Blindfold

Blindfold Kevin J. Anderson Stunning psychic science thriller by the bestselling author of X-Files: Ground Zero and X-Files: Ruins.Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by Truthsayers. Trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas – a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty – Truthsayers are justice. Infallible. Beyond appeal.Troy Boren is falsely accused of murder. He put his trust in the young Truthsayer Kalliana, until, impossibly, she convicts him. Her power is fading and nobody can work it out.A conspiracy is taking place that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth and justice, Atlas will certainly fall. Copyright (#ulink_b8fb047a-4020-5f93-b1b6-83ac312b627f) HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) Copyright © Kevin J. Anderson 1995 Kevin J. Anderson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780006483069 Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007571529 Version: 2016-12-16 Dedication (#ulink_33e0f8f3-d6e7-5059-a514-e0e35d4fc080) This book is for KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH for all the help and love she has shared over the years in helping me become a better writer. Contents Cover (#u6f833e82-04a4-53a6-ae70-f6cf1a82af4a) Title Page (#ub6e5dbf3-429d-5e2c-b29b-9472c58b1856) Copyright (#ulink_9bebe0d5-2d68-5f07-8770-e8f0048693f8) Dedication (#ulink_0a8fc8f5-8f21-5413-ae88-4b9f08eaa071) Epigraph (#ulink_e4a27241-ca7a-581f-b1ae-56e515c84ac2) Accused Chapter 1 (#ulink_6a071f45-a1ab-5991-b630-2d5d05c47e9d) Chapter 2 (#ulink_4ea66bd4-9877-56b8-9739-3e19af0f9dba) Chapter 3 (#ulink_74fdc0fb-7751-551f-9f66-82699a520778) Chapter 4 (#ulink_65d88513-c770-54ba-9aab-681df5489a43) Chapter 5 (#ulink_a066b1fe-91a6-57f2-a44b-f4d331fbc1b6) Chapter 6 (#ulink_8dc8892b-555a-521a-bab0-2b97b8f08bb6) Chapter 7 (#ulink_9ee7ad10-cec3-5191-935b-15b3823250a7) Chapter 8 (#ulink_121658a0-f87f-5009-b329-b6d1939f38d8) Chapter 9 (#ulink_2c6dc367-d9e2-5b37-ad69-97c71685554b) Truthsayers Guild Chapter 10 (#ulink_b9be1cb1-1c5d-58d8-b62c-9fe5f13113dc) Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo) Orblab 2 Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo) The Burden of Proof Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo) Exiles Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo) Truth Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo) Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Epigraph (#ulink_962100f6-b370-5afd-9055-8315125f022a) Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience. WALTER LIPPMANN The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them. OSCAR WILDE ACCUSED (#ulink_1081e177-576a-5e0b-8507-ff02f29578a8) CHAPTER (#ulink_5f496b00-8dc8-59fb-8fa9-0d7b5ae4ceba) 1 (#ulink_5f496b00-8dc8-59fb-8fa9-0d7b5ae4ceba) i Outside the Truthsayers Guild, the crowd had already started to gather. Kalliana could hear the murmur of voices, feel the press of their excited thoughts even through the shielded walls of Guild Headquarters. They were waiting. She looked through the stained glass windows of her quarters on the third deck. She brushed pale fingers across the smooth, cool glass panes—brilliant shards of crimson, green, and blue epoxied into dull alloy tracks—as if to rub away the shadows of milling people anticipating the trial. But they would not leave, not until Kalliana had made her judgment. The people of First Landing waited in the plaza for the Truthsayer to come out, to face the accused murderer, to read the guilt or innocence directly from his thoughts. Perhaps it was the spectacle the colonists wanted, a bright entertainment, or just relief from their strenuous jobs for an hour or so. Kalliana knew they all had hard lives out there; she wouldn’t have traded with them for anything. Officially, the Truthsayers Guild believed the citizens longed for a reaffirming lesson in morality, a demonstration of what would happen if they slipped from the narrow but clearly defined path of the law …. Then again, after spending so much time descending into the minds of criminals, Kalliana wondered if maybe the spectators were just thirsty for blood. The accused—a man named Eli Strone—had supposedly spilled enough blood. Raw sunlight filtered through her window to spill rainbows across the rugs that covered the cold deck plates. Her quarters, once the cabin of a high-ranking officer on the scuttled spaceship that had been converted into the Guild building, seemed safe and warm to her, a shelter from the evil thoughts of the populace at large. Every day she and the eleven other telepathic Truthsayers had to face the sins of the people, but today would be worse. Today, if the accused was indeed guilty, she would be forced to confront his memory of slaughtering twenty-three people. Kalliana wrapped herself in her white robe, clean and pure, made of bleached cotton grown here on the planet Atlas, then tied it with the emerald sash of a Truthsayer. Her petite body, fine blond hair, and translucent skin made her look like a pale angel. The cloth rustled like hushed whispers as she moved. She completed her ceremonial costume with a wide, ornate gold collar that added extra weight to her shoulders, as if her burden wasn’t already heavy enough. But the formal spectacle required all the trappings of a mystical ritual. The crowd was growing restless in the plaza. Her reluctance had already made her late. She would have to face the people soon, face Eli Strone. ii She had read the proclamation a dozen times over, but Kalliana picked up the discolored sheets and stared at the words again. Documents printed on genuine paper made from kenaf fibers, because a physical document implied a permanence that electronic records could not convey. The Strone Case. The brutal murders had occurred in the isolated wastelands between the landholdings of Carsus and Bondalar, out in the construction camps for the new mag-lev rail that would link the two holdings. An efficient mag-lev network already connected each of the nineteen scattered landholdings with the hub city of First Landing, but in an unprecedented alliance, Carsus and Bondalar had decided to join their holdings directly, without passing through the central point. The construction work had proceeded for three years, plagued by disasters, sabotage, defective materials. And now this: Three separate labor gangs, twenty-three people, had been murdered. The bodies hadn’t been discovered for days, since the crews reported to their overseers only once a week. The killings had gotten progressively more monstrous down the line. A man named Eli Strone had shown up on the roster of each slaughtered crew. Up until two years ago, Strone had been a member of the elite guard working in the Guild Headquarters, steadfast and ready to defend the Truthsayers against any sort of disturbance—but he had abandoned his post suddenly, without explanation, after years of service. Strone had then bounced between minor jobs in First Landing’s hydroponic greenhouses or loading docks, eventually heading out to the wilderness and a more rugged life. Three months ago Strone had volunteered for the backbreaking work of laying inductance coils and alloy rails for the transportation link between Bondalar and Carsus holdings. Such work had generally been assigned as slave labor to criminals convicted of minor offenses, or even the religious fanatics, the Pilgrims, but crew bosses would not turn down a willing worker. Then the murders had occurred. Eli Strone had survived; no one else had. He had applied for labor on a fourth crew shortly after the massacres were discovered, and the soldier-police had apprehended him. Strone insisted he was innocent. But then, most guilty people did. Only a Truthsayer could tell …. Finally ready to face the accused, Kalliana stepped toward her cabin door. Her stomach knotted, and she felt the frosty electricity of nervous sweat, but she did not hesitate. She had been raised in the Guild since the embryo stage, developed for this duty. It was the way she paid for the comfortable life she lived. As she stepped into the corridor, she saw Guild Master Tharion striding toward her: a tall man with sunlight-yellow hair and eyebrows, granite-gray eyes, and a long white robe cinched with a royal blue sash. He was thirty-four, thirteen years her senior; only two years ago he had found himself suddenly saddled with leadership of the Truthsayers Guild. “I’m ready, Guild Master,” Kalliana said, averting her eyes, certain Tharion had come in impatience. “A moment, Kalliana,” he said, gesturing back into her quarters. “The people can wait. They enjoy the anticipation.” Kalliana retreated into her quarters, glad for the delay but worried about what Tharion would ask. She detected no anger in his expression, no stiffness in his movements. He had a pleasant face, calm but firm, just beginning to show the lines of responsibility that came with middle age. With her own residual telepathic enhancement, Kalliana was tempted to reach out and pluck the concerns directly from Tharion’s mind, to prepare herself—but after her years of rigorous ethical training, she would never do such a thing. Guild Master Tharion lowered his voice, commanding her attention. “There may be more to this case than the murders, Kalliana,” he said. “It troubles me deeply. You know that Strone used to be one of our elite guards, but he left us just after I became Guild Master. Very mysterious. He always seemed a bit of an odd sort, but reliable. He escorted me many times when I was younger. I got the impression he revered the Truthsayers, looked up to us as great dispensers of truth, wielding the sword of justice.” He laughed, then frowned, letting his thoughts come through. “I’ve done a lot of thinking … and I cannot help but wonder if he may be a pawn in a larger, older plot against … us? Against some of the landholders? I don’t know.” Kalliana frowned, not sure what he wanted from her. “What makes you say that? Murders were committed, and this man was implicated. It’s up to me to declare whether he is guilty or innocent.” “There may be more,” Tharion said. “Given the constant delays and frequent setbacks on the rail-construction project, Hektor Carsus has informally petitioned me for some answers. If any information comes to light during your reading of Strone …” “What kind of information?” Kalliana asked, suddenly wary. She knew clearly, from her years of ethical training, exactly how far she was expected to go inside the criminal mind. “I am not required to read any deeper than necessary to determine his guilt or innocence.” “Just be watchful. Perhaps his motivations will be plain enough,” Tharion said, a pair of small creases forming between his pale brows. “We all know Hektor Carsus is a suspicious hothead, but he does have certain valid points. From the day he and Janine Bondalar announced their plans to form a marriage alliance, the mag-lev project connecting their holdings has been beset with unreasonable problems. Cursed, some people might say.” Tharion wove his long fingers together. “I have privately brought some of his concerns to Guild Mediators. There’s a distinct possibility these murders might be another attempt by some rival landholder to destroy the direct rail link. Strone may just be a hired killer—or a patsy who hasn’t really done anything.” Kalliana considered this and nodded uneasily. Tharion looked at her with an open expression, not quite a plea. “When you’re inside Strone’s head, try to determine whether he was acting under orders from someone else. Is this just a random act of violence, or is there a deeper plan?” “If he is guilty at all,” Kalliana pointed out. “True,” Tharion said, embarrassed. “We need that answer too, of course.” She could hear the continued droning of the crowd in the plaza, rising and falling in irregular waves. “Why should Truthsayers worry about more landholder rivalries? They always squabble with each other—but we are independent, and have been for a hundred years. Let them do their own investigations, their own snooping. I won’t be a spy for Carsus or Bondalar or Dokken or any other landholder—” Tharion held up his hand. “Not for the landholders. For us. Because if another landholder is working this plot, then we are being manipulated.” Kalliana finally saw his logic and could not think of an excuse to deny his request, despite her reluctance. She nodded and followed him out the door. “All right, let’s get this over with.” iii The huge ground level opening of the half-buried spaceship, the SkySword, had originally been designed for loading cargo and launching military assault vehicles, but the Truthsayers had replaced the doors with ornate slabs of metal cast in the foundries of one of the mountain holdings. The regal portals were inlaid with beautiful and complex mosaics of bright polished rock. Grandeur to impress the masses. A cascade of sunlight spilled into the main corridor as the doors swung open. Kalliana walked down the ramp beside the Guild Master, her petite form dwarfed by the immense size of the Guild Headquarters. Outside, a group of elite guards flanked the door, ready to escort her through the crowd to the speaking platform in the center of the plaza. Kalliana raised her chin and walked forward, her feet bare on the shadowed flagstones, her white robe fluttering around her in the breeze. The air outside smelled dry and flat, like rock dust, without the enriching moisturizers and perfumes that circulated through the Guild’s confined chambers. She felt instantly uncomfortable, but she would be back inside soon, as soon as she finished her duty. The elite guard fell silently into ranks beside her, their scarlet gauntlets and boots, deep blue uniforms, and goggled helmets setting them apart from the citizens. Kalliana ascended the granite steps to the speaking platform. Overhead, the skies turned gray with an approaching cloud front, one of the fast-moving storms that cruised over the surface of Atlas. The orbital Platform had not issued a weather warning, but she wondered if it would rain soon. The water would probably make a big difference to those living in the outer landholdings, though it wouldn’t matter to the Truthsayers inside their Headquarters. Often, she found it soothing to listen to the raindrops beating an irregular rhythm against the hull plates and watch them stream and ripple over the stained glass windows. Kalliana would need some forced relaxation after this ordeal in front of so many people. She hated murder cases. The crowd was larger than usual. Eli Strone’s alleged crimes were so heinous that many had come even from the far landholdings to witness her pronouncement. Guild Master Tharion seemed pleased at the turnout. As she walked among them, Kalliana felt the surge of anticipation from the audience, a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts that forced her to put up mental barriers. Though she had not taken a booster dose of the mind-enhancing drug Veritas in days, she still felt the backwash of their thoughts—disjointed hopes, bitterness, frustration, new love, anticipation, even physical thoughts of muscle aches and noontime hunger. She shook her head to clear her mind, pushing back the psychic babble. While she was required to experience the sins—if any—of Eli Strone, these other citizens could keep their weary lives to themselves. Kalliana didn’t comprehend how all these people lived, what their dreams were, how they coped with such a bleak and difficult existence. The colonists often seemed happy, though she could not understand it. She had seen so much anger and misery in the minds she had truth-read. Nervously, she glanced behind her at the polished hull of the Guild Headquarters, her landmark of safety and shelter. In the front row of spectators, sitting in canvas chairs covered with sun shades, swarthy Hektor Carsus sat beside his betrothed, landholder Janine Bondalar, who was at least fifteen years the man’s senior. The two held hands and stared woodenly ahead, waiting to hear Kalliana’s judgment about the man accused of killing so many of their workers. Kalliana wondered what they wanted to hear—did the allied landholders wish to find a scapegoat so they could start another feud with somebody? Hadn’t Atlas already suffered enough bloody civil wars during its two centuries of colonial history? But it didn’t matter what Carsus and Bondalar wanted to hear. Kalliana would speak the truth of the case. The consequences were not her concern. The Guild’s other eleven Truthsayers sat on shaded stone benches to the side of the stage; many of the crimson-sashed Guild Mediators, those who had lesser telepathic powers but greater skills as negotiators and politicians, had also come to watch Kalliana’s pronouncement, though they were not required to witness the spectacle. From the height of the raised platform, Kalliana looked down at the intimidating sea of faces, all strangers to her. The citizens gazed up at their Truthsayer. They did not know her, because their names were not divulged. To them, all Truthsayers were identical, equally trained, equally capable. And they were right. The Guild Master took the center of the stage, raising his arms so that the wide white sleeves of his robe pooled around his elbows. His bright blue sash made him look regal; his sun-yellow hair blew in the breeze. “The Truthsayers Guild does everything in its power to see that you remain safe,” Tharion said, thrusting his voice into the hush of the crowd. As he grew more accustomed to his position as Guild Master, his voice seemed to grow stronger, Kalliana thought. “Your lives are difficult enough, trying to wring an existence from our untamed world, and we do all we can so that you may go about your business without fear of violent crime or war. “But sometimes we fail. Here, the Guild has failed twenty-three citizens, now dead, found murdered as they worked to construct a new mag-lev rail line that would have benefited the holdings of Carsus and Bondalar.” Tharion drew a deep breath, and paused meaningfully. “When the Guild fails to protect the people, the best thing we can do is to make certain that justice is done, that a criminal does not escape punishment—and that an innocent person is not convicted of someone else’s crime. Today, the Truthsayer will determine the guilt or innocence of the man accused of these murders. The dead cannot be brought back to life, but your safety can be assured.” Tharion swept his pale gaze over the gathered people, hesitating on the calm figures of Hektor Carsus and Janine Bondalar, then moved on to glance at the other landholders, each standing separate from their rivals in the crowd. Kalliana noted that Tharion’s friend and mentor, the landholder Franz Dokken, had not bothered to attend the trial. “Over the years,” Tharion continued, “despite the best efforts of the Council, some landholders have still attempted to settle disputes through violence, or to usurp lands or resources that have not been distributed to them. For generations, under the authority of the Truthsayers Guild, regiments of soldier-police have been stationed at each holding to deter such hostilities. In the wake of these new murders, I have asked that the sol-pols step up their patrols, keep a more diligent watch for violence brewing in outlying lands as well as here in First Landing. Until we can all work together, Atlas will never become the Eden we were promised it would be.” Looking satisfied, Tharion took a step backward until he stood next to Kalliana again. “Now let us determine the truth about Eli Strone, and learn whether or not we can sleep safely tonight.” Guild Master Tharion gestured, and one of the white-sashed Guild children came up to Kalliana bearing an ornate brass and copper case that held a booster dose of the precious Veritas drug. Kalliana took the case without smiling, and the white-robed child ran back to her companions. From the gilded, fingerprint-locked cache, Kalliana withdrew one of the sky-blue Veritas capsules. She rolled its smooth shape in her palm. Then, turning her back to the crowd and looking up at the towering metal curves of the Guild Headquarters, she popped the pill into her mouth. Drawing a long breath, she cracked down on the capsule to make it work faster. The bitter syrup spilled along her tongue, down her throat. She swallowed repeatedly as she gazed up at the motto of the Truthsayers Guild emblazoned on the metal bulkhead over the arching structure of the derelict starship. She stared at it hypnotically, concentrating, focusing. Truth Holds No Secrets. Kalliana straightened her white robe, swallowed, and let the Veritas boil within her mind. She closed her dusty blue eyes, nodded, then opened them again. One of the elite guards gestured. From the detention decks beneath the Guild Headquarters, Eli Strone emerged. Already feeling the psychic rush building in her mind, Kalliana turned to look as the accused murderer was brought before her. iv When Strone walked forward, a mental hush fell over the crowd. Kalliana detected a faint, indescribable change in the smell of the air, like ozone. A cool breeze rippled across her white robes, as if presaging a storm from the gunmetal gray clouds. She stiffened. Tall and angular, Eli Strone seemed incredibly placid. His face showed nothing but peace, and he presented a totally cooperative demeanor—but the sol-pol guards had shackled his ankles and chained his wrists, nonetheless. These were primarily symbolic bonds, because if Kalliana pronounced him innocent, she would remove the chains herself, freeing Strone in front of all the spectators. But the bonds also kept the prisoner under control on the off chance that he turned violent. Kalliana looked down at the accused, bracing herself, but not yet releasing her telepathic abilities. She wasn’t ready, but she couldn’t show it. She rubbed sweaty palms against her white robe. The weight of the golden collar on her shoulders seemed to increase as she studied the man before her. The big man wore a gray