A Princess of the Aerie

by John Barnes

  “It has the second highest gravity of anywhere inhabited,” the Dean said. “Is this the quality of your research?”

  “I mean light the way kids use the word, sir. Fun. Fashionable. Exciting. New. Something you want to be associated with. Like rich people with style. Not like some pathetic loser gweetz with a job and bills and no future. Like that.”

  The Dean smiled as if he were about to torment a small animal. “Oh, yes, oh, yes, I should dearly love to try to sell that story upstairs, if I had to, which (glory to Nakasen) I won’t.” He brought his feet up onto his perch, still chuckling, bracing his hands on his knees. “And you did manage to keep your preposterous tale straight, much better than Dujuv. Did you consider how the Venereans might feel about it?”

  “Well, sir, my concern was the Hive. That’s where our loyalty is supposed to be, after all. So I probably wasn’t thinking about the Venereans at all.”

  “Do you see a pattern here? Because I do. And not a good one. You seem to think that the Hive is all that matters, and that all your superiors will, or should, feel that way as well. In fact you seem to think that consideration for the different feelings and ideas of the citizens of other nations is somehow a weakness or a failing in someone working for the Hive.”

  Bewildered, Jak dakked what he was being accused of, but not why it would be an accusation. What was good for the Hive, so far as Jak could see, was good, regardless of what it might mean for the perverts of Venus, the miserly miners of Mercury, or the surreal tribals of Mars.

  “Jak,” Dean Caccitepe said, “you know that I’m not going to try to appeal to your moral sense. I’m not that big a fool. But if you think ignorance is a mark of patriotism, we have a problem. And I think that’s how you actually feel. Why else would you avoid and/or flunk, constantly, a not-at-all difficult required class? Certainly it’s consistent with your cover-up story. I know perfectly well that you and Dujuv were merely trying to finance an end-of-year slec party. But even if I didn’t, I’d have known that your entire story was nonsense. Now, can you tell me why?”

  Jak shrugged, looked down, and mumbled, “Because you’re smarter than me.”

  “No, Jak. I am smarter than you—many people are—but that is not the reason your lie failed. Almost anyone could have seen through it. Now, why? This is important, Jak. If, in just a few years, we are going to have you out there lying on behalf of the Hive, with the security of a billion people dependent upon your lie’s being believed, then you had better be able to tell a good one (and more importantly avoid telling a bad one). Now—again—why was it that anyone could have seen through that lie?” The question was clearly serious. “I’m still waiting for an answer,” Caccitepe said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea,” Jak said, possibly for the first time in his life.

  “What is Principle 204?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just recite it.”

  Jak drew a breath, blanked his mind, and let the familiar words tumble out. “ ‘Principle 204: Always make your lie the lie that your listeners want to tell themselves.’ All right, sir, I sort of see that it has to do with the case, but I don’t see what it has to do with the case.”

  “Hmm.” The Dean frowned. “Either that was a real question or your act is improving. Either of those is a good thing, of course. Hmm.” He tented his fingers under his jaw, seeming again to look for something to peck at on his desk. After some thought, Caccitepe said, “Well, then, here’s what I’ve decided. Mind you, if you don’t like it, you can always appeal through official channels.”

  Jak shuddered.

  The Dean nodded a few times to himself, his sharp face and small head bobbing on his long neck. Jak tried not to think of it as stork-like, because he was already feeling like a bite-sized frog. When the Dean spoke again, that smile was back. “Now let me tell you what you did. You had exactly the effect you’re claiming to have intended—in the Hive. Millions of our younger citizens accessed those illegal recordings and were fascinated. Venerean diplomats are getting fan mail from pornography buffs. Interest in and affection for all things Venerean surged—we’re predicting dozens of best-selling entertainments with Venerean themes soon. Intrigue and adventure vivs, vids, and novels for the next few years will feature many Venerean sidekicks, love interests, or other important secondary characters, and there are going to be practically no Venerean villains for the next six or seven years. You truly have made the Venereans the lightest of the light, Jak.

  “You’ve made them deeply angry, too. The average Venerean likes us less than ever, and the anti-Hive parties and organizations are growing fast.

  “When you pulled your little trick, we were in secret negotiations for a more equitable trade treaty. You’ve just strengthened their hardliners and our accommodationists— so guess what you’ve done to the negotiations? Guess who will be making concessions and who will be accepting them?

  “Now, you don’t have to like Venereans, Jak, but if you don’t want to give the store away to them, you have to know who they are. Can I make that any clearer?”

  “No sir.”

  The Dean’s smile had become very, very deep and strangely warm. He settled back, letting his back straighten so that Jak became aware that Caccitepe was actually well over two meters tall, and beamed down his long nose at Jak. “No doubt you are well aware that the time is almost here to set your Junior Task.”

  Jak tried not to hold his breath. All students were given a task to be completed by the end of the junior year. Caccitepe was one of the dozen or so administrators who set Junior Tasks … and he was legendary for setting difficult tasks, sadistically aimed straight at your weaknesses.

