As well as did the considerably more diminutive Captain Islay, Arran’s daughter knew, from one corner of her eye observing her mother smile quietly at the same time, and doubtless with the same thought. Of course, that was a different matter, they both realized, one of sheer, indomitably stubborn determination.
“We are likewise informed,” Lia went on, “that Captain Krumm once enjoyed a narrow but successful escape from chirurgical and cheminergic alteration into an Oplyte warrior-slave, himself. It is asserted that he decapitated a number of the slavers with an oven ‘peel,’ a sort of gigantic metallic spatula gradually rendered razor-sharp through its continual sliding contact with an oven floor. It is our conviction that, upon account of this experience, he will prove that much more unlikely to allow his commander, his commander’s family, and their fellow travelers, to suffer such a cruel fate as capture by the enemy they pursue. That is precisely chiefmost of the tasks with which we would charge him.”
For his part, Bretta was aware, Krumm would never consider undertaking such a journey without his own family, his two wives of long standing, Tula and Tillie. These constituted yet another reason—and an insultingly salacious one—that the Hanoverian media could not seem to get enough of Krumm. Never mind the mundane fact that both his women were small, plump, middleaged, and remarkably unglamorous to anybody but him. Most of the human populations of the imperia-conglomerate were monogynous, although this was chiefly due less to any virtue of moderation and restraint than to a need—Bretta recalled reading about it under the heading “Marginal Utility” in an economics textbook—to preserve the perceived value of politically and financially advantageous marriages.
Lia smiled as sweetly as possible at each of her listeners in turn. “And then, of course, there is our present—and our father’s former—Executor-General, the wise, courageous, and highly capable Sedgeley Daimler-Wilkinson, esquire.”
“What?”
“Did you say something, Sedgeley? We thought not. Sedgeley is that most insightful and resourceful individual who brought Jennivere Daimler-Wilkinson—or ‘Owld Jenn’ as she now styles herself—to our attention in the first place, for which we thank him profoundly and sincerely. Not only does he have unanticipated depths, as we have discovered more than once already, we know he will agree that, in this best of all possible worlds, no good deed should go unpunished.”
Bretta could see clearly that her great-uncle now wore a nonplussed (not to mention openly apprehensive) expression upon his face. Such transparency represented a breach, she thought, for a professional diplomat of his reputed level. The girl regarded Lia with new appreciation. For Sedgeley, being torn out of his sybaritic life at the Immortal School and sent upon this perilous, uncomfortable expedition, would be rather like what he had done to his niece—and more importantly in this context, the Ceo’s closest friend—fifteen years ago.
But Lia was going on. “Of late, it has come to our attention that these depths include a rather sensational career as a duelist in his youth, during a period when masques were fashioned in ‘cutaway’ style, first to facilitate, and then to reveal a fashionable scar.” She leaned forward, more directly to address the one of whom she had been speaking. “Where you go now, Sedgeley, such an avocation may prove more valuable than any political skill you may possess.”
Lia snapped her fingers, and a servant who had not been apparent before came forward, bearing a leather-covered case. Within lay something slender and silvery which made Bretta think of the slim rod running along her own forearm.
“Therefore, Sedgeley Daimler-Wilkinson, Executor-General to Lia, Ceo of Hanover, we present you, in the sight of all these others, this handsomely engraved personal thrustible—with which we command you to begin practicing each day, beginning this evening, until you and your company leave Hanoverian orbit.”
The diplomat stammered. “Madame, I am not—I do not quite know what to—”
“Say nothing, then, good fellow. We have come to like you well and would greatly enjoy seeing you seize this opportunity to reestablish yourself. What is more . . . I shall take personal advantage of the moment to advise you that I was brought up to favor a stoic, rather than a hedonistic view, as I believe you were, as well. Your long, faithful service to my father made you wise and useful in the ways of power; however, I believe that you have been foolish, lately, squandering your capabilities upon a myriad of empty-headed bodily pleasures. I fondly hope that you will think upon this waste during your journey.”
