by Janet Morris
Shebat only shook her head. “I cannot leave.”
“Then get off this ship.”
“You would let me go?”
“Why not? You can do no worse damage than that ship is going to do. All subterfuge is unmasked, at this point. It is the quick, or the fallen. And in the larger context, it matters very little: I’m going the same place to hide from them that they will send me if they catch me. The only difference is that this way I get to keep my balls.”
“I thought you said Parma would kill you.”
“Look, Shebat. I’m trying to make it easy on you. Go on, get out—”
“I think you should take her. Spry,” said a third voice, a baritone sword slicing through their intimacy.
“Julian!” gasped Shebat.
“Sponge,” spat Spry. “What are you doing here?”
“Hitching a ride, it seems, if all is about to be revealed. I suppose you might say I’ve chosen my side.” The flaxen hair swayed against his neck as he unfolded his arms, eased over to the third acceleration couch and sat in it.
“By my ass, you are,” said Spry.
“If necessary,” retorted Julian agreeably. “I hate to seem like the brash egotist you doubtless think me to be, but I have a question that might also be a suggestion: why don’t you tandem the Marada out of here, right from under their noses? You’ve done similar things, and Shebat is here, too. Why not?”
Spry snorted, rubbing the back of his ear. “Because I did not think of it, for one thing. And because it is Shebat’s ship. Right now it doesn’t look like Shebat is coming over to my side.”
“Our side,” corrected Julian.
“You’ll pardon me,” Spry said dryly, “if I am having just a bit of trouble believing that.”
Shebat was hardly listening, but rather remembering Marada’s poetical eyes passing over her. She was not particularly surprised to see Julian so offhandedly declare himself against his family; that was inherent in his presence here. Nor was she comforted by it: here she was, about to betray them once more, and seeing one of their own blood eager to join in made her feel sorrow for Parma and regret for Chaeron’s misplaced faith in her.
“Shebat?”
“Yes, Softa. I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. The Marada will follow you if I ask him. Valery suggested I board and use him for this, but the arbiter,” she could not hide the bitterness in her voice at the speaking of her beloved’s title, “had just forbidden anyone to go aboard, and I did not think I could disobey him unnoticed. The Marada . . . wants me.” Her voice broke, upon the impliciation that the cruiser was the only creature that did want her, for herself.
“Good, instruct him to that effect,” ordered Julian, in fine Kerrion fashion. “And stop blubbering like a baby, every time something happens that you don’t like.”
“Get off of this ship,” suggested David Spry very slowly.
“I can hardly do that. I know too much. Come on, pilot, you’re as bad as the girl. If so much hangs on this, why are you just sitting there? If you can’t give your own orders, then perhaps it is my place to prompt you.”
“Who recruited you, anyway?” demanded Spry, face colored with mayhem.
“Valery,” accused Shebat, before the young Kerrion could make a reply. “They’re lovers.”
“That is right. And since I have been your lover as well, Shebat, I am forced to point out that you are no one to criticize another’s predilections. Now, get your ship—”
“Mister Kerrion,” Spry interrupted, his jaws so tightly clenched the words hissed out flat and attenuated. “If you are joining us, you will maintain yourself in silence. Shebat, get to work.” He leaned over and opened the feed to Bucephalus’s back-up console. “Patch in to Marada through Bucephalus. Here’s the data.”
A short time later he smiled, touched her shoulder, and said approvingly that though he had planned nothing so strenuous as this for her graduation, in his eyes, at least, she was now a ratable pilot.
Shebat Kerrion had only a moment to sniffle and knuckle away the last of her tears before the Bucephalus with a leap and a great roar tore at a mad pace toward the exit tube and freedom among the stars.
The backwash singed hair from a dozen heads and seared one maintenance man badly. But those at slipside had no authority to stop the Bucephalus, who was, after all, cleared for launch at that very hour, a thing which in the mass confusion had been overlooked.
Parma, Chaeron, and Marada Kerrion sat with Guildmaster Baldwin in the Hassid exchanging hot and mutually abusive accusations under a security order that brooked no interruptions.
