by Janet Morris
“But you still have not told me why piloting is no fit occupation for a Kerrion, nor why when it appeared on my aptitude tests the computer red-lined it.”
“That high, eh? Well, well, welcome sister madwoman.” And Softa David Spry leaned near, widening his seal’s eyes until the whites showed all around, “Because, little Kerrion heir, by all accounts and current standards, spongespace makes us all mad as hatters. We live short, eventful lives. We produce few children. But most of all, they fear us because we are not platform-sane. Spongespace, you see,” he whispered, “strips away all illusions. One clear look at one’s self entitles any man to lunacy’s refuge. Ha! Now I have frightened you! Good.”
“I am not frightened. And if Parma put you up to this to frighten me away from piloting, it is to no avail. See the glitter in my palms? Feel them; are they not cold? It is anticipation, not hesitancy, you feel.” And she caught his larger hand in hers, squeezing tightly. “Teach me what you can, for I will not be swayed, and I have a lot of lost time to make up for, Softa David.”
He laughed, saying, “I am beginning to see why Parma chose you above one of the serpent’s brood. Look closely, now; this is not a run-through. I am setting up the course.”
And, a little later: “Now, let us both get acquainted with Bucephalus, without whose aid we would yet be sitting here when the universe has run down stonecold.”
Bucephalus was the flagship’s name, Shebat recalled, while hiding her puzzlement as best she could. She had seen the painted white horse pawing seven stars by the entry port, with the name stenciled beneath.
Flip; snap; punch went Spry’s nimble fingers. Blink; glow; shimmer went the thousand lights of the master control.
The Bucephalus’ mellifluous voice spoke from all about: from grids in the desklike panels, from corners high above their heads; from before, beside and behind, the sonorous greeting rang out. And as Softa David Spry answered solemnly the mechanical salutation, Shebat remembered the spirit voices speaking from thin air in Marada’s ship. “Greetings to you, Bucephalus,” she said when Spry prompted her; she no longer had any doubt as to whose the disembodied voice was.
So, Shebat met her first ship’s guidance computer as an equal, and all of Ashera’s curses and Chaeron’s warnings and her longing for Marada’s comforting presence were subsumed by the shivering tingle that overswept her while she and Bucephalus made one another’s acquaintance, so that none of it mattered at all.
Draconis, like Lorelie, was a platform; one dwelt in it, rather than on. But there all resemblance ceased, for Draconis was the premier Kerrion control central, the largest commercial port in all the consulate’s space. She had been much smaller once, housing a mere ten thousand on ten levels. Like an onion, she had recircled herself, again and again, so that the original out-level had become part of her core.
Now, Draconis was the central jewel in her anchor-planet’s fillet. The planet itself was skewered through six times with laser spokes, merely a hub for man’s marvelous wheel.
When man had first come here, popping out of sponge into an alien star-scape, that vista had seemed most similar to Draconis as it appeared in Earth’s night sky. Sometime around the building of level forty, it had been proved that the locus of the platform was nowhere near the astronomical Draconis, but rather in a far galaxy Earthers had named M-87. The galaxy M-87 became Centralia, because of its sponge-centrality as much as its ancient bright sky; but Draconis remained Draconis, misnomer or no.
Now, she housed a quarter-million souls, on two hundred levels. She housed the mighty and the meek, for such were drawn together, to serve and be served. They were of every class, creed and color, the common denominator being currency and its exchange.
As with any other habitation of man, some parts boasted great beauty, others begged in baleful disrepair. There had grown up a bellicose stalemate between the two: the dole and the dream dancers provided amelioration for the penniless; the cheap labor which could turn down no work, no matter how dangerous, justified in practice what in democratic theory their betters were obligated to provide.
Anyone could rise to great stature in the Consortium, so its leaders ever hastened to aver. However, no one could bear a child without being able to show funds set aside for its education and the securing of its position in the work force; and of the difficulties of that matter for the dwellers downunder, as little as was prudent was said.
