Tranquility Lost

by J. L. Doty

  Jack considered the matter. If this King Deland had some sort of technology for rejuvenating his dukes and other selected individuals, figuratively allowing them to drink from a fountain of youth, and only he could grant them such a boon, then they would indeed be loyal and obedient servants, ever unwilling to bite the hand that fed them.

  ••••

  “Fountain of youth?” Zarkovy asked, making no effort to mask the skepticism in his voice.

  SSS-047 never initiated contact with Jack. It wouldn’t do to be interrupted if he were in a fight for his life. So most evenings he’d activate the relay in his pack, climb into his blanket and feign sleep while he contacted Zarkovy through his implants. “I need to investigate further, but it’s a common belief that if granted the king’s favour, you can live forever. All you have to do is go to the king every ten years or so for some sort of treatment. It could be just a hoax, or simple superstition, but there are too many things that point to something unusual going on here. And it would explain a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “Deland has some sort of power over these dukes. There’s no infighting, no wars or contention for the throne. Maybe he has some sort of technology holdover that allows him to seriously delay aging. It would certainly explain why these dukes toe the line. Kill off this king, and you have to age and die like all the rest.”

  Zarkovy was silent for several seconds. “But that would mean that Deland is three or four hundred years old.”

  Jack gave an involuntary shrug, but remembering he was supposed to be asleep, he rolled over as if sleeping restlessly. “Who knows what kind of technology they have laying around. That’s why I may stop reporting in as we approach Parthan. It’ll depend on what I see as we get closer. He may still have something that can detect these transmissions. As soon as I know it’s safe, I’ll contact you again. But don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for several weeks. On the other hand, if I don’t see anything that bothers me, you’ll probably get tired of hearing from me.”

  “Ok,” Zarkovy said, “we’ll sit tight. By the way, sorry we didn’t trust you at first. You weren’t there, on SSS-193. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jack said. Once the distrust had subsided, Zarkovy had proven to be a good ally. Stowicz’s and Candow’s attitudes had softened as well, though Palaski hadn’t changed his opinion of Jack one iota, and seemed quite unhappy Zarkovy had locked their sidearms away in the arms locker.

  Jack signed off, rolled over and went to sleep.

  ••••

  Noah Palaski understood he couldn’t hide from Him. He was everywhere, and nowhere, in his head, in his heart, in his soul. He couldn’t hide from Him, though he knew he’d done better than his crewmates. He couldn’t hide from Him.

  In his cabin he allowed only one dim bulb to burn at low power, casting a grayish wan light with deep, colorless shadows. He had thought the shadows would help him hide from Him, but he knew now he’d deluded himself with such a hope.

  His crewmates had long ago succumbed, were even now plotting against him, plotting to ensure his capitulation. He was certain of that, but he couldn’t prove it, certain they were possessed by an evil beyond imagining, the same as his former crewmates on SSS-193, though they hid it better, managed to appear completely normal on the surface. One wouldn’t know to look, but he knew. Yes, he knew.

  It was all Strand’s fault, the son-of-a-bitch. The four of them had survived SSS-193 because they were strong. And then came Strand, a virus to infect their carefully defended sanity. Were it not for him, the four of them would still be free. But Palaski could see the infection now in the others, their acceptance of Strand, their growing belief he had proved his ability to resist the evil. And then Zarkovy had taken their sidearms, said they weren’t necessary any more. He locked them away in the arms locker, and said Strand was no longer a danger. After that, Palaski had watched it spread through them like a cancer, even as he himself had managed to resist.

  He carefully slid open the drawer to his desk, picked up the small gun he’d smuggled aboard, took comfort in the solid weight of it for a brief moment, then returned it to the drawer. He knew the truth. Yes, he knew.

