Drakas!

by edited by S. M. Stirling

  I slipped back into the building and listened to the explosions and crashes outside—presumably driverless vehicles plowing into things, and aircraft with dead pilots crashing. Walks was frantically rubbing himself with oily rags he'd found. "Oh, god, I can't believe it, I really can't," he said. "None of my protection worked at all. And they grabbed our personal computers, and . . . um, well, I told her everything she asked. We're absolutely screwed, Mark."

  "Well, almost absolutely," Chrysamen said. She stepped out of the shadows. "And at least Walks is dressed for it. I'm here to bring you guys home."

  She pressed the button on a hand-held gate call, and abruptly there were bursts of no-color alternated with colors and lights; we ran through another deception set, and there we were, back at Hyper Athens, two days older and much the worse for the wear.

  * * *

  By tradition, in my family, we have a little review of the past year every Fourth of July. My father is just about the most patriotic person I know, and the Fourth is always our biggest holiday, by far. After we watch the Frick Park fireworks, and the various children are sent off to bed, Dad and I, my sister Carrie, and of course since she married into the family, Chrysamen as well, all gather in Dad's study, to talk a bit about what's happened in the last year, and what we hope will happen, and so forth. Sometimes it's been about dangers, and sometimes about opportunities, and most years, more often than not, it's just been a pleasant, satisfactory review of all the things that have gone right with our lives.

  This time, though, I had a story to tell. Thanks to the short-term exchange they had granted me, so that I didn't have to be away from my timeline on a day-per-day basis, though I had experienced being away for about six weeks, including all the debriefing time at Hyper Athens, I had gotten back home only an hour after I'd left, on the third. Now I'd had a good night's sleep and a soothing family holiday, and was feeling rested and ready to talk. So I did, with Chrysamen filling in many parts, because, of course, she knew much more of the story.

  We talked for a long time, in the warm glow of Dad's study; in the lamplight, the sharp angles made the old pockmarks from the long-ago bullet holes more visible, and I tended to get lost in looking at them, and thinking, even after all these years and even with my very rewarding family life, how life might have been different if we'd seen the attacks coming.

  "So that was really all it was," Dad said. "The old standard way of planting disinformation—have it carried by someone who believes it and will try to guard it. Neither Walks nor Mark knew that they were doing anything other than what they were ordered to do—but Ariadne Lao set Mark up with that escape device, so that when things got desperate enough, he'd `accidentally' bounce right over to a major Closer military base. That must have caused some excitement."

  "It did," I said, and described the situation of popping onto a runway with Walks naked, and then of massacring the population around the airport. "Anyway, the one thing that Lao didn't lie about," I said, "was about the amplification of the timeline-crossing shock wave. The Closers got a real good fix on that Draka timeline, I'm sure. And the Draka—if their physics is up to it—know where the Closers are, as well. I should have figured that that escape device couldn't possibly work the way they were describing it, anyway. Why have something that has to look for a safe place to set you down? Why not just design it to always take you somewhere safe?"

  Dad nodded. "Because that's the basic technique for planting disinformation. Don't let anything that actually is important sound like it is. Lao gave you a plausible explanation for something you weren't supposed to need, and with so much else going on, you didn't worry about the fine details." He sighed and took a sip of brandy. "Anyway, as a guy who once followed the activities of a few espionage outfits, I have to admire this as a sheer piece of trade craft. How much of it did you know about, Chrys?"

  "All of it, once Mark was already on his way," she said. "Always assuming they're not running some scam on me, as well. Ariadne Lao came and saw me ten minutes after Mark left. They sent Mark and Walks in there, deliberately vulnerable, and knowing full well that the Draka were apt to just grab them and try to extract intelligence information. They knew that Mark would get both of them out—they hoped, leaving the documents and a lot of hints behind—and that the device would take them very noticeably through Closer territory. The whole operation was one big setup to insure that the Closers and the Draka were going to find each other, and not in a friendly way . . . . "

  My sister Carrie sat up a little straighter in her wheelchair. "But don't you have to worry about them allying with each other?"

