On the morning of the first of Tenmonth, which had dawned cold and clear, with frost over everything, Maertyn sat in the office that was not his and scrolled through all the routine communications on the desk screen. Among the memoranda was a reminder to all assistant ministers to include supporting documentation along with the reallocation recommendations. Maertyn had finished the reallocation recommendations for the Environment Research Subministry on the twenty-ninth of Ninemonth, well before they were due, but he?d already decided not to submit them until late on the second. His supporting documentation was voluminous, for reasons other than mere bud get justification.
Cautious as he?d been in leaving the Ministry in the evening at times when others were also departing, and varying his times of departure, as well as taking other precautions, he continued to worry about the lorry that had attempted to run him off the avenue. Other facts tended to support his concerns. Not a single other assistant minister had suggested they eat together, nor had any old acquaintances contacted him. While part of that had been because he had contacted no one, he had run across several at a bud get briefing held for all assistant ministers and a number of deputy assistant ministers at the quarterly briefing at the Executive Administrator?s meeting hall. Everyone had been pleasant…and no more. Amirella had also avoided him since she had stopped by his office over a week ago. That also bothered him.
Rhesten, in his quiet efficient way, had shipped off the double crate to the station. Maertyn hoped that it arrived and would be waiting for him, even as he hoped he would not need its contents. All in all, Maertyn was very much looking forward to Josef?s return, and not because he had any desire to see the not-so-honorable Josef Cennen, although he hadn?t been able to get a firm date on when that might be from the minister?s office. And that worried him as well.
The comm chimed, automatically announcing, "Lord Ashauer calling."
"Accept."
Ashauer?s image appeared on the desk screen. "Maertyn…I hadn?t realized you?d be staying in Caelaarn so long. I just learned of that. I know it?s rather short notice, but, by any chance would you be free for lunch today?"
Maertyn laughed, softly and briefly. "As it so happens, I would be."
"Then let me pick you up at a quarter past noon, and we can go to my club."
"I could easily meet you there."
"I?m driving in any case, and it?s on the way."
"I bow to your common sense," replied Maertyn with a smile.
"Then it?s settled." The screen blanked, to be replaced by the image of the last memorandum that Maertyn had read.
A faint chime announced that another message had arrived. Maertyn called it up. The message had been sent blind, with no originating address, and no text, only an enclosure. The enclosure was a news story. Maertyn read, and then reread, the part intended for him.
…the advocate-inspector of the Ministry of Justice indicated that the Ministry is looking into what he termed "the abuse of privilege" in cases where close to full-body cloning had been employed to return victims of accident and disease to full function…
Maertyn deleted the message.
After reviewing his reallocation recommendations, then reading and modifying a number of replies drafted by subministry personnel in response to inquiries from the Council and the office of the Executive Administrator about various environmental research projects, Maertyn finally left his office and walked down to the main level of the Ministry and out across the bridge to wait for Ashauer-except Ashauer?s official sedan was already there, driven by a stern-faced man whose bearing screamed "security."
Maertyn slipped into the sedan. "You?re early."
"Better that than late," replied Ashauer with a smile.
Maertyn nodded as the driver eased the sedan back toward the avenue.
"You?ve been here in Caelaarn longer than anyone expected. I imagine you?re looking forward to getting back to your wife and your research."
"Very much so."
"Do you have any idea when you?ll be leaving?"
"Only in the general sense that it will be shortly after Josef returns."
"He?s returning on the fifth, I hear."
"That wouldn?t surprise me."
"I suppose you?ll be planning to leave on the morning of the seventh, then."
Maertyn understood exactly what Ashauer meant. "Once his arrival is confirmed, of course. I?m certain Minister Hlaansk will want me to brief Josef."
Ashauer chuckled. "We both know that Josef may have other thoughts about such matters."
And, of course, what happened after that was another question, Maertyn knew.
"It?s been a while since you?ve been to the club, hasn?t it?"
"Quite a while." In fact, it had been years since Maertyn had been to Aesthica, and that had been as a guest of Maarlyna?s uncle, Jaeryn S?Weryl, just before his untimely death.
"It hasn?t changed much. Hasn?t changed much since my grandfather?s time, I expect, except for better power and climate control systems."
Before long, the driver turned off the avenue and up a long drive that wound through a park-like setting with tall evergreens and exposed boulders amid wild grasses that had largely turned to the autumn brown. The sedan slowed as it approached the raw stone archway that clearly dated back to the time of Ashauer?s grandsire, if not before, and stopped behind another vehicle, from which two men in the blue jackets of the Transport Ministry emerged and walked toward the club entrance.
"Do all the lords in Transport belong to Aesthica?" Maertyn smiled as the driver pulled up to where a man in a singlesuit of Aesthica blue waited to open the vehicle doors.
"Both of us do, in fact."
Maertyn waited for the doorman and then stepped out of the vehicle. Once Ashauer joined him, the two lords walked through the oak door opened by another club servitor and into a long and narrow foyer, totally without decoration or adornment and walled in the same natural stone as the outside vehicle archway.
At the end of the foyer stood another figure in a pale blue jacket. "Lord Ashauer…Lord Maertyn," he offered before escorting them through the brass-bound double doors and down the left-hand corridor and into a small dining room with wide north windows overlooking the greenbelt and Lake Caela. Ashauer?s table was at the far left end of the windows. No one was seated at the adjoining table.
"Thank you, Daulhaus." Ashauer took the seat closest to the side wall, paneled in time-darkened golden oak.
"My pleasure, sir."
The table linens were as Maertyn recalled them, of a blue so pale that it was almost but not quite white.
A server appeared, a woman in a tailored pale blue suit that neither accentuated nor concealed her femininely modest figure.
