“Plotting revolution.”
“But you are alone now?” Her tiny hand gesture took in the hanging vines.
“How could I be alone with a l’Amontag! Sit down and tell me all your troubles so I can reciprocate and tell you mine.”
“Your troubles are probably some fake part of a cover story. I should listen to crocodile tears?”
“Not everything about me is fake. The troubles I can talk about are really quite fascinating.”
“Oh, all right.” With a snap of her fingers, she called a chair up out of the floor—it grew and flowered as she waited—then sat down, propping her elbows on the table and placing her face as close to his as she could manage. “I’ll listen to be polite.”
“You first,” he said with a gentlemanly flourish of his fork.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve been sent home from a wonderful job to marry an oaf. I haven’t thought up a clever way to poison him yet.”
“Ah, you belong to an orthodox Helmarian clan? I presume they are now in their heated breeding mode?”
“Yes”
“Me, too. But they are there”—he pointed at the sky— “and I am here .” His warm gaze took in Nemia, and she was obviously his here.
“Do you think you’ll escape their long arm?” she asked slyly.
“Of course. Why do you think I went to school? Why else would I take secret assignations and secret identities and flit about the darker comers of the Galaxy if it wasn’t to escape the clan?”
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” she mused.
“I would consider it as a preemptive strike against my parents if I could only find a woman they disapproved of.”
“You couldn’t be pushed into a marriage with a mezartll” Mezartl was a peculiarly Helmarian word that carried all the implications of clan approval, rightness, and duty, flavored by a kind of mystical happiness that came from letting wiser minds choose one’s destiny.
“A mezartl shrew?” He shuddered. “No. I’ve known myself to be a free man since I was ten.”
“I’ll bet you an emperor’s face that you’ve never found yourself cornered by your whole clan, all at one time. You wouldn’t be so glib otherwise.”
“I move too fast.”
“You think so, do you? They’ll get you,” she said. “The Helmarians keep track of their own. The Galaxy isn’t big enough.”
“Hey, girl, you’re really taking the pressure seriously! They haven’t got that much power! It’s just an illusion they support. Just say no.”
“Impossible. They’ve already sent out the banns.”
She had brought out the protective male in him. “Let’s go out together and make a big scene.” Hiranimus laughed. “Give your fiance something to be upset about.”
“You’d do that for me? They’ll shoot at you!”
“Of course. We could even have dinner together tonight.
Don’t leave. Forget your business. Stay with me. Let me order you something. Special.”
She shook her head and let him misinterpret the gesture. His parents were very wise in not telling him what they had already agreed to with Nemia’s family—in unalterable, legally binding code. “You’re chasing me.” She was annoyed that she was pleased.
“Don’t say no to me,” he implored.
“Why not?”
“Nemia. Think of me! What could be more pleasant than chasing a girl of your charms and braving the wrath of two incensed clans in the name of illicit sex?”
“Ho, slaverer! Back to your food! I recall that at the Fortress you were running away from me when I was desperately trying to seduce you.”
“True. But that was all before I became a wise man. They posted me to a planet where farmen are consistently mistaken for eunuchs. Being an outside observer gives one a perspective on life and a fondness for one’s own people—even a melancholy longing for one’s people.” A melancholy look washed over him as he entertained fantasies that he didn’t expect her to share but that he was having fun expressing. “You’ll need a fling before you marry this oaf. I need a fling. Come home with me to Mendor’s place. It is just the right dream world for an impossible romance. A lake. An estate. I’ll get you a cottage on the lake.” Silence. He stared at her and decided that he had made her very, very wary. He called over their waiter. “Boy, the lady wants the Gitofene. The full treatment. All the courses, right up to the mousse.” He turned back to Nemia. “See, I remember how much you liked Grandfa’s Gitofene. Here the chef does it differently—but I assure you, just as deliciously.”
“Is this the kind of ragged flummery you use on all of your women?” She was half amused, half biting.
