In the Courts of the Crimson Kings

by Stirling, S. M.

  I also see in my mind devices that are not machines at all but relations, contiguities of time and space as complex as the dance of neurons in a brain and as abstract as a mathematical theorem.

  It was severely annoying to have to operate thus on hints and ambiguities. Not unfamiliar, but annoying.

  “Supremacy, you seek to irritate me beyond bearing and thus affect my judgment,” Heltaw replied. “I concede that this stratagem has irritated me, but the truth is still plain: The decisive piece on this board is your heir.”

  “But the heir is only of value while it exists,” Sajir said. “Since you cannot destroy, you cannot control absolutely.”

  “Draw your knife and kill the Terran,” Heltaw said to Deyak.

  Teyud, Sajir thought.

  He cocked his head, watching with interest as her hand went jerkily to her harness and began to draw the blade. Her arm trembled, as if something invisible were forcing it to move against every straining sinew. It was tempting to wait a little, and let the complication of Jeremy Wainman be removed before he proceded.

  No, Sajir thought. I had best intervene. Simplification does not serve my purposes. And I would greatly have appreciated the play of events if someone had intervened on behalf of Vowin.

  “Agreed, you have a degree of control,” he said to his opponent.

  “Cease!” Heltaw said to Teyud. To the Emperor: “Control of the only possible heir of sufficient genomic resemblance.”

  “On the other hand, I have overwhelming physical force, and may—simply by adjusting my own attitudes and priorities—decide that confounding your ambitions is a task more crucial than anything which happens after my death,” Sajir pointed out with cool good humor. “I ruled without an heir for a very long time and presumably would be content to do so again. You, on the other hand, have no fallback position.”

  Prince Heltaw was far too experienced to show his surprise by any physical movement; Sajir thought he detected a slight flux in the pupils of his eyes.

  “Stalemate?” he said.

  “Not necessarily. You may return my offspring, and retire to your estates in Aywandis. I will pledge to take no action against you or your lineage as long as you remain passive. This would leave you free to act after my span comes to a close.”

  “Unacceptable. The loss of prestige would diminish my support to a fatal degree. Nor will I likely have an opportunity to infest the heir again; once infested, twice reluctant to approach.”

  “Or we could wage war. I can kill you here, but you would take my heir with you . . . and your lineage, I understand, fled by fast Paiteng some time ago. They would undoubtedly rally your supporters in Aywandis.”

  “Supremacy, grant me more tactical nous than Chinta sa-Rokis, who thought only of preserving the status quo. Of course, my lineage fled. Together with most of my personal Coercives.”

  Sajir conceded the point with an inclination of the head. “There is little point in destroying infrastructure and killing valuable personnel when the outcome may be settled more economically. Therefore let us use the traditional method of adjudication: the Game of Life. We are already standing on an atanj board, after all.”

  Prince Heltaw adopted a posture of respectful agreement, with ironic exaggeration. “There is extensive precedent for such a course. If your playing in the Game of Life is as passive as your technique in the nonmetaphorical form, then I have little to fear.”

  “You would be prudent to consider the fact that I have reigned for two hundred years of the Real World. And that I have achieved a nearly maximum life span, while thousands of contemporaries and competitors have not. Perhaps a certain degree of watchful passivity is prudent, where a more headlong approach is contra-survival.”

  “Your survival is due largely to the fact that you had no close heir,” Heltaw pointed out. “Others could afford to wait.”

  Sajir sa-Tomond smiled slightly. “In point of fact, I do have a close heir, particularly considering the past interactions of the Tollamune and Thoughtful Grace genomes. She has all the necessary markers to control the Devices.”

  “An heir whom I now control, as I have demonstrated!”

  The ancient face smiled thinly in reply; an ancient wickedness seeming to glow from within for a moment, casting the network of wrinkles into contrast. His voice was imperturbable as it continued, “Yet this, in fact, guarantees my victory. Even if you were to topple me, and sit upon the Ruby Throne—metaphorically, because a linkage would, in fact, kill you—you could hope to hold it only by a genetic merger with my heir. To do otherwise would alienate far too many, beginning with all the Thoughtful Grace lineages, who now have a genetic stake in the matter as well. Thus, my lineage would prevail, with you as merely an episode.”

