by John Barnes
She held him closer. “Jak, you are a toktru tove. The best. You just aren’t the kind that Dujuv is. But”—she pulled away, still holding him by the arms, but looking at his face seriously, as if trying to confirm that he heard and believed—“you’re the kind of tove that I want and that I need to have. Someone who is going places, and won’t be happy unless he goes places, and wants me to go places.”
“Well,” Jak said, “as far as I know, tomorrow, I’m going to the office, and so are you. After that, who knows? But I’m glad we got to know each other.”
“Me too.” She let go of his arms as if she had only just realized she was holding them. “Hey, want to do something stupid and dull like catch a viv together?”
“Oh, sure. Anything without sex or Mreek Sinda.”
“Then I guess the new ‘Sex with Mreek’ series would be out …”
It was a feeble joke, but he laughed anyway. They ended up just hanging around in one of those endless conversations that is really about nothing except the friendship itself—no matter what the subject may appear to be—and it was late before she left and he got to bed. His last thought before falling asleep was that he used to have conversations like that with Duj, often, and that he couldn’t remember when they had stopped.
Next day, at work, just as he had made his last pointless note on the last bit of uselessly referred trivia, his purse announced, “Message from King Dexorth Verklar of Paxhaven, marked highly confidential and personal.”
“All right, ‘prepare to receive eyes-only message.’ ”
The door locked, the windows opaqued, and in a moment the screen flickered to life on the back wall. King Dexorth gazed out at Jak calmly; behind him, the Korolev lagoon rippled with the big slow waves of low gravity, as the long slow twilight of Mars crept across the sky.
“Dear Jak,” he said, “I have been thinking about recent events here. I have some thoughts I should like to share with you.
“Let us start with that so-slippery issue, the truth. It is unlikely that the truth is the best thing for anyone to believe, but it is surprisingly easy to agree upon for most cases, and its secondary effects are more predictable. It is therefore very valuable and like any valuable intangible, it should be given away freely.
“So my decision is that the truth will be given away, freely and soon. Make your plans accordingly.”
“Pause!” Jak barked at his purse.
“Got it. Back up two seconds and wait?” the blue fingerless glove asked.
“Please.” Jak sat back and stared into space. Perhaps the King just meant that they would release their partial copies—
It was as if Sib sat at his shoulder, laughing and saying, “Old pizo, think of the oldest trick in the book. It’s the one they did. Tricks get to be old because they work. So you were escaping with the fake …”
Uncle Sib’s presence felt so real at that moment that Jak nearly turned and spoke aloud, but he checked himself; in a universe with an almost infinite supply of listening devices, you “never say an unnecessary bit of the truth out loud,” Sib’s voice seemed to remind him, as it had so often as he was growing up.
I miss you, you horrible pushy rude pigheaded old gwont, Jak thought.
Yeah, well, so what’s the answer?
They left a fake in the vault, Jak thought. And I swapped them a fake for a fake. Clarbo was blown to bits trying to steal it for Hive Intelligence, and to restore his own mess of a résumé. Nakasen’s hairy bag, what an absolute waste of effort by everyone.
At least the King had had the decency not to look smug.
And his meaning was utterly clear: Paxhaven would release the lifelog and let whatever happened happen. “Un-pause.”
The King’s face appeared on the wall again. “—and soon. Make your plans accordingly.
“Now, some people will be very upset by the truth that is about to come into the world. Large numbers of people will begin to run in circles and scream and cause trouble.
“It may seem irresponsible of us to unleash this thing, but when a mighty tower is built upon a narrow foundation in soft ground, and story after story and annex after annex are added at the upper levels year by year, it is inevitable that the djeste will fall. It is only a question of when. The longer it stands before it falls, the more will fall, from a greater height. It’s not whether there will be a smash, but how big a smash there will be. The later, the bigger, you see. So we choose sooner rather than later.
“You can therefore expect that forces will be put in motion which will change the world around all of us, drastically. For Paxhaven—well fortified, safe, and thoroughly dakking who we are—this will be no very great change. But you, Jak Jinnaka—new, raw, open to the world, not yet wise, and unknown most especially to yourself—will be slung, hurled, and yanked every which way, like a single electron in a solar storm, your path always determined by forces vastly greater than yourself, and yet incalculable to anyone.
“There is nothing any of us here can do for you,” Dexorth said, his eerily calm eyes never wavering from the camera, “nor would any of us care to, if we could. But a medieval American poet said that ‘Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ Strictly speaking, we will never have to take you in. But still we’d appreciate it if you think of us when you have to go somewhere. Meanwhile, find your path, Jak.”
The message stopped and the room lights came back up to full. “Know where you are, Your Perception,” Jak Jinnaka said to the sudden chill of the now-so-blank wall in front of him. He swallowed hard as he thought of how alone he now truly was.
He was just reluctantly opening the large file of nonurgent approvals—things where his judgment was not really needed but his handprint was legally required—when his purse said, “An urgent message, eyes only, has just arrived.”
“Well,” Jak said, “ ‘prepare to receive eyes-only message,’ again. Screen it as soon as you’re ready.”
