The Ragged Astronauts lao-1

by Bob Shaw

  “Do you think you should?”

  “Don’t be such a prune, my boy — it’s the best tonic there is. If you drank a little more wine it might put some flesh on your…hmm… bones.” Glo studied his glass while it was being refilled, making sure he received full measure, and the colour began returning to his face. “Now, what was I talking about?”

  “Wasn’t it something to do with the impending rebirth of our civilisation?”

  Glo looked reproachful. “Sarcasm? Is that sarcasm?”

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” Lain said. “It’s just that brakka conservation has always been a passion with me — a subject upon which I can easily become inte’mperate.”

  “I remember.” Glo’s gaze travelled the room, noting the use of ceramics and glass for fitments which in almost any other house would have been carved from the black wood. “You don’t think you… hmm… overdo it?”

  “It’s the way I feel.” Lain held up his left hand and indicated the black ring he wore on the sixth finger. “The only reason I have this much is that it was a wedding token from Gesalla.”

  “Ah yes — Gesalla.” Glo bared his divergent teeth in a parody of lecherousness. “One of these nights,! swear, you’ll have some extra company in bed.”

  “My bed is your bed,” Lain said easily, aware that Lord Glo never claimed his nobleman’s right to take any woman in the social group of which he was dynastic head. It was an ancient custom in Kolcorron, still observed in the major families, and Glo’s occasional jests on the subject were merely his way of emphasising the philosophy order’s cultural superiority in having left the practice behind.

  “Bearing in mind your extreme views,” Glo went on, returning to his original subject, “couldn’t you bring yourself to adopt a more positive attitude to the meeting? Aren’t you pleased about it?”

  “Yes, I’m pleased. It’s a step in the right direction, but it has come so late. You know it takes fifty or sixty years for a brakka to reach maturity and enter the pollinating phase. We’d still be facing that time lag even if we had the capability to grow pure crystals right now — and it’s frighteningly large.”

  “All the more reason to plan ahead, my boy.”

  “True — but the greater the need for a plan the less chance it has of being accepted.”

  “That was very profound,“Glo said. “Now tell me what it… hmm… means.”

  “There was a time, perhaps fifty years ago, when Kolcorron could have balanced supply and demand by implementing just a few commonsense conservation measures, but even then the princes wouldn’t listen. Now we’re in a situation which calls for really drastic measures. Can you imagine how Leddravohr would react to the proposal that all armament production should be suspended for twenty or thirty years?”

  “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” Glo said. “But aren’t you exaggerating the difficulties?”

  “Have a look at these graphs.” Lain went to a chest of shallow drawers, took out a large sheet and spread it on his desk where it could be seen by Glo. He explained the various coloured diagrams, avoiding abstruse mathematics as much as possible, analysing how the country’s growing demands for power crystals and brakka were interacting with other factors such an increasing scarcity and transport delays. Once or twice as he spoke it came to him that here, yet again, were problems in the same general class as those he had been thinking about earlier. Then he had been tantalised by the idea that he was about to conceive of an entirely new way of dealing with them, something to do with the mathematical concept of limits, but now material and human considerations were dominating his thoughts.

  Among them was the fact that Lord Glo, who would be the principal philosophy spokesman, had become incapable of following complex arguments. And in addition to his natural disability, Glo was now in the habit of fuddling himself with wine every day. He was nodding a great deal and sucking his teeth, trying to exhibit concerned interest, but the fleshy wattles of his eyelids were descending with increasing frequency.

  “So that’s the extent of the problem, my lord,” Lain said, speaking with extra fervour to get Glo’s attention. “Would you like to hear my department’s views on the kind of measures needed to keep the crisis within manageable proportions?”

  “Stability, yes, stability — that’s the thing.” Glo abruptly raised his head and for a moment he seemed utterly lost, his pale blue eyes scanning Lain’s face as though seeing it for the first time. “Where were we?”

