A Princess of the Aerie

by John Barnes

  In the middle of it all, Jak felt a remote shock because “Make sure you appear to deserve your privileges” was Principle 133, and although he himself never felt much about the Principles, he felt vulnerable and frightened about people who could mock them or repudiate them. Perhaps it was what Nakasen had said in Principle 163, “If you are a thief, always make sure you have good locks, because being robbed will really upset you.”

  She must have mistaken hesitation for judgment. She added, “Grow up, Jak. This is how the aristos live and die, and it’s how it has to be. When I think about what that old fool has done to Greenworld—we have peacekeeping forces in fifteen nations, and relief and reconstruction workers everywhere, and useless people on science scholarships at a dozen useless institutions, and at the same time the Royal Palace is turning into a fuddy old ruin, and Greenworld hasn’t been on any media or party circuit for so long that no one even remembers when it last was, and there’s no style and no sense of place and nothing happening here. And all that stuff he does just encourages the republicans, which costs us a fortune in secret police. When I take over, things in the Palace will be gorgeous, media will swarm, every hot artist will die to be here, and there’s going to be such a thing as Greenworld style! And it will be so easy to do!

  “I just feel myself so bursting with pride and energy and life. And that … old … tired … kind gwont just sits around being loved while all my energy is waiting to do things! If aristos aren’t fierce and wild and terrible, what’s the point of being us? We don’t live like ordinary people, we take what we want when we want it, and you know we don’t fuck like ordinary people, and if the major thing we die of is predation on each other, well, that’s just part of it.” She breathed on him and said, “Here, I’ve had a fresh squirt of the pheromone maker. Feel my breath on your face … smell me … deep breath, deep breath … take off your clothes.”

  He had never felt his heart melt like this before. They stood together, naked but for their purses. The lightest touch of her index finger relaxed his jaw. He was aware that in the deep kiss she was breathing pheromones into him; he was also aware that gravity keeps the planets in place, and that he didn’t much like asparagus, and all those facts were equally irrelevant.

  When she finished the kiss, he was warm, tingling, crazy in love. Tears ran down his face. She was so beautiful and he was so unworthy. “Now,” she said, “I’m a tender little scared virgin. Teach me gently and make it good.”

  An hour later, when she had finally had enough, she rolled over and said, “All right, no more hard, stop being interested.”

  He could not have felt more cold and sick if he had awakened in the middle of sex with a corpse.

  “Calm love.” She hadn’t used that command before. An entirely convincing peace settled over him. “Lie on your back. I want to use your shoulder for a pillow, and I want to talk. Listen to me and comfort me.”

  His arm knew how to hold Sesh, but his heart did not know how to see her. She sighed, snuggled, and said, “My stupid worthless father insisted on making me go to school with the ‘real’ kids. Like I was virtual or something. Like being real would rub off on me. Like I would want to be ‘real’ if I could.”

  She turned further into Jak’s shoulder; her hand lightly stroked his chest. “Everything was a fake, of course. My father is stupid and gets brainlocked on weird ideas but he isn’t so stupid that he trusts to reality or to chance. So of course he had it faked up to make it come out right, and I have to say he did a good job. He hired Circle Four, your uncle and his people, to not only watch over me and guard me, but to arrange for experiences for me. They picked Myxenna as my best friend, and set it up for me to run into you and lose my virginity to a tender, awkward, good-looking goof, good-hearted and smart but not too smart, so I could do all the nicey-nicey romance stuff.”

  Jak tried to say, Even if they did bring us together, I still loved you for real. He could think it just fine, but apparently her last command wasn’t going to let him talk. He knew he felt differently, but all he could do was lie there and gently stroke her back and listen.

