by M S Murdock
“Why me?” Kemal asked.
Gordon took his time before speaking. “You may well hold a grudge against me, Kemal, because I kept you on Mars so long. Believe me, it was for your own good, and for the good of the family.”
“Can you explain that?” Kemal asked, deciding he’d had enough of both his uncle’s starfruit and his lies.
“I ask you to take it on faith, for the present. Believe, for the moment, at least, my good faith toward you.” He raised his right hand to affirm his honesty.
“What sign of it is there, Uncle Gordon?”
“This. That at this moment, when I have concluded an important treaty with the arcology of Kallag, I have chosen you, rather than one of my sons, to carry it to Kallag and sign on behalf of your Gavilan clan. It means that you are one of us, equal in my eyes to my sons.”
It was dazzling. And it was perplexing. Kemal couldn’t quite believe it. It was all too neat and easy. What was Gordon up to? he wondered.
“Are you ready to do this for me-for your family?” Gordon asked.
Kemal waited until he had everyone’s attention.
He touched his napkin to his lips, placed the cloth on the table, and then said, “I’m afraid no.”
Gordon stared at him. “What do you mean, Kemal? You won’t go?”
"Uncle, if you want me to do something for you, you are going to have to do something for me.”
Everyone’s forks and Spoons and glasses stopped in midflight to their respective destinations. No one had ever demanded anything of Gordon Gavilan, and especially not one of his own family!
“And what is that?” asked Gordon with forced non-chalance, breaking the silence.
“I want my father’s inheritance?”
Gordon laughed. “But of course! I’ve been holding it for you in trust. You’ll find every kilo accounted for. In fact, there’s more there than when Ossip died.”
Kemal couldn’t help but notice Gordon’s antique wooden chair squeak when the titanic man squirmed in it. “I want it deposited to me in a bank in New South Mars,” Kemal said. “All of it, including deeds to property. In my name and no other. To do with as I please.”
“What do you intend to do with it? It’s a sizable amount of money,” Gordon said, suddenly sitting still.
“What I do with it is my own concern. The fact is, it’s mine and I want it.”
Gordon leaned his sweaty face toward his nephew. “Kemal, there’s never been the slightest question about that. I can set up an account now so that you can draw interest from your share. The interest alone is a huge amount.”
“No,” Kemal said.
“Now, boy, listen to me. I have a lot of delicate negotiations going on right now. I’ve been….. compounding your father’s inheritance by working with it. I can’t simply unravel my negotiations by removing that part from the principal. It’s in your interest, boy, to let it remain with me, because current deals are going to double your share. Within a year, you’ll be legally of age. I’ll give it to you then, with pleasure. You have my word on it. What do you say?”
“No,” Kemal said again.
“Do you doubt my word?”
“I probably would, if I gave it much thought. I simply want what’s due me.’ ’ Kemal struggled to remain cool-headed, sure that composure more than anything else would help him get what was his.
“You’re still not twenty-one!”
Kemal sensed the weakness of Gordon’s argument. “Eighteen is the legal age on Mars,” he ventured.
“You’re not Martian, you’re Mercurian! Our law puts the age of manhood at twenty-one,” Gordon bellowed, his face turning as crimson as a Martian sunset.
“You say I’m Mercurian,” Kemal said. “But I’ve lived sixteen of my twenty years on Mars."
“You don’t know what was going on here,” Gordon said lamely. “What I did was for your own good. And you had to be educated, Kemal, in order to take your rightful place here in the ruling hierarchy of Mercury Prime.”
“1 don’t give a damn what your reasons were,” Kemal said. “You made them without consulting me. If you want any cooperation from me, you’ll treat me as an adult and give me my due.”
“Kemal, I’ve already told you, it’s most inconvenient for me to withdraw your father’s bequest from my general funds at this point. I give you my word: In six months, you will receive what is due you.”
“No.”
Gordon flinched at Kemal’s bullet like delivery. “But you have my word. Don’t you trust me at all, Kernel?”
“You’ve asked me that already,” Kemal said coldly.