He smiled back good-naturedly. “Not a chance. There is no other woman than you. You don’t know my story. I own a fam that can run an imposed persona. Think of that. Worse, one not subject to my control. The last place I was at, I worked under heavy celibate constraints.”
She was glad that he didn’t know that she had designed that persona. Her eyes widened in (mock) horror. “Isn’t that dangerous, to be in the field like that? I don’t mean the celibacy—that’s good for men like you.”
“I never thought of fieldwork as dangerous.”
“Of course not! Fieldwork is an extended vacation.” She found herself in a teasing mood. “I didn’t mean the silly old fieldwork. I meant, letting your fam be modified to hold an imposed persona!” She knew that was dangerous. It just wasn’t dangerous for Scogil. His fam had been built from the ground up as a special agent. Not that he knew she knew.
He grimaced ruefully. “Danger is being forced to do what you’re not built to do. I was designed as a walking impersonator, compliments of my parents’ ambition. I can fam-feed a constructed personality as fast as I can change my clothes. It’s not dangerous when you grow up with the extra personas feature. No surgery. My parents knew what they wanted from me and what I was going to become before I was bom. So it was all built in. I’ve never been free. I was given a fam to match my parents’ expectations. I wanted to be a psychohistorian. What I am is a second-rate field agent. My whole life is tracked out.”
“All of it? All of it? Your parents have picked out your wife already?”
“Presumably.”
“And you are blackhole bent on thwarting their plans?” “Presumably.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing what you seem to be saying. You are actually going to ignore their wishes?” That was heresy—but tempting heresy. It was something that she wanted to believe that she could do—wanted to believe that she was doing.
He laughed unnaturally. “Ignore their wishes? What a sweet sound that has. Nothing so bold. My revenge is going to be more subtle. I’m going to do better than they expect— better in ways they could never dream. Better in ways which
will make a mockery of their preparations. My only hope is that I can run faster than they do! Hey, do you think you could keep up?”
Why was she attracted to this man? In her mind’s eye she saw a Coron’s Egg spreading out its stars across the sky while the charts grew and wrote symbols in fire. She even saw in the geometric designs a child named Petunia—after the pentagon of petunias she had carved on her grandfather’s sarcophagus. Her child by Grandfa’s command! She could see everything as if the foretold astrological fate had just now been sealed forever.
She became angrier at her beloved Grandfa than she had ever been in her life. She knew that she wasn’t going to be able to escape the tyrant. She had fallen in love. She knew that she was willingly going to marry Hiranimus Scogil and bear his children and endure whatever strange life he made for them. Had she been poisoned? Poor Hiranimus! She was exactly what his parents wanted for him. It was what her parents wanted for her. There was no escape. She felt tears and had to call in the iron emotional control of her fam to suppress them. She could feel her fam triggering the love-changes in her brain chemistry. She laughed. It was all worse than this young man could possibly imagine.
&nbs
p; She had her instructions to modify his fam, too. And she would—for the sake of keeping him.
16
THE HYPERLORD FRETS OVER A MESSAGE, 14,791 GE
Deadlines requiring action will arrive before you’ve had time to get answers to all of your urgent questions. This is how one is forced to learn that action precedes knowledge. Never hesitate from lack of knowledge. Act when action is required, but never before. Since action without full knowledge will often precipitate error, choose your actions so as to grant yourself idle time in which to learn from your mistakes. Only the dead make no mistakes.
—The Zenoli Warrior
Hyperlord Kikaju Jama wasn’t sure whether he’d caught a fish or been caught himself. The weasel’s message that had bloomed on his telesphere was too terse. Somebody out there wanted to purchase his galactarium. Was it a real nibble? Or an alert policeman’s barbed hook?
The recent organizational expansion of his conspiracy came with a paranoia that was a new affliction for Jama. When he was just a fop, openly spouting ideas that no man could take seriously from the mouth of a fool, he had not only felt safe—he had been safe. Noblemen pretenders just didn’t rate as a probable psychohistorical infection. But now that he had positioned himself to menace the Pscholars, a sense of safety eluded him. Wasn’t it odd for a star-spanning weasel to find him just after he had expanded his opposition to the Pscholars—and while he was in the throes of planning his expedition to Zural?
