by Janet Morris
“But that does not alter the fact that my brother’s penchant for violence has given the space-enders, most especially you, since Valery can register no objection any longer, cause for complaint. It is true that no justice can be meted out before due process, and that Chaeron has acted unilaterally, from passion.”
Spry sat up, in the process smearing the shaving cream over his belly.
“So,” Marada continued, “I will offer you your potency in exchange for your agreement that no demand for redress be made, now or at any later date, by you or any space-ender against the house of Kerrion.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. You have lost your citizenship, your pilot’s license, your cruiser. It seems to me that is sufficient punishment, so far in advance of the determination of any crime.”
“Put me out of your ship and out of your mind! I’m more than ready to go!” Spry grinned, grabbing up a towel and swiping at his foam-covered loins.
“End: slate,” drawled Marada. “I’ll arrange for your transportation to the reception platform. It’s not working very well, so the space-enders say. From then on, you’re on your own. I don’t think enough damage was done here to endanger the colony’s survival.”
Spry snorted. “You’d have to kill them to the man to do that.” Then his flat nose wrinkled up and his cheeks drew taut. “Marada, I’ve got to thank you.”
“No, you do not. Chaeron’s actions are categorically unacceptable to me. This state of war and piracy allows such students of despotism to come to the fore. Tell your space-enders that if they refrain from piracy, we will refrain from retribution.”
And he got out of there, tasting the foulness of disgust—at Spry, at the Consortium and the space-enders alike, but mostly at himself. Must we play out the same parts, only the men behind the masks ever changing? Is eternity fixed, that man must judge his brother, and find him lacking, forever and ever? He wanted it not to be so. He wanted it so much that he forgot to tell the medical team of his decision, and had to retrace his steps to do it.
Then, finally, he could turn his attention to the thing most pressing. Hopefully, investigation would calm the storm riding just below the surface of his façade, that storm that had been roiling since those riding in the Marada had been brought aboard—since he had heard the baby cry.
His steps quickened. Hopeless hope brought a slick film of perspiration to surface on his mil. His limbs trembled. He knew he had heard it. He wanted so to hear it. If only it could be true, if a miracle could come to him on gossamer wings . . .
When he held his flailing, red-faced screamer’s damp bottom against his arm, the sun rose and shone, a soft breeze kissed him, he heard the worms moving in the bowels of the Earth and birds screech and insects hum happily, though his kind had been removed from the music of the fecund spheres thrice a hundred years.
It was not until much later that he thought to hole up in the Marada and see whether what the cruiser held in its silicon brain was as remarkable, as invaluable to his quest as he had long maintained that it was.
By that time Softa David Spry was among his brothers of the pirate’s guild in their antiquated, barrel-like platform, staring out at the stars.
Everyone had been gentle, commiserating, even laudatory. No one had let even a single eye flicker to his ears, where empty holes lamented the loss of his pilotry rings.
Marada had taken them from him, just before he had been hustled off into exile.
“I must have those,” Marada had said, holding out his hand.
It had been difficult to disengage them from his unwilling earlobes; he had never thought it would be so hard. He had had to say: “This clemency on your part changes nothing between us. I still spit upon your shadow.”
“Good,” had grunted Marada. “You had me worried.”
And he had walked away, leaving Spry to be unceremoniously shuttled off into anonymity.
Yet, living was better than dying. Spry reminded himself, and set about finding some work with which to occupy his mind.
It was Harmony who suggested he take a command among the rescuers.
“I’m not much of a sailor,” he demurred, envisioning the primitive sails unfurled to catch the light of Scrap’s desultory sun.
“We have a few powerboats left,” Harmony soothed. “And as for the solar schooners, I’m sure you’d excel at that, if you’d only try.” The jelly of her flesh quivered, arms stretched wide to mother him.
Later, he thanked her. Then he had not been able, but had shrunk from her embrace.
It was no more than a week after the punitive expedition from Kerrion space had disappeared into sponge headed back the way it had come that a frigate dropped a passenger for him to rescue.
He had been in deep self-recrimination, reviewing endlessly his folly, that had brought him to such sad estate. He was uplifted, reborn upon hearing the scramble alarm: at least he had something to do.
The little rescue boat was adequate, chugging away under fusion power. He had explored its design, and come away nonplussed at the jury-rigged aggregation of scavenged parts. The helmsman, in answer to his questions, had offered wryly that he should not be uncertain of the ship: it ran not on proton pumps, but desperation and the power of prayer.
He found it simple to navigate, but lonely. He must perform every operation with his eyes and hands: the little rescue vehicle had no voice, no mind.
Ahead floated the helpless capsule, spinning slowly prow over stem. The frigate had merely dumped it, uncaring of its fate.
It seemed to him unnecessarily cruel, as he grappled the little egg-shape and drew it up into the rescue craft’s receiving bay, that the new space-enders were from the outset helpless, at the mercy of their peers. But it was a lesson, and a situation that did not cease to obtain: they were all dependent upon one another, here; all equal, all equally guilty and equally punished.
