“Thank you, sir. I thought they might be.”
4
Kemal Gavilan was the son of Ossip, the second Sun King of Mercury. His father had died when he was four. Ossip’s brother, Gordon, took the throne and sent Kemal away to be educated in a series of boys’ schools on Mars.
Kemal found a kind of home in this society of boys who came from different societies, different races, and different planets. Red Crest, on the planet’s other hemisphere, was a good school, and Kemal would have liked to stay on into the higher grades. He wanted to learn more about the delicate science that shapes planets to humans and humans to planets, ever seeking a balance between what can be manipulated and what must be left alone. But orders from Gordon had eventually sent him from Red Crest to the John Carter Military Academy, where he began at the age of ten.
John Carter was a very different experience. There were no exotic experiments in education here. This was a military academy and it was run conservatively. Students were taught the importance of team play, l’esprit de corps, and tradition. They received a sound military education in the principal arts and techniques of present-day warfare.
The long, low barrackslike building where Kemal lived was on the far corner of the quadrangle. It didn’t take Kemal long to pack. One of his roommates, Kin Vestry, from Aurora in the Asteroid Belt, was away on pass in Coprates, Mars’s southern capital. His other roommate, Mtabele Khan, returned as he finished packing. As soon as Mtabele saw Kemal’s packed bags, and his maps and photographs down from the walls, he knew what was happening. There was a well-prescribed code for saying good-bye to a roommate.
“Leaving, are you?” Mtabele asked.
“Yes,” Kemal said, “actually, I am.”
“Thought so,” Mtabele said. He hung up his dress tunic. “Going far?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Mercury,” Kemal said.
“Ah,” said Mtabele. “Hottish sort of place, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Kemal said. “Quite near the sun, you know.”
They nodded sagely at each other. Then both broke into laughter.
Slapping one’s friend on the back in a gruff, soldierly manner was permitted. Even a brief hug was not unseemly. Mtabele did both, then went to his drawer and lit two outdated and outlawed Earth cigarettes. He gave one to Kemal.
They took ceremonial puffs, careful not to inhale the smoke, then put the cigarettes out. Cadets liked to keep cigarettes, because they were forbidden and dangerous. But, of course, none of them was fool enough to inhale them. You could get lung cancer that way.
“Well, your leaving is a bother,” Mtabele said. “They’ll probably move in some lout who snores. Kin won’t like it at all.”
“Tell Kin, I apologize for my discourtesy.”
“He absolves you in advance. Take care of yourself, Kemal. Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
It was delicate of Mtabele to not mention who the bastards were.
But Kemal knew.
Gordon Gavilan was not a happy man. Wealthy, yes. Powerful, indubitably. But happy, no. The second of three heirs to the Sun King monarchy, Gordon had held the throne for sixteen years, following his older brother’s untimely death. But try as he might to solidify his position, Gordon still felt that his throne teetered on the precipice of revolution. His rule was increasingly being challenged.
Shortly after coming to power, Gordon was forced by Mercury’s various arcologies to either relinquish social control to a ruling council on the planet, or face a long and costly war. Because he had not yet firmed his military structure, and didn’t yet know where his subjects’ loyalties lay, he had no choice but to agree. Luckily for him, the arcology representatives were benevolent (stupid?) enough to allow him continued control of the planet’s energy and mineral resources.
Since then, he had made the Gavilan clan one of the most wealthy in the solar system, surpassed only by a few families directly tied into the vast RAM fortunes on Mars. These, though, were his latest threat.
RAM supplied Mercury (via the Sun King) with everything it needed, except solar energy and mineral ores, which it produced in abundance itself. Mercury reciprocated with its own resources, as well as with enormous regular payments. Despite frequent polite communiques to the contrary, RAM began edging up its prices for its goods and cutting back on its purchases from Mercury. This left Gordon Gavilan, Sun King of Mercury, few choices. Thus he came to his current quandary.
“Computer, what is to be done about our current financial situation?” asked the larger and older of the remaining Gavilan brothers.
