by Rick Shelley
“I’ve not noticed it, Your Highness,” Vepper replied. “He has yet to beat me, and I am not your equal at chess.”
Or at anything else, George thought, but that was the sort of thing one did not say—except at the greatest provocation. “He has fewer inhibitions about contesting the game fully.”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Shall we have our morning constitutional?”
“Of course, sir.” Vepper kept the resignation out of his voice. He was only forty, but there were times when the prince made him feel like an old man. Him and his damned constitutionals. What good does it do in this godforsaken place? I’m a civil servant, not a bloody commando.
Prince George set a faster pace than usual. He wanted to get in his three miles in time for his chess game. Even after seven years of barbaric isolation, he kept appointments with obsessive precision. Vepper struggled to keep station as George strode across the trampled grasses that marked his daily route to the river and back—an isosceles triangle with the base along the river and the apex at the hotel. Vepper was sweating profusely before they had crossed the hotel’s lawn. He was six inches shorter than his master and thirtypounds lighter, but had never approached the prince in conditioning or stamina.
George swung his ebony walking stick, an antique that had been in the family for generations before one of his ancestors emigrated from Earth, with studied casualness. The head of the stick was of delicately worked gold with five deep-set, pear-cut diamonds. The ferrule was ivory. George always carried the stick, unless he was carrying a rifle or a shotgun. The one thing he did not need the stick for was to assist him in walking, but the device had become so integral to his public persona that it was no longer truly an affectation. It was a habit so deeply ingrained as to be totally unconscious.
“Don’t dally, Vepper,” George chided as they neared the river. Even at this distance the jungle was fairly tame. The underbrush was thinner because of years of visitors trampling over the same ground. The vines that clogged some parts of the jungle near waterways were missing. And, of course, there were fewer animals about. Only the cachouri had refused to flee from the proximity of humans.
“Yes, Your Highness.” Vepper struggled to find breath for the words and to catch up with his patron. I’m glad we can’t play polo here. There wasn’t a horse on the planet. It was the one advantage Vepper had found in this diabolical exile.
The river (it had a proper name, but none of the people at the Excelsior bothered with it; most would have needed time to recall it) wasn’t much of a stream, except during the infrequent flooding of the winter rainy season. In the summer, it was sixty feet wide and rarely more than three feet deep. The water ran crystal clear over a rocky bed, showing the rich variety of aquatic life. Most of what passed for fish were eellike in appearance and too foul-tasting for humans to eat except in utter desperation. The hotel people did net a few now and then to add to the food processors. After the nanotech system finished with the fish, there was no hint of their origin or taste left.
“Look at that tree!” George commanded. He stopped and used his walking stick to point.
“Sir?” Vepper said, glad for any excuse to rest.
“There must be a hundred cachouri nests in that one tree.” The tree wasn’t a particularly large specimen, sixty feet high with a crown thirty feet across. The first settlers had called the species the pumpkin tree for the dull orange shade of its bark.
“Perhaps we could try smoke bombs again,” Vepper said.
“You’re missing the point. We’ve been going at this problem all wrong. Why do the cachouris frequent this area?”
Vepper hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Whatever they eat must be here,” George said. “Do you have any idea what those birds eat?”
“No, sir.”
George harrumphed. “Neither do I. I wonder if anyone does.”
“To what point, sir?”
“To what point? To get rid of the cachouris, all we need do is get rid of their fodder, don’t you see? When we get back to the hotel, sound out Master Lorenqui on that, will you?”
“Yes, sir.” Always some damned nonsense, Vepper thought.
The chessboard was set up on a table made of wickerlike reeds on the north side of the hotel, but there was no one on the veranda when George and Vepper returned. The prince checked his watch, then marched through the hotel foyer and up to his room. There were seventeen minutes left to the allotted hour, time for a quick cold-water shower and a change of clothing. In an average day, George would shower two or three times, change clothes perhaps one additional time.
“Why is he so obsessive?” Marie Caffre asked her husband after the prince swept through the foyer. There wasno doubt about his destination and purpose. After seven years, there were few secrets left in the hotel. “Does anyone care about a few wrinkles in a shirt, a little perspiration?”
Henri limited his reply to a noncommittal grunt. He was daydreaming of home—his own obsession. “I want to make sure that I don’t forget any detail of Loreche,” he had once told Marie. Every day he chose some aspect of their homeworld and tried to encapsulate every possible fact and memory about it.
“Henri, are you listening to me?”
He hadn’t been, but he rarely found any real need. Marie had to be complaining about the prince again. That was her obsession. Henri used his stock reply. “My dear, just be thankful that His Highness is here. If it were not for him, we could not be certain that anyone would ever come to rescue us. No matter how long the war lasts, or who wins, someone will come searching for the king’s brother. Someday.”
That was the prime canon of Henri’s Camerein catechism.
The veranda, which had always been a gathering spot for guests, wrapped completely around the hotel’s main building. Before the war, as many as three hundred might congregate there for afternoon tea. Shuffleboard courts were inlaid on the south side. A variety of gaming tables was available. But after seven years of enforced residence, it was a rare day when anyone could raise the enthusiasm for games.
