by Janet Morris
It was he, Chaeron, who should have stood there and received the touch that ennobled; a blast of pure hatred rocked him. But Parma was speaking; the hatred was impotent now, better saved for a more propitious time.
As all the voices of his kin (whose promises of accord he had secured without exception to second the father’s wishes on this day of the establishment of the house of Kerrion’s new successor) rang loudly, the son added his affirmative vote. Parma’s glare would allow no different, warning first Chaeron, then his mother, who was stiff and hardly breathed by his side.
Of all present on that day, it was only Marada Kerrion who smiled, whose jaw trembled with suppressed laughter, who had to duck farther back in shadows to mask his mirth.
Almost immediately, the laughter was banished from him, not by Chaeron’s promissory scowl, but by Parma
Kerrion’s next words: “As you see, Selim, this son is burdened in no way. I offer him to you, binding our houses through marriage. Offer me a daughter fit to be his wife.” Parma’s sharp inclination of head reeled Marada back from dimness into the center of the convocation, even as his light touch told a stricken Shebat she must step back.
It took all her strength of purpose to obey him, to stand a pace behind the patriarch rather than run to Marada and throw her arms about his waist, which had she done so, she would not have released on pain of death.
But it was another woman who stepped into the brightness at Selim Labaya’s bidding awkwardly, blinking often and never looking up.
“I offer you this daughter, Madel, second-born daughter, unburdened, as a fit and fitting mate. Let the two be united forthwith and our fortunes thereby joined.”
Shebat’s sob, the hands that flew to cover her eyes, were lost in the moment of consternation that was silenced like a flipped switch by the raising of Parma’s hand. The fathers looked only at one another, the true battle therein joined. Together they proclaimed each other’s children their own, each drawing from stunned youth and lame girl between them swift monosyllables of acquiescence.
The marriage vows exchanged, both fathers shook with laughter, no longer needfully containing it; then, after proclaiming an evening of feasting, strolled away with their arms about one another’s backs.
In the milling of Kerrions, Shebat, the newest Kerrion, sank down weeping freely, ignored.
It was not until the crowd had nearly cleared that anyone remembered her at all. Then it was Chaeron, worried over what she might have heard, who raised her and gave her comfort while trying to ascertain what her ears had picked up of the many threats and oaths and denouncements that had spilled from his mouth, destined for his mother’s hearing alone.
But he found out nothing of what he wanted to know, for Marada saw him holding Shebat against him and intervened, saying: “Here, let me take her. Shebat, come now, do not weep. It is better this way. You are a Kerrion now, and not just any Kerrion. You must not cry; this is a joyous day.” And, softer, in her hair, his lips whispered: “Do not be afraid. Kerrions take care of their own.”
But it was not so much from fear as from loss that Shebat cried, and when she whispered back that it was her love for him that made her weep, there was nothing he could say.
So things fell out in the way that Parma Alexander Kerrion had known that they must: after all, should he have given the place to Chaeron, he would have been ever looking over his shoulder to protect his back. This way, Chaeron might marry into the power he craved; or wait until the girl stumbled badly while further proving his own fitness to attain to the consular head. After all, what hope had an illiterate barbarian girl of ever actually exercising consul generalship when all eventually devolved to votes of confidence? And furthermore, any runny-nosed brat who dreamed of being more than a steward of some outreach factory platform should have foreseen all this, said Ashera to Chaeron on breath of acid, though Chaeron had espied his mother’s face when Parma’s trap was being sprung and did not believe that the old dame had known any more than he.
Still, Ashera had disappeared for three hours without anyone being able to find out where she had gone, rather than greet Marada, a pleasure her spiteful nature would not have easily given up.
“Look at that,” said the beautiful woman through unmoving lips in a totally emotionless face. “He cuddles the barbarian before his new bride’s eyes. Mark me, within a half-year Marada will have the Kerrion/Labaya alliance in shreds and your father will have all the grievance he needs to war on them howsoever he might choose. With Marada in their company, their doom is as good as sealed.” From the look of her, she might have been discussing the weather.
