A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [141]
However, Jess continued to feel a growing suspicion that this mysterious fluid was…unusual. He experienced an eerie sensation whenever he stood close to the cylindrical container. He watched the liquid sitting there, utterly transparent, without a bubble or a speck of impurity.
And it seemed to glow, filled with something unmeasurable.
“What is this?” he said aloud.
As more water was added, collected from misty condensation, it shimmered and roiled, concentrating some unusual essence that it somehow retained after being dispersed across the emptiness between stars. If Jess had been prone to Roamer superstitions, he might even believe that the nebula water was possessed.
Squatting close to the cylindrical container, he touched its curved walls, feeling a warmth that should not have existed. It made him giddy. He couldn’t deny it—this throbbing water was not simply water…but much more. Haunted…possessed…somehow alive in a way that made little sense.
And gradually, alone on his big drifting ship, Jess Tamblyn began to communicate with it.
72
BASIL WENCESLAS
The Hansa Chairman sat on top of the world in his penthouse suite. He pulled the strings, made all the important decisions, commanded the wealth and resources of sixty-eight scattered and loosely allied planets.
And yet he felt powerless. Sometimes, the clear and undiluted truth—without spin, without extenuating circumstances, without mitigating data—was too difficult for any human being to handle.
In blissful silence, he stared out the broad windows as he sipped his cardamom coffee. Sunset spread a metallic film of golden rays over the Palace District. The WhisperPalace looked as if it had been splashed with molten bronze. Torches on the cupolas and bridge posts glinted like bright eyes. Today, unfortunately, the fading sunset seemed too symbolic, too depressing.
Detailed analyses compiled by his handpicked experts left no room for doubt. There was no question: The Hansa was doomed and would fall very soon unless something changed dramatically.
Basil turned away, not wanting to see the lengthening twilight shadows. How could he hold it all together? He felt as if the weight would crush him. He finished his coffee, savoring the pungent aftertaste on his tongue, and went back to his crystalline table, which he had cleared of papers and debris.
One of the earlier Chairmen of the Hansa, Malcolm Stannis, had said it best in his posthumously published memoirs: “Business is war, and war is a business.”
Screens came alive on a thin film embedded within the table surface. Shaking his head, Basil looked at statistical projections, maps of settled colonies, resource distributions of food, transport, luxury items. He could take in all of the displays at once—not just details, but the overall state of the Hanseatic League. And it did not look good.
Some colonies were worse off than others. In previous decades, Relleker had concentrated on its burgeoning success as a spa planet, but now no one could afford to go off-world on a discretionary trip. Relleker was begging for aid and supplies that Basil simply could not provide.
Cloudy Dremen needed solar mirrors and greenhouse enhancers to augment crops that could barely survive in the dim sunlight. The Yrekans had already been forced into an ill-advised rebellion, and now they were licking their wounds. The forest industry of Boone’s Crossing had been destroyed by the hydrogues, and although it was good for public relations to rally around the tragic survivors, those desperate people had now become hungry refugees. Who was going to feed them?
Basil had scripted the appropriate optimistic speeches for King Peter, slanting reality, but the stretched fabric of those lies would not hold much longer. He clenched his fist and stared at the projections, as if by force of will he could alter the bottom line.
Unfortunately, the numbers were accurate,