by Dave Duncan
“Ill-begotten idiot!” Vaun yelled. “You almost died!”
“I apologize for the intrusion, sir,” Blade came smartly to attention, staring over Vaun’s head. “I thought there would be more doors.”
“And I thought you were Roker!” Vaun tucked the gun in his belt.
Blade frowned slightly at the implications, and then went blank again. He seemed quite unperturbed by his narrow escape, but Vaun saw his mauve eyes surreptitiously scan the room.
“If I knew you were coming, I’d have waxed the floor.”
“Sir, the high admiral sent me to tell you that he is ready for you.”
“Tell him to come himself!” Vaun’s anger had returned and encountered enough residual brandy to brew a potent mixture. Worst of all, perhaps, was the bitter knowledge that he so often underestimated Roker. Which girl had run from that bed to report the secret love nest? Of course, the big boy had more sense than to come himself, here beyond Security’s vision.
Blade turned and spoke to Feirn. “Tell Admiral Roker that we’re coming, please.” He closed the door on her. Then he swung back to Vaun.
“We are, are we?” Vaun said.
Blade took a step forward.
Vaun pulled the gun from his belt. “Over your dead body.”
Blade stopped and made his irritating little frown again. “Sir, the high admiral—”
“Screw the high admiral!” Of course, that had been another of Maeve’s lies, and Vaun should have realized it years earlier than he had. Roker had no interest in juvenile males. And the little cloakroom in the guest house…It had been when Vaun discovered how well it was supplied with sensors that he had recognized the extent of Maeve’s treachery.
Blade sighed. “Sir, I have orders to bring you.”
“And a good spacer obeys to the death?”
“Yes, sir,” Blade said sadly.
He probably meant it, too. This was the boy who had speared three strealers and come back without a bruise.
Vaun was beginning to feel extremely foolish. “Even if I didn’t have a gun, you couldn’t force me, you know. Big Pig himself might, but you can’t.”
“No, sir. But I have to try.”
“Are you human?”
“Sir?” Blade eased another step closer. The room was very cluttered for fighting. There were two chairs and a pile of paintings and a stool between them.
Vaun clicked off the safety. “Are you a random, or another construct, like me? Another, better formula, perhaps?”
The mauve eyes were dark in the fading light, very sincere. “I am quite human, sir. I am not better than you, not in anything. I know that from your record at Doggoth.” He was taller, but not much heavier. His youth would be a serious handicap against an experienced brawler like Vaun. “We all studied it, sir.”
Vaun grunted, then spoke to the com. “Service, access DataCen. Verbal report: Doggoth record of Ensign Blade.”
“Blade Strong Virtu, born 29,385, only son of—”
“I must tell Maeve you have no choice,” Vaun said.
“Sir?” Blade advanced another step.
“Your name.”
The com was still talking. “…with extreme distinction, First in class of ninety-three, First in physical proficiency training, First in electronics, First in Galactic, First in gravities,. Expert in marksmanship, First in navigation, First in ordnance, First in physics, First in track…”
For a random, it was an awesome litany of accomplishment. Blade was on record as the best all-around student since Admiral Vaun, forty-eight years earlier. The catalog of his honors rolled on and on, but he seemed to take Vaun’s interest in it as some sort of mockery, for his face grew grimmer and his lips whitened. He continued to edge forward.
Eventually Vaun snapped at the com to cease. “Were there any possible Firsts you missed?” he inquired.
Blade had arrived within reach, and too close to watch both the gun and Vaun’s eyes. His attention flickered up and down uncertainly. His next move must be open violence, and while he might have met the situation often enough in a gym, this was reality, against a real weapon. He would not be reassured by the total lack of concern Vaun was projecting.
“Political history, sir. Martial arts.”
“Why not martial arts?”
“Broke my arm, sir.”
He was fortunate that his classmates had done no worse than break his arm. Vaun tossed the gun over his shoulder, to land on the bed. “If I’m not up against a First, then I don’t need that. Know something? You’re too precious to shoot, anyway! The Brotherhood would likely pay real well for a sample of your genes; they’re always keen to improve their mix.”
