by John Barnes
Jak and Dujuv deposited their bags into small, comfortable rooms in the dormitory. They worked out on resistance machines with about twenty other young heets, all of them in just thong and shoes, and a small crowd of fashionably dressed young women watched them. Myxenna wasn’t among them, which surprised Jak slightly and also pleased him since it was one less thing to precess Dujuv.
There was no mess but there was a generous meal allowance to draw on; Jak and Dujuv ate in a small Lunar Greek restaurant within the Palace that Xabo suggested. They were to report back immediately after dinner for night assignments.
“I ought to message Uncle Sib and tell him what’s going on, except I don’t actually know myself,” Jak said to Dujuv.
They came around the corner into the office. Kawib returned their salutes in his oddly sardonic manner; he never did anything wrong yet everything he did implied that he knew he was only playing soldier.
“Well,” he said, “night patrol tonight. Wear these monocles so you can see the infrared sprite. Follow it. If you encounter anything that looks like it should not be happening, either suppress it yourself or call for help. Every time the sprite flickers into the visible light range and starts running through all the colors of the spectrum, call in to report that everything is okay. If your sprite suddenly glows red and moves quickly, follow it because it’s taking you to where someone needs backup. In my two years here, that has never happened. All you’ll see is lost, drunken, noisy kids, fresh from a party somewhere. The Princess prefers that we be officious with them and make them afraid, and urges you to feel free to hit them. I am required to tell you that it is an official privilege of your job to be, and I quote, ‘moderately abusive for your own pleasure.’ (Unofficially I’m adding that if I catch you hurting people for fun, you and I have a sparring date, and I’m a local champion.) I’m sure we’ll all see each other before the night is out. The sprites tend to go to the same places.”
Darkness was just falling, the lights dimming on the bottom of New Bethlehem five hundred kilometers above as the glass a kilometer overhead changed to opaque, when Jak set out. For the first hour, he followed the sprite, a hand-sized pale gray cross, as it danced along the hedge walls of the central maze.
Jak’s stiff, thick coat, tight knee breeches, and high black boots were out of a comic opera. The jingle of all the little medallions and metal decorations precessed him too. When he tried standing still and listening intently, he heard only the faint jingles of other RPGs.
Standing there in the quiet, Jak glanced up. The dome was de-opaquing. When possible, Greenworld used “natural” rather than “room-style” darkness for night. A shiny black circle, as wide as your hand at arm’s length, covered the zenith, where New Bethlehem hung above them, absorbing all the sunlight falling on it. Columns of crescents descended around the black circle—habitats on other arms, a few lit brightly and a few dark with just a few lights on.
Around the crescents the stars blazed brilliantly, barely dimmed by a mere kilometer of air. Off to his right, low on the horizon, he could see the bright double “star” of the Earth and Moon, and to the right of that pair, the dimmer, much more distant Hive. He stood on one of the broad lawns, surrounded by statues of Earth animals—his purse said they were trophies of the conquest, and had once stood around the doors of the Republic Hall. The shapes of the horns and the graceful fins on the stone creatures cut into the sky full of stars and crescents, both peaceful and violent, like silhouetted twisted wreckage on the walls of a fortification, many long years after a battle, rusting in the shapes into which it had burned.
The gray cross waited patiently; with no reason for Jak to be here, the AI that steered the sprite could afford patience.
Then the cross zipped toward one entry into the hedge maze, and veered back and forth, like a crazed puppy, urging him to hurry. Jak followed, the silly jewelry on his chest tinkling madly. The sprite led him up a winding pathway onto a low stone platform and turned right.
Jak was on the big stone stairs of the Heir’s Palace, facing up the hillside toward the complex neobaroque fractal profusion of doorways and windows in the cascading stone fountain of high arches and vaults. The Heir’s Palace seemed poised to fly, either to sail up into the stars, or to plunge down the stairway like an owl on a mouse.
The overhead dome re-opaqued for another pass through daylight, and the bright sky faded as if someone had turned down a dimmer. At the top, the sprite led him to a wall where a hidden door dilated silently.