“Do you think so?”
“Foolish dandy sot of a son, I know so. But while you would wring your hands and sit quietly by, Marada wraps up the heart of that dirty little wretch for carrying away with him into Labayan space.”
“What am I to do?”
“I should be saying that, with you as my instrument. Dullard! Get your handsome nose over there: be nice to the girl. After all, she will need someone, now that Marada is departing for his wedding bed. Go.”
“That is all? But we must do something. Something—”
“Do not worry. We will, but when I say and how I say. Now go on, and be a good boy. And when Marada announces his intention of jaunting into Labayan space in the Hassid, rather than as a passenger on the Labayan flagship, say nothing at all!”
“But how do you know he will—?”
“When will you learn never to interrupt people capable of thinking before they speak when you yourself are not?” Spittle sprayed his cheek, but when he turned away from Marada and the slight Earth girl, Ashera was smiling pleasantly. “Have I your attention now? Good. It is as important that you do not encourage, as that you do not discourage. Go with them. And bring me back word of what is said. But covet not the Hassid. You will have a ship of your own and a pilot soon enough.”
“But, why—?”
“Your brother has a love for that particular craft, a matter of his pilot’s gift. That is more than you need to know. If you cannot answer your own questions henceforth, then perhaps I am wasting my time with you. . . . After all, your brother, Julian, comes of age next month. . . . Ah ha ha,” she laughed, “you should see your face. Go on now. Little Pestilence. I must arrange for bodyservants and suitable quarters, not to say tutors, that will make a Kerrion out of that piece of ground-dwelling rubbish.”
Chapter Four
It was on the day that Shebat turned sixteen (as well as she could reckon the date) that Ashera—with an enigmatic smile—said to her that she, Ashera, had done her best, and now all was up to Shebat.
There followed immediately an interview with Parma which Shebat had petitioned for while still she did not understand what was happening to her, three months before; and which by the day of its occurrence she had given up hope of ever being granted.
Until today, she had had the opportunity to call Parma “father” only at those once-weekly breakfasts attended by the most intimate Kerrion family: Ashera and her sons and daughter, herself and the consul general.
“You look a far cry from the knobby-kneed waif Marada brought us,” said Parma, raising eyes but not head from the screen on his desk to greet her. “Sit.”
She sat opposite him in the old-style armchair before a venerable antique of a desk made from real wood. Like so many things Kerrion, its harkening back to hallowed days of antiquity and the superiority of both taste and breeding thereby implied would have been lost on her when first she came to study in Lorelie. As the quaint custom still observed among the platforms of numbering time in days, weeks, months and years A.D. had been unnoticeable to her because of its familiarity, so the presence of wood and leather and carpet of hand-tied silk might have seemed comforting, but not the arrogant statement of wealth and breeding her accultured perceptions now knew it to be.
“You wanted to see me?” prompted the mountain seated behind the desk.
“Three months ago, when
my bodyguards suffered to a man from the flux and I finally realized both the dangers inherent in the position to which you so offhandedly elevated me, and the reason behind it. Then, I wanted to see you.”
“Your command of Consulese is quite impressive. Is your insight equally so?”
“I am the wild card in your hand; the random factor that makes you unpredictable to the minds of your fellow men and their computers alike,” accused Shebat, unaware of the pout that pushed forward her lips when she had said her say.
“Guilty as charged,” chuckled Parma. “Surely there was more to this ‘life-and-death matter’ which your own handwriting affirms must needs be discussed in private than to accuse me of ulterior motives, without which a Kerrion would feel naked as a newborn babe?”
“Since then, I have learned many things. I have studied survival as it is taught in Lorelie; both by your intelligence officers in principle, and by your wife in application. Having withstood Ashera’s kindnesses this long, I need not ask for your protection from them.”
