I restarted the second set from where I had left off; at first they sat tense, waiting for another assassin I suppose, but by the end of it I had the audience solidly back with me. I walked off stage, drank some water, hung up my tapi, and stretched out in near-complete bliss.
Paxa woke me. “Giraut, what's that in your hand?"
I looked down and I was clutching a note; I had not been holding it when I had gone to sleep. I read aloud,
Donz Leones,
We know you are eager to meet us. Be prepared to discuss the possibility of your visiting us at our location within three stanmonths.
Atz Deu,
Nemo
“Nemo,” I said. “'Nobody.’ The name that Ulysses gave to the Cyclops. Handwritten, looks like a child's copying.” I handed it to her.
Paxa looked stunned. “They got through three rings of guards, an intelligent lock, and a mechanical lock, and didn't wake you up."
I shrugged. “Maybe I sensed they were harmless and felt too safe to wake up.” I looked at the note again. “This has to be the Lost Legion."
“Because of atz deu? All your fans know—"
“Because anyone else would have commed OSP headquarters or passed a note to any of my team on the street. Instead they deliberately chose the most melodramatic possible method of contact with the highest personal risk to their agents. I know my culture—and the Lost Legion are more Occitan than other Occitans. All I have to do to predict their next move is to ask myself ‘What would have made sense when I was seventeen?’ Furthermore, this also means they aren't the people trying to kill me. They were in here. If they had wanted to hurt me, they'd have done it."
Paxa sighed. “Now I have to tell Margaret this happened."
“Don't let her bully you. Remember when she acts like that, it's not about you, really. All right?"
She nodded. “Just being a coward.” She pulled out her computer, attached the sniffer, and waved it around the room for a few seconds. “No explosives or drugs. They didn't leave a microspringer in here. No active nanos and we'll sweep for sleepers while you're on stage.” She opened the door. “Come on in, Laprada.” Paxa touched my shoulder on her way out. “Have a good set. I'll see what this is about."
As Laprada was grooming me for the stage, I briefed her; in a hurry, we didn't banter.
I sat down on my stool four minutes later than the revised time. I hated to be so discourteous to fans who had rushed to get back to their seats; I had announced that I would debut a new song cycle in the third set.
The first few chords hinted at a jazz influence, and the arpeggio following was distinctly Lunar Exile—a combination deliberately in very bad taste, since the same nations who had genocided the Old Americans had endured the Lunar Exile.
The new cansos were in Occitan as always. I could never write in Terstad and my own translations of my songs sounded flat and dead to me. But everyone wore direct-to-brain translator buttons nowadays, so they not only understood the words, but could catch the complex pun in the title of the first song, “Tostemz non te sai, midons.” “Midons” is what a trobador calls his entendendora, the donzelha to whom he has dedicated his life and art in the joyful suffering of finamor. But it's a strange expression to apply to a young woman, because, grammatically, it's masculine—midons means, literally, “My Lord,” an address to your feudal lord; the idea complete obedience to the slightest whim of the entendendora.
Of course, My Lord is also a traditional Christian address to the deity.
I made those translator buttons work on those ambiguities. It might be that the narrator was a man who had been away from his lover so long he could not recall anything more than her name. Just as defensibly, the narrator was a knight whose lord had demanded some impossibility. Rather than try, the knight fled; though now he wants to return and kneel at his lord's feet, he cannot recall the way.
Or the canso might be Giraut Leones contemplating how immediate and necessary the message of the prophet Ix had seemed, back on Briand, when I had known him. Now after all the stanyears and light-years, it seemed more necessary, yet I could not recall anything Ix had said that seemed to offer any help.
So take your pick; that's what ambiguities are for.
"Tostemz non te sai, midons"—
“I no longer know you, my lady."
“I cannot fathom your purpose, my lord."
"I never understood you, Ix."
Those lyrics were woven around musical fusions that were on the OSP's blacklist of things apt to infuriate two or more cultures, and therefore to be discouraged in the Interstellar Metaculture. I myself had helped to write that blacklist.
