A Talent for War

XIX.

DELLACONDA Is A small, heavy, metal-rich world circling the ancient, brick-red star Dalia Minor. In relatively recent times—about twenty thousand years ago—it is believed to have been involved in a near-collision, possibly with the object that is now its moon. Today it describes an erratic looping orbit around its central luminary, much as its own satellite rolls in a wild ellipse. (The moon will break free eventually, but that event is still ten million years away.) The orbit is gradually correcting itself, and current estimates are that within several hundred thousand years the world will have acquired a pleasant, backyard sort of climate.

In the meantime, the habitable parts of Dellaconda are afflicted with brutal winters, blazing summers, and a capricious weather machine punctuated by terrifying storms. People tend to live inland, well away from the cyclonic winds that regularly rake its coasts. It is a world of rock and desert, of vast plains frozen during much of the year, of impenetrable forests and impassable rivers.

The cities are protected by gantner fields, though some people still claim they prefer the old days ("when you got a real change of seasons"). It’s all too predictable now, they say: every day is twenty degrees and pleasant. Ruins the young people. But the occasional measures introduced into Council to disconnect are always resoundingly defeated.

There were one hundred seventeen listings in various Dellacondan cities under the name "Scott, Hugh." I called them all. If any of them was the Scott I was looking for, he didn’t admit to it.

I tried the Grand Bank of the Interior, which held the account into which the proceeds from the sale of the house had been placed. They listened politely, and explained that they regretfully could not provide an address. Furthermore, it was against their policy to take a message.

So I was left to search a planetary population of thirty-odd million for a man who didn’t want to be found.

The most likely place to start was Christopher Sim’s home. It’s a museum now, of course: a modest, two-level permearth house in Cassanwyle, a remote mountain town whose population during the Resistance was about a thousand. It isn’t really a whole lot bigger today, excluding tourists.

Still, this tiny, exposed collection of well-kept but ancient buildings constitutes the lodestone of the Confederacy. The great symbols are here: the harridans haunt its forested peaks; the Signal glows forlornly in an upstairs window of Sim House; and (in Tarien’s modest cottage across the wooded valley) a computer still carries within its memory early versions of the phrases that would eventually find their way into the Accord.

I got there late in the afternoon. To maintain old world charm, the Dellacondans had, at that time, refrained from erecting a shield over the town. That’s no longer the case, as you may be aware; but when I visited it during the late spring, in the Dellacondan year 3231, it was exposed to the elements. It was a brisk day, as I recall, with a temperature that, in mid-afternoon, could get no higher than twenty below. There was a steady current of frigid air across the mountain slopes, and through downtown Cassanwyle.

But the visitors came, wrapped against the weather, and generally subdued in this holiest of Confederate shrines. The Dellacondans had built a tourist shelter several hundred meters downslope of Sim House. From there, people were ferried by airbus to all the major historical sites in the area.

But the wait at the holding station could be long. I was there almost an hour before a group of about twenty of us were taken the final distance over a field of hard-packed snow to our transportation.

Sim had lived in a three-story farmhouse with an enclosed veranda on two sides. Our bus circled the area while we looked down at the various points of interest: the little cemetery in back where Maurina was buried; Sim’s own skimmer, now permanently moored beneath a gantner shield just north of the property; the Bickford Tavern, visible at the foot of the east slope, where the first strategy meetings had been held after the fighting broke out.

We stayed aloft until everyone in a previous airbus had loaded; then we descended to our assigned place on the landing pad. The guide informed us we would have ten minutes inside, and opened the exit doors.

We filed out and, despite the severity of the climate, most people paused along the walkway in front of the house to absorb the moment, and to look up at the bedroom windows. It was the middle of the day, so the Signal was not particularly evident, but the soft yellow glow was visible nonetheless in the curtains.

We moved inside. The veranda was heated, and furnished with rockers and thick-armed, heavily padded chairs. A chess board had been set up, and a bronze plate explained that the position had been taken from a recorded game actually played between Christopher Sim and one of the townspeople. I gathered from the comments of the visitors that Sim, who had the black pieces, had the stronger position.

The view from the veranda was stunning: the long valley with its wandering frozen river; broad white slopes broken only by occasional houses or patches of forest; the cold peaks, lost in wisps of cloud; and the warm defiance of Cassanwyle, its hundred or so buildings clustered against the wilderness.