Down a hall, through another door, Sesh was waiting by candlelight. Nearly Jak’s height but less than half his mass, her body was shaped by the admixture of gracile that the Karrinynya line had acquired from the three-century-long Permanent Regency, when the bored captive kings and princes had ennobled showgirls, courtesans, and models as their consorts.
The candlelight, scattered by bozze, sconces, chandelier, and fiber-trees, made her thick, almost waist-length red hair and ocean-storm blue eyes blaze. Her coffee-colored skin was covered with a fine-lined geometric tan pattern, now, different from the tiger stripe she had worn as his demmy.
She wore a scarf tied low on her hips, just enough to cover, and her hair poured over her breasts in a wave of crimson highlight and black shadow. “Jak Jinnaka,” she said. “It’s been a long time. I’ve had lovers, but I haven’t had anyone touch me gently, or like an equal, or just for love. I … would you like … ?” She let the question trail off, sighed, stretched, and brushed her hair back over her shoulders; her hands continued in a single motion to release the scarf like slippery smoke. Her soft lips felt his as if trying to memorize him, and when he gently pressed his tongue forward her mouth opened wide and soft.
She giggled at the awkwardness of removing his heavy uniform.
The black leather chaise among candlelit mirrors was exquisitely smooth and soft, just firm enough to let him take his weight on his hands. She pulled him into her, and they thrust together, fast and hard, more and more, until she arched her back and his hard thrusts ululated her cat-shriek into a siren.
Jak sat back, spent, panting, heart and mind empty, his eyes wandering in awe across the perfect planes and curves of her body, from her high-cheekboned face to her wide-flung thighs. The sweat on his chest and shoulders would cool in a moment—
The lights came full on, bright and blinding.
“See,” Sesh said, in a tone better suited to a lecture than to a bedroom, “that was what I was talking about.” She flipped off the chaise in a beautiful back somersault and landed on her feet, turning in a mocking dancer’s bow to the candled mirrors.
The mirrored wall flew up into the ceiling, revealing an array of theater seats, occupied by Kawib, Dujuv, Myxenna, and three other young women.
With a cry, Jak rolled and covered, feeling more naked than he had ever felt in his life.
Sesh laughed uproariously. Two of the three girls that Jak didn’t know joined her, seeming to compete to see who could laugh hardest. The very pale blonde girl, who sat apart from them, sat perfectly still, as if watching a poisonous snake crawl toward her. Everyone in the seats was naked.
“Well, you all saw,” Sesh said. “In fact having you all see is probably what’s bothering Jak.”
The two girls laughed again. Myxenna and Dujuv were staring into space; between them, and a row farther down, Kawib was glaring, all but hyperventilating.
“Now,” Sesh went on, “Dujuv can attest that neither he nor Jak had any conditioning. That was Jak’s real, natural response to me. And if you were all watching closely, you saw that I had a lovely time. Bland, of course, but lovely.” She spoke directly to the still, pale blonde woman. “So, you see, Seubla, I do know what you mean when you prattle on about gentleness and sweetness and tender love and all those pretty words, all those things you were saying I didn’t understand—in fact, that’s what my first experiences were, too, very much like yours. So I don’t just understand, I really know, firsthand, that all this kind of tender-cuddles
mush causes very strong bonds! Which is exactly why you and Kawib are not going to resign and marry.”
Seubla said, “I never doubted you could enjoy any form of sex, Your Utmost Grace.”
“You’re a tough little bitch, and very stubborn, and you never give up, do you?” Sesh said, with an amused smile that seemed strangely affectionate. “You’re going to say that it’s different if your heart is in it. And I’m sure you’re right, because I know my heart wasn’t in it this time, but it has been in the past, and it was different. I really do think that, back on the Hive, when I was Jak’s demmy, my heart was in it, quite often, very sincerely. At least I have no memory of having any contradictory thoughts. I was actually very much in despair once (for almost a week!) about the certainty that I would have to leave the Hive and that Jak could never be more than my consort, not my husband. Of course I was sixteen and one has many stupid thoughts at that age, doesn’t one?
