A Princess of the Aerie

by John Barnes

  * * *

  “Well, what an interesting year for you,” Dean Caccitepe said, meeting Jak as he airswam through the dilating door. “Probably most interesting because you’ve seen so little of me. Grab a seat, we’ve a little talking to do, but I don’t think any of it will be unpleasant, or at least I have nothing unpleasant on the agenda.” He airswam back to his own seat, behind the desk, but then popped over the desk and perched on its edge near Jak. It was much more informal but it also put the tall ange into a position where he loomed over Jak like a vulture, sitting reared back with his long legs and arms tucked in close and looking down his long nose. But the Dean’s smile seemed kind and genuine. “Not only did you start off with a brilliantly completed Junior Task, but you also did better in all of your classes than you’d ever done before in your life—I know students hate the expression, but you lived up to your potential.”

  Jak shrugged. “Everyone keeps telling me what a success my Junior Task was for the Hive, and I know that I learned a lot.” It seemed like a safely neutral thing to say.

  “And,” the Dean said, “I would have thought it was impossible, but I have not had you in here all year, this year, though in your previous two years you might as well have had a cot in the waiting room. I have had no disciplinary in-fractions of any kind to deal with. Now, though I am forced by circumstances to believe that Jak Jinnaka can go a year without getting caught, it is beyond my power to believe that Jak Jinnaka can go a year without doing anything.” The Dean cocked his head to the side as if to get a better angle on a worm. “So, what’s going on? Is it that Dujuv is on leave, and you don’t have anyone to do things with?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Is it that he was always the least adroit liar of the team and often got you caught?”

  “It’s nothing to do with him.”

  “You have lost your taste for pushing your luck to see where it breaks—”

  “Not a good guess.”

  “You no longer enjoy getting caught.”

  Jak was about to deny that he had ever enjoyed getting caught. But the Dean would be pleased with himself, and therefore pleased with Jak, if one of the guesses proved right. “I was going to try to convince you that that one isn’t true, sir, but I have learned to really enjoy not getting caught, and … well, I guess that’s all. I don’t like being a bad boy anymore. I really like being a successful sneak.”

  Dean Caccitepe smiled as if he had just killed something. “I have no doubt that someday you will be one of the Hive’s finest operatives. We worry about such things. There are, unfortunately, people who are masters of deceit but cannot leave their good work alone. Some of them—it’s all too common—are obsessed with truth, and that is why lies fascinate them. Indeed they become such proficient liars because their minds are constantly nattering on, in the background, about the issues of truth: what should it look like, how does each individual tell truth from lies, how can all the different kinds of truth-filters be spoofed, are there any that can’t be, how does the fit between the true part and the false part make a lie more or less effective. But they are people who should be philosophers, not operatives.

  “I have an acute interest in this myself, you know.” He wrapped himself in his own arms and stroked his long-fingered hands down his own long, lean triceps, unconsciously preening. “If you check the library you will find three monographs of mine on just that personality type. Furthermore, I shall authorize you to access the fourth one.” Jak at least had learned how to recognize a completely unsubtle hint, so he said, “Well, I’ll read all of them. They sound interesting. If it’s okay to ask, though, the classified one sounds like the most interesting, so what’s it about? Or do I need to read the unclassified ones to dak it toktru?”

  “It isn’t classified, Jak. It was conditionally suppressed.” This was beyond strange; conditional suppression was the category the pokheets and courts used for heresy and for peaceable sedition.

  “But,” Jak said, “you can clear me to read it?”

  “The work is about a century old, Jak. So in the eyes of the law there are two separate Caccitepes. There is Caccitepe who long ago wrote a scholarly study that was ruled heretical and conditionally suppressed, and who also long ago served his sentence. Then there is Caccitepe the distinguished scholar with forty years in Hive Intel, who is now the Dean of Students at the Public Service Academy. And that latter Caccitepe has the power to authorize any student to read any suppressed work.

  “Now, as for why it was suppressed, I say with some pride that my heresy was not just any heresy. We were just discussing those talented-but-oddly-handicapped liars whose propensity, proficiency, and perspicacity in lying all arise from their fixation on the truth. They very often, you see, later in life, change overnight to rigorous truth-telling.

