Now I remembered: her nose. Dr. Gashwan had always had a wicked scar running the length of her snout, as if someone once stuck a knife tip into a nostril and yanked it all the way back to her cheek. It was an ancient wound from her youth; but even in the dim lanternlight, the ugly mark was still very visible.
Beside me, Festina lifted a hand to her own face.
"Gashwan," Plebon said. He bowed, but the old woman ignored him. Instead, she shuffled past everyone till she stopped in front of me.
"Edward York," she cooed in English. "My one and only son."
Leaning forward, she nuzzled me on the lips.
38
LEARNING SOME UGLY TRUTHS
I blinked. The kiss was almost exactly like Counselor’s back on Celestia — a human gesture imitated by an alien. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak; but Festina asked the question that was on my mind. "Son? What do you mean, son?"
"He’s my child," Gashwan answered, her eyes glittering. "I made him."
"You?" said Festina. "You were the engineer?"
Gashwan lifted one of her wrinkled hands and patted my cheek fondly. If I hadn’t been so frozen with horror, I would have flinched away.
Dad had never revealed who engineered Sam and me… but it only made sense that he went to someone on Troyen. He knew people here; the doctors were the best in the galaxy; and Mandasar medical facilities could ignore stuffy Technocracy laws about gene-tinkering.
Years later, when Sam needed a doctor for Innocence and me, it probably wasn’t coincidence she’d gone straight to Gashwan.
"You’ve turned out nicely," Gashwan purred. She’d taken my chin in her hands and was tipping my head from one side to the other: examining her work. "Still perfect, aren’t you, boy?"
"I’m okay," I mumbled.
She smiled. "So much like your father when I knew him. The same look. The same attitude."
I did some quick arithmetic. My father was a hundred and twenty-one now, still hale and hearty thanks to YouthBoost. He must have been in his mid-sixties when Sam and I were whipped up in a test tube. His original mission to Troyen was thirty years before that… which must have been when he first met Gashwan. Maybe she’d been a young medical researcher, eager to learn about the human metabolism. Mandasar doctors loved to study aliens.
"Well," Gashwan said, still looking at me keenly, "I’m proud of the way you turned out. Very presentable… for a human."
"But you made a mistake on me," I told her. "I’m stupid. My brain doesn’t work right."
"Your brain works exactly according to specification," she said. "I agree, it wasn’t fair; but your father promised you’d have a fine life, brought up so you’d never know you were different. That’s the only reason I said yes when Alexander asked to make you the way you are."
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. "Dad asked you to make me… slow?"
"Oh, Edward," she chided. "Do you think I’d mess up your brain by accident?"
"But why?" I whispered.
"So you wouldn’t get in your sister’s way," Gashwan answered. "If you were smart enough to figure out how the admiral wanted to use you…" She shook her head. "You’d never have gone along. But things turned out all right, didn’t they? You’re here and you’re fine."
"But… but…"
There were no words inside my brain. No words. They’d been burned clean out of me.
No one had made a mistake. It’d all been completely deliberate. Premeditated. Carefully planned. Yet my whole life, my father had called me a disappointment: rejected me for being the way I was, when he was to blame.
It didn’t make me mad. It made me sick.
But Plebon had lifted his head. "Gashwan — you’re talking about an admiral named Alexander. Do you mean Alexander York?"
"Yes," Gashwan said, "Alexander York is Edward’s father." With a ghost of a smile, she added, "And I’m his mother."
Plebon turned to Festina. "Alexander York was the admiral who sent Willow here to Troyen. He wanted us to pick up a queen and take her to Celestia. York has some shady business deal with a group of people there, called ‘recruiters’…" Oof. I should have guessed — who else? who else? — but I was beginning to realize my greatest skill in life was denying the evil around me. My father was the one behind it all: Willow, the recruiters, the terrible inertia of my brain.
Festina said nothing, but nodded to herself… as if she’d suspected the truth for some time.
In the silence, a distant sound drifted up through the bleak stone corridors — possibly from outside, possibly somewhere in the castle.
