by John M. Ford
Kethas smiled slightly. “Then we will do that.” He went back to Rogaine, who sat very still by the fire; he spoke to her in her own language.
The servitor Odise bowed crookedly to Vrenn. It was a small being, a little over half Vrenn’s height, with spindly legs and arms and a turret head, covered all over with smooth black fur. It turned, and Vrenn followed it, up stairs to a corridor above.
The kuve opened a door, handed the key to Vrenn, then gestured for him to enter the dark doorway. As Vrenn did, lights came on.
The chambers inside were fully the equal of a Captain’s quarters. There was a study the size of Vrenn’s shared room at the house, with a library screen and books on shelves; an equally large bedroom beyond that; a private wash-and-waste. Odise demonstrated some of the controls—silently; it apparently did not speak—bowed and went out, closing the door.
Vrenn wandered around the rooms for several minutes. The similarity to a Captain’s cabin was not just superficial, he realized. He had seen pictures of ships showing the same furnishings: the cylindrical closets, the angular desks and chairs, the tracked spotlamps. The bed even had a concave surface, though there was no restraint web. There was a meal slot in the wall, with programming buttons. And the walls were covered with clearprints of stars and planets, lit from behind, exactly like viewports to Space beyond.
Vrenn sat down on the lumpless bed, weighted down with too many enormities for one day.
On a small table next to the bed was a klin zha set. The pieces were of heavy green and amber stone—jade and quartz, Vrenn guessed, having heard of those materials. The board was black enamel, with inlaid brass strips marking off the spaces. Vrenn looked at it for a long while, not touching it, then opened his brown envelope and slid its contents out onto the table: a [59] triangular piece of heavy card, and some discs of soft wood.
Vrenn had found the board on the ground next to a recycling bin, and inked the triangular grid with another piece of scrap for a straightedge. The discs were hole-punchings from some packing material, scrounged in the same way. Vrenn had engraved the symbols for the pieces into the soft grain with a writing stylus. They were Green and Black, since he had no yellow ink.
Vrenn set up his pieces to match the stone set. He made a few moves, then looked up at the corners of his room. There was nothing overtly a monitor visible. He felt the key in his pocket, thought about getting up to lock the door, but did not.
Finally he scooped the paper board and pieces into their envelope, reached beneath his bed, and found a slot where the package would fit.
Morning light filtered through skylights, vines, and fog into the house’s indoor garden. Vrenn felt the warm, wet air like a solid substance around him. Fog parted as he moved.
Kethas was armpit-deep in a sponge-tiled pool, watching text flicker by on a small viewer at the water’s edge. “Come in, Vrenn,” he said, and touched the display off.
Vrenn approached. His tunic and trousers were damp, impeding him. He stood on the edge of the water, on which bright plants were floating, giving off a sweet scent.
“Well, come in,” Kethas said, smiling.
After a moment, Vrenn undressed and slipped into the water. It was an oddly neutral sensation, not cool, not hot, just ... enveloping, and very comfortable.
“Now we’re civilized,” Kethas said. “Have you eaten?”
“I ... just a little.” The meal slot in his room served nine flavors of fruit nectar, and he had gone through a large glass of each. But they had not stayed with him. [60] And he had soon been more interested by the library screen, which also served as a starship action simulator.
“Two meals,” Kethas said, to the apparently inert monitor. “You were up early.”
Vrenn wondered then if his room was watched. “We always woke before sunrise, at the House.”
“There’s no such rule here. It would never work. I live midmorning to midnight, and Rogaine needs many little sleeptimes, and Titian sleeps when it’s convenient, like a Vulcan. If you like mornings, fine, but find the time you’re best at and live there. That’s the payoff strategy. The most efficient, that is to say.”
That was exactly the opposite of what the House Proctors called efficiency, but Vrenn was already thinking of something else. “Are there Vulcans here?”
“No, I do not have a tharavul. Can you use a library unit?”
Watched or not? Vrenn thought, and said, “Yes.”
“Then you have no need for tharavul. Here’s food.”
