by Jim Rudnick
He wiped his brow. Sweaty still. He cleared his throat and said to the casita AI, “Breeze on me, please, say, fifteen mph.”
From somewhere, a nice breeze hit his face and body. Evaporative cooling, he thought, as the breeze began to chill him as the sweat began to evaporate. “If I had to invent something science-wise,” he said to himself, “it’d be just that. Cool off in the breeze …” He pushed back the remembered prognosis from his doctor that he might have some issues with not being able to sleep or going over the event time and time again. He could force off the event memory, but sleep seemed to be beyond him frequently.
He snorted and brought his mind back to the duke’s funeral, leaving his contributions to science out of his consciousness.
The duke d’Avigdor’s funeral was held at the duke’s palace and had taken place in a wing that had been used for ducal funerals for many generations. There had been no casket as the duke had been cremated. His ashes had been bottled up and sent via probe directly into the system’s sun. According to tradition, all dukes were sent to the Neen system sun so they would always shine down on Neen.
He had not been out of the robo-doc for long, and he’d not really been able to pay attention to much before the ceremony, but he did appreciate that as a “new” Royal, he got to sit right up front with the Baroness and his wife. Around him were heads of state for many of the RIM realms, and he nodded to some he knew and smiled at Kondo, newly made the prime minister of Amasis, and also to his friend Bram, who came up to say hello and shake his hand. His friends were there and that made him feel a bit better, he remembered.
“Up by five more mph,” he said, and the breeze got a bit stiffer and the cooling increased too.
He sat up, moved his legs off the bed, and slowly walked over to the bathroom in the far corner of the casita.
He sat on the toilet, rested, and wondered how the casita AI knew he had moved and kept the breeze constant. He looked around at the big shower stall, at the bidet beside him, and at the vanity off to one side. As an owner, he’d thought that the settings here in the southern ocean were what one might have called tropical rustic until one remembered that it was completely technologically supported.
There were force fields out in the water that protected the whole group of islands from just about anything and everything that Bottle could throw at them from typhoons to sharks. The waters around them were pristine with small, non-dangerous fish only. Each of the casitas looked handmade by someone hundreds of years ago, yet the resort was not even a year old yet. Beneath the larger of the islands, just a few hundred yards away, lay landing ports for ships and spaceships. His personal pilot, Lieutenant Cooper, had set down the Sword—his own personal ship—when they’d arrived here on Bottle those couple of months back. The Sword was a one-hundred-foot-long ex-personnel shuttle, which he’d had completely refurbished to make into his own ship in the Barony shipyard. He’d added very sumptuous quarters for himself and serviceable ones for crew too. Not that he needed much crew. Cooper was his helmsman, and he’d wanted Hartford too, but he had realized that this Barony officer belonged in the navy, and so he’d not taken him on. He had considered others too; as a Royal, he’d just command and the Barony Navy would comply, but he also knew that sometimes some personnel belonged where they’d be best for the Barony and not his own little world.
He sighed and stood. He hadn’t had to go, but the seat had been cool at least. He trotted back to bed.
Back in bed, his thoughts wandered again to the duke’s funeral. The funeral, he’d realized, had been long, but it didn’t seem so at the time. Some speakers he’d not known had talked about the duke when he’d been a youngster—his own nanny had been one of them, he remembered. The chairman of the RIM Confederacy, Chairman Grasci, spoke too as had a few other heads of state. The brand new Master Adept had also spoken and had been more than supportive seeing as her predecessor had also been killed at the wedding.
He remembered wondering about that, as he shifted his arm under his pillow, bunching it up so his head would be a bit higher.
Wouldn’t the Issians, who were mind readers and could sometimes “tell” what the future held, have known about the assassin and the plot to kill him? And if they knew, why did they not interfere—losing their own Master Adept?
He shook his head once more and noted that there was no sweat coming off his brow, which was a good thing.
Why indeed? He asked himself about that every day. And he had no answer at all.
He had left the funeral, as he remembered, feeling very tired after sitting up for almost a whole afternoon. Robo-docs worked well, but the fatigue he felt was right through to the bone. He was glad for the arm of the nurse who helped him move from the pew to the chair, and then he was on his way back to the Atlas to go back to Bottle.
He’d paid his respects. He had very much liked the duke. Saying goodbye was hard in his condition, but he was glad he’d done just that.
As the group moved, led by the Baroness and her retinue, he was wheeled along near the rear of the whole Barony party, and at the doorway of the exit point, a single man stood, his eyes on Tanner. As he was slowly pushed toward the man, Tanner could see he was dressed as a member of the Duchy Diplomatic Corps with a green sash across his chest. He stepped forward and spoke quietly to Tanner while walking along at his side.
“Lord Scott, the duke has some private papers that were reserved for YOUR EYES ONLY. Might I suggest, My Lord, that when you’re able to come back that you just let us know and we will arrange for you to get same?” he said as he straightened and turned on his heel to move back and away.
“Honey, you okay?” Helena said as she walked back to see the diplomat veer off. She snapped her fingers, and three EliteGuards appeared at her shoulder.
