by Janet Morris
“Marada, I am sorry about the girl. She was like a daughter to me.”
“Most exactly: spare me your parental protection, lest it pluck me from life.”
And he had stormed out. It had been but a harbinger of the gale that blew shortly thereafter, when Marada all but accused Selim Labaya of what was an unthinkable crime, causing Parma to shout him down, at which time Marada threw caution to the wind and raked the Labaya/Kerrion alliance over the coals for the manner in which they were even now forcing Orrefors space to come crawling, poke-ribbed, penurious, and desperate, begging to be bought out for a pittance.
And there had been the final stumble, after two days abed, when Selim Labaya had solicitously attended him on a walk through Shechem’s gardens, whose audacious expanse was full of flying things that shit whitely on a man’s shoulder or dived whirring at a man’s face or crawled delicately over a man’s hands when he sat on a bench.
Old Selim’s jowls had flapped almost audibly when a feathered dive-bomber landed a wet strike in Parma’s hair.
This, and the unctuous false-fellowship which proclaimed that he, Labaya, had not been fooled by Parma’s feigned illness, irritated Parma Kerrion. He had been ill, short of breath and weak; he was possibly still ill, to have succumbed so unknowingly to his own emotion.
He had voiced Marada’s supposition that there had been a Labayan hand in the disappearance of his adopted heir. And Labaya had laughed, saying:
“The decoy? Surely you would not have set her up if you did not expect her to be shot down. Having trouble with your constituency, I must assume? Well, if my sources are correct, which I might boast they are ninety-nine percent of the time, you will have no trouble retaining your elected status. But should you actually be planning anything more precipitous than a puppet vote of confidence, inform me. I can modestly say I could swing you half a hundred consular votes.”
Such a thing would never have come under discussion if Parma had been feeling himself. The keen glint in Labaya’s ice eyes said how interested he was in Parma’s reaction.
To close the matter, Parma said softly: “I have long been wanting to ask you how you came to bear a handicapped child in this day and age.” The other consul general reacted as if he had been slapped. Parma, feigning not to notice, continued:
“The matter has been much in my mind, both because of the rumors of the similarity between how you spent your early years and how Marada is spending his; and also because, like any father, I am concerned that my grandchild be hale and straight of limb.” Not pausing even for breath, though the other man sat heavily and with obvious effort sought to repair his shattered aplomb, Parma warned, “Should any child of their union be so damaged as to be unfit to inherit, then that child will not inherit so much as one dull coin. So, lest we risk having a stranger’s profile on our money, we had better stop being so polite and start being more practical.”
It had been a terribly risky card to play. Labaya’s intelligence might have secured him the new order of Kerrion succession; it might not. Making a tacit admission that Marada was once more in line to inherit a controlling interest of Kerrion stock put Parma’s own person in jeopardy, however the elections came out. Whether or not Parma won the Consortium elective office his family had monopolized for more than two centuries, Parma’s inheritor would still be able to control the general policy of Kerrion space. But it would be a great loss of face to cede the seat. Parma hoped it was great enough to quiet whatever stirrings of impatience Labaya might feel toward assuring that his daughter’s husband (no matter how despised) would wield the Kerrion power.
Although Parma might face a fight to win the election, any younger member of his family would face a defeat. So he played with Labaya, as he did everlastingly with Ashera, the dire game of personal power. Either one could probably succeed in having him assassinated: the only protection was to convince them that they dare not try, or be disadvantaged themselves by his death.
All had seemed to have worked out well enough, until Spry had overstepped his authority and opened his mouth to Selim Labaya at slipside.
Parma had had no inkling that such a thing might happen, had only Marada’s obscure assessment of the man’s character to prepare him.
As farewells came around to him, who had been a guest so long in Labaya’s zoological paradise, the pilot said flatly: “I cannot say I have enjoyed being constantly pried for information and plied with drink and approached with increasingly higher offers to become an agent in your pay. My guild-oath precludes such things, would preclude them even if my self-respect did not. And as for Shebat Kerrion, if I had her, the last thing I would do is sell her to you.”