There were light fried anemones and crisp salt fish, sweet gel pastries (Vrenn was careful to take only two) and a hot dark drink he thought at first was heated ale, but which was something harsh and incredibly bitter. Vrenn nearly choked.
“Human kafei,” Kethas said, laughing. “They bring it to me in course; I should have warned you. Awful, yes, but you learn to drink it. Some years back, I was on a deep mission, taking supply by forage, and for half the voyage we had nothing to drink but a case of that stuff taken as prize ... that and the white fire the Engineer brewed up. They’re not bad together, too.” Kethas drained his cup. “And it has a mind-clearing effect, which you’re going to need.”
The Thought Admiral reached to the display unit again. As he rose slightly from the water, Vrenn could see rippled scars on Kethas’s flank. He had watched enough tapes of battles to know that only delta rays left marks like that: Kethas had been burned by either an unshielded warpdrive, or Romulan lasers.
[61] “Bring down my green tunic,” Kethas said to the unit, “and for Vrenn, the gold.”
Vrenn and Kethas walked around the fireplace in the large front room. Along the walls were boards and pieces for every game Vrenn had ever heard of, and even more than he had not. For klin zha there were many sets, for all the variations.
“I’ve seen you in the Clouded Game,” Kethas said. “Do you know the Ablative form?” He gestured to a board that was elevated on posts, pressed a ringer on one of the spaces; the triangular tile fell out, into a tray below.
“Yes. And Blind, too.” Vrenn wore a long coat of gold brocade, with the multicolored crest of a forest lizard sewn across the shoulders. Kethas’s coat was of thick green cloth, with an Admiral’s haloed stars on the sleeve.
Vrenn thought about his clothes; both the wardrobes in his rooms had been filled. This gown was too new to have been the Admiral’s; it must have belonged to one of Kethas’s children. Vrenn put the question away to ask later, if at all.
Kethas pointed at boards marked in squares instead of triangles. One was square overall, spaces alternately black and white; the other was rectangular, a tan color with gold lines.
“The human zha, chess. And the mm zha, which the Romulans call latrunculo. They are both fine games, though not so interesting or varied as klin zha.
“Do all races have a game?”
Kethas smiled, evidently pleased with the question. “Kinshaya have no stylized game, though they are excellent at small-war with model soldiers. Vulcans find games ‘illogical,’ though they create computer simulations that amount to the same thing, and labor at other races’ games for some reason of the Vulcan sort. Do you know the saying, ‘less pleasant than torturing Vulcans’?”
[62] Vrenn laughed, which was enough answer. Kethas said “Among Masters of the Game it goes ‘... than klin zha against a Vulcan.’ ”
“And the kuve?”
“The kuve do not. They have games, yes, and some of them are worth a little study—I will show you, another time—but no kuve zha can be truly great.”
“That is only sensible,” Vrenn said, embarrassed. “I should have understood it.”
“An obvious question is better than obvious ignorance,” Kethas said. “In this house questions may always be asked. Only in the larger universe must one be cautious not to show one’s blindness.”
Vrenn nodded, silently resolving to be more cautious at once. He said “What variant is this?” realizing he was showing more ignorance.
The board and pieces be
fore them were of klin zha pattern, but there was only one set of pieces, colored green and gold combined.
“That is for the Reflective Game. It is the highest form of klin zha, and the most difficult. Barring of course the komerex zha—or do you deny the Perpetual Game?” Kethas shook his head, smiling; evidently a joke was intended. “Come here; I’ll show you.”
Kethas picked up the Reflective set, carried it to one of the tables by the fireplace. He punched up a cushion and sat against it, then swept the single set of two-colored pieces to the side of the board.
Vrenn sat, folding his tunic beneath himself, and waited.
“In the Reflective Game,” Kethas said, “there is a single group of pieces which either player may move in turn. All pieces move in the fashion of the normal, Open Game.”
“How does one win?”
“In the same fashion as the Open Game: by making it impossible for the opponent to move legally. ... We begin by setting up. Choose a piece and place it: any [63] piece, anywhere. Then I shall do so, and so on, alternating.”