Who could possibly know that he owned a marvelous jade ovoid except Igar Comoras and the ephemeral man who had
slipped it to Igar as a bribe—and Kargil Linmax? Only Kargil knew its nature. Was Kargil double-crossing him? If so, Jama’s head was in the executioner’s bucket because it was Kargil who had put in place the new security system. What if Kargil had given a key to the police and was sitting back in his shop in the Kirin Sovereignty enjoying his perfidy? After all, Kargil had worked a good part of his life for Naval Intelligence, a group which was just another arm of the Pscholars. Annoyed with himself, Jama mentally stamped on his suspicions. Hadn’t his reliable people-instincts been consistently telling him that Kargil had never betrayed anyone in his life?
He sent off a coded message to Kargil. “An untraceable weasel has inquired as to the price of my galactarium. Why? Where did that come from at this time?”
Kargil’s reply was transmitted almost immediately back through Jama’s blacked-out telesphere directly into the Hyperlord’s fam by coded famfeed. “You forget that you put out your own weasel recently to find a repairman for your galactarium. You clearly specified the probable manufacture date and the nature of the device. Your weasel is no longer in circulation, but these things get archived by strange libraries and can be accessed by other weasels for a small fee. It may be that you have only found the police, yet consider: there are billions of patient collectors both on this planet and elsewhere who are looking for all sorts of incredible items— from the cryogenized messiah of Rith to the electronic eyeballs of Emperor Krang-the-Blind, to say nothing of an authenticated signature of the Founder. Weasels are one of their best tools.”
The Hyperlord was, at that moment, changing into his afternoon attire. Instantly angry that his friend so dangerously dismissed the cunning police, he took the opportunity to throw the buckled shoe in his hand at the telesphere, which, assuming itself unwanted, vanished. Only reason and practical matters calmed Jama’s rage. His toes needed manicuring. How could he have let his toenails grow so long that they had worked a hole in his hose?
But maybe his fear of the police had blinded him to the obvious? While he trimmed the toes’ overgrowth he wondered if his jade ovoid might indeed be merely another valued item. Or could a second mysterious detective be searching out the location of Zural in a game that would thwart Jama’s purpose? Probably not. Do not panic. Look for simple explanations. He looked. Maybe a little girl had been dazzled by such a galactarium as was his and now, as a rich old lady, sought to recapture that experience? Maybe there was a mad astrologer out there desperate to know his fate? Who could fathom the reasons of collectors?—certainly not a dealer in antiquities! Drat! His toenail polish was now chipped. He decided to renew it with a darker sparkle.
Should he reply to the weasel’s request? He thought back. His own weasel, designed to probe for an atomo-unit repairman, had been constructed to be untraceable. A secure response to the stranger’s probe would be similarly untraceable by its quantum mechanical magic; therefore an answer wasn’t dangerous—but would it serve any purpose?
Well, there was always the money. He had some accounts laid away for an airless month and some highly charged iridium sticks and those scholarium bonds—but he really did need a cheap way to finance his expedition to Zural. If only he had a clue from whence the inquiry had come! He appreciated that the recipients of any weasel he sent out wouldn’t be able to detect its source, but he certainly didn’t like the mutual finesse with which this trick was executed.
Even with quantum security he didn’t feel safe. It was all too easy to imagine police on the other end of the reply, helmets hiding their eyes, fingers playing over the banked consoles of interrogation machines, waiting patiently while their sting accumulated enough evidence to arrest him. A message itself couldn’t be traced, but the information in it was subject to analysis.
Not a restful nightmare, in spite of Kargil’s attempt to put him at ease.
This expansion of his revolutionary infrastructure at a rate faster than his cautious nature recommended was unsettling business. All was going too swiftly because of the new security org. Jama wasn’t yet used to working with people he didn’t know and couldn’t locate, who took action without being given orders, and who didn’t bother to report back until after their actions had been resolved. Did it make him feel secure that everyone in his untested, more virulent org was disguised to look like a bonehead acting independently of any rational scheme? No, it did not! He was sweating into his arm puffs!
