Command Decision Read Free

emotions swirled…he had not known, he had not understood. What he had not understood, he could not say; he wanted desperately to see his father, talk to him. He forced that aside as he moved back across the property toward the road. Whatever had gone wrong, he must not be suspected or captured now.
    Reentering the theater at the climax of the second act, he slipped unobtrusively into the men’s room, into the stall he had used, retrieved his costume and put it on over the skinsuit, and then—sticking a finger down his throat—vomited into the toilet, noisily. It was easier than he’d thought it would be, and his face was suitably pale when he looked in the mirror. He returned to his table at the intermission; a passing waitress asked him if he felt all right.
    “Too much travel,” he said, smiling at her. “My stomach—it is delicate, I’m afraid.”
    “Should I call someone?”
    “No…I should be all right now. But tell me—is it possible to get a private car to the port area? I don’t know if I feel like riding the tram.”
    “Of course, sir. Would you like me to arrange that now, or do you want to see the rest of the play? It’s quite good—”
    “I will try to stay, but—”
    “Just press this button, if you need me,” she said, reminding him of the call button on his table.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    Through the third act of the romantic comedy, he tried to think rather than feel. He had expected a chilly reconciliation or an angry rejection…not this blank nothingness of absence. Were they dead? Surely he would have heard…but he had not been at his last reported address; he had been in space, much of the time in FTL flight, utterly unreachable, for…more than half a standard year now. Perhaps they had died, and no one could find him. Yet…why then the odd response to his call? And if they weren’t dead, where were they?
    He clapped with the rest when the show was over, and the waitress came over to check on him and tell him she had arranged a car. He thanked her; he had already left a generous tip. His watcher was outside on the steps, feigning interest in a poster advertising the show. Rafe leaned on one of the pillars until a car drew up and the driver asked for “Gen-son Ra-tan-vi?” with the accent on the wrong syllable in both names.
    The watcher stared fixedly at the poster—better than whirling around, but not much, Rafe thought as he got into the car and gave the hotel name and address to the driver. He made no effort to lower his voice, and besides, the watcher could always check with the car hire company. The paunchy foreigner had indeed gone straight back to his hotel after being sick in the men’s room.
    He lay a long time on the bed, wondering what to do next. The newsfeed in his room, its sound automatically muted this late at night, had nothing about his family, and only the blandest announcement that ISC was making good progress restoring ansible service. The talking head for that announcement was Lew Parmina, his father’s closest associate and expected successor. Rafe remembered the man—intelligent, sophisticated, affable—who had been his father’s messenger in the most difficult years when his father had virtually disowned him. Parmina had counseled patience, had promised to do what he could to mend the breach; he had sent friendly notes now and then with the remittance payments. He looked much the same, with the well-groomed gloss of the successful man of business.
    Rafe turned off the newsfeed. He didn’t care about Parmina unless the man had something to do with his family’s disappearance. Which surely he did not: he was well up the ladder to the highest position in the most powerful monopoly in human space; what more could he want?
    Where was his father—his mother—his family?
He felt as if a crevasse had opened up beside him and half his universe had disappeared into it, as if he teetered on the brink of some bottomless pit. He shivered and dragged the