Without hesitation, Vrenn reached for the Fencer, placing it in the corner of the board nearest himself. He watched Kethas: but suddenly nothing at all, not even a smile, was readable from the Grand Master’s face. Kethas selected a Vanguard, placed it some distance from Vrenn’s Fencer.
When all the pieces were placed, in what seemed to Vrenn a totally random fashion, Kethas said, “I move first. This is a disadvantage.” He shifted a Vanguard. “Now, your move.”
“Any piece? And I may kill as well?”
“Of course. Remember only,” he said, still without expression, that you may not voluntarily put your Goal in danger of attack. Even though it is also my Goal.”
Suddenly Vrenn began to understand. He examined the board, realizing that most of the moves he had thought were possible actually endangered the Goal disc. If he even moved the Fencer off the Goal, it would then become the enemy’s Fencer, and give the enemy an instant victory.
The game lasted only three moves after that.
Kethas sat back. “A pleasing game,” he said. “My compliments to a worthy opponent.”
Vrenn felt frustrated, angry. He felt he had been used, to win a cheap and honorless victory. Controlling his voice, he said, “I am a good player, at the forms of klin zha which I know, but I do not know this one, and I could not play well against you.”
Kethas answered in a voice that seemed to reach out and physically take hold of Vrenn. “I am an undrawn Grand Master of the Game, and you cannot lose well against me, no matter the form. But as with all my children, I will play this game or another against you every day that you are here, and in time you will learn to lose well, and you may even learn to lose brilliantly.”
Vrenn held his hands below the table, keeping them [64] from clawing into fists, kept his lips from curling back. He wanted to understand, but was not sure at all that he did, or ever would. “And if in time I learn to win ... however badly?”
“Kai Kassai, Klingon!” Kethas said, laughing, and slapped Vrenn’s shoulder. “Then I will make you a Thought Admiral in my place, and retire to my consort and my garden pool forever!”
That night, after a long and useless assault on sleep, Vrenn touched on the bedside lamp and stared at the stonecut kiln zha set in the pool of light. Then he reached beneath the bed, took out the envelope, shook its contents onto the table and set up a game.
It was an afternoon deep in the cold season, and the perpetual fireplace was stoked high; there had been a trace of real white frost on the garden outside, just at dawn, and Vrenn had watched until the day reclaimed it. He had never been so far north, and found the change of seasons amazing. He had been Khemara now for two-thirds of a year.
Kethas had been away from the house for ten days, at a meeting of the Imperial Council, in the Throne City on the other side of the world. Today, the morning’s message said, he would be returning.
Tirian had at once gone to check the working of the house’s transporter station; he seemed satisfied, and now sat in the front room reading a printed book, while Vrenn experimented with klin zha positions on a computer grid. Music drifted down from a balcony: Rogaine was playing the harp in her chambers. The sound was pleasing, but it was not like Klingon music; there could be no words to it, and it did not inspire.
The harp fell silent. A moment later, Tirian’s belt annunciator chimed. He tucked his book away inside his clothing. Vrenn blanked the game display and followed Tirian out of the house.
Beyond the formal garden and the flier landing, all to itself, was a small hexagonal pavilion, much newer than [65] the main house. The particle transporter had been safe for Klingon use for less than thirty years; only very recently had anyone, even an Admiral, the luxury of a home station.
Inside the small building, Titian unlocked two banks of controls. On the first, he dilated an opening in the deflector shield covering the estate, set to scramble any unauthorized attempt to beam in. Then he went to the second console and began setting to receive.
There were three discs on the floor before the control consoles, matching three on the ceiling. Between one pair a column of sparkling golden light appeared, entirely without sound.
Kethas epetai-Khemara, in black silk tunic and full-formal gold vest heavy with medals, stepped off the disc, and sighed. The grooves in his face and forehead stood out very darkly. Vrenn could not remember seeing him look so tired, or old.
“Well done, Tirian,” Kethas said. “The war continues, on every space of the board.” He nodded to Vrenn, and went out of the transporter pavilion, toward the house.