“Not a problem, dear.” He waved off the guards. “He just thanked me for coming is all …” he said, and they progressed out toward the Atlas to go back to Neres.
He wiggled his arm about a bit under the pillow, trying to find a spot where it was better, and he realized that he’d sort of lied to his wife—and he had no idea why. He wondered if other brand new husbands lied to their wives just days after the wedding, and he had no answer to that one. Nor, for that matter, did he believe that swearing to never lie to her again would be something he would be able to honor either. And as far as those ducal papers, they could wait.
“So much for being a husband …” he said as his comfort grew and the cool air worked at slowly putting him to sleep.
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She really had not spent much time on Dessau itself, choosing always to fly in and then take a robo-cab up to the walled Issian city to see the Master Adept. But now as she was the new Master Adept, it had been somewhat forcefully mentioned to her that she should be prepared to visit the capital city, Dessau, at least once a month.
To walk among her citizens and to listen to them. To provide quiet counsel and offer up her advice as she faced their own issues, and to let them know that as their Master Adept, she cared for them all.
She had considered that as one of the job duties that came along with being the Master, and she would have to get used to them all. She had almost grinned, when she’d wondered about what else her aides would roll out on her for more duties to consider, and then she’d stopped short. She didn’t know. How could one be a mind reader and see into the future and not know?
She had no idea. “What I do know was that I have much yet to learn,” she said to herself as her aide opened the door for her on the robo-cab, and she stepped out in the downtown core of Dessau.
A city of more than 400,000 souls, it was a city under climate siege. The weather on Eons had turned bad more than a generation ago with constant droughts and higher than normal solar radiation placing their whole farming community in jeopardy. Without food, one starved. Or, one bought from off world, which was what Eons had been doing now for almost three hundred years. Generating the revenues to use to buy that food, she well knew, w
as hard as well. Thank God, the RIM Confederacy Naval Academy had been founded here, and all of those revenues were used just to feed Eons populations.
She looked over to her left first to see that some of the citizens were staring at her, stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of the planet’s Master Adept. She nodded to them and then looked to her right as her aide pointed that way, and she began to walk along beside her. Ahead a group of youngsters had also frozen, their mouths open.
She smiled at them, and when she was about in the center of the dozen young girls and boys, she stopped and turned to face them. “Hello,” she said and she waited, her mind reaching out to look among the brains in front of her.
Some were in shock. Not everyone met the Master and yet, here she was, one was thinking.
Another, a boy near the back, was thinking that he needed to record this and use it as his school project. She grinned since that type of innovative thinking was exactly what Eons needed.
One right in the front row was shielding her thoughts, repeating a children’s nursery rhyme over and over to hide her thoughts, and she stared at the Master, challenging her to see through the rhyme. Gloria smiled at this one and reached out to touch her arm. Direct contact between Issians meant that a brain-to-brain connection was made, and no Issian could hide from direct contact. She smiled again at the girl as she dropped her hand.
She looked at the boy in the back row of teenagers. “If you’d like, young man, you may come out to the walled city, and I would be more than pleased to sit with you for a real interview for your school project,” she said.
That got a gasp from the young man as he more than nodded his head.
She turned to the girl on the left edge of the group and smiled at her too. “Yes, I know that many Issians do not get to meet the Master—and as the new Master Adept, I can promise that I will be here often, many times a month, to meet anyone who would like to meet me. Please, pass that along to your friends and families,” she said.
As she prepared to walk on, she looked at the girl in the front row who was still reciting that rhyme over and over and she shook her head at her. “Miss, my advice is to tell your parents immediately. Today. Tell them today, and you may also add that the Master has looked forward and there are only good things to come of this. You have my word,” she said, and she walked on with her aide.
The girl had found out that she was pregnant just this morning and didn’t know what to do. Her support system, Gloria knew, began with her parents—so that’s where she should start. She really had no idea what would happen, but as there were millions of people on Eons, births happened daily, so one more would not be a real problem, especially if the girl would come clean to her parents.
They walked on. They met many more citizens. Many stood in awe. Some were too surprised or in shock to speak while others rhymed their way into anonymity. She didn’t really have much to do for these few hours but to meet her citizens.
She enjoyed it, actually, and while it was a part of what her new duties were going to be as the Master, she didn’t really think of it as a chore.
She smiled as the robo-cab door closed behind her and her aide gave instructions to the Issian walled city about fifteen miles north of Dessau.
She watched as the city core went by, then the streets got emptier, and the robo-cab sped up until they were on the main road home. She saw the brown walls coming up as they got closer, and at the entrance gate, her aide helped her out, and made their way to the tower and her rooms.
“Still need to work on other issues,” she said to herself, “such as the Praix and what would come of the new discovery of their technology over on Ghayth …”
#####
She was glad she’d at least had some time to herself between the sleeper ships out to the RIM and now. This was like being in a cryonic tank, except she wasn’t. There was no sleep nor did she have the dreams she’d begun to like in her years of travel to get here.
Instead, she was now stuck in a jail cell, and she didn’t have to look around much to see what her existence entailed here on Neres.
