His Conquering Sword (11 page)

“Complete and extensive.”

“Encyclopedic and precise. Cross-referenced. Triple cross-referenced. Their referencing system is nothing like ours. It’s neither linear nor hyper, but both, and something else as well. But extremely efficient.”

“Of course. What do the Chapalii prize above everything else? Efficiency. Peace. Those two things. So, what if we put a spoke into the smooth turning of their wheel? What if we disrupt their efficiency? What if we disturb their peace? As the Tai-en Mushai did, fourteen thousand years ago.”

“I record his death as 10,382 B.C.E,” said Rajiv.

David felt a shudder of misgiving—no, more a premonition, a feeling that they stood on the edge of a momentous step, that once the word was spoken, once that first step was taken, once the reckless hand turned over the first card, that there was no going back. That their road would be chosen, for good or for ill. To the death, or to freedom.

“Sabotage,” said Charles. “It’s an old Earth strategy. Constant, unending, unexpected, disruptive. A campaign of sabotage.”

“You mean terrorism,” said David.

“No, I think that’s a later accretion to the term. But use terrorism if you want to. These timetables, these charts, these merchant houses—have they changed significantly since the Mushai’s time? Do we have reason to think the Empire is static enough, the Chapalii so addicted to stability, that they might still be—” Charles paused and abruptly grinned. “Still good?”

David and Maggie and Jo all laughed. “Does the eight twenty-nine still leave Rigel for Betelgeuse?” said Maggie.

“That could take years to research,” objected Rajiv. “We don’t know enough about the Empire. But certainly many of the structural systems could have remained parallel, even pertinent to our situation now.”

“We have years. We have eternity, if our heirs keep the torch burning. But I’m convinced of it. I’m convinced that this is why the Mushai accumulated this knowledge here. I’m convinced that this is how he broke the empire that he lived in. There is proof here that the borders of the Chapalii Empire were once larger than they are now. Rhui is proof. Before they absorbed the League, before they absorbed human space, Rhui and this system were not part of the Empire just as human space was not part of the Empire. But the Mushai’s movements prove that they were once part of the Empire, long ago. How could they lose track of them? Of what they once had?”

“What if they had no history?” asked Maggie. “Or no access to historical records, at least. Or—I don’t know. Given this lead to go on, and time to work, Tess could probably make some sense of it.”

Charles bore that fixed expression on his face that meant he was absorbed in the genesis of a new idea. David was not even sure that he had heard Maggie. “For the sake of argument, let’s say that those who administered did so as if every day was the present day. So they lost track, somehow. If we fix in our minds that they don’t operate like we operate, that they don’t think like we think, then it’s possible. If all is in the present, and they are otherwise stable, why shouldn’t the information in these banks be reliable? Why shouldn’t we be able to use it in the same way he did?”

“You want to bring down the Empire?”

“I want to free humanity. I sincerely doubt we have a chance against them, main force against main force. But if we’re persistent enough gadflies, perhaps they’ll consider us too much trouble and let us go.”

“Or crush us entire.”

“There’s always that chance. Every risk we take in life risks, as one of its consequences, oblivion. But the hand of the Yaochalii is gentle. I’ve never seen the least sign that they’re as ruthless in war as, say, Bakhtiian is.”

“Well,” said David, encouraged by Charles responding to Maggie’s comments, “and we’ve certainly seen more of the Chapalii in war than any other humans have. I don’t know.”

Charles shook his head impatiently. “We don’t need to know, yet. We’ve got a lot of work to do, just to see if it’s even feasible. We’ll have to use the Keinaba house to spread out a gathering net. We’ll need to apprentice more humans into that house, to give them wider access to Chapalii space. And to get the Chapalii used to humans running around Chapalii space. We’ll need excuses for humans to travel extensively. Merchants. I doubt if they’ll let linguists and xenospecialists move so freely—”

Maggie laughed. “Repertory companies.”

“What!” David rolled his eyes, but he could not help but laugh with her. “Can’t you just see Anahita playing Mata Hari?”

A light sparked in Charles’s eyes. “Yes! Repertory companies. Musicians. Artists and craftsmen. They can gather information and have a perfectly legitimate excuse to be wandering around the Chapalii Empire.”

“But, Charles,” said Rajiv in his usual cautious manner, “all of this would have to proceed in utter secrecy. Where can we possibly find a secure base of operations?”

“Rhui,” Charles said casually, and the dizzying array of the data banks hazed and melded to become the blue globe of Rhui, dazzling against the black veil surrounding her. For a moment, David thought that Charles had simply wanted to see the planet. It was a beautiful enough sight.

“What better base than Rhui?” Charles continued. His face was quiet, but David still knew him well enough to know that Charles was concealing a perfectly violent sense of triumph. “Rhui is interdicted already. It’s off-limits to casual Chapalii observation, and any official delegations must come through me.”

“What about covert operations?” David asked. “Like the one that brought Tess here in the first place?”

Rajiv lifted a hand from his slate. “We covered that. There won’t be any more of those.”

