A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  So he sat in the light for a time as the itching faded, his eyes closed and upturned to the brightness of the diffuser far above, enjoying the evolving patterns in the darkness behind his eyelids. A gentle breeze caressed his skin. Welcome at first, it strengthened steadily, and then Ivard realized that it was blowing, not across his body, but down on his head. A faint pungent scent, like herbs and smoke, tickled his nose.

  Then a subtle change in the sound of the open space around him snapped his eyes open, and he looked up into the hideously deformed face of some horrible alien creature, brown and deeply wrinkled with a rubbery sphincter gaping in a ghastly frown above dark brown eyes in deep sockets. . . .

  After a moment of utter terror his mind grasped the scene properly and the face resolved into that of an incredibly ancient human hanging upside down in front of him within a faintly shimmering bubble of energy. The wind flowed from the bubble, and the ancient smiled. Ivard stared back doubtfully, wishing he had his clothes on.

  “Ho there, Little Egg,” said the man, his voice somehow identifying his gender. “You are the one the Kelly are hatching, no?”

  As he spoke, the bubble slowly rotated, bringing him right side up. This man was a nuller, like Granny Chang, enclosed in a gee-bubble to insulate him from the acceleration of Ares. The geeplane drive of the bubble was generating the downdraft.

  “I’m Ivard,” he managed.

  “More or less, yes,” the nuller replied, laughing. “Rather more now, I’d say.”

  Ivard shook his head, confused. He sensed no sarcasm; the man was not laughing at him. His amusement tasted of approval. Ivard thought of Greywing, there on Desrien—she had approved, too.

  “The Kelly asked me to assist your hatching,” the nuller continued.

  “Hunh?” Ignoring his own nakedness, Ivard stood up, bringing his face more on a level with the nuller’s. The man’s body, wrapped in some brightly striped cloth, was shrunken, with stick-like arms and legs protruding from his garment, but his wrists and hands were almost full-sized, gnarled but strong-looking. His ankles, too, were larger than one would expect, and his feet quite strangely shaped, as though all of their strength was in the toes.

  “Breaking out of your shell, Little Egg. Don’t you feel it? The Kelly said you would about now.”

  Ivard stared at the man. Did the nuller really know what he had done within his body, guided by the Archon’s fire?

  The nuller merely waited, smiling.

  “Who are you?” Ivard demanded, heat prickling up his neck.

  “Ho! Six hundred fifty years I’ve seen, and the answer to that question would take as long. But nobody has the breath for that, so I answer to Tate Kaga, and other names as well, which you may discover. Or not.”

  Perhaps because of the man’s strangeness, Ivard felt comfortable with him. The nuller seemed to see him as a whole, without judging him. Like Eloatri.

  “Why do you call me Little Egg?”

  “It’s more descriptive than ‘Ivard,’ which is just a noise your parents dubbed you with when you had no choice in the matter. A name should tell your story, and you’ll have to find your real one for yourself, and soon, but for now it’s Little Egg.”

  Ivard said, “Ivard is a good name. It’s my favorite hero from the vids.”

  “Ah! You will wear that name well, and it will tell a new story.”

  Ivard grinned. “What story does Tah-tay Kah-gah tell?” he asked, saying the name carefully the first time.

  “Tate Kaga is my name, Makes the Wind, and that tells many stories. Two I’ll tell you now. A third you must discover. More you will find if you live long enough.”

  “Your bubble!” exclaimed Ivard. “It makes wind.”

  “Ho!” exclaimed the nuller, sounding surprised. “This egg is swift, but is it wise? What’s the second?”

  Ivard shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Wise it is. Few among my fellow Douloi would admit their ignorance so readily.” The nuller cackled loudly. “Beans!”

  “Beans?”

  Tate Kaga pursed his lips and made a rude, wet noise. “Beans. They make me fart. And I love ’em.”

  Ivard laughed.

  Tate Kaga laughed, too, and his bubble spun around, end over end, making Ivard dizzy. “Only damned physical pleasure left to me after nearly seven hundred years—that and a good dump, but that name’d tell a different story, and not mine, thank you very much. I leave that to my fellow Douloi.”

