Imry felt his stomach turn over. “Lady Disdain’s on that shuttle?”
“Of course she is. How else can she get to Earth in time for the mindmeld? Naturally she didn’t relish traveling with the Secundans—who would? But she is devoted to her duties and the human race, so she had little choice. There was no room for myself and the entourage at such short notice, but I can’t say I’m sorry about that.”
Imry struggled to come to terms with this. Lady Disdain on the shuttle herself? It seemed he’d made a complete fool of himself. He’d been so sure. “But… does the president know Lady Disdain’s on the shuttle?”
“My Lady sent a blip informing her, before she left. So I’d say everybody’s quite safe from your hypothetical accident.”
Imry left as soon as he could, face burning. God, what a fool he’d made of himself! There was only one good thing come out of this disaster. Megan was safe.
Irrationally, he found himself hating Lady Disdain more than before. It was almost as though she’d duped him in some way. It was only when he got back to the bliprider’s quarters that the thought occurred to him: maybe he had been duped. He only had the Cartaginian’s word that Lady Disdain was on that shuttle.
But when he checked with Dispatch, her name was on the passenger list. That settled it. Now the only thing to do was to forget the whole embarrassing episode. He’d screwed up but nobody knew except that Cartaginian. In some way he’d completely misread the blip. Or maybe it had been some weird blipreader’s hoax.
And now Lady Disdain’s eyes were open again, watching him. Had she read his mind? No, but she’d experienced a lifetime of enemies, which made her hypersensitive to hostility. Her lips moved.
“You can’t imagine the relief now that Lady Fortune and I have melded. I’ve shared a mindful of ancient skeletons and eased the burden. And now I can think and say whatever I like, without the fear of passing on my thoughts and conversations for analysis and condemnation. My mind is my own, not posterity’s. I’m free for the first time in my life.”
“You must be very relieved to know the future of Earth is in capable hands.” It was difficult to imagine that pretty girl bore all the dark secrets of this old crone. Crone? That word hadn’t crossed his mind in two hundred years.
Her gaze became very direct. “I hope it is in capable hands. As you alone know, there is a flaw in the genes of us clone-sisters and there is a shame we will carry with us as long as we exist, because the mindmeld ensures we can never forget it. Our only consolation is that when you are dead, the flaw will be known only to the clone-sisters. I am forever in your debt for that. But you are well aware of that.”
What was she talking about?
He said, playing for time, “We’re all flawed in one way or another.”
“But we rulers were bred for perfection. They tell me you still live with Megan Sunrise, and that you have eight children. It must be very reassuring to blend your genes with those of another person, and know that some of the imperfections will be lost in the process.”
“We never think of it that way.”
“Megan Sunrise once told me I was a useless old woman. At the time I resented her remark very much. But when the… thing happened, and I found myself living with a shipload of Secundans for six months, I began to think. I saw Secundan crones going willingly to their death for the immediate good of their race, and I contrasted that with the way my own clone-sister had acted—or would have acted, if I hadn’t forestalled her. And I realized we are the useless ones. We, my clone-sisters and I, the rulers of worlds. We are parasites feeding on the work of humans in the pretense that we are leading them. But neither Earth nor Cartaginia need leading. They are stable societies that run themselves.”
When you’ve had a fixed notion for two hundred years it’s difficult to shake it. Imry turned to the window in case she read the amazement on his face. Lady Disdain’s clone-sister, the president of Earth, had done something terrible, it seemed. Something so terrible that it meant the genetic structure of the rulers was flawed.
What could be that terrible? Ordering the mass murder of ten thousand Secundans could be that terrible! Had he been right after all, two hundred years ago?
He turned back to face her. “Tell me one thing, my lady.” Suddenly he could bring himself to call her that. “Why did you take the Secundan shuttle to Earth?”
