Hour of Judgement

by Susan R. Matthews

  Once awakened not even this odd conversation could stop Andrej’s mind from returning to its troubles, and he began to wonder about how he’d come to be here. He was at Center House, that seemed clear enough. Someone had brought him, because he certainly didn’t remember coming on his own. But if he was at Center House, washed and undressed and put to bed, where were his Security?

  Where were any Security?

  Were these Nurail here to serve as Security?

  “No, open your eyes, please, Uncle. Don’t pass out on me, I’ve been waiting for years for a chance like this, don’t ruin it now.”

  He had no intention of opening his eyes. His eyes were burning. He couldn’t keep them open. But the young Nurail sounded desperate, so Andrej blinked twice, squinting in the dim lights at the man at the doorway. Who were these people?

  “You’re Andrej Koscuisko. You were at Rudistal. At the Domitt Prison. Surely you remember.”

  He was not interested. “I cannot forget.” His voice sounded rusty; he waved for another swallow from the flask, just to moisten his mouth this time. “I am dreaming, yes? Mostly I cannot forget when I dream. Do not speak of it.” The Domitt Prison. He would never be free of the Domitt Prison.

  “Just this small bit, Uncle. You can give me just this small bit.” Wheedling. Persuasive. Andrej turned his head, and met the young man’s keen concentrated gaze in the dim light from the night-glims and what made its way around the man in the doorway from the room beyond. Something about the Nurail was familiar. Something about the eyes.

  The young man’s voice was low and soothing, but even so vibrant with some unexpressed tension. “And I’ll never ask you more, but Uncle, I’ve heard stories. You’re the only one alive who knows the truth.”

  There had been no truth at the Domitt Prison. It had all been a lie, from start to finish.

  “You are giving me a headache. Go away.” He had more than enough to think about without being distracted by a dream. And he was dreaming. Andrej had no question in his mind about that.

  “Only the weave, Uncle, and we’ll go. I swear you’ll never even see us again, but Uncle, please Uncle, try to remember. My father’s weave. The Shallow Draft.”

  It meant something. Things in a man’s dream almost always did. “You’ve no business with your father’s weave. How dare you? Have you no shame? Insolent puppy.” And yet if this young Nurail’s father was dead . . .

  “I beg your sweet forgiveness.” And the Nurail sounded sincere. “But it’s lawful if there are none other. And I’m the only one survived. The Shallow Draft, surely you remember. He was my father, and you killed him in the Domitt Prison. The war-leader of Darmon.”

  Now Andrej was there, again, imprisoned in the stinking cell of his dreams, and a tortured man before him. Trying to tell him something before it was too late.

  “Have you no charity in your heart.” He heard the dread in his own voice, but knew that it would do no good to beg. He was dreaming. This young Nurail was only his own self, it was a dream. He could never get away from the Domitt Prison at night. “It has been so long. Holy Mother. To be away from there.”

  “There was no charity for my father, why should I have a care for you?” But the Nurail sounded only reasonable, not accusing. “And I have followed you as closely as we dared forever since. Hoping for this chance. Do you remember?”

  Oh, he remembered. It had something to do with a clinker-built hull, a warship with so shallow a draft that it could skim over the chains that zig-zagged the mouth of the harbor and tied into a net of mines to destroy any ship that tried to escape. There was a very great deal more to it than that, of course. There always was.

  “No, please, you’re fading out on me, give it to me again. You must remember.”

  Well, he didn’t.

  Not any more than that.

  “You expect too much.” Always he demanded so much more of himself than anyone else. Why couldn’t he just forget about it, and forgive himself?

  There was certainly no sense in looking for forgiveness from a Nurail —

  But the young man was weeping. “Oh. Is there no more? Is there no more that you remember, Uncle? Please.”

  The Nurail was in pain, whoever he was, whatever he was doing in Andrej’s dream. And Andrej felt sorry for him. He could do nothing. “No. No more. How could you expect me to remember? Why else do you think I had to write them down?”