“Madame Ceo, I—”
“Also, my dear Sedgeley, I reckon that you have an old and unpaid debt of honor that you must be quite desperate to settle. Your brother Clive was not quite as lucky in escaping the Oplyte slavers as Mr. Krumm, here. Upon that account, the bizarre wretch once known as Jennivere will travel with you. She should serve you as a constant reminder of that debt, do you require it, the repayment of which—with interest—may well turn out to be the making of you.”
Bretta squirmed a little with vicarious embarrassment. She supposed that it must have been a very humbling experience for a man in his late fifties to receive such a lecture from someone less than forty, and a woman, at that. The Executor-General had colored as it began, but now appeared to have himself in hand.
“For this and other reasons, we have commanded that Jennivere retrace, as nearly as possible, the unlucky pleasure voyage she began so long ago with her husband.”
“But Madame Ceo,” Demondion-Echeverria interjected, “when we questioned her, she was quite unable to tell us anything about where she had traveled or when—”
“To aid her, my dear Ambassador, we have consulted at some considerable length with an expert skilled in the evocation of lost memories, including such trivial data—that is, from the viewpoint of an unwilling passenger—as the visible stellar patterns from which navigational inferences may be extracted.”
“Ahh,” Demondion-Echeverria nodded understanding. “The ancient hypnosis. Mesmerism.”
“Owld Jenn has already experienced a number of surprisingly productive sessions with this expert. Thirty years ago, Jennivere Daimler-Wilkinson’s ill-fated journey took her from the dizzying heights of Hanoverian aristocracy to subhuman depths of degradation and despair. Her one comfort today seems to be the anticipation of revenge, and to this end, we assure you, we shall lend her every assistance. To begin with, at our order, her son Woulf will go with her.”
Bretta must have made some kind of face, although she had no recollection of it, for now the Ceo Lia turned to her. “That will make one more like you, my dear, who is familiar, not just with weapons themselves, but, something far more important in these overly fastidious times, the idea of weapons.” The Ceo shrugged. “And the pair, mother and son, appear to be inseparable in any case.”
“Lastly, we shall require that Sedgeley be accompanied by his old friends and confidantes, Frantisek Demondion-Echeverria who, as a refugee to Hanover, will now have an opportunity to repay his adopted imperium-conglomerate, and the formidable Brother Leo—no, no, Father, do not break your vow to thank us.”
“Madame Ceo . . . I implore you . . .” Demondion-Echeverria spluttered, “I beseech you . . . I . . .” His face had turned purple. Brother Leo’s was pure white.
Lia straightened herself where she sat. “Dear gentlebeings, we fervently wish that we, too, were going forth with all of you upon this great adventure. We could complain, as others before us have done, that we are no more than a prisoner of our office. But in truth, we rather enjoy being the Ceo, and in any event, who put a thrustible to our head and commanded that we accept the position?”
The irony, Bretta knew, was that this was virtually what Leupould had done.
“And now, one of the most dangerously exhilarating temptations of power is the frequent and satisfying opportunity it presents one to command whole gaggles of poltroons and dimwits to stop jabbering over a task and get on with it.
“With due respect, it is to this temptation that I now allo
w myself to succumb.”
CHAPTER XX:
EUNUCHS DRESSED AS CLOWNS
“Now, now, Father, you need not say a single word—even if you were inclined to do so. I happen to know precisely what you are thinking at the moment.”
Lia buried both of her hands in the opposite furtrimmed sleeves of her coat. It was not truly cold today, especially where she and her companions sat together now, but the perpetually leaden skies of Hanover—which made the rainy planet Skye appear relatively sunny and dry—always made her feel as if it were. She had never gotten used to it, and doubted that she ever would.