Tirian began locking up the console. Vrenn thought of what he had wanted to ask the servitor, for a long time now: suddenly, perhaps because of the quiet of the mood, or their distance from the life of the house, it seemed the right time to ask. “Tirian, do you believe in the Black Fleet?”
“My people mostly believe in a next life,” Tirian said, without looking from his work, “though there are not starships in it. But we evolved separately, and if one world’s idea is true, I suppose all must be.”
It was much more answer than Vrenn had expected, but he took it as affirmation. “When my father has gone to command there ... will you then be his Transporteer?”
“What,” Tirian said quietly, “does the Empire’s hold extend so far as that?”
“Any race may reach—”
[66] “I know. Kethas has told me. I will have a place on his Black Ship. Even if I do not want it.”
“You are Withiki,” Vrenn said. “You would have wings again.”
Tirian turned. His skull face was drawn, pure white. “So my younger master is a strategist as well,” he said flatly. “The Thought Admiral will be pleased.
“But I wonder if you are right. Master Vrenn. I had fine wings once, blue-feathered, if you know what that means, and of spread twice my height. But such broad wings are awkward in the corridors of a starship. So a Force Leader of Imperial Race told me, when he had his Marines pull my wings from their sockets. Do you think that officer is also in the Black Fleet, waiting to maim me a thousand times? Laughing?
“Kuvesa tokhesa. Your father. While I live.” Tirian walked out of the room, toward the flier hangars, not the house.
After a little while, Vrenn went back to the house, thinking that he had in fact won a victory, gotten the information he wanted. But it did not have the taste of victory.
The female Rogaine was seated among the web ferns of the indoor garden, playing her harp. There was no light from above, and she was no more than a dark shape outlined in light, almost one with the reflections on the pool beyond. Thick mist floated, glowing, diffuse.
Rogaine turned, playing a complex chord, and Vrenn could see that the mist was all that covered her. He felt a stitch in his side, as if his air was short. It was not quite pain, and then it was something worse than any pain Vrenn had ever known. Rogaine’s long nails stroked the strings, and Vrenn heard himself groan.
Then a cold hand touched him, and all his nerves cried out at once.
Vrenn lay on his back, in his bed. Above him, touching Vrenn’s shoulder, was Kethas, wearing his [67] dress uniform. Only the bedside lamp was on; it seemed to be still the middle of the night, when Kethas slept.
“Get up, and dress,” the Thought Admiral said. “It is a night for decisions. Meet me in the garden outside.” He went away.
Vrenn lay still a moment longer, not entirely certain he had not simply slipped from one dream into another. But his senses told him otherwise; surely, he thought, the relics he felt of his last dream would not carry over to this one. So he rose, and put on his adoption-day clothes that were like a Cadet’s, and went outside.
The night air was very cold, and Vrenn’s breath misted. The sky was very dark. ...
The sky, Vrenn saw, was cloudless. Overhead were stars, hard and white, all the thousand stars of the world’s sky standing naked, as they did on less than one night in a hundred.
So whatever Vrenn and Kethas said here, whatever they did, would be remembered for all time to come.
“Shortly you will be ten years old,” Kethas said, a figure of gold and darkness—but no dream, Vrenn knew. “It will be time for you to choose what you will be. Have you thought on this?”
“The Navy,” Vrenn said instantly.
Kethas did not smile. “You know that I do not require this of you? That you may, as you wish, be a scientist, or an administrator—or even a Marine?”
“I know, father. And I would not be anything else.”
Then the Thought Admiral smiled. “And so you should not. You captain the machine like you were made for it. I am pleased to find you wise as well as skillful.”
Vrenn said, “Was my father sutai-Rustazh a great captain?”
Kethas tilted his head. “You have no father but myself.” After a moment he added, “Though it is true I once knew one called sutai-Rustazh, who was great.”
Vrenn bowed his head, ashamed at the stupidity of [68] the question. And still Kethas—indeed his only father, his whole line—had answered it; Vrenn wondered what this strategy was.