He had been very clever in returning the sword, playing to her honor. He must know that now, at the end, it was all she had left.
Leaving the Hall of Moonrith, Maigrey heard the dry and broken sobbing of an old man.
Chapter Eleven
Not all the water in the rough, rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king.
William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Richard II, Act III, Scene 2.
"We're coming into their instrument range. You been monitoring public transmissions?"
"Yes," XJ answered in a preoccupied tone.
"And?" Tusk pursued, his hand on switches, his eyes on a reddish planet that during the last four hours had been growing increasingly larger in the viewscreen.
"Nothing. You sure there's a war down there?"
Tusk grunted. "Corporate battle. They'll be controlling the official broadcasts. Civilian population probably doesn't even know the war's going on—outside of the few hundred or so who get in the way and get hurt, of course. The corporations try to seize control of mines and factories, maybe lay siege to a corporate town. That sort of thing. If anyone asks questions, it's put down to union violence, terrorist bombings, or a new p.r. campaign. But, if Dixter's running the show, it'll be a clean fight—on our side, at least."
"I thought you didn't enlist in corporate wars," Dion said, remembering one of Tusk's lectures on how to enjoy a long and profitable career as a soldier of fortune.
"I don't usually," Tusk admitted. "Corporations hold grudges longer than the Warlords. Once they hand over money, they figure they own you body and soul and you better be ready to lay down both in their cause. Show a natural reluctance to get yourself killed, and they take it as a personal affront. Only blood feuds are worse. Never get involved in a blood feud, kid."
"So why are we here?"
"Because of Dixter. Like I said, if he's in charge, it'll be a fair fight. He doesn't like corporate wars any more than I do. Must be something different about this one," Tusk muttered, frowning intently at the numbers that were flashing in front of him. "What's the problem?"
"Somebody doesn't think we ought to land," XJ said.
"Missiles?"
"Maybe. You got those coordinates Dixter transmitted?"
"Yeah."
"Use 'em. No standard orbit entry. Come in like a ball of fire."
"Which is what we may turn into. Better fasten yourself in good, kid."
Having learned in the past week how to operate the safety restraints on the co-pilot's chair, Dion did as he was told. Despite Tusk's ominous prediction, the boy was looking forward eagerly to the landing. As Tusk had said, space flight was, for the most part, intensely boring. You could be in awe of the grandeur and majesty of flying among the stars only so long. Then, with the natural perversity of human nature, you begin to dream of trees and air that hasn't been circulated through your lungs a thousand times and water that—though it was purified—made you think about the fact that it, too, had been recycled.
The days in flight had actually passed relatively swiftly. Dion had spent long, absorbed hours either with Tusk or XJ studying space flight and learning how to operate the Scimitar. Tusk had been both amazed and discomfited at how rapidly the boy learned.
"Why are you throwin' that stuff at the kid?" Tusk had demanded of XJ one evening shortly after leaving Syrac Seven. A three-dimensional image of one of the Scimitar's main engines was slowly rotating on the computer's screen. "You'll confuse him. He wants to fly the plane, not build it!"
"I asked to see it," Dion had said. "It's all right, isn't it?"
"Sure. But why bother? Most of the systems aboard these craft are designed to repair themselves if anything breaks down. If it's something that can't be fixed internally, then XJ reports it to me and tells me what to do. You'll learn as you go along. No need to study something that doesn't make sense to you now."
"Oh, but it does make sense. Look." Calmly, Dion had explained the function of the myriad complex parts; the computer responding by magnifying, colorizing, rotating, simulating—whatever was needed.
"How did you do that? How did he do that?" Tusk had rounded on the computer.
"He has the mind of a machine," XJ had answered, with an electronic sigh of rapture.
"No kidding." Tusk had stared at Dion in awe tinged with uneasiness.
"It's nothing, really," Dion had said, flushing red with embarrassment. "I was just passing time. I didn't mean to show off."
"Photographic memory?"