Brother Leo raised his massive eyebrows at his daughter, but, of course, said nothing at all. He had a secret wager with himself that Lia knew nothing of what he thought. And if she did not, then no one did, which was exactly as he wished it. The ugly fact that he was about to be compelled to spend the next several months in human company not of his own choosing filled him with disgust and dread. But he was not prepared to say so to his daughter now, nor—the prospect being far worse than that of the voyage itself—to explain why.
Instead, he pretended to gaze out through the one-way window at his elbow upon the dense traffic of passersby, both vehicular and pedestrian, both alien and otherwise. There were even one or two sapient species out there that he was unable to recognize, an indication that considerable time had passed since his abdication—along with an even greater number of events—so much that he had somehow lost track of it. The route they took this afternoon, however, was completely familiar to him, as he had often been a guest at what he still thought of as Sedgeley’s house, during a happier time when he had been the ruler of more than he could possibly survey and called the Residence ahead his own.
They were being conveyed back to that very edifice now in his daughter’s official unmarked vehicle, a glowing teardrop-shape of metalloid mesh, self-directed, entirely devoid of moving parts, driven by §-fields that forced air through a forward intake, accelerated it, and expelled it out the rear of the machine, thrusting them along efficiently and quietly, several siemmes above the cobbled street, suspended upon the same frictionless §-fields propelling them.
There was a time when he would have enjoyed this ride, but it was gone forever.
Lia had requested that her father accompany her back from the Daimler-Wilkinson establishment while Sedgeley and his friend Demondion-Echeverria took transport of their own to the same destination. Since that first day when they had called upon her with regard to the return of Owld Jenn to the capital planet, she had gently but firmly insisted that they stay with her at her Residence. The strain of remaining upon dry land, within an unnourishing atmosphere of mere air, under the full force of Hanover’s rather oppressive gravity, was beginning to tell upon all three—an effect she had awaited patiently.
In the end, they would be more than eager to take ship and be quit of her.
Presently, she smiled. “You wish to know why, aside from reasons I have lately given in public, I urge my old pupil, Captain Arran Islay—your old enemy, the brigand Henry Martyn—to accept this allimportant assignment I have offered him. It really is quite straightforward, Father. You see, he was brought up—partly by me—to detest the Oplyte Trade. If anyone lives who would deal it a mortal blow—and can—it is he. And, sharing his deep hatred of the vile enterprise, as I do, I sincerely wish him every conceivable success.”
Had there been reproach in what she had just said? In all his time as Ceo, he had done nothing about the Trade, nor had it even occurred to him to try.
She watched his frown, and chuckled. “Is that a trifle circular for you, Father?”
Her father shrugged, pretending to indifference. Apparently Lia had not meant to criticize him. And in all truth, Brother Leo was more than a little curious about what it would be like existing at close quarters with the boy who—but no, Henry Martyn was the merest of scamps, compared to the horrific things that haunted his nightmares these days—had done, for more than a decade—and he actually looked forward to spending some time with the young rascal.
“All the same,” Lia continued, as if completely unaware of the way in which her father’s troubled mind was churning, “I must confess that I wonder myself, whether it is altogether wise of Arran to take his wife and daughter along with him. As you know—and better than anyone else, I should think—I have garnered rather a deal of personal experience upon behalf of . . . well, shall we say, ‘far-flung interests’ that you and I happened to share at the time?”
Brother Leo nodded, remembering.
His daughter went on. “Much of it involved long-range reconnaissance and deep-cover espionage, operations the benefits of which I experience today from the consuming end of the gathering process, as it were, rather than from the producing end. Yet I understand that process well, and by every indication that I am aware of, Father, the present expedition is certain to prove to be an exquisitely dangerous undertaking. Still, within the Monopolity of Hanover—just as in any other imperium-conglomerate that considers itself remotely civilized—not even a Ceo may question a man’s decisions concerning his own family.”
There it was again, that bitter tone of reproof. Or perhaps it was just his guilty conscience attempting to communicate with him. Again he peered at his daughter suspiciously and tried not to assume a pained expression. Again he wondered what all this was in aid of. Lia had arrayed herself against an institution vaster, and vastly more ancient, than the imperia-conglomerate to which it sold its one and only product. Conceding that the coming mission would be dangerous was like conceding that erecting the ’Droom had required a bit of stonemasonry.
