A Princess of the Aerie

by John Barnes

  After a while, Dujuv said, “Jak, this is bad.”

  Jak nodded and said, “At least, I dak your, uh, Myx-problem better than I ever have. I keep wondering where Sesh went. I wonder if I was just so naive that I didn’t see what kind of person she is when we were together—”

  Dujuv was shaking his head. “Pizo, you’re getting the full experience, toktru. Do you know how often I wonder where Myx went? And have to remind myself that she was never the girl I thought she was, that I just made her up?”

  “You made her up?”

  “Jak, this is the first time I can tell you this because it’s the first time I’m sure you won’t laugh at me. Because I can see in your eyes what you’re feeling about Sesh now. You’re imprinted, as much as any panth ever was. I know people say that it’s borrowed genes from animals, but it’s not—it’s something that can happen to most people, it’s just that it rarely happens naturally in unmodifieds. Let me just show you. True or false—when you were mekko and demmy, Sesh used to forget your birthday.”

  “Fal—well, it’s true but so what? I mean, she’s a princess, she had more important things—”

  “True or false, it hurt your feelings—”

  “Fal—true. That’s true, Duj, but it doesn’t feel true anymore. It feels like the whole memory should be false.”

  “Unh-hunh. True or false, you and Sesh often talked about your hopes and dreams, and her hopes and dreams, and what was important to both of you.”

  “Oh, now that’s true. I know that’s true. We did that thousands of times.”

  “Right. Tell me what the two of you said in any one conversation you definitely remember.”

  Jak stared into space; beside him, the unclosed viewport in the side of the centrifuge showed the coffee shop whirling by four times before he spoke. “I must have amnesia or something.”

  “No, you remember it happening because it’s what you’d expect for two people in love. And you can’t remember any specific time because it never actually happened, old tove.” Dujuv stretched and yawned. “You going to finish your food?”

  “Have it all, I’m toktru not hungry at all.”

  “See?” Dujuv asked, between bites of another pastry. “See?”

  “Maybe. Explain it to me, please.”

  “Well, there’s part of me that still believes that Myxenna was devoted to me, loyal and faithful as if she were a panth herself, and that remembers all the different ways that she was loyal and how completely I could trust her—don’t laugh. I’m only telling you this now because I thought, with what’s happening to you, you wouldn’t laugh.”

  Jak tried to hold down his smile. “I see what you mean about you making Myx up.”

  “Yeah, and the funny thing is, I can know that the truth is more complicated—but I can’t forget the parts I made up. Well, what did you and Sesh do for all that time in gen school? Stop grinning, I mean besides that. You hung around and were popular, wore nice clothes, went to expensive places because you were both rich kids, masen? Most of your conversations were probably about how much you liked each other. So you didn’t know each other, did you? And you’re as surprised to find out that she’s cruel as I was to find out Myx is slutty.”

  “Sesh is not cruel.”

  Dujuv said nothing; he crushed a whole pastry into his mouth and swallowed it in one gulp, then took another sip of coffee.

  Jak repeated, “Sesh is not cruel.”

  “And Myx is a nun.”

  “Shut up.” Jak couldn’t believe the anger surging through him. “People really don’t understand her at all. Okay, so I don’t remember every little detail of our relationship on the Hive, but I remember that she’s sweet and funny and gentle—”

  “—and even back then she liked to see the expressions on people whose feelings she had hurt, and she thought it was very funny to cut down people who weren’t as popular as she was—”

  “She did not. And besides she was young and that was just having fun—”

  “Same age as we were, old tove, and who was it fun for?”

  Jak groaned. “I’ve got to help her,” he said. “Something is terribly wrong with her, now, she’s changed, something must have happened—”

  “Jak, they just conditioned me. I’m panth-bonded to her too. But I have a little more practice at dealing with this than you do. Now pull back and try to think about what’s happening to you. And to lots of people around Princess Shyf. You’re worrying about her? Think about what she’s doing to Kawib and Seubla. Weehu, it tears my heart out!” Dujuv stared at Jak for a long breath, as if willing his friend to see.

