In the Hall of the Martian King

by John Barnes

  Accepting the peace offer, Dujuv sipped his wine and said, “Well, it happens every few months. I’m not sure why it made the news this time. I had a real good record at the PSA. I guess it’s not too immodest—more just the truth—to say that I’m probably the best player around who isn’t in school or signed to a pro team. So every time a minor league team gets into trouble and the head coach is trying to keep his job, they use some of their draft points and claim they’re going to get me; because usually if you’re trying to turn a team around in a hurry, and you can only afford one real change, a young hotshot goalie is what you want. I’m not sure why this time it made all the vid and viv sports channels; usually it’s just a little flattering attention in the low-priority ‘other news’ category.”

  “You may have more friends than you think,” Sibroillo said. “You seem to like your present job, but there are those who would say that when people are good at one job and magnificent at another, they shouldn’t be allowed to be merely good. And therefore some busybody may have planted the story—perhaps Venus National, since they’re the ones trying to draft you.”

  “Could be,” Dujuv said. “And there are times when my mood tips toward just going and doing it.”

  The conversation wandered off into Disciplines technique, the new tactics in Maniples that had made Pabrino Prudent-Reckoner (a crewie pizo and tove of Jak’s and Dujuv’s) the youngest Greater Master in more than a century, what the perfect all-night drunk required, why the Uranus System moons remained quiet backwaters compared to everywhere else (Sib thought it was that their culture was programmed to fail, Dujuv thought it was caused by poverty, and Kawib and Jak thought it was important to get the two of them off the subject).

  When they were very drunk, Sib started on the subject of adolescent pranks for which he had had to pay bribes to keep Jak out of jail. “Going climbing in the light shaft got the most press and might have been the most impressive,” Sib said, “but it was relatively cheap. And the ventures into commercial pornography and intellectual piracy were almost amusing. The one that cost me plenty, and most of it spent keeping Jak’s name from getting into the media so that there wouldn’t be angry mobs looking for him, was that nasty trick with the Pertrans cars.”

  “I told you not to do that one, old tove,” Dujuv said.

  “I know,” Jak said.

  “I haven’t heard this story,” Kawib said, slurring his words; he seemed pretty drunk.

  Sib said, “Not much to tell—”

  “—but if we make Jak tell it, he’ll be much more embarrassed.”

  “Thanks so much, Duj.”

  “What’re toves for, old tove?”

  “Am I gonna get this story?” Kawib demanded.

  “I guess so,” Jak said, pouring another glass he didn’t need (the room was already slowly rotating) as a way of delaying it just a few more seconds. “It was pretty simple, really. I hacked into the Pertrans message control database, the thing that tells a public Pertrans car what to say to you. The Pertrans car confirms your ID so it knows who to bill, and that also means that it knows everything else about you. So it knows which people have a fear of enclosed spaces, or which ones are bothered by the fact that those cars go at up to three thousand kilometers per hour, and so on, and it has extra-reassuring messages for them, for any time acceleration goes above point seven g for example. I just programmed it so that every so often instead of saying, ‘This high acceleration is routine,’ it would crank the volume way up and scream, ‘The line broke! We’re all going to die!’ Now if those poor gweetzes thought about it for a moment they’d know that if a linducer track breaks or depowers, all that happens is you glide to a stop, and anyway they never break—”

  Dujuv shook his head. “Phobias aren’t rational, and you were scaring the piss out of people who already have more than enough fear in their lives. Not adventurous, not funny, that’s why I bowed out.”

  “And that’s why I thought about adopting Dujuv,” Sib added. “And having you neutered and keeping you as a pet. But there is a funny part coming. Tell Kawib why you got into trouble—it wasn’t merely because you frightened some unfortunate people so badly that some of them had to have medical treatment.”

  Jak groaned. “Oh, all right, it was mean. But the other thing was really stupid, and that’s much more embarrassing.”

  “Really?” Dujuv asked.

  “Really what?”

  “You’re really more embarrassed about having been stupid than you are about having been mean?”

