by Jim Grimsley
“Really?” Kitra asked.
“He’s very famous, Kitra, at least on Senal,” Dekkar said. “He’s being droll with you, at the moment. Do you know what the Orminy is?”
“Or was,” Figg said.
“Yes. I’ve seen enough vid for that.” She was looking at Figg with suspicion. “You’re one of them?”
“He’s not just one of them, he’s the eldest male of the eldest Orminy house. He’s the one who killed that degenerate and set off the Common Fund Reforms.” Dekkar yawned, affecting boredom. “Surely you heard about that.”
“Oh, heavens,” Kitra said, “I followed that whole thing on the vid. You killed Sade. Now I recognize you. So this is—” She stopped short, looking at Keely, who was still sleeping.
“Yes,” Figg said quietly. “This is the girl’s brother. I adopted him.”
“You had that bug thing and it crawled all over that poor man.” She shuddered, though the gesture appeared more voluntary than not.
Penelope nearly always knew when someone was discussing her and took the occasion to preen herself a bit on his head. Kitra glanced at the spider in surprise a couple of times, though she’d seen it before. She’d thought it was one of Keely’s toys, perhaps.
“My family was licensed for a certain number of assassinations per year,” Figg said. “I used one. It was perfectly legal.”
“Under some law that’s how many thousands of years old?”
Figg shrugged. “The old laws are always the best.”
“At any rate, he’s our passenger,” Dekkar said. “And he’s an old friend of mine and really not at all a bloody murderer, so do close your mouth before you catch something in it.”
Kitra gazed fixedly ahead, jaw clamped, and set the flitter down at the edge of a parking platform. Her repressed indignation was more or less amusing to Figg, who understood her to be very young, not even a hundred yet.
Figg had bought a full-fledged working farm that grew protein meat-forms, a lot of soybeans, corn, two crops of wheat per year, and a few hectares in truck which were shipped daily to a local produce market; the farm was fully staffed by professional agriculturalists and had shown a good profit for the last decade or more. The former owners lived on the premises and ran the farm; Figg intended to follow their example in living on the farm but to see to it that somebody else did the managing. Reform had left him poor but not that poor. Figg had bought the place initially for the income from the farm and only later realized its utility as a place to live. The estate complex, while not elaborate, was large and comfortable, set on a wooded hillside on a place where the hill leveled out to form a kind of broad shelf that was the lawn and garden for the mansion.
The house was built as a series of pavilions joined by a series of covered walkways, surrounded by gardens, pools, and paths. Each pavilion had walls that were in fact sliding screens that could be pocketed nearly out of sight, leaving the pavilions open to the gardens on one or two sides. Galleries ran under deep eaves along the perimeter of each pavilion. Privacy inside was maintained with folding screens. The insect population near the house was damped by machine; the pavilions could be completely opened to the air in good weather, inviting the feeling of living in the outdoors but with all the comforts of a home. The climate in most of Ajhevan was mild, though weather could be sharp at times in the winter; the screens were made of a paperlike material that was nevertheless a good insulator, and translucent as well, so that light entered even when the screens were closed.
The central pavilion was spacious, all the internal dividers opened for the moment, making a large space where everyone could congregate. The house had a Hilda and a Herman as staff, and the Herman in its usual efficient way prepared a buffet table of food while Hilda set up a couple of news-frames near the pavilion at one end. Figg wandered in the pavilion, pleased at the look of the place and feeling something of his old self, a host seeing to the needs of his guests, perhaps somewhat less lavishly than had been his custom but richly enough, and with nothing but good intentions.
Nerva right away had to stop Keely from drawing pictures of a speaking tree on the wall. The boy was too large for the sullen, childish look on his face; at times Figg wondered whether this age regression was having any effect at all. “But it talks,” Keely said, pouting darkly. “You didn’t even let me draw the mouth.”
“You have a slate to draw on, Keely. Why do you want to draw on Uncle Figg’s walls?”