He stared directly at his uncle’s narrowed eyes, though could see peripherally that all were quiet again save Dalton, who twiddled a steak knife between his fingers. “No, Uncle Gordon, I do not trust you.”
Blood vessels stood out on Gordon's face and neck and beads of sweat formed on his brow and upper lip. “Kemal," he said slowly, almost pleadingly, “I understand your annoyance at me. But I swear I’ll put things right by you. You have my solemn word. The entire bequest of your father, plus accrued interest in four months. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“No,” Kemal said for the last time.
“You’re unreasonable and uncivilized!” Gordon exploded, unable to restrain himself any longer. He leaped from his chair and flung it backward, gouging the precious sculpted wall behind him and knocking the old chair to pieces. “Get out of here! Get out of here before I kill you with my own hands!”
Kemal had an answer for that, too. “Try,” he wanted to say. But he decided he’d said enough. He stood bowed, and left the audience chamber.”
00000
Kemal ordered dinner in his own suite that night, A servant brought it on an ornate tray. Beside the steaming dishes, there was a document in a heavy envelope. Kemal opened it and saw that it was a paper releasing to him the accrued personal bequest of his father, Ossip Gavilan.
Kemal read the document carefully. It was signed and witnessed and seemed to be in order. It gave him the right to examine the accounts and transactions since his father’s death in order to judge for himself if there had been any mishandling of his funds.
There was a condition, however. Kemal was to receive the bequest only after signing his name as Mercury Prime’s signatory to the Mercury Prime Kallag Protocol. After that, the first ten million Konigs would be released to him, the rest to follow within the week. As much as Kemal wanted the money and the freedom. he despised Gordon even more, and certainly didn’t trust him. What could he possibly have inherited (besides money) that Gordon would want? He wondered. Going to Kallag will get me that much closer to my freedom, he thought, but I will not sign this treaty blindly. “My eyes are very much open, Uncle? He said softly.
Kemal lay on his bed and fell into a fitful sleep.
A messenger arrived some time later with the sealed treaty and Kemal’s new travel documents from Gordon. Transport was ready to take him to Kallag at his earliest possible convenience. That meant right now, Kemal knew, just like at military school.
Gordon was wasting no time. But that was fine with Kemal. The sooner he finished this and got on with his life, the better.
Chapter 8
Kemal was the only passenger in the inter-arcology launch that was to take him to Kallag. He sat alone in the luxurious little cabin.
The pilot, already aboard in the front compartment, signaled for takeoff. Kemal strapped in, and they lifted away from Mercury Prime.
Soon they were descending. Mercury’s surface, even viewed through darkened polarized viewers, was a hellish spectacle. The land was mostly flat desert, scoured clear of sand and other debris. Rocks were piled into complex shapes like a surrealistic landscape by an alien sculptor. The desert floor had been Split into a crazed pattern, but it was an alien pattern, not like a desert floor might crack on Earth. The rock formations were piled high by wind and other forces. Randomness had produced stone collections that were characteristic of the fo
rces at work on Mercury.
As the launch descended, Kemal could see endless kilometer of what looked like railroad tracks, those, he knew, were the solar collectors, the only artificial things on the Mercurian surface. They were remains of the early days of settlement an attempt to get at the mineral wealth of the planet.
Peering ahead, Kemal could make out a dense mass low on the horizon: a Track City.
Everything appeared strange, but most alien of all was the light he saw as the launch passed into the planet’s atmosphere. A luminous red-gold, shading into hues of violet and suffused with the fiery light of the nearby sun, the coloring was the dimly remembered hues of eidetic dreams.
The Track City came up toward the launch swiftly It was a squat, ugly thing, a black Iron toad squashed flat against the smoldering earth; the bumps and protrusions on its hide resolved into viewing ports, observation galleries, and equipment pods bristling with detection devices.
The Sun King’s amber-colored launch flew over it and continued low across Mercury’s cracked surface. Minutes later, Kemal made out a dark opening on the bleak plain. It clarified into the mouth of a cavern, and beyond it Kemal could see the line of the terminator, the line dividing Mercury’s bright side from its dark. The, ship braked, hovered, and then descended into the mouth of the cavern.
