by John Barnes
“You assigned me to come to this door! I came as fast as I could!”
“I was teasing—I shouldn’t have done that when everyone is under so much stress. Myxenna, sorry about having to be so rough with your friends.”
“It’s all right, I wasn’t going to use either of them for anything else tonight,” she said. “Are they going to be all right?”
“As much as any of us,” Xabo assured her. “Right now they’re regaining control. Then we’ll all go back to the barracks for sleepy drugs and happy drugs, and be the best of toves again when we wake up. Kawib, you have them covered?”
“I do. Pizos, this is for your own good—we need to check that you can control your rages. Xabo is going to say something that will trigger another rage. If you control the rage, fine, we know you’re sane enough to work with. If you don’t I stun you and we try again in a few minutes. Clear?”
“Toktru,” Dujuv agreed. “But it’s not the conditioning; it’s panth imprinting. I’m better now. I can feel that I’ve got control.”
“Oh, good, then I’ll fuck Myx,” Kawib said, conversationally, “it’s high time she had a human boyfriend.”
Dujuv froze, then relaxed and sighed. “All right.”
“Jak, you know that Princess Shyf is all mine and you can’t have her and I’m a better fuck than you are, and don’t get any ideas about Myxenna because I’m taking her too.”
Jak was about to laugh when his field of vision became a narrow red tube, the blood thundered in his ears, and the world seemed to slow down. He had never felt so ready for a fight before.
He stayed down on the floor anyway, drew three long breaths, and said, “Close, but I think I’m okay.”
“ ‘Close’ is all the better any of us ever do,” Xabo said. “The people who do the conditioning dak their business, singing-on. All right, get up slowly, keep your hands where we can see them, and let’s all walk out of here just as if we were four good old toktru toves and nothing in the world could ever be wrong.”
Myxenna said, “One suggestion?”
Kawib nodded. “Of course.”
“Have Jak put his clothes back on. He’ll be less conspicuous.”
It wasn’t the friendliest or most comfortable time they had ever spent together, but Jak and Dujuv made a point of having breakfast together, when they finally got up, around lunch time. The schedule said they were excused from workout but that there would be guard duty for a reception. At least they would have the afternoon to recover.
They had gone to a twenty-four-hour breakfast buffet, which meant they could further avoid each other by taking turns going to the serving area. Even when they sat across from each other, sharing the sweet bread, rice, olives, omelet, and miso, they didn’t speak much. Jak didn’t know how things felt to Dujuv, but for him, the world seemed cold and gray and vaguely threatening, with no prospect that anything really good would ever happen again. Away from Sesh, and partially deconditioned, he loathed himself for the way he had felt the night before, but at the same time, it seemed as if those had been the only hours of his life worth living. Apart from that longing, all he seemed to be capable of feeling was irritation, like a bad hangover.
“I know we’re excused, but do you want to make work-out anyway?” Jak said. “I know they were trying to give us more rest before this reception, but I think I’d feel better for the exercise.”
“Toktru, I was already planning to.”
Neither Kawib nor Xabo seemed surprised to see them, and the pleasant no-mind state of just working the resistance handles over and over soothed Jak like two big glasses of fruit juice after a hangover. He was almost cheerful in the big communal shower with the other Royal Palace Guards, only glancing occasionally at the viewing windows under each shower head.
As they were dressing, Kawib and Xabo approached and said, “How about having dinner over in New Bethlehem this evening? We need to eat early because of the guard duty. It’ll be just lunchtime over there and they do a great lunch.” Almost all habitats maintained twenty-four-hour days—that was what people found most comfortable—but the timing of midnight, and the length of dark and light, were purely local options.
Xabo, Jak, Kawib, and Dujuv emerged from the gripliner station into bright sunlight. Fields of grain stretched down to a lake. A heet in a tall hat, wearing heavy, awkward clothes, rode by on horseback, looking bored. “It’s this way,” Xabo said.
They walked by the side of a dirt road that seemed remarkably realistic to Jak; except for the black sky beyond the transparent dome overhead, and the bright ellipses of other habitats in the sky, and the two occasions when an alarm sounded and they had to squat down and wait out changes in the gravity, it might have been “farm country in Africa,” Jak said to Dujuv.