No applause at the end; no booing either. But I felt the crowd leaning forward.
The next canso's first line, “Ilh gen atz mundo pertz,” could mean a memory of a man lost along with his world, the beloved customs lost in the cold present, a man from the world of those who have lost something, or the customs of the Mourning Planet, and it became more ambiguous with each verse. Musically I applied finger-picking from Old American bluegrass to the dissonant in-and-out chords of the Lunar Exile.
Again they sat in silence. Doubtless my reputation for sweet, sentimental art songs cherished by sensitive over-serious young people was crumbling.
Well. That had been a longer pause than I intended. I could hear them all breathing. We needed some sound.
I set my fingers for my third song—"Un Aussisan en ilh Mundo Pertz"—"A Murder (or Murderer) on (in, among, from) the (that, that same) Lost World (World of the Lost)."
Then a single person somewhere out there started clapping—clap, clap, clap; steady, loud, defiant, solo, continual, until it was joined by a patter of hands and a vigorous murmur that swelled into the whole house standing and cheering.
Well, after all, it was an audience of friends.
At the last intermission Paxa always had a chilled glass of Hedon Glass waiting for me, next to my lukewarm water and saline gargle. Hedon Glass is a white wine. Your first sip tastes like a very pure white grape juice but it crams plenty of lovely alcohol into a small volume. If no one had ever called a wine “crisp” before, Hedon Glass would have started the term; if it had been any drier you'd have to break off pieces.
Paxa explained that giving me Hedon Glass was “easier to apply than chloroform, and less permanent than decapitation."
I lifted the glass and, though I was alone, spoke the traditional OSP toast: “Another round for humanity, and one more for the good guys.” I drank it reverently. Paxa had left a note:
Giraut,
Tech Analysis got it. Paper/ handwriting/ink all from Noucatharia. Nothing you can do right now, go back to being brilliant. Save some energy for your birthday fuck.
—PP
Noucatharia was the Lost Legion's illegal extraterritorial colony. I drained the Hedon Glass, gargled gently with saline, drank some water, and stretched out for my nap.
I had the psypyx nightmare—that strange dream we all share, nowadays, though surely people in past centuries could not have had it. Before exams were invented, did students dream of being unprepared for them?
I dreamed the classic version of the psypyx nightmare: I was dying in terrible pain. Medics pulled an emergency psypyx recording hood over my head. As always, it knocked me unconscious and no time seemed to pass before I blinked and awoke—
Not in Raimbaut's mind. Still dying as they packed the kit around me. Still bubbling blood. Every part of me still screamed with pain. “Got it,” one medic robot said to the other, “He's all copied and we're done."
Dreams don't have to make sense. A medic is one aintellect in multiple robots. They only speak aloud to us, using radio among themselves. Medics carry the hood only in case of a failure of all ambulance springers in the area; normally if you're alive with an intact-enough brain they just spring you to a recovery center. Nowadays all they really need is the brain anyway. This could never happen.
It didn't matter. In the dream it is
always the same; waking up as the original, live and suffering, screaming for help as medics roll away. I was the original, not the copy.
A warm, wet cloth passed over my face. I opened my eyes. Paxa kissed me.
“I just had the waking-up-as-the-original nightmare,” I said.
She kissed me again, and said, “We all have it now and then, Giraut. It doesn't mean anything. You'll feel better in a moment."
The door closed behind her.
I got up, splashed my face with cool water and dried it with a fluffy towel, and sipped some more tepid water. I ordered my shoulders to come down and my back to lose its fierce, grinding tension; a quick, sketchy kata encouraged them to comply.
Laprada bustled in to tell me that my tapi looked like a soggy bath towel and my hair like a Persian kitten drowned in a washing machine, but “luckily I can fix all that as long as I don't have to do anything about the face or personality. By the way, I'm glad you're not dead."
“Well, my narrow escape has made me reflect on eternal questions,” I said. “Why do I have so much talent in addition to my physical beauty? Why do I keep a horrid brat on my team instead of buying Raimbaut a sheep? Things like that."
“Bravo, you ancient monster of ego. I'd score that a tie."
