“Virtue or punishment, Uberd?”
Murphy grinned, removing a long, rolled-up section of yellowed parchment from under his cloak. He added it to the pile on the Captain’s table. “’Tis a map, me friend, of the Misplaced Continent, Tissathi.”
Raucous laughter circled around the table. B’garthy slapped the other parchments lying there with a hard hand. Flagons jumped, slopping hilk over the scrolls. “Scrounge around in these a while, old dog. Ye’ll find another dozen claimin’ exactly the same. Hilk for me mates!” the man shouted into the air. “Ye never outgrow yer need fer hilk!”
A tired-looking young woman with large breasts, exposed for the most part by her barmaid’s costume, brought the drinks to the table. Murphy took a long draught, looking at me expectantly. I gulped, but I had thought in advance to disguise that reflex with a big swallow of brew.
“Ye will find no such a map in yon haystack, Yer Worship.” I said as I had been coached. I still had not gotten the hang of the accent. Now I had to control my stomach as I spoke: hilk did not agree with me.
“It is indeed a chart of the Misplaced Continent—though she be misplaced no longer—as I should know who has lately been there hisself.”
There were only two decent-sized landmasses on the entire planet, both of them straddling the equator, at opposite ends of the globe. We had examined the ancient spherical colonizing vessel left in orbit, identical to the one that circled Vespucci. The first arrivals to Afdiar had mapped the world, intending to land in the more hospitable place. Something had gone wrong. Now, sunk into a barbarism they were only just (excruciatingly slowly) climbing out of, their “Misplaced Continent, Where It Only Rained Occasionally”, had become a fantastic legend.
B’garthy laughed uproariously. “Tisathee, the land of hilk an’ money, is it? Well, say on, then, m’lad, I’m in sore need of a tall tale.”
Tall was the word: the map had started as an orbital photo of the other side of Afdiar, altered to look hand-drawn. There were details of closer islands already half explored which only a sailor would know.
The old pirate was impressed.
“Yewjeed, I’ve a plan,” offered B’goverd. “Ye say yerself that yer privateerin’ days’re over. Explore these coasts, take with ye only those as accept the Principle. Johd-Beydard’ll sign on. Build a city, a nation, free of Queens an’ rules an’ regulations, an’ repel all boarders!”
“A dream,” sighed Yewjeed B’garthy, “An impossible dream.”
“More than that, my friend.” He looked directly at me: “There are cures, me bhoy, both individual an’ otherwise, for the authoritarian personality. But because the problem’s rooted in the evolution of the species, none simple or easy. Birth by low-trauma methods lower the temptation t’use the repressive mechanism that fatal first time. Derepressive therapy can undo damage an’ raise resistance, as does use of natural derepressives: vitamin B6, REM, communication with the unborn ...”
B’garthy smiled at me as if he were perfectly used to outbursts like this from his old friend Uberd. All of this talk about ethics bothered me, however. Aboard ship, I had seen people practicing jailbreaks for Sodde Lydfe, rehearsing assassinations, preparing bombs, planning to wreck monetary systems, encourage the growth of black markets. The object, I had been told, was to minimize disorder or loss of life, to leave the surviving real economies intact, while utterly destroying the governments that had fed off them. This was supposed to be a good thing, the absolute right of any being anywhere to undertake. I wondered if B’garthy would still be smiling if he knew.
“Electronic cerebrocortical Implants,” added Rogers, “provide users with a warning that their repression ‘circuits’ have been stimulated.”
“What we’re tryin’ t’do,” said Murphy, “is abolish any opportunity t’ gain power an’ avoid circumstances where folks seek others t’rule ’em.”
He hefted a pouch. It was the remainder of the fortune he had not given to Geydes. “I think me that this’ll outfit such a voyage, Yewjeed.”
Geydes raised the ante, plopping a similar bag on the table.
B’garthy’s eyes lit. “An’ will ye an’ Dorrie be comin’?”
The agent shook his head. “Ye’ll need fresh recruits t’replace us. Somebody t’stay here, teachin’ an’ writin’, sendin’ more pioneers t’Tisathee.”
“All right, then by Afdiar’s two-wheeled chariot, I’ll think on it, my—”
“Whaddyou shay aboud Afdiar anna Gweed?”
A drunken individual wearing a food-stained uniform had passed by our table several times, the last nearly stumbling across it. Now he stood with both hands planted on his hips, challenging anyone else to speak.
I looked over at Geydes. “Your noble friends, the police.”
Geydes looked at the cop, opened his mouth, “Officer—”
Casually, the police officer backhanded the aristocrat across the mouth, drawing blood. Then he raised his staff, brandishing it at the rest of us. “Thaddle do it! Resistin’ arrest! I’m runnin the lotta you in!”