The lad’s eyes flickered as they did when he was suppressing anger—or what would be anger in ordinary wild stock. There could be no doubt that he was human, though. Doggoth’s gnomes would have checked his cell nuclei very carefully.
Vaun smiled. “So go ahead and take me in by force. I rarely back down for ensigns.”
At last the ridicule drew blood. “It was easy for you,” Blade said bitterly. “You’re naturally superior.”
“And it wasn’t easy for you? You were obviously far superior to anyone else in the school.”
“No, it wasn’t easy,” Blade said, but still very quietly. “I worked like hell for it, every minute. Ever since I was seven years old, I wanted to come as close to being like Admiral Vaun as I possibly could.”
His mother was quartermaster at Hiport; he would not have been a mudslug misfit as Vaun had. But nobody as effective as Blade could ever have been popular, even had he been gifted with a sense of humor and a few human weaknesses. And now he was obviously planning a jump.
“You’re too perfect for your own good,” Vaun said reflectively. “Wits all fouled up by juvenile dreams of honor and heroism. And you have never suffered enough humiliation; I can tell. Very character-forming, humiliation. Leave now, because once I get started, I’ll surely do you a favor and beat all that shit out of you.”
Blade smiled thinly. “I would prefer that you strike first, sir.”
“Think you’ve got a chance?”
“None at all, sir. But I’ll still try.”
Vaun ought to be feeling much madder by now. Where was his adrenaline? Blade’s lips were white, but he wasn’t flinching, and that should have been enough to rouse Vaun’s blood lust. “I’ll make a terrible mess of you.”
“I expect you will, sir.”
Crazy, suicidal bonehead! “Why? What’s Roker planning, do you know?”
Blade hesitated. “Feirn knows of Quild. She says he’s an authority on pepods, sir.”
Gods and stars! Pepods? Vaun’s heart stopped and started running again, but not running on brandy anymore.
“Oh, that’s it!” he said, and shivered. “I see. Of course.” What a fornicating awful way to die!
“Sir?”
“I’ll tell you what the high admiral is planning. He’s going to feed me to the pepods.”
“That seems unlikely, sir.” Blade had sensed the fight draining out of Vaun; he relaxed enough to lick his lips.
“Even if you believed me,” Vaun sighed, “you’d still try to take me to him, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. It’s my duty, sir. And yours.”
He did mean it. And he was too good to shoot. Too good, Vaun reluctantly decided, even to suffer what Vaun had done to that over-loud lieutenant the previous night. And to repeat that exercise now would give Roker all the excuse he wanted, anyway.
“All right,” he said wearily. “Let’s go! Take me in.”
Wild stock pursued territory almost as obsessively as sex. Roker had found a really fun way to win back Valhal, which Vaun and Maeve had stolen from him, so very long ago.
IN HIS MINT-NEW uniform, Ensign Vaun stands so rigidly at attention that he almost vibrates. He stares stonily ahead at the high crystal windows, and the endless ocean beyond, running blue to meet the sky. All around him, the big salon shimmers
with rich fittings and furniture, and also with the braid and medals of its occupants. Slumped back at ease in the down-packed chairs and sofas are the assembled nabobs and shoguns of the planet, the admirals of Ultian Command assembled. They are gazing in fury at this perfect replica of the Commodore Prior they have known for so long.
Power and wealth.
The undoubted center of the array of might is High Admiral Frisde herself. Her uniform outshines all others, glittering with jeweled honors and orders; one glance from her green eyes can silence even Roker. Close beside her on her divan sits an incongruously humble captain with a thick neck and long eyelashes. He has the excessively broad shoulders of a Galorian, and her slim hand rests on his thigh.
But Maeve has explained Frisde for Vaun. Two hundred and thirty years old, perhaps even two-forty, she has been high admiral for over a century, and a ruthless destroyer of potential successors. She changes lovers frequently, and flaunts them as proof of her continuing vitality; she revels in scandal.