“Me too, evil child,” I said. “We're at the top of our form tonight.” I glanced at the clock. One minute.
“There. You look good. Touch one hair or garment on your way to the stage, and there won't be enough of you to blot off the clothes."
“All right, I'm on. But I warn you, I'm about to drench these clothes in the damp lanes of nostalgia."
* * *
For the last set, I invited people to sing along—since it was one long medley of my old hits, people would anyway, and don't ask me why, but the invitation makes the singers-along less annoying to their neighbors.
As I started my last song, “Never Again Till the Next Time,” the Ixists rose from their seats en masse, and came down the aisle toward the stage like a procession of monks. I was in such an expansive mood that the Ixist robe did not irritate me as it usually did.
Ix had never worn any such thing. On Briand, he and his followers, whether Tamil or Maya, had worn plain black trousers and white, tunic-like shirts, with black broad-brimmed hats, to blend in—the opposite effect from those community-theatre-Friar-Lawrence robes.
In my peripheral vision, I could see Raimbaut, Laprada, and the temporary help scuttling frantically. I kept on playing—there might be another assassin among them, but their loyalty did not deserve any less gratz and merce from me just because an enemy had borrowed their costume.
Each Ixist held up a red rose and tossed it onto the stage. The rest of the crowd applauded and sang louder, and the whole thing turned into one vast corny love-fest. At the final chorus, the house was singing loud enough to drown me out.
I don't suppose I could persuade you that I was embarrassed by it all.
Raimbaut and Laprada were waiting just off stage, smiling broadly. Raimbaut took my lute as if it were a holy relic and said, “Your best ever. I am honored to be your companhon."
“I'm glad you're mine, since it means I'm not dead."
“Not a problem,” he said. “Now that they have psypyxes working right, dying is not so permanent—"
“I insist on being grateful anyway. Many things that aren't permanent really hurt."
“But you only remember what happened up to the point where your psypyx was recorded,” Raimbaut said, “so nobody ever remembers getting killed."
“I would know."
Laprada held up a finger in an ah-ha! “So if a tree falls on an ancient monster of ego—"
“Then two bratty kids have to find someone else to work for, and no sane person would tolerate them,” I said. “Not to mention your having to write a complete report on the tree's known political associations—Margaret would insist."
Raimbaut handed my lute to a robot, and they walked with me through a springer—to my pleased surprise, into the bridal suite at the Marriott Trois-Orléans. “Birthday gift from Margaret,” he said. “She's overdoing guilt as usual after losing her temper. She said some really stupid things about Paxa, over that note in your dressing room. Sort of a peace offering."
Laprada held up a hand to stop me from expostulating. “Your father and I already made her apologize."
“Rightly so,” Raimbaut said. “Anyone who can get into a room that secure, and get out again, is somebody that Shan himself couldn't have stopped. Anyway, expect company soon—Paxa just had a few things to wrap up.” He slapped my shoulder lightly “—atz fis de potemz, fai!"
Raimbaut and I exchanged forearm grips, and Laprada gave me a little air-hug. In the mirrors on every wall, we looked like a youngish jovent and his entendendora, talking to his grandfather. They vanished into the springer.
The ubiquitous gilt and bronze frouf in the bathroom was unmistakable evidence that I was in either a high-end Trois-Orléans hotel or a low-end Freiporto brothel. The faucet handles shaped like penises and sconces shaped like breasts failed to arouse me, but it wasn't for lack of their frantic effort; plumbing just isn't one of my kinks, I suppose.
I did my best to ignore the visual implications of the shower gushing from between the thighs of a life-size female bronze nude on the ceiling above the bathing pool, and reveled in the first glorious hot rinse.
My muscles relaxed and the room filled with warm clouds of steam. I shampooed and rinsed my hair and beard, and said, “Fill the tub” to the room aintellect.
Water stopped pouring from between the thighs of that improbably busty nymph overhead, and began flowing from four surrounding bronze cherubs, each about half a meter high, who appeared to be joyously urinating into my bathing pool. So this was a bridal suite. I resolved never to get married here.