Geydes hit him in his swollen stomach with a tankard.
Snatching up the precious map, the bag of money that went with it, Murphy rose while B’garthy overturned the enormous table. Wishing for the pistol I had not brought with me, my hand went instead for my sword-hilt.
Another hand fell over mine.
“Unnecessary, son,” said the pirate. “Just go have yerself a grand time.”
He smacked another constable over the head with his own flagon, ducked a flying chair, then plunged with a whoop! into the melee that had spread away from us in circles. The accordion-player did not miss a beat, simply speeded up the tempo, getting into the spirit of things.
I felt another hand, this time on my shoulder, turned—
Whaaack!
—wound up on the gridded floor, rubbing an aching jaw. A huge civilian stood over me for some unfathomable reason, both his fists raised.
“Hey, get up an’ fight like a man!”
I kicked him in the kneecap, heard the cartilage crumble in a satisfactory manner. When he had sunk, screaming, to my level, I let him have a straight shot with my hardest knuckles, right in the nose. He fell over onto his face. I stood, trod over the man’s body, found another person sneaking up on Geydes (who was punching the bartender) from behind. Picking up a chair, I lifted it overhead, took careful aim—
“Hey!”
—it was snatched out of my hands. I whirled. There behind me stood another policeman, hanging grimly onto the business end of my chair.
“Naughty, naughty, little sailor bhoy. That there’s our fine, proud City Councilman G’neezovig, don’t you know. Now come along quiet—Ungh!”
I hit him in the nose while his hands were full. It felt so good I did it again. He fell backward, over someone crawling on the floor. I repossessed the chair—Geydes had finished his debate with the city councilman using a broken bottle—so I used it to hold off a trio of Udobian Navy swabbies who had joined the fun while I watched Redhawk Gonzales.
Gonzales stood in the middle of a knee-high ring of fallen bodies, his back to that of Charlie Norris. The two of them were having a grand old time. I could not decide whether they were an irresistible force or an unmovable object. They seemed the center of considerable attention.
Occasionally one or more Afdiarians would step into the deadly circle. Gonzales would kick, Norris would punch. Or the other way around. They would both whirl about. Before you could tell what had happened, the wall of bleeding, unconscious idiots around them would be a few bodies higher. Each had a flagon in his hand. Neither had so much as spilled a drop. They would take a swig. By then another idiotor two would decide to try his luck. The whole process would repeat itself.
But it could not go on forever.
There came a shout, a whistle. Suddenly uniforms were pouring into the bar from every door, every window. While busy with a half dozen sailors, Norris took a sharp crack on the arm that had just heale
d. I heard it break from across the room. He sank to his knees. Someone struck Gonzales from behind. Eyes crossed, he joined Norris on the floor.
I used my chair as best I could, unable to see my comrades in the crowd, smashing it over the heads of two policemen who were kicking someone. Someone else jumped on my back. I turned around, smashed that person into the bar, but another pair of hands immediately seized my throat.
Unable to pry them loose, I began to suffocate. The light in the room was growing dimmer, dimmer. I even thought I was beginning to hallucinate.
The burning blue razor-circle of a Broach appeared on one wall. Lucille Olson-Bear stepped out of it. In her upraised hand, she held an object like a grenade. Taking deliberate aim, she threw it at my feet.
Catching in the grating, it went off.
-2-
Notes from the Asperance Expedition
Armorer/Corporal YD-038 recording
Page forty-seven:
The North American Confederacy developed a reliable interstellar stardrive around 250 Anno Liberatis. (I have yet to adequately reconcile these Confederate dates to our Vespuccian calendar, but they make mention of another, older reckoning, 2026 A.D.) All they wanted, in the beginning, was to explore freely among the stars, trade among them.
Worried that “degenerate” colonies might make use of the new technologies (inertialess tachyon drive, quarkotopics) to plunge the galaxy into eternal warfare. A minor “party” in the N.A.C., the NeoImperialists, insisted that the revolution must be completed, systematically destroying every post-Malaise government as it was discovered.
Two huge fleets were constructed to accomplish that task ...
My avenging angel Lucille was still there in the bar as I regained consciousness and returned to the world, a surprisingly genuine look of concern on her pretty face. I was lying uncomfortably on the floorgrid, its pattern printing itself into my back. She knelt—probably even more uncomfortably—slapping me in the face with a greasy bar towel.
“Whitey, speak to me!” She was almost hysterical. “Say something intelligent!”
“Something intelligent,” I groaned.