  “Jak, we have to maintain your independence and your talent for improvisation while finding a way to harness them. There are two kinds of people that can’t be trusted with any important job—those who always follow directions and those who always tear them up. Before you graduate, you must be able to completely understand directions, intentions, and context, and then do the right thing, which is often but not always the thing you were ordered to do. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Toktru clear, sir. I dak.”

  “Well, then. Right now, you are compulsive about not following directions, which makes you as much their prisoner as any robot, and you willfully refuse to understand any point of view other than the most narrowly chauvinistic one, which means you can’t modify the directions intelligently. By the end of your junior year we will have fixed all this completely.”

  Jak felt a cold chill up his spine, but he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

  The Dean smiled at him, very kindly and warmly, and the chill became a vast glacier of frozen helium. “So. First of all, you will continue on the Maniples team and you will not be on academic suspension.”

  He relaxed a little.

  “You will be under a much tougher condition. Every term while you remain here, and via correspondence during Long Break, you will repeat Solar System Ethnography, regardless of how many times you pass it, until you actually earn top rank in the class, after which you will repeat the optional class in Advanced Ethnography until you earn top rank in that class. If you insist on being a fool and a boor we cannot fix that, but we can make sure that it’s a choice, rather than a matter of ignorance.”

  Jak breathed a sigh of relief; this wasn’t so bad. He would still be on the Maniples team, and if he was sentenced to perpetually take the course he most disliked, well, at least with all that exposure to it, he should be able to speck some detection-proof method of cheating.

  “Now those are the preconditions for your staying. About your Junior Task.” The Dean seemed to be glowing with joyous bonhomie, like one of the medieval gods— Buddha or Santa Claus or Satan, Jak could never keep them all straight. “You will take on an independent project to be graded by me. It must be a situation exactly like those you will encounter as a field operative: the directions must be vague, the goals not entirely clear, the situa
tion one in which you have to interact extensively with people who are not Hive citizens and do not share our goals. It’s a shame that that little adventure of yours a couple of years ago— when you rescued Princess Shyf, put Psim Cofinalez in line to be Duke of Uranium, and acquired a number of cross-cultural friends, including one Rubahy—isn’t coming up now, because it would have been perfect. You have one week to tell me what your project will be. Questions?”

  “Er, well, none right away sir, but—”

  “Then goodbye, and good luck on that exam you have forty minutes from now. If you’re quick, you can probably review all the ethnographic material just before you go in.” The Dean winked so merrily that Jak might almost have mistaken it for friendly.

  Unable to think of anything else to say, Jak got up and airswam through the door, which closed behind him silently. An instant later he heard bellowing, joyful laughter. Jak resolved not to mention that to anyone. Already, his story would be disbelieved by every other student, when he got to the part where the Dean smiled.

  CHAPTER 2

  I Don’t Need You to Kill a Man

  So apparently the first thing I have to do is come up with a project,” Jak said to his best tove Dujuv, as they sat down to share a platter of Whole Steamed Beefrats in a private booth in the Old China Cafe, their favorite booth in their favorite place of many years, in Entrepot, a vast shopping area tens of kilometers across, far down in the lower decks of the Hive, not far above the industrial service decks, so far down that the main floor was on the .76 grav deck. The Old China had a proletarian-jock tendency to big portions, heavy sauces, and strong flavors, especially to sweet-and-sours.

  Since his allowance was generous and his Uncle Sib was rich, Jak was probably among the Old China’s wealthiest customers. Not the wealthiest, though. That had to be Sesh.

  The greatest shock of Jak’s life had occurred two years ago when he had discovered that Sesh Kiroping, the girl who had been his sweet, amiable, pleasant demmy for his last years in gen school, was in reality Princess Shyf Karrinynya, or more formally, Her Utmost Grace the Princess Shyf, Eleventh of the Karrinynya Dynasty of the Kingdom of Greenworld, by the Blessed Choice of Mother Gaia. Greenworld, a vital ally to the Hive, was in the Aerie, the other giant space station in the solar system.

  Discovering Sesh’s real identity had led Jak, and later Duj, into wild adventures, caused Sesh to return to the Aerie, and gotten Jak and Dujuv into the PSA not as Hive citizens, but as special favors to the Duke of Uranium, Psim Cofinalez, one of the hundred or so most powerful people in the solar system.

  Jak thought of that adventure as the best weeks of his life, living like a hero in an intrigue-and-adventure viv: plots, rescues, counterplots, affairs with beautiful girls, high adventure with good toves. Since then he had mostly spent time in class, or socializing with Fnina, his current demmy, who had the looks of a model, the clash-splash-and-smash of a viv star, and the perspicacity of an unusually naive brick. She had been attracted to Jak by Mreek Sinda’s best-selling documentary about him, a grossly distorted version of his adventures, and Jak really thought that in two years Fnina had not yet noticed that he was not the heet in Sinda’s show.