“Complacency is a tripware on a sheer-sided path. Watch your steps the more carefully, the surer you are of them.”
“Then keep that old snake away from me!” demanded the child peeking out through a woman’s mask. Parma shifted slightly, aware once again of the blossoming beauty in what had so recently been an awkwardly adolescent collection of knees, elbows and oversized eyes. The eyes had gotten no smaller, but all else had taken on roundness where before had been painfully sharp angles. The girl would be beautiful, which had been no part of Parma’s plan. Already she was winsome beyond what might have been prudent. And intelligent, it seemed, beyond genetics’ ability to contradict.
“I have your aptitude tests,” he said easily, tapping on the screen with a stylus. “I have cleared an hour for you. If nothing more, we could discuss them.”
“Then you will not call that woman off?”
“Incredulity does not become you. You have been studying law, among other things. How would you suggest I limit the freedom of my wife and yet remain within lawful framework? Unless, of course, you have some proof to offer that Ashera has orchestrated the accidents with which you seem unfortunately plagued?”
“A faulty mil-suit, less than four months old when it gave way? A gravity-sled whose throttle jams at fast forward?” Shebat ticked these off on upraised fingers. “A short circuit which turned every piece of metal in my suite to a possible instrument of execution? A—”
“Now, Shebat, those are hazards one must endure. The mil-suit, I must remind you, was that Marada bought you; an inferior product of Orrefors technology, and none of ours. Sleds jam often; you were advised beforehand of the risk and went thrill-seeking, regardless. As for the rest, mechanical devices tend to malfunction.”
“In Lorelie?”
“Everywhere, which is why fail-safes and redundancy are built into all our systems. These things could be—though I am not for an instant suggesting that they truly are—simple mishaps occasioned as much by your un-familiarity with our somewhat more complex mode of living as by anyone’s overt attempts to place you in the path of those little difficulties life often presents.”
Shebat, in answer to Parma’s upraised black brows, snorted disbelievingly, while wondering whether or not the white-haired man blackened those expressive wrigglers over his eyes purposely to increase their effect. She took deep, measured breaths the way Chaeron had taught her, but could not banish her nervousness under Parma’s assessively patient scrutiny.
“No retort? Shall we leave this subject? And on to what suggestions Lorelie central has made for your continuing education?”
“No,” inaudibly.
“Speak up!”
“I said, ‘No.’ I am not finished. Let me off this beautiful but inimical playworld of yours before it becomes my burial ground. Let me study elsewhere. What can I learn here but hate and fear? Chaeron says you are going back to Draconis, now that your vacation is through. Take me with you, or take from me these mortally dangerous honors, lest they be my eulogy!”
“Chaeron says? You are not as astute, then, as the computer predicted or as I myself had come to believe.”
“Had it not been for Chaeron’s sage warnings, his mother would have got me by now.”
Parma tried to appear as if he considered that information. Then he said: “So it may be. But tell me, is it Chaeron’s idea that you leave the isolation of Lorelie for a more cosmopolitan setting? Or is it for more neutral territory?”
“I think I have exhausted my opportunities here. But I am sure he would agree with me.”
“That, in itself, is enough reason to budge not one foot from Lorelie. However, I have learned by raising many children that advice unsolicited falls on deaf ears. But tell me, what is it you can do in Draconis that you cannot do here?”
“Be of some use. Learn commerce and the true work of the first-born. Take a pilot’s license and—”
“Wait,” Parma interrupted. “What was that last again?”
“You heard me, foster parent.”
“I heard the part about learning to be in actuality what you were never meant to be in more than name. That surprised me. But I suppose I owe you the chance, since you are bearing the difficulties therefrom. The last, however, I did not hear, did I?” This moment tested the girl: would she back away from what she must know would evoke his displeasure and perhaps lose her all he was allowing her to think she had gained? His eyes skipped briefly down the graphed results of her aptitude tests. There it was, in red while all but one other entry was the acceptable green: Pilot, spongespace. Well, if the computer had prophesied it as third choice, there was little possibility that the girl would be unaware of her own predilection. The first-choice entry, also glaring balefully in red, unconcerned about the censure it was sure to elicit from any human eye that read its scarlet message, held his gaze a little longer. If he allowed the lesser evil, would he be spared the greater? And if not, what then? Dream dancer, the red letters spelled smugly, uncaring.