“Taking into account the most significant profit and debit sources, the Gavilan Monetary Fund must either increase its accruals by 105.0246 percent in the next eight days, or reduce its expeditures by 327.54278 percent in the same period to maintain its current balance,” expounded the Gavilan computer-generated accountant.
Gordon’s face, usually his family’s distinctive bronze color, began to redden slightly as he resisted the urge to strike the accountant’s holographic image with his bare hand.
“Calculate the remaining accrual percentage, taking into account agreements with the Warren communities, adding them to the merchandisers’ cooperative,” said Gordon, suddenly having a thought.
“Adding the standard tax payments by both Kallag and Vitesse into my previous calculation, the Monetary Fund must still increase its accruals by 39.0918 percent to maintain its current balance,” stated the computer. “Still insufficient.”
“But it’s a place to start,” rumbled Gordon. As much as he hated the menial task of bookkeeping, anything that could help him maintain his political control always caught his eye. The deep cleft in his brow softened, and he was glad the computer had validated his scheme concerning his nephew, Kemal. Though the impudent little boy had never before held any value for the current Sun King, he now might be the answer to all Gordon’s problems.
5
Kemal took the Pavonis Space Elevator to Interchange Point 3, and then a chemical rocket, the Newyorg, which made the Mercury run in just over three days.
Chemical rockets weren’t comfortable ships, but they were all there were because of the limited tourist travel between Mercury, Mars, and Earth. Sleeping accommodations were little more than crawlspaces, except for Kemal’s, which was small but luxurious. It was only later he learned that Garrick had paid the chief petty officer to give up his cabin for the flight. It was a gesture of goodwill from his least offensive uncle, no doubt, but it left Kemal embarrassed. He would rather have been treated like the other passengers.
Spaceflight was not new to him; he had been to Deimos and Phobos on academy training missions, and had gone several times to Vesta and Ceres in the Asteroid Belt. The difference was that he now traveled alone. Always before he had been with classmates, since, like most military fraternities, the cadets of John Carter lived together in barracks, went on holidays together, even took their weekend leaves together in groups. During his ten years at the academy, Kemal had rarely been alone for more than a few hours.
He woke up that first day in space alone in his cabin, and lay in bed, just savoring the solitude.
Going home. The thought made him laugh. Mercury was nothing to him. His Uncle Gordon had made sure of that, sending him away as hastily as he could, and making sure he stayed away. Gordon couldn’t just cut him off, of course; that would have been a scandal, and the Gavilans avoided scandal. But he had done the next best thing: Buried Kemal in one school after another, keeping him on an allowance sufficient for his needs but not enough to let him do anything he really wanted to do.
Not that Kemal necessarily knew. At twenty years old, an age when most young men had their lives mapped out, he was still dangling on the end of a string that led back to Mercury.
Why were they bringing him back now to Mercury Prime? And where would they send him next? He didn’t know. He knew only that if he got the chance, he’d make himself independent of them.
He need
ed money. And he had a right to it. There was his father’s personal fortune, left for Kemal in trust, the money that Gordon had been doling out to him over the years.
And if he got it, what then? There were plenty of inhabited planets and moons in the solar system, plenty of things for a young man to do. If he could get his hands on the money that was rightfully his, he’d turn his back on Mars, and on Mercury, too; he’d reject the place as it had rejected him, and go somewhere else, Venus or the asteroids, perhaps, a wealthy young man, and make his own life.
He washed, shaved, brushed his teeth, dressed, and went out to mix with the other passengers.
Kemal got into conversation with an elderly Earth couple who were taking a long-awaited grand tour of the inner system: Mercury, Venus, Mars, and one or two of the asteroids.
“It’s our first time off Earth,” Edgar Shaeffer told him. “Jean and I were expecting great things. We’d read all this stuff about the romance of space flight. But, really, you can see more on a television show. This ship has only a few places from which to observe space. And when you look, there’s nothing to see.”
“That’s space,” Mrs. Shaeffer said. She was a plump, red-cheeked woman. “And what about you, young man? Why are you going to the fiery planet?”