From what Vaun can see while staring fixedly over her head, he would be more than willing to oblige her in scandal making. Gorgeous! The thought reminds him of Maeve, and her parting good-luck kiss when he was summoned to appear before this council.
The council now awaits the high admiral’s comment.
“Yes, the resemblance is astonishing,” she says at last. Her voice is low and husky. “Say something, Ensign. The Pledge of Allegiance might be appropriate.”
As stiff as an automaton, Vaun recites the ancient words.
“The accent is wrong, of course. But we can correct that. At ease, Ensign.”
That means Look at me! so Vaun obliges.
Frisde continues to study him for a moment, and then removes her hand from the husky captain’s thigh. “In what ways do you differ from genuine human males, Ensign?”
Krantz! What is she hinting? “Only in biochemical detail ma’am, so far as I am aware. I understand I have fewer than the normal number of chromosomes…things like that.”
“Nothing that can be detected by the naked eye, you mean?”
A few of the onlookers smile uncertainly, but Vaun feels a sudden flush heating his face. “That is correct, ma’am.”
Frisde smiles mysteriously, and looks at Roker. “He is really as durable as the Doggoth reports say he is? An all-round super-achiever?”
“Apparently, ma’am. He seems to learn anything without even trying. He caught his first strealer on a second attempt.”
And I caught your mistress, Roker. I have even bedded your own girl in your own bed, Roker. Ask Security to play it back for you, Roker.
Apart from Vaun himself, Roker is the only person standing. The boys sitting around him are people Vaun knows to be his especial cronies and advisers: Waggery, Malgrov, Shrin. Again, Maeve’s briefings make sense of the roiling undercurrents of tension in the room. Frisde is well past the normal age of withdrawal—gossipmongers whisper that she needs booster every two or three hours now, and rejection can not be long delayed. The scavengers are fighting for first bite at the carcass, and Roker’s coup in unmasking Prior has catapulted him into lead position. His opponents are ganging up in desperation, and Frisde has called this meeting to adjudicate.
If she backs Roker, then he will have won. Always in the past, though, she has ruled by division, slowing the pack by felling the leaders.
Obviously she still enjoys the game. She is being cryptic. “Ensign, I understand that you have agreed to participate in a mind bleed of the prisoner Prior.”
“Ma’am.”
“You have never met him?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I suppose he must be much older than you, but biologically he is your twin brother. You must know what will happen to him. How do you feel about destroying your twin?”
“Ma’am, he raped my mother. He drove her insane.”
Frisde purses her lips, and nods. Her gaze wanders thoughtfully around the august company. “Are there any precedents for mind bleeding a commodore?”
The silence stretches slowly, until a stringy, oddly red-faced boy says, “Evidently not, ma’am, or Admiral Roker would have recited them for us.”
Frisde looks up at Roker. Her neck is no thicker than Vaun’s forearm.
Roker’s long lip curls only slightly. “If you recall the history of the Thunderstrike Mutiny, ma’am, you may agree that what was done to the leaders was considerably worse than a mind bleed.”
She pulls a face. “I hope we are not going to slide back into the barbarism of ancient times, Admiral. Let me have a show of hands…a preliminary sense-of-the-meeting. How many feel that a mind bleed is justified under the circumstances?”
Vaun dare not peer around to watch the result, but he can see Roker, and Roker is displeased. No totals are announced, and perhaps the high admiral does not bother with an exact count.
“You do not seem to have convinced us yet, Admiral,” Frisde says sweetly.
Evidently Prior’s fate has been made the point of issue. The lines are drawn there.
The ruddy boy raises a hand, and Frisde’s glance gives him the floor. “With respect, ma’am…” He must be one of the leaders of the anti-Roker coalition, for the room stills. “All I can see here is that some curious charges of rape have been brought against Commodore Prior, and he has reserved his defense. Quite understandably so. We may ask why the matter has been suppressed for so long—five years, isn’t it? I agree that there is enough evidence to proceed to a court-martial on those charges. The rest is all cobwebs, ma’am.”
Frisde waits, and he shrugs and continues.
