"What is it?" Wrath-Pei asked.
"A small thing. I should like you to relay a recording, which I will transmit to you after our chat, to the new gride. It is from her father. Let's call it my wedding present to her."
"Fine!" Wrath-Pei said; and before the Bug could chatter on, Wrath-Pei severed the transmission, leaving open a link for the promised recording to be relayed. He would screen it himself later on, but at this point, he had no interest in it whatsoever.
Sam-Sel
A mixture of heated emotions roared through Wrath-Pei. He sat for an indeterminate time staring at the space where Saturn was, but seeing only the horribly deformed visage of the Machine Master.
At his side, his hands flexed and unflexed, finding purchase finally around the handle of the ancient tool he wore there, holstered like a gun.
Wrath-Pei brought the aviation tin snips up to his eye level and ran his gaze lovingly over the two sharp blades.
Pulling the handles, he brought the blades slowly together in a razor-sharp, finely oiled lock.
"Lawrence," he said sweetly, knowing that the boy still had three toes on his left foot to attend to, which Wrath-Pei had been saving for a moment such as this, "I believe it's time for us to go in."
Chapter 22
Suffocation.
Dalin Shar knew the word intimately now. He was nearing the place where he was almost begging for annihilation; each slow orbit of his soon-to-be coffin brought him achingly closer to the freighter wreck. He could now make out close details of the docking studs below the ruined front cabin, and had made a kind of tepid game out of trying to guess which of them his hexagonal craft would hit, less than an hour after his air was gone. It was a futile exercise, of course—he would be already dead—but the diversion was welcome. He had decided on one particular rust-colored knob, but his last slow orbit, showing him sadly pocked Luna and then the incrementally closer nose of the freighter—whose name he could now make out: Ad Aspera—had nudged his craft slightly away from that impact point, and in line with another, equally deadly, stud.
Any diversion was welcome.
He had stopped counting time. For the first two days he had contented himself with conserving movement, breath, and food—and with following the course of his own countdown to death. Then there had come a point where he had decided that rescue by any means was better than suffocation and had attempted to get the Screen to develop some sort of transmission. This, of course, had failed.
Finally, sickening of the Screen's calmly irritating tone, Dalin had told it to shut down completely, leaving him in darkness.
Darkness .. . ."
In this semi-womb, with his food gone, his air turning stale and bitter-tasting, and only the sights of his porthole to divert him, it was easy to think of Tabrel Kris. Somehow he knew she was safe, for the moment. He wondered if she thought of him, of their brief time together that would have to suffice for all eternity.
If there was such a thing as eternity.
He knew that his mind was becoming poisoned. The oxygen content of the air was lessening with each breath; Dalin could almost hear the air purifiers and tiny oxygen pumps shutting down one by one, as the thin tanks wafered between the walls of the hexagon let out their own last breaths so that he might have his...
And there it came: the looming nose of the Ad Aspera, so close now that he could count the attachment locks on the surface of the rusty stud that would smash his little pod to bits on its next goaround. It was close enough to touch now; and if he just reached his hand right out, perhaps he could—
Suddenly the docking stud pulled away from him. Impossibly, it now stood a good hundred meters away. In fact, Dalin could no longer make out anything but the studs themselves, in a cluster, and the smashed front cabin of the Ad Aspera, whose name was no longer readable.
"What in damnation?" Dalin said wonderingly.
Suddenly his empty stomach lurched as the hexagon spun entirely around before coming to a dead stop.
Dalin heard two dull thumps followed by a solid clang before darkness descended on the inside of the pod.
"Screen! Give me light!"
But Dalin's voice was now so weak that the command was not even heard. Here he was, on the point of salvation, and the time had run out on his oxygen, and he was pulling air in that wasn't air, weakly heaving like a fish out of water, but too weak to flop on any deck—
More sounds were followed by a bang, and he felt his body, already floating off, bounce once and then become still.
Tabrel, good-bye, he thought-
--and then air was rushing over him, breaking like hard waves.