  Dad chuckled. "I suppose it's possible, but consider who's involved. Totalitarian states with a long record of treachery. Both eager to find whole timelines to enslave. The Closers were just hit with an unprovoked attack that apparently originated among the Draka; the Draka know that we're now hostile, and they think that Mark and Walks in His Shadow escaped into the Closer timeline. So my guess is that whichever side crosses over first will go in shooting."

  Chrys beamed at him. "Not bad," she said. "But it's more than that. How will the Closers react to a threat like the Draka? They do know their limitations—they know that a slave society like theirs tends to stagnation. But they also know that when you're dealing with a secrecy-minded aggressive bunch of totalitarians, you need to be even more paranoid and secretive than they are. So they'll liberalize a few timelines, hoping that in those timelines they'll get some basic research done. And they'll tighten up in others, to make them better defended. Now you've got a crackdown in one part of the Closer domain, and a loosening up elsewhere . . ."

  "Cultural drift and conflict, maybe leading to civil war?" Dad asked.

  "Maybe. At least a lot of internal tension. Look, the Closers have been dependent on ATN for new technology for a long time, and essentially their whole system of a million timelines has been a parasite on the ATN system. A very costly, dangerous parasite. Well, we're giving them one of their own. The Draka probably only had a dozen timelines at the point where we introduced them, and they already seem to be stagnant, so we're giving them the chance to loot the Closers—after all, better them than us. Now either the Closers will wipe out the Draka menace, or—more likely—the Draka will bleed the Closers for centuries. Good for us, no matter how you look at it."

  "Well, not quite good for everybody," I said, leaning back and taking another sip of brandy. "It's not really much fun to think of yourself as easily fooled—and to fool them, ATN had to fool both Walks in His Shadow and me. And then too, there's another little problem . . . Walks is married, you know, back in his timeline. I don't think his wife knows what he does for a living, but I bet she can spot guilt as well as any other woman. And Walks is pretty guilty about it all."

  "Oh, I have faith in a trained agent," Chrys said, sitting on the arm of my chair. "He'll manage to lie well enough so that she doesn't have to know anything was amiss."

  "I don't know." I put an arm around her and said, "If it had been me in his situation, could I have lied well enough to keep the secret from you?"

  She shrugged. "But it wasn't. You never know what might have been, now, do you?"

  The Peaceable Kingdom

  Severna Park

  Severna Park is the author of several SF novels, including Speaking Dreams and most recently The Annunciate, bold works which take the tropes of classic space opera and use them for profound meditations on power, sexuality, and the nature of human relations. Plus a cracking good story, of course!

  In this little fable, Ms. Park shows the underside of the Domination, and how the plain fact and sanity of one timeline can become the paranoid fantasy of another.

  What made Doctor Hamilton Guye's office different from the rest of the cardboard cubicles in the Police Psychiatric division were the paintings, his own paintings, hung on the walls. There were the small ones with the wide-eyed animals lying down together in a peaceful clump; lions, zebras, gazelles, all together by a silvery wat
erhole. Those were the ones he showed to his patients, like Rorschach ink blots, letting hardened criminals and first-time offenders wander through the fiction of a perfect world, while he waited to hear their impressions. The small ones were quick works—impressions of a peaceable kingdom, but his masterpiece—the one he used to calm himself while the murderers and rapists and robbers and lunatics hunched in the heavy wooden chair across the desk from him, was the big painting of Paradise on the opposite wall.

  His patients sat with their backs to it, facing the white haze of Baltimore summers and the gray misery of Baltimore winters, while Hamilton only had to look over their shoulders to see golden rays of sun lying over lush jungle. Leopards, languid on high branches; elephants, quiet and hidden in the shade of vast palms. Lemurs and giraffes; eland and white herons. Here, the dark viridian green of ferns in the undergrowth. There, the bright vermilion where sun cut through the upper branches. While the rest of the department went to Tully's bar, down on St. Paul Street, Hamilton stayed focused, day after day, year after year, on his own inner visions.