Hyena laughter. Cackling and crazed.
"What’s that?" Gashwan asked.
"An old friend," Festina answered grimly. "His name is Larry."
Part 5 TAKING THE CROWN
39
BECOMING AN EXPLORER
"A Laughing Larry?" Dade blurted out. "There weren’t supposed to be any…" He closed his mouth sharply.
"There weren’t supposed to be advanced weapons on Troyen?" Tobit asked. "Looks like our navy researchers weren’t the only ones who got around the Fasskister Swarm."
"Don’t jump to conclusions!" Festina snapped. "Quick," she said to Gashwan, "who’s in charge here?"
"I am," Gashwan answered.
"In charge of the whole palace? The defense?"
Gashwan nodded. "Ever since Queen Temperance left."
"Willow took the queen away," Plebon put in. "To help the recruiters on Celestia control—"
"We figured that out," Festina said, then turned back to Gashwan. "The laughing sound comes from a killing machine… maybe more than one. Your arrows are useless, and your troops will be slaughtered. Surrender now before there’s a bloodbath." Gashwan patted Festina on the arm. "Dear child, I’m not a fool. I tried to surrender as soon as Temperance abandoned us. The Black Army refused."
"They wouldn’t let you give up peacefully?"
"They ignored my broadcasts and killed my envoys. The Black Queen doesn’t want capitulation — she wants to take the palace by force."
"Who is the Black Queen?" I asked. Knowing the answer.
"Your sister, of course," Gashwan said. "She started the war, and she’s about to end it."
I wished I could go all outraged: yelling, How could you say such a thing? But no. Sam had called herself an "advisor" to the Black Queen, but my sister had always been a leader, not a follower. And she’d led Troyen straight into this war. She’d been in a perfect position to incite hostilities, using diplomacy to pump up tensions rather than ease them. The footprints at the Cryogenic Center had been just her size. And Samantha had murdered Verity before faking her own death.
When war came, I could imagine her killing the fifteen queens one by one: getting on their good sides then murdering them, just as she did with Verity. She could have claimed to be a secret envoy from the Technocracy and promised navy support for the queen’s cause — that would be a quick route to royal favor. Then she’d betray the queen to some convenient enemy, or slit the royal throat personally when the time was right. It’d taken twenty years, but so what? And every time a queen died, Sam would try to keep control of the queen’s armies, giving orders to generals who still trusted her as the late queen’s closest ally.
Now, it was almost over — nothing to do except take the palace. In the process, she’d kill me because I was a loose end. She probably thought I was too stupid to figure out things on my own, but she didn’t want me talking to anybody else. Sam couldn’t afford that: my very existence was evidence against her.
"It’s me Sam wants," I said, "She’s afraid I know too much. If I give myself up, maybe she won’t kill anyone else."
"Dear boy," Gashwan replied, "I know too much too. A lot more than you do. But if we both give ourselves up, Samantha will worry we might have talked to someone or hidden a message somewhere. Besides, Edward, she can’t leave witnesses who’ll say you surrendered peacefully. You know she has to kill you and destroy your body. You know
that, don’t you, dear?"
"Yes."
"And it will look suspicious if she does that to a voluntary prisoner. Your human friends will make a fuss. From Samantha’s perspective, it’s tidier if we all die accidentally in the heat of battle. Then she’ll lament the horrors of war, and make an apologetic donation to the fleet’s Memorial Fund."
Gashwan’s whiskers quivered with amusement… even admiration. She was truly tickled by the way Sam had worked things into a neat package — a mother’s pride at how clever her daughter turned out to be.
Festina snapped, "We’re wasting time. Plebon, can you find your way to the roof?" He nodded. "You want me to look for Larries?"
"And anything else you can see. Tobit, you and Dade go with him. Take a Bumbler and check what the Black Army is doing. Keep trying with the Sperm anchor too — maybe Prope will have an attack of conscience and come back for us."
"Prope?" Tobit snorted. "Conscience?"