“Toktru, I was thinking that.”
The inn was a copy of a clapboarded farmhouse on the outside, but it was comfortably clean and modern on the inside.
At first they just ordered, and ate, and made small talk. Then Dujuv said, “I don’t really want to talk about any of the things we ought to talk about.”
Kawib said, “Toktru. Nobody likes to. Talk anyway. It’s how we get through it.”
Dujuv nodded. “I was telling Jak that at least, thanks to his being conditioned, he gets an idea of what panth loyalty feels like.” He ate a last bite of pancake, and held his plate out to the side. The waitron put his third stack onto it. “I mean, if I dak it all toktru, you’re all feeling, about the Princess, what I’ve felt about Myxenna for years. So believe it or not I sympathize. Even though, now that I also feel the same bond toward Princess Shyf, I want to kill you all. At least I dak why it seems like everyone in the Royal Palace Guard is crazy, and—forgive me for saying this—Kawib, why you’re eating your heart out.” He finished smearing jam on his pancakes and began methodically folding and swallowing them.
Kawib looked across his long-abandoned plate and said, “Dujuv, you don’t even speck me. At all. Your bonding to Myxenna, and now to Shyf, just makes you miserable, masen?”
“Gnokgnu,” Dujuv agreed, nodding and chewing.
“Well,” Kawib said, “the feelings I have for Seubla are the only good reason I’ve got for continuing to exist. Our gen school years together were not only the best of my life, they were my life. The hope of being able to continue it—even when she’s dying of old age—gets me through every day.”
“How long since you’ve been able to just sit and talk with her?” Jak asked.
“Two years. Since Shyf returned. King Scaboron had been tolerant; some people say he’s republican at heart. Then the Princess came back and refounded the Royal Palace Guard and the ladies-in-waiting program. She grabbed Seubla and me in the first week she was back.”
While Sesh had been doing that, she had been sending Jak very long, passionate, I-love-you-I-miss-you-I-want-you-forever messages, two and three times a day. He imagined her compelling Seubla and Kawib to do those things … and then getting into a warm bath to tell Jak how much she loved him and missed him. His conditioned mind worked hard to find a way to love her for it.
“What will happen to you?” Dujuv asked.
Kawib looked at the wall. “Well, I don’t know, really, what Seubla thinks or feels anymore; how would I? I suppose she doesn’t know any more about me. Our time together now seems like just an old story. I suppose if we’d been left undisturbed it might have all been over by now, anyway. But, still, anyway, Dujuv, though I feel sorry—”
A tiny, elegant woman, very petite but built like a lanky model, strode in, her hair in the traditional journalist’s platinum blonde helmet cut, her olive skin tanpatterned in fine-grained Fractal Leopard. Her clothing was singing-on this week’s clash-splash-and-smash: a pseudoskirt with ultra-brief flaps emphasizing her several pairs of hip-hugging gozzies, with a smooth, clinging, self-lighting top. A swarm of drone cameras zipped and hovered around her like voyeuristic hummingbirds.
She sat down on their table, braced a hand between Ja
k and his plate, leaned back, and twisted to prop one long leg into the view of the active, green-lighted drone. “Hi, I’m Mreek Sinda and I’m here with Jak Jinnaka, whom you’ll recall from my award-winning series ‘Kidnapped by the Duke of Uranium’ as the brave young rescuer of Princess Shyf Karrinynya. Also his faithful panth sidekick and toktru tove, Dujuv Gonzawara—”
A drone buzzed in for a close-up of Duj. Without looking up from his pancakes, he snatched the drone out of the air by its lens barrel and hammered it against the table, shattering it in three quick whacks.
Mreek Sinda observed him with the mild interest usually given to ten-year-olds who have stuffed straws up their noses and are making strange noises. “So what we have here is—”
“A private conversation,” Jak said, “and I haven’t consented to an interview, and anyway—”
“You’re in a nation that absolutely gives all media their feets,” Sinda informed him, putting on what he specked as the “coolly elegant face of steely resolve” mentioned in her service’s ads. “I have a right to an interview if you’re in a public place and not on duty, and since you are technically armed forces of another nation, you can’t be on duty while you’re here.”