As he secured the bay’s lock and reestablished air pressure within it, he reaffirmed his determination that no one should know that he was not quite as equal as the others. No, none would hear from him that he had not given up fertility. The arbiter had done him a great service, the greater for its secrecy. He could not afford to be different from the space-enders in any particular at all.
He opened his intercom and read rote instructions to the unseen occupant of the capsule. When those had been followed, a grating sigh told him that the fish netted from the vast sea had arrived.
He swiveled his seat round, then rose, then sprinted half the cabin’s length while Lauren’s lips caressed his name. Then he held her, face buried in her golden hair, listening to her paean of joy and fortune.
When she had fallen silent, he arched back in her embrace, to see her. “Are you unharmed?”
Her lids fluttered. She pressed her lips tight and shook her head, unable to speak. Then she found the skill: “As much as any, here, are unharmed.”
“I am sorry.” And he was.
“It is nothing,” she tossed back, a thin mask of bravery over her bitterness. “I am with you, when I thought to never be again. What of you?”
He laughed, praying it would not reveal how much the curious bark of man could hurt. “Happier than I thought I might ever be again.”
Having said it, he realized that it was true.
Chapter Eighteen
The Kerrion convoy came out of sponge like diamonds falling from a velvet sack.
Ashera herself was informed, as she had demanded to be. With a swish of her azure gown, she settled behind Parma’s desk, a bird of prey coming to nest.
To the tiny replica of Kerrion Authority’s chief controller, she reiterated her orders: “Bring them in and bring them to me. And remember, not one word of what has happened, or the speaker will tell tales of my retribution henceforth!” She snapped the connection.
No use getting too explanatory with the help.
Then she set about ordering up amenities for her far-traveling sons, the sons of blood and the so
n of marriage.
She had need to make sure all things went as she had determined they must go, as she had made sure they would go by having Parma interred within a day of the announcement of his death, which she had held back twelve hours for safety’s sake. There had been some risk: should the doctor she had been forced to call been capable of even counting on his fingers backward to the moment that her husband had died, she would have been in dire peril.
But she had kept him far too busy with a pyrotechnical display of hysterics and loudly screamed widow’s demands. Those demands, coming from the throat of the consul general pro tem, were in the nature of unquestionable edicts. The possibility that the attending physician could himself become the subject of this bereaved woman’s madness was one she was sure the physician was made to face. He was very careful, following her every instruction to the letter.
Parma was ash upon the solar wind so soon after being pronounced dead that Draconis had barely begun to mourn. Some had not even roused to the morning. Some had barely begun to enjoy the customary festivities hosted by the victorious house before those festivities took on the aspect of a wake.
But it had worked. It was done and done well. She had preserved the seat, as Parma would have wanted.
She would preserve more than that, if determination could sway the balance.
She punched up Parma’s will once more, and frowned at the green letters glowing on the screen. The status of Shebat Alexandra Kerrion blinked angrily with two appended search codes, but she ignored it. The girl had defected, fled to space-end. Her citizenship was revoked: Ashera had made sure of it. Why had Parma struck her from the record so sloppily, in such a way that his action was negated by the method in which it had been performed? Procedure was something Parma understood too well to invalidate by such an error. Therefore, his declarations in regard to her were no error; his error was a protective shield behind which Shebat could maintain her claims while appearing to be no further threat.
Parma, thou art a snake! Notwithstanding Parma’s ploys, nor her son’s involvement, the girl had run off with Softa Spry to space-end. That gave an ending to the matter. Ashera, in her capacity as Parma’s executor, had made sure that it did.
There remained Marada, of course, to be dealt with. But Marada would not be likely to trade his beloved arbitrational guild membership for a position whose very existence he decried. Marada, everyone knew, was sponge-struck, anyway. That his blood-tie to the mighty house of Kerrion was execrable to his refined sensibilities only proved it. And there was the matter of the condition Parma had appended to his place in the line of succession: all was void if it were demonstrated that the second son could produce no viable offspring. From what Ashera had heard, he had proved his unfitness to inherit more resoundingly than Ashera might have hoped possible. Everyone spoke of the reasons behind Parma’s annexation of Labayan space. No problem there, then.
Third in line was Chaeron, and though Ashera would have some trouble controlling him, she was content not to contest his accession.
She pondered transiently the oligarchic reality behind the Consortium’s façade of democratic referendum. On that familiar garden trail, she came quickly to the end-point she had visited often before: the stability of viewpoint necessary to sound government could be assured only by consistency in administration. Though favoritism and nepotism yet existed, they were as nothing compared to the corruption that would have gnawed away at the Consortium’s effective strength if favors could be curried and bought of a ruler never sure of more than a provisional seat.
Yes, it would be Chaeron. Marada had disqualified himself in a host of ways. And Shebat . . . she was there as a monument to Parma’s infinite despite. Yet, she was there, and none of Ashera’s younger children even listed. Julian was not mentioned, thanks to Parma’s installation of Shebat in the place of the first-born, which Marada’s folly had made vacant so suddenly. When the news had come down of who had died on Earth, and for what disobedient whim, something had died in Parma—or hardened.