There had been some tidying up. Someone, a rescue team from the ship, had sorted out the bodies. Policemen were stacked like cordwood over here. Navy personnel were lying in a corner over there. There was a pile for civilians, another one for bar employees. Somehow, they were being kept unconscious while we Confederates were being brought around.
“That one there’s an informer,” Woodie Murphy sneered from the chair he was reclining in. “Let’s put his carcass over with the police.”
There was warm laughter that I recognized. Geoff Couper observed, “That ought to engender a raised eyebrow or two, once everybody wakes up.”
“Oh yeah?,” the Confederate operative replied. “Well, the other one there. That’s right, the little one with all the face-fur an’ the naked scalp. He’s Navy Intelligence, such as they have. But put him with the cops, and the street-snitch with the Navy. Confusion to the enemy!”
I sat up. “Your accent is slipping again, Woodie.”
“What of it, me bhoy? I’m retirin’ off this mudball, about t’be listed as the only fatality of an otherwise friendly barfight. Me griefstricken wife’ll be after dyin’ of the shock. You folks did bring the silicone corpses with you? Orta keep ’em from makin’ me a plaster saint like every other conveniently deceased dissenter in Afdiarite history!”
“Well, we’d better be quick about it.” suggested Couper, dusting his hands off. “We’ve got to get back upstairs, and fast. You’d all have been recalled anyway, within the hour, fight or not. There’s an emergency.”
I looked over at Lucille. “Message from Bobfleet, via Zorro. A planet on their side it’s too late to save, now a radioactive ball of lava.”
A premonitory chill ran down my spine. “Sodde Lydfe?”
Couper nodded. “Its otherworld equivalent, and a terrible loss to everyone. Tomfleet’s own mission has been accelerated. We may be just in time to save their counterparts in this stretch of reality—if we hurry.”
“Counterparts?” I echoed stupidly.
“And our first alien race,” admitted Lucille, “the Lamviin. Nine legs, three sexes, exoskeleton covered with fur. Pretty weird. We didn’t know whether to tell you or not. Weren’t sure how you’d take it.”
I struggled painfully to my feet, the realization dawning on me that the actions of a starship twelve kilometers in diameter, possibly the fate of everyone within it, were suddenly in the hands of a nine year old child, because she had once been the only person interested enough to think about a particular topic. Elsie Nahuatl would be ecstatic.
“Aliens,” I repeated, “All right, let us go, then.”
Lucille asked, “You’re sure you feel up to it?”
“Just fine,” I lied.
“Good—”
Lucille kicked me with all of her strength, at the point where my legs join my torso. Red haze filling my head, I went straight to my knees.
“That’s for fucking around with somebody else, Corporal! Anybody else, especially including my little sister! Now we can go back to the ship.”
***********************
Part Three
The Lamviin
***********************
wings of an angel
Wings of an Angel
Notes from the Asperance Expedition
Armorer/Corporal YD-038 recording
Page Fifty:
It has been argued that, while you sweat your brain away over personal choices, there are other “yous” out there, sweating over them equally in alternative universes, but making them differently, every way they can be made. They all cancel out. Therefore, everything is stupidly futile. Confederates call this Niven’s Fallacy for some reason, pointing out that you are the only one you have. Only your choices count, since you can only live one life, in one universe at a time.
Now Howell informs me that Confederate physicists are playing with the idea of a third time-dimension, completing symmetry with the three dimensions of space. They do not know what it is, any more than Australian Aborigines saw that time is a different thing from space, or people before Pascal knew about statistical probability (or that it was a fundamental pillar of reality before P’wheet and Thorens). But it will likely be something that we have known about all along, in an entirely different context. After all, people gambled long before Pascal.
It might simply be the way time flies when you are having fun!
“Whitey!” Owen Rogers hissed at me, “Come here a minute!”
His sibilant crackle in my helmet-phones threatened the well-being of my eardrums. I shrugged, levered around to face the praxeologist where he lay like a beached dolphin beneath a wind-weathered overhang. The sun broiled down into my face. As long as I kept my eyes closed, that unmerciful orb shut out of my consciousness, I was comfortable. My smartsuit was more than adequate to any task this planet set for it.
It was only my mind that threatened to bake me to a cinder.
Below, the quarried fortress squatted in a low, marshy depression, a long-extinct caldera atop the isolated monolith locals called Zeam Island. We were just off the south coast of the nation-state of Great Foddu, seat of the world-wide Fodduan Empire. Triangular in floorplan (like most of the buildings on this overheated planet), the place was a low security prison, reserved for the highest-ranking clientele. It was three stories tall—yet broad enough to appear low, forbidding, dangerous.
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