  Lain felt depressed and oddly afraid. “Perhaps it would be best if I sent a written summary to you at the Peel, one you could go over at your leisure. When is the council going to meet?”

  “On the morning of two-hundred. Yes, the King definitely said two-hundred. What day is this?”

  “One-nine-four.”

  “There isn’t much time,” Glo said sadly. “I promised the King I’d have a significant…hmm…contribution.”

  “You will.”

  “That’s not what I.…” Glo stood up, swaying a little, and faced Lain with an odd tremulous smile. “Did you really mean what you said?”

  Lain blinked at him, unable to place the question in context properly. “My lord?”

  “About my… about my flying higher… seeing farther?”

  “Of course,” Lain said, beginning to feel embarrassed. “I couldn’t have been more sincere.”

  “That’s good. It means so.…” Glo straightened up and expanded his plump chest, suddenly recovering his normal joviality. “We’ll show them. We’ll show all of them. “He went to the door, then paused with his hand on the porcelain knob. “Let me have a summary as soon as… hmm… possible. Oh, by the way, I have instructed Sisstt to bring your brother home with him.”

  “That’s very kind of you, my lord,” Lain said, his pleasure at the prospect of seeing Toller again modified by thoughts of Gesalla’s likely reaction to the news.

  “Not at all. I think we were all a trifle hard on him. I mean, a year in a miserable place like Haffanger just for giving Ongmat a tap on the chin.”

  “As a result of that tap Ongmat’s jaw was broken in two places.”

  “Well, it was a firm tap.” Glo gave a wheezing laugh. “And we all felt the benefit of Ongmat being silenced for a while.” Still chuckling, he moved out of sight along the corridor, his sandals slapping on the mosaic floor.

  Lain carried his hardly-touched glass of wine to his desk and sat down, swirling the black liquid to create light patterns on its surface. Glo’s humorous endorsement of Toller’s violence was quite typical of him, one of the little ways in which he reminded members of the philosophy order that he was of royal lineage and therefore had the blood of conquerors in his veins. It showed he was feeling better and had recovered his self-esteem, but it did nothing to ease Lain’s worries about the older man’s physical and mental fitness.

  In the space of only a few years Glo had turned into a bumbling and absent-minded incompetent. His unsuitability for his post was tolerated by most department heads, some of whom appreciated the extra personal freedom they derived from it, but there was a general sense of demoralisation over the order’s continuing loss of status. The aging King Prad still retained an indulgent fondness for Glo — and, so the whispers went, if philosophy had come to be regarded as a joke it was appropriate that it should be represented by a court jester.

  But there was nothing funny about a meeting of the high council, Lain told himself. The person who presented the case for rigorous brakka conservation would need to do it with eloquence and force, marshalling complex arguments and backing them up with an unassailable command of the statistics involved. His stance would be generally unpopular, and would attract special hostility from the ambitious Prince Chakkell and the savage Leddravohr.

  If Glo proved unable to master the brief in time for the meeting it was possible he would call on a deputy to speak on his behalf, and the thought of having to challenge Chakkell or Leddravohr — even verbally — produced in Lain a cold panic wh
ich threatened to affect his bladder. The wine in his glass was now reflecting a pattern of trembling concentric circles.

  Lain set the glass down and began breathing deeply and steadily, waiting for the shaking of his hands to cease.

  Chapter 4

  Toller Maraquine awoke with the knowledge, which was both disturbing and comforting, that he was not alone in bed.

  He could feel the body heat of the woman who was lying at his left side, one of her arms resting on his stomach, one of her legs drawn up across his thighs. The sensations were all the more pleasant for being unfamiliar. He lay quite still, staring at the ceiling, as he tried to recall the exact circumstances which had brought female company to his austere apartment in the Square House.