The crossed magnifying glass and dagger insignia of Hive Intel appeared on the screen, then the long vulturish face of Caccitepe. “Hive Intelligence hereby invokes its rights under Code Article 83, to cross-list or transfer such personnel from either Hive agencies or from other Forces, as Hive Intelligence may require. That’s the officialese, Jak.
“Informally: I’m sending you on a mission for which you are well suited. It does not require more than what we covered in Advanced Intelligence Operations, at the PSA, and I know you did quite well in that class. You were, in fact, one of my star students.
“Your mission is this: you will be infiltrating a sunclipper crew, specifically the crew of Umbriel’s Glory, which as you know is making a flyby very shortly at Deimos. We have created an identity for you in the UAS as a Crewman-Second, and made you look like exactly the fellow they have been trying to hire.
“Report to Hive Intel Deimos Office, two hours from now, for an orientation session, identity chip for your new identity, quick body makeover, pack of clothing, cache of concealed weapons, and of course a new purse in your new identity. All of these will be waiting for you.”
Jak had taken a few chances, in his teens and early twenties, to accumulate union points to join the UAS, because it had been more interesting than traveling as a passenger; he only hoped that his skills weren’t too far below those of a real Crewman-Second.
“Umbriel’s Glory is upbound to Triton. We know from some of your previous reports that you are acquainted with the Canaan legend. Umbriel’s Glory’s crew, both officers and regular crewies, is thoroughly penetrated by the Canaan cult. Also they are carrying contraband to the Tritonian underground, and there has been Tritonian penetration of the crew. We have been trying to prove a connection between the Tritonian government in exile and the Canaanist faction in the Council of Captains for decades; we are sure that crewie society is not maintaining the strict neutrality it claims, and we can make excellent use of any clear evidence of this. Your job, then, Jak, is to get that evidence. It need not be anything that would stand up i
n a court and I need hardly mention that there are no restrictions on how you get that evidence.
“Do be careful. Umbriel’s Glory is Jovian League registry and therefore you are committing espionage, which is a capital offense.
“You need not revisit your apartment as our crews will store everything there; you may not take along any mementos or keepsakes. They will all be waiting for you, along with your purse, when you return to the Hive after this mission. Your two hours are intended to give you time to message friends and relatives so that they won’t come looking for you, thereby possibly accidentally compromising security, in the next few months. Tell them enough to keep them quiet, but for your own safety we advise you to be vague in your good-byes.
“You could, of course, avoid this mission by resigning, and hope that PASC is not going to fire you, and will find some suitably punitive backwater for you. But you will instead do no such thing. This is exactly what you have been wanting—a deep-cover mission in which you can use your crewie skills. So I know you will take the job.
“Therefore, in advance: thank you for your cooperation. Good luck.”
The message clicked off. It was immediately followed by three lower-priority nonconfidential messages, in which Jak successively authorized his own transfer (he had no choice anyway), signed up for the considerably better benefits package available to him in his new position, and authorized Hive Intelligence to grab everything out of his apartment and move it to the Hive for storage. (He was very glad he’d never gotten the kitten he had been wanting.)
He looked at the clock. One hour and fifty minutes to go. He set up his purse for messaging, faced the camera, checked his hair and made sure nothing was between his teeth, and spoke. The first one he recorded was:
“Dujuv, old tove, I hope you are not so angry that you’re going to wipe this message without reading it. I’ve received new orders. I will have to be out of touch for a long while. I am going to hang on to my hope of someday renewing our friendship, and therefore, as soon as I am able, I will be back in touch. That will not be until I am done with this present mission which is going to take months or years and about which I can say no more than that. I am sorry for any pain I have ever caused you. I know that there has been plenty. I don’t deserve your forgiveness but I would love to have it. Take all care of yourself, succeed at whatever your heart most wishes to achieve, and as they say in Paxhaven, ‘Find your path,’ old tove.”
His next message was shorter and more formal:
“My oath-friend Shadow on the Frost, our paths diverge for the moment. Take care of Dujuv; he will need your protection. I have not forgotten my oath-friend and could not in any case. You will hear from me again. It will be a long time. It is an honor to have my name mentioned with yours. Be strong and well and don’t lose that sense of humor.”
His last message was shorter still.
“Myx, that was slick. Hive Intel assassinated a potential disaster of a future politician and established a basis for claiming that anything coming out of the Nakasen lifelog is a forgery, and if anything had gone wrong, it would have been me holding the bag. Was that Caccitepe’s trick, or are you just his best pupil?” He thought of a dozen crude remarks he could make, swallowed them with difficulty, and clicked off.
He had an hour and forty minutes left.
He could drift around saying good-bye to his staff and to various Deimons he knew slightly, but he could see little reason for that; he had always preferred to come and go like a cat, saving the big productions for the hellos and simply vanishing for the good-byes. What to do with all this time?
He told his purse to unlock the door, and airswam out by Pikia’s desk, where she was plowing along, obviously desperately trying to stay awake, through a collection of business even more routine than what Jak had just dismissed.
“Your boss has gone mad,” Jak said, cheerfully, “and has decided that for today only, you are getting a long break, and you are having coffee with him, to discuss a variety of things around the office. This actually has to do with yet another chance to distinguish yourself. Unless you’d prefer to keep filling out forms.”