This seemed to Shebat somehow an ill-struck chord in the Consortium’s symphony; an unnecessary dissonance that made the glorious petty, as if the golden statues of prominent Kerrions around the manicured court of Kerrion consulate headquarters were merely wood wrapped with gilded foil. She said as much to Parma, pointing out that with all the Kerrion wealth there was no reason why its citizens should be ragged and hungry, stumbling in ill-lit, littered streets. Thereupon Parma’s brows drew down, and in a voice like thunder he threatened her with terrible punishment should she ever again venture beneath the hundredth level of Draconis.
“You will never get your ship; you will never get out of these walls, but to bid the Consortium farewell on the way back to your dustball of a planet. Should you even mention such sophomoric, ill-placed compassion to me again, these will be only the harbingers of my retribution.” And Parma jabbed at his desk’s electronics, snapping thereto: “Jebediah, come in here. Now!”
Almost instantly, the baldheaded secretary was entering, his stooped shoulders preceding all else, his bright eyes sweeping about his master’s office.
“Sir?” he queried, when he stood before Parma’s desk.
“Did you take this girl downunder? Or did you simply lose track of her?”
“I accompanied her myself. Consul, since she would not be dissuaded. I thought it best.”
“You thought it best? Who are you, to ignore my specified restrictions? I am gone barely a half-year, and you have no more use for me, but run all the consulate as you see fit, is that it? Well, speak up, Jebediah!”
But the older man’s chin trembled, and he seemed also to shrink smaller, from which diminishing stature he cast Parma a look like a dog beaten for a wolfs transgression.
Parma let out an explosive sigh, rubbing his eyes, then pulled his palm down slowly over his face, twisting camel’s mouth as it passed. “Ah, I am sorry, Jebediah, for doubting you. I am sure whatever was done, was done as best could be.”
“I was just trying to keep matters in hand without troubling you, sir, as I have always done.”
“I know. And you know I realize that. But I am cranky and overworked, and not back a week. If I had two of you, I would send the other to Labayan space to work your magic on Marada.”
“Trouble, sir?” asked Jebediah softly.
“How not, with that meddlesome son of mine in there? But nothing we cannot handle, I think. If—”
Shebat cleared her throat, knowing she had been forgotten.
“Ah, yes. Shebat, run along. And remember, if I catch word that you have been downunder even once more, no matter if it is in the company of the Jesters themselves, you will have no pilot’s training, no little cruiser for which I have just paid twice the insurable worth. I will have Jebediah turn you into a woman, and we will all treat you like one. Now, go on and look at the gift I have got for you, though you are hardly deserving. Wait!”
Shebat had made the distance to the door, glad to be out of there unpunished. She had hardly been listening. When Parma’s command pulled her up short, she turned, running back over the things he had said which she had heard but not considered. Then she said: “Ship! Cruiser. You said that? You mean that? Where?”
Though he struggled against it, Parma’s pleasure cracked through his scowl. “Where? Where? Now let me think, for you made me so angry, I seem to have forgotten.” He put three fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Ah, I have it,” he said as Shebat’s soft wail sounded. “Slip fifteen. That’s it: fifteen.”
To the girl’s streaming thanks, he said only more severely tha
t she must not ill reward him for his gift, and let her go.
Once she was gone, the smile vanished and the old consul general’s face displayed a concern Jebediah had seldom seen there. “She’s half a dream dancer, Jebediah. Her aptitudes proclaim it.”
Jebediah had difficulty concealing his shock, not at the fact, which he well knew, but that Parma would so confide in him.
“If she gets more than a smell of them, I am likely to lose her. And I do not want to be the laughingstock of the Consortium, which would be only the first of many bitter blows should the worst occur.”
“So you gave her the ship, fostered this hunger of hers for space, as an inoculation against the dread disease?” Jebediah forgot his usual “sir,” but Parma did not notice.
“Most exactly so. Do you see why I restricted her from the lower levels, yet could not forbid them too pointedly?”
It took all Jebediah’s years of training to keep a straight face when he answered that he understood; more, that as a father of some few years’ experience, he would have had to do the same.