  “Well, yeah. Toktru masen.”

  “My fault, I suppose,” Sib said. “I raised him that way. Let’s not let him wriggle out of telling the story.”

  “Toktru.”

  Seeing no way to avoid it, Jak explained, “So, I was very involved with hacking at that time, loved it more than any other part of tradecraft class, spent a lot of my spare time for a couple of months getting good at it. And there happened to be this Dean of Students who I hated very much.”

  “Dean Caccitepe,” Dujuv filled in. “Philto Caccitepe. You may know the name—”

  “The head of staff for Hive Intel’s counterintelligence unit? Yes, any security heet has heard of him,” Kawib said, and began to giggle, partly from seeing where this was going and mainly because he was exquisitely, excruciatingly drunk, even more so than the rest of them. “Oh, Nakasen’s furry pink bottom, Jak, don’t tell me you hacked into his home number.”

  “Nothing that painless. I found a number associated with his account that wasn’t marked for any purpose—”

  “And even though Genius Boy here knew that Caccitepe was involved in Hive Intel—” Dujuv added.

  “Oh, Nakasen, because I knew. You know, that spirit of you’re going to commit a crime and get caught, why litter or shoplift or park illegally when you can get caught raping the president’s pets in a secret weapons plant on top of a bag of xleeth? You know, that go-for-the-record spirit. So I took this number, which I knew must be something, but did not realize was the hotline for urgent counterintelligence calls, and I put it into a special message that played in that Pertrans message database. If it gave anybody the ‘We’re going to die!’ message, one minute later it would say, ‘This joke was brought to you by the Pertrans company to brighten your day. If you’d like to thank or compliment us, or if you’re a humorless crybaby sissy who wants to complain, please call …’ and gave them that number.

  “Dean Caccitepe was sub-impressed and infra-thrilled. Especially because he had five ordinary law-abiding citizens in jail for calling him on a high-security line and making threats—and thirty agents investigating—before they got hold of someone coherent enough to tell them what had happened, and checked the database, and figured it out.”

  “It cost a small fortune,” Sib said. “Only a small one because the Dean and I are old friends and colleagues. As for what consequences it might have for Jak … hmm. Well, as long as I’m alive, and able to keep an eye on things, limited consequences. But if I die before the Dean does, Jak, you could do worse than to defect.”

  “I thought you believed in absolute loyalty,” Dujuv said. It came out as “Athaw yabeleeved nabsloo loytee,” but after a moment, everyone pieced it together. He pulled himself up straighter said, “Shouldn’t Jak ‘follow his sword’?”

  “Absolutely. For as long as it makes sense. Once your employer has decided to kill you or throw your life away, well, that’s when you follow your sword over the wall and down the street to find another employer—and be just as loyal to that one. A smart aristo won’t throw a good merc or op away—and a smart merc or op won’t make himself ripe for throwing away.”

  “Even though I do feel sorry for those poor people that Jak did that to—especially for them being arrested afterward—I have to say, it’s kind of hilarious,” Kawib said. “I still can’t quite see what you were thinking. That has to be the stupidest stunt I’ve ever heard of.”

  “People always laugh at record-setters,” Jak said.r />
  CHAPTER 8

  How Is Up to You

  Later, it seemed like a good idea to all walk back to the pavilions together, about five kilometers in the mild night along the Phobos-lit road. Kawib and Dujuv got involved in some obscure race that probably wouldn’t have made sense to them, either, sober. After they had bounded around the bend in the road ahead, Jak said to Sib, “You used to seem to really like Dujuv, and be very pleased that he was my best tove. Now I think you really resent him. What is it that precesses you about him?”