  He still practiced the Disciplines daily, and was if anything better at them than ever, but there was no one to fight with, and sparring had lost some of its pleasures; he still consumed intrigue-and-adventure vivs, but couldn’t help noticing how much less interesting than the real thing they were. For that matter, during his brief period of adventures, aside from his sex life with a passionate, beautiful, horny princess, he’d also had a tender love affair with a crewie girl on the sunclipper on which he traveled—her first, and he still dreamed of how sweet and affectionate it had been. Comparatively, Fnina was merely compliant and proficient, and within a few months, anyway, his fame would have at last worn off and she’d find someone else.

  Everything in the last two years was nothing compared to those few weeks. That wild set of adventures had begun with a casual conversation, right here, in this booth. Jak suddenly hoped that this booth was lucky.

  Dujuv’s attention was where it usually was, on his plate. Jak had often heard him say that beefrats were the real triumph of the genies—without beefrats, there’d be no hamburgers or meat loaf in space; cows were just too big and inefficient. A beefrat would eat pretty much anything and turn it into so much juicy, tender steak on each tiny body that, when full-grown, they looked like thick cylinders garnished with a whippy long tail, tiny little head, and four pink hands.

  Dujuv was gobbling down beefrats at his usual pace—hands, tails and heads came off in a single blinding motion, into the bone bowl to his right; then the beefrat torso in his left hand whirled as he stripped off the outer layer of meat with his teeth. After ripping them apart with his hands to get the sweet hidden bits between the bones, he plopped the skeleton into the bone bowl at his left even as his right hand grabbed another steamed beefrat and the process began again. Duj had once said, casually, that he’d never really known how to enjoy beefrat until he’d dakked you needed a bone bowl for each hand.

  Jak watched the process in some awe, as always. A plate of Whole Steamed Beefrats was twelve of them; Jak had accounted for three, probably a quarter kilogram of meat. But then Jak, unmodified as he was, didn’t have the speeded-up metabolism of a panth.

  Dujuv at last came up for air. “So did Dean Caccitepe give you any ideas for where to find a project?”

  “Not even a hint. So what’s your Junior Task? Score four knockbacks the next time we play Nakasen University?”

  “Four knockbacks is one more than the school record.” Dujuv dragged a foreleg through his teeth, getting the last succulent bits. “I could eat these fat little bastards all day. Hmm. Well. The Junior Task for me is actually harder than getting four knockbacks against Nakasen, I think. I have to go along on your project, and help you out, which is not necessarily hard at all, except that I’m also supposed to keep you out of trouble, and I ask you, can anyone? Is that a fair assignment?”

  Jak gaped. “So your project is to be my pizo?”

  “Singing-on, tove. I’m to be your responsible pizo. Dean Caccitepe’s exact words. It’s that little adjective, ‘responsible,’ that makes the whole job so tough, masen? So, you go save the universe; I come along and help. Any idea what I should pack?”

  “No idea at all. But it’s only been a few hours. I’m still recovering from that test—which might as well have been an ethnography exam. I can’t believe that he did that to us. Every question had some condition like, ‘Bearing in mind the implications for the Fertility Festival of the Booga Booga Nation’ or ‘Without reviving historical memories of the Second Civil War in Beriberistan’ or ‘assume that machismo, gimu, and bloody-mindedness are all relevant.’ I mean, it’s supposed to be a negotiation class, and that test wasn’t about negotiating anything—it was all about respecting some rule that you can’t pick your nose with your pinkie on Tuesday. It’s as if they gave you a test on how to be a goalie and all the questions were about fast and slow surfaces and which team had the most left-handed power slingers, and none of them were about stopping the ball or whipping out.”

  Dujuv looked thoughtful as he plucked the head, hands, and tail of the next beefrat. “You know, stops and whipouts are the things you practice all the time, of course, I mean, they’re basically what they hire a goalie to do, but to do them at the right time, in the right way, so that your team scores and theirs doesn’t—and to set you up to score on a knockback … hunh. Well, for that, you really do need to know things like the speed of the surface and how many lefties they have.”

  “It was just an example.”

  “But see, that’s what’s interesting, that you picked that example. Because those things would be relevant in a goalie class. And look, I’m never going to take any negotiating class, or anything else academic that isn’t required—nobody wants me for my brain—but what kind of deal are you going to get if you don’t dak the o
ther heet?”

  “Anyway,” Jak said, sick of the entire subject, “I’m going to talk with Uncle Sibroillo about coming up with some kind of project. I’m having dinner with him tonight.” Jak had never known his parents, and had been discouraged from asking questions about them; Sibroillo was the only relative he knew. Jak had moved out of Sibroillo’s home after graduating from gen school, but they still saw each other a couple of times a week. “He’s a silly old gwont but he does have ideas, sometimes good ones.”

  Dujuv shrugged. “You’ll think of something, Jak. How long have we been friends?”

  “Since the second day of gen school, so I guess about ten years.”

  “Well, then, in ten years, I’ve never known you to actually fail to think of something.”

  Jak raised his left hand and spoke into his purse. “Time check.”

  The purse replied, “Fifteen twenty, standard. Sibroillo will pick you up in one hour ten. He’s going to surprise you with a pricier, fancier place than usual, and he hopes to catch you not dressed for it and thereby make you feel like a gweetz. If you want to get a shower and change into something nicer beforehand, we should leave in the next five minutes.”