And with that, amid Selim Labaya’s increasingly heated demands for an apology, the pilot strode down the ramp and ducked into the ship, leaving Parma to make what amends he might.
Parma Kerrion cleared his throat, twice, softly, absently studying the crown of Spry’s ash-blond head, just visible around the acceleration headrest.
“Yes, sir?” said the pilot. “I’m done with the tricky stuff. Talk all you want. The Bucephalus has things well in hand.” Spry leaned back from his controls, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips.
“You are sure that you no longer need silence in which to work—that nothing will be disturbed should we have a chat? I would hate to be eternally lost in this pea-soup because I distracted you.”
“Why, no, sir. All’s well.”
“Then, how dare you speak so to a consul general? What misguided sense of propriety so impelled you to risk you-know-not-what? Did you think you were protecting me? If so, you were wrong. If you ever have another landfall, which you may not, and should speak out of turn even once more, I will report you to your guild and have your license pulled. You will never pilot again!”
“Yes, sir.” The pale face went no paler. The boyish brow did not furrow. Spry merely regarded Parma attentively.
“Yes, sir? So simply? It will not feel so simple when I pull your landing papers. How would you like to spend the remainder of your tenure aboard ship, never setting foot on a platform?”
“I would not like it, sir.”
“But you could live with it, is that it? Well, do not be so sure.”
Still the pilot graced him with his space-eyed glance, saying gravely: “I am not sure of anything, sir. And as for what I did back there, I do not regret it.”
There was a long silence, at the end of which Parma Kerrion began to laugh.
Then the laughter stopped, abruptly. Parma said: “You might answer a question for me: why is no one willing to put the matter of Shebat aside?”
“Possibly, because there is no positive proof, no body. The Marada is, or was, as capable a ship as the art allows—”
“I know that. I pay the bills.”
“Well, that enters an element of doubt: even if Shebat were twice the novice she seemed, the Marada had the power and the knowledge to bring them out, somewhere.” Spry felt his peril; also, a certain degree of regret: he had the missing piece Parma Kerrion was seeking; it was a case full of low-denominational scrip that had bought sanctuary for girl and ship alike. Spry had come to respect the consul general, though he would have preferred not to.
“So, you hold to the opinion that she did take the ship?”
Carefully: “What else?”
“I am asking you, who display so many intelligencers’ skills that I have begun to think you missed your calling.” The old man rubbed his brow, which shone dully.
“If the light is bothering you, sir. . . ?” Before his passenger could answer. Spry closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them, they were bathed in the colored luminescences of the infrared and apparent-light star maps, the peak-reading indicators, and the green running-lights. Otherwise, the control room was in total darkness, except over the emergency exits over their heads where ruddy arrows shone. Spry’s shoulders came down and his jaws unclenched.
“I asked a question,” came out of the dark on his
right, where a man much his senior rested, divested of years by the wash of indicator-spill, which ran along his skin catching highlights, erasing decades with its warm red-tinted glow.
“I gave you an answer. The only other one is Marada’s, who may be right since he is living in with your enemy.” Why did I say that? Caution . . . No, not you, Bucephalus!
“Speaking of Marada, how good a pilot is he?”
“Good. He might have been exceptional. He still could be, if he took the guild and his oath seriously.” Parma Kerrion’s eyes seemed black and flat in his rejuvenated face; and wise. Spry felt his palms begin to weep.
“Is that the quarrel between you?”
“A part of it. I would prefer not to discuss our differences. There are some things that are eternal.” He leaned forward and slapped a green oblong, though he had not needed to: Bucephalus complained softly that this was so. Spry had only a brief word to spare for the ship, which sensed his agitation and was running systems checks, seeking to calm him. In the semidark, all the boards flared and subsided in sequence: left to right— yellow—blue—red—blue—yellow—green.