The chess matches between Prince George and Jeige McDonough generally occurred three or four times a week. The game this day reached its thirty-fifth move. Each man had a glass of emerald green livven juice at his side. George had nearly finished his. Jeige’s was almost untouched. He concentrated too deeply on the game. There were no spectators. In the constant ennui of the Excelsior, no one could bear that intensification of boredom.
Jeige moved his last knight toward the side of the board, posing a weak threat to one of George’s bishops, then leaned back and took a deep breath. “Sorry I took so long with that.”
George waved a hand to pass off the delay, and the apology. George had anticipated Jeige’s move five minutes earlier, and had his reply ready.
The prince was reaching to move his queen to pin Jeige’s knight when the late-morning quiet was shattered by a sonic boom. The building shook. George’s glass toppled from the table and shattered before it hit the floor. Juice slopped out of Jeige’s glass, but he didn’t notice. He had leaped to his feet as the shock wave hit, tipping over his chair. Jeige reached to cover his ears but the noise was gone before his hands got to his head.
“What the hell?” Jeige shouted. He ran to the edge of the veranda and looked up. “There!” He pointed into the sky.
George got up and crossed to the edge of the veranda. He spotted the contrail flowing from west to east, well to the north. But Jeige wasn’t pointing at that. George squinted and finally caught the glint of sun on metal, much lower, and some distance east of the end of the vapor trail.
“It’s turning north,” Jeige said. Both men strained to keep the craft in sight as most of the others poured out of the hotel.
“A sonic boom,” Jeige said. “Some sort of aircraft or spacecraft.” People crowded together along the railing even though they had the whole length of the veranda.
“Could you tell what it was?” someone asked.
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“No, but it looks as if it’s coming back,” Jeige said as the craft continued its turn.
“Where is it?” one of the older women demanded. “I don’t see it.” Several arms were raised to point her toward it. The craft was over the hotel almost immediately, heading south now, losing both speed and altitude.
“No engines,” Shadda said, almost breathless.
“It’s going to crash,” another voice predicted.
There was a hurried migration around the veranda to the south side. The craft was losing altitude in a hurry, and it disappeared from view as the first guests reached the southern part of the veranda.
“How far off?” “I don’t see any flames.” “No explosion.” “Could they have survived?” “Who was it?” “Can we find it?” Questions and comments collided in destructive interference, but each was repeated often enough that they were all either voiced or heard by everyone.
“Was it ours or theirs?” Jeige asked when there was a brief hiatus in the litany. He looked to the prince. If anyone there could know….
“I saw no markings,” George said. “It looked a bit like our old Kappe-3 reconnaissance shuttle, but that means nothing. There are only so many practical aerodynamic shapes. And there shouldn’t be any shiny metal on any military craft. You don’t make military vehicles that are so bloody easy to see.”
“Do we go looking for it?” Vepper directed the question at the prince. The others looked to George as well, apparently ready to give him the first opinion.
“I suppose we should, in case there are survivors,” he said slowly, though he was eager for the adventure. “It will be a change of pace, in any event.”
Several people cheered.
“I do not believe that we should all go, though,” George continued, instinctively dampening the enthusiasm. “That would be most impractical. I mean, really. Perhaps there is a ship waiting to rescue us. Someone should try the radio, scan the frequencies, try to contact whoever is up there. And we do not have enough functional safari bugs to carry the lot of us and bring back any survivors we might find.”
The prince scratched a line across the top of the railing with his walking stick. “We must not lose sight of the direction,” he said. “That is our vector.”
“Who goes? Who stays?” Mai McDonough demanded. Her words were slurred. She had already started her drinking for the day. After her behavior at breakfast, that wasno surprise to the others. They all knew the pattern. Nor was anyone surprised ten minutes later when she disavowed any further interest in the matter. “I need a drink,” she announced, pushing clear of the others and heading for the Savannah Room, the hotel’s bar.
The arguments over who would go to try to locate the wreckage might have continued for hours if Prince George had not raised his voice and assumed leadership. “I will lead the expedition,” he announced. Decades of royal training and experience at court, and perhaps also the scores of generations of royal ancestors, gave his voice an air of command that none of the others was prepared to challenge without more time.
Vepper Holford would accompany his master, whether he wanted to or not. Everyone recognized that.
“I will go,” Shadda said. “Someone from the hotel must go, to look after hotel property, if nothing else.”
“Your assistant could handle this,” George said.
Shadda looked around the veranda, his movements slow and deliberate. Dacen Poriri, his assistant, was nowhere in evidence, as usual. And Zolsci Emmet, the services technician and only other remaining employee, was already working the radios, trying to contact the ship that had to be in orbit.
“I would not delegate this, sir,” Shadda said with a formal nod to the prince. “It is my duty as your host and acting manager of the Commonwealth Excelsior.”
George accepted Shadda with a nod. Jeige McDonough volunteered, and George accepted him as well. Henri and Marie Caffre were the last to be added to the party. Marie volunteered—almost demanded to be included—and her husband would not let her go without him.
“We should leave quickly,” the prince said.