  Ivard laughed harder, remembering some of the nicks he’d seen so far on Ares. When he finally caught his breath he asked, “And what’s the third?”

  Tate Kaga stopped smiling, and his bubble halted its rotation, leaving him upside down. “That you must discover,” he repeated. His bubble began to accelerate upward. “Come visit me.”

  Ivard stared up as Tate Kaga’s gee-bubble disappeared into the soft dazzle of the diffuser, then a wave of dizziness warned him of his depleted state and he walked back into the suite.

  Ivard dialed some nourishing food and ate it almost without noticing the taste. As soon as he had eaten, he dropped onto his bed and closed his eyes.

  Ivard no longer dreamed alone. Bypassing the long necklace of interconnected memories that the Kelly Archon’s genome had bequeathed him, he sank into more familiar dreamscapes, pursued by the whispering voices he now knew were the Eya’a.

  One-who-hears-three has amended herself?

  I’m a he, Ivard corrected sleepily, looking for a likely dream pattern to leap into. He was learning how to control his dreaming, but sometimes it didn’t work. He hated some of the things he saw sometimes. . . .

  Then a distinctive voice came in, cool and soft-toned: Vi’ya. Don’t try, Firehead. They’ll never get it straight. Her amusement was like a thin stream of golden light.

  How come I can hear you like this? Ivard asked. I’m not a tempath. And you’re all the way up in the Cap. As he sent the thought, memory flickered: Vi’ya and Lokri, locked together in rage-fueled passion.

  Perhaps she could catch his words, but—relief—not his images. She returned the answer he’d already figured out: Your connection with the Kelly and mine with the Eya’a seems to have brought us into contact this way. And the Eya’a are impatient for you to add your focus to a project of theirs—but not yet. Not until you are stronger.

  What is it?

  We have to locate the Heart of Kronos. But do not think about it now, and do not, ever, discuss it with anyone else. Sleep. Regain your strength. When you awaken, Jaim will visit you. We will talk about this later.

  Ivard sent his wordless compliance, and Vi’ya’s presence vanished. But behind his obedience, somewhat to his surprise, an obdurate bit of self complained: But Tate Kaga is a nick. Why that came to mind he didn’t really know. Then memory supplied an acid comment from Greywing: You can’t trust someone just because they talk nice, but the blue fire added its weight of experience with the observation that the ancient nuller tasted good.

  Oh, shut up, all of you. Interior silence fell, but the good feeling he’d gotten from Tate Kaga lingered, and Ivard slid gratefully into a pleasant memory-dream of the good days when Greywing was alive, and Markham, and they were all together on board the Telvarna, and free.

  o0o

  “Two duels?”

  Vannis turned away from her mirror and looked down at the woman lying across her bed.

  The corners of Besthan’s smile deepened sardonically. “You did not know, child? Where have you been hiding?”

  Vannis laughed. “I was sleeping off an illness.” She would not admit to anyone that she had used what Srivashti’s accursed Shiidra tea had done to her as an excuse to wait for a repeat visit from Brandon vlith-Arkad.

  “Were I coarse-minded,” Besthan said in that same dry tone, “and were we on home ground, I would recommend a stroll through the Whispering Gallery some evening.”

  “I’ll be spending days making amends to those I offended yesterday,” Vannis said with a sigh
.

  “You shouldn’t have had your maid tell them you were still ill,” came the imperturbable answer.

  “Because no one believed it.” Vannis still felt enervated, which made her petulant. And being able to freely vent her emotions was a rare enough luxury to be cherished. “I should have said I was in bed with somebody’s cook. Everyone would have believed that, because then they could despise me for it.”

  Besthan laughed. “There is no getting away from Arthelion’s understood rules.”

  “Which are binding us ever more tightly now that Arthelion is out of reach. The truth is disgusting enough. Srivashti gave me some Shiidran hell-brew. Which, of course, he identified after I’d drunk it. Would you want the medtechs spreading that all over—even if they have a remedy, which they probably don’t?”