“You do not approve of us, do you?” came Parma’s sibilance.
“That is not germane.”
“So? It would have been excruciatingly pertinent, if it so colored your thinking as to make you receptive to Labayan advances. I am not unaware of that, or ungrateful.”
“Belay your gratitude. You have contracted for a modicum of loyalty along with my services. To the extent that my guild oath demands it, I am a good Kerrion minion.”
“But no more.”
“No, no more. I rather liked that little planet girl.” Too obvious? Spry held his breath, after the words had escaped. Why was he taking these chances? If he had told the old man what he needed to know about Jebediah, the risk would be no greater.
“So did I,” said Parma bleakly.
The two subsided into silence. Spry needed to give his full attention to the Bucephalus, who was only now beginning to recover from the lack of confidence that had accompanied the ship’s selective loss of memory and its attendant overhaul. It had hurt Spry more than anything he had had to do in this heinous interlude; more than the entire Shebat Kerrion affair. It had hurt him because he could not truly justify the cost to the Bucephalus, an innocent who should not have had to pay Spry’s bill, especially when the item purchased was an increment of human freedom for a human entity, and nothing to do with the cruiser except that it had been victimized by the one human from whom it had the right to expect protection, even love. Spry loved Bucephalus, as a pilot must love his cruiser. He loved the strength of him, a command cruiser’s strength; the quietude of his power; the discerning logicality that abided within. To have betrayed the Bucephalus’s trust in him was unthinkable. Having done so, for whatever cause, he had been busy making reparations rather than thinking about it. Only the fact that he had so recently taken over the ship from his retiring predecessor had allowed him that latitude: if he had had the Bucephalus from blank infancy, he never would have been able to do it; it would have been like bulk-erasing himself. But the retiring pilot’s teary-eyed unwillingness to put a part of himself to death, Spry’s empathetic, half-drunken boast that he could ship the Bucephalus without an individuality-wipe, plus Bucephalus’s disconcerting conception of himself as a male, had not allowed Spry to keep his distance emotionally. He had known when he ordered the Bucephalus to discard portions of its memory that Spry himself would never be able to forget that he had done so. He had raced against time, putting his plan into operation as quickly as possible, knowing that soon enough he would sorrow over what he had done, but that if he waited even a few days longer, he would not be able to act at all. So he had bought himself endless grief and reparations; every hesitancy or sign of bemusement in the Bucephalus struck him to the quick. Neverendingly, he was searching ways to rebuild the cruiser’s self-esteem; neverendingly, he shored it up with bricks stolen from his own wall. It might have been this that led him to speak carelessly to Parma Kerrion about Labayan “enemies” and his own fondness for Shebat. Should things go amiss, what he had done to the Bucephalus would have been done to no purpose. That, he could not suffer to occur.
What Parma could not suffer to occur was even then in progress.
Chapter Eight
A raffish young man in consular blacks strode through the luridly lit maze of seventh-level street, scattering the inebriated and infirm who whined and chanted in dim rubescent alleys. Once a hand dared to reach out toward him, clutching. Even as he spat upon it, he was past. Nothing: a gnarled hand, protruding from a crusty sleeve.
No other challenged his command of the street, though low-livers spilled onto it from adjacent bars. The lights leered, polychrome, but the man looked neither right nor left, only into the clear space about him. Behind his back, he heard a lorry braking in the drop-shaft, garbled shouts and pounding feet as pedestrians raced to hail it.
A woman screamed, ahead and off to his right, across an intersection. As he turned onto that narrow side street, a citrine sign illumined her at pulse-beat intervals, struggling beneath a shapeless form. He walked on, unconcerned.
The thwack of his boot heels changed pitch as he quit the street, changed rhythm as he descended a short flight into a basement court.
He knocked, his gloved fist aurora’d in a steady rufous glow pierced by distant citrine flashes.
A hum and a scarlet blink from the door told him he was being scanned.
