by Dave Duncan
He looked such a wimpy dork, and yet he had killed three men with his bare hands and injured others. He must have handled that giant soldier like a rag doll. What would an adult be capable of?
Here came the big questions.
“Now, when you left your probe to descend to Pock’s World, you left it in a safe and stable orbit around Javel, right?”
“We did.”
“So you do not believe these rumors that it is aimed to impact Pock’s World tomorrow and kill us all?”
He had refused to consent to a simple negative. Ratty himself, he had argued, had told him that independent observers confirmed the impact trajectory. He had conceded, though, that this was third-hand hearsay. So the agreed compromise answer, hammered out in the air car, was, “To the best of my knowledge that is simply not true.”
What Umandral said was, “Certainly I believe that.”
But only Ratty heard him. Over the loudspeakers, Umandral’s voice said, “To the best of my knowledge that is simply not true.” The mike went dead, so there could be no retraction.
During the riotous cheering that followed, as the two of them were walking back to their seats below the throne, Ratty said, “You went back on your word to me, you snotty little shit.”
The boy looked at him pityingly. “It made no difference. I had detected the two-hundred-millisecond delay, of course, so I knew you would have some sort of intervention ready. I was quite impressed by the way your primitive technology made the switch.”
“You lied to me, earlier, when you promised to stick to the script!”
“I did warn you that I find lying distasteful. I told the truth knowing that you would block it. The deceit is yours, not mine.”
“So you haven’t cut all sense of ethics out of your genome? But isn’t breaking your solemn word worse than just lying?”
“In most circumstances, yes. I would never break my word to any of the Children. You I just can’t see as an equal.”
“Mutual,” Ratty assured him. “So we can never rely on you to honor an agreement?”
“Only when it is in our interests to do so. That’s true for your species also.”
Arguing with Umandral was unsatisfying.
* * *
No matter—the brief interview had been a planet-shattering success. Governments of a world had assembled to debate the end of that world, and the alien had put their minds at rest. The impact story was all vicious nonsense, and the Goddess’s assurance could be believed. Members of the entire sacred family and their senior staff kept popping in and out of Ratty’s mind, thanking him, congratulating him, and begging him to forgive doubts that they had never previously mentioned.
He thanked them all politely, but what he really wanted to do was go home to the palace at Abietin and climb into bed with Joy and a magnum of champagne.
Chapter 6
Athena had found Solan huddled in a corner of his father’s sickroom, which was a comfortable and engaging place, expertly furnished and opening out on a rocky grotto with flowers and water. Skerry himself was lost in a coma or a very deep sleep, monitored by a medic machine and unresponsive. A priesthood that had survived ten thousand years could hardly be expected to deal with the end of the world as a routine matter, and the boy had evidently been forgotten in the current turmoil.
“Your dad doesn’t need you right now,” she said. “Why don’t you and I go riding?”
Gloom. “I don’t know how.”
“I can teach you.”
His eyes went bright. He looked at his dying father.
“He won’t mind. We won’t be long.”
She took Solan to the stable and even there found a curious shortage of people. If the palace staff were heading home to be with their families, that seemed like a disappointing lack of faith in their high priestess’s assurances.
The few attendants around did not interfere as she saddled up the mare she had ridden the previous day. She put the boy on the saddle and led the horse around for a while, then mounted behind Solan and let him experience a walk and a canter. Falling off was much less fearsome in low gravity—not that Solan had any lack of courage—and when she suggested that they find a pony for him, she won his heart. Within an hour she had taught him the basics and had to restrain him from attempting aerobatics.
Eventually she dragged him away so that both they and the horses might eat lunch. Skerry was still unconscious, and she could read enough on the unfamiliar medic’s data panels to know that the prognosis was hopeless. Fortunately the lad did not understand that output; he was raring to get back to the pony. He wanted to try jumping, galloping, and a full-sized horse, preferably one of the twenty-hand stallions. She let him have another hour or so in the saddle, but by then she was weary and sore, and suggested that they go swimming instead. Then boating.
He was much better company than Linn Lazuline.
When Javel and the sun were close enough for her to declare evening, she took Solan back again to check on his father. A nurse was in attendance now, clearly relieved to see him. She adjusted the bedside equipment, and the patient roused enough to recognize his son. He probably understood little of the boy’s excited chatter, but he knew enough to say goodbye.
“I suggest,” Athena said, “that Solan come and stay with me for a week or two. Until the crisis is resolved, I mean.”
Skerry seemed to understand that also, for he nodded and muttered thanks. Father and son were not naturally demonstrative, but Athena was, and she could not let them part like that.
“Why don’t you give your dad a kiss?” she suggested.
Solan understood then. He paled and did as she bade him.
“Time to go,” the nurse said, and Skerry’s smile faded back into his final sleep.
As they went out the door, Solan took Athena’s hand. The guests’ terrace was deserted, Ratty and Linn and Brother Andre all being busy elsewhere. She chose a comfortable love seat and sat the boy beside her.
“Everything has a purpose,” she said. “And tears are to wash away sorrows. If you want to cry your eyes out, no one will think less of you for it.”