As she realized that Parma had not intended her son ever to become consul general, so she knew that old “Camel Lips” had never really wanted his first-born to don the dignity. That was why he had gone through so much with Selim Labaya to equalize Marada’s claim. The Labayan alliance would have done it, but for the defective child.
But Fate loved Ashera, had always accepted her offerings and done her service. The Lords of Cosmic Jest were for men: they received no allegiance from her. They were not of her sort. Fate loved her daughter, and received oblations in return.
She snapped off the screen and leaned back in her husband’s chair, waiting for the children to arrive.
When they came before her, Marada in shabby gray flight satins and Chaeron in rumpled black and red, they shared a subtler wrap, a pall she attributed to the length and strife of their journey.
She said, “Sit down, children.” Firmly, gently, she waved her fingers at Marada, indicating that he pull up another chair.
Chaeron did not sit in the wing chair, but stood behind it, gripping it so that his knuckles were yellowish white.
Nor did Marada scurry to take the lesser seat she had ordained, but came right up to the desk, laying his palms on it and leaning forward: “Ashera, we have some bad news for you—”
“And I,” she broke in, “have worse news for you than anything you could have to say about cruisers or platforms.” Her eyes roved from Marada’s hooded ones to Chaeron’s beryl ones, so like, yet unlike her own. “Your father died in his sleep just after giving his acceptance speech.”
Marada pushed away from the desk, strode to the closet wall, and leaned there, his back to the room.
Chaeron stood unmoving, his gaze a sapphire drill boring deep. His nostrils trembled, flared. His head lowered. A grunt came out of him. Then his whole body trembled, seemed to crouch inward, though his stance changed only by the raising of one hand to his head. Leaning with his elbows on the wing chair, he took several breaths, each less shuddering than the last. Parma had loved him cheaply, a thing of duty. Why should he feel so terribly lost?
He gazed at his mother, thinking horrid thoughts of the dissolution of the family. Almost, he asked her how they could go on without him.
She said, as if he had spoken aloud: “We will manage.”
He hardly reacted, but Marada did:
“I am sure we will.” He had turned to face them, still using the wall for support. His face was bloodless, his brown eyes wide and strange. “And you will manage, despite what I am going to tell you.”
“I am sure I will. Do neither of you have a question to ask? No word for your father of love? No demands to see his remains?”
“If I were you, I would have had him long since incinerated,” snapped Marada.
“Don’t,” choked Chaeron, imploring them both. “Cease this. . . .” Then:
“Mother, in the battle at space-end the Bucephalus was totally destroyed. . . . My—Julian was on it when it ran straight up one of our beams. . . . It’s my fault, my order. . . .”
Ashera shrieked: “My baby; my little one; my son!” A spew of negations came out of her; her agony filled the room so that both men wept and she herself doubled over in Parma’s chair, her arms clutched to her belly, weeping, weeping. “You don’t have to worry about him taking your honors anymore, Chaeron! You’re safe now! Oh, it should have been you! My poor little Julian!”
It was Marada who went to her, intending to slap her. But he wrestled her hands to her side and held her instead, while looking at Chaeron over her shoulder with more empathy than he had ever thought he might have for his brother.
But Chaeron did not see him, or anything but his fingernails, swimming in his wavy field of view.
When he could, he took his weight off the old leather wing chair and half-ran from Parma’s office.
In the secretary’s antechamber he snarled at the girl, whose face held an offering of compassion which he could not bear to accept: “
Out! Get out! Send someone with a sedative for my mother!”
Then he lay back his head in her chair and for the first time in much too long merged with the Kerrion data pool.
When he came out of there, back into the moment which he had fled, he knew that he had lost everything he had once considered important. He knew the order of Parma’s succession and knew that the screaming, mysteriously healthy son Marada had named Parma had invalidated his claim.
He could probably remain as consul of Draconis, if he wished, under Marada, and bide his time until the pilots’ madness in his brother forced his removal. Then he might regent, until the son reached legal age. Or act some way to change destiny. Chaeron looked at every specious, dastardly move that would resecure him the consul generalship, and put each one aside. Though he was the only member of his family qualified to succeed his father, not Parma, nor his mother, nor the old crone Chance wished it to be.
And because he was that man, he could not reach out for the seat of power with bloody hands.
No more could Marada refuse to sit in it.
He went after Chaeron, as soon as his stepmother was sedated, and extracted a promise from him not to mention Shebat to Ashera.
“Why? It does not matter. You yourself have ruled she goes back to rooting for grubs on her home planet.”
“Because Ashera will come to her senses. When the curtain of suffering lifts, she will not fail to realize that as long as Shebat lives she is a threat to a child of hers who might seek to supplant me.”
“Marada, leave off.”
“Little brother, I must call it as I see it. We have lived with your mother long enough, both of us, to know that I speak the truth. Know also that I can deal with her, as Parma did: gently, without rancor. But keep in mind that though I come to this responsibility with mixed emotion, I intend to be an exacting, scrupulously fair and long-lived consul general. I would not want to disappoint Parma.”
“Parma is dead.”
“I meant, little Parma.”