“Not a good idea, chum,” agreed Figg.
“The crayon doesn’t even stick good anyway,” Keely said. “Poo.”
“Poo? What’s poo? That’s no proper word.”
“It is too a word,” Keely said, and shrugged. “It means I feel poo.”
Dekkar and Kitra were scanning the news-frames at a low volume. Figg went to listen, leaving Nerva to watch the boy. She was sitting on the balcony in the fresh air, watching the garden, where dappled sun played over a field of gorgeous plants, not one of which Figg cared to learn to name. Would his indifference to nature change as he lived here? Nerva appeared to be memorizing the garden already, tugging idly at the fabric of her skirt.
Hilda and Herman carried the hand luggage to the other pavilions to prepare them for the arrival of their occupants. The presence of the pair, which were identical to the Herman and Hilda he had used in his penthouse in the Marmigon, gave him a feeling of comfort; though these were, of course, updated models from the current line, with enhanced software and guidance features and with what was supposed to be more efficient AI.
Penelope crawled off his head and moved into the garden, most likely having located something to eat. She preferred hunting for herself to being fed; she was not a web builder but a stalker of prey—anything up to the size of a small elephant would do. Though for eating she preferred something much smaller and more suitable to her taste, like a bird or a large insect. She ran, legs flashing, along the top of the balcony railing, then leapt down into greenery and disappeared.
Dekkar, at the news-frame, said, “My lord. That doesn’t sound like a war for independence, that sounds like genocide.”
Kitra had turned away from the frame, pale and shaken.
With the Anilyn Gate closed, the only media available were local sources on or above Aramen. This news-frame was from a satellite news center, Pivotnet. An image of a town, or rather, two images side by side, one a wide shot showing several blocks of structures from an aerial view, the other close-ups of corpses in the streets, and one shot, horrific, of something glimpsed partially at an intersection near the limits of the camera’s range: a thing eating one of the bodies, something like an insect head but huge, glittering, black as obsidian, showing no features and moving in a way that made Figg wonder whether the camera was functioning properly, moving in a kind of blur. The camera coverage focused on the eating thing, which was using something like a beak to snatch the meat off the bones of a woman, face partly devoured.
Figg tuned to the voice-over and heard that the village was called Flores, east of the capital; Flores served as a data center and market for the local farms. Had served. As of today, the population had been wiped out by construct troops from the north, aided by creatures like this mantis, which was at present out of attack mode and eating the scores of corpses that lay about. After a few more bites of the woman, the thing’s jaw expanded, unhinging grotesquely at the back, wrapping itself quickly over what was left of the dead woman’s head and pulling the body into its ballooned throat. The mantis then raised its head and sucked the rest of the body down its gullet. The throat and abdomen expanded and then sharply contracted, crushing and compacting the body, moving it down the monster’s digestive tract. The mantis grasped another corpse in its forelegs, what looked to be a child, and pecked at it, tearing at the flesh of the face and tasting as before, as if this were a delicacy.
The images came from an automated floater camera that had survived the attack and continued to broadcast footage. Rebels were declaring the village to h
ave been a secret military installation that had to be annihilated, but the camera showed nothing of the kind, only ordinary dwellings smashed to bits, quiet streets, and slaughter.
“Why are they doing this?” Dekkar asked Kitra. “Why are they attacking ordinary people? You used to work with them. Do you have any explanation?”
“I don’t see any human troops there, do you?” Kitra asked, making no effort to hide her complete discomfiture, her upset.
“No. I don’t see anything that looks like any troops from our side, either, just constructs and this scavenger thing.”
“That’s a pretty vicious-looking scavenger,” Figg said.
“This is pure viciousness,” Kitra said. “This is nothing like any attack we ever discussed when I was with PFA.”