What in truth Jebediah had to do that day he did not find time to even contemplate until Parma’s office was as dark as the artificial evening swooping down over Draconis. Alone but for the whirr that signaled the automated security and janitorial system waked and prowling, he set up the isolation block which masked whatever sensitive endeavors might be taken up in the consul general’s suite from even those insidious all-seeing eyes.
Then he leaned back, feet upon his desk, hands laced into a cradle for his aching neck, and closed his eyes, exhaling deeply thrice. Privacy, which the Kerrion kinship bond had tendered to them as a birthright, was of great moment to all lesser souls.
Shebat Alexandra Kerrion, who was so untutored in the customs of the bondkin she would someday (if Parma had his way) lead as to have never even have used the term in Jebediah’s hearing, was the sole subject of Jebediah’s meditation. If there were not so much to be gained financially by delivering the girl into those hands anxiously awaiting her, Jebediah would have been content to sit by. To let her stay in her place, stay Kerrion, stay the scrap of meat over which the whole hungry pack of Kerrions would tear each other limb from limb: there was a tantalizing bit of revenge that would sate even Jebediah’s hunger.
But it had been he, Jebediah, who had suggested to Selim Labaya the whole of the delicate—and profitable—maneuver by which Parma Kerrion and his meretricious brood would be forced to discredit themselves so entirely that the next vote of confidence would be their last. He must see the matter through to its fruition, no matter what the difficulties. And he must do so without implicating himself in any way. Even that, he would do! he corrected himself: For the end of the Kerrion bond group’s tenure as first family of the Consortium, Jebediah would sacrifice his place, even his life. His honor had long ago gone into this pot, the winning of which was the only goal he allowed himself. Besides, of course, an occasional dream dancer to ease his nights, whenever he could afford one. How many such nights he could buy from a successful completion of this particular sabotage he refused to prematurely contemplate.
What he had suggested to a bereaved father of a slain girl, that father had taken to heart. He had been hesitant, though he had long known the ears in which to whisper, whose owner’s lips in turn whispered in Labaya’s ear. The price he had put upon the service he offered was unthinkably high; but the service was unthinkable, dear to Labayan hearts as an innermost dream.
He had had second thoughts, having committed himself. But his penchant for dream dancers had made some such move a necessity. He was pauperized, though his income was as high as could be any man’s, come from downunder with no bond group’s profit-share to underwrite him. Come up a bastard from downunder streets, disavowed spawn of Parma Kerrion’s uncle and a tenth-level slut, he had dedicated his life to the destruction of those whose kin he was, but who refused him. Well had he kept that secret hid, but not well enough that Selim Labaya had not found it out. Which was another reason why all things must shape themselves to Jebediah’s prognostications.
Jebediah dared not disappoint Selim Labaya in any particular. As the bond’s consul general had so succinctly put it, to do so would mean his citizenship. As urgently even as that, another consideration weighed on him: his creditors must be appeased, for those dwelling in the shadowy streets beneath Kerrion glory had no bondmember’s responsibilities to kin, nor sensitivities either: they would simply kill him, should his debts stand overlong.
That, he thought wryly, though without remorse, was what had gotten him into this intrigue to begin with. Other times, he had come to the edge of covert alliance with a rival consulate, but always turned away in disgust. This time, there had been no turning back. Correction: there was no turning back. But then, never in his wildest dreams had he thought up any scenario as precipitously perfect as the one Marada had begun with his customary heedlessness and Parma served Jebediah on the platter of his shortsighted grief.
Indeed, knowing of Marada’s wardship of the Earth girl, and the death of the Kerrion heir and Labaya’s daughter, of Parma’s grief-stricken obtuseness and Ashera’s obdurate machinations to install her eldest as next in line: knowing all of these, plus the reason Parma Alexander Kerrion had found it necessary to take a half-year leave, it had been incumbent on Jebediah to whisper in the ear of a Labayan minion that a sweeter revenge could be gotten by consummating the marriage of Kerrion to Labaya than might be had even by snubbing Parma’s invitation to Lorelie. The snub would lead to a trade war which, it would then be easy to argue, Labayan as well as Kerrion would equally have precipitated.