  Jak felt his gaze drop from his friend’s. “It’s kind of ugly, masen?”

  “And water’s kind of wet. And the Hive wants us to work for her. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?”

  “We’re supposed to ‘render all possible support to a friendly monarch’ and we’re especially supposed to ‘assist the ruling dynasty of one of the Hive’s oldest allies.’ I don’t remember that ‘be the good guys’ was even on the list.”

  Dujuv sighed, raised his purse to his face, and ordered a plate of squab gyoza “to help settle dessert,” as he explained. For the rest of the time, they talked about slamball.

  That night, when Jak had been walking his beat for about two hours, and the gray-white cross suddenly raced ahead and back, his gut clenched and he felt a cold sweat break out; he was excited, madly joyful, and unable to believe his good luck. The responses made no sense to his conscious mind, but they were indisputably his. He hurried after the sprite, toward the Heir’s Palace. Though the greensward was as smooth and gripped the feet as comfortably as a deep rug, and Jak was a trained and disciplined athlete, he stumbled and slipped and almost fell.

  The sprite led him in through Sesh’s window. She was waiting for him, dim warm lighting already set, the bed a vast soft comfortable sprawl of soft white covers, her face eager, alert, and curiously more innocent than he had seen it since she had been a virgin, years ago. “Undress,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Tonight we have all night. And no audience. We have so much to say to each other. But let’s make love first, masen?”

  She was as tender, eager, and affectionate as ever. And it wasn’t as if Jak really had a choice; at every moment of resistance, she whispered a command, and his desire surged up like a fire with the damper opened.

  Afterward, there was a buffet of cold meats, cheeses, vegetables, and heavy breads, all sliced and ready to eat, along with chilled white wine. They made large sandwiches and sat on a thick rug in front of the fireplace, eating, feeding each other, getting deliriously drunk. The depths of her eyes were blue as the metal in a fine pistol.

  Sesh’s sudden brief pout delighted him so much that at first he didn’t speck she’d asked him a question, so she repeated it (she was so patient with him!). “Don’t you approve of what you’ve learned about life here?”

  “I approve of you,” Jak temporized, feeling that with all his heart. The wine chilled his teeth. The room became slightly too clear and cold. “It’s hard for me to see someone I love so much doing things that seem so cruel.”

  “Cruel is kind of a matter of where you stand, isn’t it?”

  He made himself imagine that Dujuv was there at his shoulder telling him what to say, and said, “Not for the person you’re being cruel to.”

  Sesh smiled at him, teasing him, and said, “Now, haven’t we both always noticed how stupid most people are? We used to talk about that all the time back in gen school, when we’d sleep over with each other. Most people need to be governed. And you govern by love and fear, masen? How are they going to feel fear if we aristos are not ‘cruel,’ as you put it? No more than they could feel love if we weren’t beautiful. And to rule effectively, we must be both, at the same time.”

  Jak remembered her smile from their little teasing lovers’ arguments, and wanted to hug Sesh. Instead he said, “Why do you torment Kawib and Seubla like that?”

  Her
eyes flashed in the firelight. “A leader I admire, in a similar situation, once said that little snakes are dangerous, too. I’m sure someone has told you who they are, what families they are from. I can’t imagine why my father was so careless as to let them live this long, and now that they have, the death of either of them would be laid at my door unless there were an ironclad alibi. So since I can’t poison either of them, I’m poisoning their relationship, masen? This way, if she does manage to breed despite all my precautions, their pup will be raised by such damaged parents that it will probably spend its silly, pathetic life in psychotherapy. More likely she won’t whelp at all. Without their child, no civil wars, fewer attempted assassinations, no weird whispers in corners that turn into public massacres of the best people. The only cost is that one fat little religious weird-girl grows old and dies without laying any viper’s eggs—or laying Kawib, which is another part of the fun; they won’t do it with each other until they’re sure they’ve been used for the last time at the Palace. Trying to keep it pure for each other, you see? And of course, when they finally do—well, wouldn’t it be just delicious fun to watch them both try to make love?” There was something about the way that Sesh said “make love” that was far more obscene than “fuck” could ever be.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Jak demanded, almost a cry. His heart ripped between the claws of his furious disgust and his conditioned adoration.