“Anyway, I toktru could not let you get away with what you said at dinner the other day, Seubla. Nor with your agreeing with her, Kawib, however laudable your loyalty to a demmy might otherwise be. I do know what gentleness and tenderness in bed is, and I know what it is like to have sex with someone who has not been conditioned to my tastes, and I have enjoyed it. Jak, thank you. Don’t dress. Take that seat over there. Sit with your legs apart, that’s what we always do in this room. Or rather what all of you always do in this room. I always do what I want.”
His feet seemed to lift him from the chaise and carry him to his designated seat. Everyone else’s nakedness did not make him any more comfortable.
“Now.” Her tone reminded Jak that he was supposed to call her “Princess Shyf.” “Come here, Kawib, and we’ll demonstrate something for our guests.”
As if being marched to the gallows, Kawib got up and walked stiffly to her; Jak looked down, not wanting to see whatever came next.
“Please,” Seubla whispered, beside him. Now that he was closer, he could see that she was small, plump, not terribly pretty, nose a little too large and eyes a little too close together. “Please, she punishes everyone if anyone doesn’t watch.”
“I don’t punish,” the Princess said, “you are to watch and learn because that is what your job is. But thank you for clarifying things for my old friends, Seubla, they are new here.” She turned Kawib outward to face them, and again her voice fell into the cadence of lecture. “Jak, Dujuv, tomorrow, you will report for conditioning. The first time takes a few hours. After that, once or twice a week we refresh the hypnosis, resensitize to my pheromone mix, and review some special viv, so that eventually—” She smiled, looked at the commander of her guard, and said “Hard!”
His face showed nothing but loathing, but he was instantly erect. She stretched out on the couch and said, “Now, I expect everyone’s full attention.”
She smiled at Kawib. Jak had seen Bex Riveroma contemplating removing his liver, and this smile was worse.
“Kawib.” The man got on her as if he were being strapped face down on a bed of nails, did what he was supposed to with an expression of fury, and kept doing it until she said, “Release.” He convulsed briefly, pushed back, and stood at the end of the chaise.
“Good boy,” the Princess said. “You may give your sow a little peck on the cheek. Report for two hours’ refresher conditioning tomorrow. You’re not as reflexive as you should be.”
Kawib stood and walked slowly back to the seats. Tears were streaking his face. He bent and brushed Seubla’s cheek with his lips; the two of them smiled at each other, clinging to each other’s hands.
“He lives for this,” Sesh said, and she, and her two other ladies in waiting, laughed loudly, a harsh sound, like a clique of children on the playground who have just decided who will be the goat. Myx, Duj, and Jak sat still. Kawib and Seubla remained entranced by each other’s eyes. After a while, Princess Shyf lost patience and shouted, “That’s enough.”
When Xabo dropped into the gym early the next morning, Jak and Dujuv were going through the formal part of the Disciplines, having just moved into slug-throwers. Xabo coughed and pushed the override; the vivid illusion of a black-clad attacker with a pistol disappeared, and Jak found he was holding the virtual, a little cylinder that simulated all the different weapons in the Disciplines, matching its apparent weight, feel, and appearance to each part of the process. Jak was almost relieved—his arm had been glowing dim turquoise, off and on, through all the katas, indicating that he had been fractionally slow and pulled too far low and left. Uncle Sib had often said that it was better not to practice on a day when you were only able to do the Disciplines badly.
Xabo stood still for a long moment. “Report for conditioning at the infirmary.”
Jak had been hypnotized before—it was standard practice to teach every small child to “go under” easily. So the machine flashed the light and played the tones, and sent him under, and when he awoke two hours later, his arm felt funny from multiple pressure injections, and he had had an experience that felt very much like (when he was much younger) falling asleep in the middle of a pornographic viv, to awaken with his head a confused whirl of erotic images. It wasn’t terrible, but he didn’t like it.
Xabo was waiting for them when they had finished the conditioning; he handed them each a large cup of orange juice, and as they drank greedily, he said, “Someone messed up and we have a note that says bags belonging to you two are still sitting at the docking body, and they insist that you come and claim them personally. There’s just time to claim them before Jak is due to start his night watch. Please come with me.”