jumpsuit, barefoot, bare-handed. His knuckles were large and bony, his wide hands callused as if he was accustomed to heavy labor. His hair was a rich, chocolate brown, cut short, but with an unruliness that implied wild curls. What did his thoughts hold? If Strone had actually committed the killings, Kalliana would find out the moment she looked into his mind—and he knew it. The entire justice system depended on the infallibility of the Veritas drug. No one on Atlas could get away with a crime if brought before a telepathic Truthsayer. The guilty ones often confessed and accepted a lighter punishment rather than be taken before a Truthsayer. Therefore, since Strone insisted he was innocent, Guild Master Tharion’s suggested conspiracy might indeed be true. And that would mean the real murderer remained out in society, uncaught. Eli Strone stood directly before her, gazing into the bright wash of translucent sky. Something about him made Kalliana’s skin crawl: an inhuman quality that made him seem aloof from his own circumstances. His eyes, the color of rusty water, were wide, almost circular with unblinking detachment. Guilty or not, he was a strange one, no question about that. Strone gave her a thin-lipped smile and raised his chin. Kalliana focused her mind. The sol-pol guards placed their hands on their weapons. The gathered audience in the plaza held its breath. Kalliana touched Eli Strone’s temples with her short delicate fingers. She closed her eyes — And entered a chamber of horrors. v The first work gang of eight: he had shot them all in the middle of the night as they slept huddled for warmth under their tents in the wasteland. The blood was black as oil in the starlight. Strone cleared his thoughts to make it easy for Kalliana. Proud, he wanted the Truthsayer to see, to understand. He thought of nothing but what he had done to those abominably guilty human beings. He expected some sort of reward for what he had done. Strone had been with the team only three days—but that was enough for him to see their sins, the guilt written all over their faces, their expressions, their manners. They coveted things that didn’t belong to them, they fantasized about other men’s wives, they thought of violence toward one another. They were so twisted. Their evil ran so very deep. In these outlying lands there was no one to dispense justice … no one but himself. Sick with revulsion at their guilt, Strone had crept out of his own tent, blinking his eyes in the watery light of the silent greenish aurora overhead. The mag-lev rail under construction stood like a sentinel, a silver line drawn by a hooked claw across the rocky landscape, raised up on boxlike pedestals with induction coils, transformers, and magnetic boosters. Dust blew across the open desert like a lost sigh. Strone had killed the sentry first, lulling the man by distracting him, volunteering to take night watch for a few hours since he couldn’t sleep anyway. Then, Strone had balled his fist and punched like a sledgehammer into the side of the man’s head, cracking the eggshell-thin temple bone. As the sentry slumped, Strone wrapped his forearm around the man’s neck, settling the chin into the crook of his elbow. He knelt, using his knee and his back muscles to snap the sentry’s neck so thoroughly that Strone could have ripped his entire head off if he had pulled just a little harder. That wouldn’t be necessary, though. He took the sentry’s weapon and with fast, cold efficiency, walked from tent to tent, firing into the seven flimsy shelters. A few workers, awakened by the sound of gunfire but still groggy, staggered out, fumbling with the flap zippers even as he shot them. They sprawled on the ground, half out of their tents. Some of them groaned in pain. And he shot them again. They had continued thinking evil thoughts even in their last moments of life. Strone could tell. He could read their sins. Eli Strone had been brought up believing that the Truthsayers were dispensers of justice, that the white-robed telepaths kept all crime and sin in abeyance. But he had learned that not even the Truthsayers were perfect. And though they worked diligently, evil still ran rampant among the citizenry. Even in First Landing the Guild couldn’t possibly handle it all. There was just too much. In rare and secret instances, Strone had seen others peripherally able to read thoughts, common people given a brief and illegal rush of telepathy, not the long-standing ability of a Truthsayer, but enough to know the truth. He had heard rumors about black market availability of the Veritas drug, normally held in such tight control by the Guild. Strone, though, had his own access to the truth. He was a vigilante, who could sense the evil lurking inside the other colonists. And he would quietly assist the Truthsayers in their quest for justice. It was his mission …. Leaving the bodies behind at the first site, Strone had walked along the path of the mag-lev rail until he found another group of seven workers and offered them his services. The second group were all Pilgrims, the quiet religious order who wore dark woolen clothes despite the heat. The Pilgrim crew gladly accepted the help of Eli Strone, then set about attempting to convert him to their religion, but Strone had no interest. His secret powers revealed the hypocrisy in their facial expressions. He could see the hidden desires they harbored within themselves, the evil thoughts, the twisted dreams. His killing was quieter and more efficient this time. Strone slipped from tent to tent in the deepness of the night. With a knife blade, he made no sound, and neither did the cooling bodies as they twitched and spilled their blood on the ground while Strone held a broad callused hand across their mouths and noses. A few Pilgrims thrashed and fought even after he had slit their throats, but their struggles soon faded. He was drenched with blood when he finished punishing the second camp, his clothes sticky, his skin painted copper red. He stripped himself naked and scoured his body with handfuls of sand until his flesh felt tingly and raw, and he was cleansed, inside and out, with the purging fire of justice. He was like the Truthsayers he so greatly revered. He didn’t need the Veritas drug, because the power of rightness was on his side …. As Kalliana touched his forehead, Strone’s thoughts continued to hammer her, cold and impersonal, a simple recitation of factual memories, like a sol-pol incident report. Despite her revulsion, she was forced to view all the flashbacks through his eyes. Strone’s lack of emotion nauseated her just as much as the vivid slaughter. He continued to pour out his thoughts eagerly, as if offering her a gift: The members of the third camp looked at him with greater suspicion when he offered to join their detail. These were exiles guarded by two sol-pols, people convicted of crimes and put to hard work for Carsus Holding, blasting and leveling the grade for the mag-lev rail. Strone wore a rough, ill-fitting robe stolen from one of the Pilgrims. The guards looked strangely at his tattered clothing. They asked him his name, and he gave it freely. He had nothing to hide, since no one had yet learned of the previous murders. As a former member of the esteemed elite guard, he had no blot on his record. He was a righteous man. Warily, they accepted him because the work team had fallen behind schedule. They had several more kilometers of rail to lay down before they could take furlough back at the main village. Within three nights it was Strone’s turn to help with the cooking, a heavily spiced rice dish. He drugged them all with a small supply of stenn, often used by sol-pols to quell disturbances. Before leaving the Guild, Strone had kept the stenn given to him as an elite guard. He put it to good use now. No one tasted the paralysis drug mingled with the pungent spices. All the victims lay helpless as darkness fell. A line of scarlet clouds clumped on the flat desert horizon. Strone withdrew his most prized equipment, scalpels and pliers. He had planned ahead, dreaming of this day. They all deserved it. He was in no hurry, so he took his time with this group. They were paralyzed and could not run—but they could still scream. He made one incision with the scalpel in exchange for every outcry they made, continuing his tally until they could make no more sound. It took him all night long. These people were very evil …. Kalliana tore herself away, reeling backward. More darkness lay deeper, more secrets, a tangled labyrinth of shock and betrayal—information Kalliana did not dare to witness. She fled, coming back to herself. Eli Strone looked up at her with an open eagerness, like a pet waiting to be praised by its master. “Guilty,” Kalliana choked. “Guilty!” She staggered away and fell to her knees. The sol-pols rushed forward to grab the shackled Strone as he stood gaping at her in shock, too surprised even to struggle. “But you saw,” he said. “You saw my reasons! You know!” In answer Kalliana felt revulsion rush upward inside her, as if a fist had plunged into her stomach, and she vomited onto the speaking platform. The thoughts of all the crowded people sliced at the edges of her mind like a whirlwind of razor blades. “But how can you call me guilty?” Strone wailed. Kalliana couldn’t bear to open her eyes as the elite guard caught her, supporting her by the shoulders and arms as she slumped. They rushed her back to the sanctuary of Guild Headquarters. CHAPTER (#ulink_54a75064-6c7d-510b-b9f3-56a138306f97) 2 (#ulink_54a75064-6c7d-510b-b9f3-56a138306f97) i Craning his neck to gaze up into a sky that had been threatening rain for days, Troy Boren watched the space elevator car come down through the clouds. It hung from a braided diamond-fiber thread like fine spider silk thousands of kilometers long. Sol-pol guards opened the chain-link security fence around the anchor point as the space elevator glided down, silently propelled by motivators along the unseverable cable. Troy squinted at the approaching shape, an artifact of old Earth technology: its armored walls were streaked with tarnish and ionization scars from daily trips to orbit and back over two centuries. Troy imagined what it must have been like so long ago, when conditions were even more rugged than now. Upon their arrival at the raw, new planet, the original colonists had lived in orbit aboard a platform detached from the main shell of the ship. After several years they had dropped the elevator cable and anchored it at the place that would become First Landing, then they had begun their mass exodus down to the surface…. Now the cylindrical elevator car thrummed as it decelerated on the sturdy cable. A complicated network of servomotors, impellers, tension sensors, docking attachments, and control apparatus crowned its roof, looking as if someone had hammered random scrap components into place without prior planning. But the elevator worked, and it had always worked, and Troy had no doubt that it would continue to work for as long as he lived. He hadn’t grown tired of the sight yet, not in his three weeks at the new job in First Landing. The space elevator seemed so … majestic. He squinted his bright, hazel eyes and watched the car descend. A wonder-filled smile crossed his face. “All right, everybody, prepare for arrival,” Cren shouted. Troy’s boss worked with a feverish intensity that exhausted him just to watch. “Got it this time, Boren? Don’t screw up again. Training period is over. I don’t care who your father paid off.” “Yes, sir!” Troy nodded, then glanced upward again, unable to tear his gaze from the elevator car’s final descent toward the anchor point. “Oh, stop gawking,” Cren said. “You make me sick. It’s embarrassing to have such a starstruck kid on my crew. Go over there and get ready. You got the cargo manifests?” “Uh, yes sir!” Troy waved the four paper cards printed with itemized lists of supplies, as if his boss might not believe him. He wondered how long it would take for Cren to believe in his competence. “Be sure you get the damned numbers right this time. I don’t think it’ll stretch your mental capacity.” With a disgusted look, Cren went off to harass someone else. He clapped his hands as he flitted like a sand flea from worker to worker, double-checking, issuing orders, reinforcing his control. Troy stared nervously down at the manifest cards in his hands, as if that could prevent him from making another mistake. Only two weeks ago he had transposed some digits in two shipments, which sent valuable cargo off to a pair of landholders who had not paid for it—and who refused, even on threat of sol-pol intervention, to return the precious resources that had arrived at their cargo stations. The Landholders Council and the Guild Mediators had been brought in and were even now working to settle the dispute. Cren had never let Troy forget just how much trouble his incompetence had caused. “Never again,” Cren had said, leaning close enough to Troy that the young man could count the bloodshot lines on his boss’s eyeballs. Troy knew Cren got more enjoyment out of intimidating his workers than in getting the job done well. “Don’t you ever even dream of putting me through this another time.” Troy was of medium height and thin, fidgety as he moved from one task to another. His family had been frustrated with his distractibility, unable to comprehend why he couldn’t just work hard and be content with his lot in life like the rest of them were. He just wasn’t cut out for a life as a miner, though. He had done a brief stint on an ore hauler in one of the mine shafts, but he simply could not handle the strenuous physical toil. He had been transferred to one of the chemical leaching plants, and finally to an inventory shop, where he had received some of his training on computers. He had been reprimanded twice for letting his thoughts wander, for doodling, for letting the paperwork pile up. His mother had lectured him, making everything worse. Though he loved them, like a dutiful son, Troy couldn’t understand his family, why they were blind to dreams and possibilities, why they saw no further into the future than the next day—until it involved them directly. Once the elevator car docked, Troy’s job was to go through the manifests and inspect every item as it came off the ramp, tallying it with the orders from various landholders, the Council, the Truthsayers Guild, merchants, or wealthy private citizens. When all the shipments had been removed and stored in the low holding warehouse for later distribution, and their totals entered into the computer systems, Troy would hand the double-checked manifests to Cren, who would then determine an equivalent amount of supplies to be sent back up to the Platform in exchange: water, canisters of air, craftwork, and hydroponically grown food or actual agricultural produce. Under the overcast sky Troy and a dozen coworkers marched into the fenced area as the car settled onto its toroidal supports and padded bumpers. Chain links rattled as the fence gates moved apart. Two sol-pols stood at their station, looking bored; they had seen the car come and go hundreds of times. Stalls lined the streets around the anchor point. First Landing’s marketplace bustled with merchants selling oddities, from desperately needed supplies to valueless trinkets: new fossils dug up in the mountain holdings, gaudy gemstones, exotic plants grown in private greenhouses. The mag-lev lines from each landholding ran straight into First Landing at the large supply hub and boarding station. Single-passenger cars whistled in from the outlying areas, and cargo haulers trundled along the rails delivering supplies and resources: sweet-smelling pine lumber from Toth Holding, fish and kelp and bricks from Sardili Shores, salt and processed chemicals from the dry lakebeds of Dokken Holding. As the other workers plodded through the elevator arrival procedures, Troy watched a big ore hauler come in from Koman Holding. As the cargo hauler locked itself down, burly miners sprang out, reminding him of his home and family up in the Mining District … how his father’s skin was always grimy from work in the ore shafts, his fingernails black no matter how much scrubbing he did. His squat mother had developed sloped shoulders and biceps as large as hams from her own backbreaking labor. Troy’s family knew full well he could not have handled such a life. His little sister Rissbeth belittled him incessantly about being a weakling. His older sister Leisa understood and loved him unconditionally, though she had no idea what advice to give him. But Troy’s gruff father Rambra had unexpectedly rescued him. Paying a large bonus out of their family savings—all the credits he had set aside from his years of work—Rambra had petitioned their landholder, Victoria Koman herself, and she had found Troy a job in First Landing. His job at the anchor point had been a godsend, and he knew his family had pinned all their hopes on the slim chance of his success. They gambled on him working his way up in the world, and finding a spot for them, too, so that they could escape from the mines. If he could only establish a foothold here, perhaps Troy could find jobs for his sisters, a new position for his father, anything to free them from their cramped quarters and daily drudgery. Troy had vowed to do his best, but the way Cren treated him, he didn’t think his chances were too great. On one of the first days, the boss had yanked him aside for a lecture. Cren jabbed a finger at Troy, keeping his voice low. “I don’t like being ordered to hire a redneck yokel from dirt-digger Koman Holding,” he said. “I don’t care who your father is or what he did, but this isn’t a free ride for you. I’m going to watch you closer than any of my other team members—because if you don’t deserve to keep your job here, there are plenty of others who do. Don’t think your father is going to get you out of trouble again.” Troy swallowed and shook his head. “No, sir. He can’t—he has no money left. He spent it all just to get me this job.” Now, Troy looked around him, wide eyed at the big city, where citizens went about their jobs as if everyone on Atlas was so blessed. Sol-pol guards stood at the corners, keeping order. Pilgrims in hooded robes moved about, muttering to themselves. Representatives from the outer landholdings met to make deals, trade supplies, and increase their own power. The space elevator landed with a thunking sound of locks and stabilizers. Cren yelled at Troy again. “Hey, Boren—I’ve got a suggestion. Quit daydreaming! Come help us unload. Do your work, dammit! The car is down.” Troy snapped out of his reverie and ran to do his job. ii When the tall elevator car opened its bottom level, two passengers disembarked, stepping carefully onto the ramp the workers had rolled up and clamped into position by the access hatch. Troy was fascinated by the two Guild Mediators, in their white robes and crimson sashes, who had gone up to inspect operations on the Platform. A pair of elite guards also emerged from the elevator, escorting the Mediators. When the passengers were clear and checked through security, Troy and his coworkers entered the cramped main chamber of the elevator, bumping shoulders as they wrestled with the containers lashed down in the lower storage bay. Troy held the manifest cards, shuffling them as he tried to keep track of everything that came out of the elevator. He was especially careful not to get distracted and miss an item. Everything had its place on his list and in the storage warehouse. Over by the chain-link fences Cren stood watching, checking each activity around him as if he could somehow keep control through the intensity of his scrutiny. Troy worked with greater diligence, trying not to reveal that he knew he was being watched. Men in cargo hauler jumpsuits unloaded the sealed packages of replacement computerware: perfectly sandwiched circuits grown in orbit, sapphire films laid down in impedance paths on wafers, then sliced into specially patterned chips that followed old templates from Earth. The man in charge of the Platform, Kareem Sondheim, whose property and power rested in orbit, was called the “landholder without land.” The ancient man was said to be one of the original occupants of the first colony ship that had arrived 231 years earlier. Sondheim had never set foot on Atlas. He had remained alive by staying in zero gravity and indulging in sophisticated geriatric treatments that were not available on the surface. Sondheim kept control of the Platform’s genetic library of embryos and cloning sequences the colonists had brought from Earth; its vast array of species, a veritable Noah’s ark, would provide the foundation of an Earthlike ecosystem on a new world. Unfortunately, Atlas had proved more inhospitable than they had expected. The planet’s atmosphere and climate were tolerable, with the right temperature range and an amenable mix of component gases. But Atlas was just at the very cusp of bringing forth life of its own. Its fledgling ecosystem was shallow and undiversified, with only a few primitive species, most of them in the cradle of the sea. The soil was utterly barren, forcing the colonists to begin their work several steps farther down the chain than they had hoped. The native biochemistry was incompatible with human systems, but for a very few exceptions, such as the Veritas drug. The planetary ecology and the new Terran organic matrix were two independent and parallel paths. Unable to turn back to Earth across the gulf of a fifty-year voyage, the colonists had to start from scratch, and they had held on by their fingernails, gradually using up what supplies they had brought with them. Separated from assistance by half a century, they could not simply send home for a new batch of supplies. The colony’s technical resources had been only marginally replenished by the four other ships that had arrived in the intervening years. Landholders continued to claim swaths of land, bombarding them with