  “Nothing except that he’s gone from being a fine young fighter and op—Nakasen’s hairy bag, he still is—to being the sort of high-minded young turd who is going to make everyone else miserable forever. Just another stupid idealist out to ruin everything that is good and right and beautiful about the world, just because it isn’t perfect for everyone. Would you want a world where there was no one as beautiful and terrible as Princess Shyf? Would you want a world where there was never the kind of magnificent pagentry we see every day here at the palace? Would you want a world where there were no high, wild adventures to be had against all odds, because there was never a desperate aristo to give you a glory-or-death mission? Because that’s the kind of world that a young high-minded cretin thinks he wants. The kind of world that the socialists and the republicans, and the free-marketers and the democrats, put together back in the middle of the Red Millennium, which took centuries to undo. Nakasen and every Principle be praised that there was still enough red blood and high courage in the human race so that after we got into space, there were enough pirates, filibusteros, freebooters, and adventurers to create the new aristo class.

  “A thousand years ago, if things had gone the way that your friend Dujuv and his pink-and-red pizos would have preferred, everybody would have been living in their comfy little cubes thinking comfy little thoughts, and there would have been no Ralph Smith, nobody even faintly like him, to win the war against the Rubahy. And why should the kings and the parades and the adventures have to go away, or fade to shadows of their former selves? So that ugly little children on Mercury, tenth-generation social scum, can have orthodontia? I’ve heard your silly tove getting emotional about how tough the little kids have it there. Well of course they do. Look where they live. Look who their ancestors were—prison sweepings, masen? Look who Princess Shyf’s ancestor was—a magnificent brilliant beast of a man—and look where she is. Everything is as it should be.”

  “Uncle Sib, you’re practically shouting. Are you all right?” His uncle turned back to him and said, “Yeah, old pizo, I’m all right. Just getting old on you, is all. I’m exhibiting some of the diseases of the old—like thinking that if young people aren’t immediately, vociferously agreeing with me, I can fix the situation by repeating myself and shouting.”

  “By that standard of evidence, you’ve been old as long as I can remember.”

  “Why you insolent cub—” Sib aimed a mock kick. Jak ducked and ran, his uncle pursuing. “Impudent puppy!”

  “Silly old man!” Jak said over his shoulder, slacking his pace so Sib could keep up with him. They covered the better part of a kilometer before they slowed down, laughing because running in low gravity is fun. As they stood, bent over, gasping, feeling alcohol, CO2, and oxygen levels fight it out in their bloodstreams, Sib said, “Jak, I am serious. The beliefs and ideas that Dujuv is listening to are putting him on a road that doesn’t lead to a successful career for a commoner with ambitions—like you, or like him.”

  “Sib, I don’t willingly lose a tove,” Jak said. “Too many past experiences taught me not to do that.”

  “Then don’t lose him. But don’t join him, either. If you turn aside from the paths of glory, you don’t avoid the grave; you just waste yourself on a lesser path. If you follow the tepid pink flag, and throw away all your training and your family destiny, it will make me sick—and break my heart.”

  “I’ll remember that, Uncle Sib.”

  “Thanks.” The older man stood up and looked around at the quiet desert landscape between Magnificiti and the palace, taking in the long shadows from now-low Phobos and the spires and pinnacles at either end of the road. “If you remember me, and what I taught you, then I think maybe my life was not thrown away.” Then he laughed and slapped his thigh. “Weehu, a man gets morbid when he crosses into his third century. Come on, puppy, we’ve had a good walk, and that was a lot of wine back at the tavern. I need to mark my territory behind that boulder.”

  “Let’s make it a social occasion,” Jak said, recognizing the peace overture and happy just to be with his good old uncle, who had often been wrong, but always sought what was best for Jak and the family. “Praise Nakasen for a warm night and a dark shadow where we need it.”

  Having nothing to do, Jak slept most of the next day. He had just finished a long workout and a longer bath, and was contemplating early bed, when his purse said, “Sorry, urgent call from Clarbo Waynong.”

  Jak groaned and said, “All right, put him on.”

  You really had to give Waynong credit for perfect grooming, because there wasn’t much else that you could give him credit for.

  “Hello, Jak, listen, I’ve been talking to some of the old pizos up in Hive Intel and they’ve decided—well, we’ve decided—well, I said it and they didn’t say anything I understood in reply—well, anyway, we decided.”

