Dalin nodded.
Shatz Abel regarded him. “Are you all right now, boy?”
“No,” Dalin said. But the color had returned to his cheeks, and there was life in his eyes.
Shatz Abel gave a short laugh and slapped the young man’s back as he passed him on the way to the heavy clothing lockers near the outer door. “We’ll make a king of you yet. At least you’re alive. And while you’re alive, there’s hope.” He paused. “For everything.”
Dalin nodded, and before long the two men were shrugging into heavy clothing, with masks for protection and heavy, servo-driven gloves.
Shatz Abel, straining, opened the stainless steel door with a curse.
As Dalin came up beside him, the pirate took the boy by the scruff of his neck and pointed north, at a dim greenish patch of light between two tall mountains whose tops were already shrouded in lowering storm clouds.
“There it is,” Shatz Abel said. “Tombaugh City. Our Holy Grail, and ticket off Pluto. And now that Wrath-Pei has finally turned his attention away from us, that’s what we head for. I’ve waited nine years and you’ve waited three for this trip, but it will probably kill us both. A hundred kilometers distant, and not one of them easy. If the panthers don’t get us, the white bears will try; and if they both lose out, the weather will take their place. I’ve never been crazy enough to go myself, and not only because there’s a price on my head there. It’s a trip for madmen and fools. We must be both, because now we’re going to make that trip, boy, you and me, and then the two of us are going to have one good meal under SunOne, and then buy or steal our way off Pluto.”
“You’re … hurting me,” Dalin croaked.
Still holding Dalin tightly, as a child might hold a kitten by the scruff of the neck, Shatz Abel turned the king’s face so that the boy’s lidless eyes were staring into his own bloodshot ones.
“And nothing’s going to stop us from getting off Pluto and back to Earth. Nothing. And if you want that girl of yours to be your queen, you’d better start believing what I say.”
He released Dalin, and the king stumbled and fell to the ground.
“Now come with me, Sire, and do what has to be done.”
Shatz Abel closed the door to their shelter behind them and headed off into the howl of ice and wind.
Dalin rose and followed; and out in the growing storm, doing what had to be done, Dalin once again thought of that first kiss…
Chapter 4
Wrath-Pei was … happy.
Which disturbed him greatly. It was not that he was adverse to pleasure—in fact, he had devoted his life to it. And though many of his pleasures were what other men deemed perversions … well, this did not bother him greatly. He was proud of his sociopathology; truly, he reveled in it. If a man is fully what he is, so his philosophy went, then what’s the problem? How could you fault a man for being himself? And Wrath-Pei had always been so much himself.
But happiness, which Wrath-Pei equated with ease of acquisition, bothered him to the core. Made him almost frown. He was used to getting what he wanted—had gotten what he wanted since taking his first toy from his only sibling at the age of one and discovering that the act gave him pleasure, all the more enhanced by the subsequent destruction of that toy. Oh, the tears and rage that act had produced! How his sibling had wailed with despair!
And what a wondrous rush of warm pleasure had flowed through Wrath-Pei’s body, even tingling his skin!
But had the actual taking of that toy been an easy event? Of course not! There had been fighting, and one-year-old words of recrimination, fear, and hatred, and a tug-of-war—but finally the prize had been gained and the fluid flow of pure satisfaction attained at the outcome.
And the fight itself had been part of the pleasure!
But now … things were going too easily. Wrath-Pei had expected some sort of obstacle to be thrown in his path by now—but none had come. It was almost as if the Bug, Prime Cornelian—or, as he fancied himself, High Leader—could not be bothered. As if Wrath-Pei didn’t matter enough to be stopped at the moment. And though Wrath-Pei knew this wasn’t true in essence—he knew Cornelian much too well, knew that the Bug seethed at each Outer Planets outpost that Wrath-Pei plucked like a cherry from the High Leader’s tree—still Wrath-Pei was made uneasy by the ease with which these cherries were falling into his hand.