  “But this would not constitute victory from the viewpoint of your personal continuity of consciousness.”

  “Which entropy will sever soon; I freely concede that against that opponent, I am overmatched at last. I in turn concede that there would be a deep personal satisfaction in witnessing your demise; yet even if the reverse is true, in a fundamental sense I cannot leave this board defeated, even if my remains are carried from it.”

  His smile showed teeth. “As the vaz-Terranan say, ‘Heads I win, tails you lose.’ Let the pieces assume their positions.”

  Heltaw’s voice was smoothly cruel. “Deyak sa-Sajir, assume the square of the Chief Coercive. The vaz-Terranan shall be Consort.”

  The earthman they’d called Binkis circled outside the squares of the atanj board.

  It couldn’t be the one who’d disappeared on Venus twelve years ago, could it? He was supposed to be dead . . . he and his wife died in that cave when the ancient whatever-they-were blew up . . .

  Behind Jeremy, he spoke softly, in English, which probably nobody here spoke except the Emperor. “Among its other attributes, the device that the woman found operates to magnify the will,” he said.

  “You’re Binkis?” Jeremy blurted. “Look—”

  “I am the Yellow Jester, here in the Court of the Crimson King,” the man said cryptically. “There is no time for explanations. The Crown strengthens the will but the parasite subverts exactly that. Strong stimulus might make it possible to use the one against the other. Throw double or nothing, Yanki. So must I. Administer the strongest stimulus you can.”

  Jeremy wanted to turn and babble questions, but the dance of death and treachery was beginning across the stone squares of the atanj board. Steel flickered and bodies fell; when Teyud fought, it was with the leopard fluency he’d seen before, and her voice was crisp when she called orders to the Coercive pieces. That was a bad sign; the filthy thing in her head must be getting a better grip.

  The ancient, seamed face of the Tollamune Emperor was impassive as he directed his pieces, a symbolic representation of his actual life’s work . . . the Game of Life. He spoke, and an unarmed courtier with a bag of symbolic valuata stepped toward Jeremy—a Clandestine Subversionist couldn’t take other pieces outright, but it could slide past barriers of Brutes and Coercives as though invisible.

  “Usurper’s Consort, you are offered extensive properties to defect,” he said in a Court accent thick enough to cut, with his voice shaking slightly—he had a good deal riding on this game too. “In return for your information, your personal lineage will be preserved.”

  Decision welled in Jeremy’s mind. Double or nothing.

  “I accept and will defect!” he said clearly.

  Prince Heltaw turned, the trained calm of his face cracking. The defection of a Consort was an important move in atanj; it closed off a whole chunk of the board to him. Now he was angry, not just annoyed; incredulously angry. The vaz-Terranan worm had turned . . .

  “Chief Coercive! Coerce the defecting Consort!” he half screamed. “Administer lethal force to deter others!”

  Ooops, Jeremy thought. Her father waited until she could access this square before he moved the Clandestine. Guess he was thinking along the same lines. C’mon, blad
der and bowels, don’t disgrace me now.

  His guts did feel liquid, as those yellow eyes turned coldly on him, and the long blade turned toward him. The half near the hilt still shone, but there was a liquid coat of red on the forward twenty inches. A drop splashed on the marble below as she advanced, feet turned in a perfect Martian fencer’s stance.

  “Jeremy,” she said, as she approached.

  It was a soft murmur, dreamy and warm like a whisper on a pillow, an utter contrast to the bleak killer’s mask it came from.

  “Teyud,” he said, his voice husky with fear and with something else. He spread his arms. “I’m not going to fight you.”

  “Jeremy . . .”