"It’s a long shot," Festina admitted. "Try anyway." She put her gloved hand on the sleeve of his tightsuit and gave a little squeeze. "Get moving, you old sot."
"Right away, your magnificence." He gave her something that was nowhere near a salute, then grabbed Dade by the arm. "Come on, Benny, we’re off to fulfill the glorious Explorer tradition: getting our asses shot for no good reason."
"That’s what ‘expendable’ means," Dade replied.
Tobit cuffed him in the helmet. "Asshole — you say that after we die."
As Tobit, Dade, and Plebon hurried up a nearby ramp, Festina said, "All right — the rest of us need to get organized. Let’s get Kaisho to… Kaisho? Where the hell are you?" I looked around: lots of Mandasars, but no wheelchair. While we’d been distracted, Kaisho must have drifted quietly out of the lanternlight and vanished into the darkness. "Bloody hell," Festina glowered, "I knew there was a reason she ought to stay in the ship."
"Perhaps," Counselor suggested, "she wants to make contact with the moss at the front of the palace."
"She’s made contact already," Festina fumed. "Likely while she was still on Jacaranda — no one knows the range of the Balrog’s mental power, but there’s so much damned moss down here, it probably has the combined strength to talk with someone in orbit. Hell, it may have been able to contact Kaisho while she was still on Celestia; some experts think the Balrog is a single hive-mind, with instantaneous communication between every damned spore in the universe. Willpower stronger than the laws of physics. If that doesn’t scare the piss out of you, you haven’t thought about it long enough."
"But if she’s already talking to the other Balrogs," Counselor said, "why did she need to go off on her own?"
"Because the moss has an errand for her," Festina answered. "Something it can’t do for itself, while it’s stuck to the palace walls." She lifted her hand and pressed it to her helmet’s visor, as if she wanted to cover her eyes. "I really hate being manipulated," she growled. "Kaisho used me to bring her here. And so did you, Edward."
"My sister manipulated me," I told her.
"So did your father," Gashwaft put in, way too cheerily. "From the very start."
"To make Edward a king?" Counselor asked.
"Exactly," Gashwan smiled. "What a clever young girl you are."
"King of what?" I asked.
"Of whatever you want," Gashwan answered. "Mandasars. Or humans. Possibly both."
"Because of the pheromones," I mumbled. "Because I’m like a queen and can simulate…" I didn’t finish the sentence.
"When your father first came to Troyen," Gashwan said, "he saw the possibilities. Queens can consciously manufacture Mandasar pheromones; what if somebody created a being who could make human ones too? A secret weapon for swaying people to your side. The ultimate diplomat."
"The ultimate admiral," Festina murmured. "Manipulator supreme. Old Alexander must have dreamed of becoming royal himself."
"He couldn’t," Gashwan told her. "His DNA was entirely human: incompatible with the transformation he had in mind. He had to settle for making clones of himself — ninety-nine percent like the original, but with a sampling of transplanted Mandasar genes to pave the way for more changes later on…"
Festina nodded, as if she’d already known. That’s why she’d asked if I was bioengineered. She must have guessed I’d need fancied-up DNA if I was going to become… um…
…more than human.
The idea made me shiver — I was supposed to be Dad’s ideal of a superman.
Except that I was stupid. Supermen shouldn’t be stupid. Why would he deliberately ask for that?
Gashwan had already answered the question: so I wouldn’t realize what was being done to me.
"I was the guinea pig," I whispered.
"That’s right." Gashwan patted me fondly on the arm. "When Innocence started suckling from Verity, so did you."
"Thanks to the nano," Festina said, "that your sister commissioned from the Fasskisters. The nanites dosed Edward little by little over the course of the year… and Verity never knew it was happening. I assume you had a second batch of nanites that brought venom to your lab instead of to Edward?"
