Tropic of Creation by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online Page A

this was rather longer than he would have liked. “It would be against the treaty for you to keep me here.”
    “Yes. This presents a difficulty.”
    He filled the silence by saying, “Perhaps I can help you with your difficulty.”
    Nefer turned to the interpreter and spoke softly for a time. Then she rose and moved past him, toward the entrance. She spoke something directly to him for the first time. The words were like rocks ground together. She left the room, ushering in four other ahtra, who remained standing by the door.
    Maret looked at the floor as she translated, “My mistress says she is very sorry.”
    The heat in the room was mounting. “I hope she has no reason to be sorry for what she can still avoid doing.” The gaps in their conversation were swollen silences, with a presence of their own. He waited.
    Finally Maret looked at him. “You cannot leave now.”
    “Then when?”
    “As you measure it, you would say … a few weeks. I am very sorry.”
    “My people will grow alarmed at such a delay. It will attract military attention.” He thought that might not be true. They could leave without him, assuming he had suffocated in the capsule or in the tunnels.
    “Yes, regrettably.”
    “What is the difficulty? Your position, if you hoped it to remain secret, is likely to be exposed, even if you never release me. There’s no point in keeping me here, and much reason to permit my return.”
    After a slow blink, she said: “I very deeply regret to bear the news to you that your people will all die. I am very sorry. There is nothing we can do.”
    He stared at her.
    Her dark eyes were calm as she said, “No one will survive—above. I am sorry.”
    He fought back his alarm. “If you attack, Congress Worlds will find you and destroy you. These tunnels can’t protect you.” That was no bluff. They would come, for the general’s daughter and granddaughter—eventually.
    “We will not attack. It will not be our doing. You have no armament … to speak of. You will tend to be overwhelmed.”
    “Let me go back, then, to warn them.” She was standing up to go. He also rose, aware of the guards shifting behind him. “No matter who attacks my people, you will be blamed. The armistice is fragile. Maret, do you want war?”
    “No.”
    “Then help us. Let me warn them.”
    “This would not be possible.”
    Her passivity was maddening. He found himself stepping toward her, gripping her by the forearm. “By God, it
is
possible!” As he held her arm, she visibly paled.
    The guards grabbed him from behind, and he allowed them to restrain him for the moment.
    Maret’s eyes took on a glaze as she stood taller and brushed at the place where he had grabbed her. “They are as dead already,” she said placidly.
    He surged forward, despite the restraints. Strong hands locked him in place. Maret hastily backed away from him, retreating toward the door. He cried out after her: “No, this will not happen!”
    She paused in the doorway, saying, “No one can hear you.” Then the door closed behind her with sucking noise.
    A thin stream of dirt cascaded onto Vod’s head from the bare rock overhead. He looked up into the blackness where foam girders held the lid of the tunnel in place. So far from the comforting walls of DownWorld, the smell of dirt and the sight of oozing water claimed his senses. He was uneasy, though he’d spent his whole life working amid the dirt and the wet.
    The tunnels here were
wrong
, no matter what the Prime Engineer said.
    They had eighteen increments of rest before work resumed. Around him, his fellow workers slumped against the walls, fatigued, plugged in. Crouching among the shavings of the tunnel, he sank his tendril into the temporary gates strung along the work shaft.
    His backmind swelled with data.
    Nefer Ton Enkar commandeered a forward position for her latest data. It hove into view, bragging of completion rates, hexals of ways dug, rebored, renewed, and inspected. She