The interior of Sim House is stiff and formal, in the manner of its era: richly embroidered rugs and vaulted ceilings and boxy, uncomfortable furniture. A central hallway divides the living room and library, on one side, from casual and dining rooms on the other. As so often happens in historical buildings, the intended effect of preserving a sense of another age, of how it must have been, is lost; instead there is only the mustiness of arrested time. Despite the photos and personal items and books placed carefully about to suggest that the owners had just stepped away (perhaps to discuss the wisdom of intervention), there is no life.

A visitors' log had been placed in the library. I scrolled quickly through it, throwing its pages on the monitor, and drawing the attention of one of the security guards. He wandered over to ask whether he could be of assistance.

I replied pleasantly that, for me, the visitors' log was always the highlight of a visit. "You can learn a great deal from what people have to say about a place like this," I observed, searching the remarks columns for pithy comments. There were observations on the quality of the food at the various inns, and suggestions that the bathroom facilities at the tourist shelter were inadequate. "Just married" appeared beside one couple’s name, and "Kill the mutes" beside another’s.

"I know," said the guard, losing interest.

Well back in the entries I found what I was looking for: Hugh Scott’s name! How long ago had he been here? The dates were written in the Dellacondan calendar, which I cranked into my commlink: I was, at most, four months behind him.

In the section reserved for his address, he had marked "Dellaconda." And the comment block was blank.

I’d have liked to look around the house a bit, but the tour completed its rounds and headed for the door. The guide signaled me toward the exit, and I reluctantly fell in with my fellow visitors.

My next stop was Wendikys Academy, where Sim had been an instructor.

The school is a replica. A whiteout destroyed and scattered the original shortly after the war, and no building stood at the site for almost a century.

All but one of the classroom spaces are now devoted to other purposes: souvenir shop, washrooms, projection areas, restaurant. The one that remains is Sim’s: displays are set up for a history lesson on the Persian wars, using materials and a lesson plan from his files. A holo of a fully armed Spartan hoplite, resplendent in polished armor, stood by the door.

The title of the lesson flickered on one of the displays: LEONIDAS IN THE PASS.

A silver plaque is mounted on the wall outside the classroom. It lists those former students who eventually fought by their teacher’s side. The names of twenty-seven are inscribed, only two of whom ever returned.

Like Sim House, Wendikys Academy maintained a visitors' log, and again Scott’s name was there. Same date, and this time he’d added an observation that was pointedly disquieting: "In the end it made no difference…."

Assuming he would only sign in once at each site, I concluded he might be an occasional visitor. I looked around, scanning the crowd: we stood jammed together in roped-off portions of the building. Some were watching the battle of Thermopylae, others tried to see Sim’s control console, still others sat at terminals bringing up data that, according to the Parks Department, had been devised and entered by Sim himself.

Monuments and markers are everywhere. One can see Mora Poole’s cottage, with the black harridan which she defiantly painted on her roof at the height of the Occupation; and the plaque containing Walt Hastings’s response on learning that all five of his sons and daughters had died at Salinas: I count myself the most fortunate of men, to have known such children!; and the memorial to the nameless Ashiyyurean officer who was slain by partisans while participating in a midwinter search for a lost child.

But the most celebrated is the Signal.

At dusk each evening, it shines forth from the front window on the second floor of Sim House: a warm yellow cone glittering across the snow. It’s Maurina’s beacon to her lost husband, an ancient lamp which, according to legend, has burned every night since the news came from Rigel two centuries ago.

And Maurina Sim: there’s a name that goes to the heart of the tragedy of those days. One always thinks of her as she appears in the Constable engraving, staring out at a wild quarter moon, lovely, young, black hair loose, dark eyes stained with agony.

Her wedding took place in the shadow of approaching war. She made no effort to dissuade her husband from joining Tarien and his volunteers, who were resolved to assist Cormoral. That expedition must have seemed suicidal at the time, though many thought the Ashiyyur would back off rather than slaughter a force that was more mob than navy.

But Cormoral burned before the Dellacondans got there. And that melancholy action changed everything. What was to have been little more than a demonstration became unrelenting war.

In time Maurina went to war herself. She was present at the defense of the City on the Crag and at Sanusar. She is known to have manned a weapons console at Grand Salinas. But she functioned also as an ambassador, traveling the neutral worlds with Tarien, pleading the cause of Confederacy. And it happened that she was on Dellaconda when that world was seized by the Ashiyyur.

She was stranded until the invaders withdrew near the end of the long struggle. Curiously, despite their telepathic abilities, they seem never to have realized the prize they had in their hands. Or if they did, they chose to ignore the fact.

She is said to have been in her bath when news came of her husband’s death. A young townsman, whose name was Frank Paxton, was the carrier, pounding tearfully on the door until she understood what had happened.