  The arms of the man who was holding him — “Beauty” —- tightened around him suddenly, as if in shock. Surprise. Whatever for? Beauty knew perfectly well about the books. Because Beauty was just Andrej, a splintered piece of Andrej, a dream-piece of Andrej Koscuisko with a scarred face.

  “Wrote them down,” the young Nurail choked. “What did you say, wrote them down?”

  This was becoming tedious. Andrej was beginning to feel exasperated with this dream. “There were too many of them. I couldn’t be expected to learn one, let alone so many, and in so short a time. Of course I wrote them down. Five. Six. Maybe eight pocket-manuscript’s worth, I lost count, I’ve never so much as looked at them since.”

  In fact he’d all but forgotten that they were even there, tucked at the back of a records-box. The Bench had not taken them into evidence, because all he’d written in those books was the weaves. It was illegal for any Nurail to possess such material. He’d had a vague thought about transcribing them for posterity. The Nurail would not be the Jurisdiction’s whipping-people forever, after all.

  Transcribing them, when he went home. He wasn’t going home.

  Eight years —

  But when he stood within the Domitt Prison in his dreams he knew, he’d known all along, that he was never to be permitted to go home.

  And he was dreaming.

  It was entirely up to him if he wished to wallow in self-pity for a while.

  “Holy God,” the young Nurail said. “Beauty. Beauty. We have to get on board of Ragnarok. Did you hear him? He’s written them down.”

  Yes, that was what he’d said —

  Andrej turned his head and closed his eyes. And wept.

  Never to go home.

  Never again.

  And as he wept he fell back through the layers of this perplexing dream experience and deep into profound un-dreaming sleep once more.

  ###

  Stildyne sat and stared at the wall for two thousand years, trying to understand what had happened. Why it had happened. He’d meant well. He’d meant to hurt Robert, but not to kill him, and he’d done it without malice or pleasure in what he did. To save Robert’s life.

  Robert had asked to die.

  It made no difference, or not enough.

  What was he going to tell Koscuisko?

  Someone jostled him from behind; people were moving around him. Startled. Concerned. Stildyne looked up. Pyotr was staring across the room, at the door to the place where Robert lay. Pyotr was black, and when he paled the deep color of his skin grayed to sooty ashes. Pyotr was pale now.

  “No, it’s all right,” Doctor Howe called. “Had some trouble with that thick Nurail skull. Doctor Orklen’s a genius.”

  People were leaving the room. Looking tired. But only that. Not looking disgusted, or angry, depressed or accusing.

  So it was all right?

  “Send in your chief, I want a word with him.”

  Maybe not.

  Maybe they were just putting a good face on it for the troops’ sake.

  Stildyne rose unsteadily to his feet and stumbled across the floor toward the treatment room, cursing his body for not being as resilient as it used to be. He was getting old. He’d never been beautiful. Life was unjust.

  How was Robert?

  It was dark in the treatment room, and the ventilators’ hushed vibration generated so much white noise that it almost drowned out the sound of Robert’s breathing. But Robert snored. It had tripped him up more than once. He was still learning how to sleep on his feet and not give himself away by snoring while he was about it.<
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  “Wanted to show you,” Doctor Howe confided. “Didn’t like to show the others, not this. They’ve seen one already. They show it to you before they implant it.” The last of the techs left. Nobody had drawn a sheet up over Robert’s face. And he was snoring. Stildyne wanted to weep; but he didn’t know how. “Have you ever actually seen a governor?”

  Having no practice in weeping Stildyne merely held out his hand, numb and silent, to receive the object that Doctor Howe presented to him. It was almost too light to register in the palm of his hand as being there at all.

  A governor.

  A tiny bit of dull gray metal, with a glittering eye like that of a malevolent spider.

  Whisper-thin filaments like gossamer legs, too thin to bear the weight of so much as an idle thought, and yet capable of invoking such ferocious pain that a man could be governed with absolute rigor by fear of it.

  This was the thing that had dealt Robert such horror. This was the thing that had put Lipkie Bederico to death by torture, that ruled the lives of bond-in voluntaries, that had the power to make a man execute atrocity rather than disobey a lawful order.