  ••••

  Roebar traveled to Parthan with a retinue of a little over one hundred people. There were about twenty members of his family, including Lady Gethany, no sons or daughters, a few grandchildren and great grandchildren, all of whom exhibited the same age discrepancy that Jack had seen with Roebar’s grandson. Apparently Duke Roebar and Lady Gethany were the only members of his family granted the king’s favour. In addition to family members there were about thirty servants plus a company of fifty soldiers, among whom Jack was numbered. Not part of the retinue, but accompanying them nevertheless, a little more than two hundred condemned criminals trudged along under guard, men, women and older children, all shackled to a long chain.

  When asked, Tomasa told him, “They’re to be brought before the king for the king’s justice.”

  That seemed rather odd. It would be inconvenient and expensive to house and transport criminals and miscreants to the king for execution, especially if they had to be housed for some time waiting for this trip. In every medieval society Jack had observed, the local Dukes exercised broad latitude concerning the disposition of those who broke the law. Being an ignorant barbarian from the Westerlands, Jack could get away with questions that locals would not ask, and he learned that Roebar and Gethany traveled to Parthan for the king’s favour about every ten or fifteen years. And while offenders were usually punished or executed in a more timely fashion, beginning a year or so before the trip to Parthan the duke’s men were under orders to accumulate a sizeable inventory of live and healthy lawbreakers.

  Seated around a campfire one evening, one of Jack’s fellow guards commented. “Yah, about a year before we goes for the favour, all sorts of things become a hanging offense, things what would’a got a simple lashing any other time.”

  The prisoners were also well fed and rather healthy, again, unusual for a medieval society and certainly not cost-effective for condemned prisoners. Fattening them up for the slaughter like cattle, Jack thought. He wasn’t sure what had triggered such an unpleasant thought, but it left him with an uneasy feeling.

  Jack kept his nose clean and his mouth shut, pitched in when something needed doing and did it well. It was important that he prove to be a soldier who didn’t shirk his duties, one who could be trusted. But at the same time he was careful not to stand out. He needed to be a little better than average, but not overly so.

  Late one afternoon, about thirty kilometers outside of Parthan, they halted for the night. Jack helped set up camp, light cooking fires, and pitch tents. It had been a long day and he was looking forward to a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. He sat down by one of the fires to warm his hands and wait for the meal.

  “Jakaboe.”

  He recognized Tomasa’s voice and turned to see the young bard approaching him.

  “I have something to show you,” Tomasa said excitedly. “Since you’ve never before ventured out of the Westerlands, you won’t have seen its like.”

  Jack stood and asked, “What is it that has you so excited?”

  Tomasa leaned close to him and spoke conspiratorially. “An ancient shrine to the star gods. It’s nearby. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it myself.”

  The star gods! Jack had to see this.

  They joined a small group of about a dozen of their comrades and walked off the main road into sparsely forested land. About a hundred meters in they passed a low pile of natural stone blocks. Jack paused and examined it for a moment. The stones appeared to be the remains of the foundation of a building that had long ago collapsed into decay. He guessed several centuries had passed since it had been a viable structure.

  Further on they passed small patches of dark gravel. Curious, Jack reached down and picked up a hand full. He examined it as he followed Tomasa
and the others, and to his surprise realized he was holding crushed rock, much like that used in old tarmac.

  Someone up ahead gasped as if in awe or fear. The rest of them emitted “oohs” and “ahs” in a general chorus of wonder and amazement. Jack walked forward and carefully edged his way through them to the front of the group.

  They stood around a rusted hulk of steel and iron so badly decayed Jack could not identify its original purpose. But then he spotted a few fragments that could have been parts from some sort of engine, and he thought they might be standing over an ancient machine that had long ago been a tractor, or a car, or something of that nature. It was now little more than a smear of rust with a few solid fragments that in another century or two would disappear completely.

  “This is the shrine?” Jack asked, speaking to no one in particular.

  “No,” one of his fellow guards said. “The shrine’s farther in. This was a sacrifice.”