fertilizers, fixing nitrogen, irrigating deserts, and plowing under grasses, mosses, algae they had planted to lay down a nutritive soil matrix. New life forms were introduced experimentally and with great caution once they were carefully selected from the genetic library on the Platform…. As the packages were unloaded from the elevator, Troy documented the computer chips, finding their notation on his manifests, then moved on to log a series of insulated fish tanks for Dokken Holding. The tanks were filled with thousands of trout and salmon fry that might find enough to eat among the strands of algae and the dragonfly larvae Franz Dokken had previously introduced into his warm artificial ponds. Toth Holding had ordered cages and cages of live chicks grown from embryos aboard the Platform, and the birds were now ready to be turned loose in the grain debris in the fields. Muttering to himself to verify his own markings, Troy moved about to inspect the cargo with loose manifest pages fluttering in his hand. He found a trio of cages holding three water buffalo calves, small and fragile and bleating. The beasts had knobby knees and large wet nostrils. Their dark eyes flicked around in confusion. According to the manifest, the water buffalo would be put to work in the rice fields in the river delta at Sardili Shores. When someone called for a new species—such as these water buffalo, or the chickens—biological technicians on the Platform took the stored embryos from their precious library, cloned them, and grew the new animals to their birth age. The offspring were then shipped down on the space elevator. The cargo haulers heaved the water buffalo cages out of the elevator car, bumping into each other and wrestling the beasts onto the concrete receiving area. Troy followed them briskly, needing to verify the serial numbers tattooed in the animals’ ears and scribbling on his manifest sheets. The calves shifted awkwardly in their cages, trying to maintain their footing. Suddenly, one of the handlers slipped and let loose his corner of the cage. It crashed to the ground with a loud noise that triggered a panicked reaction. The female handler shouted and scolded her partner. The water buffalo bleated a pitiful sound. On the pad the handlers roughly set down their wire mesh cages containing thousands of cheeping chicks, not noticing that one door had not been fastened properly. Suddenly the front of the cage sprang open, spilling a chaotic flock of fuzzy yellow chicks that scattered chirping across the landing area. Some ran toward the toroidal supports and padded bumpers around the anchor point where the elevator had come to rest. “Hey!” Cren shouted. The handlers dropped what they were doing and rushed to help. “Get those chicks! They’re all accountable.” Already unbalanced, the water buffalo cage tipped over as the calf tried to move. The metal crashing on the concrete sounded like thunder, which further startled the already-panicked chicks. The pathetic calf lowed as if bemoaning its fate, and the other two calves set up a similar racket. The two handlers yelled at each other, voices raised over the din. Troy had been shuffling through his manifest sheets, but now he stuffed the papers in his various pockets as he ran to help out. The burly handlers seemed to think the best way to catch chicks was to lunge after them, large hands outspread. But the fuzzy birds simmered across the area, rushing toward the chain-link fence. The four sol-pols leaped into action, pointing their weapons at the escaped birds, as if their threatening posture could help. Troy crept toward some of the chicks, whistling cheerily at them, extending his hands and trying to coax them nearer. He nabbed one, which squirmed and pecked at him, peeping comically, but Troy didn’t let go until he had stuffed it back in its cage. The people in the merchant district paused to observe the spectacle. Apparently, the frantic action of workers scrambling about was worth giving up a few minutes of business. Troy shook his head, muttering to himself that this was the most spectacular entertainment the citizens had seen since the grim judgment of Eli Strone several days earlier. He wondered what might come next—a comet striking the planet and obliterating all life? One of the handlers managed to find a shovel and used it unceremoniously to scoop up five chicks at a time, depositing them back in the wire cage. Downy feathers flew in the air like a seed storm in one of the kenaf fields. On the other side of the fence Cren used his palms to rattle the chain link, which frightened away the chicks that were trying to work their way through the openings in the wire. They ran around in circles, cheeping in terror. It took the better part of an hour to recapture the birds. But the victory was not without casualties. Three of the delicate chicks had been killed in the roundup, and another had a broken leg. Troy sighed, knowing he had done a good enough job, even as Cren used a low tone of voice to rail at the handlers for their stupidity and clumsiness. Cren checked out the water buffalo calves, then sent them to the big holding warehouse. The following morning they would be whisked off on the mag-lev to Sardili Shores. At the end of his shift, Troy handed in his crumpled manifest sheets listing his tally of the computer chips, pharmaceuticals, supplies of the Truthsayers’ precious Veritas drug, and live animal cargo. He shook his head, thinking again of the frantic escape attempt by the baby chickens, the mishandling of the water buffalo calves. This wasn’t exactly what he had expected when he left the Mining District to take a respectable job as a documentor for First Landing. Oh, well. All in a day’s work. iii As evening gathered around the city, and the glass-and-steel buildings lit up with hydroelectric power, Troy settled in to his small rooms. The new place in the multiple-dwelling complex was still unfamiliar to him, and he reveled in the delicious privacy. He could think and breathe and not bump into anybody else when he decided to daydream. It seemed like heaven. For too long Troy had been cramped in the same apartment with his mother and father and sisters, listening to loud arguments, tedious conversations about the day’s events (which always sounded the same to him, though his mother and father went through the same dialog every evening, as if it were a ritual). He smelled Rissbeth’s acrid homemade perfume, endured entire days without five minutes of privacy or quiet. For release, he dabbled with painting, strictly for his own enjoyment, though his mother resented the expenditure on useless items and his little sister criticized his work. Their quarters had become even more crowded when Leisa married and brought her husband to live with them; he had lost much of his older sister’s attention as well, one of the few tolerable aspects of his life there. No doubt Leisa and her husband would soon wish to start a family—a large one, as most colonists preferred—and that would take up even more space. But these new rooms were Troy’s own space, and he had already begun to think of it as his “home.” After preparing a meal of hydroponic vegetables and a few small morsels of cultured turkey and setting it to cook, he settled back to unwind and to begin painting. What a luxury to indulge himself with a hobby. He had been experimenting with new paints available from First Landing vendors, vibrant colors he had never before seen in the small merchant shops up in Koman Holding. Brilliant blues, reds, and yellows made from cobalt and cinnabar and uranium oxide. He dabbed designs with his paint. Some of his fresh work hung on the walls, like trophies. Nothing very good, he knew, but Troy enjoyed the soothing yet exhilarating act of painting. He’d experimented with different techniques, different styles. His abstract imitations were complete failures—but then, he wasn’t quite sure how to tell when an abstract painting “failed.” He preferred painting imaginary landscapes, looking out upon the vastness of Atlas with his mind’s eye. He had already drawn the low, rocky hills of Koman Holding, honeycombed with mine shafts. He swirled the colors, sketching out another barren landscape—but this time adding forests, swamps, beautiful birds spreading their wings to display remarkable plumage in the sunlight as they glided across the air … pure fantasy. Troy hummed to himself, scratching his curly, light brown hair. Muffled noises came through the thin walls, his neighbors arguing, the children crying. He had lived his life among the sounds of other people, so it didn’t bother him, but he would have preferred to overhear a happy family. He painted part of a granite outcropping, adding fanciful wind-bent cypress trees in the crannies of the rock … and then on impulse he sketched in some stylized mountain sheep. He recognized that he was mixing a great many ecosystems here—accuracy was not his goal at the moment. He looked at the mountain sheep and smiled. He went to change his clothes, pulling on a wool sweater Leisa had made for him (though her new husband grumbled that it was a waste of expensive Bondalar yarn). As he folded up his work pants, Troy heard a faint and unexpected crinkling sound. He reached into his back pocket to find one of the wayward manifest sheets. He must have thrust it there during the chaos of the escaping chicks. Then the implications struck him. He blinked rapidly, and his throat tightened like a piece of gnarled wood. He had recorded all of the deliveries from the elevator car, but without this last sheet he had missed several items. The logs wouldn’t match—and that meant big trouble. Troy sighed and sank into a seat beside the bed, wearing the pullover sweater but leaving his pants crumpled on the floor. He looked at the manifest sheet and groaned. Cren would have his hide for this—he just knew it! After his previous mistake of the transposed shipments, his boss would be utterly unforgiving. No more chances. After only three weeks, Cren would have an excuse to send him whipped back home, no doubt imagining a preposterous chain of disastrous effects. Red-faced, Cren would yell, “This error could set up echoes throughout the entire system, mistake upon mistake, leading to misdirected supplies, unreported shipments, and major upheavals in the economy of Atlas itself!” Troy sighed. “Or more likely Cren will be the only one to notice, and I’ll still be on the next mag-lev car back to Koman Holding.” He would spend the rest of his life down in the shafts, coming home to a crowded apartment no bigger than a cargo container, with his own family glaring at him because he failed them in their one opportunity to get a foothold in the city. He didn’t want to go back to the Mining District. Troy ran his fingers over the rough scrap of paper in his hands. He knew exactly how he could fix this mixup, if he could get back to the holding warehouse and the inventory terminals before anyone noticed. Troy knew the appropriate passwords to access the records computers—he had been so proud when Cren had grudgingly given him the access codes the week before. The idea caught hold, and he clutched it like a drowning man clutched a twig. If he could log in these receipts before the space elevator began its return journey up to the Platform, no one would be the wiser. Sondheim would get his expected shipment, and First Landing’s records would accurately reflect the supplies that had come down. Troy felt so stupid. Abruptly, the smell of his dinner overheating on the stove unit penetrated his melancholy, and he dashed into the kitchenette to remove his now soggy and overcooked vegetables. He would wait a few hours yet, go in much later that night and make a few quick adjustments on the computer. Simple enough. No one would ever know. His stomach was already tied into a knot of nervousness, but this would be the quickest and safest solution. Simple, he thought. Simple. CHAPTER (#ulink_d36bbea0-a745-543f-a1fa-8e6b892ac45d) 3 (#ulink_d36bbea0-a745-543f-a1fa-8e6b892ac45d) i The storm front finally rolled in just after dark, pelting down clean fresh rain that gave the air a metallic tang, slicking down the streets with muddy runoff that gurgled in the gutters. Breezes tore the clouds to shreds, and the tattered remnants scudded across the sky, clearing patches of night flecked with stars. The wet cobblestones of First Landing’s thoroughfares looked oily under the wavering aurora, and silted runoff curled through drainage channels. Because of the heavy weather, most streets were deserted. Only a few vendors of fried vegetables, sweet desserts, and warm beverages remained open to catch brave customers. The smell of hot oil, burned honey, and watery coffee mixed with the scent of rain. Four figures moved through the wet shadows, keeping to narrow alleys when possible. Two sol-pols took the point, wearing deep blue uniforms that turned them into silhouettes in the falling darkness. A tall bald man with a craggy face, his features seemingly carved out of stone with a blunt chisel, strode confidently behind the guards, taking long steps in his loose gray jalaba. The fourth man betrayed the greatest eagerness, but he hung back behind the bald man, glancing furtively about. “Maximillian—” The bald man cut him off with a quick gesture of his broad hand. “Don’t worry, Cialben. We have everything we need.” “But what if we’re stopped?” Cialben pressed. “We won’t be stopped. We’re obviously going about official business. We’re accompanied by two sol-pols.” “Sol-pols assigned to Dokken Holding, not First Landing—” “Who’s going to stop us?” Maximillian asked in a sharp tone. Cialben swallowed and looked ahead to the stadium-sized lit area where the space elevator car sat docked, ready for resupply in the morning. “I’ve just never picked up a shipment myself, that’s all. Is this the way it’s always done?” “It’s different every time,” Maximillian answered. “Dokken insisted you come along this time.” “He’s never done that before either, not in ten years of this kind of scut work. You don’t think that’s unusual?” “You must learn to trust people,” Maximillian said. “Dokken’s the one who taught me not to trust anybody,” Cialben said in exasperation. “Stop asking questions,” Maximillian said. Cialben muttered. The sol-pols said nothing—they rarely did. The guards led the way through the streets with no indication of uneasiness. Cialben and Maximillian had an excuse if they were stopped and questioned … but Dokken had made it clear that he preferred they not be questioned. The Veritas drug was rigidly controlled by the Truthsayers Guild, but Cialben managed to distribute a small fraction of it to the black market. He had never dared to ask what sort of arrangement the powerful landholder Franz Dokken had made with Kareem Sondheim up on the Platform, how he obtained capsules skimmed from the supplies allotted only to Truthsayers. By Atlas law—established by the Guild itself, of course—no one but a designated Truthsayer was allowed to use the mind-boosting drug. That didn’t mean there was no demand elsewhere, though. Cialben fed that demand. True, only Truthsayers could use the Veritas to maximum effect. Their bodies had built up a tolerance from a lifelong exposure to the drug. For them the psychic boost lasted hours or days, whereas in a regular human the Veritas rush was good for only a few seconds. But, oh, those seconds! Like having a dozen minds at once, lifetimes of memories, experiences right at his mental fingertips … though they faded as fast as the drug did in his nonacclimated system. Short-term memories, like vanishing dreams. Cialben had taken Veritas himself back in the early days, when Dokken had used him as a spy numerous times to get an edge in the constant power struggle for land. Cialben had performed admirably each time, though Dokken had been miserly with his rewards. But Dokken had flown into a rage when Cialben had once dared to carry Veritas in his presence, intending to use it later for enjoyment among the servants … possibly even dipping into the mind of Dokken’s beautiful lover Schandra. He hadn’t anticipated Dokken’s violent reaction. In a terrifying instant Maximillian, Dokken’s faithful and powerful manservant, had locked Cialben’s arms behind his back, driving him to his knees in the private drawing room of the villa. Franz Dokken had glared down at him, his teeth bared in anger that transformed him into a beast. “I do like secrets, Cialben,” Dokken had whispered, “especially when they belong to someone else.” His voice was low and cold. “But I want to keep my own secrets. You are never to use Veritas in my presence. Is that understood?” Cialben, his neck aching from staring up at the landholder, tried to nod. Maximillian’s powerful fist clutched Cialben’s short graying hair, yanking his head up so that he gazed directly into Dokken’s tanned face. “I understand,” Cialben said. “Really, I do.” “No one on Dokken Holding is to use this drug, but you’re free to sell it to all the other landholders. I know how destabilizing Veritas can be. Let my rivals tear themselves apart.” Since that time, they had indeed kept their understanding—but now, tonight, he and Maximillian had been sent all the way in to First Landing to obtain a large shipment of Veritas capsules, the largest delivery ever. If Guild Master Tharion found out about it, he would probably have a cerebral hemorrhage. The group of four splashed through the darkening streets. The air jealously held on to its damp coolness, and Cialben felt his hands growing numb. He stepped in a puddle, which made his ankle cold and wet. Cialben shook his foot. Maximillian gestured for him to hurry. Faint steam curled from his breath. The bright lights of the elevator anchor point stood in front of them. A squad of First Landing sol-pols stood around the chain-link fence, huddled together to keep warm. But Cialben knew the shipment wasn’t on the elevator. It remained in the inventory warehouse, where the computers and shipping manifests were kept, along with the supplies waiting to be distributed to the outer holdings. The inventory warehouse was a low, one-story building made of steel supports, darkened glass windows, and adobe bricks, only one building in a district of similar warehouses. The group approached from the rear. Maximillian showed not the slightest tension. While the regular night shift sol-pols had established a firm presence at the anchor point, the inventory warehouse had been locked and left alone. Their two sol-pols slipped toward the building. The shorter of them withdrew an access key card and slid it in to the sealed door. The door opened silently, letting Maximillian and Cialben enter. Lined with pale bricks, the entrance yawned like a cave. Faint lights burned inside, tiny illumination resisting complete darkness and leaving only murk. “How can you be sure the warehouse is empty?” Cialben said. Maximillian looked down at him with scorn, his craggy face creasing in distaste. “Look how dark it is.” They crouched inside, using their hand illuminators to send bright spears of light into the shadows. “Shouldn’t be hard to find,” Cialben whispered, moving forward, still reluctant to take the lead. One of the sol-pols remained stationed at the door while Cialben, Maximillian, and the second guard went past administrative cubicles equipped with old computer systems and paper files, to the chill warehouse section. “This way.” Maximillian’s pale gray outfit made him look like a ghost in the dimness. A clutter of canisters, supply crates, and cages waited in the rear. The boxes of computer chips and sterilized pharmaceuticals had been placed in neatly ordered bins along one wall. The cold concrete floor made flat echoes of their footsteps as they walked. Cialben flashed his light around. Segmented metal doors rolled up for loading heavy transports; beside them stood bins of metal sheeting, girders, and other supplies. Sweet, resinous lumber had been stacked in the middle of the concrete pad. Outside in separate storage barns were further shipments, bulky items brought in from one holding and marked for commercial distribution to the highest bidders. In the livestock section Cialben went to a wire cage filled with hopping, cheeping chicks. The stupid birds had spilled their water and dumped feed all over the bottom of their cages. They looked filthy. “Here,” Maximillian said, squatting by one of the large cages. “Shine the light over here.” Inside, the black water buffalo calf seemed eager for attention, lowing loudly. Its dark eyes were wet and glistening. It tilted its squarish nose upward as if seeking milk from a mother it had never had. The clone-grown calf knew nothing of its own existence. “Not this one,” Maximillian said, squinting at the tattoo in the calf’s ear. He moved to a second cage. The other calf let out a bellow, demanding yet shy. “Here.” He unfastened the catch on the wire cage and swung open the door. The calf backed away clumsily, uncertain but with nowhere to go. Maximillian banged the back of the cage with the flat of his hands rattling the wires. The startled animal stumbled out, lowing again. Cialben gently put an arm around the calf’s neck to keep it from running loose in the warehouse. Grateful, the animal nuzzled his hands with a wet nose. An overturned aluminum water dish sat dry at the bottom of the cage. “In a water buffalo?” Cialben said. “Is Sondheim running out of ideas? Or is this one of Dieter’s sick suggestions?” “No one asked me how to do it,” Maximillian said, then fixed a stony glare on Cialben. “And no one asked you either.” The water buffalo mooed again, and Cialben patted its neck to hush it. The calf nuzzled his hand, running a long, wet tongue along his palm. Maximillian slipped a long wide-bladed knife from a sheath at his hip, and in a single lightning movement drove the blade hard against the calf’s side. A quick thrust between the ribs, then a second full-muscled shove to drive the point all the way into the calf’s heart. The animal