  “This is so common that for millennia the secret services of every nation have been bedeviled with people who keep deciding that ‘the public must be told.’ I argued that just such a personality—the truth-obsessed liar—was evident in the historical record of Paj Nakasen. Mostly back when he was plain old Bob Patterson and the Wager’s naming convention had not yet taken hold.”

  Jak winced at the mention of the forbidden name. And why was the Dean telling him so many things it was dangerous to know? This game was clearly far more than just recruiting talent for Hive Intelligence. Well, as Uncle Sib said, when in doubt, sow confusion, and as Nakasen said in Principle 212, “If you are thinking of changing the subject you already should have.”

  Jak said, “Mreek Sinda and Princess Shyf wouldn’t have been able to pull that hoax on me unless they had someone helping them in the Hive. That had to be my Uncle Sib, whom I know it wasn’t, because I checked—or Dujuv, who wouldn’t do it in a million years—or you. I can show you the evidence, if you’re interested, that it was you. You were in it with them all the way back to composing that phony message. Bex Riveroma was as surprised as anyone when I turned up; you people put me within his reach. Now I know that Sinda did it because it was good viv, and Princess Shyf hadn’t actually planned on it … but why did you? Were you just shopping me freelance for the money?”

  Caccitepe smiled, pleased that his pet had just executed a trick flawlessly. “Think, Jak. Yes, I did conspire with a few people to put you where Riveroma could get at you. It was nothing personal, and I did rather hope that you’d come back alive and successful. But it was neither my intention that you should live or that you should die, and it was only of passing interest whether you succeeded or failed on the mission. So why would I shop you? The PSA and the Hive would have to know. Why would they let me?”

  “Because you don’t like me, and neither do they?”

  “I don’t, and they don’t, but that’s not the reason.”

  Jak stared into space. “Does this have to do with the problem liars you were talking about before, and how happy you are that I don’t seem to be one of them?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I speck that your job is to turn out what the Hive needs. And for some jobs, the Hive … just like Greenworld or any other serious player … has to have some real rat bastards. People who will stab a friend in the back without even remotely thinking about it, people whose only loyalty is to themselves—”

  “And who does the Hive have who is like that?” The Dean got up to show him out. “Congratulations and welcome. You and I will doubtless have much more to do with each other, without enjoying any of it, for I very much doubt that we will ever become friends. So rather than spend time in each other’s company before we must, I suggest you leave now.”

  Jak airswam out of the office, his mind utterly blank. As he descended a rung tube into the main part of the PSA, down where the grav would be too heavy for airswimming, he remembered to check, and locked his legs around a rung before bringing his purse up to his face. “Time check.”

  “You have sixteen minutes. Estimated time there if you take Pongo and pay premiums for speed is fourteen and a half,
if you go to the nearest station.”

  “Do it and direct me to the nearest station.”

  “Down this rung tube, nine more levels. You can drop it if you don’t mind a disciplinary infraction.”

  At least his restored purse still was willing to help him break rules. It was good that he’d made two real friends in the last few years, even if one of them was a blue glove and the other was a feathered lizard.

  Jak kicked off and let himself fall; it wouldn’t do to be late. When he swung through the door, he could see a couple of campus pokheets just turning to walk toward where he was emerging—they’d have him marked and ID’d anyway, so there was no point standing around waiting for them to lecture him on safety. He bounded hard to where his purse directed, a siding that he wasn’t authorized to use. Pongo was just grounding, its canopy already sliding open.

  Jak popped inside and belted in as the canopy irised over him; then there were several minutes of violent jerks and sudden accelerations as the purse and Pongo’s own nav equipment found the fastest possible way through all the available Pertrans track. Lights from the ports in the tunnel walls flashed by, forming mad hyphens and streaks; grav must have hit three g’s a couple of times; but with just over two minutes to spare, since Pongo had outdone itself, Jak was dumped out at the receiving area for the big docks, deep down in the Hive, where warships came in and locked down for maintenance and repair.

  The Hope of Peace, on which Dujuv was a CUPV, was just docking; Jak intended to be standing in the receiving area when his old tove got off it. “Message from Shadow on the Frost,” Jak’s purse said.