"Of course," Gashwan replied. "We needed to analyze the venom at every stage so we could reproduce it for Samantha later on. We also needed to test all kinds of medical techniques to make sure we could keep a human alive through a full year of venom poisoning… and through the transformation." She gave me a smile. "If it’s any consolation, the things we learned working on you made it much easier when we did the same for Samantha. Your contribution saved her a lot of pain. Sam transformed into a queen as easily as a natural-born Mandasar… all thanks to you."
Oh good — I’d fulfilled my one and only purpose. I’d been engineered as a near-genetic double to my sister, so I’d be the best possible guinea pig later on. A good testing ground before the doctors started on the real patient. I was just the disposable prototype, the one they’d throw away after they learned how to do things right.
So here’s the honest truth: I wasn’t a superman, I was a super-Neanderthal. Close to the real thing, but a dead end. Sam was the true progenitor — by the time the war started, she must have had some secret medical facility all prepared so Gashwan could put her through the same treatments I got. Sam was given the pheromone powers of a queen, but she stayed looking human, so no one would suspect what a threat she was. Over time, she’d eliminated her competition, built her big Black Army, and conquered the planet.
What was next? The League of Peoples would never let her leave Troyen, that was for darned sure; but she could have children. The next generation would still look human, so they’d have no trouble sneaking onto Technocracy worlds. After that, how long would it take for them to manipulate their way into top positions of power? A few decades maybe. My father would have himself a dynasty, secretly dominating human space.
But the dynasty would come from Sam, not me. I was never destined for anything but the trash heap.
Funny… for a long time, I’d felt guilty wearing an Explorer’s uniform when I didn’t think I deserved it. But surprise, surprise, I’d been perfectly suited for the Explorer Corps from the moment of my conception. No one could possibly be more expendable than me.
40
RACING THE BALROG
"Why did you do it?" Festina asked Gashwan. "Why did you help Samantha with everything? You’re too smart to think she’d be grateful — it’s a wonder Sam didn’t kill you as soon as she’d gone through her transformation."
"She would have tried," Gashwan agreed. "But I ran off to join Queen Temperance a few days before the job was done. My assistants finished the process. I doubt if they’ve been seen since."
"Then why?" Festina asked again. "Why help a ruthless murderer?"
"Because it was interesting," Gashwan said, as if that should have been obvious. "A pretty little challenge. And because I owed Alexander York a favor."
"What favor?" I asked.
She pointed to her nose: the old ugly sca
r running the length of her snout. "He gave me this."
Festina stared. "Alexander York hurt you? Damaged your face?"
Gashwan shook her head. "Alexander York helped me, with something no Mandasar would have done. He got human surgeons to destroy my sense of smell." She reached up with a wrinkled hand and stroked the scar affectionately. "They weren’t very skilled at dealing with Mandasars, but they got the job done. It’s trickier than you’d think — not just excising the olfactory nerves, but creating enough scar tissue inside the nostrils that the membranes can’t absorb odor molecules."
"But why?" Festina asked.
"To be free," Gashwan said. "Free of control by queens. Free of being terrified by warriors. Free of getting my moods altered by anyone who walked by. I got my brain into a state I liked, then cut the cords so no one could change me."
"That’s why you could betray Verity," I muttered.
"Why I was valuable to Verity," Gashwan corrected. "Other doctors told the queen what she wanted to hear; I told the truth. Mostly. The same with Temperance — she appreciated me because I couldn’t be swayed like other people around her. I’m the reason Temperance survived the war as long as she did. Smart objective advice. And now that Temperance is gone, I’m the one in charge, aren’t I? Because my brain isn’t muddled by every whiff of sweat drifting on the breeze. I’ve become my own queen."
Festina looked at me; I caught her gaze but said nothing. Like it or not, Mandasar society depended on communication smells: conveying emotions, providing feedback, tuning folks in to each other. Humans do the same with tone of voice and body language. Rejecting all that, Gashwan had become a sort of sociopath, untouched by the people around her. Disconnected.
Which is why she could go along with Dad and Sam, when their plan would lead Troyen into war. Gashwan thought it was interesting — a pretty little challenge.
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