by B. V. Larson
My eyes and my mind were wandering. I was thinking of all kinds of nasty ways to kill Claver. I’d done it before, after all, plenty of times. I kind of thought that this time around might be special. I was really going to enjoy this murder, when I got the chance.
“…very good, Floramel!” Claver called out, smiling at her.
Floramel looked troubled.
“Uh…” I said. “What’d I miss?”
“Thinking of pork chops again, McGill?” Claver asked.
“Now that you mention it, I could use a snack.”
“No doubt you could. You eat like a cow eats grass. It’s a wonder you don’t shit yourself with every step you take.”
“James,” Floramel said quietly. “He means to give you to the Galactics. He’s going to pretend he picked you up from the Rigellian ship—therefore providing an excuse for not going directly to the Mogwa ship.”
I almost blurted out that didn’t make much sense—but I managed to shut myself up.
“I get it,” I said. “A double-deal, just like you said. There’s just one thing… why would Sateekas want me? He kind of likes me, if the truth were told.”
Claver gave me a predatory smile.
“Maybe he does right now,” he admitted. “But what do you think he’ll say after I inform him of certain recent… indiscretions on your part?”
“Huh?” I said, playing dumb.
My heart was pounding already. I didn’t like where this might be going. I didn’t like it at all.
“James, James,” Claver said, clucking his tongue. “How could you forget so quickly? You’d think even an interstellar murdering sociopath like yourself would recall the most heinous act of perming a Mogwa!”
I snorted and laughed. “You’re crazy, Claver. Is that really what you’re going to try to pin on me? No one would believe it.”
Floramel was leaning way forward. Her long, lovely neck fully extended. Her mouth was unaccustomedly gawking at me, too.
“James?” she asked in a near whisper. “Did you really perm a Galactic?”
“Not just any Galactic,” Claver said with glee. “Our beloved ex-tyrant, from right here at home. He permed Xlur, none other than the duly appointed governor of Province 921.”
Floramel searched my face, but I didn’t meet her eye. Instead, I stared at Claver.
“That’s not just a lie, sir,” I barked at him. “That’s a damned lie!”
Floramel gave a sigh that sounded like something my mother would have released after an angry teacher called home.
“James…” she said. “How could you?”
Claver howled with laughter and slapped at his knees. He was almost crying, he was so fucking happy.
“She really does know you, McGill!” he said. “You know what? If you two weren’t both about to be traded off into servitude, I’d recommend you give marital bliss a shot. It’s a shame that will never happen. A damned shame.”
“James,” Floramel said. “Is that what happened to Governor Xlur? Everyone at Central—the entire Hegemony Government—they’re all in the dark. They’ve had countless meetings about it. This means… Now, what will happen next is…”
I shrugged, and I met her eye at last.
“Sorry,” I said. “I had my reasons.”
She flopped back in her chair, defeated. “I’m sure you did…”
-66-
When we docked with the ship from Rigel, I wondered if Squanto was around. I didn’t think Claver knew how much he hated me—but maybe that was just as well.
There wasn’t much to the transfer. The hatch opened, and Claver gushed pleasantries. Then he scraped and bowed like some kind of medieval servant.
The bears took custody of Floramel, and I began to object. I had things I could tell them, if they would only listen.
I was ready, in fact, to use the name of Squanto and demand an audience with him. Hell, if I was going down, I figured I might as well throw a wrench in Claver’s carefully laid plans.
Claver seemed to catch my mood.
“Ah, one thing!” he said. “I’ll be back in three days to collect this lady intact. That’s agreed, yes?”
The bears looked at each other doubtfully as their metallic snake-bone necklace things clicked. They finally agreed.
“It seems pointless that we should be inconvenienced by your mating habits,” said one of them.
“Um…” Claver said. “Oh… right. We’ll go with that. I ask that you indulge me on this point. I’ll be back with even better deals soon.”
“We very much doubt it. But this formula is useful to us. We’ll submit to your demands on this occasion.”
“Excellent! Thank you, gentlemen! Thank—”
But they’d already clanged the hatch shut behind them.
We were soon flying away, leaving orbit. Storm World fell behind us, but it didn’t vanish.
“Hey Claver,” I said, coming up with an idea. “You remember when you told me about your sister?”
He glanced at me sharply. An instant frown overcame his face. That was noteworthy, as he’d been as happy as a pig in shit up until now.
“I have no sisters, McGill.”
“Aw, sure you do. I’m talking about your clone-sisters. The female Clavers. You told me all about them once—but then, maybe that’s a memory you don’t have anymore...”
Claver led a strange life. He’d come up with the idea of transmitting his body-scans and mental engrams from one place to another instead of his physical being. Essentially, he used death and revival as a means of mobility. After all, it was easier to send a signal across countless lightyears than it was to send a flesh and blood person.
All he had to do in order to cross great gulfs of interstellar territory quickly was off himself, then make a copy wherever it was he wanted to go. Once he awoke in a new place, he could make deals then transmit his updated memories back home after that copy died.
