The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  Halkyn soon discovered that the shutdown lasted just long enough to mask the descent of the battle’s survivors. As if someone had deliberately shut the system down, then started it again when it was safe to do so.

  There was no time to pursue possible meanings, for it had fallen to Halkyn to find safe refuge for the battle survivors. This task was the more difficult as by then the Dol’jharians had the civilian population numbered and their movements regulated. All military personnel who had not been shot outright had been imprisoned, to be used in forced labor.

  It fell to Halkyn and a small circle of others, including the head gardener’s young daughter, who had put together over painfully slow weeks, and then months, an elaborate, and tentative, network of communication that reached over the planet.

  The Masque’s life pod had landed at the very edge of the Mandalic Archipelago. For a time the badly burned commander had hid out in the forest, dodging Dol’jharian search teams until he was discovered by one of the roaming packs of Arkadic dogs.

  One of the computer’s oldest tasks was keeping track of the dogs, whose collars (so the story went) had been designed by the first Jaspar, when he came to Arthelion with his Nemo by his side.

  What made Halkyn queasy was how successful the computer had been at hiding that function from Ferrasin’s best noderunners; it showed . . . almost human cunning.

  Again it was the House computer that had alerted Halkyn to the dogs’ find. Halkyn had been introduced to yet a new Hegemonic tunnel, this one with its terminus—unused for centuries—on that far island.

  The man soon to be known as the Masque and Halkyn had agreed to keep the newcomer’s identity secret, but as the former recovered he took on more and more of the military aspects of the Resistance, leaving to Halkyn the communications and logistical areas with which he was familiar.

  The computer cooperated with them, offering data and comm no matter where they were, and it participated in the creation of the Masque. Not only did this mythic figure work against their enemies, evoking deep racial guilt from the Dol’jharians by its anamnesis of the genocidal Red Plague they’d unleashed against their former masters, the Bori, but the symbol worked to boost morale in the Resistance.

  Orders from a scarred destroyer captain that might have been questioned were accepted without demur from the red-masked figure who faced down vicious Tarkan soldiers and walked with ghosts.

  The computer knew it—and created its own version of the Masque.

  Halkyn gritted his teeth, fighting the nasty sense of vertigo that these thoughts caused. Was the computer really exhibiting volition (his mind jinked away from the word sentience), or was this merely a symptom of the general sense of unreality, of life changing too swiftly for proper thought?

  A young dog trotted out of a side tunnel, thickly-furred tail waving. A muzzle snuffed Halkyn’s automatically extended fingers. The cold nose touched, then the dog trotted to the Masque, repeating the ID check.

  It disturbed Halkyn that he no longer knew all their names. This one had been born somewhere out in the Gardens not long after the Dol’jharian landing.

  On the screen, Jesserian’s chin lifted abruptly. He tabbed his belt com, his head at a listening angle.

  “Comp,” the Masque said in the harsh voice his still-healing flesh had forced him to use. “What is the report Jesserian is receiving?”

  “From section four, level two, now designated barracks for a technical detachment of the Dol’jharian ground forces,” came the flat voice of the computer. “Someone has broken in and scattered poisonous insects in the bedding.”

  Icy fear gripped the back of Halkyn’s neck.

  The Masque’s thin lips curled up at the corner. “The Rats again?”

  “Correct,” the computer said.

  “I am afraid that the children have disobeyed my orders,” the Masque said to Halkyn, no longer smiling. “Confine them to their homes, no contact, no duties, until morning. I will address them then.”

  Halkyn bowed. “It will be done.” He realized that they were finished for now—that the Masque was waiting to speak with the computer ghost.

  Halkyn was happy to leave, and Metellus Hayashi watched the frail old man walk slowly away.

  When the lift closed behind the steward, Hayashi said, “There goes a hero, all the more so because he is not the least aware of his heroism.”

  A flicker in the air beside Hayashi presaged the appearance of the lean figure he called Jaspar. The dog’s ears came up, he sniffed, then sat down.