Kemal knew she wouldn’t have believed the truth, and he didn’t want to get into it. “Actually,” he lied, “I’m an archaeology student from Coprates University, on my way to Mercury on a study trip.”
“We’re spending two days on Mercury,” Mr. Shaeffer told him.
“We’re booked to visit Kallag in the Maccabbee Caverns, and we’ve got a two-hour stop at Mercury Prime. That’s the satellite home of the Gavilans, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” Kemal said.
“It’s supposed to be one of the art treasures of mankind,” Mrs. Shaeffer said.
They were happy to tell Kemal at great length about Mercury Prime. They had a lot of information, most of it culled from the New Frommer Guide to the Inner Planets. Raised under the tenets of the shrewd Martian industrial-military complex, Kemal was amazed, yet bored, by the couple’s naivete. He excused himself after a while and returned to his cabin. Compelled to his solitude, Kemal remained there and slept until the viewscreen announced that Mercury could be seen to good advantage through the forward viewport. Instead of going and having to deal with the Shaeffers again, he dialed up the view on his screen.
At first there was nothing to see, only the bottomless black pit of space. And then the ship rotated slightly. Automatic polarizers darkened the glass so that passengers weren’t blinded by the enormous glowing fireball swimming against the dead black of space. And there was Mercury’s bright side, jagged, wild, a world without blues or greens. A strange, fiery, red-brown-black-purple landscape without a hint of blue or green. He could make out deserts and mountain ranges. Mustard yellow clouds writhing and twisting over the surface. Active craters pouring out dense yellow smoke. There were a few dark objects moving across the surface—the Mariposas, butterfly-shaped orbital habitats, where Mercury’s chemical and energy reserves were stored.
Then the ship crossed the terminator, the line of separation between Mercury’s dark and bright sides. On one side of the terminator, all objects were bathed in unrelieved brilliance; on the other, unrelieved darkness. The terminator stretched from pole to pole and presented a continually shifting and changing band of light and dark. Long shadows came up swiftly across the rugged surface, as the sun, four times as large as it appeared from Mars, dropped down toward the horizon. Then the ship crossed into the dark side and the passengers were plunged into frigid blackness.
The ship’s braking orbit brought them around to the bright side again, and Kemal could make out what looked like railroad tracks across the cracked desert surface. These were the radiation collectors, an experiment tried by a previous generation and abandoned in the present generation. The Track Cities now used the collection trails, moving slowly along the surface, mining the ore deposits that could be reached on either side of the track. The Miners of the Track Cities were few, but they had somehow managed to adapt to the hard radiation that constantly bombarded the surface.
The main population centers of Mercury were now in the Warrens, the underground cities that had grown extensively over the last twenty years. By previously established protocol, the spaceship’s flight was no closer than one hundred kilometers to the Maccabbee Caverns, where the two leading Warrens shared an extensive underground cave system.
The ship turned again toward space, and the cabin speakers came on. “Prepare for disembarkation at Mercury Prime.”
6
As the Shaeffers had described, Mercury Prime was the orbital home of the Gavilans.
Seen in the approach, it resembled a carved and ornamented cylinder floating free in space. It was a miracle of ornamentation; every inch of it was covered with carvings, bas-reliefs, statues, and friezes. It was one of the wonders of the Inner Solar System, built during the free-wheeling days of Bahlam, the first Sun King. Legend said that a craftsman had died for each square meter of its making.
As the ship descended, the cylinder grew rapidly in size. More and more features became evident, and Kemal had the feeling that he was coming down to a world infinite in scope and variety.
The ship’s public address speaker squawked again. “All passengers, please proceed to the main exit. Have your passports and health documents ready. Your baggage will be waiting for you on the other side of the customs barrier.”
Kemal left the cabin and went down the corridor to the exit port. He entered, and the valved door closed with a sigh of air. Kemal saw the overhead lights glow, denoting the brief irradiation that would remove off-planet bacteria. Then there was another hiss as the other door dilated. He swallowed hard and stepped out onto Mercury Prime.
As Kemal went through the doorway, he was met by a tall, thin, balding young man in his mid-twenties.