He thought about it. “I’m not ready for that,” he decided. “Probably tonight. That was how it was when Mom died.” His emotions had been tempered to adult strength already.
“Would you like something to eat, then?”
“No thank you, Friend Athena. Tell me about Ayne.”
“It’s a bigger world than this one. You’ll weigh more there, so you’ll have to grow more muscles, but we have tonic that will help. My house is called Portolan. I’m going there tomorrow morning. I have a very big house, with horses and boating and fishing.” And no one to leave it to when she died. “There are quite a few children of your age running around.”
“What if the probe hits Pock’s World, Friend Athena?”
“You won’t be here.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll bring you back to your family.”
“Got no family.”
“Then it will be your choice. You can come back here or stay on Ayne with me, whichever you like.”
Solan stared down at his knees for a while. Finally he said, “Thank you. How many horses?”
Frivdy
Joy tickled him, and skillfully, too. He rolled over and grabbed her hand. Then her other hand. He kept forgetting she was ambidextrous.
“It’s morning,” she said, which meant that this was the day the shuttle would leave, so he must cuddle her tight and assure her that he wasn’t going to leave her.
So he did that.
“No,” she told his collarbone. “You must go. I know you don’t really believe that the probe won’t hit, so you must go. You can come back later, when it doesn’t.”
“You mean you couldn’t live with the guilt if I stayed here and died?”
“Yes.”
“But you would be dead too, so you wouldn’t have any guilt to live with.”
Then Joy, the
ebullient, irrepressible Joy, began to weep, which wasn’t part of the game he had thought they were playing, and something he had never known her do before.
“You could come with me,” he suggested. “Millie Backet won’t be taking her seat in the shuttle.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Just a quick trip to Ayne to visit my family.”
“I didn’t know you had family!”
“Eight boys, seven girls.”
She wept even harder.
“I don’t understand this,” he said. “Do you believe, really believe, that the probe will miss?”
“Of course I do.” —sniff.
“That Pock’s World will survive?”
“Of course it will.” —snivel.
“Then I’ll be here with you for as long as I live.” Even if the probe missed, his life expectancy would be a lot shorter on Pock’s than on Ayne. Was he a fool or was he a fool? “So what are you crying for?”
“Duty!” —sniffle —snuffle
“Duty?” he repeated. Then he understood. “Oh, Duty! That’s why she’s so sure? In desperate circumstances, the Mother will accept sacrifices?”
“Of course. Tonight.”
“Why Duty? Why not old Wisdom? She’s got nothing left to lose.”
“No, has to be Duty.”
So he held her and let her weep.
* * *
Joy’s eyes were still pink when Ratty escorted her out to the guests’ terrace in search of breakfast. The medic, informed that he had decided to remain on Pock’s World permanently, had issued him half a liter of the vilest muck he could imagine, probably straight from the sewers of a major city. After that, breakfast held no appeal. Metabolic adaption was never easy, and Pock’s World had the most extreme environment ever colonized. He was in for a miserable few weeks if he lived; by nightfall the probe’s impact might seem like a welcome release.
The weather was close to perfect, cloudless sky and a soft breeze. Athena was there already, accompanied by young Solan. That would be a promising story lead if Ratty were still in the reporter business.
—Skerry died last night, Joy cognized.
Glances were exchanged, and Athena’s was a warning not to comment, so nobody did. Solan was concentrating on a plate of something that Ratty preferred not to look at, because it wasn’t quite dead. The boy stopped eating when he noticed the next arrival—Umandral, Child of the Future. Two armed guards followed the cuckoo out of the palace but remained by the door to watch. Were they there to keep him from running away or to defend him from xenophobic Pocosins?
Solan stared at him in horror as he approached.
“You met him on Toody,” Ratty remarked.
“I could never forget that,” the boy said.
Ratty shared his distaste but said politely, “Good morning, Ambassador Umandral.”
The youth smiled as if humoring him. “Greetings to you, Liberator Ratty.”
Pages were taking orders. Ratty confined his to coffee, most revered of all terrestrial friends, a shrub that thrived exquisitely in Pock’s hot climate and volcanic soil.
“The STARS air car is on its way,” Joy announced. “Your companions have been warned to hurry.”
“Do you know what the radiation level is?” Athena asked.
Joy passed the question, then spoke the reply. “High acceptable, but variable.” Pause. “They don’t expect to fry you.”
The next arrival was ex-STARS engineer Braata. He bowed to Joy, nodded politely to everyone else, and took a seat outside the group.
Then came the godlike Linn Lazuline, good-humored as ever. He greeted everyone jovially, even Braata.
Pages and waiters still bustled around, and Ratty did not notice the next arrival until he was looming over the diners—Brother Andre, looking even more exhausted than he had the previous day. Skinny dipping? Ratty struggled to keep a straight face.
The papal legate declined a seat and inspected the congregation with disapproval.
“I assume that the Backet Commission is about to depart from Pock’s World?”