  He had celebrated his return to the capital with a round of the busy taverns in the Samlue district. The tour had begun early on the previous day and had been intended to last only until the end of littlenight, but the ale and wine had been persuasive and the acquaintances he met had eventually begun to seem like cherished friends. He had continued drinking right through aftday and well into the night, revelling in his escape from the smell of the pikon pans, and at a late stage had begun to notice the same woman close to him in the throng time after time, much more often than could be accounted for by chance.

  She had been tawny-haired and tall, full-breasted, broad of shoulder and hip — the sort of woman Toller had dreamed about during his exile in Haffanger. She had also been brazenly chewing a sprig of maidenfriend. He had a clear memory of her face, which was round and open and uncomplicated, with wine-heightened colouring on the cheeks. Her smile had been very white and marred only by a tiny triangular chip missing from one front incisor. Toller had found her easy to talk to, easy to laugh with, and in the end it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to spend the night together.…

  “I’m hungry,” she said abruptly, raising herself into a sitting position beside him. “I want some breakfast.”

  Toller ran an appreciative eye over her splendidly naked torso and smiled. “Supposing I want something else first?”

  She looked disappointed, but only for an instant, then returned his smile as she moved to bring her breasts into contact with his chest. “If you’re not careful I’ll ride you to death.”

  “Please try it,” Toller said, his smile developing into a gratified chuckle. He drew her down to him. A pleasurable warmth suffused his mind and body as they kissed, but within a moment he became aware of something being wrong, of a niggling sense of unease. He opened his eyes and immediately identified one source of his worry — the brightness of his bedchamber indicated that it was well past dawn. This was the morning of day two-hundred, and he had promised his brother that he would be up at first light to help move some charts and a display easel to the Great Palace. It was a menial task which anybody could have done, but Lain had seemed anxious for him to undertake it, possibly so that he would not be left alone in the house with Gesalla while the lengthy council meeting was in progress.

  Gesalla!

  Toller almost groaned aloud as he remembered that he had not even seen Gesalla on the previous day. He had arrived from Haffanger early in the morning and after a brief interview with his brother — during which Lain had been preoccupied with his charts — had gone straight out on the drinking spree. Gesalla, as Lain’s solewife, was mistress of the household and as such would have expected Toller to pay his respects at the formal evening meal. Another woman might have overlooked his behavioural lapse, but the fastidious and unbending Gesalla was bound to have been furious. On the flight back to Ro-Atabri Toller had vowed that, to avoid causing any tensions in his brother’s house, he would studiously keep on the right side of Gesalla — and he had led off by affronting her on the very first day. The flickering of a moist tongue against his own suddenly reminded Toller that his transgressions against domestic protocol had been greater than Gesalla knew.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he said, twisting free of the embrace, “but you have to go home now.”

  The woman’s jaw sagged. “What?”

  “Come on — hurry it up.” Toller stood up, swept her clothes into a wispy bundle and pushed them into her arms. He opened a wardrobe and began selecting fresh clothes for himself,

  “But what about my breakfast?”

  “There’s no time — I have to get you out of here.”

  “That’s just great,” she said bitterly, beginning to sort through the binders and scraps of near-transparent fabric which were her sole attire.

  “I told you I was sorry,” Toller said as he struggled into breeches which seemed determined to resist entry.

  “A lot of good that.…” She paused in the act of gathering her breasts into a flimsy sling and scrutinised the room from ceiling to floor. “Are you sure you live here?”

  Toller was amused in spite of his agitation. “Do you think I would just pick a house at random and sneak in to use a bed?”

  “I thought it was a bit strange last night…getting a coach all the way out here… keeping so quiet…This is Greenmount, isn’t it?” Her frankly suspicious stare travelled his heavily muscled arms and shoulders. He guessed the direction in which her thoughts were going, but there was no hint of censure in her expression and he took no offence.

