[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

mechanical eye and ear in Acheron which Shebat's top-clearance intelligence
keys permitted him to encircuit, he traced her around the skywall to
Chaeron's five-sided consulate, and within.
When she proceeded, not to the proconsul's offices, but to his residence, the
Marada found that only the sec-
ondary group of matrix keys would suffice to access him beyond its tall,
burnished doors. Within the proconsul's apartments, only his own data net took
note of all that occurred. Through it, the Marada did, also.
So it was that the Marada, like some sly voyeur, wit-
nessed a confrontation the significance of which was beyond his ability to
decipher.
Seeing it was not living it, and although the Marada acquired continual
readouts of Shebat's heart rate and
endorphin balance, he could not feel with fragile flesh the impact of
betrayal. Revelation, disappointment, disen-
franchisement, disgust: these were only abstracts to the cruiser, though he
dared so much as to cock a key-coded ear to what was formulated for speech but
held back un-
said by a heartbroken girl to the only occupant of the proconsul's suite, once
she had stripped off her clothes before the running shower's steamed glass
door and opened it, smiling sensually, to join him who she thought to be her
husband, but who was, instead, Bitsy Mistral, long ago known to Shebat in
Draconis' level seven when he had been doorkeeper and apprentice in the very
troupe from whom Shebat learned the art of dreams.
Mortified, she had fled, wordless, clothing in hand.
Straightaway, she had hastened to the slipbay, where the Marada's ports were
open for her.
But once within, the cruiser noted that the sting of re-
jection, the poison of jealousy and supplantation had sped to her heart,
paralyzing every thought but one:
revenge, Cautiously, the cruiser disengaged from data pool and proconsular
matrices; what was revealed to one source
Page 46
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
72
JANET MORRIS
was not held back from its correlates; he wanted no rec-
ord of such passions as wracked Shebat.
Then she had said to him, after tugging the bracelet from her wrist and
flinging it across his control room's length, "The time has come for us to
find out whether I
am as mad as your namesake. You will monitor me, and
I will attempt to 'pass by unnoticed,' and you will tell me true if you can
track me, or not. I could have used it, when the Orrefors descended upon my
cave; I could have used it often, before that. But I promised him that I
would not, and then I began to believe as he believes, that I could not, that
spells are only self-delusion and
Kerrion technologies could not be thwarted by such a flimsy weapon as human
will. But now, I bow to his wishes no longer. I will 'pass by unnoticed,' out
of his life, never to return. You and I, Marada, are going back to the Pegasus
colonies. But first, one small digression for the sake of evening the score."
The Marada had objected that no hurried experiment carried out by so biased a
source as himself could be con-
clusive. Then had she replied, "We have got to find out if
'passing by unnoticed' works, Marada," and winked out of being as completely
as a blown LED.
More worrisome than the apparent disappearance of his outboard from physical,
real-time space was her dis-
embodied announcement, as a hand he could not see in any mode from infrared to
gravitational activated his outer locks, that he should not fret over her, but
make ready to debark first for Earth and then Pegasus. She would be back, she
promised, as soon as possible. If something urgent arose that demanded her
attention, the cruiser might seek her on their private hailing frequency.
Where was she going? the Marada had to ask.
"To the dream dancers, first. And then to Jesse
Thome's." She popped back into view, biting her lip, her gray eyes hot like
molten metal, "And never mind about logging out for Pegasus. I have run away
from what I
would not see for the last time."
While the cruiser pondered the conundrum of how
Shebat managed to alter the reflectivity ratios of not only her body but the
clothing upon it, so that all questing waveforms passed through the space that
she occupied
EARTH DREAMS 75
uninterrupted, as if nothing at all were where she indu-
bitably still was, Shebat Kerrion sought the twin balms of work and vengeance.
She spent five hours on level forty with ninety-odd hastily gathered dream
dancers, every one of them neu-
tered and convicts and remembering that she alone among dream dancers had
escaped level seven on that awful night during Parma's administration when
then-
consul Chaeron's cordon had closed in upon their il-
legality, damning them to space-end.
She found it necessary to remind them that they would be there yet, but for
the intercession of the Acheron pro-
consul at her behest.
She taught them three dreams, in that time, and or-
dered them to create several more, with similar themes.
"Propaganda," one cried. "Concerted," she agreed- She was grateful that the
dancer Lauren was not among those present, that her old troupe mistress, the
piebald Har-
mony, had declined the proconsul's offer in favor of awaiting Sofia's ghost at
Page 47
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
space-end. She sat out tense mo-
ments in which the troupe leaders argued over the pro-
priety of putting dream dances to such blatantly political use, but a friend
she had not known she possessed one of her former instructors: still
thin-faced, still claw-nosed, still called Rajah came to her defense in the
name of pragmatism, and she left them with orders to be ready to leave for
Earth in a week's time.
None of it salved her. Bending a hundred dream danc-
ers to her will today, to pursue some elusive endpoint way off beyond
tomorrow, did not make the sting of yes-
terday's treachery less galling. Were she consul general of Kerrion space, it
would not have helped. Even while
Chaeron had been winning her trust in good Kerrion
fashion, telling her lies she wanted to hear and begging her to take up
residence with him in a full partnership, he had had that smug-faced catamite
waiting in his bed. She was not fooled. Chaeron, you will find if harder to
receive than to give, she promised a mental picture of him, its mocking smirk
already melting into a weary frown.
Then, taking leave of the dream dancers, she ordered her waiting lorry to the
Earth town. Slipping down in its padded interior, she closed her burning eyes.
74 JANET MORRIS
He had not even had the courage to admit his lechery.
Philanderer. Sybarite. Everything his enemies said about him was true. He had
known this would happen, but been content to let Mistral make his own
introduction.
"Better than words, I suppose," she spoke aloud, then had to answer the driver
beyond the lorry's smoked glass partition, "Never mind. Sponge pilots talk to
themselves;
it is an occupational hazard."
At the Earth town's main and dusty street, she dis-
missed the lorry and its driver, ordering an automated one through a
low-clearance channel for an hour hence. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]