Future Indefinite (8 page)

Prat’han growled.

D’ward said, “Hush!” and Prat’han flinched as if he’d been slashed with a whip.

Dosh went down on one knee by the fire as a sort of compromise between going and staying. “Join what? What are you up to?”

“Tell him, big brother.”

The muscular potter scowled at Dosh. “The Liberator is fulfilling the prophecies. We are the Free, and we are on our way to Thargvale, where he will bring death to Death, as is foretold.”

That was utter insanity, but Dosh knew better than to argue with Prat’han. His head was as empty as his pots.

“What conditions?”

“Ah!” D’ward thought for a moment. “You’re a murderer, a thief, a liar, a sexual pervert of every description, and a traitor. Does that about sum you up?”

Burthash guffawed. D’ward looked at him sharply.

He shriveled guiltily, muttering, “Sorry, Liberator.”

“I think you’ve covered all my good points,” Dosh said. “I also drink to excess and smoke poppy when I can afford it.”

“We can’t accept a man who does any of those things.”

“Then why are you wasting my time?” Dosh began to rise.

“Because you could promise to stop doing them.”

Dosh wondered if he’d heard correctly, and the others looked equally bewildered. With anyone but the Liberator, he would have assumed that he was being mocked, but D’ward’s eyes held no ridicule, only challenge.

“I don’t care what a man was, Dosh, only what he is now.”

“You mean you’d take my word for it? Mine? You think I could possibly keep such a promise, even if I wanted to?”

“Yes I do. You once told me you were the toughest bastard in the army, and I said I believed you. I’d believe you now. If you’ll tell me now that you’ll give up all those vices, then you’ll keep your word.”

The fire began to crackle more loudly, its smoke drifting away in the wind. Out in the dark valley were low voices, children, and someone singing what sounded like a hymn. Who were the Free? Just the Sonalby troop or all that ragtag collection of humanity? Join them? Him?

“Gods!” This was the greatest insanity yet.

“Only one god here. Your decision.” Suddenly D’ward laughed. “I’ve never seen you look scared before, Dosh!”

He
was
scared. His hands were shaking. “I couldn’t!”

“I think you could.”

That was what he’d wanted D’ward to say, but he still didn’t believe it.

The Liberator was watching him very closely. “We knew you as Dosh Envoy. If the troopers ask for you by whatever name you’re using now we can say we don’t know you.” He grinned faintly. “Besides, you’ll be a new man altogether, won’t you?”

New man? This was the sort of decision that needed a lot of thinking over. Dosh wouldn’t be a loner anymore. He would be one of this harebrained Liberator cult, heading for certain death in Thargvale or sooner. He had been one of the gang, once. Briefly.

“Why haven’t the reapers caught you already?”

D’ward shrugged.

“Reapers?” Gopaenum laughed raucously. “You want to meet some reapers? We’ve got a dozen or so around somewhere. Soon as they get near the Liberator, they aren’t reapers anymore.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind that,” D’ward said. “You’re avoiding the issue.”

Dosh looked uncertainly around the firelit faces. He couldn’t actually
see
the scorn and contempt, but he knew it was there. They were hiding it out of respect for D’ward, that was all. He heaved himself to his feet, feeling as if he weighed more than all of them put together.

“I wish you luck. You’re all crazy. Go and bring death to Death if you can. Me, I want to keep life in the living.”

He turned away. He had taken only a couple of steps when he heard D’ward call out, “See you in Nosokland.”

He walked on, paying no heed.

The first
tyika
houses at Olympus had been laid out on the perimeter of the node. When that loop was full, an outer circle had followed, forming the other side of a street, and after the Chamber had sacked the station, it had all been rebuilt to the same plan. Being “Boots,” the junior officer in the regiment, Julian lived even farther out, in a new suburb just beginning. A man’s residence defined his status very clearly, but it wasn’t all swank, for the innermost locations provided a distinct occult advantage. When followers of the Undivided anywhere in the Vales prayed to the apostles, a little mana would flow to those located on a node. It would not compare to the power the gods received from the worshippers in their temples but, year in and year out, it must mount up.