“We have been given no proof of this alleged war on Avalon. We were merely shown a couple of ambiguous com interceptions, fragmentary and cryptic. They would not be admissable in any courtroom, civil or military. The testimony of the last emigrants is contradictory and hearsay. They think that some enclave of illicit technology was destroyed at some obscure settlement in a remote corner of the planet…when was it?”
“By our calendar, it would be 29,364,” Roker says coldly.
The other smiles nastily. “And how long was that before Green Pastures left Avalon?”
“Seven years, Ultian years.”
“Prior was a cadet then, was he not? Your witnesses do agree on one thing—that Prior was an adolescent when the journey began. He could not have been more than a child at the time of the trouble, whatever it was. Now another ship is arriving from Avalon. Absolutely no evidence has been put forward that it is anything other than a routine interstellar—”
Roker breaks in. “Prior appointed himself to command the pilot boat.”
The tall boy seems to snuggle down more contentedly in his comfortable chair. “Unusual, but hardly seditious! And perfectly natural. He was born on Avalon. He would be interested in hearing news of his former world.”
He flashes a rosy smile up at Roker, as if asking him to confirm the score. Then he returns to addressing Frisde. “Absolutely no evidence has been presented that standard security precautions would not suffice, ma’am. They could be augmented, perhaps. We might go that far. But to trash the constitutional rights of a senior member of the Patrol and subject him to the barbarity of a mind bleed…that should need evidence, ma’am! Real evidence!”
All eyes switch to Roker, whose head has drooped low on his bovine shoulders. He glares across at his opponent. “We are not contemplating an attack by pirates here, nor a canoe full of cannibals! Our standard security can detect ordinary subversive elements, yes, and I am not suggesting that any sort of conventional armed invasion across interstellar distances could ever be more than the stuff of pubcom fantasy. No, (his is a disease we are fighting! Let the infection once gain a hold, and we may never stamp it out! One boatload of technicians and supplies would be enough.”
He is not very convincing, Vaun minks. An impalpable mist of disbelief seems to rise from the distinguished audience. Ingrown aristocracies are never cordial toward revolutionary ideas.
Worse—he will have to do better than that.
Vaun wonders what his own fate will be if the mind bleed is refused. Then he will be merely one more piece of evidence to be thrown in jail and held until the Q ship has been inspected and the truth discovered. Before that happens, much of the evidence may vanish in the labyrinthine obscurity of Patrol politics, especially when the stakes are so high. And if Roker is wrong, if crew and passengers are normal human beings…then what?
He has enjoyed two wonderful weeks with Maeve in the paradise of Valhal, but a Putran mudslug does not belong in this lofty, shimmering world of power. He will certainly never be tolerated within the Patrol on a permanent basis, and the best he can hope for—the very best—is to be thrown back in his swamp. The meeting is concerned with Prior. Nobody here or anywhere cares about Vaun’s welfare…except Maeve, and for all her noble birth, she is only a spacers’ recreation girl.
The ruddy-faced boy smells triumph. “After all,” he says jovially, “if the human race is indeed battling such a peril on Avalon, then surely Avalon Command would have sent us a warning? Radio waves do still travel faster than Q ships, surely?”
Roker smiles.
Before he can seize the opportunity presented, Frisde demonstrates that she can still cut both ways. “Ensign?”
Vaun is so taut already that he can not stiffen further. “Ma’am?”
“Answer Admiral Hagar’s objection.”
Ouch! “Q ships travel along line of sight, ma’am. Their singularities generate interference which impedes radio transmission between the destination and the world of origin…ma’am.”
Kindergarten stuff. The room squirms.
“Thank you,” Frisde says agreeably. “I thought there was some rule like that.”
Hagar’s face has turned an unbelievable scarlet.
The high admiral lays a hand on her escort’s knee and another on the arm of the divan, and flows easily to her feet. She saunters forward to inspect Vaun more closely. Her delicious red lips still wear traces of a smile, but what he sees in her eyes appalls him. He wonders which is more dangerous to meddle with—the Brotherhood, or High Admiral Frisde. He realizes with shock that his present peril is even greater than Prior’s.