  Then she lunged, blurring-swift, and the shock of the steel in his flesh was like a needle of ice. He sank slowly to his knees, looking incredulously at the sword through his shoulder. She fell back from the lunge and into stance, pulling the blade free—and then it really began to hurt. Not as bad as Heltaw’s pain-snake, but more real and less virtual; his body knew he’d actually been damaged now, and that his life might pour out. He stifled a scream and clutched at the wound with one hand.

  “Teyud, it’s okay,” he whispered, his eyes locked on hers. “I know it isn’t you doing it. I love you. Remember me.”

  She lunged again, fluid and swift; the blade pricked his chest just left of his breastbone. It barely dimpled the robe, but the needle point still pierced his skin, and he could feel another trickle of blood starting, this one running down his chest. Teyud’s face was as calm as ever, but she was sweating, beads of moisture rolling down into her eyes from her brow, and he could see the faintest trembling.

  Jeremy kept silent, eyes still meeting eyes. Behind her Prince Heltaw nearly left his Despot’s square and stopped himself only an instant before he forfeited the game. Instead he pursed his lips and whistled, a coded modulation.

  Teyud screamed. The steel bit a little deeper into Jeremy’s chest muscles, and he could feel it quiver with the tension in her hand. From behind the Emperor’s square another whistle rose. Teyud screamed again, and blood was running down her face as well, from her nose and eyes and ears; he could smell the rank salt-and-copper smell of it, stronger than his own.

  Then she stumbled back, her face working in a grimace that was half agony and half a feral determination like a wolverine in a trap. Something was wrong with her, or with Jeremy’s eyes; she seemed to shimmer as he watched, a silvery nimbus that crackled on a level too low for vision to catch. The sword dropped from her hand, but it seemed to drift downward, the flexing bow as it struck the stone and sprang back visible as an undulation in the metal. Teyud was screaming continuously now, raw animal sounds. Her hands went to her head, and she stumbled in a circle howling like a wolf.

  God, I’ve killed her, Jeremy thought numbly. It’s cutting up her brain inside, I’ve killed her.

  The knowledge that he would die with her didn’t seem to help, but he knew that the thought of living wasn’t something he could bear.

  She fell to her knees, but it was as if she were moving in a different time frame than everyone else. The whole complex dance of the game had ceased, and the great-eyed Martian faces weren’t locked or inscrutable for once. Only the Emperor himself seemed calm. When Teyud spoke, the words rolled inhumanly deep and slow.

  “That . . . Which . . . Compels!”

  There was something wrong with the way she looked; it was like staring at a photographic negative with the colors reversed, but also like staring into the heart of a sun. The Invisible Crown wasn’t invisible any more, and the glowing hum that came from it made every cell in his body ache. When she stood, a wave of silver light washed out in a blast wave like an explosion; it didn’t strike him, but he fell backward helplessly anyway.

  It isn’t light. I’m not really seeing it with my eyes at all. That’s just how my brain’s interpreting it because I don’t . . . know . . . how . . .

  She screamed again, and flung her hands upward. The column of light around her began to swirl. Prince Heltaw looked up from the surface of the atanj square and screamed in counterpoint. He drew his dagger and began plunging it into his own chest, over and over again, long after he should have been dead.

  Another shriek, but there seemed to be modulation in it now. A second column of light surrounded Franziskus Binkis; it whirled inward, into the substance of him. Jeremy stared with his mouth gaping, and . . .

  He’s smiling. He’s smiling, and it’s dissolving him.

  “Jadviga,” the man said.

  Blackness.

  Teyud’s mind felt like a vast raw wound. Thought was excruciation beyond bearing; she stumbled and shook her head. Something fell away from her neck with a wet thock on the smooth marble.

  Her father lay on his back in the Despot’s square. His face was smoother now; she saw the Imperial physician shaking his head in bewilderment.

  “Come!” she said.

  The word seemed to tear its way through her larynx; it sounded barely human, but he obeyed; the Thoughtful Grace stayed around their Emperor’s body, heads bowed in grief.