  “It’s a nice morning for a walk,” he said, raising her to an upright position and hastening her — clothing still partially unfastened — towards the room’s single exit. He opened the door at the precise instant needed to bring him into confrontation with Gesalla Maraquine, who had been passing by in the corridor. Gesalla was pale and ill-looking, thinner than when he had last seen her, but her grey-eyed gaze had lost none of its force — and it was obvious she was angry.

  “Good foreday,” she said, icily correct. “I was told you had returned.”

  “I apologise for last night,” Toller said. “I… I got detained.”

  “Obviously.” Gesalla glanced at his companion with open distaste. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Aren’t you going to introduce your… friend?”

  Toller swore inwardly as it came to him that there was no longer the slightest hope of salvaging anything from the situation. Even allowing for the fact that he had been adrift on a vinous sea when he met his bed partner, how could he have overlooked such a basic propriety as asking her name? Gesalla was the last person in the world to whom he couid have explained the mood of the previous evening, and that being the case there was no point in trying to placate her. I’m sorry about this, dear brother, he thought. I didn’t plan it this way.…

  “The frosty female is my sister-in-law, Gesalla Maraquine,” he said, putting an arm around his companion’s shoulders as he kissed her on the forehead. “She would like to know your name, and — considering the sport we had during the night — so would I.”

  “Fera,” the woman said, making final adjustments to her garments. “Fera Rivoo.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” Toller smiled broadly at Gesalla. “Now we can all be friends together.”

  “Please see that she leaves by one of the side gates,” Gesalla said. She turned and strode away, head thrown back, each foot descending directly in front of the other.

  Toller shook his head. “What do you think was the matter with her?”

  “Some women are easily upset.” Fera straightened up and pushed Toller away from her. “Show me the way out.”

  “I thought you wanted breakfast.”

  “I thought you wanted me to go home.”

  “You must have misunderstood me,” Toller said. “I’d like you to stay, for as long as you want. Have you a job to worry about?”

  “Oh, I have a very important position in the Samlue market — gutting fish.” Fera held up her hands, which were reddened and marked by numerous small cuts. “How do you think I got these?”

  “Forget the job,” Toller urged, enclosing her hands with his own. “Go back to bed and wait for me there. I’ll have
food sent to you. You can rest and eat and drink all day — and tonight we’ll go on the pleasure barges.”

  Fera smiled, filling the triangular gap in her teeth with the tip of her tongue. “Your sister-in-law.…”

  “Is only my sister-in-law. I was born in this house and grew up in it and have the right to invite guests. You are staying, aren’t you?”

  “Will there be spiced pork?”

  “I assure you that entire piggeries are reduced to spiced pork on a daily basis in this house,” Toller said, leading Fera back into the room. “Now, you stay here until I get back, then we’ll take up where we left off.”

  “All right.” She lay down on the bed, settled herself comfortably on the pillows and spread her legs. “Just one thing before you go.”

  “Yes?”

  She gave him her full white smile. “Perhaps you’d better tell me your name.”

  Toller was still chuckling as he reached the stairs at the end of the corridor and went down towards the central section of the house, from which was emanating the sound of many voices. He found Fera’s company refreshing, but her presence in the house might be just too much of an affront to Gesalla to be tolerated for very long. Two or three days would be sufficient to make the point that Gesalla had no right to insult him or his guests, that any effort she made to dominate him — as she did his brother — would be doomed to failure.

  When Toller reached the bottom flight of the main staircase he found about a dozen people gathered in the entrance hall. Some were computational assistants; others were domestics and grooms who seemed to have gathered to watch their master set off for his appointment at the Great Palace. Lain Maraquine was wearing the antique-styled formal garment of a senior philosopher — a full-length robe of dove grey trimmed at the hem and cuff with black triangles. Its silky material emphasised the slightness of his build, but his posture was upright and dignified. His face, beneath the heavy sweeps of black hair, was very pale. Toller felt a surge of affection and concern as he crossed the hall — the council meeting was obviously an important occasion for his brother and he was already showing the strain.