The ground control conferred over what to do, shifting their weight from one foot to the other and the responsibility from one pair of shoulders to the other. It was not until the Marada shivered and snapped shut its ports, backing rapidly from its slip that the dispatcher himself decided that the guildmaster, at least, must be informed.
But by then Marada Kerrion had gotten the news from Hassid, who was unhappy about it: Shebat Kerrion was taking her master-solo flight with Softa Spry monitoring her; there was another person aboard, identity unknown; Marada the cruiser had been pleased to join them. Whether or not the ship had done so of its own accord, the Hassid did not know; the Marada had refused to answer her questions.
“Gentlemen,” said the arbiter, “it is time for us to decide what is to be done. Let me advise my family that I feel Guildmaster Baldwin to be, at the least, insufficient to his tasks and at the most, thoroughly corrupted by them. It is my position, and will be my formal recommendation, that you, Baldwin, be stripped of all rank and incarcerated under full security until your part in this can be determined.”
“All right, Baldy,” said Parma, rubbing his brow. “Go arrest yourself. When I have my cubs calmed, we’ll have dinner.” It hurt him more than he would have wished, to say it. He could not seem to take control. Baldwin threw him a strange look and walked slowly, his long frame more bowed than Parma had ever seen it, toward the port.
When Baldy was gone, all that was left were Parma’s two sons, one with his handsome face twisted into an eternal smirk, the other pacing jerkily like some peak-reading indicator, back and forth, five steps left, then right, fists clenched behind his back.
“Now, with your permission, I would like to discuss the war you have started,” Parma said to Marada.
“You do not have it,” said Marada, abruptly motionless. From behind his back came the sound of cracking knuckles. Then a rustle, then one hand came forth and when it had unclenched and withdrawn, a prismatic cube sat smugly on the master console’s padded edge. It was tiny enough to be enclosed in a hand; it was powerful enough to unseat a despot or rename a galaxy, should it turn crimson: it was the arbiter’s weapon, an arbitrational cube. It was glowing softly: Marada was about to begin a formal inquiry. Once activated, the cube must be fed data until it reached its decision-point. If an arbiter could not bring an investigation to fruition, and the cube to either glaring scarlet or cobalt blue, such was noted negatively in his record and a different arbiter assigned to complete the task. Once begun, cube arbitration could not be aborted. No investigation by that means could be compromised.
Chaeron Kerrion pronounced an uncharacteristically picaresque curse upon his brother’s head.
“I am forced to agree with Chaeron, in this one instance,” Parma observed. “I find this rather presumptuous upon your part. I am disappointed.”
“And I am sorry, too,” drawled Marada, gaze still on the small cube. “But my duty is clear.” Then he gave day and date, and spoke over the cube: “Data collection on the probability that the pilotry guild is the entity heretofore referred to as individual malcontents operating various privateering vessels out of space-end. Collect all relevant data from archival sources.” The cube developed a streak of red around its bottom, extending a tenth of the way up its height.
“Enter also,” the arbiter continued, “Guildmaster Baldwin’s objection that the Marada’s memory i
s faulty as regards this subject.” The red line developed a yellow crust, but got no higher. “Investigate and evaluate the procedures by which the Bucephalus was declared space-worthy, this date. Consider probability that Bucephalus’s integrity was violated by group under investigation: Spry, David; Baldwin, P. L.; Stang, Valery.”
“Kerrion, Shebat,” rang Chaeron’s wry addition.
“Kerrion, Shebat,” added Marada, and a number of subheadings and packet-send priorities that caused the red line to inch perceptibly higher.
“Put it away, Marada,” growled Parma, getting up from the acceleration couch.
“You know better than that.”