  The physician reached toward her. “Attend . . . him,” she said. “Quickly!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Encyclopedia Britannica, 20th Edition

  University of Chicago Press, 1998

  THE ANCIENTS: Purpose and the Lords of Creation

  As the twentieth century draws to a close, humanity is confronted with an existential crisis, as the implications of what our astronomers and astronauts have discovered over the last two generations sinks in.

  That we are not the only planet with intelligent life has been strongly suspected since the late nineteenth century, and obvious since the mid-twentieth. That life is common among the stars is now also obvious, and we have no reason to doubt that such life is intelligent, too. The truly troubling feature of the universe that we have discovered is this: Our solar system itself has been extensively reshaped by intelligent design, for at least the last two hundred million years. We inhabit not so much a world as an artifact.

  We have dubbed those responsible the ancients, but other than one enigmatic artifact and the awesome power indicated by their accomplishments, we know virtually nothing of them, not even whether they still exist.

  We now know that Mars and Venus were sterile until terraformed and seeded with earthly life. We cannot prove that Earth itself was not turned into a life-bearing globe by the same ancients; all we can be reasonably sure of was that if they did so, they did it at a much earlier period. The same is true of our wider stellar neighborhood; we cannot tell whether the life-bearing worlds we have detected are “natural” or not, or indeed whether the evolution of the universe itself is “natural” in the sense of being the product of the blind operation of natural law. And the enigmatic objects observed farther in toward the galactic core—the near-invisible stellar-sized constructs detectable only by their emission of waste heat—pose questions even more troubling.

  All we can say with any confidence about the ancients is that they possessed powers beyond our comprehension, in their nature if not their effects. What was their purpose? The general opinion among those in the scientific community, that they represent some gigantic ongoing experiment in the development and interactions of life, is plausible—but it may be simply a professional deformation, a projection of our own motives onto the alien other.

  There are two possible responses to the universe in which we find ourselves. The first is despair that we are simply the laboratory rats of minds as far beyond our comprehension as that of a human is beyond a rat. The other is exhilaration in the knowledge that intelligence can transcend itself, and eventually wring from the fabric of reality powers equivalent to those mythology attributed to gods, and that we ourselves may become the Lords of Creation.

  Mars, Dvor Il-Adazar

  Hall of Received Submission

  June 21, 2000 AD

  “You sure you want to go through with this?”

>   “I just wish I had Sally here to be Best Person,” Jeremy said.

  Robert Holmegard and Dolores were in Earth-style diplomatic garb, white tie and tails and long black dress respectively, with only the discreet earphones at all out of place. Jeremy wore a robe of shimmering moth-silk that had been woven when Charlemagne was crowned. It looked almost plain compared to some of the others in the vast arched hall below the Ruby Throne. The scale of the building should have made the Throne look insignificant; somehow it didn’t. The rows of gorgeously clad dignitaries stretched back into the distance, leaving the central isle clear, lit more brightly by the glass-fiber circles in the uppermost arch.

  Banners hung in the shadows above on either side—the banners of kingdoms thirty thousand years dead; the murals portrayed their lords kneeling in submission before Timrud sa-Enntar.

  From their niches in the walls, man-high birds like living jewels sang of glory in a language long dead even on Mars. The ranks of armored Thoughtful Grace below them might have been carved themselves, save for the watchful golden eyes. Incense scented like cloves and cinnamon smoked into the air, like a soothing fire along the nerves.

  “Washington is ripshit,” Holmegard said quietly. “You’re going to be in deep, deep trouble if you ever go home again.”

  “I am home,” Jeremy said, and felt the same ridiculous grin trying to break through on his face.

  He suppressed it; wouldn’t do to grimace like a monkey, not in public.

  I’ve been keeping straight-faced all through the ceremonies, he thought. This is the end of it. Well, except for all the other ceremonies, which will be a pain in the ass, but it’s worth it.

  “And if you think Washington’s ripshit, think about how Beijing’s feeling. All their people are going home, the entire base.”