Xan was unusually subdued. He walked around the Zang, surveying it from every angle. He looked as though he had been given a particularly marvelous present.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. You can feel the way it seems to stretch out over parsecs.”
“It’s amazing,” Nell breathed, clutching her pocket secretary to her heart. “I can see why primitive cultures worshiped them.”
“We’ve visited a few worlds where they still do,” Laine said. “I was telling Thomas about the place I was studying when Proton and I met. They think of it as a benevolent presence.”
“But does it actually protect them at all?” Xan asked.
“I think so,” Laine said. “I saw it get rid of some dangerous animals on at least one planet.”
As though floodgates had been opened, my cousins deluged Laine with questions. Every bit the visiting professor, she handled each one seriously, with charm, and in language that any layman could comprehend. I herded them all back to Laine’s sitting area (now furnished with a collection of brown-upholstered armchairs and a rolling serving table) and activated the coffee maker and the other hospitality technology while she held court. She smiled up at me as I brought her a cup, prepared as I had come to learn she liked it, with a twist of lemon peel and a pinch of raw sugar.
Though we were capable of clamoring for her collective wisdom until her throat grew raw, it had been hammered and welded into our collective consciousness over the course of decades that one half hour was the correct length for a call. We knew to the moment when that period was up. As the time expired, my family rose as one. Surprised, Laine put down her cup and saucer and got to her feet.
Nell extended her hand and advanced upon her. “Thank you so much for allowing us to visit you, Dr. Derrida. I hope you didn’t mind having us descend on you in a mob, but we were all so curious!”
“Not at all,” Laine said, beaming, shaking her hand with enthusiasm. “Come back any time.”
“I will!”
“Will you join us this evening?” Xan asked, measuring her with his eye. I marked that look, and resolved to pull him aside for a private warning. “For dinner and entertainment? We would all love to have you there.”
Laine wrinkled her nose, an adorable expression that drew admiration from several of my cousins.
“I’d love to,” she said, “if Ambassador Melarides can keep the Kail busy. It’s hard for me to get away if they’re here.”
“Until tonight, then,” Xan said, bowing over her hand. He fixed her with a warm look of his deep blue eyes. “It’s been … delightful.”
We withdrew, leaving peace and quiet behind us.
I waited as long as I could, the distance along the echoing metal corridor from her door to the lifts.
“What did you think?” I asked at last.
Nell could hardly collect her feelings into simple words, and instead resorted to polysyllabic utterances.
“It’s fascinating. Amazing. Monumental!”
“Yes!” I agreed, signaling for the lift. Jil fixed me with a summing, humorous look.
“But you’re not asking about the Zang, are you?”
“I suppose not,” I admitted. How well she knew me! Jil shook her head.
“She’s darling, Thomas, but …”
I held up a hand to forestall her. “But? I know she’s a commoner. We have no future together but for this moment.”
“It’s not that, Thomas. Her voice! It could shatter glass.”
I shrugged. “A minor distraction from an otherwise marvelous woman. The path of true love never did run smooth, as one of our ancient prophets so accurately said.”
“I’d say it’s more than a bump in the road,” Xan said, clapping me on the shoulder hard enough to knock me through the floor. “I’d keep her around only on the grounds that she never open her mouth.”
“Then you would lose out on her discourse,” I argued. We stepped into the shaft. The lift did not need to be told where we were going. It knew us well by then. “She has had a fascinating life, and she is a most intelligent, charming woman, warm and exciting.”
Xan shot me a look of pity. “It’s your ears that will suffer, cousin. Not mine. I would never keep someone around who wasn’t perfect in every facet.”
Somehow, everybody in the lift was overcome by a fit of coughing. The cadre of Xan’s unsuitable loves, from the day puberty struck him until the present moment, could fill a very large gallery.
“All right!” he said, recognizing that he had the lower hand, no matter what cards I showed. “But if you plan to keep her around, do suggest she listen to the sound of her own voice for a while. Perhaps she’ll moderate the shrieking when she knows how it strikes others.”