There was the bed—a think pallet of a mattress on a concrete pad. It wasn’t springy at all, and the coldness of the concrete bled through the thin mattress and always made her cold. There was no bedding either. No pillow, no sheets, and no blankets. Just the mattress.
Over on the far side was her bathroom. Well, as much as a concrete toilet could be. She couldn’t even flush it, as the cell AI did that as soon as she stood up after relieving herself.
And on the third wall was the doorway. A solid piece of heavy steel, it glowed blue since it was protected by a force field too. There was no way to even tap on it, never mind trying to break the door down.
The last wall was blank. There was nothing else. No windows to look out of. No vid screen to watch a show or to listen to the news. No paper or any kind of materials to write or draw. She had nothing to do. She felt she would die from boredom.
Her outfit was the same as all prisoners here in the Barony wing of the Neres City jail wore. A simple one-piece orange jumpsuit. No zipper, of course, but a simple Velcro strip ran from her neck to her groin.
And that was it.
She’d long ago lost track of time, but she’d begun to use the change of meals as a way to try to guess how long she’d been held here. One meal was obviously breakfast as it always came with a fruit juice. Then there were two more meals, which were usually different and not too bad in a few cases. But the fruit juice meal meant a new day.
So far, since she’d begun her counting, there had been fifty-nine juice meals. All she had to do was to remember the number, fifty-nine this time, until the next juice meal. A low-tech answer but it worked.
Plus, while it was hard to tell as the lights in her cell never varied, in her mind, the time between the third meal of the day and the next juice meal was a long time. It was then that she tried to sleep.
But that was hard to accomplish as her mind continued to work, churning with her failure. She had come all this way over years and years to do one thing—avenge her sister Nora by killing Tanner Scott, the man who had killed her.
He was her brother, but that meant nothing to her. The Branton courts had found him guiltless in Nora’s death, which also meant nothing. Her mother had known that Tanner had sacrificed Nora, which meant everything.
She’d killed two others by mistake, but that meant nothing to her. She had not killed Tanner Scott, and that meant something. She sat on her bed and contemplated her failure.
Moving off the bed to start her push-ups, she pumped out fifty-nine in a row. She then rolled over and did three sets of fifty-nine crunches, her feet pressed up tightly against the concrete bed to get some leverage on her abs. She then stood and did five sets of fifty-nine jumping jacks, working up a sweat too, which was good.
She sat then and as her breathing got back to normal, she thought of one thing and one thing only. If they were holding her, she was going to get a trial perhaps or a hearing. And if Tanner were present, she would get to him and kill him.
It was what she had to do … what she’d promised her mother she would do … and what Nora would expect.
CHAPTER TWELVE
She walked all the way down the long corridor with her heels slamming on the tiles; a mad Baroness was something to behold, and not a single servant, aide, or EliteGuard could be seen. They know well enough to leave me alone, she thought, and she turned at the big marble doorway and went into her own private study to drop into her chair at her desk.
Her husband had told her that the desk itself was worth a frigate in price as it was over a thousand years old and had come from a world inward more than five thousand lights away. She remembered nodding at the time and trying to look interested, but right now, she was more than upset with the Caliph and the chairman too.
Caliph Sharia al Dotsa, the head of the Caliphate on the RIM, had a realm of only nine planets. Her own Barony had ten, which would soon be e
leven when Ghayth would be granted full membership. But with all of its casinos, the Caliphate was still one of the richest realms in the Confederacy. Gambling was something that somehow struck a nerve in every single species that happened upon it. It didn’t matter if aliens or humans were throwing the dice or pulling the slot machine levers. Everyone liked to win, and as the only RIM Confederacy realm with casinos on almost a hundred worlds or space stations, the Caliphate capitalized on the players’ losses. Gambling had never appealed to her, but she knew there were millions of gamblers on Neres itself, all hoping to roll a seven.
She snorted.
The Caliph had refused to take her EYES ONLY call, and she had a feeling it was because he knew she was going to ask point-blank if the Caliphate was on the Duchy d’Avigdor’s list. Over the past few years, she thought she had been able to forge at least a working pro-tem partnership with the alien. He seemed to want what she wanted. She had recognized that, and she had been cautiously tempting him with more every year. Now, the Ikarian vaccine, which would double the lifespan of anyone who took the single dose of same, was in his hands. She’d ensured that the Caliph had more than enough of the pre-release samples for his own use and to give to family too. In his realm, one could have a plethora of wives, and the rumor he had more than a hundred wives might be true, so she had provided the Caliph with an adequate amount of the vaccine.
She snorted again.
The question was, could one could pay enough attention to more than one spouse to keep the marriage based on love and affection positive. Of course, she thought, some of us have trouble with just one—a hundred times less—and isn’t that the truth.
She shook her head. She kicked off her heels and rested one calf on the corner of her desk as she leaned back to think. Her toes were still polished with a crimson color from Carnarvon. Her retinue included a great girl from Veloka, the capital city on Carnarvon. When she returned from her last trip home, she had brought some polishes in colors the Baroness had never seen before. This crimson had highlights of blue in it, and when the light hit a toe just right, the polish glowed. In her open-toed heels, she often noticed the men around her looked at her feet much more often than they looked at her chest.