There were, of course, reasons: Cornelian had his hands full with other matters at the moment, including, prominently, the growing trouble on Earth—but, even so, couldn’t the High Leader devote even a tiny bit of his attention and boundless rage to his old enemy Wrath-Pei?
Just to make things … spicier?
Oh, well, Wrath-Pei thought, we’ll just have to make our fun without him for the moment.
The time would come, soon enough.
Oh, yes, it would.
Smiling in his thoughts, floating in his gyro-controlled chair, which enfolded his sitting body like a hand holding one of those cherries, Wrath-Pei did not notice the soothing beep of a message-waiting summons on the glowing Screen before him. There came the gentlest of taps on his black-leather-clad shoulder, and Wrath-Pei turned to see Lawrence, just lowering the stump of his left arm. Behind his visor, which covered nearly all of his face save his thin lips, the lower of which had been clipped neatly away, showing the young man’s gum line and a row of perfect teeth, Lawrence’s expression was unreadable.
“Message, Your Eminence,” the boy said.
Gently shaken from his reverie, Wrath-Pei turned to the Screen and arched a silver eyebrow.
“Perhaps something… interesting?” he said, and ordered the Screen to proceed with the message, even as Lawrence stepped back away from the chair, his lidless eyes no doubt already returning to their task of studying the lines of data that continuously flowed across his visor.
On the Screen, Wrath-Pei was presented with the always-unsmiling visage of Kamath Clan, of Titan.
“My queen!” Wrath-Pei said in delight. “What a pleasure to see you!”
“A pleasure I cannot reciprocate,” Kamath Clan said dourly.
“What a shame!”
“Shame has everything to do with my call,” Ka-math Clan said.
“Then by all means elaborate!” Wrath-Pei said, the pleasure of the queen’s displeasure already beginning to give his skin the familiar tingle he had so missed lately.
Barely contained rage filled the queen’s features, no doubt fueled by Wrath-Pei’s delighted visage. “Quog!” she burst out, her face reddening.
“What of him? He is well, I hope?”
“He has vanished!”
Wrath-Pei let a fraction of his smile dip into pity. “How … terrible!”
“What have you done with him?” the queen demanded. “I still have my sources, and they tell me you have spirited him away to your ship! Return him immediately!”
All of Wrath-Pei’s smile returned. “Now, my queen, please don’t be so upset. After all, I’ve just managed a great coup for you and your sect. From now on, the sulfur fields on Jo, sacred as they are to you, will be provided duty-free to all of Titan! Isn’t that marvelous? No more tribute to the Martians, no more cash on the barreihead for your most revered of ceremonial substances. I should think all Titanians—and most especially yourself—would be singing my praises in the Temple of Faran Clan. Why, I’ve just made religion … cheaper!”
“I repeat: what have you done with Quog!”
“Quog is … safe. And will continue to be safe. The truth is, the man never got out, and I thought it was time he enjoyed a vacation. In payment for all the … service he has rendered to you over the years.
In fact, you could say I did it all for you, my queen! And when he returns, he’ll be rested and happy—and of even more service than ever!”
“Bring him back immediately!”
“That isn’t … feasible, my queen. There are some experiments that we are conducting, Quog and I, that are in a delicate stage at the moment. But you�
��ll see him again soon enough.”
Wrath-Pei was nearly swimming in the delicious sensations that Kamath Clan’s face presented him: rage, sickness, and, yes, terror! The queen’s face collapsed with the weight of that last manifestation, and suddenly, if Wrath-Pei was capable of feeling pity, he would have felt it. “Please bring him back,” Kamath Clan begged.
“Soon… enough.”
The queen’s voice became hoarse, all pretense of royalty gone. “I implore you.”
“What would you say, my queen, if I told you that there is a possibility of … duplication of Quog’s gifts. He is old, you know, and not likely to live forever.”
“I’ve tried, myself. It is useless!”
“Perhaps not. Do you think I … borrowed Quog merely to … deny you?”
The flaring of bright hope on her face was not nearly as satisfying as her former terror.
Wrath-Pei waited a moment, and then asked sweetly, “And how is your son, Jamal? Is he … well?”