Dekkar gestured to one of the folded icons at the bottom of the frame. “This is an official feed from a rebel outlet. It’s claiming all the attacks are being directed against military targets. But there are a couple of independent stations from island settlements that are still broadcasting from the south. They’re claiming wholesale slaughter of civilians and non-combatants all over Jharvan.”
“You think it’s true, it’s not just propaganda?”
“These are rebel images,” Dekkar indicated, the wide camera panning over another empty village, this one along the eastern coast. “I don’t see any civilians alive here. Not a hint of one.”
“Maybe they’re terrified and staying inside.”
“Nice try, but most of those houses don’t have an inside anymore. This is complete devastation. Just watch.”
“What about the Prin?”
“They’re holding the twin city. There are some pockets of them in other places. The independents claim the Prin have left the Citadel and dispersed into the streets and that’s kept the rebels out of the city. At first it looked as if the Citadel was going to be overrun. The rebels are claiming some victories in the outlying parts of the capital, and they’ve captured a couple of Enforcement bases.”
“Minor ones,” Kitra said. “Communications and coastal radar.”
“This is astonishing,” Figg said, and he was smiling in spite of the image on the screen. “Someone’s finally giving the Prin a black eye.”
“You think that’s a good thing?” Kitra asked.
“Why, yes. I have to admit I do.”
“All these dead civilians don’t bother you? These people didn’t all have to die for Aramen to convince the Mage to give us a local assembly, to elect our own governor.”
Part of him was enjoying her outrage. “I suppose I have to admit it appears a bit excessive.”
Dekkar snorted.
Kitra said, “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to who this is who can fight the Mage and Great Irion and not back down? Don’t you think that whoever this is may be even more dangerous than they are? And maybe a good bit less friendly?”
Figg scratched his head, looking at another horrific image in the frame, a smaller version of the shadow mantis ripping ribbons of intestine out of a woman about Kitra’s age.
“It’s a fact the Prin don’t often eat their victims.” Dekkar moved toward the fresh air with a bemused look on his face.
“Even I would have to admit that.”
“You’re angry at them because they took your money?”
“Understandably, don’t you think?”
“No. Not really. Look at what you still have. I’ll work all my life and never earn enough for this.”
“You can always apply to the Common Fund,” Figg countered, with something of a sneer.
She was getting more heated, her color rising. “Not for a life like this, not unless I invest my share in a business and make a mint.”
“Which you’re quite free to do.”
She scowled at him. She was a handsome woman, strongly built, not afraid to sneer back at him. “You talk as if you’ve done it yourself. I doubt you actually have.”
He damped down his own reaction; he was old enough to know better than to argue out of anger. “I suppose you mean I never earned the money myself. That’s true enough if you mean money earned independent of the family name. Under the new laws, I’d have no choice but find out what I could do for myself, since I’d have no matripart. I suppose you think that’s just.”
“It’s certainly more along the lines of what I’d call a free market.”
“I’d disagree with that.”
“You still have a very prestigious name, don’t you? You still have a lot of rich relations who can help you. That gives you a lot of advantages.”
“You can’t have an elite without elite wealth. You can’t have a real civilization without an elite.”
“Garbage,” Kitra said.
“Maybe that’s true,” Dekkar said, mildly. “But there’s no law that says the Orminy have to constitute the elite.”
“That’s clear enough.” Figg ground his jaw and scowled.
“From the point of view of the Mage, destroying the Orminy is very sensible. No empire survives long at the center unless it periodically destroys its elite and replaces it.”
“That’s logic I understand. That’s logic worthy of my mother.” Coming from an Orminy, this was meant as high praise. Figg raised his glass of wine to Dekkar, and just then Penelope, having fed herself to the point of satiation, no doubt, came skittering across the floor and clambered onto his shoulder.
“So you think that’s what the Mage is doing?” Kitra asked.