As the sky flamed blood red behind the peaks, he headed inward, feeling the first tingling of virtuality as he paced up the Pinkneys’ garden path to their front door. Through the open windows, he heard the polite laughter of the
tyikank
enjoying themselves. Three minutes later, he was clutching a glass of the sickly fluid that passed for sherry in Olympus and pretending breathless interest as his hostess described the new rock garden her Carrots were building for her.

Escaping from Hannah Pinkney’s horticultural saga as soon as he decently could, he began to circulate from group to group. He was required to discuss polo and cricket—the Carrots had taken it up and were becoming too bally good at it, old man—and of course the weather. Not a word was said about the Liberator.

“Fascinating news from Fithvale,” Prof Rawlinson declaimed. “Seems that Imphast has ordered her clergy out of red and into blue!”

Delores Garcia said, “Really!” Then she added vaguely, “Who’s Imphast?”

“Goddess of, um, female puberty. Obviously she’s changed allegiance from Eltiana to Astina! A major move in the Great Game!”

“Gracious!”

Prof began to explain, at great length. Julian knew nothing of Imphast and cared less. He moved on, analyzing who was there and who was not. Some people were only window dressing, not relevant to the Exeter problem—people like Hannah, for instance. Ineffectual people, gossipy, garrulous people. Some undoubtedly were relevant: Prof Rawlinson, Jumbo Watson, and a couple of the others Dommi had mentioned as having been recalled. In the background he could hear Foghorn Rutherford, this year’s chairman.

About three of the women might be significant: Delores, who had a body to drive men out of their wits and was reputed to be the only faithful wife in Olympus; Ursula Newton, with the shoulders of a wrestler and the unerring competence of a sergeant-major; Olga Olafson, who was unmarried, voluptuous, and a nymphomaniac. Scandal whispered that she even pursued Carrots.

He detoured away from Foghorn, who was leering at Cathy Chase, who in turn was portraying bored indifference, although they were current lovers. Extramarital affairs were the main source of entertainment in Olympus, but it was understood that they must be kept strictly confidential in case the Carrots gossiped. That deception was the second most popular game. Admittedly, there were few other games to play in a land so backward, but Julian considered it absurd early-Victorian hypocrisy. Of course, many of these people
were
early Victorian. In practice, everyone knew exactly who was sleeping with whom. If they didn’t, they could always ask their Carrots.

The Service were a very rum lot, and somehow that was even more obvious than usual tonight, but it took him a while to work out what was different. There was nothing conspicuously wrong with the dinner party—a dozen men, a dozen women, two Carrots serving drinks and probably twenty or more laboring away behind the scenes. Conversation swung from triviality to banality and back again.

Under the glitter of the chandeliers, the men wore tails, the ladies long gowns. This sort of dinner party happened almost every night of the year, for there was no restricted social season in Olympus. No one would ever mistake it for a formal dinner in Town. The discerning London hostess would look askance at the outdated fashions. She would eye the furniture with curiosity and inquire politely where in the Colonies this or that had come from, although she might well praise the Narshian rugs or the Niolian brasses, which were as good as anything from Benares.

On the other hand, the gathering was a reasonable facsimile of a social occasion in an outpost of Empire almost anywhere on Earth—dinner with His Majesty’s district commissioner. The Service did not serve the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets, but it had the same altruistic motives as those who did. Like them, Olympians were dedicated to uplifting the benighted savage. They were just exiled a little farther away, that was all, or no distance at all, if one preferred that view of the paradox. The node here was a portal. Walk out on the grass, perform the key ritual, and you could be Home instantly. Unless you had made arrangements to be met by Head Office, you would be naked and penniless, of course, and you would certainly be mortal again. No fear! It was a lot better to better the lot of the natives here in the Vales.