Nothing was as foolproof as design would have it. Foolproof was a harlequin mischief maker who knew how to prove better than anyone else that the soberest man was all fool! Someday someone was bound to be spotted by the police.
Could he laugh with Kargil? Kargil was willing to chuckle at the thought that if (or when) they were infiltrated by a police agent, that poor nudnik probably would be written off by his colleagues as just another chump chasing a mythical conspiracy! Or maybe a dupe caught in the latest aliens-are-among-us rumor. No! Laughter wasn’t a substitute for certainty.
Still, one must live. One must act—even with incomplete information. Lord Jama was a creature of quiet times who dreamed of the adventures rampant during unstable times. In recent bouts of imagination he cast himself as a dashing, fast-acting zenoli fighter of the Interregnum. How could he fault the discomfort of a little paranoia? He fanned himself and rearranged his jewelry. Hadn’t Katana, one of Kargil’s recruits and an expert on the old zenoli ways, recently recited to him an aphorism of the zenoli? “Boldness and Caution make fit companions for marriage!”
It was proper that he compose any reply to the inquisitive weasel with extreme care—if he could keep his mind off Katana’s breasts long enough to compose his thoughts. Desire was supposed to slacken in a man his age—sixty-four by last reckoning—but it never had. Nevertheless, it would be better if he concentrated his seductive energies on less dangerous maids.
Frightfulperson Katana of the Calmer Sea was a mature woman, at least thirty-five, an ex-naval Intelligence officer of no mean perception, with a supple body which knew every gesture of the old zenoli practice, a remarkable throwback to the old noble clan of Frightfulpeople which she adamantly claimed as her own line. But: She had been dismissed from the Stars&Ship after murdering her husband— unfairly according to Kargil—but nonetheless a woman to be pinched with caution.
Katana’s six-year-old daughter was more Kikaju’s métier, charming even without her mother’s breasts, if dangerous in her own pe
tite way. Frightfulperson Otaria of the Calmer Sea. Instant seduction was Jama’s preference, but for variety, a long drawn-out courtship had a special marinated flavor. Otaria would be ready to bed in about another six years if carefully prepared. By then she would have budding breasts—perhaps, when mature, to rival her mother’s own wonderful orbs. A carefully prepared virgin was one of life’s gourmet delicacies. Dangerous, of course—her mother was fiercely protective—but a little danger was one of life’s more piquant spices. To be used, never overused.
But to return to business. The nibble from the galactic black had offered to buy his galactarium. No price was mentioned. The implication was that funds were not the buyer’s chief constraint. Jama was always interested in a good price, but at this time he was not interested in selling. Slowly he composed a counteroffer, careful to keep within the legal niceties. Was the potential buyer, he inquired, interested in the information contained in the device or in the device itself?
Then he forgot about it in his enthusiasm to choose his wig and mask for this evening’s orgy. He hadn’t dared invite Frightfulperson Katana. His companion was to be a young baroque singer, freshly turned eighteen, whose mother was
too far away to watch over her daughter carefully, having selected for her child’s further education the services of an expensive, but distant, singing master—fortunately Jama’s neighbor and accomplice. Such innocence was challenging. Kikaju had spent the best part of the previous evening, with several of his male friends, introducing her to the customs and manners of the Aziyade School of Orgy—about which her wide eyes had known absolutely nothing.
The Hyperlord, himself, was partial to the exuberant court rituals of Emperor Takeia-the-Happy of the eighty-seventh century, which were undergoing an underground revival and which were to be the basis of the indulgence planned for the seventh watch. He already had the costume for his companion, which had been chosen for her after much dressing and undressing, and his own costume, but he wasn’t yet sure of his foot perfume. With that much foot fondling, his foot perfume had to be selected with care. And it had to match dark pink. The Hyperlord’s reputation as a master of erotica was at stake.
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