"More than that." XJ was enjoying showing off. "Humans or aliens with the so-called photographic memory can call up images of what they see in their minds—such as a page from a book, a diagram of an engine—but sometimes that's as far as it goes. Ask them to analyze it, explain how it works, relate the meaning of what they've read, and they can't do it. The kid here not only remembers everything he's ever seen but he can tell you how it works or what it means. He has all of Shakespeare memorized. Give Tusk the scene from Richard II you were doing for me. The one about the king deposed—"
"Not now, XJ," Dion had mumbled, feeling his cheeks burn.
"A little culture would be—"
"He said not now!" Tusk had thumped the computer.
With a vicious bleep, XJ had killed not only the image on the screen but the lights as well. It had refused to turn even the emergency lights on, and Dion and Tusk had been forced to grope and fumble their way to their hammocks and had spent the rest of the day in bed.
Remembering the incident. Dion shifted uneasily in his chair. He hadn't meant to expose his innermost thoughts to Tusk like that. King deposed. Why had he ever brought that up? The boy was startled to discover how easily the mercenary saw through him, understood what he was thinking. Dion realized that he had underestimated Tusk. The boy had marked the mercenary down as a materialistic, restless adventurer. Quick to act and act intelligently, Dion had to admit, but that was probably due to instinct and training. Limited intellectual capacity.
Dion was forced to revise his opinion. The man was smarter than the boy had originally thought. Smarter—and therefore more dangerous. Dion set increased guard upon himself.
The landing on Vangelis was uncomfortable, terrifying (for Dion, though he took care not to admit it), and uneventful. Nobody shot any missiles at them, although the commlink with the planet threatened immediate destruction if they didn't go into standard orbit until their credentials could be properly cleared.
"They gotta keep up their image!" Tusk shouted as the small plane rocketed through the atmosphere.
A fiery orange glow surrounded them, the heat in the cabin increasing markedly, life-support doing its best to compensate for the burning hot temperatures outside. Sweat poured down Dion's face. He gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that his hands and fingers ached for an hour afterward. The jolting caused him to bite down painfully on his tongue.
Once they had entered the atmosphere and were gliding through sunlit wispy clouds, receiving landing instructions from a base somewhere below, Dion was forced to leave his seat hurriedly and race to the head. When he returned, he was extremely pale. Tusk glanced at him but never said a word, for which Dion thanked the man deep in his heart. XJ, fortunately, was too occupied with the landing to comment on the boy's weakness, though Dion thought he heard a synthesized chuckle during a momentary interval in the conversation with ground control.
The plane landed and was towed to a parking place in a spaceport General Dixter had commandeered for his use, according to whoever was manning the control tower. Staring out the viewport as they trundled slowly to their position, Dion saw the strangest and mottliest assortment of flying craft gathered in one place outside of a museum. There were several long-range Scimitars (Tusk wasn't the only one to appreciate and "borrow" one of the Navy's renowned fighters), their markings either cleverly changed or—like Tusk's— completely obliterated.
"That's an old needle-nose!" Tusk said, peering out the port excitedly, in search of old frien
ds. "They used to fly those in the days before the revolution. Yeah, they look real sleek," the mercenary said in response to Dion's admiring gaze, "but the Scimitars are ten times more maneuverable and practical.
Should be. Derek Sagan designed them and—so I've heard— he was the best pilot to ever come out of the Royal Academy."
"Royal Academy? What's that?" Dion asked.
"There's Zebulon Hicks, that S.O.B.!" Tusk sat forward.
"Where?" XJ demanded.
"Isn't that his plane? Turn your scanner about ten more degrees to the left. Now—"
"You're right! And stop swearing."
"How much does he owe us?"
"Sixty-seven Korelian mandats. I'll have to check on the exchange rate, but it's somewhere close to eighty golden eagles."
"The Royal Academy?" Dion persisted patiently. Derek Sagan. The man who'd killed Platus. The man who was alter him. The Warlord held a strange fascination for the boy.