“Dujuv, if you’re done with the pancakes, we should probably go,” Jak said.
“Let me finish this plate, just a second or two.” Another drone crept close. This time Dujuv caught it by the tail and decapitated it with a hard rap against the table edge.
Mreek Sinda turned back toward Jak; her self-lighting top took out shadows on her neck and enhanced them under her bust. She wet her lips. “I’m going to try to find out if Jak is on some secret mission on behalf of his beloved Princess Shyf. Jak, what can you tell me about your reasons for coming to Greenworld?”
“Rogga bogga erf ganoo,” Jak said firmly. “How are the pancakes coming, Duj? I hate to rush your eating, but—”
Duj swallowed hard, taking in all the remainder. “Understood, old tove.”
“Then you’ll neither confirm nor deny that this may involve matters at the highest level for Greenworld’s ruling dynasty, as well as your own connection to Bex Riveroma, possibly the most wanted criminal in the solar system?”
“Ergle argle farf, skweedong pretzels,” Jak said. “Wanna race back to the hopper?”
“Sure,” Dujuv said, and all four guards charged out the door and back up the dirt road.
Camera drones are built for stability, not speed, and Sinda was wearing extremely tall heels. They were boarding the gripliner by the time the first drones flew into the station, and Sinda was nowhere in sight.
“She produced a really long silly documentary about my ‘daring rescue’ of the Princess,” Jak explained, as the gripliner pulled out of the station. “I guess it was popular in the Hive.”
“Here too,” Xabo said, “but I didn’t follow the series because I was busy being drafted into the RPG. To tell you the truth I only just now connected you with Princess Shyf’s rescue.”
Jak nodded. “Well, anyway, it was Sinda’s big moment. Her only really popular work in any medium. Every few months she turns up, as if she’s hoping I’ll do something interesting in front of her again. The fact is, she was a minor fashion reporter who got lucky enough to be the only one with a camera when the Princess was kidnapped. That got her the assignment. Then she slapped together a show that people bought because of who was involved, not because of her work. It was all lies anyway.”
Xabo said, “I don’t know about that, but I did hear that the rescue was pretty impressive.”
Jak made a rude noise. “I was practically set up with a script and more or less followed directions, and more people were on my side—”
“It was still impressive,” Dujuv said. “You always underrate yourself. Your uncle thinks you did well, and we got into the PSA based on how well we did, and the Duke of Uranium practically buried us in medals.”
“You know him?” Kawib asked.
“We met during that adventure. I did him some favors. Entirely by accident, but he didn’t seem to quibble about that.”
“Well, you’ll see him again,” Xabo said. “The reception we’ll be pretending to guard tonight is for him.”
“Psim Cofinalez is coming here? But he only just made duke, three months ago, when his father died,” Jak said.
“Well,” Xabo said, “the official story is that he’s doing the Big Circuit for the next two years, to celebrate his having succeeded to the duchy, I guess, and probably also so that he’s conveniently out of reach of suspicion when various long-term enemies happen to suffer dreadful accidents or to commit suicide. Plus some officials will have done things that were necessary but unpopular, and he will come back and fire them (into some cushy retirement), thus becoming very popular.”
“But is it smart to be away from Fermi right now? He has an older brother with a claim to the title and a nasty, treacherous disposition,” Jak pointed out.
“Not anymore. Two days after Duke Psim Cofinalez started the Big Circuit, Pukh Cofinalez, who was living in the penthouse of his brother’s palace, was assaulted by persons unknown who somehow penetrated three layers of defenses to reach him in the roof garden. He heroically resisted them but was driven back until, already mortally wounded, he fell over the parapet, dropped twenty meters or so, landed on his head (four times), and was run over by the arriving ambulance.”
“And the killers?” Dujuv asked.
“Escaped completely. Psim has pledged to find them no matter how long it may take. Anyway, the Aerie is the second stop on the Duke’s Big Circuit, and he’ll be here tonight. I’m assuming he’d be glad to see the two of you?”