  One July afternoon, a police lieutenant brought him a prisoner. The prisoner was a young man, white, about thirty, with stiff black hair and flashing black eyes. He was shackled in a leather belt, with hands and feet chained. He had the look of an angry crow, thought Hamilton, and wondered how that kind of bird might fit in the upper right corner of the painting he was working on at home.

  "Sit down," he said to the prisoner, who dropped into the wooden chair, facing the window.

  The police lieutenant handed Hamilton a blue Psych Eval Request folder. "He's nuts," said the lieutenant. "Thought you should know." He glanced around the office, which only had enough wall space between the paintings for a bulletin board and a small table with a coffee pot. "You do all this stuff yourself?"

  "Oh yes," said Hamilton.

  The prisoner slumped in the chair, manacled hands between his knees. He didn't look at the paintings, or the torpid view out the window. Just the floor.

  "We picked this joker up last night," said the lieutenant. "He was trying to break into a gun shop."

  Hamilton opened the folder.

  Name: Malik Rau.

  Age: Unknown

  Address: Unknown

  Delusional, confrontational and violent. No known prior convictions or arrests. No known medical history.

  "Thought he was a crackhead," said the cop. "He was yelling his head off, trying to jump us. One guy, five cops." He grinned and patted his nine millimeter. "Good joke, huh?"

  "Good joke," said Hamilton.

  "They did a blood test on him downstairs," said the cop. "But there wasn't any crack in his system. So we decided he wasn't a crackhead. Just nuts. So now he's your problem."

  "I guess he is," said Hamilton.

  The lieutenant turned to go. "When you get done with him, send the chains back downstairs, okay?"

  "No problem."

  The cop left and closed the door. Hamilton got up, made himself a cup of coffee and sat down again. The prisoner didn't move.

  "Mister Rau," said Hamilton. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

  "No," said Rau. He didn't say it like a Baltimore native. He said noh, like a foreigner.

  "Can you tell me where you live?" said Hamilton.

  "No," said Rau.

  "Can you tell me how old you are?"

  "No."

  "Can you tell me why you were trying to rob the gun store?"

  Rau just stared at the floor.

  Ten minutes, thought Hamilton, and then he can come up with some answers in the cellblock downstairs. He let his eyes stray to the painting of Paradise on the far wall of the office. There was a dark area at the bottom left, which he had been thinking needed a dab of cerulean blue. Maybe he'd bring paint in tomorrow and fix it during lunch. He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

  "Mister Rau," he said. "I'd like to ask you some questions. Would that be all right?"

  Rau shrugged.

  Hamilton picked up a small framed painting from the top of his desk. This was one inspired by Rousseau; a man sleeping peacefully on the ground, approached by a lion. The colors were pure and fanciful. The man was deep in a dream. The lion looked curious, not hungry.

  "Can you tell me what this picture is about?" said Hamilton.

  Rau frowned and held the painting clumsily in both hands. His chains jingled as they moved.

  "This is an innocent man who is oblivious to the dangers around him," he said.

  Hamilton listened to the soft accent, unable to place it. Not British. Not quite Jamaican. Almost one of those west African dialect-accents, but this man was distinctly Caucasian. He looked almost Greek.

  "Have you ever seen a lion?" said Hamilton.

  "Yes," said Rau. "Many."

  "In the zoo?" said Hamilton.

  "No," said Rau. "I've slept out in the dirt like this, and they would come to see if they could eat you. But I never let them get this close."

  Hamilton smiled. This was going to be a much easier evaluation than he had expected. Rau was projecting himself into the painting. His sense of reality was skewed in an almost textbook manner. "Where was this?"

  "At home," said Rau. "Where the Draka are."

  "The Draka?" said Hamilton. "Is that a kind of animal?"

  "No," said Rau, and his face seemed to close. He put the picture down and put his hands in his lap and didn't say another word. Finally Hamilton called the Psych department officers and had him taken to the holding cells on the first floor.