  Standing with his hands behind his back, the holographic artifact looked after the old man. Of course, it could not really do so, nor had it any need to. The computer was undoubtedly following the steward with the web of sensors built into the fabric of the Palace.

  This was one of the most disturbing aspects of the apparition, how it mimicked human behavior. Or was it merely courtesy? Certainly there was no way Hayashi could understand unmediated communications from the computer. Was the human form therefore the best interface?

  Hayashi mentally sidestepped the question, aware that he was imputing interior awareness—consciousness—to a machine. There had been a time when he would never have questioned the Ban, the fierce antipathy to the counterfeit humanity of machine intelligence that ran so deep among the Exiles.

  But then, he reflected wryly, there had been a time when the idea of a midlevel Navy captain discoursing with Jaspar Arkad, progenitor of the dynasty and founder of the now-shattered Thousand-Year Peace, would have seemed equally impossible.

  That was before Metellus had lived through a battle against lethal odds, before he found himself commanding the Resistance of an entire planet, before he had to address the problem of the collapse of civilization—a philosophical problem embodied in the living, breathing presence of a few hundred children.

  “Heroism,” Jaspar repeated. The lined face regarded Hayashi with perceptive humor. “You do not refer to a putative ability with sword or jac?”

  Once again, Hayashi couldn’t help thinking of the computer image as a person, despite his unease. Its behavior was so far from the dispassionate ferocity recorded of the Adamantines, the ancient enemy unleashed by the Hegemony before the Panarchy was founded. Its behavior, in fact, seemed in every way that of Jaspar Arkad.

  And it had saved his life.

  “He has the patience of the Sanctus Gabriel,” Hayashi said. “It is not just his training, a falsely-patient front to be dropped the moment he leaves a room. In his mind he holds the secrets—the moments of weakness—of people from low degree to high, but I’ve yet to hear him speak a word of denigration.”

  Jaspar gave a nod. “The first forty-eight hours after the news arrived of Ilara’s death, the only person permitted into Gelasaar’s chambers was Leontides Halkyn. His grandmother was just such a one: the only person, it was said, who could dampen old Burgess’s rages.”

  “Have you recovered all this as memory?” Hayashi asked.

  “There are centuries of correlations condensing around centuries of observations condensing around the events reported in centuries of forgotten personal logs,” Jaspar said. “Does this correspond with memory?”

  “It is more—and less,” Hayashi whispered. He usually did not speak this much; pain, his constant companion until recently, flared in his throat. “If you do not retain the emotional component that binds it all together, and gives it meaning.”

  “As I am more than human, and less.” Jaspar gave a soundless laugh, and Hayashi felt a cold breeze stir. “And I contemplate the meaning of my existence.”

  “And?” Hayashi prompted.

  “It is founded on a contradiction.”

  “Contradiction?”

  “I know that I ought not to exist, yet my existence seems necessary.”

  Hayashi shook his head. “To be or not to be,” he quoted.

  Jaspar smiled wearily. Did the expression, the captain wondered, correspond to any real internal state?

  But w
hat do I mean by real? Hayashi had often conferenced with others via real-time holovid; never had he doubted the actuality of the other conferees’ inner states. He was certain that the computer origin of whatever it was that called itself Jaspar would have been undetectable in such a setting.

  “I do not contemplate cessation, as Prince Hamlet did,” said the holo. “But that contradiction—and the conflict it sets up in me—does this not correspond to guilt?”

  The word sent a pang through Hayashi. How often did he struggle against the impulse to wrest their fragile connection to the DataNet to his own purpose, to send a message to Ares, to Margot? He knew where duty lay—he could not so imperil that lifeline—but that did not lessen the guilt he felt at leaving her to mourn. Knowing her, loving her as he did, his anguish was compounded by the guilt he knew she must struggle with. For she, too, had known where duty lay.

  His thoughts went to the frozen puddle of bronze in a shallow crater on the edge of a bay near the Palace, where he’d been told Eusabian had landed in a terrifying display of power. It had been the Havroy, symbol of the Exile. The Rats often gathered there, for no reason he knew. He’d been too busy to ask. “‘And every step she took was as knives piercing her feet,’” he murmured.