  She giggled, a sweet, high sound that he remembered so well, the sort of thing she usually did when correcting a faux pas or explaining to him why he needed to remember any of the dozens of anniversaries on which she expected presents. “My delightful ex-mekko, all that tenderness and gentleness you are so good at giving really does make me happy; but don’t we all like to be loved for who we really are? So I let you see who I am … and then you give me the tender love … and it just feels so good!” She kissed his shoulders, tasting and rubbing them with her lips, and her hands slid down his taut belly. She kissed him lightly on the lips and said, “You see, I want you to be like this, and I want you to let me hold you this way—wanting me and afraid of me. Love and fear. The elements of being ruled, masen?”

  “What kind of love do you think you’ll get if everyone is afraid of you?” he whispered.

  She giggled like a twelve-year-old hearing a dirty joke that she doesn’t quite get; in the firelight her face glowed with life and pleasure. Her hand closed on him gently. “Kiss me, silly.”

  He did; she returned the kiss passionately, but as he warmed to it, she suddenly squeezed hard. With a clenched shriek of pain he pushed her away.

  She laughed. “Hard.”

  He was, suddenly, and she pushed him against the wall and all but yanked him into her; for a moment her eyes were flat and cold. Then she dissolved into giggles. “See?” She leaned forward and kissed him tenderly. “My sweet boy. What’s the difference?”

  “It makes a difference to me,” he said. “And you had me conditioned.”

  “I told you why. Don’t be a slow learner. You’ll make me feel like I’m with Dujuv.” She tenderly licked at his throat, murmuring, “Now, hard.”

  Afterward, as she lay with her head on his chest, Jak said, “I would have been tender and affectionate to you—I would have loved you—without any conditioning, you know.”

  “Well, then it doesn’t matter at all, masen?” The fire glinted off her hair; she was utterly beautiful. “Anyway, enough of all this, I’m bored. Go home.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Are You Sane?” “I’m Trying.”

  He dressed quickly and went out through the dilating door, into the dark palace, without speaking again. The corridor was dark, and Jak had no sprite, nor had he quite known how to ask Sesh for one, so he kept repeating directions to himself mentally—right at the first turn, left at the second, out through the big French doors—as he crept through blackness, hoping not to bump into anything noisy.

  A hand took his, gently but firmly. Jak froze. “Psst.” The unseen person seemed to wait a moment for him to react, and then made another “psst.”

  “What?” Jak breathed.

  “This way.” The hand guided him gently; he had a sense of a door dilating around him in the darkness, then irising closed behind him. Dim light from the outside edges of a black rectangle told him there was an uncurtained window behind a screen; he could make out the shape of the person guiding him, barely, and realized it was a woman, much shorter than himself.

  Who reached up, put a hand on the back of his head, pulled his face down to hers, kissed him passionately, and guided his hands to her full breasts. The small woman led him to a thick sleeping pad on the floor.

  Sometime later, when he was thinking in words again, Jak whispered, “Myx?”

  The girl riding on top of him with a wild, bucking motion whipped her forearm into her own mouth, making a strangled whooping sound as if she were trying to eat it. She didn’t lose rhythm at all, though her lungs convulsed with the force of her laugh. At that moment, the perturb alarm hooted, but neither of them had anything to grab; they floated a few inches upward, pushed by Myx’s bucking. She grabbed his shoulders to keep them together.

  Sudden weightlessness felt like a plummet through the floor. Surprise added just enough excitement to end the event in progress sooner than expected, just as gravity returned with more than usual force, dumping them both back onto the padding. They fell face to face and chest to chest with a heavy “Oof.”

  As they disentangled, she whispered in his ear, “So did you think it was Dujuv in drag?”