“That is possibly true,” I said. “She is alone so much, and Proton does not appear to have ears or a voice of its own.”
“Has the Zang spoken to you?” Jil asked, enviously.
“Not speak, in so many words. I felt as though I was overhearing its thoughts, only once so far.”
“What did it say, er, think?” Xan asked.
“It complimented Dr. Derrida,” I said.
“Really?” Xan asked, in disbelief. “Perhaps it can’t hear her voice.”
“Or it sounds different to a Zang,” I said. I strode into the day room and threw myself full length upon the nearest divan, propping my feet upon the rolled arm. “To me, Laine is divine in every way. The fact that the Zang can see her excellent qualities is a tribute to the Old Ones, not the other way around.”
“Amazing,” Nalney said, his eyes dreamy as he previewed the tri-dee images on his viewpad’s horizontal screen. The small figure of the Zang still retained its inscrutable aura of eternity. “I wish Nole was here to see. He would never have thought the day would come when we were rubbing elbows with a Zang and a host of Kail. He would laugh.”
I chuckled. “Indeed he would.”
Nole lounged in the pilot’s couch on his private shuttle. He was baffled by the lack of comm signals coming from Counterweight traffic control. It had been smashing fun following his cousins and brother around the planet, watching them sightsee and shop, without an inkling that he was anywhere about. Once they had cleared an area, he had done his own looking about and made his own purchases. He could always catch up with them at the next tourist site. The LAI car that he had hired was a genius at discreet pursuit. She wouldn’t admit it, but Nole suspected that she had worked as a private investigator.
It hadn’t been quite as lonely on his own to visit Counterweight, since family had been just an arm’s length away, but he was ready to spring the surprise and have done with all the sneaking about. To do that, he needed to fly his new ship, the Spectre, to the platform and shout, “Surprise!” at his cousins. To do that, he had to get back to the ship and steer it toward the next jump point just far enough ahead that the Jaunter and its attendant warships could detect its power signature but not see the structure.
A shame he had never visited Counterweight before. Lovely place. Though just as warm, its climate was a bit wetter than Keinolt, rendering his dark hair rather frizzy. He smoothed it in the nav screen’s surface, pulling a few tufts down near his ears. Was it time to ask his valetbot for a trim?
He admired his reflection yet further, turning his blue silk collar up for best effect. Amazing how much of a knack Cousin Thomas had for locating the very best in fashion design! That tailor of his, Hugh, was brilliant. Nole had employed seamstressbots before, but Hugh was something above and beyond any of them. He had the knack for identifying precisely the ideal cut, the perfect length, the naturally becoming fit that made a garment less an item of assembled fabrics and more a showcase for the body it encased. The metallic blue silk-and-linen tunic Nole had on was as crisp as the first frost, with a warm sheen that invited the eye to linger and fondle the texture. It flattered his broad shoulders, and lent an interesting and mysterious tone to his dark brown skin. Four or five times that day, while tailing Cousin
Lionelle back to the shuttle field, he had been tempted to let himself be seen, so she would praise his couture. Her own style was as impeccable as Thomas’s or her mother’s, whom Nole had always admired. For a woman who had to wear a uniform sixty percent of the time, Aunt Tariana knew good clothes. He shot a glance over his shoulder at the parcels of fabric that he had purchased in the same market as Cousin Leonat had hers. Perhaps he would share some of his bounty with his favorite aunt. Still, all that was ages in the future.
He glanced out over the controls at the airfield. About sixteen small ships still awaited permission to lift. Night had fallen, revealing the sparse spray of constellations that this sector possessed. That was one thing in which Keinolt excelled. The skies around the Core Worlds were brilliant with stars.
“Attention, please, the tower?” Nole said, thumbing the communications control for the ninth or tenth time. “This is Lord Nole Kinago in Spectre One. I have dinner waiting for me on my ship. I’d like to leave, if someone would give me the go-ahead?”