The process left plenty of chances for gaps in his knowledge, however. If one copy had experiences after the transmission point, for example, those were lost forever when the clone died.
“You’re lying,” he said. “None of us would talk about—”
“She wasn’t bad-looking, the one I met up with on Dark World. We thought she was a ghost, you know. She was transmitting sobs and tears across the station. We tried to find her, but by the time we did—it was too late.”
During this short speech, Claver turned around and fixed me with a serious glare. I could tell I was on a taboo subject.
“McGill,” he said. “I’m warning you, this isn’t a topic you should poke at. There’s no way—”
“That I could know about your clones? Don’t you remember? I’ve been out to your little hideaway planet twice. The little fart-bag flying things outside the windows. The building, set up like a mini-version of Central. It was kind of cute in a way—”
“You’ve only been there once!” he said loudly.
I looked startled. He was, of course, correct. But I was messing with his mind. He had a weakness in this area. Anyone who lived and died over and over, with various clones doing stuff while any one version didn’t exist—how could a man be sure his memories were complete? I myself had often run into people who remembered events I had no recollection of.
It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. In fact, it was downright disturbing.
He must have felt the fear such discrepancies created: a gnawing worry that your own mind wasn’t complete. How could anyone feel hale and wholesome if they didn’t know what had happened to some of their own existences?
That special little mind-fuck—that’s the one I was working on now. It was the only card I had left.
Shrugging, I leaned back and made myself comfortable.
“Don’t worry about it,” I advised. “None of that stuff really matters. You’re just one Claver-Prime among many. From your point of view, you’re probably right. I’ve only been to Claver-land once, and I never met up with any lady-Clavers. Just
forget I brought it up.”
Claver stared at the deck for a moment. He was thinking hard.
“What did I say?” he asked quietly.
“Huh?”
“About the female, you moron. What did I say about her?”
“Oh… oh yeah,” I laughed, and he frowned. “Kinda funny, me having to tell you what you said yourself.”
“What did I say?!” he demanded.
I shrugged again, as if I barely cared. This gave me a moment to dream-up something good.
Taking the timeout seriously, I dug into my brain. Claver was upset about this talk of different memories, and any talk of a female version of himself. Why would that be?
My fertile mind conjured up some awful thoughts. Could a renegade Claver have created a female just to abuse her? Maybe a bad grow—or maybe the girl herself was a bad grow. Sometimes, copied genetic material got twisted up a little. Could it result in a change of gender?
Either that, or one of them had done it on purpose. Maybe… just maybe, not all Clavers were completely trustworthy. Maybe some of them hadn’t wanted to die for the greater good of the others. That could cause all sorts of trouble.
Given the paranoid way he was acting, I figured it had to be something like that. Something bad had happened in Claver-land.
A smile began to flicker into life on my face. I tamped that down immediately, though. Never let your mark see you grin. Not even when you’ve got him by the gonads—never.
Forming up a serious expression, I screwed up my face and put on my best thinking-hard expression.
“Hmm…” I said. “I met up with the female Claver on Dark World—on the factory satellite to be clear. I thought I saw one again back on Claver planet—your home world.”
“That’s impossible,” he snapped, “a dirty lie. Females are forbidden.”
“Ah-ha!” I said. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why all of you Clavers freak out when I bring her up. It’s a taboo among your tribe, huh? I understand.”
“You’re a simpleton. You understand nothing.”
I stared at the bulkhead as if seeing across the years and the countless lives and deaths I’d experienced.
“As to the last time I talked about the girl, well, that happened when you revived me a month or so back.”
“What are you talking about? It was a year ago when—”
I shook my head. “Like I said, maybe you’re a little befuddled. You revived me, asked me a few questions about the girl—the one I’d met on Dark World—and then put me down again. It was rude, actually.”
Claver blinked, staring at me. “You’re claiming that another Claver-Prime has been shielding his memories from the rest of us? That he’s been storing them somehow, and searching for Abigail in his spare time? That’s a lot to swallow, McGill.”
Blinking, I almost blew it. I quickly contorted my surprise with a dumb-ass expression.
“Uh…” I said. “I didn’t say anything about one of you Clavers being a renegade, or anything about Abigail. Didn’t even know that was the lady-Claver’s name. I just thought any confusion between our recollections must be due to some natural trimming of our minds. You know, how you wake up feeling your old self must have died… but that you can’t quite remember the details? Don’t you ever wonder if that last guy really did bite it… or if maybe he somehow survived and went into hiding?”
Claver was studying the deck again. “A deal is a deal,” he said firmly. “Without that single principle, we’ve got no basis for interaction!”
I watched him. He seemed to be talking to himself as much as he was talking to me.
Could this mean there was less than a state of total bliss in Claver-land? If there was a rogue copy—or one that showed up from time to time—that might explain the uneven nature of his recent behavior.
More importantly, it gave me another idea.
“When do we get to Sateekas’ ship?” I asked brightly.
Claver studied me for a moment before answering. “You seem suddenly interested to meet the Mogwa. That seems odd.”
“Oh, I’ve met him before. Many times. Sateekas and I, we go way back. Waaay back.”