The cavern’s entrance had a width of several kilometers and slanted downward toward the planet’s interior. Powerful, long-lived glow-lamps illuminated its walls, but the place was so vast that the lighting produced only a twilight gloom. The launch continued down the gradually narrowing cavern, coming at last to a major branching.
It took the left-hand branch.
The launch’s pilot proceeded cautiously down a winding tunnel no more than twice the ship’s width.
After another few kilometers, the launch, which, though streamlined, was limited to low speeds and high maneuverability, slowed and then come to a stop. Kemal saw that there was a kind of landing stage ahead, with loading stalls and heavy equipment. Lights burned through the gloom.
The pilot landed neatly. Wasting no time with formality, Kemal sprang from the launch. Guards stood in a single rank. Standing before them was a man in civilian clothes, small, balding, middle-aged, with the look of a minor official.
“You are Kemal Gavilan?” he asked. “I am Holton Zac, here to offer you official welcome to Vitesse.”
“Thank you,” Kemal said. “But did I hear you correctly? Is this Vitesse?”
“It is indeed,” Zac said.
“Then I’m afraid there’s been some mistake? Kemal said. “I am going to Kallag on official business.”
“No mistake,” Zac said. “You are new to Mercurian politics, young sir. We heard of your mission and decided to put ourselves and our excellent city of Vitesse on your itinerary.”
“Sir,” Kemal said, stunned, “you have no right to interfere with my journey.”
Zac shrugged. “Put it down to politics. Welcome to Vitesse. You are our guest.”
But Kemal recoiled. “This makes no sense to me. What business is it of yours where I go? I demand that I be allowed to proceed to Kallag immediately”
Abruptly the launch’s door opened, and out stepped the pilot, still wearing a pressure suit but with the helmet open. She was thin-faced, light-eyed, and tanned, with wisps of dark hair on her forehead. Kemal thought she might have been attractive if her expression had not been so serious.
“I’d like to introduce you to Duernie,” Zac said. “She comes to us from the Dancers, who arranged this little diversion.”
The woman walked up to him and peered intently at his face, “you are Kemal Gavilan, son of Ossip the Sun King.” It was not a question.
“Yes, of course,” Kernel said anyway.
“You resemble the king;” she said, squinting at him. “I bring you greetings from the Dancers.” “That’s nice,’ he said distractedly. “But what is his all about.” It seemed to be the wrong thing to say. The woman turned away, disappointment evident on her face.
Zac said to her, “I told you we could expect him to know nothing. Gordon sent him away when he was four. And no doubt made sure he was kept in ignorance? ’.
“Then the situation is even worse,’ Duernie said. She strode off through a corridor leading to the city’s interior. A door slammed behind her.”
“What’s she so angry about?” Kemal asked, a puzzled look on his face as he watched her go.”
“Well, we must explain a few matters,” Zac said “and then you will understand the position. Come, we can talk in a more comfortable place than this.”
The guards formed up around them: Kemal turned to join them, then suddenly broke away. In two strides, he had gone past the guards before they could react, and was running fast toward the launch.
The plan had formed in his mind instantly, and he had acted on it. Although it was a calculated risk, he doubted that Zac would kill him outright. If he could just get to the launch, he was sure he could pilot it, He remembered the turnings coming into the cavern.
It would be simple enough to reverse them.
Behind him he could hear Zac shouting orders. The guards were starting to react now, too late. He had reached the launch’s entryway….
Then he was enveloped in the shattering scream of a D beam. Zac had been ready after all.
Kemal tried to will himself through the hatch, but the sonic-neuro disruptor bathed him in its enervating noisy field. He fell backward into unconsciousness.
Chapter 9
Kemal knew he was still alive by the throbbing pain throughout his body. He ached from head to foot, and had a splitting headache. He was alive, and of course there was something to be said for that. But at the moment; not much.
“Feeling better, boy?” asked a voice….