“I thought you knew better than this.” The father clenched his hands together, that he could be sure they would not on their own strangle his son. “There is a good possibility that Shebat Kerrion is simply taking her master-solo flight, as logged, with David Spry, her acknowledged master. Any inquiry made before the fact of wrongdoing can only be adjudged disastrously biased.” As he spoke, he watched the cube, was rewarded by a widening of the yellow crust and the addition of a blue tinge in its center. “It is also equally possible that the Marada, upon its own initiative, followed Shebat. The arbiter in charge has admitted the ship’s extraordinary capability in this regard.” Somehow, Parma found himself hovering over the little cube opposite Marada, staring into brown eyes eager to damn them all. He had seen this mad gleam of truth’s priest viewing a potential sacrifice before: all arbiters had it, the perquisite of their profession. “This is no time for us to break with the guild,” he found himself pleading, heard Chaeron’s displeased snort, though he stared steadily at Persephone’s ghost come to ride the visage of her son. “You are not fully informed.”
Marada cracked one knuckle at a time, nodded his head toward the cube. “I am remedying that. I’ll put a two-day hold on this, if you can tell me who that third party in Bucephalus is, and why any third party should be there at all, if the flight is as innocuous as you say.”
“There are too many things you do not yet know which I will not admit into the record at this time,” Parma maintained, feeling dizzy, dry-mouthed and tight of chest so that he stepped back from the cube on the panel, settling heavily into the Hassid’s master couch.
Marada shrugged. “I cannot very well interfere with the proceedings at this point without compromising my integrity.”
“Fellate your integrity,” glowered Chaeron, who had come up behind his father’s couch and whose hand rested on Parma’s shoulder ephemerally as he gestured to apostrophize his words. “You jumped in too soon. I hope they pull your license. As a matter of fact, I might request it. You can conduct your investigation from a high-security cell.”
Marada chuckled, shaking his head. “Some things are eternal. If you want to arrest someone, little brother, arrest your personal pilot, before your own credibility is stained by keeping a saboteur in your employ. It was his order that your men so meekly obeyed when they discontinued their investigation of the Bucephalus, so Baldy hastened to aver.”
“Cease, both of you,” Parma sighed wearily. “Marada, box your accursed cube, or I am leaving. Chaeron, I know you are concerned for your wife’s safety. Try to control yourself.”
Marada had taken a little box from under the console and was fitting the arbitrational cube into it. He did not look up until the cube was sealed and fitted into a depression in Hassid’s board meant to hold it. Then he turned around, leaning on the padded bumper with his fingers digging deep into it:
“What did you say?”
It was to Parma he spoke, but Chaeron answered: “I married her. It was the only way to protect her. She has made a plenitude of errors, none of them deliberate. Check the record, it’s all there. Maybe you would like to have her declared an enemy of the consulate. It would seem to be well within your capabilities.”
“That is why she did not come to greet me.” It was no question; rather, an indictment. The hostility between the two blazed openly. “What have you been doing, sodomizing her three times a day?”
Chaeron snorted softly. “Hardly. I tried it once, and she called your name. So I left that passage to its discoverer.”
“Enough!” howled Parma.
“Not enough, not enough at all,” countered Marada. “How could you allow this?”
“How could I allow it?” the father repeated incredulously, beginning to rise.
Chaeron stepped in front of him. “Better me than you, defiler of children. Beware the man who mocks justice while in its pursuit. Shebat was there, at slipside. You looked right at her, and did not know her. I was watching. You could not have hurt her more thoroughly if you had blinded her like the Justice you purport to serve.”
“It has . . . been . . . nearly a year since I have seen her. That tall girl in black-and-reds was she? I confess I saw you two together and thought it just more of your cultivated bad taste, that you would bring—”
“Marada, Chaeron—sit down!”
After a long pause during which all realized that things had gone too far, the sons obeyed the father.
“Thank you. Now, let us get these matters into some tentative perspective, even if later such is found to be spurious. With your permission. Arbiter? Consul?”
“Proceed.”
“As you will.”
“Thank you, gentlemen. Marada, I must congratulate you on initiating hostilities between ourselves and the Labayan bond. This, and only this, should currently concern us— Wait until I am done.” That to Marada, who made a wordless sound. “It is the only thing that need concern us because I am about to declare a state of war, retroactive to your arrival in Draconis. Thus, I am solving the problem of your precipitous investigation, and whatever it might uncover. I need the guild, right now. I am not allowing any weakening of my force in this time of marshal law. You can pluck the hairs out of our warts later.”