bleated in shock, but was dead before it could move. Its eyes rolled up, glassy. Its body shuddered and spilled blood all over the concrete floor as it fell. Cialben stepped back to keep from being sprayed. With the carcass still twitching, Maximillian knelt and, tugging on a pair of rubber gloves, withdrew the knife and gutted the calf. He worked without speaking, breathing hard from the strenuous activity. Cialben watched the slaughter with eager horror, his throat dry, his lips peeled back in a combined grin and wince. Maximillian’s arms were slick with red up to his elbows, far higher than the gloves reached. Using both arms Maximillian heaved out the calf’s entrails, then sliced open the largest stomach to pull out a plastic-wrapped package. Dokken’s manservant held the bloody packet in his gloved hands and gestured for the sol-pols. The second guard rushed forward from his post at the door. The first man bent over the carcass, choosing the best handhold. The two strong men lifted up the dead water buffalo, and together they lugged it, still dripping blood, out of the warehouse. They disappeared into the night. The fresh veal—a delicacy read about in the archives but never tasted by any living person on the planet—would bring a high price indeed. Maximillian used his slippery fingers to unwrap the folded plastic of the hidden package. He unrolled the outer wrapping and exposed a treasure. Cialben gasped. He had never before seen so much in a single shipment. Hundreds and hundreds of sky-blue capsules of the Veritas drug. More truth than all of Atlas could comprehend. ii With a stretching sound and then a snap, Maximillian removed the rubber glove from his left hand, carefully tucking it into the pocket of his gray cotton jalaba, where it left a bloody smear. Cialben kept his eyes fixed hungrily on the hoard of Veritas, dreaming of the huge number of credits it would bring and also eager to experience the psychic rush again. Because of Dokken’s adamant refusal to allow any use of Veritas by his own workers, Cialben had restrained himself, his fear of Dokken’s wrath greater than his desire for fleeting entertainment. With a clean hand Maximillian delicately, reverently, picked up one of the sky-blue capsules with his thick fingers. He held it in the palm of his hand, rolling it around in the creases of his skin, studying it under the uncertain light. Cialben’s eyes followed it. “Do you deserve this?” Maximillian said, surprising Cialben. “Come on—after all I’ve done for Dokken?” he answered. “What does he think?” Maximillian held Cialben’s gaze for a long moment. Around them the stillness and darkness of the warehouse seemed to smother all sound. The remaining two water buffalo snorted in their cages, smelling the blood. The manservant flicked his wrist, tossing the sky-blue capsule toward Cialben. Grinning, he reached out to snatch it from the air. Maximillian continued in a voice free of emotion. “One and one only,” he said. “And you have to do it here.” Cialben held the capsule like a gem, slightly soft and filled with secrets. He looked around him in the empty warehouse. “Here?” “And now. You know Dokken won’t allow it on his own landholding.” Cialben didn’t know what the psychic rush would do for him in such an empty scenario. But the sleeping city lay out there, the identical dwellings, the brick homes, the steel apartment buildings. He considered the thousands of thoughts, the personal mysteries, the muddled dreams the colonists would be broadcasting into the air. The telepathic boost would last only a few seconds, but it would burn very brightly indeed, at peace, surrounded by the city. And there was Maximillian. Did he really want to read the manservant’s thoughts? Yes, he realized, he did. He was astonished that Dokken would allow such a thing, because Maximillian had been the landholder’s right-hand man for decades. Cialben popped the capsule into his mouth, bit down with his back teeth, felt the acrid gush down his throat. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, then a second. His scalp began to tingle in anticipation. He opened his eyes, and opened his mind, and everything came flooding in. He looked with anticipation at Maximillian. And froze. At the front of the manservant’s mind Cialben read Franz Dokken’s final instructions like a sharp-bladed ax coming down. Maximillian must have been thinking the conversation over and over again, keeping his memory fresh, so that the thoughts remained clear in his mind. He watched as Cialben read them. “Let him take one capsule and wait until he reads your mind. I want him to know your orders. I want him to know his fate—then kill him.” Cialben caught the rest of the entire appalling setup, the details of what Maximillian would do to his body—planting evidence, distorting clues. He was already backing away in horror, windmilling his arms. He slipped in the wet blood on the concrete floor from the slain water buffalo. Maximillian reached out with a fist that moved like a cobra, grabbing Cialben’s collar, holding him upright. Cialben regained his balance and began to struggle. Maximillian drove the long blade hard against his side. A quick thrust between the ribs, then a second full-muscled shove to drive the point all the way into Cialben’s heart. He twisted the blade. Cialben fell, his body losing control, the nerve signals melting into black static. He slumped into darkness, his last thoughts cursing Franz Dokken. CHAPTER (#ulink_c79a9060-b67f-5c00-a401-fa78e37ea2a5) 4 (#ulink_c79a9060-b67f-5c00-a401-fa78e37ea2a5) i That evening in the damp darkness of Dokken Holding, Guild Master Tharion sat uneasily on a placid gray mare, dutifully following Franz Dokken’s chestnut stallion. The ageless landholder rode intently, his body barely visible in dark leather breeches and tunic. His wild blond hair flowed behind him like a comet’s tail. “Thank you for coming with me,” Dokken said in his rich, cultivated voice. “This won t take long, but it’s important for you to be there. For moral support, you know.” Gusting breezes picked their way around the bluffs like probing fingers. A wide gravel trail wound from the stables down to the foot of the bluffs, and both horses knew their way. Fields of cotton covered the flatlands surrounding the village, extending south to the rolling hills, a mixture of dark and light that gave the landscape a knobbly texture. Franz Dokken urged his impatient stallion into a trot. Tharion gripped the reins between his fingers, but still felt completely out of control. “Slow down, Franz—please,” Tharion said. He would have preferred to take a methane car, but Dokken loved any chance to show off his horses. Luckily, the gray mare maintained a gentle, slow pace—it kept him from looking like a fool in front of the public. Dokken laughed. “That mare’s foal is due in a few weeks—she couldn’t manage more than a trot if she tried. Just sit still, pretend you know what you’re doing. She’ll be careful, for her own sake if not for yours.” Tharion held the reins doubtfully. “If you say so…” Dokken shook his head and flashed a thin smile. “I value your friendship even more than increasing the size of my herd. I’d hate to think of reporting to yet another Guild Master just because you fell off and broke your neck. Two in two years’ time is enough.” Tharion responded with an uneasy smile. Franz Dokken had worked miracles for Tharion’s career, a subtle guardian angel throughout his life at the Truthsayers Guild, a friend as well as one of the most powerful landholders on Atlas. Dokken’s outspoken support at the Landholders Council had been one of the reasons Tharion had been chosen for his post. Two years earlier, the aged previous Guild Master had died in his sleep, leaving Tharion one of the most qualified candidates, but the final vote had favored another Truthsayer, Klaryus. But after a month in his duties, the new Guild Master Klaryus had taken his weekly booster dose of Veritas—only to fall dead from the terrible Mindfire toxin produced by a virulent mutation of the Veritas bacterium. Somehow, his capsule had become contaminated in its processing up on the isolated orbital lab … and so Tharion had found himself wearing the royal blue sash of the Guild Master. The deadly contamination had raised a great many questions, and Tharion himself had submitted to a truthsaying to prove that he had nothing to do with the death of his predecessor. Ultimately, everyone agreed that Klaryus had suffered from a bizarre accident. Since the elite guard Eli Strone had vanished from the Guild shortly thereafter, Tharion had wondered if Strone might have had something to do with Klaryus’s death—but now, after Strone had brutally slaughtered twenty-three people, Tharion knew that subtle poison just wasn’t Strone’s style. While many of the other landholders had flocked to assure Tharion of their loyalty, Franz Dokken had been there all along, giving him insightful advice on the new burdens he would have to bear. So, when Dokken asked him to come out to his holding as a special favor on this damp, cool evening, Tharion could not refuse. At the outskirts of the village the sol-pol sentries stepped forward to verify the identity of the riders. Tharion shook his head in disbelief. Who else on the entire planet might be riding up on a horse? The guards pivoted to accompany their landholder to the center of the village. Incandescent streetlights on wrought-iron poles bathed the town with a harsh glare, burning electricity from Dokken’s hydroelectric plant at Trident Falls. Adobe dwellings clustered around the square, where a fountain chuckled over polished stones, misting a flower bed of marigolds. In the center of the square Franz Dokken pulled his stallion to a halt; the horse snorted, shifting from side to side. The restless animal made Tharion nervous, but the landholder seemed to enjoy the challenge, patting the horse’s broad neck. Dokken sat upright, looking around. “Captain Vanicus, would you ring the bell, please?” he said to one of the sol-pols. “Let’s get ourselves an audience, so we can make an effective demonstration.” The stallion snorted again, and Dokken patted its muscular neck. The guard jogged over to a tower made of metal crossbars. “Franz…” Tharion said. “Trust me,” Dokken answered. “This benefits you as much as it does me.” As always, Tharion gave him the benefit of the doubt. He could smell the smoke from squat, beehive-shaped kilns, communal electric furnaces used round the clock. Prized terra-cotta pottery from Dokken Holding went for a high price in First Landing. As the bronze bell rang in clear, high tones, people bustled out to see the excitement. Captain Vanicus tolled ten times before returning to Dokken’s side, and another contingent of sol-pols emerged from the garrison in the town square. The second group of guards folded around five prisoners held within the garrison—a middle-aged, flinty-eyed man, a moonfaced woman whose red eyes were smudged with dirt and puffy from weeping, a young couple who clung to each other despite their bindings, and a sour-faced, matronly woman. Tharion suddenly paid sharper attention. Did Dokken want him to do a truthsaying? A flicker of annoyance passed through him, though he kept it well hidden. Dokken should have warned him, so he could have at least taken a Veritas boost. Tharion didn’t know if his abilities were currently sharp enough to do a thorough mind-reading. As Guild Master, he had done mercifully few truthsayings in the past two years, spending more time with the Landholders Council, advising the telepathic Mediators, and overseeing the crimes and punishments determined by his Truthsayers. He didn’t miss the onerous task of rooting out sins and guilt, though his recent task of sentencing Eli Strone up to OrbLab 2 had not been a pleasant task. Dokken nudged his stallion closer to the village prisoners. The horse gave a token resistance to the commands, then acquiesced. The five captives looked up at the landholder on his tall mount; they looked at each other; some lowered their eyes to the packed dirt in the square. Tharion could sense the puzzlement and uneasiness in the crowd—these captives were people they recognized, friends or neighbors. Tharion wondered what crimes they were accused of. “I make no secret of the things I will not tolerate in my holding,” Dokken said without further preamble. He didn’t raise his cultured voice, but his words carried across the crowd. “My rules are few, but they are firm.” He paused just long enough to let them think. “Paramount on my list of crimes is illicit use of Veritas, the Truthsayers’ drug. Atlas law forbids anyone but a chosen Guild member to use this substance. Other landholders may be lax in this regard—but there will be no such abuse in Dokken Holding.” He took a deep breath, then let out a long, sad sigh that made him seem intensely paternal. “It seems that not everyone has understood this.” Tharion narrowed his eyes, sitting stock-still on the mare’s back. Five users caught in a small village with only a few thousand inhabitants? His stomach knotted with anger and revulsion. His entire life in the Truthsayers Guild had been guided by unforgiving ethical training, knowing what was right and wrong—and this was so wrong. Only Truthsayers were supposed to have access to Veritas. Where had these prisoners gotten it? What trivial and mundane thrills did they use it for? “You!” Dokken said to the moon-faced woman, who cringed and began to sob again. “So desperate to learn whether your husband was cheating on you, you stooped even to this—and for what? Was he guilty, or did your own groundless suspicions damn you?” Her wail was all the answer Tharion needed to hear. “And what will your family do, your children, your husband, now that you have breached their trust?” Dokken turned to the flinty-eyed man, who flinched and looked away. “You—a craftsman trying to dredge up hidden knowledge about a competitor, stealing trade secrets rather than developing your own skill.” Then the young couple. Dokken’s lips flattened into a thin line, and he seemed to be stifling a bemused smile. “And two lovers who wanted to flash into each other’s minds during sex, as if Veritas were a toy!” He shook his head. “You thought working in the cotton fields was difficult? Hear me, because now I’m acting as Magistrate for my Holding. For the next three months, you are all assigned to hard labor at the dry lakebeds, strip-mining salt and processing nitrates. I doubt you’ll ever wash the chemical stink out of your skin and hair.” The villagers gasped, but Tharion nodded. Such labor was usually reserved for the worst criminals, and he agreed with the sentence in this case—but sentencing was supposed to be done by a Truthsayer, not at the whim of a landholder. “These can be punished,” Dokken said, then turned to the last prisoner, the matronly woman, whose sour expression intensified. She turned dull eyes up at Dokken, but said nothing. “But the person who sells the illegal Veritas cannot be tolerated.” He spun his stallion around, turning his back to the drug pusher. “She will be taken a thousand kilometers out into the unreclaimed lands and turned loose. Atlas can do with her what it wishes.” The villagers moaned at the certain death sentence, but Dokken nodded to the sol-pols, directing them to follow his orders. Tharion sat in shock and anger on the gray mare. He could not grant a simple landholder the right to mete out executions; not even Eli Strone had been sentenced to death. “Franz!” Tharion whispered harshly. “Only the Guild—” With a decisive sweep of his hand, Dokken shushed him. “Wait until we’re out of the range of lamplight,” he said under his breath. “I know what you’re going to say. But there’s time. Plenty of time.” One man, muscular and dark-bearded, stepped forward from the crowd, apparently some sort of village leader. “Master Dokken,” he said, averting his eyes in respect, “a village representative should be given the opportunity—” “Not in the internal affairs of my holding!” Dokken said vehemently. “Guild Master Tharion sits here beside me. I need no other authority.” He turned his stallion to leave. “Just see to it that I don’t need to crack down like this again!” Tharion’s mare trotted beside Dokken as they hurried out of the village. He twisted the reins in his hands, annoyed at himself for being so easily manipulated. As always. His nostrils flared, and the night air was cold. As they ascended the path into the bluffs, riding together under the stars and the whistling wind, Tharion finally reprimanded his mentor. “Franz, by dispensing justice yourself, you blatantly damaged my power. The Guild can’t let this go unchallenged!” Dokken turned to him, his sea-green eyes shadowed but glittering. He smiled, kept his voice low and gentle. “Ah, but if we say you instructed me to do this, Tharion, then nobody is weakened. You were there. Everybody thinks you sanctioned it, probably even ordered me to do the sentencing. You know those people deserved it. Every one of them.” Tharion was unconvinced. “I’d prefer to make up my own mind.” Dokken scolded him now. “Tharion, think! I’ve been helping you to see the greater consequences, the second and third levels of power and control, not just the obvious cause and effect. These people could have been brought into First Landing, put to a Truthsayer in the middle of the great plaza—but I wanted it done here. In my holding, where it counts most. I want it known that I, Franz Dokken, will not tolerate black market Veritas.” “You brought me here so I could pat you on the back, commend your efforts?” Tharion said, his throat tight with frustration. “No, I wanted you here so we could discuss some new information I have uncovered. It has consequences for your entire Guild as well as my landholding. I’ve already taken care of it, and you will thank me for it.” “Oh?” “Let me explain it over dinner,” Dokken said, tapping the stallion’s sides with his heels. The horse moved at a faster pace. “Come to my villa. Garien is preparing fish tonight.” Unable to think of anything else to say, Tharion rode his mare up the steep hill path to Dokken’s home in the cliffs. ii Garien, the chef, served a wonderful broiled trout from Dokken’s fish farms, seasoning it with herbs from the kitchen garden, served with a saut?ed medley of tomatoes, onions, and unfamiliar green pods. Dokken fell to his meal with gusto; after every three bites he methodically dabbed his mouth with a dyed linen napkin. His eyes were half-lidded as he savored the fish, peeling away crisped skin and flaking the delicate white meat. Tharion sat at the polished rose-granite table, resting his elbows on the cool, slick surface. He tasted one of the sliced green pods, not a familiar vegetable raised in the greenhouse levels of Guild Headquarters. He found it tasty, but with an odd texture. “What is this? A new vegetable from the Platform gene library?” Dokken speared a pod with his fork and held it up from his glazed terra cotta plate. “Okra. It’s a relative of cotton, and the kenaf we plant for paper fiber. I decided that since my kenaf was thriving so well, I would try the okra. You should taste Garien’s gumbo sometime.” He popped the vegetable into his mouth. “It amazes me what still remains untapped up in the Platform’s genetic bank.” They finished their dinner with small talk about the season’s newly recovered lands, novel crafts and products emerging from the villages, and the annoying activities of the other landholders. Tharion maintained an impassive expression, since landholders always complained about their rivals. One of the servants came in to clear away the dishes and to refill their wineglasses. Dokken swirled the dark red liquid in his clear glass, then sipped. Tharion drank the sour wine out of politeness, but he didn’t like the taste. Dokken seemed torn between criticism and enjoyment of the vintage. “This is a Chianti,” he said, “a dark wine that’s traditionally Italian. The bottles are supposed to be wrapped in wicker, but nobody has cultivated the right kind of reeds for old-fashioned basketry. Maybe Sardili will try it down at the delta.” Dokken took another sip of the wine. “Let’s go sit by the fire.” The landholder’s leather clothes creaked as he rose. To Tharion, in his loose white cotton garments and overrobe, Dokken’s breeches and tunic looked heavy and uncomfortable. Tharion followed Dokken across the tiled floor to the sitting room. He took one of the chairs next to a snapping fire that did more to drive off the night’s chill than any of the villa’s corner thermal units. “Where’s Maximillian?” “Away.” Dokken pushed his boots close to the fire and stared at the glowing embers. “I also just returned from another sojourn a few days ago. He’ll be back soon.” By now, Tharion had learned not to be bothered by Dokken’s evasiveness. He relaxed in a comfortable chair, staring into the flickering flames, uneasy to see such an outrageous waste of wood, which had to be cut and shipped in from the pine forests in Toth Holding. He sipped his bitter wine again. Dokken began one of his tangential lectures. “Trust me, this isn’t how Chianti is supposed to taste. The ground and climate here is dry and rocky, like parts of old Italy, and it should be perfect for growing grapes and olives. But the fruit tastes awful, even after decades of conditioning the soil. I’m still working on it, though. Either I’m improving, or my sense of taste is irreparably damaged. Maybe I’ll try coffee next, I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve had a good, rich cup of real coffee.” Tharion made a noncommittal sound, though he couldn’t imagine where Dokken had ever tasted “real” coffee. He didn’t interrupt, though, but tried instead to relax and enjoy the fire. All through dinner, Dokken had not broached the subject of the allegedly important new information he had learned. He knew better than to push his mentor; Franz Dokken was a master at playing his hints in the right order, drawing inevitable