  If Stildyne had had any religion he would have wanted to exorcise the thing. But he had no religion. So he decided that he simply wanted to crush it underfoot, instead.

  “Interesting.” Words seemed inadequate. “Take it back. I don’t want anyone seeing it. Save it for the officer. How’s Robert?”

  Doctor Howe sobered. And he hadn’t been particularly giddy to start out with. “We were lucky. The governor was half-dead already, or it would have done some damage coming out — it’s got a self-defense mechanism, naturally. Can’t have people doing surgery to pull governors. Might contribute to the loss of bond-involuntary troops before the completion of their terms.”

  Doctor Howe was reborn. There was language behind his words that Stildyne did not want to hear. And fortunately for him Doctor Howe continued smoothly.

  “One thing, though, and your officer will expect this. He’s not going to remember coming to hospital. He’s not going to remember much about the few hours immediately preceding arrival, especially any incident that might have been stressful. Extreme stress condition, traumatic amnesia, you know. Now, usually traumatic amnesia will recover over time.”

  Doctor Howe was wrapping the governor in a bit of bandaging as he talked. And Stildyne was even halfway familiar with what Doctor Howe was talking about. “But in most cases a person will never recover some portion of his life immediately preceding. And with a governor gone terminal I’ll be surprised if he can remember anything after his mid-meal, when he wakes up. Fast-meal for sure, yes. Third-meal for certain no. If he had one.”

  Was Doctor Howe actually giving him absolution, all unawares?

  Was Doctor Howe telling him that what he’d done to Robert had actually protected Robert so well that not only was Robert safe from immediate horror, but Robert would not remember anything that might put his life at risk in the future?

  “So tell me.” Stildyne struggled for words, overwhelmed with gratitude. “When does he wake up? The others. They’ll be anxious.” Not him, of course. No. He cared only so much for Robert as for any troop, and not so much as for the next troop either, because Robert annoyed him. For himself he would just as soon Robert St. Clare had never come into his life. Complicated.

  “You could wake him up now.” Doctor Howe sounded a little thoughtful. “Or you could let him rest. The scans are all good. That kind of pain, he’ll be exhausted, even with good drugs in him. Send the rest in. You can all sleep in here, if you’d like. But he’s snoring. We could put you all on ward with the diagnostics; they’ll move. I expect he’ll wake up before midday, sometime.”

  Or sooner.

  Robert liked his fast-meal.

  It would be all right.

  He could face Koscuisko with a clear mind, secure that he’d done what he could to protect Robert, knowing that Robert was safe from himself.

  And he’d tackle everything else there was to deal with, in the morning.

  ###

  Someone came into the room with fresh rhyti and hot bread, setting the tray down beside the head of the bed before leaning over to kiss the back of Andrej’s hand where it lay on the coverlet. Andrej woke so easily and naturally as to be unable to make the distinction between waking and sleeping; the habit of the first twenty-odd years of his life still ran strong in him. At least when he was asleep.

  Opening his eyes he looked up at a ceiling gaily decorated with a motif called beard-of-grain. Very pleasant. Traditional. The man who had waked him was standing quiet and patient at his left, waiting to be noticed. One of Paval I’shenko’s house staff; one of the Danzilar Dolgorukij house staff, that was to say. He’d been on active duty for more than eight years now. He’d never met a Security troop who waked a man in so old-fashioned a manner.

  “Holy Mother, bless this child to your work,” Andrej said. Half-unthinking. The houseman smiled and bowed in apparent appreciation.

  “And prosper all Saints under Canopy this day. Good-greeting, your Excellency, you are anxiously awaited, if you would care to rise and take bread.”

  Anxiously awaited was probably an understatement. He had several missions he needed to accomplish himself, but first things first. Sitting up in the bed Andrej took note of the fact that he was wearing someone else’s nightshirt; not his, anyway. Reedstalk-work. Very respectable. But all of his linen was worked in lapped-duckwings.

  “Thank you. I will wish to dress. There are Security waiting for me?”

