were, "Let me go — in the name of mercy, let me go. ..."
He meant, Let me die.
And Andreas Riis was free.
She focused on the thought, trying to recapture the relief and joy she felt when Ben brought him through the MT. The day they had worked for and anxiously awaited for eight long months; Andreas was free, and because she loved him, the relief was still there. But any hope for the future of the Phoenix was dimmed. Whatever his virtues, Andreas wasn't capable of leading the exiles back to Fina. Not to a Fina occupied by Predis Ussher.
She reached out and touched the motionless hand lying against the sheet, finding it cold under her fingers. It was a personal conviction that the survival instinct is too strong to be easily overridden, and when existence becomes that intolerable, the victim is justified in asking the mercy of death. She wasn't sure she was capable of offering that kind of mercy; it had never been asked of her. But it didn't matter, she had no choice. She couldn't be merciful. Not to Alex Ransom; to the Lord Alexand.
But he wanted to die. The question that haunted her now was whether it was within her power to keep him alive.
She tensed, aware that she wasn't alone, feeling a chill of fear; this was the realm of the Brotherhood. Then her breath tame out in a sigh of relief. Jael. She wondered how long he'd been standing behind her.
"Are you well, sister?" He came up beside her and stood looking down at Alex.
"Yes."
"And Alex?"
"We managed to save the arm."
Jael turned to face her, and she wasn't deceived by the lack of emotion in his black, hooded eyes.
"Will he live?"
"He'll survive the wound."
"You slip my questions."
She pulled in a deep breath, suddenly so bone-weary, she wondered if she could stand.
"I can't answer your questions; not the real ones."
He nodded slowly. "That's answer enough."
"What about Andreas?"
"He's resting now. We set up an S/V cubicle for him. The 'cells' didn't hold much favor with him."
"I can understand that. Does he seem — I mean, is he —"
"He's clear and straight down the line. Ben had a long talk with him, skimming the general stat, then Andreas had a head session with Lyden and Bruce, and he's ready to dive in."
"I must talk to him before I go back to Fina."
"Erica, it'll hold. He needs rest, and so do you. Ben said he'd wait on for you at Fina; he left an hour ago."
She nodded mechanically, then after a moment frowned. "Will you be here with Alex?"
"I can be, but I brought Carl Roi from the COS HQ. He's a Grade 6 medtech."
Erica looked out through the haze of the S/V screens and saw a face-screened man standing a little distance from the Outsider guard.
"Yes, I know Carl. Thank you, Jael. I hadn't thought that far ahead."
"You've had enough to think on." He looked down at Alex again. "He left some tapes with me. Called one a death testament. Asking fate, damn it; he kept asking fate."
"Are the tapes private?"
"Not the one with my name on it. I've called an Exile Council meeting tomorrow; we'll hear it out then."
She noted that "I've called," but the assumption of command implied in it didn't surprise her.
"When will the meeting be?"
"Talk that out with Ben. Any time the two of you can shake loose." He looked up at the biomonitor screen. "The tape ... he talked about the Peladeen Alternative."
That didn't surprise her either. "With you as the prospective First Lord of Peladeen?"
"Yes." He stared fixedly at Alex; the sighing of the respirator paced out a short silence. "Erica, we can't be taken down to that alternative."
She pulled herself to her feet, exhaustion dragging at her like a tangible weight.
"Then hope Lady Adrien is alive, Jael. There's nothing more important to the Phoenix right now than finding her."
He hesitated. "And if she is dead?"
She heard the words, the answer to that question, in her mind: If Adrien is dead, Alexand is dead.
The tears came unexpectedly, and she was too tired to stop them. Jael said nothing; he only offered a supporting embrace and an understanding silence, holding her until it was over, until she had herself under control again.
She was thinking of Val Severin when she finally looked up at him. "Jael, I like to delude myself that if I'd ever had a son, he'd be the kind of man you are."
He laughed. "What can I do with a gim line like that? Come on, I'm taking you back to the Cave and waving you off to Fina. You've had a week in a day."
She nodded absently. "I should talk to Carl."
"I've already lined him in, and he talked to Dr. Eliot. And I've set up a schedule; there'll be a Phoenix medtech with Alex every hour, every day, and they'll be armed. Besides, I laid edict, and so did the old Ser, and I'll keep one of the blades on watch here, too. Alex is as safe as a babe."
She touched that still hand once more and turned away. "All right, Jael."
"Hold it in faith, sister."
She smiled faintly as she stepped out of the cubicle, remembering to activate her face-screen.
"I do. I hold you in faith."
2.
It seemed a frozen tableau, the meeting of the Exile Council. Alex always called it that, and the name held. Jael sat at one end of the table in the rock-walled conference room with the portable speaker before him. He didn't have to listen to the words; he had them all laid to memory. But at the last words his breath caught and he swallowed at the tightness that closed his throat.
"... and to you, Jael, friend and brother ... fortune."
Jael reached out and turned off the speaker, then let the silence run a while longer until he had himself under hold again. Erica and Ben were watching him, waiting, but Andreas was still staring at the speaker.
Jael said, "I won't call that an 'advisory command.' At least, I'll leave off the 'advisory.' He laid the lines, and I intend to run the gant like he read it. And I intend to hold down his chair until he comes to claim it."
He waited then. If anyone showed any tooth, it would be Ben, and he'd be the hardest to bring around. Ben looked up, meeting his eyes, then gave him a crooked, humorless smile.
"Jael, there's a hell of a lot in that tape I don't like, but there's nothing I don't agree with. That includes your holding down his chair. Did you think I'd draw blades with you over that? I accept the alternative Alex put on that tape as exactly what he called it: the only viable alternative. That includes you as his second-in-command and heir apparent."
"Thanks, brother. Erica?"