She looked at him expressionlessly for a long time, but her eventual words showed astonishment “Good heavens, you had it wrong. And still you didn’t betray us… I took the Secundan shuttle so that my sister could not destroy it, of course. She hated the Secundans—they stood between her and a chance of longevity. She was dying and she was desperate—so desperate that she could not foresee the consequences of her actions. She threw three worlds into confusion by reassigning you people to Secunda, with some stupid notion of atoning for the Secundans she intended to kill. She risked sending a blip to warn me, to make sure I wasn’t killed as well. At least she showed that much sense of duty, preserving the mindmeld. But otherwise… She betrayed everything she’d been created for and lived for, simply out of a primitive fear of death. She was mad, didn’t you know that? My biggest fear was that she was so mad she’d destroy the shuttle anyway, with me on board. When I reached Earth we mindmelded, and ever since then I’ve lived with a small cancer of madness in my head—her madness. I killed her immediately after the meld. It was quite easy; I won’t go into the details. Her madness was so fresh in my mind I found I could be primitive, too. It wasn’t murder; she was my clone. It was more like lopping off a diseased branch.”
Imry said, “I doubted my own reading of the blip. When you took the shuttle, I thought it was simply your quickest way home.”
She smiled. “You hated me, didn’t you? I don’t blame you. A person has to be seen to be a ruler, and you don’t make friends that way. You hated me, but the reason you didn’t betray us was because you had no confidence in your own judgment. Well, it’s as good a reason as any.”
“Blipreading’s an art more than a science. And I was young. And I was so glad Megan was safe that I put the whole thing behind me. And suddenly we were all going to Secunda instead of Cartaginia. That was the clincher. Why didn’t you countermand your sister’s instruction and send us to Cartaginia anyway? It was what we were trained for.”
“That was a shameless bribe. And unnecessary, as it turns out.”
“Your sister might have gotten away with it,” he said wonderingly. “She wasn’t so mad that she wouldn’t have covered her tracks. You knew that. So… You risked your life for the Secundans, didn’t you?”
“Dreadful people! But there’s a world of difference between locking people up for a week, and massacring them. The voyage was my small penance for my clone-sister’s sins.”
“I’m sorry I misjudged you, my lady.”
“So I needn’t have told you all this. And I don’t need to bestow an honorable title on you.”
He laughed. Suddenly she was more like an old friend. An old friend who had once saved Megan’s life. “But I know everything now.”
“Who would believe you? That bliprider was the only proof you had, and it’s been dead over two hundred years. And I thought you’d had it retabolized, and would produce it one day.”
Imry gave a theatrical sigh. “So I’ll never be Lord Imry of Secunda?”
He heard a breathless cackle. Lady Disdain was laughing. “Go and see Lady Fortune about that,” she said, “Her memories are identical to mine since the meld. All except the last hour while you and I have been alone. I’m sure you take my meaning.”
Imry touched her dry hand and left.
Lady Disdain closed her eyes. It was done. Her life was tidied up, so far as any human life could be tidy, and night was not far away.
Rhuum Service
Brad Ferguson
“Marvelous,” said Chaylaifa, his breath finally coming back to him. He was on his back, smiling; his tail was comfortably wrapped around his lef
t thigh, out of the way.
The chosha was not smiling at all, but she nodded agreement “Excuse me for a moment, Chaylaifa,” she said.
“Of course,” he said. The sha watched her by the dim light as she left their bed and headed for the bathroom. Nasu still cuts a fine figure, he thought idly, particularly for someone of her years. I chose well, so long ago. She is both good company and a good friend… and she still provides this old warrior with a stout enough ride, willing as she is to try new things—
“Chaylaifa?” came a small, high voice near the foot of the bed.
“Ah,” he said. “Still with us, eh, my dear? Ha! Come a little closer.”
She did. “I thought you’d forgotten all about me.”
“Not possible. Did you doze off?”
“Just for a moment. It has been a long day.” The thaka’thott rolled across the sweat-stained sheets of the strongly built bed and snuggled like a youngling into Chaylaifa’s pelt. Fehlorah ran a paw through the matted fur on the sha’s chest, her slightly extended claws barely grazing the sensitive skin beneath.
“I am glad the Bloxx was delayed,” she breathed.
“So am I,” Chaylaifa replied. “I had to appear angry for the benefit of our agents here, but I did not expect such a pleasant… respite… on the first day of the talks.”
“A most welcome respite. It’s such an exciting trip, isn’t it?”