conclusions, manipulating results by virtue of his wise perspective and generous patience. They sat in silence by the fire, sipping wine. Waiting. Finally, Dokken raised himself out of his chair and refilled their glasses with the bad wine. “All right, my friend, I know you’re getting anxious,” he said. “Let’s go out onto the balcony.” iii Dokken set his wineglass on the polished ledge and placed both hands on the stone rail, looking down at the courtyard below. Clay pots filled with explosively colorful geraniums sat in the corners of the balcony. The main towers of the villa rose up above them, walls of creamy stucco, roof overhangs of red tile, and a satellite dish antenna on the tallest tower, pointed out toward the stars. Below, mulberry bushes adorned the grounds, carefully watered and fertilized. Dokken turned to his guest. “In civilized Earth society, I would be offering you a fine cigar.” “A cigar?” Tharion asked. He’d never heard of the thing. “What is that?” Dokken looked up at the veiled stars, as if trying to find the Earth system out in the galactic forest of lights. “Carefully selected tobacco leaves dried and rolled into a cylinder. You light the end, then inhale the smoke. It contained a mild narcotic, which was also a carcinogen. Rather pointless, I suppose, but there was a time when cigars allowed for wonderful social affectations. I hear Hektor Carsus is contemplating cultivating tobacco at his holding, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” “One too many vices from Earth?” Tharion asked, wondering if Dokken would ever get around to the point. The landholder waved away the thought. “No, the soil and the climate are lousy for tobacco. Not rich enough yet. I looked into it. Give us another few centuries of working the land.” Tharion finished his Chianti and found that he didn’t want any more. Dokken would toy with him all night long, avoiding the question unless Tharion pushed. “Franz, about this important information you were going to tell me—” Dokken smiled, as if he had been wondering how long his prot?g? would wait—but an interruption from the firelit sitting room disturbed them. Garien was setting out two small glazed saucers of honeyed strawberries, but a dark, slim woman pushed past him. “No, I don’t want a third place setting, thank you,” she told the chef with weary patience, heading straight for the balcony. Dokken frowned, then sighed. “Schandra, could you please excuse us while we finish our conversation?” The woman, Dokken’s longtime lover, placed her hands on her slender hips and widened her coal-black eyes. Her hair was long and silky, like spun obsidian, and her features had a smooth exotic cast that spoke of an African/Asian genetic mixture. She wore a scarlet blouse and a swirling black skirt, both made of the luxurious silk that had made his holding famous. “No, Franz, I won’t just excuse you. I’ve been polite over and over again, and you always forget to make time to talk to me. A few days ago you got back from being gone for two weeks, out of touch with everyone, riding around your holding like some sort of scout, and we still haven’t talked. Maximillian won’t say a word to me—and I need to discuss our family.” Dokken raised his eyebrows with a long-suffering expression and turned from Tharion as if begging his indulgence. “What family, Schandra? We don’t have a family.” “Ah, now you’re getting the point, Franz. Everyone else on this planet has children, and we don’t. Is it so wrong for me to have a couple of dreams, too?” Obviously, Tharion thought, Schandra had been rehearsing the discussion with her mirror while waiting for Dokken to return from his sojourn in the outer lands. Tharion thought about Dokken’s legendary lack of heirs, the rumors of his sterility. A great landholder such as Franz Dokken should have long ago assured his inheritance, rather than risk losing all the lands he had claimed. Tharion sympathized with Schandra, though: he, like all Truthsayers, had been rendered sterile by constant use of the Veritas drug. “Schandra, I don’t wish to discuss this now,” Dokken said calmly. “When?” “Later. Now, if you’d please leave us alone—” “When? Can I make an appointment? You put me off every time I want to talk to you.” “Schandra, this may come as a shock, but I don’t keep you around for your conversation skills.” Dokken’s eyes narrowed, and his voice, though soft, held an unmistakable harshness. “I did not take you under my wing and spoil you with everything a woman could want just so I would have someone to chat with.” He glared at her with a fury he rarely showed to anyone. “Now, if you don’t leave immediately, I will throw you headfirst off of this balcony. Perhaps you’ll break your neck in one of the mulberry bushes. Then who will feed your precious silkworms?” From the landholder’s expression, Tharion didn’t think Dokken was joking. After a frozen moment, she forced a laugh. “All right, later then. Let’s do lunch sometime.” Schandra departed, taking one of the dessert plates with her, as if as an afterthought. “I apologize for that,” Dokken said. “Women become so incensed about little things they have no control over, yet all the while they remain blind to the Big Picture. I never promised her children, yet now she thinks she has a right to demand them.” Tharion toyed with his empty wineglass, set it on the balcony rail, then bent to sniff one of the geraniums. “It’s none of my concern, Franz,” he said. “My wife Qrista gets incomprehensible sometimes, though with the Veritas we can’t keep any secrets from each other.” “A frightening thought,” Dokken said. “Sometimes it is,” Tharion admitted. “Now, about this news?” Dokken smiled, and in that unmasked glance he seemed immeasurably ancient. “I think I might have found some way to stop the black market smuggling of Veritas. You see, by interrogating the woman you saw in the square tonight, the one who was selling the stolen drugs … I discovered her source!” He fixed Tharion with his gaze, as if daring the Truthsayer to read his mind. “I know how Veritas is being taken from First Landing and distributed among the other holdings.” Tharion perked up. “How?” Dokken shook his head sadly. “I regret to say the culprit was one of my own men. Cialben, my associate for twelve years. You’ve met him. He was behind it all, and I was blinded by my own trust.” Tharion blinked. “Yes, I remember him. How did he—?” “Don’t worry. I’ve taken care of it. After tonight, much of the black market trafficking will stop. You can rest easy.” Tharion stiffened. “What do you mean you’ve taken care of it? Did you take matters into your own hands again? I can’t allow you to keep—” “Oh, be quiet, Tharion!” Dokken said curtly. “You’re not thinking again. Because this smuggling is chipping away at your Guild’s power, the last thing you want is to make a public spectacle of how thoroughly you’ve failed. Who would believe in a Truthsayer’s impartiality when he’s digging for knowledge that affects the Guild’s own monopoly on Veritas? It is against the law for any person other than a legitimate Guild Truthsayer or Mediator to use the drug. No deliberation is required. “I have taken care of Cialben, quietly and permanently. It will be an unsolved crime, but the black market smuggling will stop, at least on this end. That’s all you need concern yourself with.” Tharion cinched his blue sash tight against the night chill that had suddenly begun to sink into his bones. He pressed his lips together, bristling at how Dokken treated him—like a child. “Where is he? A Truthsayer should interrogate him! We could get a lot more information.” Dokken’s cool expression told him that there would be no interrogation. None at all. Tharion shook his head angrily. “When will you ever consult me before you do something like this, Franz? I deserve to be part of the decision.” Dokken snorted with impatience and downed the rest of his wine, turning to go back to the fire and his dessert. “I have my own problems, Tharion. Some of the landholders are allying themselves against me. I can feel it, though they’re keeping it quiet. We could even have a bloodbath like the civil war sparked by Hong and Ramirez almost a century ago. That’s my main concern right now. “For now, I’ve stopped the smuggling, Tharion—what more could you have accomplished by involving yourself? Get on with your work, and I’ll get on with mine. I need you to be strong for my coming battles.” Then Dokken shouted for the chef to bring another plate of strawberries to replace the one Schandra had taken. CHAPTER (#ulink_4df074de-779a-50f8-9572-34cd1c00a09e) 5 (#ulink_4df074de-779a-50f8-9572-34cd1c00a09e) i Dreaded anticipation made the evening pass with all the speed of a rock eroding. Troy whiled away the hours trying to concentrate on a new painting, his second of the evening. He would have to wait until it was late enough to slip into the slumber-quieted city and fix the stupid mistake he had made. Before this mess, he had eagerly anticipated a relaxing few hours of experimenting with his new paints—carmine and burnt sienna—but now the thrill was soured. He managed to paint a coppery crimson sunset with a storm rolling in; the orange-gold rays streamed across a lush imaginary landscape sometime centuries in the future, when tall cities spread like monuments across the face of Atlas, where forests grew wild rather than trapped in rigid rectangles of conditioned soil. But Troy felt distanced from his art, preoccupied with thoughts of dire consequences for his clumsy and unforgivable clerical mistake. He got the perspectives all wrong so that the cities were foreshortened, and the people were far too tall. The rays from the painted sunset streaked out at an astronomically impossible angle. Terror gnawed at him. What if he got caught keying in the revised manifest schedule when he went back to the warehouse? The sol-pols would haul him off to the brig in Guild Headquarters, and he’d probably be exiled back to the Mining District. Cren would undoubtedly fire him if Troy simply apologized and tried to rectify the glitch in the light of day—though this one was far more easily fixed than his previous mistake of swapping shipments. Cren would also fire him if Troy said nothing and the manifest error wasn’t fixed. His choices seemed to funnel to this single option. On the other hand, it was only marginally likely that someone would discover him out on the streets at this late hour. Logic continued to hammer at his brain, though his emotions were not entirely convinced. Troy shivered. The viewplate in his living room buzzed with an incoming call. Troy jumped, leaving a trail of reddish ochre across his fresh painting. With a rueful smile he realized he might have to paint that into a meteor flashing down. Another wash of panic brought pinpricks of cold sweat showering out of his skin as the viewplate buzzed again. Who could be calling him at this hour? Had Cren discovered Troy’s error after all, working late? Were the sol-pols giving him sufficient fair warning to pack a few belongings before they marched him off to prison? Was an arrest done that way? Troy didn’t know. He had never needed to worry about the sol-pols before. Pale and frightened, he tapped the Receive button on the viewplate—and was astonished to see the image of his family sitting in the common room in their small communal dwelling. He laughed with relief as he realized this was the day of their weekly communication. “Look, Rambra,” Troy’s mother said, “he’s actually glad to see us. That’s a pleasant change.” “Must be up to something,” his father said gruffly in an attempt at humor. Behind his parents he saw his little sister Rissbeth flaunting a new dress. Rissbeth had devoted her life to demonstrating that Troy was her natural enemy, and had done everything in her power to be his complete opposite. His older sister, Leisa, looked at him fondly. He missed her very much. “Are you surviving in the big city?” his mother Dama asked. “How is your job? Do you have new friends yet?” “I’m doing my best, Mother,” he answered. Always the same questions. He knew what was next. “Have you signed up for one of the matching services? You need to be married. You are old enough. Leisa is pregnant. Did we tell you that last week?” “Yes, you told me that last week, Mother. I’m very proud of her.” Rambra said, “I hope that’s not the only set of grandchildren we’re going to get.” Out of view behind her parents, little Rissbeth tossed her head in challenge, as if to show Troy that she was willing to do her duty to have children. “I haven’t signed up for the matching services yet. I haven’t had time.” “Time?” his mother said. “What could be more important? People will think there’s something wrong with you. Isn’t there a stigma attached to single people, those who don’t have large families?” “I’ll survive,” Troy said. “I just moved here. Starting a family isn’t my highest priority. It’s only been three weeks.” “You need your own children,” Dama insisted. “You simply can’t understand until you have your own.” Troy sighed. “Yes, and if I don’t have children, the gene pool will immediately begin to deterioriate, thereby leading to the ultimate extinction of the human race.” “Oh, Troy, you’re being such a fatalist!” Dama said in alarm. “If I’m going to be a fatalist, I may as well do it right.” Behind his mother, he could hear Leisa laughing. His mother huffed. “See the way he treats us?” she said. “We’ve placed our hopes in you, Troy. Your father worked very hard to get you this opportunity. We have faith that you’ll pay us back, find a place for us in First Landing. Keep us in your thoughts.” “I will. Thank you for calling, Mother, but it’s very late here. We’re in a different time zone, and I have lots of work yet to do.” “Oh! We forgot about the time change again,” she said. “We should write ourselves a note on the calendar.” “Keep working hard,” his father said. “Let us know when you get a promotion—and if there’s room for us to move there.” Rambra chuckled, but Troy knew that he wasn’t entirely joking. “We’re counting on you!” Troy signed off, and the viewplate filled with static, then turned a dull, cooling gray. His heart sank. Still a few more hours until it was time for him to go. ii When Troy peeked out the window in his apartment, he saw rain still sprinkling down, so he chose a dark slicker from the closet. The fabric was too thin to keep him warm, but it had been lacquered with waterproofing resin. His mother had made it for him before he moved to the city. Troy wrapped it around himself, took two deep breaths to buck up his courage, then slipped out into the quiet, lonely night. He tried to appear casual, not nervous or impatient as he hurried down the puddle-strewn streets. He stopped at a stand, where he purchased a cup of a watery brown liquid the vendor called coffee. The cup steamed in the cool night, and Troy slurped it as he walked in a haphazard path, trying not to look as if he was heading toward the holding warehouse. Just going out for a walk; Troy thought, imagining a confrontation with a night shift sol-pol. Couldn’t sleep. Needed to stretch my legs. Oh, I’m not supposed to be outside this late? Sorry, I’m new here in the city. From the Mining Districts. Ever been there? He muttered the excuses over and over to himself, but First Landing seemed to be sleeping comfortably. He wasn’t sure if he had ever been awake so late, but dozing was the last thing on his mind. Even the sol-pols must be huddled under awnings or in shelters from the drizzle. His nose was cold and numb. By the time he finally reached the low warehouse, he was sniffling repeatedly. The building was dark except for a few small lights left burning to comfort the animals. With a gulp to squelch second thoughts, Troy slid his access card through the reader. The door popped open to admit him. When Cren had given him his own access card, the responsibility made Troy feel tall and important. He had actually called his family to brag about it—and now just days later, he was abusing the privilege, sneaking in to alter records. Once again, it didn’t seem like a good idea—but he convinced himself otherwise, wringing his hands as if he could squeeze out more courage. He had to do this to keep his job, to keep his family’s hopes alive, to deny Cren an excuse to fire him (this week at least). It would all be over in a few minutes, just a series of quick keystrokes. The warehouse was dim, but he picked his way over to his own cubicle, needing nothing more than the peripheral glows from the emergency lights. He flicked on his computer terminal, and the screen’s glow helped him see. One of the water buffalo calves began a repetitive lowing as if it were a machine that needed repairs. The pitiable noise made Troy lose his concentration several times, until he finally succeeded in calling up the receipt file for the day’s shipment from the Platform. Troy withdrew the crumpled piece of paper, the last sheet of the manifest he had found in his pocket. He scanned the erroneous file and erased it completely, then re-input all the items from the manifest so that every entry showed the same clock record. It didn’t take long. Troy felt pleased that he was able to eliminate the error; no one would know the difference. The Platform would get the appropriate amount of supplies, and old Sondheim wouldn’t complain about being shortchanged. Missing supplies received from the previous day’s shipment would not go astray, as had happened before, and Troy would not be reprimanded. He had saved his job. He keyed in the last entries and sighed. The water buffalo bellowed again, louder this time, startling him. He sat up and sniffed the air, smelling something odd: wetness, a metallic scent … like hot copper. The calf lowed another time, as if confused as to why Troy didn’t rush over and investigate. He wanted to run back home—but something wasn’t right here. The back of his neck prickled. Reluctantly, he flicked on one of the floor level lights, hoping not to attract attention from any patrolling street guards. He shuffled around the cubicles and headed toward the back of the warehouse where the animals were kept. One of the water buffalo cages was empty. Had he lost a calf, too? He wondered how he would explain that. It was the first, most ridiculous thought to enter his mind. Then he saw the dead man lying on the concrete floor, sprawled in an ocean of blood. It reminded him of the crimson sunset he had painted just that evening using his new pigments. Troy stumbled forward. His legs felt like bars of iron as he plodded forward, gawking down in the low slanted light. He fixated on the blood. He couldn’t believe there was so much blood. A bloody plastic wrapper lay across the dead man’s chest along with two sky-blue capsules. Veritas. Troy had seen that substance only a few times in his weeks here. But no shipments of Veritas had come down from the Platform that afternoon. And every capsule of the Truthsayers’ drug was supposed to be kept under tight control, heavily guarded until its delivery to Guild Headquarters. Troy stared down, his eyes wide and dry, but he did not recognize the victim. The man’s eyes were glassy, his short hair dark and streaked with gray. The thick blood still oozed, pulled by gravity into a spreading pool around the man’s chest. A long stab wound had sliced into the ribs…. Bright lights came on inside the warehouse like flashes from a supernova. Suddenly Troy realized he had been screaming and shouting. His mind was so numb he couldn’t understand what was going on. He found himself bending over the body, moaning, his hands trembling. Blood—there was so much blood! Did the human body even have that much blood? Four armed sol-pols rushed in, dripping rain from outside. Upon seeing Troy, the body, and the blood, they leveled their weapons at him. “Don’t move,” one said. “You can’t get away.” Troy stopped, blinking down at his hands. What were they shouting at him for? He had stopped screaming. His throat was so raw that when he spoke, his voice was hoarse and damaged. “I didn’t. I didn’t—not me.” The sol-pols approached him cautiously, rifles ready. When they saw he had no apparent weapon, they grabbed his arms, twisted them behind his back and applied the bonds. “Uh, wait,” Troy said. “I didn’t kill him.” Terror and shock made him feel sluggish. He couldn’t think straight. One of the sol-pols groaned, “Don’t tell me you’re going to waste a Truthsayer’s time on this?” “I didn’t kill anybody,” Troy said. “I’m innocent.” “Aren’t we all?” the guard said. “But I didn’t do it,” Troy insisted, letting a hint of anger trickle into his voice so that the sol-pols gripped his arms more tightly, with enough force to bruise. “I just found him here.” “We’ll get a Truthsayer, and then we’ll find out what really happened.” Troy closed his eyes and let them take him away. At least there was some comfort in that. The Truthsayers were never wrong. CHAPTER (#ulink_35a9cca3-ec64-562c-91e7-c7e94278ea29) 6 (#ulink_35a9cca3-ec64-562c-91e7-c7e94278ea29) i In the stables on a sunny morning after an exhilarating ride, Franz Dokken reveled in the calm he experienced while brushing down his stallion: smooth, soothing strokes, caressing the velvety texture of the chestnut coat that covered the horse’s coiled muscles. The fresh air of Atlas lit the roomy stables with the energy of blue sky and yellow sunlight. Dokken inhaled deeply, smelling the animals, the dusty ground, the rusty sourness from the corrugated steel trough. The gray mare would deliver soon, and he already had a clean pen ready for the new foal. The other horses made restless sounds—on a day like this they all wanted to be outside, to run and roam, but he had no worthwhile place to graze them. They ate oats and alfalfa grown on strips of his reclaimed land, and many of his workers quietly resented harvesting food for the animals rather than themselves. The villagers were puzzled by Dokken’s obsession, not understanding why he raised magnificent horses instead of “useful” animals—cattle for