“You know, Father . . .”As the conveyance turned at last into the broad semicircular driveway at the rear, unofficial entrance of the Residence, Lia began offhandedly as if the new subject she was about to broach were merely small talk she had just thought of. “It is quite characteristic of my early life that it never occurred to me to wonder at the time about my own case in particular.”
He gave her an interrogative look. What in the Ceo’s name could she be driving at? He felt himself far too old and tired for these games. He had lacked the energy and spirit for them since just before his abdication. If the girl had some issue to rebuke him over, he wished she would simply spit it out.
“Judging by his behavior, my father must have felt he had children to spare.”
There it was, at last.
“He sent me out upon one desperately dangerous mission after another, to ‘sink or swim’ as I may. Not that I ever raised a complaint, mind you; I had been very stringently brought up never to do so. No one can deny today that I managed to survive, grow, and flourish, somehow, as a result, although I doubt that this was the object of my upbringing. And in the end, perhaps also as a result, my father even thought me qualified to take his place. Although might a daughter not reasonably judge that to be just another desperately dangerous mission?”
She gave him a sidelong glance.
Leupould was adamantly determined never to offer to his daughter—or to anybody else, for that matter—as much as the slenderest clue to the reasons for his behavior, either past or present. He knew perfectly well, now, what Lia was attempting, and he swore grimly to himself that he would deny her the satisfaction.
“Sink or swim,” to be sure! And had any child ever proven satisfied, in the years that followed afterward, with the manner of its upbringing? Had any ever failed to blame its personal shortcomings and professional failures upon its parents? Had any never yearned for the chance to bring its manifold grievances before that selfsame vile culprit, bound, gagged, and helpless—precisely as Brother Leo found himself—whom he held most accountable for them?
“The object of her upbringing,” she had prattled. By the Ceo’s ballocks—strike that; make it ovaries—what other object could there be, except to be brought up? And if the orb and scepter that he had passed along to Lia were just the least bit tarnished, a trifle second-rate, well, she mi
ght prove fortunate enough never to learn the truth of that particular matter, might she not? Had he not done everything he could, himself, to assure that she never did?
At last their carriage drew itself to the gentlest of halts at the foot of a broad, sweeping, colonnaded staircase lined solidly from bottom to top with liveried guardsmen. Undaunted by her father’s silence (which seemed only natural, by now) and his lack of response (which did not), she stubbornly refrained from dismounting when the door was opened for her, but instead, continued:
“I do know my own father, Leupould Wheeler, well enough to understand the one, all-important fact about him: that, without even a moment’s hesitation, he would have thrown himself straightaway into the same danger he exposed his daughter to, had he but believed the action needful to preserve his concept of civilization.”
Brother Leo sighed deeply as if in good-natured resignation, and nodded, wondering whether his daughter would ever have occasion to learn that, more than anything, what he was agreeing with her about just now was her choice of tenses.
“And now, Father,” she told him over her shoulder as she allowed herself to be handed out, “with this expedition, you will have a chance to prove me right.”
Lia’s stirring (if somewhat sarcastic) call to action was one thing. The realities of preparing an excursion into unknown territory were quite another.
To begin with, there were crewbeings to recruit, for skilled hands almost certainly would not be replaceable beyond the furthest reaches of the imperia-conglomerate. Careful precautions of the belt-and-suspender variety must also be taken regarding sails, standing and running rigging, consumable supplies, weapons, and spares. A two-month pleasure tour such as they had just essayed to Hanover from Skye—not just through the Known Void, but through the Well Known Void—was not the same at all as the open-ended sally they purposed into what would inevitably prove hostile territory. Was that not the reason they were venturing out, after all, to accomplish things that would engender hostility?
Coordinated Arm 02: Bretta Martyn Page 19