Parma Alexander Kerrion’s hands snapped the stylus they held into two equal parts, which he lay carefully side by side upon the desk.
“You do know,” he asked softly, “that such an occupation as pilotry is no fit vocation for a member of a consular house?”
“I have heard it said. But Marada—”
“Marada’s talents were so few and so unfortunately spread that no amount of pressure could keep him from it. As with his appointment as ‘arbiter-at-large,’ it was on my part more a ploy to keep him from shattering the very structure of Law and throwing his life away in the bargain than any choice of mine. As you are well aware, he nearly managed both, despite all my precautions to the contrary. Surely you do not wish to similarly reward me for my kindness to you?”
“Kindness?” tittered Shebat in an uncanny imitation of her stepmother’s most scathing repartee.
Parma Kerrion raised both hands palm up in a gesture of defeat. “Come to Draconis, if you will. It seems I must get you out from under Ashera’s tutelage before I find myself with two such doppelgangers under my very roof.”
Shebat Kerrion did not burst forth in grateful tears or vociferous praise. She merely nodded regally, content.
Parma shuddered, and eyed the results of the girl’s psychometric examination one more time. “There are conditions appended to this favor I do you,” he warned.
“Of course,” Shebat agreed complacently.
Parma Alexander Kerrion wondered if perhaps sending Marada a copy of the report greenly glaring up at him would steal from his son some percentage of the sleep he, Parma, would doubtless lose over the creation of the masterpiece Shebat Kerrion—he must remember to have a middle name entered for her: Alexandra, as she would soon enough deserve—was destined to become. Would the quiet coincidence of genetic relatedness between black sheep son and foster daughter bite at Marada’s heart as inexorably as that son had eaten away the father’s? Or was it unnecessary: did Marada even now suf
fer over the meeting and subsequent loss of what might be, out of all the women in the Consortium, his most auspicious mate?
No matter, after all. The boy was well out of the way doing husbandly duties for the daughter Selim Labaya had despaired of ever getting wed to an acceptable candidate. Both houses were profiting thereby. Rather than mooning over her rescuer’s precipitate departure from life and ken, the girl had evidently taken up an interest in Chaeron, Lords of Cosmic Jest only knowing why.
“This is the first time I have heard you speak of Marada since his wedding. It is remarkable, considering the degree of affection you initially displayed.” Parma met the tilted head’s gray stare and held it, but learned nothing except that the girl’s glance betrayed her in no way. Whatever emotions rode behind that challenging visage stayed hidden.
“Is it my place to speak of him? He has not seen fit to send me word of his faring; he is wed and deployed as befits the fortunes of the Kerrion household. Would I be a good Kerrion, to rock the boat in which we all must ride for so small a reason as personal gain?” And she smiled, ingenuously, steepling her fingers before her. ‘Time passes; all things change. Did not Plato in his Laws set five thousand forty as the ideal number of citizens in a democracy? And did not Aristotle disagree, saying that ‘ten would obviously be far too few, and ten thousand too many’; and yet today ten million souls and more have the vote?”
“By my most remote, flint-chipping ancestor, I swear if the Jesters give me a life long enough to loose you in maturity upon an unsuspecting universe, I will ask nothing more and go without protest to an easy death.”
“And I swear to you that I will not stint in my efforts to make that dream a reality.”
There was something in her eyes, fiery like the quick strike of angina, that unmanned Parma evanescently, so that he diddled the two broken halves of stylus on his desk and found it necessary to call on the steward’s channel for refreshments to be sent up.