“Hail, Prince Leadfoot! You made the trip in record time, but you’re not supposed to fly your own shuttle, you know,” joked the lanky, one-man reception party. “You’re Kemal, of course. I’ve seen holos of you in the family album. A couple of years out of date, but no mistaking the resemblance. Welcome to Mercury Prime.”
“Thank you,” Kemal said. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you remember me? I’m Tix, Gordon’s youngest—your cousin.”
When Kemal had last seen him, Tix had been a chubby, depressed boy. Now he seemed much changed, with a harrassed, nervous look. He glanced around often, seemingly by reflex, since there were no people about, and he tugged absentmindedly at his lower lip as he spoke. Yet his glance was shrewd, appraising, and intelligence gleamed in his narrow blue eyes.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Tix said. “I’m very glad to see another young, royal face. It’s lonely being a prince.”
“You needn’t tell me,” said Kemal. “I’m the one who’s been on ‘holiday’.”
“Well, glad to have you back.” Tix took Kemal’s satchel from his hand and led his guest down a guarded corridor, away from the landing bay. “I’ve been dying for someone to really talk to. That is, if Your Highness doesn’t mind.”
“Tell you what, Tix. I’ll grant a whole day of prince-to-prince discussion if you’ll tell me why your father wants me back. Deal?”
“Deal. Granted, I don’t know specifics, but its got to do with something you inherited from your father: land, titles, money, I don’t know. That’s all I can tell you. I do hope you’ve got lots to tell me. Dalton certainly isn’t much company now that he’s in the military.”
“Dalton’s in the military?”
“Yes. Two years ago, my brother entered the Mercury Prime Security Forces as a sergeant. Now he’s thirty-two and already colonel. Needless to say, he takes his duties very seriously. In fact,” Tix said, lowering his voice, “even Father himself is wary of Dalton’s ambition.”
“What does Dalton look like these days?”
> “Just the same—a big barrel-chested Viking with a high voice and swinish ways.”
“What do you do, Tix?” Kemal asked. “Is Uncle Gordon grooming you for the kingship?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Tix said cheerfully. “I’m really not interested in it.” His eyes sparkled, and he looked like a different person. “I mean, this satellite is an art treasure. Grandfather Bahlam collected treasures from all over. What he couldn’t get, he had made for him by the best artists and finest craftsmen of his time. This place is probably man’s supreme architectural achievement in orbit. And is anyone taking care of it? I can assure you not. So I’ve taken it upon myself to fix up a few of the areas that Grandfather never got around to. The main battle station, for example. I think that a gothic look would be perfect for it. What do you think, Kemal? Tall, thin windows draped in black, the main operating boards raised on a dais, indirect lighting combined with hot spots—”
“I think it sounds great,” Kemal interrupted, “but is that what Gordon wants you to do?”
“Father lets me do what I please. Says I’d be useless at ruling, anyhow. Like I said, he wants to see you, Kemal. In fact, he’s waiting now.”
Tix led Kemal down gleaming corridors. There were portraits hung at intervals, and Tix pointed to each in turn and rattled off what it was, where it came from, and how much it was worth.
“Here we are,” Tix said as they came to a large, carved wooden door. “Father is in there. I’ll drop off your satchel, then meet you for dinner. Maybe later we can compare calendars for our mutual audience. And I’ll show you some of my sketches for the new West Wing, too.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Kemal said, and knocked at the door.
7
The audience room was remarkable for the sense of great length and depth it imparted by artfully placed mirrors and holographic projections. Kemal could have sworn that the tall white curtains were stirring to a summer breeze rather than a concealed wind machine. Looking out through the windows, he seemed to be viewing a broad green lawn with white marble sculptures of heroic men and beasts scattered over it, leading past a pagoda, down to a little stream, then beyond it, to low hills lying against one another in picturesque folds. All holographic projection, of course, which allowed the eye, frustrated and fretted by the continually close surroundings of Mercury Prime, to give itself some relief in visual fantasies of distance and chiaroscuro.
Various Fiction Page 305