instance—as other landholders did. But then, it was not their purpose in life to understand his decisions. He was the landholder. The proud and majestic beasts made Dokken feel noble. He loved the exhilaration of exerting control over an animal physically stronger than himself. It was also a way to show his villagers—not to mention the rival landholders—that Franz Dokken could do as he pleased. After his two weeks of blessed sojourn, alone and out of touch, he felt ready to tend to all the matters that had slipped during his absence. Maximillian kept the show running smoothly while he was gone; after years and years of practice, Dokken knew how often his presence was truly required, and how many brushfires would burn themselves out without drastic intervention. He thrived on the time alone, when he could get away with it. He disappeared at least once a month, to the dismay of Schandra. She resented the fact that he kept deep secrets from her, though even in her greatest moments of self-doubt, she didn’t dream how little she knew about his real activities. Her failing was that she overestimated her own importance to him, considering herself part of his life rather than a ten-year dalliance. She had no real perspective on time. Dokken felt refreshed after the morning ride, and after his recent sojourn, but there was so much to catch up on—as always. It would take a few days just to get up to speed, to solve the problems that needed fixing, to tighten a few screws, yank a few leashes. Then he would set other wheels in motion, see that everything was proceeding along its inevitable course … and when the laws of human nature grasped his plans firmly, Dokken could afford to disappear again. The reward was worth all the inconvenience. After their long conversation the night before, Tharion had left late on a private mag-lev car, bulleting back to First Landing. The Guild Master had walked unsteadily toward the pickup spur, completely unfamiliar with the effects of alcohol and somewhat comically tipsy from the wine. At one point Tharion had accused Dokken of drugging him, which had brought his mentor to sidesplitting spasms of laughter, the first true belly laugh Dokken had experienced in recent memory. Tharion hadn’t understood the humor. Through the stable door, Dokken glanced at the sun in the morning sky, estimating the hour. He refused to wear a wrist chronometer, since nothing in his experience required such accuracy. Dokken stroked the stallion three more times with the curry brush before patting the horse’s neck and hanging the brush next to the saddle. “We’ll find time to go for another long, vigorous ride, my friend,” he whispered. “I promise.” Early that morning Maximillian had arrived back at the villa, prepared to brief him on how the previous evening’s work with Cialben had proceeded—but Dokken had not been ready, and the manservant knew better than to pressure his master. Still, it had been two weeks since he had tended to outstanding business, and Dokken needed to know how the world had changed since he had last paid attention to it. He reviewed the primary background like a newscast in his mind. Returning from his rest, he’d had a few more ideas on how to delay or sabotage the new mag-lev railway between Carsus and Bondalar holdings. It was a bad precedent to set, letting landholders deal directly with each other, rather than keeping them separate and at odds, forced to funnel all their commerce through First Landing. The most dangerous threat to his ultimate goal would be a strong, unified nation of landholdings. Perhaps, if he planted the right seeds, Dokken might even be able to stop the silly proposed marriage between Hektor Carsus and Janine Bondalar. The alliance concept was so … medieval! More disturbing to him were the insinuations that Toth and Koman holdings might also be joining forces as a large cooperative district. They had a wealth of good reasons to do so, but Dokken hated to see the formation of such an alliance. As a first step, he had already set in motion a plan to devastate the fragile pine forests on Toth Holding. Loss of the fast-growing wood would severely damage the economy of the holding, making Toth a less-attractive resource partner. At Toth, as well as at other holdings, Dokken had made sure the illicit Veritas still trickled out among the populace unabated, creating anarchy and indirectly weakening the Truthsayers Guild as well. Poor Tharion. Exposing secrets caused far more damage than fabricating preposterous rumors. Meanwhile, young Michel Van Petersden, the son of a landholder Dokken had deposed seventeen years ago, was now reaching his adulthood, still happily living in his adoptive home with Victoria Koman. She seemed to be grooming him as her successor, despite the fact that she had several children of her own, and the boy was completely unaware of the role he might be asked to play. Dokken wondered about the age-old question of nature versus nurture… He had time, but it was no longer all the time in the world. The metaphorical clock was ticking. Another major colony ship—the EarthDawn—was on its way from the home planet, bringing with it an unknown cargo of supplies and people. Citizens constantly speculated on whether the passengers would be hardworking hopeful settlers, more prison exiles, another group of religious fanatics, or a second military force with orders to take over. Atlas had weathered all of these in 231 years—and the EarthDawn would arrive in five years. By that time, Franz Dokken expected to have reduced Atlas society to a shambles, crushed every one of the rival landholders, and picked up the pieces in his own hands. He would have the whole world firmly under his control when he greeted the captain of the new ship. ii Dokken sat on one of the benches in his dressing room and removed his boots, tugging on the black leather. Sunlight streamed over the barren bluffs surrounding his villa, shining through the crisscrossed, wrought-iron window bars and casting shadows like a spiderweb on the tile floor. Maximillian stood just inside the door, tall and serene, his hands clasped behind his back. Schandra had spent the night in her own bedchamber, and Dokken had gotten a good night’s sleep. Now energized from his morning ride, Dokken scooped a few fresh strawberries from a bowl Chef Garien had placed on the stone end table, then stripped out of his riding leathers. He sponged himself off with a damp rag, dipping it into a glazed ceramic basin and wiping his perspiration away with the cool cloth. He hummed quietly as he slipped into cool cotton pants and a white silk shirt, draping his riding leathers on a brass stand to air out. Unselfconsciously, he dressed in front of his manservant, paying him no heed. Maximillian had been a fixture at the villa for so long, Dokken could be comfortable around him. “All right, Maximillian. I’m listening.” He tugged a strawberry stem from his mouth and tossed it next to the fruit bowl. “How did everything go last night?” “As planned,” the manservant droned. “Cialben is dead—and very surprised, too, I might add. His body should be found sometime this morning when the warehouse crew checks in.” “I’ll probably get a frantic call from Tharion later today,” Dokken said. “Yes, you probably will.” “He knows just enough to put the pieces together the way I want him to. Tharion is the type of person who doesn’t like getting a glimpse of what’s really going on around him. It ruins his delusions, and he feels powerless.” “Is that a problem?” “I won’t let it become one. After all his years in the Guild, a few self doubts will be a good experience for him. Anything else?” Maximillian pursed his lips. “News is that some of the Pilgrim settlements are becoming restive, demanding their own homeland again. They’re finally feeling downtrodden. Despite their isolation, they have established channels of communication, so I suspect plenty of sedition must be flying around. Supposedly, no one knows who’s starting it.” Dokken raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really? Good. Continue to keep a low profile in your guise as the Pilgrim Adamant. And make sure our own Pilgrim colonies at the lakebeds don’t hear any of it.” Maximillian nodded. “As we discussed, I am focusing on the big settlements at Sardili Shores. They have the highest concentration of Pilgrims, and I anticipate an uprising in the near future.” Dokken laughed. “Old Sardili will just wave his hands and hold a meeting and ask everyone to please be friends. It’s his style, and he won’t be able to comprehend why it doesn’t work in a complex system. Else?” He cracked his knuckles. “Difficult to get firsthand details, but there has been another disturbance in Bondalar Holding, a riot of some kind. A few homes were burned. Apparently, a family feud started when rivals got hold of Veritas and learned how deeply their mutual hatred ran. The brawl lasted a whole afternoon and far into the night. Bondalar’s sol-pols put it down severely, and the news has been suppressed, but I made sure it leaked out anyway.” Dokken laughed. “Good, good. You’re a master, Maximillian.” “You have taught me much, sir.” iii Tharion called much earlier than Dokken had anticipated, even before Garien finished setting out a late-morning luncheon board of fresh bread, kippered salmon, and more strawberries. Dokken walked past the food to reach the viewplate alcove. Maximillian stayed out of range as Tharion’s image appeared, his pale skin flushed. “Good morning, Tharion,” Dokken said, immediately trying to soothe the Guild Master. Tharion groaned. “My head feels like it’s got a thunderstorm inside, Franz, and my stomach is upset. I think you poisoned me last night.” “It’s called a hangover, Tharion. The unpleasant aftereffects of wine—an ancient Earth malady resulting from overindulgence.” “Is there a cure?” “Abstinence.” The Guild Master grimaced. “I think I can manage that, especially with the way your wine tastes. But that isn’t the only headache I have this morning.” He lowered his voice. Dokken drew himself taller, looking down into the image. “Hmm? What do you mean?” “The sol-pols discovered your man Cialben murdered, just as you led me to expect. We also found enough evidence to know he was involved in the Veritas smuggling. Just as you said.” Dokken tossed his blond mane and popped his knuckles again. “So what is the problem?” Tharion leaned forward into the image area, distorting his expression. “I know you did this for me, to help the Guild—but I thought you said the murderer would never be caught! Now this poses plenty of problems.” “He won’t be caught, no need to worry. It’ll be an unsolved crime. You may need to increase your sol-pol patrols yet again, train more elite guards—but you can weather that. Veritas smuggling will dwindle to nothing in the next several weeks. Your Guild is secure.” Dokken sniffed and turned at a delectable aroma. Garien brought out a tureen of caramelized onion soup, and his mouth watered. “Franz, they’ve already caught the murderer, red-handed,” Tharion snapped, then paused. “You mean you didn’t know?” Dokken narrowed his sea-green eyes. “What are you talking about?” The Guild Master’s words came out in a rush. “Name is Troy Boren, 23 years old, recently moved in from the Mining District of Koman Holding. Worked inventorying shipments from the Platform—we caught him in the middle of the night. By the body, in the empty warehouse, with blood on his hands. We’ve also found that he doctored some computer shipment records.” Dokken took a moment to recover, flashed a glance over his shoulder at Maximillian, who shook his smooth head, perplexed. The manservant’s brows hooded his dark eyes. “So what does this prisoner have to say for himself?” Dokken asked. Tharion gave a dismissive wave of his pale, long-fingered hand. “Claims he’s innocent, of course. They all do. But when I bring him into the plaza and set him in front of one of my Truthsayers, will we find evidence linked to you? You really should have let me handle this whole thing, Franz—if there is evidence that ties you to the murder, I’ll be forced to prosecute. The law takes precedence over friendship, and you can’t keep a secret from the Guild.” His expression looked haunted. “I’m worried about what could happen to you, Franz. But there’s nothing I can do to help.” Dokken wished the Guild Master could be there in front of him, so he could personally smooth his ruffled feathers. “Tharion, trust me. Listen to what I’m saying. I don’t know how this happened, but it’s just an accident, a coincidence. This man you’ve apprehended must have stumbled in at the wrong time, an innocent bystander. Bad luck, that’s all.” “I don’t believe it. You should have seen him.” Dokken shrugged. “Tharion, you’re creating problems where there aren’t any. Put the poor sod on trial, let one of your Truthsayers dig into his mind … just the way you’re supposed to. It’s every citizen’s right: a speedy and irrefutable trial by telepathy. If the man is innocent, he will be cleared, no doubt about it. And this man is innocent.” He jabbed a finger at the viewplate. “The Truthsayer won’t find anything in his head—because he knows nothing.” He kept his voice low and comforting, repeating himself. “Just a minor inconvenience. Don’t worry about it.” Tharion slumped in grudging defeat, still looking uneasy. “This is the last time, Franz. Don’t ever put me in this position again. My loyalty is to the Guild—I’m the Guild Master, dammit!” He rubbed his temples. “Oh, my head hurts.” “Tharion, a simple analgesic will help, and drink plenty of water,” Dokken said quickly. “It’ll pass.” The Guild Master snorted as he signed off. Dokken slipped back out of the alcove. Maximillian stood behind him, saying nothing as Dokken tried to work through his own thoughts. The clumsy innocent bystander complicated the situation, but Dokken couldn’t decide if that might be an advantage or a disadvantage. He took a plate from the luncheon board, piled it with food, and took a steaming mug of onion soup. He told Maximillian to have the chef bring him a cup of watery chicory coffee—the best they could yet manage—then took his food out to a shaded table in the courtyard by the mulberry bushes. He returned to the cold fireplace to retrieve his book from the mantel. He sat outside, alone and untroubled, as he ate his lunch. Garien brought out a mug of bitter coffee; Dokken sipped it, winced, and tried to soothe his tastebuds by thinking about the coffee he used to drink as a young man, even the bad powdered substitute on the colony ship. Given enough time, it would get better. Everything did. Picking at the salmon with a long-tined fork, Dokken spread the precious book on his lap. He had self-printed it on flecked kenaf paper and bound the volume in real horsehide, because reading a book like this was an experience, not just an information dump. The treatise was many centuries old, but filled with wisdom that could be transferred from warring Italian city-states to the landholdings of Atlas. A thin, dense book—but Dokken gained more insight every time he studied it. In the courtyard by the bushes, he began to reread his Machiavelli. CHAPTER (#ulink_06942657-ed51-5bf7-a23b-1b06cd6d82a8) 7 (#ulink_06942657-ed51-5bf7-a23b-1b06cd6d82a8) i For days after reading the mind of Eli Strone, Kalliana remained in her chambers in Guild Headquarters, slipping out only at late hours … trying to hide from the nightmares she had taken from the killer, nightmares that now resided firmly in her own mind. The violence, the bloodlust, the self-righteousness possessed her, despite her constant efforts to purge it from her thoughts. Not only had she witnessed the crimes in Strone’s head, but she had experienced them as well, as if she herself had done them. And in her quiet moments in the darkness of her quarters, a deep suspicion grew that perhaps she herself was capable of the same monstrous acts…. Kalliana sat in silence on her narrow bed, plucking pieces of honeyed fruit from a bowl, but the sweet stickiness contrasted violently with the tacky texture of drying blood in her imagination. A thin skewer of spiced chicken reminded her of pieces of dripping flesh, sliced away with brisk, efficient strokes of a scalpel as a paralyzed victim screamed into the night…. Other citizens might have envied her freedom to indulge in such delicacies, but every time Kalliana visualized the spraying blood and the slaughtered victims, felt the warped justifications flooding from Strone’s mind … she wondered how many of the common people would still envy her position if they knew. Outside, in the vastness of the world, she knew other laws were being broken: small offenses out in the holdings that could be dealt with by local, nontelepathic Magistrates … or major crimes by people who would be hauled off to First Landing for trial by the Guild. Kalliana shuddered. It wouldn’t be her turn again for some time, though. The Guild had eleven other Truthsayers to share the duties of justice, and nineteen less-powerful Mediators, who negotiated solutions to civil and political disputes. Kalliana was not needed, not now. She would have time to recover, just in case the searing memories assimilated from Strone had damaged her telepathic abilities. She hoped it would be enough time. Kalliana slept on her pallet in the midmorning, feeling the bright sunlight as it streamed through the outer viewports in the ship wall—and still she woke up sweating, panting hard. She was afraid of the darkness, but nightmares found her even in broad daylight. The signal at her door startled her, and she had a sudden, wild vision of Eli Strone, escaped from his prison, come back to flay answers out of her with a sharp scalpel. I’m not guilty. You saw my reasons! You know! How can you call me guilty? But the young man outside the door to her quarters was so harmless that she burst out in a shamed laugh, though his good-natured grin was masked by concern. “Ysan, you startled me.” The seventeen-year-old boy glanced away shyly, his white robe and sash looking too large on his skinny build. “You’ve been hiding, Kalliana,” he said. “Nobody’s seen you in days. I wanted to make sure you were all right.” The boy was four years her junior, but a gulf of more than age separated them. He was still innocent, a trainee who had not yet been tested for his green Truthsayer’s sash. She began to make an inane reply, but found she didn’t have the energy to deceive him. Ysan was a refreshing breeze, a healing kindness that allowed her to see the good side of human nature while recovering from the bad. Ysan raised his eyebrows. “Let me come in. Tell me how bad it was—that might help you. Besides, I have to get prepared for it myself.” She thought how the razor edge felt as it sliced through skin, an ever-so-faint rasping, a rubbery tug. The blood was thick and wet, smearing like oil, darkening as it mixed with dust…. Through Strone’s perceptions she had enjoyed the sensation— “I can’t talk about it, Ysan,” she said in a husky whisper. “There’s no way I can describe it. No way I want to. I just need … time. I’ll work through it.” Whenever she tried to focus her thoughts and fortify her psyche, though, Kalliana felt the battering ram of violence come back at her. The secondhand screams were growing quieter day by day as she tried to erase them—but it was a long, slow process. Recovering from the furnace of Strone’s deluded sense of justice was more difficult than anything she had ever endured in her pampered life. Ysan frowned, leaning on the doorframe. “You’ve helped me enough times, Kalliana. There must be something I can do.” His eyes lit up above his soft cheekbones. His fair skin prickled pink. “Why don’t you show me what you saw? I can take some of the burden from you.” “No!” she cried, then looked sternly at him. Also born in the Guild and raised with increasing dosages of Veritas, Ysan had practiced mind-reading abilities from the time he was a child—but the young trainee hadn’t yet walked through the shadowed valleys of guilt and remorse. Mental abilities still seemed like fun to him. “Ysan, this isn’t a game. Enjoy your innocence as long as you can,” she said, trying to soothe the dejected look that showed on his face. “You’ll be tested soon enough.” “I’ll be tested in a few weeks. I’ll be a full Truthsayer. Can’t you—” “No.” She clutched her warm wool wrap closer around her. “I just need a little more rest. I’m going to sleep now—that’s all I need. Really.” She softened, allowing a smile. “But thanks for your concern.” “Sure,” the young man said, fidgeting uncertainly, and then he stepped back into the corridor. “Well, pleasant dreams, then.” ii Kalliana sat up gasping, hearing the echoes of a shrieking victim in her ears, one of the last batch that Eli Strone had skinned alive, a rugged man with a work-seamed face, whiskered chin, and the misery of barely hidden guilt in his eyes. Filtered through Strone’s own memories, the disgust she felt for the victims’ imagined sins overpowered her own horror at the crime. They deserved to die. They deserved it! The rugged victim screamed again— But then Kalliana realized the noise was not imaginary. She heard a persistent, whining buzz, a summons from Guild Master Tharion. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows. “Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath and forcing her voice louder, stronger, as she activated the viewplate. “Please come and see me on the bridge deck,” Guild Master Tharion said, “in my ready room.” Kalliana acknowledged, then dressed herself in a clean white robe. She ran her fingers along the emerald Truthsayer sash; now its bright, honest green seemed tarnished to her. She cinched it tight around her slender waist and walked briskly toward the antiquated turbolift that took her up to the Guild’s command center. The central administrative offices had taken over what had been the bridge of the SkySword. The smooth mechanical finery of the decommissioned military equipment gave the Guild Master’s seat and the surrounding offices a sterile cleanness and austere technological precision that could not be conveyed by the soft adobe or baked bricks of the other structures in First Landing. Kalliana stepped down the textured metal stairs onto the bridge deck, and the turbolift doors creaked shut behind her. Other Guild members moved about their duties; many were brown-sashed workers who had none of the rigorous ethical training that a Truthsayer endured or the political education and techniques of rhetoric a Mediator used so well. Thus the Guild workers had no access to the Veritas drug. Guild Master Tharion sat in the middle of the room in a large chair. Kalliana could imagine a military captain directing space battles from the same point. Tharion scanned a small lapscreen, intent on notes and files, probably from recent Landholders Council meetings. He seemed disgusted and distracted. Kalliana had never paid much attention to the activities of the Council, since that was beyond her expertise; she had heard that at such meetings the appointed representatives from the landholdings spent their allotted time arguing and raising grievances and countergrievances. The Guild Master blinked at her, preoccupied for a moment, then suddenly seemed to remember who she was. “Ah, Kalliana,” he said, “thank you for coming.” He set his lapscreen on the side of his command chair, stood, and stepped away. She followed him into his private ready room, dreading his reasons for summoning her. He sealed the door and turned to her with a casual expression. “How are you recovering from the Strone case? You’ve been keeping a low profile for several days.” She glanced away to avoid his scrutiny. “Reading the prisoner was a very … unsettling experience. The pain is still there, but it’s lessening.” “I’m glad to hear that,” the Guild Master said. “You are very valuable to us, Kalliana. Every Truthsayer is. But if you feel that your abilities have been worn thin by this ordeal, I’ll do my best to see that you’re reassigned in some appropriate manner. Toth Holding has requested a new Magistrate, and I don’t have anyone qualified to send them.” “No!” she said a little too quickly. “I mean, that won’t be necessary.” It frightened her to think she might lose her status as a Truthsayer and be weaned from the Veritas drug. That would be the end of everything she knew, everything she had been born to. Her embryo had been grown here in the Guild, and she had been raised for no other purpose, given no other training. That was how it had to be. “No, I’m fine.” “Good,” Tharion said. Behind him, the stained glass window filled his ready room with rainbows. “We’ve taken care of sentencing Strone—he’ll spend the rest of his life up on OrbLab 2.” Kalliana could not hide her surprise, considering the overwhelming violence of the murders. “I would have thought he might be executed.” Tharion looked away, then sighed, staring at his twined fingers. “Yes. I gave it thorough consideration—but there are extenuating circumstances. Eli Strone served the Guild well for many years. His record is one of the most exemplary of all the elite guards we’ve ever had. Until he left us.” Kalliana nodded, unconvinced, but she could not argue with the Guild Master’s decision. He sat down behind his desk. “I wanted to ask you again about my request to check for possible sabotage or a larger plot among the landholders. Did you see any deeper motivation behind the killings?” “There is nothing,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “You’re sure Strone was acting alone?” Tharion pressed. “You detected no possible connection inside his mind?” Kalliana shivered. “No. If you don’t believe me, feel free to look in his mind yourself. If you can get around the nightmares.” “That won’t be necessary,” Tharion said. “I’ve looked in his mind before, when I was younger. Even before he committed his crimes, it was … unsettling. So rigid and sharply defined.” He looked at her with concern narrowing his eyes. “Are you positive you’ve fully recovered? You seem … shaken.” Kalliana drew herself up, pretending that nothing was wrong. “I’m fine,” she said. “I can do my job as a Truthsayer.” He turned in his chair to look wistfully out the stained glass window. “I had always thought I would be a Truthsayer myself for many more years, until Klaryus died.” He tugged the blue sash at his waist tighter. “But circumstances don’t always cooperate with our convenience. I vowed to do the best job I could.” “I’ll do the same,” Kalliana insisted, with a conviction she did not feel. She wondered what this pep talk was all about, wanting just to run back to her quarters and be alone again. Tharion’s face was stony as if he had come to a deep decision. “Fine. Then we have a new case for you to read, another accused murderer who claims he’s innocent. He may also be involved with … other crimes. You will verify that for us.” Kalliana went rigid, as if a spear of ice had shot down her spine. “Another truthsaying?” she said. “So soon? But there are so many other Truthsayers—” Tharion forced a smile. “I have no control over how frequently crimes are committed, Kalliana. It is your turn again. We’ve caught this man, practically in the act. The evidence against him is strong, but he claims he’s innocent—and I have reason to believe he may be telling the truth. We must grant him a swift trial. I would like you to handle this one in particular. Consider it a test.” He paused, apparently seeing her alarm. “Are you saying now that you’re not ready?” Kalliana tried to weigh the shades of terror in her mind. “When will the reading be?” “In three days,” he said. She opened the ready room door and faced the turbolift on the other side of the command center so the Guild Master wouldn’t see her trembling. “I’ll be ready.” Kalliana left the bridge. iii Tharion sat back in the command chair and watched Kalliana leave, masking his expressions until the ready room door had slid shut. Deeply troubled, he tried to distract himself with other Guild duties for the rest of the afternoon … but he continued to come back to Kalliana’s haunted afterimage. Tharion sympathized with the ordeal each one of his carefully trained telepaths went through with every criminal mind-reading—but it concerned him that Kalliana might be unstable. He pressed his lips together and hoped he was doing the right thing by assigning her to the case of Troy Boren. It might help her heal if she could read the mind of a man he knew to be innocent. An easy verdict that would restore her self-confidence without risking further exposure to murderous memories. He prayed that Franz Dokken wasn’t wrong. The distracting thoughts made Tharion less productive, and it took him an extra hour to review all of the recent disputes brought before the Guild. The numbers of filed grievances were increasing as the population on Atlas expanded. Tharion found himself alone when he finally finished and walked quietly down the metal corridors to his own suite of rooms, which had originally been the SkySword captain’s quarters. The cabin was dim and empty; the evening lights at floor level suffused the room with a comfortable yellow-orange glow. “Qrista?” he called, but heard no answer. Then he remembered that a long and complex meeting of the Landholders Council was being held in the lower briefing chambers, and his wife would probably come back frazzled and disgusted at the uncooperative representatives. Servants had placed the evening meal on the metal dining table. Tharion lifted up the thermal cover and sniffed at the meal of rice and chopped vegetables. He was just debating whether to sit down and begin without Qrista when she came in, heaving a weary sigh and closing her ice-blue eyes. He got up to greet her, ready to offer comfort and support. She sealed the door to their suite with great pleasure, as if she were blocking off the problems of the day. She straightened her white robe then untied the crimson Mediator’s sash and came to embrace him. “A long one?” Tharion asked. She nodded, resting her chin on his shoulder as if she wanted to melt into sleep standing in his arms. “Same old problems,” she said. “Different names, different details. “Toth claims that Dokken Holding is irrigating their kenaf fields too much and thereby depleting an underground aquifer that feeds the springs watering his pine forests. Bondalar and Carsus have jointly issued a formal grievance against Koman, alleging that the raw materials the mines are shipping for their mag-lev rail project are defective, resulting in months of lost work. The Koman representative brought out quality inspection sheets to prove that the raw materials had been undamaged when they were shipped from the Mining District, but Bondalar brought out their own analysis to show the flaws in the material as received.” She drew a deep breath. “And so on and so on.” Her pale hair was the colorless blond of all Guild members, done up in a long braid that spiraled like a helmet around the top of her head. “I can give you the mental details if you like, but frankly I’d rather spare you the misery.” Tharion laughed. “Let’s sit down before our meal gets cold.” She slumped into her chair and closed her eyes. Her sash hung loose, and her white robe fell open. “So how was your day?” she remembered to say, keeping her eyes closed. “Murder,” he said. Now she blinked and stared at him. “What? Another one?” Tharion nodded soberly. “I’m beginning to suspect the Veritas smuggling goes deeper than I thought. More than just a few stray capsules that somehow managed to trickle into outlying villages.” “And this murder had something to do with it?” Qrista said. “I believe it’s a vigilante killing, removing one of the smugglers. But Franz says our problems are all over now.” “Franz Dokken?” Qrista scowled. “If he’s behind it, I’m sure it’s not all over.” Tharion took a mouthful of rice and vegetables, chewing slowly to grant himself time to think. “I never said he was behind it, Qrista. He’s trying to help. Don’t be so hard on him.” “Give me the details,” she said skeptically. “I want to know what he really said.” Tharion raised his head, and she reached over the small table to stroke his forehead. She closed her eyes and gently ran her fingers through his thoughts, enhancing them with her telepathic abilities. “Convenient,” Qrista said. “And Dokken decides to play his own games with you, getting rid of your only direct connection before a Truthsayer can interrogate him. What about his suppliers?” “That information is lost. But if it cuts off the Veritas smuggling, I think it’s for the best,” Tharion said. “Otherwise, we’ll raise a lot of questions we don’t want answered. How could the Guild lose control so badly? Think of the outcry.” “Think of the outcry if people find out that we’re holding a man in the detention chambers who is almost certainly innocent! Dokken supposedly knows the identity of the real killer, but you never bothered to ask him. Are we supposed to ignore the unsolved crime?” Qrista was visibly upset, turning away from him. “It goes against all our ethical training. We can’t just ignore a crime.” “No, we can’t,” Tharion said. “But if Cialben truly was smuggling Veritas, taking it away from the Guild and giving it to … to outsiders who aren’t prepared to handle it, and if I declared him guilty—as he assuredly was—it would have been my option to sentence him to death.” “But you wouldn’t have.” Tharion sighed. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” “You’re just doing what Dokken wants,” Qrista said. Tharion shrugged. “I do what he wants only if it’s the same thing that I want. We can think alike, you know.” “That’s a scary thought,” she said in a noncommittal tone and fell to eating again. Tharion felt the need to keep explaining, though his wife already knew every one of his reasons. “Franz has assisted me through my entire career. I’m Guild Master, in part, because of his support. None of the other landholders has been as objective or as helpful. They come here only when they want something. None of the others offered to become my mentor as I was going through difficult times. Now everyone wants my favors, of course—but Franz was there at the very beginning. He’s given me no reason not to trust him.” “Have you used Veritas to read him?” Qrista asked, “to see if he’s really telling you the truth?” Tharion was shocked. “Qrista! We took an oath. I would never read a man without just cause and without his consent. Franz has done nothing to warrant such treatment. Why have you always disliked him?” She met his gaze evenly. “Because you believe everything he says.” Tharion ate in silence, concentrating on the taste of the rice and the spiced vegetables. His hangover headache had faded with the afternoon, but now it threatened to return as a dull throb at the back of his skull. Finally, Qrista finished and nudged her plate off to the side of the serving tray. “Look, I’ve had a rough day,” she said in an apologetic tone, “and I’m taking it out on you since I couldn’t very well slam the Council members’ heads together. My mediation didn’t work well, even when I could read what each party wanted. I’m upset with all the landholders—and Dokken’s one of them.” She stood up and her robe fell completely open to reveal her rounded breasts. “Let’s go to bed. Give me a back rub?” Tharion smiled. “With pleasure.” She smiled back. “That’s the point.” On their wide sleeping pallet, with the yellow-orange lights still turned low, Tharion carefully slid the cotton robe off her shoulders and dropped it to the deck. He ran his fingertips along the pale skin of her shoulders, tickling her shoulder blades. Qrista purred, arching herself up as she rested her head on the pillow, eyes closed. He pressed into her flesh, rubbing the tense muscles. Her skin was so pale it seemed transparent. She’d let down her braid and combed out her long whitish blond hair. A lifetime of exposure to Veritas had made them sterile in addition to pale. Most Guild members never married, finding it intimidating to be in the presence of a mate who knew every innermost thought—but Tharion and Qrista had no secrets. The two of them had the same expectations, had gone through the same sacrifices. He gave her a long and luxurious back rub, and then found they were both too tired to make love. They shared quiet soothing thoughts as they pressed together with the lights turned off. They drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, nestled in each other’s dreams. CHAPTER (#ulink_61753498-9a1a-51bd-8acc-fccc3d6ae24c) 8 (#ulink_61753498-9a1a-51bd-8acc-fccc3d6ae24c) i The Truthsayers Guild had added rugs to the deck plates and tapestries to the walls, replacing sections of the armored hull with reinforced windows and stained glass mosaics—but they had done little to modify the brig. Troy Boren sat in one of the dim detention cells, fingers threaded through his hair, staring down at his knees. The lower decks of the SkySword’s belly lay buried in the dust, blocking all daylight from the smothered viewports. At least his trial would come within three days, they said. It wasn’t soon enough for him, but the Guild was required to send out notice of the public Truthsaying. Despite his protestations, they seemed convinced of his guilt—and why shouldn’t they be? Eli Strone had also claimed to be innocent. Troy had been caught kneeling over a dead body in the middle of the night. Cren had verified that computer manifests from the last elevator shipment had been altered. Records proved that Troy had used his pass card to enter the inventory warehouse long after normal operating hours. Tests showed that the murdered man had recently taken Veritas—illegal Veritas—and two more of the capsules were found on his person. Troy had tried to explain why he had really gone out late at night. He had done something wrong, to be sure—but certainly not murder. Troy laced his fingers together and swallowed. His throat was very dry, but the sol-pols had given him only warm, alkaline-tasting water. Though a brown-sashed representative from the Truthsayers Guild had come to make certain that Troy did indeed want to be tried in front of the gathered crowd, it was obvious the worker didn’t believe him, thinking that Troy was wasting everyone’s time. But it didn’t matter what the nontelepathic administrator thought. Troy was entitled to have his name cleared, and only the Truthsayer’s actual verdict counted. The Atlas system of justice was based on incontrovertible truth, thoughts of guilt or innocence taken directly from the mind of the accused rather than relying on such circumstantial evidence as had piled up against Troy. He felt relieved that a Truthsayer would find out the real story, no matter how unlikely it seemed. Just wait, he thought. Just wait, and everyone will see. ii During the following day, another member of the Truthsayers Guild came, strongly advising Troy to confess and save the Truthsayer the trouble, save himself the public humiliation. The administrator assured him his sentence would be lighter if he admitted his own sins rather than forcing the telepath to tear them out and expose them in public. Troy continued to shake his head and insist that he wanted the clear Truthsayer verdict. He wanted to be pronounced innocent so that everyone could see. Finally, toward evening that day—though deep underground in the cell, Troy had no idea what the actual time might be—he received a visit he had dreaded, one he had hoped he wouldn’t have to face until after the Truthsayer pronounced him clean. He heard footsteps, the rustle of stiff uniforms, the clicking weapons of the heavily armored elite guard marching in an oddly echoing lockstep as they escorted several people. Troy hoped it wasn’t more Guild representatives come to dissuade him again—instead he saw the swarthy face of his father with his mother and two sisters in tow. “You didn’t have to come,” Troy blurted, unable to think of anything else in the moment of his shock. His older sister Leisa smiled wryly. “Good to see you, too, Troy.” “I mean,” Troy said, “I’ll be cleared in a couple of days.” “We all had to come,” sour-faced little Rissbeth said. “Do you know how much a mag-lev ticket for the whole family cost?” “Your father got a bonus yesterday,” Dama said. “He found a rich molybdenum deposit on his shift, and we had to come and show you our support. You depend on us, don’t you?” Rambra scowled, avoiding the transparent security field by a wide margin. “If you did this thing, Troy,” he said, “I can’t describe how disgusted I’ll be with you.” Troy saw, though, a secret glint of confused pride behind his father’s eyes. He wondered if Rambra might not be at least partially pleased that his weakling son was capable of fighting a man. Troy flushed, feeling guilty at what he had put them through, but then annoyance at his little sister rose up. “I didn’t ask you to be here,” he said. His mother rolled her eyes. “We’ve got so much invested in you, Troy—and now look at what’s happened. How could you do this to us? And after only three weeks! You should have been so careful, on your best behavior.” Troy’s stomach churned. “How can you even think I’m guilty?” he said. “No matter how this turns out,” his mother said, “they’ll look down on you forever. I understand you’ve confessed to manipulating the records in the computers. What were you thinking? Now you’ll never get a promotion. You’ll never earn any extra credits. It’s all for nothing.” Rissbeth made a sound as if she had swallowed a live squirming worm. “Yeah, thanks a lot, Troy.” Leisa shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re capable of murder, Troy. Or that you would be mixed up in a drug-smuggling ring. In fact, when I think about it I have to laugh.” Troy forced a smile, warmed by the comforting tone of his sister’s words. “At least somebody believes I’ve been falsely accused.” “Falsely accused!” Leisa pantomimed a wail. “A gross flaw in the system. This could lead to the shake-up of our very society.” “To the unraveling of society’s moral fiber,” Troy picked up the thread. “It could lead to chaos, civil war, and universal Armageddon!” Dama’s alarm escalated with the interchange, as if she had finally realized the magnitude of her son’s circumstances. “Oh, you two!” she said stoically. “Stop being so pessimistic. It’s not over yet. We’ll see this thing through.” Troy slumped onto his bunk, still looking at them through the security field. “Don’t worry, Mother. It’ll all be over in a couple of days. I didn’t do this. Trust me.” “We’ll be there watching you when you face the Truthsayer,” Leisa said. “Promise.” Troy swallowed the lump in his throat. “I’ll try to find you in the crowd but … my mind will probably be occupied with other things.” “It better be,” Rambra said. “Afterward,” Troy said confidently, “we can all go out and celebrate.” With a clatter of thick red boots on the deck plates, the sol-pol elite guards returned to his holding cell. “Time,” one guard said, gesturing with his weapon for the visitors to leave. As his family filed out, Troy found that he was more shaken now than he had been before their visit. CHAPTER (#ulink_4c8037c7-daa9-56bd-8402-0857b49a5aaa) 9 (#ulink_4c8037c7-daa9-56bd-8402-0857b49a5aaa) i After several days of respite, another storm front approached across the continent, bringing a vanguard of ragged clouds over First Landing. Kalliana stood in her quarters, staring out the window up at the sky and fixing her attention away from the gathered crowds that waited again for her in the central plaza. Just like before. The storm clouds were brooding gray mounds near the horizon, but here the day was merely overcast and cold. A wind sprang up, whipping the fronds of stunted palm trees along the streets, their roots sprawled out in a broad mat to suck nourishment from the heavily fertilized topsoil. Kalliana stared through the transparent portion of her window, which was surrounded by a sunburst of triangular wedges in green, crimson, and royal blue