For a moment he could not breathe, because there was too much air. His lungs seized; and then he was coughing, his hungry alveoli pulling in as
much as they could get, flooding his system with richness. The air tasted like cream.
Then, gaining strength, he looked up, and there were two figures standing in front of him, one of them holding a long piece of iron, and one of them said:
"Cripes! 'Tain't nothin' in here but a fellanothin' of use a-tall!"
Dalin knew immediately they were pirates, but, not knowing all that much about pirates, he decided immediately to play on whatever hospitality they might possess and keep his identity to himself.
Which proved a wise choice, because a fight immediately broke out between his two benefactors over how best to dispose of him.
"I say whack 'im now!" the one with the iron bar, some sort of prying device, suggested. For emphasis, he brandished the bar over his own head.
"No, no, Enry! Tha' won't do a-tall!" his friend said, though he did not dissuade his companion from flourishing his iron weapon. His was obviously the voice of reason. "He mi' be useful—and if he ain't, you ken whack 'im later!"
"All ri'," his friend said sullenly, lowering the iron and using his boot instead to kick Dalin.
"Ge' out!" he shouted, and Dalin complied by crawling out of the opened hatchway, remaining on all fours as further blows were rained upon his buttocks and ribs.
"He's a soft 'un, ain't 'e?" The conciliatory one laughed.
"Yeah, ri'," the other said, landing a particularly effective kick to Dalin's midsection, driving out most of the sweet air that had so recently invaded his lungs.
"Who are ye?" the hard one said, poking his iron bar at Dalin to make him roll onto his back.
Dalin could not catch his breath, nor answer. "Dumb, is 'e?" the iron-bearr said, raising the weapon again.
But the other one once again intervened, lowering his greasy face to within inches of Dalin's own.
"Naw, 'e can speak," he said, smiling, showing off his scarcity of teeth. "Can't ye, mate?"
"Y-yes," Dalin croaked out.
"Awww," the iron wielder said dejectedly, lowering his weapon and walking away.
Amazingly, they both left Dalin alone.
Behind Dalin came a loud whishing sound, and a hexagonal box identical to Dalin's own was pushed through a lock, bumping Dalin's forward. He was just able to roll out of the way in time to avoid injury.
"New 'un up!" the bar-wielder shouted, and went about prying open the hatch of the new hexagon with serious intent.
Suddenly he stopped, eyeing Dalin ominously before turning to his companion.
"Hey, Ralf—ye don' think there'll be another of 'im in here, do ye?"
Ralf shrugged. "If there 'is, you can brain 'im, all rj'?"
"Ri' as rain," the other said happily, as he bent to his task of opening the box.
In another moment the hatch had been popped free and the two pirates stood peering into the interior.
"Al ri'!" the bar-wielder shouted.
"Heaven above—ye can say tha' again, Enry!"
"It's a veritable golden one, it 'tis!"
"Hurrah!"
For the next ten minutes, Ralf and Enry tore metal crates and packages from the hexagon, pulling them open like children on a holiday morning. There were a variety of goods within
—everything from viewer Screens to wearables to a box filled with tiny round objects with tufts of hair on them that none of them, including Dalin, recognized. After studying these gewgaws for a minute or so, Ralf said to Enry, "We'll sell 'em to the Clanners!" Which produced a big laugh from both of them.
The celebration went on until a vague sound announced the arrival of a new pod. Suddenly Ralf and Enry, knee-deep in open packages, jumped aside as another hexagon was pushed through the lock, bumping forward those in front of it. By now, Dalin had moved out of the line of fire and stood witness as Enry's crowbar once again went to work, eliciting a new round of excited exclamations when the door was popped open to reveal new riches within.
Tiring of watching the antics of the two pirates, Dalin turned his attention to his latest prison. It was little more than a badly lit storeroom of vast dimensions. Dalin was at first curious as to why he would have the run of it unsupervised; but this question was quickly answered when it became apparent that there was nowhere to go. There were literally hundreds of meters of aisles, all of them lined with packed shelving from cluttered floor to high ceiling, and all of them backed against smooth walls. It was like a library of booty; Dalin had never seen so many goods in one place in his life.