“Are you glad I brought you, girl?”
“Of course, Chaylaifa! Ever so glad!”
The sha smiled. “Now just how glad might that be?”
Fehlorah smiled in a way far beyond her years. “Very glad, my sha. Has the chosha left anything for me?”
Chaylaifa laughed softly. “You know she has, little witch,” he said. He sighed in mock exasperation. “How can such a one, small as you, destroy me again and again, time after time, endlessly? You’ll kill me yet, girl.”
“I kill you?” Fehlorah’s paw began making its own, slow way down Chaylaifa’s ample body, in the way she had so recently learned that he liked the most. “More likely it will be the other way round; I’ll be crushed under you—or between the both of you. A sad yet wonderful fate indeed.”
“You’re much too spry to be caught like that, Fehlorah.” He ran the tips of his powerful claws along the stripe of gray fur covering her spine, and the thaka’thott shivered as her immature tail began twitching.
“You like that,” he said in a low voice.
“Very much,” she breathed. “And you?”
“What you’ve begun doing down there feels very good, my little love.”
“Now, just how good might that be?” she asked him, laughing, as Chaylaifa’s breath began to hiss softly back and forth through his teeth.
A few moments later the bathroom door opened, throwing a bright golden light into the room. Nasu stood in it, a silhouette.
“Come back to bed, Nasu,” Chaylaifa called. “We’ve grown a bit impatient for you here—as you might be able to tell.”
“Yes,” Fehlorah said, reaching out a dainty paw. “Come to us, Nasu. Be with us.”
“I… I think I might like to retire for the evening,” Nasu said, knowing what was to come; she had no wish to repeat the vileness of it. “It has been a tiring day. I will sleep in the room assigned to me—”
“Nonsense,” said the sha, his tone suddenly harsh. “Come to bed, here and now. And turn out that damned light; the one in here is quite enough.”
“Chaylaifa, I—”
He looked at her, his eyes holding her completely. After a moment, Nasu looked away and nodded.
“Excellent.” As Nasu seated herself at the foot of the bed, Chaylaifa reached behind him and retrieved a small box from the nightstand.
“What’s that?” asked Fehlorah.
“It is a Terran delicacy, love. They are called ritzcrackas, and I am assured that they are safe for us. Expensive, as is everything else aboard this hotel, but I thought we might try them. They are something… different.” He grinned widely, showing his fangs. “After all, we have to fortify ourselves for the rigors ahead!”
Fehlorah giggled and, reaching over the sha, took a ritzcracka for herself and passed another to Nasu. The chosha ate it, chewing slowly. Fehlorah saw her reluctance and giggled again as she turned to embrace Chaylaifa.
After a short while Nasu joined with them, her unwillingness quickly evaporating as their shared scent rose, engulfing her, trapping her.
The tastefully small brass sign on the door of the suite read:
JACOBS BURKE LTD.
FACILITATORS
The reception area had been furnished by a Centaurian designer known for her terribly trendy and effectively audacious approach to everything she did. Wallpaper and furnishings had been designed to intrigue a wide variety of senses, and fabrics had been chosen to appeal as broadly as possible to those to whom touch and smell were as sound and light. To prove that price had been no object, there was an original Sunday-edition full-color Calvin and Hobbes hanging over the faux fireplace, which itself radiated in a variety of spectra. The look and feel of the room had instantly established the credibility of Jacobs and Burke aboard Hotel Andromeda, and that credibility had been the key to everything.
The other half of the suite was hidden behind a door concealed in the far wall of the reception area. Between them, the partners called it the Dark Side, and it looked as if it had been decorated by trolls. The Dark Side was the soundproofed and spy-proofed office where Jacobs and Burke actually did their work, and no one else ever got in there. The partners allowed the hotel’s cleaning robots into the Dark Side only once every six months or so. Even at that, they never let the robots do very much, frantic that something important, some significant scrap of paper, might be snatched up and thrown away. The partners were also terrible pack rats. For example, one of the Terran calendars on the wall was four years out of date, but the partners left it hanging there because it would be good again in only another seven.