  He was a little surprised none were here, in the room with him. He just hadn’t decided exactly which Security he’d expected to see, or for what precise purpose.

  “The prince’s majordomo waits upon your will, sir. I’ll send someone to see to the towels.”

  That meant that Security was not waiting outside. He would have to get past the house-master before he got more information, perhaps. Nodding without bothering to probe further Andrej lifted the covers aside and stood up. He was a little shaky. Shouldn’t he be sick? Shouldn’t he be crawling to the basin, after the drinking that he’d done last night?

  Maybe whomever had brought him here had drugged him as well. There stood a glass of water at the bedside with a stack of appropriate dose-powders beside it, right enough. And the dregs of a dose in the glass as well. All right. That explained that. He couldn’t remember having been fed medicine, but that didn’t surprise him. He was lucky — he supposed — to remember as much as he did, about what he had accomplished during the past sixteen eights.

  By the time he was washed and combed and had changed back into his own linen — freshly laundered, of course, and laid out waiting — there was fast-meal laid out, and the housemaster waiting. That could be a good sign, Andrej told himself; to be waited on by so exalted a personage as the majordomo was a mark of significant respect. So he probably wasn’t under arrest. Yet.

  “His Excellency may wish for a brief summary of what has taken place in Port Burkhayden since yestreen,” the house-master suggested, nodding to the houseman to pour Andrej’s rhyti. This was different rhyti than that he had taken with him into the washroom. A guest could not be permitted to drink rhyti from a flask that had stood for so long. Certainly not. Shocking idea. “As his Excellency was, with respect, very drunk last night. When the Bench specialist Vogel brought him to Center House.”

  All right, so that was how he’d got here. He wasn’t certain he remembered. Andrej had a quick sip of rhyti, and gestured for the morning-meat tray. He was hungry. Whatever doses whomever had used on him last night had been good meds; but the body still knew that it had been worked beyond the limits of its tolerance, and demanded he make it up in extra sustenance. Morning-meat. And hot bread. And quite possibly several slices of ripe melon.

  “Captain Lowden had cried Charges against a gardener. Skelern Hanner. He and I had gone to Bench offices.” Andrej insisted on buttering his own brod-toast; anyone else used either
too much or too little. There was a precise ratio to be preserved between melted butter and marmalade. “But the gardener was quite guiltless. I sent him to hospital. And went to the Port Authority to make him clear with the Record.”

  Updates went more quickly when they could start from a mutually understood jumping-off place. The majordomo smiled. “Yes, your Excellency.” The majordomo was Nurail, one of the tall broad-shouldered run of Nurail. Fair skin, light-colored eyes, brown hair. Not the sort of Nurail that Andrej Koscuisko would ever be mistaken for.

  “As for his Excellency’s personal movements nothing is known, sir, after that. You were reported missing from the Port Authority when First Officer Mendez arrived there. And located some time later near the Port Authority by the Bench specialist, if his Excellency will excuse, seven points before the gale, with all sheets flying. Several additional elements should be placed before you, though. It was a busy night.”

  Had he been somewhere near the Port Authority? Had he got that far once he’d left the service house? It was possible. The other alternative would seem to be that Vogel was glossing the actual location a bit. And why would he do that?

  “One wonders in particular where one’s Security have got to,” Andrej agreed. Reaching for a dish of egg-pie. He wondered whether the majordomo was Nurail enough to flout tradition and sit down with him; or majordomo enough to stand on his dignity and decline absolutely to sit down with a guest of the house.

  On the other hand since the house-master was Nurail, there was no reason to expect him to be willing to sit down with a Judicial officer of whatever sort, guest or no guest. Andrej abandoned the whole idea as a bad lead.

  “His Excellency’s Security troop St. Clare experienced a medical emergency last night.”

  This startled Andrej; he stopped where he was in mid-bite, and set his fork down. Carefully. The house-master was still talking. Never before had Andrej been quite so sensitive to the number of extra words that politeness was held to demand, when a house-master was speaking to a guest.