  “Display on the palm screen.” He held it up to his face. The tiny image of Shadow whistled a greeting. “Jak, my tove, I can think of no way in which I can help matters by being there, and several ways that, through ignorance of your customs, I might damage things. And I am afraid that on a project as honorable as repairing a friendship, and as important, it is best for you to act alone. But the moment you can, please call me and tell me how it went! Your oath-friend—and Dujuv’s—cares very much. I hope we will again be able to watch him, together, as he stuffs an entire plate of beefrats into his face.”

  “Thank you, Shadow,” Jak said, “I’ll try.”

  “Honor reclaimed is the finest kind,” Shadow said. “Good luck, tove and tove-of-my-tove.”

  When Jak looked up from his purse, they had already connected the flextunnel to the Hope of Peace, and the crew were just coming down the ramp into the receiving area. Jak moved forward toward them.

  Dujuv came through the door, saw him, vaulted the side of the walkway, and bounded to Jak in three big leaps, like a mad kangaroo. As he landed in front of Jak in a deep crouch, he said, “You came down to meet me. Thank you. I wasn’t expecting anyone.” He was grinning already.

  Jak grabbed Dujuv’s outstretched forearm, felt the panth’s big powerful hand close like a vise around his own slender arm, and said, “Welcome back. I’ve missed the hell out of you, pizo, and we’ve got to go have some fun.” Jak hoped to Nakasen and all the gods that Duj could tell that he meant it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, there are people besides me whose effort and intelligence was important to the completion of this book. These include: Betsy Mitchell, who guided me through the process of creating this series with a very large number of suggestions that proved invaluable, and whose work on the first book, The Duke of Uranium helped me find out what I wanted to do; also, whose sure eye was invaluable in developing this world and these characters: Jaime Levine, my editor, for support and extraordinary patience; Dave Cole, for a very thorough and intelligent copy-edit; and Ashley and Carolyn Grayson, my agents, for encouragement, support, patience, and keeping the business side under control while I dealt with that art thing.

  There’s also one special acknowledgment. This book is dedicated to Jessica (Jes) Tate, who I sometimes describe as the other half of my brain—the half that works. Some years ago, Jes showed up at an audition for Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, which I was directing at the small college where I taught, and took on the job of being the puppeteer who operated Rosalinda the Fish, squatting under a fish tank for two hours, in a role in which the only visible part of her was a large piranha-shaped mitten and her only lines were “gloop” and “gleep.”

  She turned out to be capable of more.

  Later, when she transferred to a bigger university with a much better library, Jes began doing part-time research work for me, at which she excelled, at first for academic projects (she deserves a sizable share in the credit for my fifty-three articles in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance), and later in assembling the background research for novels.

  Jes has always delivered more and better work than the contract called for. In the past couple of years, as I have returned to full-time writing, she has made herself absolutely indispensable, not only as a research assistant, but as a thoughtful critic and listener, and a loyal supportive friend.

  Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the world, bright students do graduate, sooner or later, and get jobs for which they are paid real money. There are still some projects ahead of me for which I have Jes’s characteristic neatly stacked and categorized piles of complete and thorough research ready to go, but those are the last such piles there will be, at least until I train some mere mortal to take Jes’s place. As I write these words Jes is finishing her last major research project for me, and will be done in less than a month. Shortly after, she will be turned loose on the world. If she has any effect on the world like she has had on my office, it is about to become a considerably better place. For its own good, I advise the world not to argue.

  Having done most of my theatre work backstage, I have always enjoyed that moment in the curtain call when the follow-spot swings around to give the invisible people their well-deserved acknowledgment. So before you go, Jes, this time, climb out of the fish tank, wave at the people, come all the way to downstage center, collect your roses, and take a bow. Applause, people. This is someone special.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  John Barnes lives in downtown Denver and writes full time. At various times he has worked full time as a gardener, systems analyst, statistician, theatrical lighting designer, and college professor. More than fifty entries by John Barnes appear in the 4th edition of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. His most recent books include The Sky So Big and Black, The Merchants of Souls, The Return (with Buzz Aldrin), Candle, and The Duke of Uranium.

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