Then he realized what was wrong: A party that should be as lively as gaudy at Oxford was as flat as a geriatric Mafeking reunion. Strangers never revealed their age, and to discuss it was strictly off-limits, always, but he was the baby of the group. None of the rest of them would ever see twenty-two again. Olga had probably weathered several centuries. Jumbo and Pinky and Ursula Newton had been co-founders of the Service, along with Cameron Exeter and Monica Rogers, fifty years ago. Nonetheless, at a do like this strangers ought to be sparkling like a gang of adolescents. Tonight they seemed middle-aged. They displayed no wrinkles or silver hair, and their bodies were still trim, but their mood gave them away.

Joalvale was not the problem. The Church of the Undivided had no significant presence there and nothing to lose if Exeter provoked the civil authorities into repression—in fact a few martydoms were good for business, although it would be poor form to say so. No, the Chamber was the danger, and always had been. The Service feared the prophecies of the
Filoby Testament
almost as much as Zath himself did, for any attempt to fulfill them must provoke an all-out war that Olympus could not hope to win. Then the men and women of the Service would be faced with a choice between death and flight back to Earth and mortality. Their cosy fiefdom here would be wiped out.

They had the wind up!

He discovered Marcel Piran and Euphemia McKay in a secluded nook behind some potted shrubbery and invited himself into the conversation. Euphemia was a right-down stunner with green eyes and hair so authentically Irish red that it made the Carrots’ seem drab by comparison. Culture and intellect were not her strong points, but she had a devilish wit and a keen sense of mimicry—she was, in fact, a bundle of fun. Unfortunately she also had the worst clothes sense in two worlds. Tonight she was squeezed into a satiny gown of royal blue, which should have flattered her coloring and figure but made her seem frumpy and hippy. She looked much better without any clothes on at all.

In a few moments, Marcel tactfully eased away to speak to Hannah.

“And how is my delicious Wendy?” Julian assumed a lecherous growl, while pretending to study the shrubbery.

Euphemia peered around the room indifferently. “Randy as an alley cat. How about my Captain Hook? Ready for boarding? Got your cutlass well sharpened?”

“Primed, loaded, and cocked. Why don’t we nip behind the sofa and have a quick one?”

“I’d rather wait for a slow one later.”

“Just one? It’s not like you to settle for just one, Wendy.”

“Well, think what you tempt me with! How’s a girl expected to refuse that?”

This verbal foreplay was interrupted by the arrival of Olga and the evening’s host, Pinky Pinkney. Conversation veered to a discussion of the latest news from Home, which was over a fortnight old.

“It is most unfair of the Peppers to keep the Goldsmiths waiting like this!” Pinky proclaimed. “Deborah is desperate to see London again.”

“You haven’t heard what’s delayed them?” Euphemia asked.

“Of course not. The Montgomerys are due back in a couple of days—perhaps they’ll know what’s keeping them.”

“No word from Head Office?”

“I’m afraid Head Office has been badly disorganized by the war. They’re not what they used to be.”

She sighed, and her dress struggled to contain the movement. “William and me aren’t due to go for years!”

Pinky made sympathetic noises. He was as slick as an oiled eel and parted his hair in the middle. “Are you quite sure of that, my dear? I think there were some changes made to the schedule while you were gone.”

“Really?” Euphemia asked with surprising interest.

“Dolores will know. Let’s go and ask her, shall we?”

Without a word of apology, the bounder led her off across the room. Julian sipped some of the nasty sherry.

“Don’t glare, darling,” said a throaty murmur. “People will think you’re jealous.”

He jumped. Olga was a heart-stopping Nordic blonde, a female Viking—something Wagner might have invented if he had dared. Tonight she wore a scarlet gown in a way that implied one deep breath would cause it to explode.

“Jealous? Of Pinky and Euphemia? There’s nothing between them.”

Olga fluttered golden lashes. “The way Pinky was looking at her, darling, there won’t be anything at all between them in a few hours.”

Julian drained his glass in one great Philistine gulp. Olga unnerved him on several levels. First, he had no idea whatsoever of her background—her English was too perfect to be her genuine mother tongue; she might not even be from Earth at all. Second, she was probably the oldest person in the Service, because she was a convert. Before changing sides, she had been a minor goddess, an avatar of Eltiana.