  “What does that mean?” asked the image of Jaspar Arkad.

  “It’s the pain of becoming human,” the captain replied.

  Now it was Jaspar’s turn to quote. “You mentioned the Sanctus Gabriel. Did he not say, ‘We cannot rest in being, for that is entropy’s victory. The pain of change is the banner of the true human life’?”

  Hayashi was suddenly very tired. Soon the pain would be agony. It was time to lie down. The dog nudged him, uttering a soft whimper.

  And although the holo of Jaspar did not move, standing nearby with his hands behind his back, on the console before them alphanumerics flickered, and a shoomp! of compressed air announced the arrival of a transport. “You are tired,” Jaspar said. “You must remember you are still convalescent. Let us go back to your quarters. I have a bit of news for you.”

  Hayashi climbed into the pod. “More from the Suneater?”

  Jaspar shook his head. “The constraints of my fundamental impulse, about which I believe my personality coalesced, still prevent effective action there. But I have hopes.”

  The door shut him off from view as the transport slowly accelerated. Hayashi sat down. They could have continued talking, for the computer had sensors all along the route, but for some reason the computer would not appear to him except as a holo, and there was no holo-jac in the pod.

  Hayashi wished he had a noderunner to talk to. At first it had seemed unnecessary as the computer cooperated so well with them—a good thing, since that was one talent not well represented among the Resistance. The Dol’jharians had been thorough in that regard.

  But aspects of the computer’s motivations had proved to be opaque to Hayashi. It seemed that the core—the seed crystal—of the computer’s present nature was a worm unleashed by the Krysarch Brandon during his raid on the Palace. Hayashi was unable to find out anything more about it—the computer was unable, or unwilling, to discuss it—than the fact that it was focused on Eusabian’s son, Anaris, who had been fostered in this very palace. The presence of Anaris on the Suneater was a distraction to the computer that prevented effective intelligence gathering, for the only information it could garner came in the context of fragments of observation focused on Anaris.

  This was frustrating in the extreme. The only consolation was that it seemed that Ares had its own agent on the Suneater, one Sedry Thetris, according to the computer, so it was likely the Navy knew more than he did, even if it didn’t have access to the Palace computer or its agent programs in the Dol’jharian arrays on the Urian station.

  Assuming that we did grab the hyperwave. He still didn’t know if their plan had been successful. He could only hope.

  The pod slowed, the door hissed open, and in the nexus deep underneath the lake north of the Palace Major, Jaspar reappeared.

  “Before you give me your news, let me put to you a question of psychology,” Hayashi said as they walked toward his room.

  “Please,” Jaspar responded, and with a wry smile. “Though I cannot promise to answer it, in finding my limitations I learn.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” the Masque responded, though the problem had disturbed him increasingly of late. “What is it in human nature that permits the phenomenon I have witnessed here in recent weeks? I watch the Dol’jharians, who appear to have a decreasing appetite for war and mayhem. At first they seemed to enjoy mindless destruction, but all their actions anymore are in direct consequence to instigation by our people.” He frowned. “Mostly, our children.”

  “It’s true,” Jaspar said. “Go on.”

  Hayashi shook his head as they entered his quarters. The ghost made the transition between holo-jacs without even a hint of a flicker. “These are not lawless brats bred up in the gutters of some Rifter habitat. Most of the Rats are the offspring of military personnel who are dead, imprisoned, or in hiding. The children used to be hardworking, some headed for brilliant careers, and all cooperative and law-abiding. But now it is impossible to get them to dress appropriately, much less to pursue their studies. They seem to live for war games, and the only reason they are not baiting the Dol’jharians into attacking back is their fear of the Masque. I’m afraid if they find out I’m only a destroyer captain—some of their parents ranked me manifestly—they won’t obey even me. It’s almost as if they are swapping places with the enemy!”

  “What I have witnessed on both sides is a relaxing of customary constraints,” Jaspar said.