When finally he did locate the single door in the storeroom, it proved to be sealed tight, employing a security system that seemed an amalgam of two or three technologies, some of them ancient. There were fingerprint coders, facial sensors, and a quaint keypad with symbols on it that were unknown to Dalin. For good measure there was an antique tumbler lock, which, Dalin mused, might actually be worth quite a bit of money as a dealer's curiosity.
Bored, his recent brush with death already fading in his mind, Dalin wandered back to the lock. The hexagon he had come in had already been pushed far into the room and looked forlorn without a scatter of broken crates around it.
A new pod had now been broken into, and Enry and Ralf were displaying anew their obviously bottomless sense of delight in pillage.
"May I help?" Dalin said.
Both pirates looked at him, startled.
Ralf suddenly grinned, showing again his nearly toothless smile.
"'E wants a job, does 'e?"
He turned to his companion.
"What do ye think, Enry? Shall we give 'im a job?"
"Put 'im to work!" Enry roared,, picking up his crowbar to shake it.
Ralf's grin widened. "Clean up!" he growled, spreading his hands to indicate the mess of opened boxes surrounding them like a small mountain.
"Grahhhh!" Enry said for emphasis, oscillating his iron in rough humor.
Dalin looked around for place to start—but the shock of an empty crate hitting him in the chest, sending him sprawling and sending the two pirates into convulsions of laughter, gave him an incentive and a point of departure.
"Clean it all, or we'll eat ye fer breakfast!" Enry laughed, showing his prodigious and dirty teeth to his companion, who whooped.
Dalin bent to his task, but before he had gotten more than an hour or two into it, most of his time spent in trying to decipher the two pirates' filing system, he was summoned back to the latest pod to enter through the ship's capture lock.
Work had ceased, and Ralf and Enry sat resplendent on a tall hill of unopened crates, which had been scooped from the belly of the salvaged hexagon.
"Hey, Nub! Come on up, then!" Enry called in a distinctly friendly fashion, waving to Dalin. His companion, also, was motioning for Dalin to maneuver his way up, which Dalin did, both cautiously and suspiciously.
At the top, he found the two pirates lounging in a man-made nest, surrounded by numerous empty bottles and even more numerous unopened ones.
"Titanian champagne!" Ralf said happily, holding a bottle out for Dalin's inspection before tilting its mouth up to his own.
"Tons of it!" Enry cried, spreading his hands to indicate the mountain they resided on.
Ralf wiped his mouth and belched. "Them Clanners may be ti' butted and grim, but they know their grape!"
"Huzzah to tha'!" Enry said, tossing an unopened bottle to Dalin. "Si' down, Nub! 'Elp us celebrate our fortune!"
The two pirates watched Dalin's attempts to open the champagne container with increasing amusement. Finally they broke into snorts of laughter at Dalin's fumbling, and Enry snatched the bottle from Dalin's hand, pressing the tiny switch on the neck which released the protective cage; then with a twist and pull the cork flew toward the ceiling and the wine was released.
Enry pushed the bottle back at Dalin.
"Now drink it!" he said, his voice a mixture of humor and command.
Shrugging, Dalin tilted the container up to his lips. Feather-light bubbles trickled down his throat.
'E likes it!" Ralf snorted.
"Then let 'im have another!" Enry said and, to a chorus of his friend's cheers, quickly retrieved, opened, and shoved another bottle of champagne into Dalin 's hands.
Soon, Dalin sat between the two pirates, participating in toast after toast. There was a lopsided grin on his face; and the world itself became increasingly soft around the edges.
"To Nub!" Enry said, holding his current bottle aloft. Finding it empty, he tossed it down the side of the hill, where it broke into pieces at the bottom.
"I'll clean it up later!" Dalin laughed.
His companions roared approval.
"Tha' you will, Nub!" Ralf said. "Tha' you will!"
"To Nub!" Enry said, resuming his toast to Dalin
with a newly opened bottle. "Our very own slave!"