“Make it warmer and scent it,” I said. “Dior Tropical Suite."
The water gushed into the wide bronze pool, steaming with vanilla, cinnamon, coconut, and cardamom. At the sink, I applied depilatory everywhere on my lower face that wasn't beard, and wiped it all off carefully.
The pool was full, and bathwater stopped flowing from the cherubs. I half expected them all to shake off drips, but I suppose someone told the designer that would be in bad taste.
In the almost-too-hot water, tension dissolved like sweat. I drifted close to sleep.
The springer pinged. “In here, Paxa."
Maybe it was the heaviness of his tread; when Paxa walked, she never made an unintentional sound, even in high heels on a hardwood floor.
Maybe, down in the brain centers where hearing shades into ESP, I heard his windup breath.
I think it was the difference from Paxa's rhythm. The three footfalls were too intent, too insensitive—too wrong, like on Briand, when Tzi'quin stepped from the crowd to shoot Ix. Like in the Council of Humanity when the assassin rushed up the aisle and burned Shan down at the podium. Like here in Trois-Orléans, twenty stanyears ago, when the groundcar reversed across a sidewalk toward Margaret.
I thought of none of this at the time. I didn't think. I knew.
Grab long-handled bath brush, right hand. Side-roll from the bathing pool to the dressing area. Left hand, snatch up clothing steamer wand. Look at the controls, place thumb, click to instant-on-high-heat.
One more big stupid foot-thud, then a maser at the end of a short, burly, hairy arm came past the half-open door, pointing toward the bathing pool where I had been. In the two seconds or so I had been moving, I must have sloshed to rouse every dead sailor in Fiddler's Green, but he had paid no attention to it, too intent on the mission as rehearsed.
I was crouched low, on the side of the door away from the tub, as his head came in.
He saw me just as I reached full extension with a lunge, my aging ankles and knees protesting but cooperating. With the whole force of my legs and right arm, and the weight of my body solidly behind it, I jabbed the bath brush handle deep into the sweet spot where the doctor p
resses when he says “turn your head and cough."
I snatched it back and clopped his jaw shut with an upward strike, interrupting his inhaled shriek, continued the motion into a roll of my right arm around his neck, and drew him toward me, the brush handle across the back of his neck.
Dazed and in pain, he tried to bring the maser around. I stroked the steamer nozzle along his knuckles, pushing his aim to the side, and squeezed the button. The jet of steam probably startled him more than it hurt—the real pain would have come a few seconds later, a bad burn is like that—but he dropped the maser.
Pushing his head down with the brush handle braced on the back of his neck, I thumbed the switch on the steamer, and dragged the nozzle across his eyes. When he screamed, I thrust the hot nozzle through his teeth, as far in as it would go, and held the switch on.
Maddened by pain, he broke backward through my grip and fell into the outer room, clutching his face and screaming through the ruined flesh of his throat.
I shouted, “OSP Eight Eight Eight,” the override code that every aintellect in human space relays as top priority—"OSP agent under deadly attack, confirm by voiceprint, send backup to nearest springer right now.” Reinforcements would arrive at any second.
Overnight bag—neuroducer epée? Usual place—perfect.
The millimeter-width, meter long thread of the “blade” emerged and stiffened with a loud pop, the tip glowing dimly.
The man was curled with his knees almost to his chest, keening and holding his face. “Hands down to your sides, stretch out on your back,” I said, “and I will make it stop hurting."
He groaned but did it. I did my best not to look at what I had done; if he lived, it could all be regrown. A firm stroke of the neuroducer tip from ear to ear, pressing hard, and then a hard push over his heart, and he was in a coma. The neuroducer had convinced his nervous system that his throat was cut, he was stabbed through the heart, and he was dead. They could revive him at a hospital.
Except for a deep, hideous thud I felt through my feet.
Another brain bomb.
The face had been bad enough; now the head was misshapen.
I was just pulling the cover off the bed to throw over the poor bastard when the springer pinged. I whirled to face it.
Analog SFF, November 2005 Page 10