  * * *

  The next day, they brought Rau up in handcuffs, not shackles.

  "Have you had anything to eat?" said Hamilton.

  Rau nodded.

  "Would you like some coffee?"

  Rau gave the pot a longing look and Hamilton poured him a cup. "Would you like anything in it?" asked Hamilton.

  "No," said Rau and took the cup in both hands like a child.

  "I'd like to show you some more paintings," said Hamilton. "Would that be all right?"

  "Yes," said Rau.

  Hamilton took a painting down from the wall. This one was larger than the one inspired by Rousseau, although it had a few of the same elements. In this one, the sleeping man was surrounded by big cats—leopards, lions, cheetahs and a white tiger which Hamilton had painted in gleaming opaline. To Hamilton, the cats looked protective, but he had painted them so their teeth showed. He held the canvas where Rau could see it. "What do you think?" he said.

  "I think you are an excellent painter," said Rau.

  "Thank you," said Hamilton, "but what I meant was, what does the painting say to you?"

  Rau hunched over the hot coffee and took a long time to answer. His eyes darted back and forth across the canvas as though searching for an escape for the sleeping man. "Why don't they kill him?" he whispered finally. "Is it because they want him to wake up and see them before they tear him to pieces?"

  "Who?" said Hamilton.

  "The cats of course," said Rau. "They will descend on him."

  "Perhaps they're protecting him," said Hamilton, but Rau let out a bark of a laugh.

  "The Draka only protect themselves," he said and then his eyes went wide. He shot to his feet, spilling the coffee all over the desk. "Are you with them?" he shouted. "Are you with them!"

  Hamilton called security and they took Rau away, still screaming. Hamilton prescribed a tranquilizer, called in maintenance to clean up his office and went home early.

  * * *

  At home in his crowded apartment, he put on Chopin and the air conditioning and opened his paint box. The work on his easel was only halfway done. The preliminary sketch, done in broad strokes of burnt sienna over primed white canvas, showed a garden of Eden with a dove in one upper corner and a Rau-like crow in the other. Below, gazelle and wolves drank together from a sparkling fountain. Trees dotted the horizon and tiny wild roses filled the foreground. Rabbits and squirrels capered in the undergrowth. Hamilton stood pen
sively in front of the half-finished painting thinking that there needed to be more predators. He brushed in a hawk, circling, but the wings were wrong, making it look more like a vulture. He needed a picture to look at and put the brush down to search for his Peterson's Field Guide to North American Birds. In the section between "Smaller Wading Birds" and "Birds of Prey," his doorbell rang.

  Through the peephole, he saw a tall, fair-skinned woman with a knot of red hair. She was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. The fisheye distortion of the peephole made her look odd—long-nosed, like a heron.

  "Yes?" said Hamilton.

  "I'm with the tenants' association," said the woman. "There's a meeting this weekend to discuss the rent increase."

  "Rent increase?" said Hamilton.

  "Twenty-five percent," said the woman. "Haven't you been reading the fliers in your mailbox?"

  He couldn't recall a flier in his mailbox. He opened the door and the woman smiled, showing perfect white teeth. She stepped through the door without an invitation. Her perfume—or some indefinable odor—filled the air around him, subtle and predacious. She shut the door with her heel, dropped the briefcase and her false manner.

  "Rau," she said in a low voice, which resonated in the spaces between his belly and scrotum. "Where is Rau?"

  "R-r-rau?"

  "We want him," she said. "He knows we're here. You'll bring him to us."

  "Uh-us?" he echoed. She was taller, wilder. Her eyes were all pupil, focused on his tender organs. His heart hammered in his chest. His palms turned cold and wet. He felt like he would fall to the floor in a dead faint, and that she would stand over him until he woke up and agreed, or if he refused, she would smile with those teeth and tear him to shreds. He was the rabbit staring into the eyes of the lion. He was the bird on the edge of flight. He wanted to scream, but her presence overwhelmed any panicky sound he might make.