"Uh? Oh, that was a special school they used to run for kids of the Blood Royal. There were two of them—one for boys and one for girls, each established on uninhabited planets. The kids were sent there at about eight or nine. Since these kids were going to grow up to be kings or emperors or presidents or whatever else form of government they had back on the home planet, they were given a lot of advanced training in politics and stuff. XJ, is that Reefer?"
"No, your eyes are going."
"It is! I'd swear it! How much cash we got on board?"
"Oh, no, you're not!" The computer's lights flared. "No ante-up for you, mister! You lost one hundred and seventy-two—"
"Tell me more about the Academy," Dion interrupted. "What happened to it?"
Tusk shrugged. Releasing his safety restraints, he got to his feet, stumbling slightly as the plane jolted over the cracks and bumps of the cement runway. "The President did something with it, I guess. Shut it down. Turned it into a retirement village or low-income housing. How should I know?" He staggered toward the ladder. Dion, fumbling at the safety restraints, noticed his body felt unnaturally heavy and clumsy, as if somebody had wrapped weights around his wrists and ankles and stuffed his fingers full of lead.
"You should know more about it than I do, kid," Tusk said, his voice floating down from the living quarters. "Open up, XJ. I'm goin' out to make sure we get leveled off."
"Don't pay any more than six gilders," the computer warned. "I checked. That's the going rate. These crooks'll charge you twenty if they think you're a tourist! Tusk always gets taken," XJ said bitterly to no one in particular. "He won't haggle. I've told him and told him—"
Dion was hurrying after the mercenary. "What do you mean, I should know something about the Academy?"
"That master of yours must have attended that school. My dad went there. All the Guardians did!"
The hatch whirred open. XJ's attention focused on shutting down systems that wouldn't be needed once they were on the ground. Dion, anxious to get outside and breathe fresh air, climbed the ladder, his feet and hands feeling clumsy, as if they'd grown too large during the night.
No, Platus hadn't said anything about a Royal Academy. Just one more thing he'd never mentioned, kept secret. Why? Was it just too painful to talk about, to remember? Or had he been afraid it might give the boy ideas?
Emerging from the spaceplane, Dion drew in a lungful of air and immediately began to cough. A couple more breaths and he felt dizzy and light-headed and wondered if there were some sort of deadly chemical in the air that the computer's analysis had missed. He started to go back for his oxygen pack but noticed that Tusk—though he was breathing rapidly and heavily—hadn't keeled over yet and didn't seem to be afraid that he might.
Real sunshine felt good on the boy's skin. Slowly he slid down the ladder that ran along the hull of the spaceplane and came to stand beside Tusk, who was peering beneath the craft, yelling instructions to the man who had towed them and was now preparing to detach his vehicle from theirs.
"What's wrong with the air?" Dion asked, panting.
"Nothin'," Tusk said, glancing at him with a grin. "You're used to the healthy, pure stuff we breathe on board the plane. You'll get used to this in a day or so. Just take things kinda easy for a while. Do too much and you'll pass out cold."
Dion nodded. Tusk disappeared under the plane and the boy—out of curiosity—was about to follow when he felt a touch on his arm. A green tentacle had wrapped around his wrist.
It was the first time the boy, raised in total isolation in a barren desert, had ever met an alien life-form, and his heart rate leapt so that he came near fainting, as Tusk had warned him. The large blob of green regarded him with apparent concern while another tentacle wrapped itself around his other arm and held him upright.
"Xrmt!" Tusk cried, coming out from beneath the plane, or at least that was the approximation of the sound he made.
Another tentacle snaked across and gripped Tusk's hand (the other two still keeping firm hold of Dion) and a fourth tentacle made what seemed to be a pointing gesture while a sound like a buzz saw came from the blob's interior.
"What? Wait. I forgot my translator. No translator!" Tusk shouted, pointing to his chest. The alien understood and released Tusk. The mercenary scaled the ladder, disappeared inside the spaceplane.