Rage returned. “You cannot have him!”
“Nevertheless—”
The Screen went blank.
Wrath-Pei stared at the vacant Screen for a moment, remembering each instant he had just experienced as if savoring it for the first time. Had he been the one to cut the transmission? Had Lawrence done it for him? Or had Kamath Clan?
No matter; the timing had been exquisite.
The look on her face
Wrath-Pei closed his eyes for a moment, drinking the last drop of Kamath Clan’s despair.
Then, summoning Lawrence to him he thought it was time to fill his eyes with another, allied sight that might give him … pleasure.
The ship was cavernous, but with Lawrence’s guidance of the gyro chair they had reached the appointed deck and cabin in no time.
The door slid open at Wrath-Pei’s arrival.
At Quog’s own request, the room was kept dark. Not wanting to upset the old man more than was necessary, Wrath-Pei had had as near a duplicate of Quog’s quarters as possible constructed. With a little imagination, the inside of Deck 5, Cabin 14 looked very much like the old man’s cave of a hovel in the Ruz Balib section of his home on Titan. Care had been taken even to cover the various potion bottles on the shelves with the proper amount of dust.
From the corner of the room, in shadows out of even the weak light that suffused the gloom, Quog’s weak voice said, “Wrath-Pei …”
“Yes!” Wrath-Pei said brightly, moving deeper into the cabin; in the darkest corner he could just make out the outline of the old man’s figure now.
“How … goes it, Wrath-Pei?” Quog said in a dreamy whisper. He chuckled, a dry rasp. “Do you think you will succeed where Kamath Clan, and others, have failed?”
“I certainly intend to,” Wrath-Pei said. “And even if I do not, a … synthesis of what you have to offer is only secondary to my needs, anyway.”
“I thought as much. Though I am not a political man myself.”
“All men are politicians.”
Quog laughed his crackly rasp. “How true. May I ask you a question, Wrath-Pei?”
“I am in a generous mood.”
“Good. I admire generosity, since I have been so generous with my existence myself. My question is: have you ever thought of … sampling, yourself?”
“Me?” Wrath-Pei was nearly startled—and that fact startled him. “Of course not.”
“As all men are politicians, but all men also seek to … remember.”
“I have all the memories I need, Quog, and I keep them in their place.”
“Do you? Wouldn’t you like to … see again, with the same vision you had? To experience what you have possessed, as if you were possessing it for the first time?”
For once direct, Wrath-Pei said, “It never occurred to me.”
Quog’s chuckle was broken in half by a weak cough. “You seem a prime candidate to me.”
“Perhaps. But to tell you the truth, I have just as much fun with my present memories as my past ones.” He thought briefly of Kamath Clan’s face. “And to be even more truthful, the thought of using is abhorrent to me.”
“It was just a question, Wrath-Pei.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was.”
To Lawrence, Wrath-Pei said, “Closer.”
Lawrence edged the gyro chair closer to the old man. The shadows retreated slightly, giving form to outline. Quog’s body, self-trussed, suspended upside down, still could not in any way be called human. Its sideways bend, courtesy of the Puppet Death he had endured at the age of eighteen, culminated in tiny deformed feet that barely afforded him a shuffling gait; at the other extreme, his taffy-like, limb-thin face resembled layers of melted plastic. In the midst of this visage his organs of sight, odor, and hearing were compressed to little more than slits. His mouth was an oval, vertical hole.
From portions of Quog’s naked body, his disfigured three-fingered hands, his chest, his thighs, his neck, dripped a thickly viscous substance, dark brown in color, which slowly collected in a pan beneath the old man’s head. Its dripping made a sound like oil into a pool.
“As you said, Quog,” Wrath-Pei said, fully enjoying the sight of the old man’s body, a disfigurement of the human form that left Wrath-Pei in awe of Nature, his only rival, “all men are politicians. What is your affiliation?”
“Me?” Quog said dreamily, weakly, from deep within his own memories. “Why, if pressed to admit it, Wrath-Pei”—and now his voice broke into a rasping, coughing laugh—”I would have to say I belong to anywhere but now.”