  “They really picked you well, too. Pretty much the way they pick out a plush toy for babies—do his button eyes pop off?, does he have any toxic paint?, is he a possible reservoir of streptococcus? You never gave me one moment of teenage heartache, and I got to do all that adolescent lovey-stuff really sincerely—I fell for it myself from time to time—and I learned how to get a heet to love me. Half the RPGs don’t really need conditioning anymore, because they’ve had enough of the big sincere eyes and the sweet trembly lip and the little wrinkles in my nose when I smile, all the things I’ve learned to do that are sort of the relationship-equivalent of sucking in your gut and sticking out your tits, and they’re toktru never going to love anyone else. And it worked on me too, you know, unlike other aristos, I really enjoy this kind of super-soft romantic sex—it does so much with such a limited range.”

  Jak tried to speak again, and this time—apparently because he wasn’t contradicting her—it was possible.

  “Doesn’t it get lonely?”

  “Yes and no. Poor pathetic stupid Seubla depended on that, you know; she kept working really hard at being my best friend, partly to save her own life and partly because she thought that since I was cruel I must be lonely, so if she fixed the loneliness maybe I’d be less cruel. And I have to admit, she was a good listener and very nice to me when I didn’t deserve it. I really did get in the habit of turning to her for comfort, and I’ll be much lonelier now that she’s dead.” She rolled even closer, brushing her lips on Jak’s chest muscles, and whispered, “You feel so sorry for me having lost my friend.”

  To his horror and disgust, Jak did. But he couldn’t move away. He went on stroking Sesh’s hair and holding her while she told him two or three stories about Seubla’s kindness and generosity, and even left a little tear on his chest about the dead girl.

  “You see,” she said, finally, “I can get all the tenderness and kindness and gentle love I want. And I can enjoy it. This has been just lovely, and now I shall have a pleasant, deep night’s sleep, and be all ready to get on with my busy life. My father was almost right about this ‘real love’ stuff, you know. It is better for me. It’s sort of like fresh-squeezed pure cold orange juice after a day of nothing but screwdrivers.” She snuggled, rubbed her face on him. “You smell good; it’s all that staying in shape. Aristocratic boys never do. I can feel you wanting to ask something.”

  He felt the little mental release and said, “Almost right about love? What was your father wrong about?”

  “Well,” Sesh said, “sometimes it hurts a little bit, and you feel a little sorry, and that’s inconvenient. But as long as I can get as much real love as I want, it’s only a little inconvenient. I can just call someone in and get real love from him, and no matter what the matter was, soon I’m all better.” She pushed herself up with her hand. “I just bet you’re resenting every moment of my telling you all this.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “See, I know you perfectly. Just like being your demmy again.” Sesh snuggled closer.

  “But it’s not the same for me.”

  She laughed. “It’s not the same for you.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  She laughed again. “And which one of us is the princess, here? All right, I want a long comfy sleep now. Numb. Dress. Back to the barracks.”

  Numbly, Jak reached for his tunic.

  * * *

  When Jak walked into the main office at the barracks to check out, he was tired, sore, loathing himself, and looking forward to a hot shower. He planned to scour till his skin came off, and scream a few times with the roaring water to mask it.

  In the office, Xabo and Dujuv were huddled in an intense conversation. They both looked up, startled, and Xabo said “Oh, well, we can settle it now, I guess,” in that flip tone of voice that he used to tell the world that something didn’t concern him—especially when it was rip
ping his heart into gory shreds.

  “Something important?” Jak asked.

  “Xabo’s trying to convince me that it’s nothing, and I’d like to convince myself. Does Mreek Sinda mean anything to you, is there anything special about her to you?” Dujuv asked the question very seriously.

  “Well, she did that embarrassing documentary about me after that time we rescued the Princess, so I had three interviews with her then. There’s that. She came in and asked a bunch of rude questions at the restaurant, that time you were there. And Princess Shyf made me do a blah, nothing interview with her early on at the ball, last night. That’s all I can think of. Why?”

  Dujuv nodded and said, “Can we dismiss early? I’d rather talk with Jak about this privately.”

  “You’re clear.” Xabo looked up and said, “And Dujuv, try to remember that Jak hasn’t been talking about this for the last couple of hours. He’s a little behind you, masen?”

  “Thanks, tove. You’re right.”