glass, distorting the view to symbolize the uncertain nature of truth. The central transparent pane was a metaphor for how Truthsayers saw clearly, while others were doomed to see the colors of lies. Another accused murderer waited for her in the plaza. Kalliana would have to dig into his mind, witness the truth in his own thoughts, and make her judgment. Truth Holds No Secrets. The Truthsayers’ code decreed that the accused was innocent until she read his guilt. But she already knew through grim experience that very few people were truly innocent. She swallowed hard. Kalliana feared more vivid nightmares that were not her own—but even more she dreaded being transferred from the Guild, being forced to leave her comfortable, familiar existence. With Veritas she had witnessed secondhand the difficult existence the other colonists endured. She didn’t want a pointless life outside the Guild. She wondered if it could truly be as unpleasant as she imagined it … out there. She would rather face another murderer. Only she and the accused could ever know for certain what had actually happened. A Truthsayer had to wear a blindfold to any repercussions of the verdict, decreeing only whether the man was guilty or innocent. The truth would come out, but Kalliana had to show it the way. ii Down in the detention levels, Troy Boren lay motionless on his hard bunk. He kept his eyes closed, willing himself to sleep so that the time might pass more quickly. But his stomach roiled with anxiety, his dry throat burned, and thoughts whirled behind his eyelids, making him squirm with the possibilities of a worst-case scenario. But it wouldn’t happen. Truthsayers didn’t make mistakes. He had no idea how many days had passed since his arrest. The guards had taken his personal chronometer; apparently they were afraid he might attempt some sort of bizarre high-tech sabotage with its tiny components…. Though hunger gnawed at his stomach, he felt no real appetite, doubting he could keep anything down if he bothered to eat. The sol-pols had given him only a limited amount of time to pick at his food, then they had taken it away. When the elite guard switched off the confinement field, Troy was startled to find that he had indeed dozed off, despite his anxiety. He sat up, blinking bleary eyes. His shoulders and back crackled with stiffness from the uncomfortable pallet. “Got your thoughts in order?” the guard said gruffly, his eyes hidden behind the uniform’s tough goggles. “I’m ready,” Troy said, hauling himself off the bunk. “Do you have a guilty conscience?” the helmeted guard asked with a slight smile in his voice. Troy couldn’t tell if the guard was mocking him or not. “I don’t have anything to worry about.” He smoothed down his formless prison outfit. This time the uniformed man did laugh. “If you say so.” Troy followed him numbly out of his cell. The metal deck plates were cold against his bare feet, and he longed to be standing under the warmth of the sun again. At least he could look forward to that part. iii “Sit next to me,” Tharion said, gesturing for Qrista to take a place on one of the flecked granite benches at the center of the plaza. “I won’t be performing for this one. A Guild chanter is announcing the crime.” Most of the audience stood on the open flagstones, waiting for the show. The crowd was smaller than it had been for Strone’s trial. This single murder was not as titillating. Qrista flashed a hurriedly covered frown and fixed him with her ice-blue eyes. Her pale hair was braided again and wound around the top of her head. Angular bones gave her face a finely chiseled beauty that her smile enhanced … but now, troubled, Qrista appeared harsh and sharp. Tharion didn’t have to ask why. “This is a sham, and you shouldn’t have allowed it,” she said quietly, but sat down beside him with a rustle of her white robes, tightening her crimson sash. Because they had shared their thoughts completely, she knew her husband’s reasoning, but that didn’t mean she came to the same conclusions. “I know,” he answered. “But it’s my decision as Guild Master and I have to live with it. We can’t announce that we know what the outcome will be, because that would open up a thousand new questions. We must proceed and get this behind us. Let him be declared innocent in open court.” Qrista looked at him uncertainly. “So the damage to our ethics can heal? What if it leaves scars?” Tharion knew she was right, but he had determined that this path was the best resolution to the complex and uncomfortable situation the Truthsayers Guild had stumbled into. For a moment he wished that Troy Boren were guilty, so they could drain more information about the black market Veritas from him. But since the young man was simply a clumsy bystander, Tharion knew they could get nothing else from him. He reached out to hold Qrista’s cold, pale hand as they sat looking up at the empty podium. “Nothing is ever certain,” Tharion said. “We’ll need to ride this out, and I need your help and support.” She pressed her lips together. “Of course you have my support,” she said. “I don’t make your decisions for you. I just abide by them.” “This will all turn out all right,” he said. Qrista raised her white eyebrows, allowing him a small smile. “Oh? You can see into the future now as well as reading minds?” “I wish that were so,” he said with a forced smile. “A new kind of drug developed up on the Platform.” He looked up to see the great ship doors opening in the Headquarters building. The Truthsayer Kalliana and the prisoner would be brought forward momentarily. iv Quietly anonymous, Franz Dokken stood in the middle of the crowd. He wore sturdy cotton slacks and a warm woolen jacket: expensive clothes but not showy. His ragged hair whipped in long strands in the gusting breeze. Judging from the cloud bank on the horizon, he guessed it must be raining hard at his holding—good. They needed the water in the dwindling rivers that powered his hydroelectric plant. Beside him, Maximillian loomed tall and stiff, ready to block anyone who approached his master too closely, though Dokken preferred to remain camouflaged within the crowd. He didn’t want Tharion or the others to know he had come to see Troy Boren brought before the Truthsayer. Dokken wanted to watch the crowd, see how they reacted. He enjoyed observing how all the threads tangled together. He had begun to calculate the earliest possible time when he could disappear for a few weeks on another sojourn. He felt tired already. “Behind schedule,” Maximillian said, glancing at his chronometer. Dokken pursed his lips. “Don’t be such a slave to time.” “Plenty to do back at the villa,” Maximillian pointed out. “Another shipment of pine logs coming in this afternoon. And there seems to be some problem with the fish farm. Your presence has been requested to check it out.” “Yes, yes,” Dokken said impatiently. “Let’s just watch the show and see how much they think they know.” Maximillian’s expression was flat and unreadable. “They know nothing about what I did.” “Of course not,” Dokken said. “I certainly wouldn’t bring you here if they did.” He raised his head as the ship doors opened. The hapless prisoner stumbled out in chains, escorted by the elite guard. Dokken scrutinized this lanky man who moved like a pigeon. Troy Boren was fidgety and nervous, his hair curly brown, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed repeatedly. “They think he killed Cialben?” Dokken breathed a short laugh. “That’s funny. He doesn’t look like he has enough courage even to harvest vegetables.” Maximillian nodded with no change of expression. “You never can tell,” he said. “Sometimes people surprise you.” v Troy stood alone on the open platform above the crowd. His hands and ankles were wrapped in firm bindings, though he wondered where they expected him to run, how they thought he might attempt to escape. He shivered. Above, the sky was a bowl of clouds the color of cast lead. Stray breezes hurled the mutters of the crowd toward him like a slap in the face. Troy hunched his shoulders, trying to appear small. He didn’t want all these people staring at him. He had never wanted to call attention to himself, just to do his job and make a living, maybe help his family’s situation improve. The noise of the audience rose higher, and he realized what their hopes were. They wanted him to be found guilty. They were eager to see another criminal sentenced. They would be disappointed when he was found innocent. Troy did not dare look out across the crowd. His family was probably out there, watching for him. He knew they would resent having to stay several days in First Landing; they didn’t have the money to afford such luxuries. He would try to make it up to them—especially Leisa—once all this was over. A new blanket for the baby, perhaps, or special confections from a sweetshop. Even Rissbeth would enjoy that. The sol-pol elite guards stood back at the edge of the platform, keeping order through intimidation. Troy remembered the guard asking him if he had a guilty conscience, and he tried to clear his thoughts and think straight—but now the idea of guilt had fixed itself rigidly in his mind. He knew he was innocent, but that meant the real killer was still on the loose. Troy had stumbled upon the body of the murdered man … there had been so much blood. If he had arrived an hour earlier—even fifteen minutes—the killer might have caught him as well. Troy shuddered. If only he hadn’t botched those manifest sheets in the first place. If only he hadn’t gone back to fix his mistake, creating an even bigger error in the process. He had changed what would have been a private (though still disastrous) reprimand into a murder trial. The image danced across his mind: the dead body, eyes wide, two capsules of the Veritas drug, the wound where the blade had stabbed between the ribs and up into the heart. And the blood. The dark blood spreading across the concrete floor. So much blood! Troy squeezed his eyes shut. He just wanted this entire ordeal to end. He gulped, hunched down even further, and waited for the Truthsayer to come out and free him. vi The promenade doors to Guild Headquarters split open, leaving Kalliana to stand in their center. A thin fingernail of cold breeze scraped along her white cotton robe. She straightened her green sash around her narrow waist. Her translucent skin flushed in the chill air as she stepped barefoot toward the plaza. The gold ceremonial collar felt heavy on her shoulders. She saw the crowd, saw the accused, and was reminded again of Eli Strone—but this skinny young man looked so different, so quiet and lost, like a terrified waif. He insisted he was not guilty. However, Strone had also been certain of his own innocence, convinced that he had done nothing wrong. A Truthsayer could not judge on the basis of outward appearances. Because Troy Boren looked so unlikely, he seemed paradoxically more suspect. Kalliana came forward and waited as one of the Guild chanters listed the case and the details, describing the crime of which Troy had been accused. As the chanter summarized, the crowd booed and jeered. Kalliana frowned. They needed to be reminded that the accused was innocent until she pronounced him guilty. If she pronounced him guilty. She came forward, an angel in white, holding the power of this man’s life in her hands. She received one of the sky-blue capsules of Veritas from its ornate brass-and-copper box, the small pill that protected Atlas from the deceptions of criminals. She popped it into her mouth, cracked it, and swallowed, taking a deep breath. “If you’re innocent,” she said to Troy Boren, “you need not fear the truth.” He drew a quick breath and answered in a quiet voice that no one else could hear. “I’m not afraid,” he said. “I am innocent.” Kalliana tried not to show that fear engulfed her as well. She hoped that her exposure to Strone hadn’t set up echoes in her mind that might dampen her telepathic abilities. She felt the power of the Veritas surging through her, but she had difficulty focusing her thoughts. Kalliana reached out and placed both of her hands flat against Troy’s temples. She closed her eyes as he blinked up at her like a wounded and confused animal. She worked to sharpen her truthsaying ability into a usable tool, then went inside Troy’s thoughts, tentative and skittish. She brushed the surface of his memories, unwilling to go deep—and there she found it sitting like a black stain on the top of his mind: a guilt, a fear. She probed deeper, feeling herself stiffen and grow even more wary, afraid to see—but it was her duty. She was a Truthsayer. She had to see. She looked into Troy’s memories for just a glance, a snatch, a vision— —and saw the sprawled body, saw the blood, heard the scream echoing in his mind. My God, there was so much blood. The body lying there in the dim orange light. The blood. The overpowering guilt. Kalliana froze, trembling until her shuddering became so violent she could not go deeper. She didn’t have the strength to probe for clearer details of the actual murder, but the answer was obvious to her. Too obvious. She pulled back, jerking her hands away and cried out in a hoarse gasp. “Guilty,” she said. “Guilty!” Troy’s face drained completely of blood. “No,” he whispered. “You’re wrong.” But Kalliana staggered away, hiding from him. She did not wish to see any more. “Guilty,” she said again, then fled into Guild Headquarters, to safety. vii Guild Master Tharion leaped to his feet as the crowd yelled. “That can’t be right,” he mouthed, but caught himself before saying it out loud, knowing the terrible consequences if he, the Guild Master, accused a Truthsayer of making a faulty judgment, of distorting the truth … of finding an innocent man guilty! That simply could not occur. On Atlas it would never happen. The Guild would fall apart if the faith of the public faltered. Qrista grasped his wrist and squeezed so tightly that her fingernails bit into his skin. Tharion looked down at her, his face devastated. How would he be able to remedy this? He couldn’t announce that he knew Kalliana’s judgment was in error. He couldn’t admit how he knew. “You can’t let this happen,” Qrista said, her words stabbing like knives. “I can’t do anything about it,” Tharion said. “Not at the moment.” He looked up to see a pair of familiar figures in the crowd: bald Maximillian, then Franz Dokken with his blond hair and ageless face. Both Dokken and his manservant looked bewildered by the outcome, and Tharion wondered what could have gone wrong. Had Kalliana intentionally given a false verdict? Was she involved in the black market sales somehow? He realized that someone in the Guild might be a link—but Kalliana? The possibilities swam in his mind, making him dizzy. He wanted to rush over to the landholder, to grab him by the collar and demand to know what had gone wrong, but Dokken and Maximillian looked as confused as Tharion. Troy should not have been found guilty—but now that the judgment had been pronounced in public with full ceremony, Tharion knew of no way he could rescind it. This was all so impossible! The uproar continued, and he looked up to see the elite guard grabbing a limp Troy Boren by the bindings on his wrists and hauling him toward the armored walls of the Guild Headquarters. A convicted murderer. TRUTHSAYERS GUILD (#ulink_a95dcbcc-5afd-5379-85e0-626d831cfad2) CHAPTER (#ulink_a3eaaca8-3b36-5211-8ae1-8541ef095ff3) 10 (#ulink_a3eaaca8-3b36-5211-8ae1-8541ef095ff3) i The SkySword’s library contained a repository of knowledge from old Earth. Many of the old ship files were locked with long-forgotten military passwords and thus unavailable to members of the Guild. However, once the Truthsayers had learned to use the computer databases and gain access to files, they had begun keeping track of their own work, maintaining files of the cases they had determined. Kalliana sat alone inside the metal-walled library room. The consoles were discolored and scuffed, the swivel chairs worn by time. She gazed at the phosphor-filled screens as if they were deep wells into a universe of information. The reflection of her pinched face stared back at her, distracting her. She blinked to restore her concentration and tapped again on the keyboard, summoning the next list. The names were just a blur, one after another, accompanied by capsule summaries of their trials, the crimes of which they had been accused: thievery, vandalism, rape, murder, conspiracy, arson. The far column listed the most important data of all. Innocent. Innocent. Guilty. Innocent. Guilty. Guilty. Over two centuries, the colonists had come to Atlas in waves, ships full of wide-eyed colonists, exiled criminals, military forces, religious fanatics…. According to transmissions, a new ship called the EarthDawn was on its way. Atlas had heard nothing from Earth in decades, not since the Pilgrim exiles had come forty-two years earlier, spouting tales of social upheaval and Armageddon. However, the Pilgrims were Millennial religious fanatics and saw the end of the world in everything—so the veracity of their news was in question. But without a doubt, something terrible had happened on distant Earth. Kalliana viewed another screen of data, working her way down through the years. She wasn’t searching for anything in particular, just a confirmation of the work the Guild had done, a salve for her doubts and the pain that so many guilty readings had brought her. After his trial Troy Boren had been sentenced to permanent exile up on OrbLab 2, the separate orbital processing facility where he would work in the dangerous Veritas-processing chambers. There had been an increasing number of disastrous accidents in the past few years, so the free-floating lab always needed new workers. Troy Boren would be shipped up on the space elevator and transported from the Platform to the orbital laboratory as soon as the proper contingent of guards could be arranged. More names flashed across the screen, but the words were blurred through her dry burning stare. Guilty. Guilty. Innocent. Guilty. So many names … for every bad one the Guild removed from society, Atlas seemed to breed another, and another…. ii Kalliana went to one of the military briefing rooms that had been converted into a classroom, where Ysan was teaching (and playing with) seven young children. All were dressed in little white gowns and had the pale hair and complexions of those exposed to Veritas since they were embryos. Though visits to help train the children were part of Kalliana’s regular duties, she also wanted to divert herself, watching the innocence and exuberance of the young ones. “Ah, Kalliana!” Ysan said, climbing to his feet as the white-robed children scattered, giggling and laughing. He surrendered his maroon chair at the head of the meeting table. “Look who’s come to play with us, kids. Sit down, Kalliana. We were just doing the mind practice game.” “I don’t want to disturb you,” she said. “No, you’ll help us,” Ysan answered with a grin. “All right.” She flashed a small smile of her own, then sank into the padded fabric chair, running her hands over the polished black armrests. The children gathered around her. Ysan knelt next to them, much taller than the six- to eight-year-olds. He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “She’s a real Truthsayer, you know, so we’ll have to work hard now. No more playing.” The children snickered. “You know how the game is played,” Kalliana said to them. “I think of something, then you try to read it from me. The first person to get it right wins, then we’ll try another.” The children sat around, watching her obediently with their bright eyes. Observing them, Kalliana felt a healing force, the goodness of children raised within the protective arms of the Guild. “All right,” she said, “I’m picturing something.” She closed her eyes, summoning an image in her mind. “Try to read it from me.” The children concentrated, looking comical with their focused expressions, their furrowed foreheads. Ysan picked up the image immediately and nodded at Kalliana, but she continued to project, not letting herself get distracted. That might throw the children off. “It’s a white ball,” one little boy said. “No, it’s glowing,” a girl interrupted. “It’s a glowbulb!” “No, the sun ,” a third child said. “The sun—the sun up in the sky!” “Yes,” Kalliana said and smiled. “It’s the sun.” Next, she thought of one of the tall palm trees that grew out in the plaza. “It’s a stick!” one of the girls said. “No, a broom,” another girl challenged, “thin and dry.” The boy grew suddenly incensed and pointed at the little girl beside him. “She’s thinking bad things about me!” “I am not!” the girl answered. “You were doing it first. You thought I look like one of the rock lizards.” “I didn’t think that.” “Yes, you did.” “Well, I couldn’t help it. That’s what you look like.” Losing her temper, Kalliana stood from the maroon chair. “Enough! You shouldn’t be reading each other’s minds unless you have explicit permission to do so. That is not something a Truthsayer would ever do. “Thoughts are private, unless we have cause to go inside another person’s mind. I’ve given you permission to read me while we play this game, but you must never, ever read another person just for fun.” Kalliana sat down again, alarmed at her own temper. The children stared at her uncertainly, and she wondered if they had caught a backwash of her inner turmoil. “All right,” she said, getting down to business. “Let’s do the game again and try to focus once more on the picture in my mind.” Trying to calm herself, she realized that with the mental wounds still stinging, she had once again been considering her onerous obligations to the Guild, whether it was worth everything her life had granted her. After the unpleasant lives she had witnessed in the minds of criminals, she was afraid to lose it all, no matter how difficult her Truthsayer duties were. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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