  “Decided what?” Jak hated himself for asking.

  “Oh, that. Yes. We decided that all this has gone on more than long enough. Cyxy is a charming old tove, and Princess Shyf is very beautiful, and the golf here has been flawless, but I do have a career to get on with, and this is simply taking too long, masen? So the time has come to take more direct action. That was exactly the words I used with the station chief from Deimos and I think that’s what he didn’t disagree with, anyway, so it’s time for more direct action. You know what I mean by more direct action?”

  “Something you should not discuss over a communications link in the middle of a foreign capital?”

  “It’s funny, you know, several people have said that to me, masen? Anyway, see you at the meeting.”

  “What meeting?”

  “Oh, that was what I called about. I reserved a room in the pavilion for it. Downstairs.”

  “Is it a highly secure matter?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it is.” Clarbo had apparently not thought about the question till then, but now he looked excited to be involved with something highly secure. “Um, actually—well, toktru,” he said, his voice now firmly commanding, “it’s a top secret matter.”

  “Then let’s have your purse download a set of security routines from mine, and have it clear the room where you’re holding the meeting. I have some really good software you should use for that.”

  “Why, thank you. Yes. Of course. Purse, did you hear that?”

  Jak heard Waynong’s purse say that it had, and that it was already doing the downloads.

  “That was awfully nice of you, Jak.”

  “Part of my job. What time is the meeting?”

  “Oh, in about forty minutes. If it’s not too much trouble, I suppose. Or I guess one shouldn’t say that about an important meeting. It was awfully nice of you to provide some help, Jak. I do find a lot of this difficult because it is awfully complicated and there’s so much to remember, masen? And it is nice to have the help. If you think of things, I wouldn’t mind getting a little discreet advice now and then.”

  “If I think of things,” Jak agreed. “All right, then. I’ll see you at the meeting.”

  When they had all gathered in the meeting room, Clarbo began by saying, “I imagine you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here.”

  “Especially since Jak is the commanding officer,” Pikia said.

  “Er, um, yes, but everyone knows that … well, I suppose everyone doesn’t know it because this is a secret mission … or do you all know it?”

  “I’m finding it hard to think of a question I could ask
,” Dujuv said.

  “Well, exactly, so let’s proceed. Now, since it’s clear that negotiations have broken down—”

  “It is?” Sib asked.

  “Um, I was supposed to say that.” Waynong looked at the palm of his left hand and asked his purse, “What does it say in that little speech?” After reading for a moment, he said, “Yes, I was right. It is clear that negotiations have broken down. Anything else I should check?”

  Sib appeared to be trying to push his eyes up onto his forehead. He gestured for Waynong to go on.

  “Now, therefore, we’re going to attempt to recover that lifelog for the Hive by physical means. Uh, that means we’re going to try to steal it—”

  The door opened and Princess Shyf walked in, Kawib at her heels. The door constricted and Shyf said, “Sorry we’re late. What’s the plan for stealing the lifelog?”

  “Er,” Jak said, “security has been compromised on this operation and so we’d better call it off until we reestablish full security.”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem,” Clarbo assured him. “I just happened to be chatting with the Princess here, and she mentioned she hasn’t had a real adventure in quite a long while, so I offered her the chance to come along on this one, and she jumped at it. And I’m sure Kawib is here because she brought him. That would be why they came in together.”

  “Your deductive abilities seem to be as sharp as ever,” Shadow said.

  Jak felt a tingle in his left hand. He glanced down at the palm display and saw a flashing red dot—urgent, highest priority, something was up. He put his left hand over his ear and pressed the code with his thumb.

  A voice quietly said, “This is Mejitarian, Hive Intel, Jinnaka. You seem to have a problem here. Let me clarify the situation. Your orders to bring back the lifelog ASAP and to bring in a personal success for Clarbo Waynong supersede all others. This includes making sure it’s a real personal victory, so just doing it and giving him the credit is not an option.