In lieu of a coherent answer, he got back a burst of static and some pixilated graphics. Nole frowned at the panel. Something had gone awry with the planetary systems, not just ground control. His viewpad had been misfiring all through his visit. Some of the locals who had taken him on tours or served him in restaurants had put it down to a burst of magnetic energy from the sun. No doubt the same burst had put the departures and arrivals of space vehicles into a delaying pattern. Still, he disliked being ignored. It wasn’t appropriate for one of his rank to have to wait without acknowledgement!
True, he could have been far less comfortable. His four-seat landau skimmer was a twin in every respect to the one that cousin Xan had purchased five months before, complete with first-class crash padding and planetary-level atmospheric controls. The outlay for a ground-to-space shuttle had put a hole into an already dwindling credit account. Who would have known that it was so expensive to commission a houseboat? Not that Nole lacked any of the wherewithal to make the remainder of the journey, of course. He’d already resolved to cut back on frivolities for a time once everyone had returned to Keinolt. One didn’t need a bespoke pair of boots for every single state occasion, however nice the feeling of creakingly new material around one’s feet.
What fun it had been to sneak up on old Nalney and nick his trousers! Thomas must have kept his word not to spill the secret that Nole was about. The fellow often seemed as though he didn’t have a brain in his head, but he was faithful to the last. Nole felt a moment’s envy for all the time Thomas got to spend in the presence of Commander Parsons. The fellow was like the wise old wizard of all the fairy tales. Nole could just about comprehend why Thomas and his siblings needed an extra bit of attention. Poor old Uncle Rodrigo. Nole and Nalney had been fortunate to maintain a working pair of parental units all these years.
“… hiss … crackle … Imperium Jaunter scheduled to dep—” A tangle of noise erupted from the audio pickup. Nole leaned forward, trying to distinguish one syllable from another in the midst of the burst. Curse it, he was going to miss his window! There was no way his ship could move faster than the entourage. If they got ahead of him, he could not make it to the platform to be there waiting when they arrived! They must not spoil his surprise.
“Ground control, I did not copy. Please repeat?”
It appeared that they were not speaking to him. Nole frowned, doing his best to make out the words.
“Delayed … two … ground shuttle … .”
Must still have been waiting for one of the runabouts to make it back to orbit, Nole mused. Good. He still stood a chance. What a delight! He was going to surprise his cousins utterly.
“Ground control, if everyone else is waiting for tardy passengers, any chance of liftoff?” he asked, politely, leaning close to the audio pickup. “Spectre One, just asking.”
“Hold, please, Spectre One.” Nole was surprised at the sudden clarity of the transmission.
“Very well,” he said. “Glad to hear from you.”
“Our pleasure, Lord Nole. One moment.”
Nole sat back to wait. He had secured some very fine wines from a south-facing slope on Continent Six. The case had been stowed by his two LAI servants behind him in the storage compartment, just within reach over the rear seat. He speculated as to whether there would be time to have one of them crack open a bottle and serve him a glass, or whether he should keep on the alert for an imminent departure.
Banging on his hull made him sit bolt upright. He activated the external video pickups. A couple of hulking shadows lurked near his hatch.
Nole groaned. As if the salespeople in the markets had not been aggressive enough! The port literature uploaded to his nav computer had promised there would be no ship-to-ship reps! But no, could those be cunning disguises? It wouldn’t be the first time that his cousins had dressed up as monsters to scare one another. Perhaps Thomas had bent after all and revealed his secret. Well, two could play at that game. He wouldn’t answer the door. Let them pound until their fists hurt, and he would see them at the platform! Nole settled back in his couch and laced his fingers behind his head to wait.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The endless pounding sounded as though his cousins weren’t going to take no for an answer. Well, Nole could outwait any of those fools.
Just then, the banging stopped. Nole glanced up at the screen. A port servicebot rolled up beside the hulking figures. Good, it could tell them to go away!