Dion tried to call to him, but Tusk was gone before he got the chance. The boy thought about attempting to free himself from the alien's apparently solicitous grip, then wondered if that might not offend it. Dion's initial surprised fear had eased; his mind was running through classifications of alien life, attempting to place this one.
Tusk reappeared, a small black box hanging around his neck. Placing a disk attached to a wire at the base of his skull, the mercenary listened attentively to the alien's buzzings.
"Dixter's looking for me, huh? Yeah, I'll report right away. The kid? Naw, he's all right. First time for him, that's all. He just needs to get his land legs."
The tentacles released Dion gently, and the boy managed a bow and gave the creature a greeting in its own language.
The blob appeared delighted, if tentacle waving indicated delight, and Dion thought it did. The alien buzzed and crackled loudly and excitedly.
"That's the only words I know—" Dion turned to Tusk. "Tell the Jarun that I know only how to greet him, in his language."
Tusk was staring at the boy wide-eyed.
"I never learned to speak it," Dion said in apology, thinking that this was why Tusk was looking at him strangely. "Platus told me it could damage the human vocal cords."
"Uh, right." Tusk cut into the alien's torrent of words that sounded vaguely like a lumber company removing half a forest. He relayed Dion's message. The alien, listening on its own translator, bobbed up and down.
"He understands and says that, anyway, it was a great pleasure to him to hear the words of the Jarun spoken by an alien race and he hopes you will join him for dinner."
Dion bowed. The alien bobbed, waved several tentacles, said something to Tusk, and went on its way.
"Reefer, huh? I knew I recognized his RV," the mercenary said in satisfaction. "Ante-up game there tonight. Uh, don't mention it to XJ, will you, kid? And say, how did you know that stuff?"
"Know what?" Dion turned his attention to their next-door neighbor—a recreational vehicle that had been converted into a fighter and had evidently seen better days. "About the game? I didn't, until you told me—"
"No, not the game. The Jarun. Who he was and what you said to him. And what do you mean you don't speak his language?"
"I don't. And I've studied the languages and habits of many of the races in the galaxy."
"Just out of curiosity, kid. How many languages do you speak?"
"About eighty, I guess. Only thirty or so fluently, though. The others I have trouble with sometimes. Why? How many do you speak?"
"Two—my native tongue and gruntspeak—what we're talking now. Didn't that master of yours ever hear of translators?"
"Of course. I k
now how to use one. But Platus said that a person who could communicate directly with another being in his own language was paying him a compliment that would always be remembered and appreciated."
"Well, you've won the Jarun's heart—if it has a heart." Shaking his head, Tusk laid a hand on Dion's shoulder. "Let's go see the general."
Chapter Twelve
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott"
The sun's heat radiated off the concrete slab of the spaceport in shimmering waves, creating mirages of pools of blue water in the distance. Back inside the cockpit of the spaceplane, Dion wiped sweat from his face and glanced enviously at Tusk, who had changed into khaki shorts and a mesh weave, sleeveless T-shirt.
"You want to borrow a pair of my shorts, kid?"
"Aren't we going to meet this general of yours?"
"Sure, but Dixter doesn't stand on formality," Tusk assured him.
Dion's opinion of this general was being lowered every moment. He climbed into the crew's quarters to change.
"Hurry up, kid."
Having completed the initial shutdown of all the important systems, Tusk left the remainder of the work to XJ and pulled himself up into the cramped living quarters.
Dion was standing near the metal storage chest where he kept his clothes. He had put on a clean pair of blue jeans and was holding what Tusk supposed was a shirt in his hands. Staring at the fabric intently, Dion was smoothing it with his fingers.
"What'd you find? Moths?" Tusk was in a good humor. "Damn, you've got white skin! Must come with the red hair. You're gonna burn to a crisp on this planet. We'll have to get you some sunblock. Come on— Hey, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dion said. He seemed startled and irritated that Tusk had interrupted him. Pulling the shirt over his head, he turned to climb the ladder leading up to the hatch.
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