Chapter 5
For Co-Prime Minister Besh, things had gone from bad to worse.
Through the window of his office, spring was turning to summer. It would be warm and dry, according to the forecasts; already a drought was under way in the western provinces, and the governor of India was fairly begging for wheat.
That which was not to be had.
Too bad Labor Minister Rere had chosen to stand with the King, Dalin Shar, three years ago; they could have used his expertise now.
This was not the way Besh had imagined hegemony. Even as a young boy, watching the struggles during Sarat Shar’s long consolidation of power, he knew that the intricacies, the Machiavellian subtleties, of rule were something that he wanted to devote his life to. Always an avid chess player, he still kept the same two books at his bedside that had been there since he was thirteen: The Prince, and Argmon Fei’s Chess: The Eternal Struggle. And still, every night before retiring, he read a chapter from each, though he long since had memorized both.
In his pride, he had thought that such traits as these would one day make his biography (or autobiography, since he also fancied himself a writer and had also, since the age of thirteen, kept a meticulous diary) required reading for all citizens of Earth; perhaps, even, all the Worlds.
Now he knew that he should have spent less of his time playing chess and learning tactics, and more time learning how to use a dagger.
What had begun as an enterprise of (in Co-Prime Minister Besh’s mind, at least) patriotism had lately turned into a nightmare.
Co-Prime Minister Acron, of course, was the problem.
But what a problem! How best to rid oneself of a street thug? None of the subtle ways had worked. On half a dozen occasions in the last thirty-six months, Besh had tried to legally oust Acron from his position; on each occasion, the stout bully had remained, at the end of the maneuver, exactly where he had been to begin with. He was like some horrible toy, an air-filled, bobbing thing that, when pressed underwater, comes right back to the surface, smiling and bobbing once more.
Even the High Leader, whose efforts on Besh’s behalf had, admittedly, been tepid, had been unable to shift the balance of power Besh’s way. But then, that was Cornelian’s style, to divide and dominate. It had been the High Leader’s will to let Acron rule alongside Besh, had it not? Not that it had done much good in the long run, with the entirety of Earth now on the brink of outright rebellion and the fragile allia
nces and subtle balances Besh had spent the last half decade forming were crumbling around them all.
The plans Besh had had in his head for Earth! The delicate levers he had yearned to pull, ever since those teenage years of dreaming! He had known since then that he had greatness in him—and had planned, since then, to let that greatness flower. All those years watching Prime Minister Faulkner’s clumsy rule, as proxy to the brat Dalin Shar—how Besh had longed to take the reins then! But no, he had waited and schemed, putting off his plans, whiling his hours with ones and zeroes as finance minister.
And now that he sat in the seat he had so long coveted, it all seemed so … empty.
Outside Besh’s window, waves of heat were already building. He could just make out the top of the trellises in what had once been the Imperial rose gardens; the petalless vines were dry and brittle, a crown of thorns. There hadn’t been roses for three years, and even then they had made it on their own, without watering. That summer had been wetter than most.
There came a light knock—almost reverential—-on the door to Besh’s office.
“Come in,” Besh said.
The door opened, revealing a guard in dun-colored uniform and shaved head beneath his cap; he was young and nervous.
“It’s time, Co-Prime Minister.”
“Is it?” Time had passed quickly during his ruminations; it must already be nearing noon.
“Very well,” Besh said, rising.
Outside the window, between the Imperial Palace and the dried twigs of the rose gardens, stood a flat of ground cleared of all obstacles; at one end a wall of neatly stacked sandbags stood, before which was a single chair. Thirty paces away stood ten riflemen, checking their rasers.
Turning away from the window, Besh smiled tiredly at the young guard in the doorway.
“Don’t worry, son,” he said, “I won’t run away on you.”
“No, sir,” the guard said, eyes downward.
Besh left his office and was surprised to see Co-Prime Minister Acron, florid-faced, waiting for him in the hallway.
Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy Page 3