“Very shortly,” Joy said. “I apologize on behalf of my senior incarnations for the fact that they are unable to see you on your way, Friend Andre. They are either occupied elsewhere or resting. I hope that my—”
“You are more than adequate,” the friar said with the fatherly smile that so rarely illuminated his craggy features. “As the senior in years, may I ask the surviving members of the mission what they have concluded and how they will report? Ratty, you are recording this, I assume?”
“I am.” Ratty had to shout over the painful whine of an air car, a noise he had not heard near the palace before.
“Very well. We are all satisfied that there are cuckoos. You already know my own opinions: you cannot compromise with the Devil, and STARS did make the right decision when it arranged to sterilize Pock’s World. So I vote Aye. Senator Fimble? Your vote, please?”
“I disagree,” Athena said. “Yes, the cuckoos exist and may very well be dangerous. I believe that the authorities should have been given time to round them up. Further—”
“Excuse an interruption, Friend Athena,” Umandral said in his unpleasant squawk. “But you should know that I was chosen to be the one captured. My name was drawn, and I accepted the assignment. There is no chance at all that any human ‘authority’ could round us up faster than we could increase our numbers.” He showed his little teeth in a smile.
“You gave yourself up, in effect?” The friar looked surprised, an admission of fallibility that Ratty had never seen on his face in all the cognition his team had assembled for The Saint of Annatto. “Knowing that you might be tortured and probably put to death?”
“I was certain I would be.”
“Then why did you agree?”
This time the youth was openly contemptuous. “I don’t think we have time to discuss faith and duty, priest. Your mind is already made up.”
“Friend Umandral,” Ratty said, “is dedicated to telling the truth under any circumstances, except when he doesn’t want to.”
“When lies serve my purpose better, you mean.”
“When lies serve his purpose better.”
The air car mercifully fell silent, having landed on flowerbeds a hundred meters away.
“To conclude,” Athena said, “I believe that the proposed destruction of Pock’s World is deliberate geocide, unjustified and inhuman.”
“Very human,” the cuckoo murmured.
“Extended quarantine would have been practical, and the correct option.”
“One aye and one nay.” The friar turned to Ratty.
“Another nay. Quarantine was the correct response, and STARS is committing geocide. I would add that I have spoken at length with Umandral, and I believe that his people have much to teach us. I can’t see why the two races could not cooperate.”
“You are wrong,” Brother Andre said. “One aye and two nays. “Friend Linn?”
The self-proclaimed local STARS boss, Chairman Glaum, was on his way from the air car, coming in a straight line, regardless of flowerbeds.
Linn looked to Umandral. “You can parasitize adult humans of either sex?”
The cuckoo smiled, showing his undersized teeth. “My own sexual apparatus is not yet sufficiently mature, but in a year or so, yes. I will be capable of inserting a zygote directly into a uterus by rape, or implanting a parasitoid fluke into a male by either anal rape or subcutaneous implant—I mean surgically or via a stab wound. The parasitoid would seek out his pancreas, which is an organ with a good blood supply and redundant functional capacity, and there it would develop until it came to term. At that point the human incubator will voluntarily cut himself open to release my child.”
There was a moment’s silence before Linn spoke again.
“I find your apparent honesty disconcerting, but I cannot find any hidden deception in it. Turnsole, you said on our way here that my vote would only carry conviction if I vo
ted against my own business interests. I must do so now. I believe STARS made the correct decision.”
Ratty shrugged. Obviously, if Linn Lazuline was STARS, then his own interests were quite different from what they appeared to be. That alone might explain why he had put himself on the commission. He was polishing the other side of the same coin, that was all.
“So we are tied,” the old man said sadly. “Two Ayes, two Nays. I congratulate Friend Linn on his perception and disinterest. But the cuckoos are the work of the Devil, and the sterilization of Pock’s World, while infinitely regrettable, is justified to preserve the human race, God’s children, made in his own image.”
“Easy to say when you have a ticket out,” Athena snapped.
“No. It can only be said at all if you don’t. Are you planning to take that boy home with you, in Millie Backet’s place?”
“I am. He agrees and the Church of the Mother approved.”
“But has STARS?” Andre wheeled to face the oversized Glaum in his black shorts and visor, who had now arrived. “Are our seats on the shuttle transferrable, Friend Glaum?”
“No. We are hard pressed to find enough spaces for all our own people.”
“My family, for instance?” Braata jumped to his feet, surprising everyone. He strode forward. “I can see you abandoning me, although you have never given me a hearing or a trial, but you are punishing my parents and brothers for my alleged sins.”
Glaum ignored him.
“I give my seat to Solan,” Ratty said. “I am staying with Joy.”
“You can vacate your place but not assign it to someone else.” The big man folded his arms to indicate immovability. His face bore a natural sneer.
“I, too, wish to assign my place to someone else,” Andre said. “So it seems that a mission of five will be returning only two survivors, who will report that STARS refused to transport three children, three refugees, to save them from the holocaust STARS plans to inflict on Pock’s world. Athena, Linn, you will put this news to good use back on Ayne?”
“Indeed we shall,” Linn said. “All religions will join in, Athena can raise the state, and I will muster industry. Their deaths will not be in vain.”