Instead, suddenly, Nole’s screen went fuzzy with a burst of static. Then, the lights around the airlock came to life, and the small security screen in its center started cycling through the procedure for emergency entry. They were breaking into his shuttle! How they had obtained his locking codes, he had no idea. No doubt one of them had bribed the manufacturer to give over the information. He absolutely was not innocent of that sort of subterfuge himself. He and Nalney had pulled such a jape on an elderly auntie a few years before, and been strategically punished for it. Nole’s hands flew over the controls, trying to override the override. It was no use. The servicebot had skeleton keys for a million craft models, including this one. Curse all cousins!
Enough was enough. Nole threw himself out of the command couch and went to the portal, just in time for it to lever open. He put the best face on it he could. They had gone to a lot of trouble. The joke was over.
“Hello! It looks as though you found me after all …” Nole’s voice trailed off. The figures on the short ramp were not his cousins in costumes. They were some other species entirely, with skin made entirely of gray pebbles and sand. Nole was horrified to recognize the intruders as Kail. He backed away. “Wait a moment! Who are you?”
“Fovrates said the mechanism is ready for our command,” the servicebot said. Its clipped speech was overlaid with squeals and burps. “All it requires is the control program.”
“Go,” said the larger of the two creatures, a mass with five legs and three arms, its answering howls translated by the ’bot. “Do.” The servicebot rolled past him toward the control center. They started up into his shuttle. Nole backed away, his eyes wide.
He must get help! He made for the ramp. The second, smaller and with only two arms and three legs, swung out an arm and knocked him backward.
“I am a member of the Imperium house!” Nole exclaimed. “The Emperor will be angry if you try to harm me. Dag! Meg!” He called for his pair of valetbots. They were stowed underneath the cargo area, but surely they had heard the uproar. “Help me! We’re being invaded by hostiles!”
He moved as far away from the two as he could. But apart from blocking the hatch, the Kail seemed to be paying no attention to him at all.
“I am already incorporated into the system,” the servicebot said. The Kail emitted peculiar squeaks.
Nole stormed over to the mechanical. He waved his arm majestically past the enormous Kail toward the still-open hatch.
“Get out of my ship! All of you, leave!”
The first Kail regarded him from flat, deepset eyes. “It’s our ship now.”
“No, it isn’t! I’ll call for help!” Nole made for the emergency beacon on the wall of the cockpit. “Dag! Meg! Summon assistance! We have been invaded.”
For answer, the Kail let out a high pitched whine that overwhelmed Nole’s ears. He covered them, but the shriek seemed to go on and on. He fell to his knees, unable to bear the pain. When it finally stopped, he looked around. The hatch was closed and sealed. The large Kail overspread both the command chair and the couch beside it. The narrower creature occupied a rear seat, its ridiculous array of limbs resting on his precious case of wine. The corner of the box collapsed.
“Now you’ve done it!” Nole said, feeling ire rising in his belly. “Get your big feet off that!” He rushed at it, trying to move it off the box before it shattered. The Kail howled in fury. Nole dodged as it attempted to kick him, and tripped to the floor.
“Lord Nole!” His two serverbots rolled up beside him. Nole looked up at them in annoyance.
“At last! Dag and Meg, throw these miscreants off my ship!”
“We are very sorry, sir,” MG-776h said, in a truly apologetic tone. Both he and DG-119m helped him to his feet and over to the remaining empty seat. With gentle but firm claws, they strapped him in. “They are in charge now.”
CHAPTER 27
Counterweight had been our last stop before the platform. Indeed, there would have been nowhere to visit on the rest of the way. Stars were few and far between in this sector. Xan had found a reference on a history vid that called this part of the galaxy the Empty Quarter. Small wonder, to my mind. Since the Zang had occupied it so long, they had probably destroyed stars, planets, bibs and bobs until there was almost nothing left to remove, all in the name of their brand of perfection.
During the final days of our transit, my cousins and I fell into a comfortable routine designed to keep us amused. Laine, Madame Deirdre, Nalney’s fencing instructor, Sinim’s master storyteller, Erita’s art master, and all the other experts we had paid to accompany us came into their own during this time. We were hungry for information and entertainment, although if truth be told, we would retain neither for very long.
Rhythm of the Imperium Page 29