  Besthan wrinkled her nose. “No. No one needs a reputation for deviance at this moment.”

  Vannis closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Srivashti probably hoped I’d do just that.”

  “What does he want?”

  Vannis sighed. “On the surface, he wants to know what the Navy attacked Arthelion for. And of course he wants, as everyone does, to find out how and why Brandon survived the bombing of his Enkainion. More than that I can’t yet guess.”

  Besthan considered a mote in the air, one thin hand rubbing gently at her lower belly. Vannis watched, distracted by the gestures. She’d grown up loving Besthan as the “aunt” her own blood relations never had been, but she did not really understand the woman. Why, for instance, had she suddenly decided to birth an heir at seventy years of age—and insist on incubating it herself?

  That was risky enough, even with the best medical care, but the sudden onslaught of Eusabian’s Rifters had forced Besthan, spouse, and family to flee their home in the only ship left operational after the initial attack, an old merchant vessel with only the barest medtech onboard. She’s lucky she made it to Ares in time. Vannis felt a chill, knowing that neither Besthan nor the infant would have survived a natural childbirth.

  “I miss your mother,” Besthan said. “Has the High Phanist said aught of her?”

  “No, and I haven’t asked. People disappear on Desrien all the time—and she might not have even used her real name.”

  “Fifteen years is a long time for a religious pilgrimage, especially for a woman who had no religion,” Besthan mused.

  Vannis signified assent with an airy gesture. She had made her peace with the truth, that the only one she’d loved among her many powerful relatives had abandoned her. “I know what to do. I’ll give an intimate breakfast. For those I supposedly snubbed yesterday.”

  Besthan nodded, rising to her feet. Then she leaned against the bed table, pressing her hand against her middle. “Childbirth!” she muttered, so low Vannis had to strain to hear her. “But we are alive, at least. As soon as I can stand up long enough to smile at everyone I must invite, I will hold the Name Day.” She smiled. “Speaking of. Time for me to visit the little heir.”

  “Tell me as soon as you decide. I’ll help any way I can.” Vannis kissed her and saw her to the door. And it is time for me, she vowed, to go visit the great heir.

  o0o

  Sleeplessness through Ares’ artificial night did not arise from just duty, passion, or ambition.

  Now that the repairs on the Grozniy were progressing as well as could be expected, with those crewmembers likeliest to tongue-wag about the real goal of the slaughter at Arthelion securely sequestered by the busywork of which the Navy had a copious supply even in peacetime, Margot Ng had forced herself to withdraw.

  After their arrival, the sight of their captain had been heartening, as she knew from her own days rising through the chain of command. But there was a point at which her constant presence would shift from benevolent encouragement to watchful hovering, and she had been careful not to reach it.

  The result? Sleepless nights under the weight of the lives she had spent at Arthelion.

  Thus, after the third dream one night of her beloved Metellus Hayashi evaporating with nightmare slowness on the bridge of the skip-missiled Falcomare , she gave up sleep-not-sleep, dressed, and made her way to the Situation Room.

  The guard saluted and triggered the door open for her. She took in the strange dichotomy of light and darkness now the heart of Ares.

  As always, the floor of the Situation Room knew nothing of the ancient diurnal rhythm of its makers. Here was always and only the high noon of artificial light and the exhilarating tension of well-trained minds pitted against the straightforward constraints of space-time and the devious designs of the enemy.

  But above this bright activity, wrapped in a gloomy darkness born of cunning optics, hung a misty, glittering hologram of the Thousand Suns, responding with ceaseless ripples of change to the data flowing from the consoles beneath. The heavy inversion of it, dark over light, oppressed her. It was too much like the regret that gnawed at her.

  She stilled, observed by the officers and analysts at their consoles, as they took in the Hero of the Battle of Arthelion. Some of them had seen enough action to correctly identify the dark circles under her eyes and the tension in her shoulders for what it was. The younger ones, still longing for glory, sighed inwardly and returned to their screens as Ng crossed to a small door guarded by two Marines. After the brief flicker of a retinal scan, they stepped aside and the door slid open. There against a wall, in bizarre contrast to the clean geometry of humankind’s machinery, crouched the red-glowing form of the Urian hyperwave, its alien lines looking half-melted, almost organic.