  Jack followed them as they headed deeper into the forest, and a dozen paces further on his eye spotted the grayish gleam of plast, the first time he had seen that material on this planet. Another wave of amazement rippled through the small crowd.

  Much of the structure before them was jagged and broken, but Jack immediately recognized the outlines of an old orbital shuttle. Gouges and scars marred the surface of the plast plating, telling him it had been attacked and assaulted with some sort of weapons. The forest’s undergrowth had enveloped the ancient shuttle’s hull, and it appeared to have been sitting there for centuries.

  Once again, nothing about this planet’s social structure made sense. During the chaos of an interstellar contraction, the civilizations on many planets regressed, some even into outright barbarism. But if their gene pool was sufficient to maintain cohesion, they eventually struggled back from the decay. Many went through industrial revolutions of their own, and some even progressed to the point where they reinvented star travel. But the whole social structure of this planet appeared static, as if it hadn’t changed in centuries, as if those in charge didn’t want it to change.

  Jack’s companions held back and didn’t approach any closer than a few meters. He dearly wanted to examine the old shuttle, but doing so would not be in character for Jakaboe the guard, who would share all the superstitious awe of the people around him. He expressed wonderment along with the rest of them, and when they returned to the camp, he held back a bit so he wouldn’t be overheard. He hadn’t seen any signs of a level of technology that would allow them to monitor or detect his transmissions, so he contacted Zarkovy, gave him the coordinates of the old boat, and asked him to check it out.

  ••••

  Jack continued to dream of the warrior who hummed the sad tune. The man never took notice of Jack, as if Jack weren’t there, merely an unnoticed observer. But as they approached Parthan the warrior started to glance his way occasionally. It happened first about two days from the city. The two of them sat across from one another at a fire in some forest, and as before the warrior hummed his sad tune and poked aimlessly at the embers, staring into the glowing coals, the shadows of the fire dancing about his face and deepening his features. But that night, for the first time, the warrior suddenly stopped humming his tune, the stick poking the coals froze in place, and he looked up from the fire, looked straight at Jack. He stared at him for a moment, squinting like a man peering into darkness, as if knowing something was there across the fire from him, but unable to see it or even determine what it was. He remained that way for several seconds, a motionless statue, the only sound that of the crackling fire. Then he slowly lowered his eyes to the fire again, resumed his tune, and resumed poking at the embers. Whatever thought had made him look up appeared to be forgotten, lost in a moment’s passing.

  After that the warrior in his dreams always took notice of him. Whether they sat at the fire, or astride their horses on a road or a trail in the forest, he would look Jack’s way, though always as if peering into impenetrable darkness. Jack noticed the closer they got to Parthan the longer the warrior would stare at him, but eventually he would always look away and return to humming his sad tune.

  That changed the night before they entered Parthan. As before, the warrior looked at him, still with the look of a man peering blindly into darkness. But that night, after several seconds of staring at Jack, his mouth opened as if he was about to say something. He hesitated, doubt written in the harsh lines of his young face, then, barely loud enough for Jack to hear, he whispered. “Who are you? What are you?”

  6

  Disposal

  PARTHAN WAS IMPRESSIVE, at least as far as medieval cities went, and Jack had seen quite a few on any number of retrograde planets. It wasn’t the largest he’d seen, but it was by far the cleanest. A few hundred years ago, the King Deland of that time had ordered underground sewers constructed beneath the streets. They let out into the ocean downwind of the city, and there were strict laws concerning the disposal of waste. The city wasn’t without its smells, but they were nothing compared to what Jack had encountered elsewhere. Apparently, all of the Kings Deland abhorred the typical stench of a medieval city.

  Deland’s palace was an elegant, sprawling affair with grounds that took up almost a square kilometer in the heart of the city. Like the duke’s residence it was more palace or manor house than castle, definitely not a medieval, defensive structure. The palace was massive, with quite a number of peripheral structures and sprawling gardens that stretched to the horizon.