  By then Jak was laughing too. “All right, who thinks at a time like that, masen?”

  “That’s kind of the issue. How are you feeling?”

  “Uh, tired, sore, wind knocked out of me—”

  “Sorry. I mean, how do you feel about me?” She rolled off the bed and knelt, her face close to his. The beginnings of the daylight, just being brought up, reflected from the domed ceiling and caught her face.

  Jak was astonished. He had never before noticed how beautiful Myx was, or how deeply he cared for her. “I—um. Weehu, I’m glad we did this, Myx. I—you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever—”

  She slapped him, across the face, not hard, but enough to hurt. “Unh-hunh. Unh-hunh. Unh-hunh. This is just what the other girls told me about. The conditioning doesn’t fully take until you’ve actually consummated it with someone. Half an hour ago you wanted the Princess more than anyone you’d ever met. Masen?”

  “Toktru.” He felt cold in his belly.

  “While the drugs are still in your bloodstream and you’re still recovering from the subsonics and the rhythm patterning, you can be imprinted by anyone. Not that I’d suggest it, but Dujuv in drag would have worked, too. I imprinted you so that you wouldn’t be controlled exclusively by Sesh.”

  Jak shuddered, grabbed his trousers from the heap beside the bed, and draped them over his crotch.

  “You see?” Myx whispered. “The question is, why would Sesh want to imprint you?”

  He had never noticed before what beautiful hair Myx had, or how lovely the curves of her body were.

  She slapped him again, impatiently. “Come on, get over it, my hand will get sore—I need you thinking, not making cow eyes at me.”

  “It’s really not easy,” Jak said. His stomach was turning flip-flops as he considered the utter impossibility of having to choose between Myx and Sesh.

  “I know,” she said. “Your expression looks way too much like Dujy. Nakasen could only guess what’s happening inside him emotionally—I saw him being led by his sprite to her window, just before I heard you in the corridor.”

  Jak gritted his teeth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He wanted to grunt Nothing but made himself explain. “Jealousy. Haven’t had it like this since puberty,” Jak said.

  “Are you sane?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “All right, look, try to think. Why is Sesh conditioning
you, if she didn’t want you here? Why, with a mystery as big as that faked message, are we all walking around instead of being completely, thoroughly interrogated, or even brain-read? Mattanga is acting like she’s not even worried. Either Mattanga has some way of knowing that the question doesn’t matter—or she already knows the answer. Masen?”

  She was absolutely beautiful in the early morning light, and Jak was having a hard time understanding the words. He opened his mouth to speak, couldn’t think of anything to say, barely restrained the urge to reach out and touch the dark thick hair.

  The whole window frame crashed in.

  Jak rolled and jumped to face the attack.

  Dujuv flung the big multipaneled screen halfway to the ceiling, as if it were a sheet of cardboard, and rushed under it, straight for Jak’s throat.

  Myx screamed, “No!” She might as well have screamed it at a volcano. The two utterly mad rivals slapped, chopped, and jabbed furiously at each other, centers bobbing and faking. Dujuv found an opening—Jak could never have seen it—and walloped Jak in the solar plexus. He crashed backward across a table and tipped over a bookcase. Dujuv sidestepped and closed in.

  Something stung Jak savagely, all over his body, and he collapsed; on the other side of the room, he saw Dujuv hit the floor. Jak tried to crawl forward, longing to break that ugly half-animal mongrel’s neck, but he couldn’t move.

  There was another all-over shock, stronger, more a burn than a tingle.

  “Hold it, right now, stay where you are, that’s an order,” Kawib said, climbing in through the hole where the window frame had been smashed down. “Don’t move, Dujuv, or I’ll keep zapping till you can’t. Are you both going to hold still?”

  “I am,” Jak said.

  “Me too, I guess,” Dujuv said.

  With a soft click and sigh, the door to the corridor dilated. Xabo moved in, stunner leveled and ready.

  “Trust you to show up late,” Kawib said.