The Signal was still burning in the upstairs window on the night that she left her home for the last time. The townspeople have never allowed it to die.

I picked up Hugh Scott’s track again at the Hrinwhar Naval Museum, in Rancorva, Dellaconda’s capital. I’d always been puzzled by the remark attributed to him that he was "going to Hrinwhar." He’d come to the museum, while I had gone a couple of hundred light years to look at the asteroid and battle site for which it was named.

He was listed as a supporting member of the Naval Society. No address was given, but there was a code. It was local, and I connected on the first try. "Mr. Scott?"

"Yes?" His voice was not unfriendly. "Who is this?"

I felt a rush of elation. "My name is Benedict. Alex. I’m Gabe’s nephew."

"I see." His tone flattened. "I was sorry to hear about your uncle."

"Thank you." I was standing in the members' room, looking through a glass panel at an exhibit of period naval uniforms. "I wondered if we might have dinner together? I’d enjoy an opportunity to talk with you."

"I appreciate the invitation, Alex. But I’m really quite busy."

"I read your remarks at the Talino Society. Were they all innocent?"

"All of whom?"

"The crewmembers of the Corsarius?"

He laughed, but the sound had a dull ring to it. "I know you don’t take that place seriously," he said.

"How about dinner?"

"I really haven’t the time, Mr. Benedict. Maybe we can get together at some future date. But not just now." He broke off, and I was listening to a carrier wave.

I gave him about ten minutes, and tried again. "You’re being a nuisance, Mr. Benedict," he said.

"Listen, Hugh. I’ve been all over the Confederacy. My house has been robbed and my life threatened, a woman has drowned, the Ashiyyur may be involved, and I get stone walls everywhere. I’m tired. I’m really tired, and I want some answers. I’d like to buy you dinner. If you won’t go for that, I’ll find you some other way. It might take a while, but Rancorva isn’t all that big."

He heaved a deep sigh. "Okay," he said. "If I see you, will you go away afterward and leave me alone?"

"Yes."

"You understand I will have nothing more to say to you than I did to your uncle?"

"I’ll settle for that."

"All right then. Can you find the Mercantile?"

He was an old man. His face was deeply lined, and his movements were strained. His hair had grayed, and his frame sagged with the weight of too much roast beef over too many years.

He made no effort to look pleased at the tactics I’d used to get him to the table. He was already seated in a corner staring gloomily out at the city when I walked in. "No point delaying it," he said, when I commented on his promptness. He ignored my offered hand. "You’ll forgive me if I pass on the food." A drink stood before him. "What exactly do you want of me?"

"Hugh," I said, as casually as I could manage, "what happened on the Tenandrome? What was out there?"

He did not react: he had known the question was coming, but I still caught a tremble of uncertainty in his throat, as though he’d decided to test the chemistry of the evening before deciding how to reply. "You’ve made up your mind there’s a secret, I take it?"

"Yes."

He shrugged as one might when a conversation has taken a tiresome, and inconsequential, turn. "You got this idea from your uncle?"

"And from other sources."

"All right. You’ve come all this way, I assume, to speak to me. And you will not believe me when I tell you that there was nothing unusual about that mission, except the breakdown of the propulsion system?"

"No."

"Of course. Very well, then: will you believe me when I tell you that we had good reason to keep the secret of what we found? That your persistence in asking difficult questions can do no good, and may do a great deal of harm? That the decision to say nothing was unanimously supported by the men and women on the mission?"

"Yes," I said carefully, "I can believe that."

"Then I hope you will have the good sense to break off your present course and go home and stay there. If I know anything at all about Gabriel Benedict, I suspect he left you a considerable sum of money. Yes? Go back to Rimway and enjoy it. Leave the Tenandrome alone." He’d stiffened while he was speaking, and the air had grown tense.

"Is this what you told my uncle?"

"Yes."

"You didn’t tell him you’d found a Dellacondan warship?"

That hit home. He caught his breath and looked round to see if anyone might have been close enough to overhear. "Alex," he protested, "you’re talking nonsense. Let it drop. Please."

"Let me try it another way, Hugh. Why are you here? What are you looking for?"

He stared into his drink, his irises round and hard and very black. "I’m not sure anymore," he said. "A ghost, maybe."

I thought of my long-ago conversation on Fishbowl with Ivana. He’s a strange one. "Her name wouldn’t be Tanner, would it?"

His eyes rose slowly and caught mine. There was pain in them, and something else. His big hands twisted into fists, and he pushed himself out of the seat. "For God’s sake, Alex," he hissed. "Stay out of it!"