And third, she was blatantly promiscuous. No other woman on the station would dare to look at a man the way she was looking at him right now. She was probably not serious, because she had hung Julian’s scalp on her belt years ago, a few days after he arrived. He hoped she wasn’t serious, but at least a fellow need not watch one’s tongue with Olga. She was unshockable and never took offense. And at the moment she was trying to put the boot in.

“I think you are attributing unseemly motives to a perfectly innocent conversation. Mrs. McKay and Mr. Pinkney are—”

“Are rutting, dear. He is, anyway. He’s as loud as a wapiti.”

“What the deuce is a wapiti? And even if he is, why should Euphemia—”

Olga rolled her sea-blue eyes dramatically. “Julian, darling, I thought I cured your innocence years ago. Don’t tell me all my work was wasted! Weren’t you born in India? You should know that imperial exiles are the same everywhere.”

“Nextdoor is hardly a blooming colony,” he protested. “The Empire doesn’t reach quite this far—not yet, anyway.”

She smiled sardonically. “They like to pretend it’s a colony, though. Olympus is deliberately modeled on a British government station somewhere in the bush, isn’t it? Don’t deny it; you know it’s true. Lording over the natives, dressing for dinner…I remember Foghorn trying to get us to put up a flagpole so we could fly the Union Jack. Cameron threatened to strangle him with it if he tried.”

Julian blinked. He had not known that Olga had been around Olympus so long, for Cameron Exeter had gone Home thirty years ago. “What has that to do—”

“You’re not worried, darling?” she purred.

“Not about Pinky,” he said staunchly, fairly sure he was not even blushing, which was a jolly sight different from how he would have reacted to Olga’s claws two years ago. Pinky would get nowhere tonight—or any other night either—because Euphemia considered him a bore and a toad in the grass. It would not be Pinky skin to skin with Euphemia tonight, it would be Captain Smedley (Royal Artillery, ret.), and the sooner the better.

He made his escape from Olga as soon as he could without seeming to be running away. No one had mentioned the reason for his recall yet or told him whether he was scheduled to appear before the Committee itself. If he were, it would be an irrelevant formality, because decisions in Olympus were made by the inner circle, Pinky and his cronies. That was another characteristic of the Service—nobody trusted anybody; too many had gone over to the opposition. There had been traitors, one of whom had very nearly scuppered Edward Exeter by sending him Home into the middle of a battle in Flanders. Mana was addictive, and the Pentatheon could offer better sources of mana. Even a very minor god with his own temple collected far more of it than a preacher holding secret prayer meetings in the bush.

Euphemia and Pinky reappeared, but Julian’s efforts to resume his wooing were persistently defeated by Pinky, who clung to her like a treacle shampoo until his wife announced that it was time to go in to dinner.

Julian was alarmed to discover that he was paired with Olga, who proceeded to flirt shamelessly with him. Fortunately they were seated across from Jumbo and Iris, who were good company. Euphemia, he was annoyed to notice, had been placed next to Pinky.

Dinner went off as usual, with inconsequential small talk. It was all frightfully civilized—damask tablecloth, silver plate, hovering servants—and a welcome relief from the peasant hospitality he should have been enduring in Randorvale right now. The only time anything approaching business was discussed was when someone brought up the story of Jumbo’s miracle at Flaxby, deflecting a magistrate and two soldiers. Julian had learned of it from Purlopat’r, but apparently the news had leaked out just after he left.

It was impossible to dislike Jumbo. He was tall and lean and had gained his nickname from the length of his nose. He had a notably wry sense of humor and a becoming modesty.

“It was nothing much,” he protested. “I didn’t set out to work any miracles. I was so scared at the sight of those jolly swords that I started babbling my head off. Before I knew it, the chaps were on their knees, begging for mercy—wanting me to shut up, I expect. If I did spend some mana, then I got a whole lot more back in return. Jolly fun, actually. You should have seen the magistrate’s face….” He made a good story out of it, everyone laughed.