  Out in the corridor, Jak wanted to ask What? but he could tell that Dujuv would not talk until they had privacy. So he followed his panth friend as they hurried down the hallway; Dujuv, too antsy to hold still, leapt up and down, constantly, turning big somersaults in the air, rising high enough to plant his feet on the ceiling with each one. Jak wished he could tease Dujuv about that.

  In the dorm room, Dujuv lifted his left hand and spoke to his purse. “Selection specified, play it for Jak, on the room projectors.”

  The lights dimmed and the image of Mreek Sinda appeared on the wall, sitting at the traditional anchor-desk with the traditional smile. Her clothing wasn’t quite so traditional—it looked like she was planning to go out to a sex club after the broadcast—but it certainly worked for her.

  Words swam into focus in the corner to the left of her head. “The Perils of the Princess.”

  “Oh, no,” Jak said, and sat on Dujuv’s bed, putting his head down between his hands. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

  “Listen to it all,” Dujuv said, flatly, anger leaking around the edges of his voice. “Start again at the beginning,” he added to his purse. “Jak, you have to look up at this one and listen, because whether you like it or not you’re going to hear a lot about it for a while.”

  “Okay, but please, Duj, please—” His tove’s expression was implacable. “Oh, all right, roll it.”

  Sinda’s piece told the story of how Princess Shyf of Greenworld had summoned her knight/protector, the boy who loved her when she was just an ordinary girl, to deal with a mystery menace. That was bad enough, but when the story reached the subject of the assassination attempt at the ball, the last tenuous touch with reality parted like over-cooked spaghetti used as parachute lines. According to her account, Jak’s brilliant detective work, superb Disciplines skills, and sheer courage had foiled the assassination attempt single-handedly.

  Then there were three one-minute spots in which Jak bragged about it all and sounded like the most arrogant gweetz ever to pull on pants.

  Jak was all but screaming with rage. “I never! I never said—she interviewed me before, not after! This isn’t me!”

  Dujuv said, neutrally, “Well, Jak, we both know it’s possible for things like this to be faked. The one with Sesh inviting us was faked—”

  “And this is much shorter than Sesh’s message! Of course it was faked, Dujuv, I wouldn’t do that to a friend—let alone be so stupid—there must be a thousand witnesses!”

  “That’s what Xabo was trying to tell me.” Dujuv didn’t look up, watching his hands squeeze each other in his lap.

  Jak took a deep breath and looked at his friend. “That must not have settled it.”

  “No, it didn’t. Jak, all I see is that everything always turns out so well for you, and I always seem to be the passenger in the process. If not the servant.” Dujuv pressed the button to dilate the door, and wordlessly gestured for Jak to leave.

  The next time Jak and Dujuv saw each other was two days later, when they were summoned to Mattanga’s office. Colonel Mattanga seemed to know something; she had set their chairs with a tea service between. When she had poured, she began without preamble, “We’ve gotten passage for you two, and for Shadow on the Frost, on a sunclipper downbound to Mercury. Closest approach will be in twenty-two hours, so you need to get packed and ready. It’s a sun-clipper that Jak, at least, should be familiar with, since he once shipped on it—the Spirit of Singing Port.”

  “Yeah!” Dujuv said. “Oh, yeah.” He bounced up and turned a quick backflip, as he often did when he was excited.

  “Oh, you know the ship, too?”

  Jak was grinning at least as broadly. “We both have a lot of friends on the Spirit. It’s a fine ship. Any chance of getting CUPV berths for the trip?”

  “Of course.” Mattanga smiled. “I signed both of you and Shadow on the Frost as CUPVs. I knew it was what you all preferred.”

  “This is great,” Jak said, “the first good news in a long time.”

  “Fine. Here are the details—” A cover story had been established for them as the kind of seditionists the Hive preferred to ship into exile.

  They dropped by Xabo’s office to muster out. “All right, you’re off the duty roster, officially inactive, and on your way. Best of luck. I wish we’d met when we could have been better toves.”

  Duj nodded and said, “We could have met at a better time, but you couldn’t have been a better tove.”