Jak was about to say that he had had only one bag, and it had come through just fine, but he glanced sideways at Dujuv; the panth nodded at him, and his left hand flashed Play along at Jak.
In their private compartment on the express gripliner, Xabo pulled out a sensor, scanned all three of them, sighed, and said, “All right, now we can speak freely. Well, now you know what the Royal Palace Guards are for.”
“You’re all her harem?” Jak asked.
“Her rivals,” Dujuv corrected.
Xabo nodded. “Singing-on. We’re all the heirs to the patrician families of the Republic, or descendants of any of three lines of pretenders, or of the last Regent General.
“Kawib and Seubla are a special case. He’s the son of two of the great houses and she’s the great-great-granddaughter of the last pretender on one side and a lineal descendant of the Regent General on the other. The only reason they weren’t aborted was because King Scaboron is pretty liberal and open-minded. Shyf is not. What she’s doing is brutal but effective, and it will work until the issue goes away.”
“Goes away?” Dujuv asked.
Xabo sighed. “Seubla’s family are Old Faith. They belong to the traditional Greenworld religion and don’t adhere to the Wager. They won’t accept genetic remodification after birth, which means no longevity treatments after the third one. Seubla will enter menopause at around age sixty, looking like most people do at two hundred, and Kawib won’t look terribly different from what he does today. Have I said ‘brutal but effective’ yet? I think I did.”
“And you?” Dujuv asked.
“Eldest male in a great family of the Republic. I’ll be out of the RPG pretty soon, I think. After exhaustive testing, they’ve determined I’m telling the truth—I’m gay, and I’ve had myself sterilized, with an intrinsic spermaticide; I can produce clones and in vitro babies, but all the evidence is that I don’t want kids. Which happens to be true. I’m not going to bring anybody into this kind of situation if I can help it. But Seubla’s religion thinks reproduction is sacred; there’s all kinds of things she isn’t allowed to do, including marry a sterilized heet.”
“So—uh, with everyone in the Royal Palace Guard, does the Princess, er—” Jack asked.
“Yeah. She even makes me ‘er’ with her every so often. Once you’re conditioned, all it takes is one rude demand from the Princess and you’re painfully capable til
l she says, ‘Release.’ Mind you, conditioning takes a lot of maintenance—if Seubla and Kawib fled to asylum somewhere, with decent psychiatric treatment, in a year, or at most two, they’d be able to manage with each other.”
“Why don’t they?” Dujuv said.
Xabo shrugged. “I’m not sure, really. Possibly Colonel Mattanga serves as a hostage. She’s Seubla’s mother. That’s part of the general Karrinynya strategy for holding on to power; make every family that might pose a threat complicit, watch them like hawks, and execute traitors frequently. It’s a lot harder to plot against the government when you’re a closely watched security chief than it is as an ordinary worker out in the city. Anyone who’s a threat to the dynasty, if they’re young, is part of Princess Shyf’s sex circus, and if they’re older, is working in her father’s pokheets.”
Jak looked out the window as they rose toward the little, yellow-lighted hole in the wide black circle overhead; the circle spread out to cover the sky, and the hole became vast, and they shot up past broad terraced gardens and oddly un-rectangular ziggurats, and past the sheen of the glass dome, back into the space between the worlds, in less time than it took for one long breath.
He wondered if Sesh would call him to her bedroom tonight. He hated himself for wondering.
Beside him, Dujuv had uncurled into complete relaxation, and was applying what the Solar System Ethnography text said was the unofficial motto of panths everywhere: “When action is impossible, take a nap.”
At the docking body, Xabo said, “Oh, well. Weehu. Looks like you have no baggage here. I’ve got two casinos to visit; there are slec clubs, dueling parlors, and some other ways to amuse yourselves around here. See you back here, Station Eight, in two hours.” He airswam away.
They airswam past countless shops selling things they didn’t want to buy before they finally settled into a booth in a centrifuged autocafe. The waitron brought coffee and trays of snacks; Jak watched Dujuv eat. It was about as familiar as any activity in a long time.