She'd been watching Andreas, who had at length turned his gaze from the inert speaker and focused it vaguely on Jael's face. She roused herself to answer him.
"Jael, you know I'm with Alex. Could I be with him and against you?"
"No, sister, I don't think so." He looked at Andreas, who took a long breath; it came out in a sigh with the weary weight of defeat in it. He turned his palms up.
"All of this ... Predis — what's happened in Fina ... I can't deal with it. It just doesn't make sense." An introspective frown, then he shook his head. "No, it makes sense; I can understand it objectively. But I can't deal with it. Alex said I must be the ... spiritual leader of the Phoenix. That's burden enough. I leave it to you, Jael, to assume the burden of secular leadership." He put his hands on the table and leaned forward as if to rise, but for a moment hesitated, his eyes fixed on the speaker. Then, seeming to remember his purpose, he pushed back his chair and came to his feet.
"Excuse me, I have to get to ... the lab. ..."
None of them questioned that or tried to stop him. Jael said to Erica, "This meet's over. Maybe you should go with him. If he needs words, they'll have to come from you."
She nodded and went to the door, resting a hand on Jael's shoulder in passing. She didn't say anything, and a silence that seemed to emanate from the rocks themselves filled the vacuum of her departure.
Finally, Ben asked, "Have you heard from Val since yesterday?"
"She called an hour ago; that's after the cloister curfew. She didn't have much, Ben. She's only been inside for two weeks and she hasn't hooked into any of the in- lines. I guess novices are supposed to stay shut unless they're asked, and except for prayers and penances, they don't often get asked. She's planting microceivers to pick up conversations she can't sit in on. One of them cost her fifty prayer penances; she got caught out of proper place. Anyway, she has a name for the novice who got pinned. Sister Betha."
"Which doesn't tell us anything."
"No, but Betha was new to Saint Petra's. Val doesn't know how new. She says time is relative there. They talk about something that happened twenty years when as 'lately.' But she's inside, Ben. Just hold on to that."
"Yes, I guess we have to keep reminding ourselves of the things we should be grateful for." Then he looked at his watch. "Jael, I'd better get back to Fina. Anything else you want to line out now?"
"No. It's all been drawn, brother."
3.
Mathis Galinin rose and looked around the circle of Directors. Preoccupied faces, he was thinking, as his no doubt was. The wintery afternoon sunlight heightened the colors in the tapestries on the Chamber wall, but even that warm light couldn't make those heroic scenes seem anything but faded ironies. Nothing is so stale as the glory of vanished empires.
"My lady and my lords ..." He glanced at Honoria Ivanoi, wondering why he'd never noticed that she still wore black after all these years, and wondering why he should notice it now. "We'll adjourn for today and resume tomorrow morning at 10:00. Thank you."
A burgeoning of muted dialogues accompanied the exodus. Galinin turned to Phillip Woolf.
"Phillip, meet me in my office, if you will. I have something to discuss with you."
Woolf paused. "Nothing ... serious, I hope."
"Nothing disastrous, at least. Excuse me — Lord Cameroodo, a word with you, please."
The tall, dark-visaged Lord of Mars stopped at the Chamber doors.
"Yes, my lord?"
Woolf didn't stay to hear the conversation; he knew what was on Galinin's mind. The same thing that made James Neeth Cameroodo even more intently sober than usual, and had occupied this august body for the better part of a day. Toramil had been rocked by a major Bond uprising only three days ago, and from all reports the compounds, and the city itself, weren't entirely quiescent yet. Cameroodo was in Concordia to ask — rather, to demand — Confleet intervention on a large scale. He called it, with no apparent self-consciousness, a "punitive force."
In the columned entry hall, Woolf's brows came down in an impatient frown when he saw the milling crowds of reporters. They wore DeKoven Woolf badges, but generally he allowed them the freedom they claimed as Independent Fesh.
Still, at moments like this it would be a pleasure to order them all out of the Hall.
But a show of temper of that sort would only give Selasis and his cronies satisfaction. And, he thought, as he caught a glimpse of Selasis barging through a cluster of mike- and vidicam-armed reporters, rob him of the satisfaction of seeing Selasis suffering their insistent attentions.
Woolf's jaw tensed at the shouted questions. They had nothing to do with the Directorate meeting; they were concerned with the rumors surrounding the Lady Adrien's death.
"My lord ..."
He turned to see Captain Martin Sier of his House guard standing at attention, backed by two more Woolf guards. A sign of the times. Conpol had advised the Directors to maintain personal guards even within the Hall.
"Captain Sier." He said nothing beyond that recognition of his presence. The reporters were surging toward him, and he set off down the side corridor, striding past the waving mikes and ogling lenses. Sier and his men were hard put to keep up with him or to fend off the jostling reporters.
"No, I have nothing to say," Woolf insisted, never breaking pace. "When the Directorate has made concrete decisions concerning the situation on Mars, I'll have a statement, and not before."
That brought on a new verbal bombardment, but he looked neither right nor left, the firm set of his mouth eloquent of determination. The babble of questions seemed endless. Would they never recognize his silence as unyielding and turn on someone else? Didn't they —
"My lord!"
The shriek of alarm gave him warning. He never knew its source; perhaps one of the reporters.
He spun around, catching a flash of light reflected in the downward thrust of a blade as a man launched himself out of the crowd. The sharp pain across his left forearm triggered an explosion of anger — not alarm or fear — and his responses were instinctive, automatic, and savage. His hand locked on one flailing arm, his knee came up, smashing into flesh, eliciting a wail of agony; a jerking twist on the arm pulled the man around, then a kick to the back of the knee, a heaving turn, and the man was briefly airborne, spinning to a shuddering impact with the floor.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "House of the Wolf"
by .
Copyright © 1981 Martha Kay Renfroe.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
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