“I was wondering how you could claim to have gone mad till that last sentence,” she said, grinning. She pushed a button to complete an approval, told her purse to shut down her desk screen, and bounced out of her chair.
It was an odd time on the shift, so it was no trouble to find a café that had no one else in it, where no one knew either of them. They chose a centrifuged booth for greater privacy. Jak bought coffee and rolls and briefed her quickly. “You may have trouble staying awake, but your résumé is about to be spectacular,” he said. “You’re a line officer. The only one. You’re going to be in command of the civilian side of Deimos. Of course, good as it all looks on your résumé, you have to do well at it for it to really count. But your great-great-grandfather gives very wise advice, there’s a good chance that not much will come up, and the staff know much more than they admit to. If you really get into trouble and you’ve been nice to them, they might pull out some of that knowledge to save you. And if you succeed—I think you will—it won’t hurt to enter the PSA with a reputation already walking in ahead of you—especially a good reputation. I could tell you a few things about going in with the other kind of reputation.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Bet you could.”
Jak smiled. “Well, once upon a time, Dujuv Gonzawara thought it might be fun to climb a light shaft—”
It wasn’t necessarily the greatest story, but she laughed at it, so he counted it a victory. Then he heard a couple of accounts of how her feelings were terribly confused because … well, she just had so many of them … and was reminded of why he was glad not to be seventeen anymore. And the time crept on, and finally he said, “Well, I’ll have to go. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you anything other than sudden transfer, I’m going out on Umbriel’s Glory, and I can’t be in touch for a long time. Don’t come to see me off. There are security considerations and besides I don’t know which ferry I’ll be on, masen?”
“Toktru. Find your path.”
“Know where you are.” He got up, and they shook hands.
It was only about ten minutes’ airswim to the Hive Intelligence office. Machines swore him in and did the medical examination; more machines walked him through the briefing in the unreal world of viv, so that in three hours he experienced three weeks of briefings. While he was “under” for the briefings, yet more machines worked on altering his body, changing his skin color to two shades darker, a sort of rich chocolate; reshaping his face for higher, sharper cheekbones, fuller lips, and a softer chin; erasing the tanpatterning he’d been wearing and putting in something more old-fashioned and bland, to fit in better with the more conservative crewie society. When he staggered off the treatment table, he knew a great deal more about a very wide variety of subjects than he ever had before, and his skin and what was immediately under it had been stretched, pulled, abraded, poisoned, and depoisoned. He wasn’t sure whether his brain or his body hurt more. He was now Pari Patzeron, a crewie, his second class badge still shiny and new and marginally qualified for, with a brief record of violent crime calculated to be unalarming (to any ship’s security officer) but interesting (to anyone looking to recruit rebels).
After the surgery and the pumped learning, they left him twenty minutes to unpack Pari Patzeron’s bags and repack them, becoming familiar with what was in them, and forming another impression of his persona.
The time came. He was supposed to make it to the ferry in the last few minutes, so that there would be as little time as possible to mess up his cover, since there was always the risk, even with all the modifications, that someone might recognize him.
So since he had to start late, he had to airswim through the corridors quickly and with many push-offs. When he hurried through the departure area, his new appearance fooled Pikia, who was waiting near the departure gate despite what she had said. He swam right by her, per orders,
glad that she had been there and sorry that she would think she had missed him.
He had just time to strap into the ferry before it began to move up the track onto the loop, for launch to Umbriel’s Glory. Through his viewport, he could see the great sails of the sunclipper, much farther away than Mars, enclosing a greater volume than that whole planet with a mass less than that of Deimos, a thin tissue over a vast nothingness.
Jak had not known that he would have a new face, name, and mission this morning. Now he did. Perhaps life would get busy, and he might remember his old life only rarely.
He was looking forward to that.
With a slight tug, the ferry whipped around onto the superconducting loop, Mars whirled by the viewport in a blur of red, blue, green, and white, the sun’s reflection flashed in the great sails ahead, and they were hurtling around the loop to launch. Jak settled into a mental review of the Disciplines, blanking his mind, getting ready for a nap. As Uncle Sib always said, you never know what’s coming next.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I need to acknowledge an error; many thanks to the about thirty people (so far) who have noted to me that the home-world of the Rubahy cannot possibly have been orbiting Alpha Draconis, since in these books there is no faster-than-light travel (or at least humans and Rubahy don’t have it), and Alpha Draconis is about three hundred light-years away, much too far. Special congratulations to the person who didn’t want to be named who realized that, long ago when I was planning this series, I must have misread the Greek letter sigma as an alpha; in fact, the Rubahy are from Sigma Draconis, a mere 18.5 light-years away. I promise, young lady, that I shall get new glasses and stop having that third beer at breakfast. When you get to college, don’t forget to correct your instructors at every opportunity; they’ll appreciate it at least as much as I do.
Meanwhile, for the rest of you, be sure to buy the previous two books in the series, The Duke of Uranium and A Princess of the Aerie, so that you can pencil in the necessary correction. The Rubahy are from Sigma Draconis. Really.