  Deland’s staff assigned quarters in the palace proper to Roebar and his retainers and retinue. They billeted Jack and the common soldiers in a large barracks that was reasonably comfortable and warm during the cool nights, with a large mess hall that served two decent meals a day. The duty was light, and most of Jack’s comrades were looking forward to a little whoring in the city proper. But the first night there, after the long ride, most unpacked their kits, ate a meal, and curled up in their blankets for a good night’s sleep.

  Jack went for a walk, activated his relay and contacted Zarkovy. “What did you find out about that shuttle?”

  “Not much,” the captain said. “Just a shuttle, no weapons of its own so it couldn’t defend itself. Badly damaged. Clearly foreign, not Commonwealth, couldn’t make any sense of the controls or symbols. Gotta be a couple centuries old. Once we’re done here, I’ll recommend the Commonwealth send in an archeological forensics team. Looks like just the kind of thing they’ll drool over.”

  Jack asked, “That’s all you got from it?”

  “Not much, eh? We did a little ground radar and found three bodies in a shallow grave nearby. Brought them back up to the ship for analysis. Been dead for at least three centuries. Showed signs of serious pre-mortem trauma, and a few metal artifacts looked like rank insignia, though like nothing I’m familiar with. They didn’t suffer from the same kind of malnutrition we’ve seen in the general populace, but who knows what it was like down there three hundred years ago. The three might be the shuttle’s pilot and co-pilot and a passenger, but we can’t be sure of that. Can’t be sure they even had anything to do with the shuttle. You said your new friends called it a shrine to the star gods. Maybe someone made a little human sacrifice and buried them there.”

  They ended the call with that, and Jack returned to the barracks, vowing to forget his concerns and get a good night’s sleep.

  ••••

  Jack looked up from his beer as the door to the tavern swung open slowly on leather hinges. He knew he was dreaming while his body lay sound asleep on his cot in the barracks. The dream had a very real quality to it, as if it weren’t a dream at all. How he knew this he did not know.

  A tall man stepped through the open door of the tavern and across the threshold. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat, long black cape, black leathers, and a long-sword strapped to his back, with a short, arm length sword at his waist. The shadows beneath the hat hid his face, but Jack knew it was the warrior of his dreams—his other dreams, he re
minded himself.

  The low ceiling of the tavern would not accommodate the hilt of the long sword protruding above the warrior’s shoulders, so he popped a few buckles and shrugged out of the sword’s harness. Carrying it in his left hand he walked over to Jack’s table, and asked, “May I sit, stranger?”

  Jack nodded, afraid to speak in this dream.

  The warrior sat down and a couple patrons at a nearby table got up and moved to a table farther away, attempting to be nonchalant about it. The tavern’s owner almost rushed across the room to greet the stranger. “What would be Your Lordship’s pleasure?”

  “Water,” the man said, and he had an oddly boyish voice. “Fresh, clean water, not from your buckets, if you please. And don’t call me lordship. If you must address me, call me brother.”

  The warrior looked Jack’s way, their eyes met, and Jack had the strangest sense of being watched from within, as if the watcher were hidden in a closet somewhere in his own mind.

  The warrior sat there for several seconds completely motionless. It was eerie to be unable to see his face because of the shadows cast by the brim of his hat, but Jack knew the man stared at him unashamedly, and he could picture the man’s needle-sharp eyes boring into him. The warrior finally spoke. “What are you? Your visage eludes me in some fashion, stranger. I see your face, and yet I don’t. What are you?”

  Jack chose his words carefully. “Merely a traveler.”

  The warrior again froze into that statue-like stillness for several seconds, then nodded carefully. “Yes, a traveler. We have both traveled far to be in this dream, you far in distance, me far in time. Our fates are intertwined.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t believe in fate, Brother.”

  The shadows prevented Jack from seeing the smile on the warrior’s face, but he knew it was there. “But I believe in you, traveler.”