He pulled at the fingers of one gloved hand with the other in an unconscious, measured fashion. As he was peeling the body of the black glove from his hand, the door was opened by a slight youth in tattered livery carefully matched to the peeling somber walls so exposed.
The youth smiled: the man had been here before; tipped well. He stepped aside, with bowed head and murmured welcome ushering the man within.
“Busy night?” the man guessed, handing the youth his gloves and cloak, inclining his head slightly to the left, wherefrom muted revelry wisped around a blind corner.
“Yes, sir,” affirmed the youth, flattered to be spoken to by the sorrel-haired man. His hands moved deftly over the elegant cloak, feeling the raised pattern of its blazon. “Have the dream of your heart, sir,” he well-wished the client, who laid a softly intimate glance on him.
“Thank you. I am sure I will,” said the man with a hieratic smile, before striding around the corner beyond the doorkeeper’s view. From the opposite direction, somewhere down the scabrous hall in the dancers’ quarters, a querulous voice called the boy’s name. With a last glance after the uniformed man, the doorkeeper hung the cloak in his coatroom, and went to see what Harmony wanted.
Rounding the blind corner was like stepping into a dream: it was meant to be, but that did not lessen the effect of star-stippled eternity-walls receding forever on his right and left; of misty, churning ceilings that cushioned perspective; of yielding, hand-deep carpet which might have been that very opalescent mist come to ground.
At the corridor’s end, bathed in overhead amber light that spilled in a perfect circle, was the concierge at her rostrum, stark and black as the obsidian console wrapping her round.
Her white eyeballs gleamed like inset shells. Bright teeth behind purple lips sparkled as she smiled in recognition. Silver nails paved with gems flashed as she cued her console. “Who writes the book of dreams?” she murmured, putting new meaning into an old formula, lowering her head so that each recurled hair glistened.
“To each his own,” responded the man.
“Who dreams with the dreamer?”
“Aba Cronin.”
Her serpentine fingers danced amid the lighted studs. “How long will the dreaming last?”
No answer. The concierge looked up. “How long—?”
The man reached out his hand and when he had withdrawn it, a large denominational coin lay there. “The night.”
The woman communed with her console. Computation and schedu
le duly entered and confirmed, she touched a light. “Number fourteen,” she directed him, offering a key.
“Enter” flashed greenly on the featureless-seeming wall to her left. A section of that wall drew back.
“Your change, sir!”
“Keep it,” came the low, sonorous voice from the man’s broad, retreating back.
Before him was the source of the sounds he had been hearing: a common room built of crystalline shadows and filled with miasmic smoke. He went on by without an inward glance, slipped past two engrossed couples seemingly leaning on empty, star-strewn space without attracting their notice.
One more move in the maze, and he was among the dreamers and their dancers, secreted behind closed cubicles’ doors. When he found the door he sought, he inserted the thin, single-use key in a slit below the number fourteen glowing steadily in LEDs. The door clicked, opened to reveal a twice man-length cubicle containing a circular, dusky recess that seemed to hover in deepest, glittering space. He stepped out onto the apparent nothingness, and behind his back the door sighed shut.
The dream dancer rose up like a phantom from the void beyond the recess, and came to meet him, feet sure on the star-strewn floor. Crystal bangles on her ankles tinkled with each step, more about her wrists chiming a counter-rhythm. She was clad from throat to toe in a netherworld net sparkling with starlight so that when she moved against the eternity-walls she was difficult to see—a void-siren hovering in deepest space with only its face to mark it. The face was pale, amid a crown of snaking pearled braids so tightly bound up that her eyes seemed to slant slightly. Gray and cavernous, dwarfing all artful decoration, the eyes of Shebat Kerrion held his.
Without breaking stride, the whole starred extent of her shivered. Fine nostrils flared, shuddered. A tongue darted out and wet pouting lips. Then he took a step to meet her.
She took his hands in her void-clothed ones, and he felt the silken net slither against his palms. “Welcome, dreamer. Who seeks the dream of his heart?”