“If I may, sir,” Shadda said. “A few moments spent stocking the safari walkers might save us considerable distress later.”
“Of course,” George agreed. “If you would be so good as to see to it?”
• • •
No pillar of smoke marked where the shuttle had presumably crashed. There had been no flash of fire or rumble of explosion that could be seen or heard at the Commonwealth Excelsior. By the time the expedition departed, two hours had passed since the shuttle’s overflight and disappearance.
Zolsci Emmet had reported no success with his attempts to contact the shuttle’s mother ship. But the narrow-focus microwave antennas had been designed to link the hotel with a satellite in geostationary orbit, not to perform search operations. It might take hours, days, to find a lower target.
The six members of the expedition left in four safari walkers—also known as walking eggs or safari bugs. Each pod could hold three people and a modest cache of supplies. Prince George and Vepper rode in the first. Shadda Lorenqui was alone in the second, carrying most of the extra supplies. The Caffres shared the third, and Jeige McDonough brought up the rear.
Before he left the veranda, George took a last check of the line he had scratched on the railing. He used the barrel of his shotgun—for a trek in the jungle he had set aside his walking stick for a more practical weapon—to hold the vector until he could walk to the bug and show it to Vepper. “Program that course,” George told his aide.
The interior of a safari bug was uncluttered, utilitarian, with one wide seat in front for the driver and two seats in back. In normal times, the arrangement would have included a hotel employee to drive. But the controls were simple. Most of the work was done by computer. The driver could set a course by keypad or joystick, adjust the throttle, and override the automatics, although the coordination of the walker’s eight legs would still be handled by computer. A touch pad operated the other controls, including short-range radio. The safari bug was much quieter and more versatile than floaters (ground-effect vehicles) or wheeled vehicles.
“Almost precisely south,” Vepper said after he had lined up the bug’s navigation program.
Prince George settled himself in the rear seat and retracted the clear canopy. “Shall we be going, then?” he said, and Vepper started the bug. The other walkers moved into line behind them.
The gait of the safari bugs looked awkward, but it was comfortable. The egg-shaped pod normally remained stable enough that tea would not slosh out of a full cup. On level ground without significant obstacles, the bugs could average fourteen miles per hour. In jungle, the bugs were unlikely to maintain half that speed, but it was still much faster, and infinitely more comfortable, than walking.
“I rather think that this must be how it felt to ride a howdah on the back of an elephant, back on Earth,” George said about fifteen minutes after they left the hotel. “This is possibly even more comfortable.”
“Yes, sir.” Vepper had heard the comment scores of times. Sometimes he thought that the prince felt obliged to make that observation every time they rode in one of the bugs. Neither man had ever visited Earth or seen an elephant, but the prince was an ardent student of the Mother World, especially of his family and the British Empire and Commonwealth there—the first Commonwealth—up to the time when his ancestors had decided to reestablish the family’s early glories on the galactic frontier.
“I do wish we knew how far off that ship crashed,” George said, rare petulance in his voice. Vepper didn’t respond. He had served the prince long enough to know when to remain silent.
George stared out, watching the jungle, letting his mind relax. There was an alluring peacefulness to the scenery, easily enough to smooth over his annoyance.
Before he had traveled three miles, Shadda was drenched in sweat even though he had kept the canopy closed and the air conditioner at maximum. It’s not the
heat, he admitted to himself. It’s never the heat. His childhood home on Meloura had been hotter than the Camerein jungle. Not the outside heat, he qualified. If was fear that was suffocating him, and it was never “cold” fear. It was always hot—sweating, trembling hands, and stomach cramps.
Shadda had insisted on coming even though he had expected this physical rebellion. It was his duty. For once in his life he had a place, a Position, something that could not be taken away easily, something he would not idly throw away in a moment of rebellion or despair. Or fear.
“I hate it.” The fear. “I never used to be like this.” The unknown had been a magnet drawing him from one frontier to the next. Now, even inconsequential unknowns could provoke almost paralytic fear. The war had not really touched Camerein—as far as Shadda knew—even though the Federation had apparently taken over, destroyed communication satellites, stopped the shuttle service, and so forth. They had never come to the Excelsior, had never even overflown it. Why has it infected me so thoroughly? He could find no answer.
But has the war really passed us by? he wondered, not for the first time. Communications had been lost so early. There had been no news. Almost anything could have happened, and the residents of the Commonwealth Excelsior would not know. In his nightmares—garishly frightful visions that were appearing with increasing regularity—Shadda had seen the towns of Camerein totally destroyed by attack from space. In those dreams, the only humans left on the planet were the seventeen at the Excelsior, and no one in the galaxy knew—or cared—that they were there.
“We know we’re not alone now,” Shadda mumbled. The shuttle was proof of that. There had to be at least one starship in orbit. “There’s still a chance we can get off this world.” Hope for an end to the years of isolation was more powerful than any fear that the war might finally come to him.
“Shall we spread the formation out a bit?” George said over the radio. “Form a skirmish line, as it were, instead of this follow-the-leader drill? We wouldn’t want to miss the shuttle, now, would we?”