"Would you care to share a bottle of Alais, Maertyn?" asked Ashauer.
"I?d like that." Maertyn smiled politely. Alais was his favorite light white wine, but not that of Ashauer, who generally preferred heavier whites or reds.
"Then…the Alais."
"Yes, sir."
Ashauer barely glanced at the handwritten menu card set on the charger before him. "A cup of the trout bisque, with the Salade Selenian."
The server turned to Maertyn.
"The cream of mushroom, with the fowl risotto."
"The soups here are always excellent," offered Ashauer as the server slipped away.
"I?ve always found them so on the few times I?ve been here."
"Nothing better than a good hot soup on a chill day." Ashauer paused as the server returned with the wine and presented the bottle to him. The older lord nodded, then waited while she opened the bottle and poured the slightest bit into his goblet. He sipped the wine. "Very good."
The server filled both goblets just over the halfway point, then eased the bottle into the chill-cradle at the side of the table before again retreating.
"We?re getting to the time of year when driving can be rather treacherous," said Ashauer blandly. "Are you still using that tiny runabout?"
"The sedan is in storage. I didn?t see much point in getting it out for a few days, and then…" Maertyn shrugged.
"I can see that. Still…larger vehicles can have advantages. But then at times, so do smaller ones. I remember reading a report. It must have been years ago. It noted that a young lord had driven a runabout at high speed between the approach pillars of the Laarnian Martyrs?
Memorial without even scraping the sides of the vehicle." Ashauer laughed. "You were always the cautiously reckless type."
"More reckless at times than cautious," admitted Maertyn.
"Someone must have remembered that. Last week someone did the same thing-the night when everything iced up. There were several accidents. Anyway, whoever it was drove through the stone pillars at the memorial, and a lorry went after the runabout and plowed into the oaks there. The lorry driver died on the spot. He must have had trouble seeing the road and followed the first driver blindly…until it was too late." Ashauer shook his head. "When I read the report in the news, I couldn?t help thinking of you."
"I?m a little old for that sort of thing," replied Maertyn, "especially on icy roads."
"I thought as much. Oh…and that lorry driver, he didn?t have any identification. He used to work for the Gaerda, but their personnel people said he was stipended off a month ago."
Maertyn understood. Whenever a Gaerda operative was killed in suspicious circumstances, somehow, in public notices at least, the operative was always a former employee…or a private contractor who was not currently under contract. "Amazing, isn?t it, how many people who are killed in strange ways turn up not to have any identification, at least until much later, when everyone has forgotten the events surrounding their death?"
"Unless they?re well known, and then everyone gets everything wrong, and by the time it?s all straightened out, most people can?t remember why they got so excited."
"The patterns are similar," Maertyn replied.
Ashauer laughed. "There are only so many patterns. It?s only the young or the arrogant that think there?s much new in the world…and they?re the ones who most often repeat those patterns."
"They don?t have the experience or knowledge, or they reject it. They don?t understand that, unless they understand patterns and history, they?ll repeat the patterns because human beings tend to react in the same ways." Maertyn took a sip of the wine. "At times, we don?t have choices. If your house is burning down around you, the pattern says to run-and it?s right."
Ashauer took another sip from his goblet. "This is a particularly good year for the Alais. I fear those years are numbered. The springs are later, and the falls earlier. You?ve seen the crop figures, I imagine."
"I have."
"So has Minister Tauzn. He?s begun to make a point of them. There was almost a riot after he spoke to a group in Saenblaed. Some of the not-so-resettled marched on the local office of the Ministry of Environment."
"I hadn?t heard that, but I can imagine it was…unpleasant."
Ashauer paused, then asked, "Do you think your research will make a difference?"
"That depends entirely on what I discover. That?s why it?s called research. You may think you know how it will turn out, but it may not. And there?s always the chance that another researcher won?t be able to replicate your results. I?d like to think it will make a difference, one way or the other, but…"
"Do you really believe great secrets are hidden in the canal?" Ashauer?s words were direct, neither skeptical nor scornful.
"That?s not the question. The fact that we can?t even analyze the stone, let alone replicate it in any fashion, indicates great secrets are there. What lies beyond the stone itself, if anything, and whether we can determine that, remains to be seen."
"Interesting, the way you phrased that. "Whether we can determine that…? Could anyone else? Who else might that be?"
"Ashauer…civilizations rise, and they fall. The canal appears to have been created by human beings. If we fail, and civilization again rises…someone else will doubtless try."
"You don?t sound optimistic about our future. Some even might say that?s not a good attitude for an assistant minister."
"Tauzn, for example?"
"The Minister of Protective Services does believe that all problems can be resolved by application of a relentlessly positive attitude."
"And by removal of all those without such an attitude?"
"Maertyn…I?m certain that the current Executive Administrator would scarcely countenance the implementation of such an approach by any of his ministers."
"I appreciate that, and it?s clear that you do as well." What was also clear was that Ashauer was implying that Tauzn would be seeking election as the successor to D?Onfrio, and that more than political views would change.
"Of course, any positive results from your work could not but help influence the course of other events."
"Of course." In short, the EA needed every positive development he could find to derail Tauzn?s bid to succeed him, and Tauzn really didn?t want such developments, or at least not until he was the EA. Maertyn took a larger swallow of the wine. It suddenly tasted bitter, and he set the goblet back down on the pale blue of the table linen as the server neared.
"You always did like cream of mushroom. So did Maarlyna. Jaelora reminded me of that the other day." Ashauer smiled. "You?ve been very cautious. I imagine Maarlyna still does enjoy cream of mushroom."
"Of course." Maertyn smiled in return.