  Ng clasped her hands tightly behind her back. She wouldn’t willingly touch it again following her first encounter with it in the hangar bay of the battered Grozniy after the battle. She clenched her jaw against the ache of memory: the warmth of firm human flesh somehow incarnate in a machine that knew nothing of humanity. She had not expected this evocation of Metellus and their last night together before he was lost in the fog of war—at her command.

  Margot Ng backed away, seeking the bustle of the Situation Room as an anodyne. She wandered from console to console, looking over the shoulders of various analysts, asking questions from time to time to gather a sense of the data flowing from the hyperwave that was slowly building a picture of Dol’jhar’s strategy. Most of the traffic was coded and still indecipherable, but enough was en clair, the rantings and boastings of Dol’jhar’s Rifter allies, to build a clear picture of their movements, and the message headers of the coded communications were yielding to cryptanalysis to generate even more information.

  A number of small analysis bays opened off the Situation Room, each holding a single secured console. In one such, a knot of personnel whose unlikely composition underscored the overturning of centuries of social order clustered tight-shouldered around a console: young Naval officers and civilian analysts, plus the diminutive Rifter tech the Marines had captured onboard the Rifter destroyer Deathstorm along with its hyperwave. She had been crucial to understanding the operation of the Urian comtech.

  Aziza. That was the Rifter’s name.

  What could they find so fascinating? Ng debated asking when one of the younger techs let loose a snigger. The sound was so unexpected in this atmosphere of quiet tension that she had to find the source. Surely these young officers were not risking their careers watching a sexchip in the midst of the most critical area on Ares!

  As she entered the bay proper, coming within the influence of its acoustic dampers, the noise of the Situation Room diminished, allowing her to hear the panting moans coming from the console.

  One of the officers, a lieutenant, looked up and horror suffused her when she recognized Ng. She jerked to attention. “Officer on deck!”

  The other officers sprang to attention, the horror spreading like a subliminal pulse, while the two civilian analysts looked up in mild confusion. Only the Rifter paid no attention, grinning at the action on the screen.

  Ng stalked around to the screen side of the console,
the young officers melting out of her path. She looked at the screen. It was a sexchip. Anger flared, hot as the plasma she too often saw consuming Metellus in the long watches of the night. But then she saw the overlay in one corner of the screen.

  REAL-TIME.

  “What is this?”

  “Sir,” replied Lieutenant Abrayan, knowing that as senior officer of the group, she must assume responsibility. She watched Ng take in her name tag as she said, “It’s a real-time feed from two Rifter ships, about five hundred light-years apart.”

  The little Rifter Aziza chuckled, a light, infectious sound. “It’s a first, Captain.”

  Ng looked back at the screen, which was split into two windows. In one a man, in the other a woman. Both were obviously in quarter-gee, and both were clad from head to foot in a slick, formfitting dyplast bodysuit. Clutching a life-size doll made of the same substance, each writhed in the throes of extreme sexual excitement.

  “They’re wearing telegasms,” said one of the civilian analysts helpfully, his round face shining with sweat.

  “Ohh, lower, ahh, in there, ohh!” said the woman on-screen. Ng noticed that her doll was rather more formidably endowed than her distant partner.

  “The gasms transmit the sensations of the simulacra to the other partner,” said the other analyst. He had puffy, badly chapped lips in a long, bony face.

  “The captain knows what a gasm is, nullwit,” snapped the newly-minted lieutenant at Abrayan’s right.

  “Unnh! Unnnh! Unnnnh!” said the male Rifter on the console. The dyplast doll squeaked furiously in his impassioned grip.

  Abrayan groaned inwardly, wondering how it could get any worse as the poor blit realized what he’d implied and got that jac-up-your-crack bulge-eyed look, blushing furiously.

  Ng’s anger collapsed abruptly at the piteous expression on the young officer’s face. His Naval pride had tripped him up. Let him wriggle for a while, it’ll do him good.

  “It’s a first,” Aziza repeated, snickering again.