"Ri'!" Ralf said. "Our very own slave!"
And Enry added, his eyes as bleary as Dalin had ever seen on a human being—though if Dalin had been able to see his own at that moment he might have been forced to alter his assessment—" 'E makes us laugh, so we'll let 'im live!"
Chapter 23
From high orbit, Venus looked no different than it did on a Screen.
In fact, the High Leader preferred to study the Screen; the detail enhancement was better, and one could not close in on a real-time image without goggles.
Pynthas, though, was in a near rapture, and Prime Cornelian found that he had to physically threaten the toady to keep his mind on the business at hand.
"Maat Mons is magnificent—nothing like the pictures!" Pynthas marveled, as Venus' second highest peak glowed with morning mist beneath the floor portal. At the volcano's base spread a scattering of shallow lakes and the beginnings of a forest; already the vegetation greens were deeper than they ever were on Mars; one could almost taste the water in the atmosphere and on the ground.
"Stunning!" Pynthas cooed.
"Would you like to see it close up?" the High Leader whispered into Pynthas's ear with a hiss.
Lost in rapture, the toady began at first to nod, but his demeanor turned to one of dread as the truth of Cornelian's message registered in his brain.
"You'll have a wonderful view," the High Leader continued, "as you hurtle down toward the surface without a space suit—would you burn up or implode first, do you think?"
Pynthas came to trembling attention, though his eyes wanted very much to stray to the view below them. "What may I do for you, High Leader?"
"As much as you ever could—nothing," Cornelian answered. "But you might as well check with communications and make sure the ring will be complete by tomorrow, as I was told."
"Yes, High Leader," Pynthas said, and was instantly gone from Cornelian's sight.
The High Leader glanced briefly down through the floor; the vista meant nothing to him, but his eye was caught by the flash of another of Sam-Sei's drones locking into place below him and off to port. A ring of such craft, forming an anklet around the planet, would soon be in place.
Uneasy with the view of reality, the High Leader turned from the floor, commanding that the window be shuttered. Instantly it was.
Cornelian moved to the nearest viewer, mounted high on the wall of the ship behind him.
"Sam-Se
i," he said to the Screen, and a moment later the Machine Master's den filled the view. SamSei himself was absent.
"Damnation—where is he?" Cornelian said; and a moment later his vertical eyes blinked, showing surprise, when the Machine Master stood before him, where he had apparently been all the while.
"What did you do?" Cornelian said, half intrigued and half angry.
Sam-Sei shrugged, his ruined face regarding the High Leader with its perpetual, horrible smile. "Something I have been tinkering with. A filter of sorts."
"You will keep me posted, of course."
Again the Machine Master shrugged. "As you wish," Sam-Sei said in his ponderous tone. "Though perhaps nothing will come of it."
"I wanted your reassurance that our little surprise on Venus will be successful."
"I do not give reassurances," the Machine Master said. "If everything was done as I directed, the re-suits will be as I predicted."
Cornelian tamped his own anger. Always, when dealing with this man, there was annoyance! It was like keeping a snake happy.
"I wish to know," Sam-Sei asked, "when Wrath-Pei will be returned to Mars."
"Ah," Prime Cornelian said, momentarily caught off guard. "That is ... something 1 am working on."
"It is not in process?"
"No," said the High Leader, trying to think of something to placate the Machine Master. "There is no possibility of his return before this Venus business is completed."
The Machine Master looked for all the world like a cadaver standing and talking to him; his wan complexion, the scarred pits around his sunken eyes, the tuft of greasy yellow hair high up on his forehead, made him appear anything but alive. Not for the first time, the High Leader wondered just how alive the man was, save for his work and his burning passion to face Wrath-Pei once more.
"You will have no trouble on Venus. I wish Wrath-Pei to be brought home as soon as possible," Sam-Sei said.
The High Leader had heard the words of assurance he had sought; now he let anger flow into his voice. It was time to poke the snake with a stick. "It will happen when I command it," Prime Comehan snapped.
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