  “Aw, quit the sentiment, you’ll make me cry,” Xabo said, trying for sarcasm and toktru not succeeding.

  A whirling belt of superconductor, forming a loop hundreds of kilometers wide and moving at ten kilometers per second, would have made a tremendous gyroscope which would have fought against the Aerie’s necessary constant precession, so a loop would have cost a fortune in energy. Instead the Aerie had a twenty thousand kilometer strip of superconducting loop material, about five centimeters across, with one end at the docking body and the other pulled constantly outward by a small stabilization-and-propulsion module. It was purely a launch device; arriving craft came through the big doors on the docking body to land on linducer tracks, as Up Yours had.

  Boarding the ferry, however, was exactly like boarding every other ferry in the solar system. “Attention all passengers. Boarding for the ferry to the Spirit of Singing Port commences immediately. Repeat, boarding for the ferry to the Spirit of Singing Port commences immediately. Launch in seven minutes forty seconds. Please advance through the boarding doors at once.”

  Shadow, Jak, and Dujuv airswam through the dilating door in the side of the little ferry, only about five times the size of the hopper, just a metal can with windows and cameras, linducer, fuel tanks, a hot jet cluster on one end and cold jet nozzles all over. They strapped in, and the door closed, but it redilated just an instant later.

  The late passenger who airswam in was Mreek Sinda, towing two extra cargo bags and two jumpies. She hurried to secure baggage and strap in before launch. Just as she strapped in, the tractor platform carried them into the big airlock.

  The inner door closed behind them. With a strange shimmer, air left the surrounding chamber. A mechanical voice said, “Vacuum tight, power systems good, all systems go.” The outer doors dilated. The tractor platform slid forward again. The craft rolled 180 degrees as it matched up the linducer grapple with the tube.

  They were launching away from the sun, and from Jak’s viewport, three of the arms of the Aerie were visible, each a long string of habitats reaching far out into the starry sky. In the forward camera, the Spirit of Singing Port was now fully in view, and with her vast shining sails, a mere few hundred molecules thick but with as much surface area as Earth, Venus, and Mars put together, now only about half a million kilometers away, she covered much of the sky with graceful bright arcs and curves.

  They accelerated through twenty thousand kilometers (two-thirds again the diameter of the Earth) at about a half g, going from the docking body to the end of the line in
barely over forty-five minutes. The effect of continuous acceleration was that they seemed to creep along at first as the early habitats went by; it took them eight minutes to get as far out as the innermost habitats, but they flashed past the last ones at the thirty-sixth minute, moving at many times the speed of a bullet. After a five last minutes in which they traveled the diameter of Mars, the hot jets flared, the linducer grapple released, and they shot into space.

  The hot jets fired three bursts of a few seconds each, putting the ferry on trajectory to intercept the sunclipper, and cut out. All onboard gravity ceased. The mechanical voice announced that about ten hours of free fall could be expected, a very short ferry flight. The upbound ferry and the downbound ship were in virtually head-on courses, and the distance—only about twice that from the Earth to the Moon—would close very quickly.

  On the other hand, ten hours might be a short ferry flight, but it was a very long time to be trapped in a metal box with Mreek Sinda, especially when there were far more interesting things in every screen and window. From the sunward side the Spirit of Singing Port was almost too bright to look at; drag-tacking, as she was doing right now to drop into Mercury’s much lower orbit, the ship had dozens of Asia-or-bigger-sized mainsails spread with hundreds of droguettes, prabs, funnels, and tripos in wild profusion; the smallest prab merely about the area of Greenland, the largest mainsail bigger than the Pacific Ocean, all woven of stuff that was bright as a mirror, less than one-ten-thousandth the thickness of sandwich wrap, and stronger than steel plate. Reflections of the sun danced off all the sails, bright as the original, and in the gentle ripples and waves that ceaselessly played across the sails, sunlight and starlight in sudden, bright, moving curves that briefly formed recurving circles, s-shapes, and bows. Now and again the Aerie itself reflected in the sails.