Kemal saw that he was not alone. There was a man in the cell with him. He was large, white bearded, and wrapped in a rusty brown woolen cloak that looked strange in this world of tight-fitting, functional clothing. It gave the man a theatrical look. He appeared in his early fifties, though it was difficult to judge, because his face was mostly hidden by white whiskers.
‘Where am I?” Kemal asked. “Welcome to the central prison of Vitesse,” the bearded man said. “A noisome place, but you might as well call it home. It’s apt to be that for a while.”
Kemal rubbed his fingers through his hair. He could hardly concentrate on the man’s words, his headache was so bad. The pain felt like a constricting net just inside his scalp. He was sure that his brains were going to be squeezed out through his nose in a thin gray trickle. “I don’t suppose you have anything for a headache?” he asked. “Got you with the disruptor beam, did they?” The bearded man chuckled. “Let me see what I can do.” In a rustle of garments, and accompanied by a smell of perspiration, the bearded man came over to him, grasped his head firmly with one hand, and began probing at his neck with strong fingers. “Hey, that hurts,” Kemal said, explaining men than complaining, because even the pain from the man’s fingers was better than the cataclysmic ache in his head.
"I wish,” the bearded man said, “that Mother Nature would standardize the intracranial pressure point location!!! Let me see, how about here . . . no, here!“ The boarded man’s lingers tightened. Kemal felt a Gash of pure light pass through him, and, as suddenly as that, his headache was gone, leaving behind only a dull, premonitory ache.
Kemal stood and took a few experimental steps, "Amazing” he said. “What did you do?”
“Merely applied a little knowledge. It’s old stuff, from the forgotten pharmacopoeias of Earth. But it works. Now we can introduce ourselves properly. I am Egon, Master Musician, at your service.”
“I am Kemal Gavilan,” Kemal said.
Egon raised tufted white eyebrows. “Gavilan is a name that opens doors.”
“It seems to have opened a cell door for me,” Kemal said.
“Glad you can laugh about it,” said Egon. “Let me see now, which Gavilan are you?
I’ve performed at many royal audiences, but I don’t remember seeing you there.”
“I’ve just arrived on Mercury. I’m the son of Ossip, the former Sun King, who was brother to Gordon, the present ruler.”
“And how did you come by this mishap?”
“I don’t know,” Kemal said. “I came at my uncle’s bidding to sign a treaty with Kallag. I was kidnapped by some people from Vitesse and brought here.”
The room was small, a three-meter cube without windows. There was a covered commode in one corner. Glowing strips in the ceiling gave a pale, shadowless light.
“What have you done to offend the Vitessans?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. I’ve never been anywhere to do anything to anyone,” he said, vaguely confused.
“Too bad,” Egon said. “If you had insulted one of their officials, there might be a chance of apologizing and getting out. But if you’re in on unspecified charges . . . Well, maybe it won’t be too terrible. You’re a Gavilan; they must want you for something.”
“No doubt,” Kemal said. “But what do they have you in for ” Egon grinned, showing broken teeth in his broad, whiskered face. “A difference of opinion, nothing more.”
“Concerning what, if I may inquire?” The old man was the first person he’d met who didn’t seem to want something from him: Kemal liked that.
“I came to collect the Musicians’ Tax, and there was some difference of opinion as to the percentage we are entitled. That led to angry words, and those, in turn, brought me here.”
“For how long?”
“Until they come to their senses. The Vitessan officials have behaved like fools. I expect my release momentarily.”
“You seem very sure of yourself,” Kemal said, envying Egon his self-confidence.
Egon grinned, his crooked yellow teeth showing again. “When a Musician is seized, all entertainment is stopped until he is released. A city like Vitesse is barely tolerable with entertainment. If they don’t have me out in a day or two, they’ll have riots on their hands. Not even Dancers can live without the Musicians’ Guild’s services.” “I was kidnapped by a Dancer,” Kemal said. “She brought me here.” “Where else would she bring you? Obviously not to Kallag.” “Why not?” “Because of the Kallag-Dancer troubles, of course. But I see that you’re not up on your local politics.” “I just came here from Mars.”