Chaeron Kerrion could not hold back an admiring chuckle, a wondering shake of his lion-maned head.
Marada was also incredulous: “You congratulate me?”
“Indeed. You have assured the elections in our favor, relieved me of what was becoming an improportionate concern as regards them. You have stymied the guild’s agitation against us, in that matter and any other, for the nonce. War is the most fortuitous development possible at this moment. If you were not an arbiter, I would show my gratitude more materially. By your expression, Marada, you are under the misconception that war is necessarily malefic. I refer you to an ancient, Heraclitus of Ephesus, on the matter.”
“And I refer you to reality: no one has ever benefitted from war.”
Chaeron snorted something unintelligible.
“It is impractical,” Marada thundered, then lowered his voice: “The ships will never fire upon each other. . . .” Parma and Chaeron exchanged glances. “. . . You have no idea what you are asking.”
“Do I not?” silked Parma. “What you told Baldy about this new shortcut to Shechem—the Hassidic Corridor, I believe you called it—makes it eminently practical. Not to say desirable, since we did not start it, and cannot be censured by the Consortium for retributive action.”
“You do not understand, I—”
“I think I understand perfectly well. Under martial law, I am drafting you: you are now a proconsul under Chaeron, attached to the strategy arm of Kerrion space forces. Chaeron will sublet your expertise to Baldy, whom you will familiarize with all the specifics of this Hassidic Corridor, and whatever else your inimitable experiences with that half-mad cruiser has caused you to discover, intuit, or even conjecture. Do you understand?”
Marada’s acquiescence could barely be heard through Chaeron’s delighted whoop and appreciative applause.
“Do not gloat,” advised his father severely. “When all this is done, we are going to have to go after the guild. And I had hoped to wait until we had enough of these new-type cruisers to make the pilots expendable.”
“We can afford to build a gross of them,
with what we will gain from the destruction of Labayan space.”
“Hold your enthusiasm, Consul. It’s just a little spanking I’m about to give them, as I must to save face. And to bury forever the rumor that my son is incapable of siring a healthy child.”
Marada Seleucus Kerrion shivered as if struck, but would not be diverted from the thing Parma had said which most concerned him: “New-type cruisers. The Marada is not an anomaly, then?”
“If you had not been so determinedly avoiding the mainstream of civilization, you would have known that long ago. I do not particularly want to advertise it; there is no need to make the guild more paranoid, and hence more active, than they already are. The pilots will sever themselves from us eventually, we have long known that. It was only necessary to develop the cruisers further, so that when the stopgap measures of sacrificing potency and sanity for mobility are no longer supportable, we will no longer need to demand them. Such heavy costs . . . I would like another twenty years, but I am obviously not going to get them.”
“You gave that juggernaut to Shebat, a child, not even a member of our society? Why?” shuddered Marada.
“To see what would happen, of course. So far, I am reasonably pleased.” Looking around him, from one son to the other, Parma could see that neither shared his enthusiasm. In Marada’s stricken eyes he saw revulsion, despair. On Chaeron’s emotionless, unsmiling countenance he read the towering brickwork of the wall of betrayal. Still, to have told the one and not the other prematurely would have lost him his hold on both. And who could have foreseen such a circumstance, in which he would find it needful to reveal so much of his thinking as it projected into the future?
Parma sighed deeply, rubbed his brow and pulled his palm down over his face. “You see, gentlemen, the time has come for you both to grow up. I expect and I will have perfectly harmonious cooperation from you both toward our common goals of maintaining Kerrion space unsullied in expanse and in reputation, as the premier consular house of the Consortium. To that end, I am going now to convince Guildmaster Baldwin that my brats are outspoken, but harmless. It should not be too hard, after the spectacles you both made of yourselves. I hate to think that I have to warn you that none of this must be spoken of in less-discriminating company, but we all do what we must: I will take harsh action against either one of you, should you fail to fulfill my brightest expectations.” Parma rose, stretched, and walked rapidly out of the control room without another word being spoken.