“I think she has a lot of motives. The reforms have destroyed what was left of the Orminy, there’s no doubt about that. Or at least sent them packing.” With a slight bow to his host, Dekkar continued. “Between them, the Mage and Hanson have annihilated the factions, the combines, and most of the major corporations as rivals of government. If the reforms are adopted all along the Trade Line, this will be a shakeup among the wealthy like nothing anybody has ever done.”
“You’re a fan of hers, I see,” Figg said. “I hadn’t realized.”
“You have to admire this kind of panache. Who among you Hormling realized what a wolf you had already let loose among yourselves in the person of this Hanson? You don’t mention his role in this, but without Hanson’s control of Hormling data systems, there’d be no way to enforce these laws to begin with.”
“I suppose I had been ignoring that part of this whole process.”
“When did a ruler ever have the power to make such a declaration stick? When was the central government of an empire ever so secure?”
Figg amended the statement in his own way. “When did a ruler ever have the authority to order such a complete disaster of a policy?”
“Too much money in the hands of too many people to suit you?” Dekkar asked. “That’s the real democracy, after all.”
Figg was sincere enough to feel severely discomfited, particularly when his gaze lighted on Keely and he remembered the kind of squalor that the boy had endured in the Reeks. He had starved, had hardly known his parents, and had been pimped to adults for money or food, used as a courier for this or that illegal substance, and beaten—horrors so thick that his therapists had insisted on age regression as Keely’s best hope of any kind of normalcy. Figg felt responsible in an odd way; at one point in his long life, he had traveled in the Reeks for pleasure, had rented children of Keely’s age for his own use. In these darkest and lowest parts of the subcity lived nearly twenty billion of the thirty-odd billion who had crowded the planet before the Mage began to encourage out-migration through the Anilyn Gate. In the Reeks people lived in public spaces, jammed body to body with hardly a moment of privacy, let alone comfort or safety; this enabled the rest of the world to live in a state of relative spaciousness and provided fodder for any number of other appetites of the upper class.
“I never much cared for the Mage until she shook things up like this,” Kitra said. “Now I find myself thinking she’s not such a bad thing after all.”
Further news from what was left of
the Surround. More and more armor was landing on Jharvan; the armies of the northern rebels were now landing near the twin cities. Rebel leadership, all rather sullen, pinch-faced people, were listing demands that were being communicated to Governor Andrick at the Citadel Palace. None of the demands sounded much different from what one would expect, and none explained the slaughter of civilians or the indiscriminate destruction of nonmilitary targets. The rebel spokesman, someone whom Kitra claimed not to know, was Tosh Unrotide Fu Chong, a complex name that was likely part true-name and part proxy, an older Hormling with a weak chin. He took a question about the allegations of high noncombatant casualties and looked momentarily nonplussed. “We’re hearing those reports, too. We can’t confirm or deny anything at the moment.”
“Is that all you have?”
“That’s all I have.”
“What about the reports that towns in the western part of the continent are being massacred and annihilated? Flores, Defarcke, Michnin, Rosewood, Cedar Hills. There’s a long list.”
“We can’t confirm or deny any of those reports at the moment. We have not to our knowledge targeted any forces in those areas. Leadership is looking at the information and we may have a statement forthcoming on this.”
“So you have nothing to say about the deaths of tens of millions of civilians.”
“You have our demands.” Chong drew a long breath, becoming impatient but governing himself with care. Figg felt rather sorry for him. His last hair-restoration had been rather badly managed and his scalp appeared patchy. He had an unpleasant, pursed mouth. The PFA might have chosen a prettier public face. “These are the conditions of the People for a Free Aramen to end the fighting. These are the reasons we started fighting in the first place. That’s what you have. Aramen will be free today. Thank you.”
Kitra had drawn close to the frames again, staring at his image avidly.
“I thought you said you didn’t know him.” Figg was having a glass of wine, careful to sip it slowly.
Kitra poured a glass for herself. “I don’t. But that was an unusual little dance routine he just did, don’t you think?”