“I think so. We’d like to see him,” Jak said.
“Then I’ll station you both inside the ballroom. That means you can’t have any projectile or beam weapon of any kind, but if armed commandos crash through Palace security, building security, wing defenses, and room defenses, killing all the real guards on the way—with the three or four hovertanks it would take—then you are allowed to stop them with your bare hands.”
“Just so it’s a fair fight,” Dujuv said.
CHAPTER 8
You Saw Too Much and Know Too Much
Your basic job,” Kawib said, his sardonic half-smile firmly back on, “is to be attractive. Try not to spend too much time around the canapés, make pleasant conversation with wallflowers—not concentrating on wallflowers your own age and of your preferred gender. If anyone wants to invite you for something in a private room, you can accept but only for when you’re off duty. Unless, of course, it’s the Princess. Don’t consume alcohol or anything else that might alter your judgment. Don’t duck out and catch a nap. And toktru, you’ll be tempted.” The more experienced guards in the room chuckled. “All right, Xabo has overall command inside the ballroom. Call me if the rich people riot, masen?
“I’m feeling good about Vifu, Yib, Coxiz, and Pelorni, at the moment, so you lucky devils get to stand ceremonial guard at exterior doors with me. You’ll be farther from the food and the ladies in waiting but also there’s less danger of having to make small talk with some bored aristo. Kewoi, Pusaf, you have the outer-doors receiving area. Jak, Dujuv, walking post around the central staircase, which is between the kitchen and the dance floor. If anyone suddenly goes berserk while dancing, it’s your duty keep them from getting their hands on a pastry cutter. I regret to say, toves, it’s about time, so make sure that your uniforms look presentable, take five to visit the little room, and we’ll all walk over to the King’s Palace together.”
Forty minutes later, Jak and Dujuv were standing with their backs to a pillar, trying to avoid leaning or moving, when a whistling voice behind them said, “Jak Jinnaka, and his tove Dujuv Gonzawara, I am astonished to find you here! Clearly my gods are pleased with me!”
“Shadow!” Jak embraced his Rubahy oath-friend. “I had wondered if the Duke would bring you along.”
Before he had gotten to know Shadow, Jak would have
sworn that all Rubahy looked alike: a tyrannosaur wearing a gorilla’s arms, a Yorkshire terrier’s head, and a rabbit’s tail, covered all over with chicken feathers. Now he could have picked Shadow out anywhere—his friend’s long slicing teeth were slightly, distinctively crooked to the left; a small extra curved lobe extended down the arm from the big black patch on his right shoulder that indicated he was of warrior ancestry; Shadow’s squarish head was squarer than most; and he was slightly short for a Rubahy, taller than most tall men. Because his scent organs (two flaps of flesh covered with thicker feathers, on the top of his head) were longer and narrower than average, about the size and shape of short bananas, some of the Duke’s Rubahy guards had nicknamed him “Bunny” (he detested that; he had explained in a message to Jak that rabbits were the most common Rubahy pet back on Pluto, so it was like nicknaming a human being “Doggie” or “Woofums”).
At the moment Shadow on the Frost wore a heavy, short leather skirt with many pockets, serving as holster and bag, and of course his purse on his left hand. Rubahy have no facial muscles, and their eyes have no whites, so he had no expression, but his scent organs stood up straight, catching and treasuring the welcome scent of his friends. “You have kept your sense of humor? You have learned things that mattered to you?”
Jak had only accidentally befriended Shadow. At one strange moment during the wild adventure of rescuing Sesh, Jak had happened to say exactly the words that, translated from Standard to the Rubahy language, constituted a binding honor-oath, which had made Shadow his devoted friend for life.
“My humor is intact and my knowledge is greater,” Jak said. He asked the ritual question for a warrior in service: “Do you gain honor by your service to the Duke?”
Shadow on the Frost said, “Well, for tonight, we have very similar duties—I will do for the Duke what you do for the Princess.”
Jak glanced sideways at Dujuv. His tove was compressing his lips and trying very hard not to laugh out loud.