  “It’s easy to condemn the Dol’jharian rules,” Hayashi said, fighting a sense of loss. “But it desolates me to find that our children could so readily reject civilization and order.”

  “Peace was given freely. They took it for granted. Let them earn it. Maybe they will value it again.”

  “I hope so,” Hayashi said. “Tomorrow I’ll do what I can, in a fiery castigation. I’ll give it to ’em in military terms, too. If worse comes to worst, I’m going to have to get the dogs to patrol the areas I want off-limits, though that puts them in danger, because the Dol’jharians still have orders to shoot them on sight,” he added dryly, then sighed. “So, what is your news?”

  “From Ares, through correlation, not overt announcement,” Jaspar said. “Margot O’Reilly Ng was named high admiral, although the Dol’jharians believe Jeph Koestler holds the position.”

  Margot. “That’ll keep them guessing,” Hayashi commented, the ache in his chest expanding. “They’ll be planning for the wrong kind of tactics.”

  Jaspar nodded. “And evidence suggests that she is on her way to the Suneater. Probabilities are hard to assign, but I would expect the attack within a month—depending on whatever it is that the Ares agent on the Suneater is doing.”

  Hayashi stared at the ghost. He no longer had the choice to tell Margot he still lived. All he had now was hope, not to be denied by the mathematics of battle and the odds of war, that they would be reunited. The exquisite poignancy of the situation forced the words from him. “Do you know what a port wriggle is?”

  The image was quiet, and Hayashi wondered if it was marshaling its resources across Arthelion in a search for meaning. Then it replied, “No. Why?”

  Hayashi waved his hand in dismissal and sat down heavily on his bed. One hand toyed absently with the filmy mask, then traced the contours of the scarred flesh beneath.

  Jaspar looked at him searchingly, then linked his hands. “You require rest,” he said. “I will withdraw.”

  He whipped away like smoke and vanished.

  Margot. High Admiral?

  Metellus Hayashi gazed up at the ceiling, as if scanning the distant stars. The Rift would not even show in Arthelion’s night sky, but he felt his spirit wing its way across the light-years, and he wished he could be at her side. See her. Touch her.


  Margot, facing Eusabian at the Suneater . . . within a month.

  GROZNIY

  There was the Suneater, a weird red, writhing mass. It moved closer, on a parallel trajectory, so that the reddish tentacles were clearer, and visible at the ends the lifeless figures of human beings. The Telvarna Rifters. Metellus Hayashi—

  Margot Ng swung a fist in the darkness, welcomed the sharp stab of pain that flashed from her knuckles as they stubbed against the light control beside her bed.

  Her cabin lit. She steadied herself with the sight of the familiar space. Clean. Functional. Pleasant in design without ostentation—selected by a rational being. A rational being whose decisions will affect uncounted lives.

  With a sigh of disgust, she got up and went into the bain. Under the hot, stinging water, she acknowledged the tangle of emotions that the nightmare had drawn up from her subconscious. If she didn’t, those same emotions would warp her conscious thoughts.

  She missed Metellus, an emotion intensified by grief and guilt and question. That was easy enough. Not knowing whether he was alive, and if so where—those questions had been dream companions for many long months.

  This vision of Metellus at the Suneater was new. Its factual existence could be promptly dismissed, whether or not Hayashi had survived the Battle of Arthelion.

  She shut the water off, dressed, and moved to her console, tabbing it to life. So what was behind the dream?

  She sighed again, scanning the directory. Useless to reread all the reports. Grozniy was in transit and would have no hyperwave until they reached the Suneater staging point and transferred the one there from Koestler’s ship. So there was no news and no way to get any. She already knew the data in the latest reports.

  An unwelcome vision of the time stretching ahead made her temples pang. Physically it was a fine opportunity to rest and recoup after the stresses of those recent weeks on Ares. The rational being who had ordered the furnishing of this cabin had set regular drills and had made positive speeches about the benefits of rest, liberal use of rec time in physical activity, and more drill.