Claver was eyeing me with vast distrust now.
“What was the nature of these… meetings?”
“Well, it all started when Battle Fleet 921 came to Dark World. You were out of the picture by that time—I think the Rogue-Worlder’s caught you in a stasis trap.”
“Don’t remind me of that nightmare.”
“Okay, we’ll skip all that. Anyway, I’d already seen the girl by that time—or rather her body—and I’d told one of you Clavers about it.”
“Go on,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“Well, later on, I was revived at Claver-land. Again, one of you Primes asked me about… uh… Abigail, was it?”
He nodded sourly.
“Right. I was questioned about that, and when I didn’t give up much information, I was put down again, quite rudely.”
Claver looked out the front viewscreen at the swimming stars. The Galactic ship was a white dot now, growing rapidly.
“Hey!” I said suddenly, “maybe that’s why you seemed surprised the last time I killed you.”
“What do you mean, boy?”
“Well, you were surprised I was all pissed off at you—but maybe you didn’t know you’d mistreated me recently, from my point of view. Just a thought. If it wasn’t you—I mean, if it was some kind of evil, rogue Claver… well… I guess I sort of owe you an apology for killing you off last time around.”
Claver looked pissed, but he also looked a little heartsick.
Now, you have to understand, I was absolutely joyful inside. I’d managed to get him to doubt himself—whether or not there was any reason to. That made me very happy.
It’s one of my personal theories that all of us live in two worlds at once, the mental and the physical. Sometimes one is happy, while the other is miserable.
Right now, I was likely to be physically abused—but I’d abused Claver mentally. Who was the winner in such a case? It was hard to say, but I felt pretty good about the exchange this time around.
-67-
We docked up with an Imperial heavy cruiser. It was an impressive vessel, about two kilometers long and maybe one eighth as wide. Old Sateekas was traveling in style.
Walking behind Claver with my hands chained up, I whistled and hummed.
Claver, by comparison, had his neck all scrunched down like a turtle.
“Could you stop making that noise?” he growled at me.
“Sure thing…”
I stared at him for a second. He really didn’t seem happy. “Do you like the Mogwa, Claver?”
He turned to look at me as if I was insane. “Like? That’s not a word I would use.”
“Fair enough. I bet they don’t like you much, either.”
He gave me an odd look, and I returned it with an idiot’s grin.
Finally, he turned away and led me deeper into the ship, shaking his head and muttering.
The floor lit up as we walked, showing green arrows where we were supposed to go. The chambers and passages lit only while we walked in them, then immediately fell dark again in our wake. It was kind of a spooky effect.
“It’s like a ghost ship in here,” I said. “They’re always like this, these Empire ships. You know why that is?”
“No—but I’ve noticed the same thing. I’ve noticed it for years. It’s a mystery.”
“I bet I know why they’re empty. It’s Mogwa psychology. You see, they don’t like leaving Mogwa Prime. These ships are almost unmanned because coming out here so far, to the fringe of the frontier, that’s a form of banishment for them.”
Claver stopped and peered at me. “That might be the most astute thing I’ve ever heard you say, McGill.”
“Uh… thanks.”
After the arrows finished up at a big sealed door, we waited until it ope
ned. There, several Nairbs humped around inside a large chamber. In their midst squatted an old, nasty-looking Mogwa.
It was Sateekas, as I live and breathe. I smiled to see him. Of all the Mogwa I knew, he was one of the few reasonable types.
He wasn’t a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. He was an old spacer at heart. He was a realist and a creature who understood something of honor. These rare traits had made him a good naval leader but a poor politician. As a result, it looked like they’d given him the governorship, which I’d learned from Xlur was equivalent to banishment from the point of view of the Mogwa.
“Hey, Grand Admiral!” I shouted. “It’s me, McGill!”
Startled, Sateekas shuffled his pile of floppy limbs around and studied me, peering with eye-groups that probably didn’t see as well as they used to.
“The McGill-creature?” he asked. “How is it you’ve been brought to me?”
Claver slapped at me and stepped forward. “Silence, prisoner,” he said importantly.
Right about then, I figured that I’d possibly done Claver’s little act some damage when I’d managed to get rid of his two bodyguards. He couldn’t really manhandle me into cooperation now. All he could do was threaten me with his pistol—but that only went so far.
When a man’s facing possible torture and near-certain execution, there just isn’t much reason for him to cooperate. As I was in that position now, I was feeling kinda ornery.
“That’s right,” I boomed at Sateekas. “I’m the McGill-creature, and I’ve brought you a prisoner. He’s a traitor and a vicious—”
Right about then, Claver tried to cow me. He went for a pistol-whipping, if you can credit it as such. It was almost laughable, but I didn’t laugh. This was part of my plan.
I took a gun-butt to the cheekbone, and it surely did hurt, but at that same moment I swept my big foot under his. He went down and did a facer.
In retrospect, I figured all our talk about lady-Clavers and my complete lack of physical threat had put him somewhat at ease. He just wasn’t expecting me to pull a move on him. Also, as I was chained up, he probably figured he could handle me.