And he had been right: Labaya was unbesmirched, blameless, even ethically pure in his behavior, thanks to Jebediah’s intervention. The trade war might have served to weaken Kerrion power, but it would not have destroyed it. And that was what Jebediah lived to behold: the kin scattered, the platforms sold off, all things Kerrion in others’ hands.
It would have been as good as accomplished now, if not for the girl’s wagging tongue. The problem facing him was complex: Parma had expressly forbidden him to expose the girl to the lower levels, where she must end to complete the coup. He would find another way. Had Jebediah not predicted that there would be no harm done by Selim Labaya’s arrogant insistence that he, Jebediah, be in the very Labayan flagship berthed in Lorelie? If anything went wrong, Labaya had threatened, Jebediah would be handed over to his employer’s wrath on the spot. But Jebediah had lain content, enjoying his dream dancer’s art undisturbed, while all things Kerrion proceeded as he had known they would, even to Marada’s insistence on piloting his own Hassid into Labayan space, and Ashera’s clumsy attempt at sabotage. So he had not had to huddle, cowering, in the cargo bay, with Marada Seleucus Kerrion mere bulkheads away. This had not surprised Jebediah: he had made the Kerrion kinship bond his lifelong study; he knew them better than they knew themselves.
All but Shebat, late of the planet Earth and suddenly Kerrion. All but Shebat Alexandra Kerrion, he corrected himself glumly, his mouth pursing, wriggling, at length emitting a cluckingsound.
“If she gets more than a smell of dream dancers, I am likely to lose her.” Old Parma’s worried voice reechoed in Jebediah’s mind. That had been a chancy moment, when Parma prognosticated the fate Jebediah had in mind for him. “I do not want to be the laughingstock of the Consortium, which would be only the first of many bitter blows should the worst occur,” the consul general had mused, looking right at Jebediah. For a moment, all his blood had frozen in his veins. For a moment, wild schemes of escape inundated him. For a moment, Jebediah had thought that Parma was telling him that all was known, that he was unmasked, found out, that old Labaya had settled for the lesser joy of flouting to Parma the duplicitous traitor in his midst, rather than waiting for the later, more exotic pleasure Jebediah had promised to provide.
But Jebediah had played one last card, as if nothing were amiss.
And the moment had passed, sans den
ouement.
He hoped.
For above all, he had learned never to underestimate Parma Kerrion, who had managed unfailingly to turn every misfortune to benefit, these twenty-two years that Jebediah had been surreptitiously strewing evils upon the consul general’s path.
There remained that most horrifying, but vanishingly small, possibility he had sensed in Parma’s presence: the old man knew! Then why did he not act? Kerrion vengeance was justly feared, as much for its languor as for its thoroughness.
Jebediah spat, and removed his feet from the desk. Sitting hunched over it, he massaged his temples. Caught between Parma Kerrion and Selim Labaya, a man might justifiably contemplate suicide, were he not of a consular house. Still, though the bond would never acknowledge him, Jebediah had acquired many of their traits. Or inherited them, he grimaced.
Let it be, then. Until Kerrion intelligencers came to hustle him off to one kind of justice, or Labayan ones to another, he would proceed as if neither possibility existed. He would do this which he had long waited to do, not out of fear, but out of choice.
Slowly, his fingers ceased their trembling. Soon he swallowed less often, and breathed more deeply.
The problem, then, came clearer. Only one worry claimed immediacy over all others: Shebat Kerrion must find the dream dancer in herself; or she must disappear without a trace.
Though the second alternative was the safer, the first had infinitely more spice. And he would be doing the girl a favor: the computer was hardly so grossly in error. It was Parma’s error for thinking that the power of his personality could overrule two red-lined aptitude prognosticators, both in her top three: Parma’s error; Jebediah’s delight; Selim’s fondest dream. All these come wrapped in the slight, attractive person of a girl barely past childhood; hardly more than a spear-carrying savage; slightly higher in intelligence than anyone in the whole of the data banks’ memory. And, last but not least, possessed of a haphazard collection of genetic predispositions so attractive to the Kerrion strain that no amount of rational thought would enable any Kerrion male to put her out of mind.