Jonathan Lee Jacobs was sitting at his desk in the Dark Side, his head in his hands. “I guess what I don’t appreciate the most,” he complained, “is that this crap always gets sprung on us at the last possible goddamn minute.”
His partner had not really heard him. Trudy Burke was lying back in her reclining chair. Her eyes were closed. She was very busy.
Jacobs grabbed his most abused pencil of the day and began tapping a rapid tattoo on the glass surface of his desk. “First I get absolutely no notice that Bannister Investments is exercising its option with us, this after we don’t hear from those bloodsuckers for years, so we have to handle the Rhuum trade reps for them as long as they’re aboard Andromeda. So, fine. We say hello and how are you, we get Ambassador Chaylaifa and his entourage settled, all twenty-three of the useless bastards, we make sure the hotel is treating everybody right, all that jazz. We even get a break on the logistics—no arrival ceremonies and no dinners, thank God; neither side wants ‘em. Good enough. Now it turns out that the Bloxx rep is going to be late because, hot pilot he, he’s blown a driver. Not a big deal, but somehow this idiot Chaylaifa thinks it’s our fault! Before I can even talk to him about it, though, he stalks off to his room with his wife and kid in tow. This is supposed to be an easy contract? Isn’t that what Bannister said?” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Damn. These micro-contacts are killing me.”
His partner still said nothing.
Jacobs cleared his throat and tried again. “I hear they can rot your corneas.”
Trudy remained quiet.
“Well?” Jacobs demanded as his pencil finally broke. He brushed the two halves onto the floor.
“‘Well’ what?” Trudy answered. Her tone was lazy, distracted. “Do you want something, Jonny Lee? I’m trying—”
“I know, I know. I’m bothering you.” Jacobs waved a hand.
“Sony. Find out anything yet?”
“Come on in, and I’ll show you what I’ve isolated so far.”
“A
ll right, but let’s not take too long. We’ve got things to do.” Jacobs ordered his own chair to recline and, still tense but reasonably comfortable, he accessed the neural network.
The office was suddenly replaced by a garden. It was a different garden, though, smaller and prettier than Trudy’s usual interface metaphor. There was a short picket fence around the plot, and from somewhere not far off came the sounds of children at play; Jacobs could also hear birds. Turning around, he saw a small, neat, white house. His view of anything farther away was blocked by tall hedges ringing the property.
“This is very nice,” Jacobs said, and he meant it. “Someone’s backyard, right?”
“My grandmother’s, as a matter of fact,” Trudy said. “I’ve been working on it for a while. Do you really like it?”
Jacobs looked up at the clear blue sky. “Very much. Where are we?”
“Pennsylvania—the nice part. I spent a lot of time here after Mother and Daddy split up.” Trudy gestured around her.
“Grandmother’s garden was my favorite place of all, especially at this time of year, when I’d help her get it into shape after the winter; it’s mid-April here now, in case you couldn’t tell from the flowers. The other gardens I wrote were just practice; I wanted to get this one right.”
Jacobs looked around. “I think you did. It’s beautiful. I wish I’d met your grandma. Is she here?”
“Oh, God, no, Jonny Lee” Trudy said, disconcerted. “I couldn’t write her. No, we’re the only ones here—and we ought to get down to business. You were in a mad rush, remember?”
“I guess I was. Hey, looky here.” Jacobs bent and picked up an insect. He held it lightly between his fingers and grinned. “Hey, honey, your program’s got a—”
“Don’t you dare say it.”
“Shoot. All right, I won’t.” He stooped to let the thing drop safely to the ground and watched as it skittered away. “What have you got for me?”
Trudy bent quickly and picked a daffodil. “First of all, here’s the summary of the deal Bannister says Ambassador Chaylaifa wants to strike with the Bloxx,” she said, handing him the flower. “The wish list has pharmaceuticals, minerals, and other standard stuff on it; Bannister’s given us the quantities desired and what Chaylaifa intends to offer for them in goods and credits standard. Chaylaifa runs the biggest import trust in the Rhuum Organization, so this deal could mean billions of credits to him personally. Bannister Investments is brokering it, so they get the usual huge cut.”
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