“Yes,” Charles murmured, watching the rich globe turn. His globe, by the emperor’s decree, to do with as he willed. “All the more reason to maintain the interdiction, to keep it in force for years, for decades, for as long as it takes us. Cara’s been doing her research in Jeds all along for that reason. Why not this as well?”

Rhui. It made sense. It made perfect sense. The Mushai had planned and implemented his rebellion from here. Why not the Tai-en Charles Soerensen as well? Would the Chapalii expect it? And yet, how could they predict what the Chapalii would or would not expect? What other planet did humans control so completely? No other planet. There was no other choice, not really. And there was a certain pleasing symmetry to this resolution as well. As it was, so will it be.

Rhui spun in her halo of space, unaware of the destiny being visited upon her.

“The gates of mercy shall be all shut up….”

—
SHAKESPEARE
,

The Life of King Henry V

H
YACINTH WAS SOGGY, COLD,
and miserable. He shivered while he hammered a tent stake into the damnably hard ground with the butt of his knife. How stupid could he possibly be? he wondered for the thousandth time. He had neglected to take a mallet, or a hammer, or even a hatchet, so every night this farce had to be played out, and it took five times as long to set up his tent as it should have. At first they hadn’t set up the tents at all, but with this awful rain, he couldn’t endure sleeping out in the open in just a blanket, no matter what Yevgeni and Valye might say, no matter how tough they might be.

Rain fell. He was already soaked to the skin, although by now the precipitation had slackened enough that it didn’t really qualify as rain. More of a mizzle, perhaps, a pathetic reminder of the storm that had blown through yesterday. Yevgeni sneezed and coughed, off to the left where he desperately tried to get a fire started with dry twigs and some dung he had scavenged. Valye was out hunting.

Four days ago they had eaten meat; since then, they had subsisted on berries and the tasteless tubers that they gathered when they paused to rest the horses. They saw no game, and certainly, in the ruined land they rode through, no stray livestock. It was as if the jaran army, sweeping through, had obliterated every living creature in its path: humans, livestock, wild animals, and all the grain that had once grown in the fields. Orchards still surrounded the occasional wreck of a village or town they passed, but Yevgeni refused point-blank to ride close in to khaja habitations, even the ones that looked deserted. It was hard enough avoiding the jaran patrols.

Hyacinth sighed and rested his forehead on a palm. He stared at the knife in his right hand. The single jewel buried in the hilt was not, as Yevgeni and Valye thought, a true jewel; it was a laser crystal, gleaming red to show that the emergency transmitter and stun pack disguised within the knife’s shell was still powered. It would be so easy to trigger the transmitter and bring—something—some kind of help. He still ached from the constant riding, but the intense pain of the first ten days had passed. Blisters covered his fingers and his palms, some worn at last to calluses. They had bled at first, and Yevgeni had bound them with a tenderness incongruous in a young man who could slaughter khaja with no sign of remorse.

He felt Yevgeni behind him a moment before the rider touched him on the neck. Yevgeni knelt beside him and leaned his dark head against Hyacinth’s fair one. They just crouched there awhile, saying nothing. Hyacinth took comfort in Yevgeni’s closeness and in his silence. A bird warbled in the twilit gloom, but otherwise only the rain sounded, muted, dying, and an occasional drip or shower of water from leaf-burdened branches.

“I’m sorry,” said Yevgeni finally, in a soft voice, “that I have nothing better to give you, in return for what you gave up for me.”

Hyacinth stared at the sodden ground. A trail of cold rain seeped under the collar of his tunic and raced down his spine. He shuddered. Yevgeni started back, and Hyacinth grabbed for him, staggering to his feet. “No. No, it’s just the rain. Please.” His heel turned in a sink of mud and he slipped on the slick ground.

Yevgeni had better footing. Catching Hyacinth, he pulled the actor close and buried his face in Hyacinth’s neck. He was perfectly still.

Hyacinth held him. Yevgeni was shorter, and seemed slight, but he had broad shoulders, and was, in fact, quite strong. Neither he nor his sister was particularly striking, but they were handsome in a proud way, resembling each other in their broad cheekbones and brown eyes and coarse, dark hair. They never complained, and they good-naturedly put up with Hyacinth’s complaining in a way that made him ashamed of himself. He could, after all, be rescued at any time. They had nothing now but each other, and him, and he was an embarrassment to them. He was a constant reminder of why Yevgeni had been banished, and Hyacinth knew damn well that it was his own fault that he had been caught in Yevgeni’s tent to begin with. If he hadn’t been so careless, because, of course,
he
found nothing wrong with what he and Yevgeni shared together, and it was so easy to forget that for Yevgeni, with the jaran, it was an entirely different matter.

“It’s I who should be sorry,” said Hyacinth. Yevgeni’s hair smelled of smoke. Behind, the fire smoked more than burned. “It’s my fault. I should have left sooner. I—”

Yevgeni laid a finger over Hyacinth’s lips. “It’s done. We were outlaws anyway and only there on sufferance. If we can make it back to the plains…”

“Then?”

Yevgeni sighed and embraced Hyacinth more tightly. Out here, quit of the tribe—and when his sister wasn’t around—he had become freer with signs of affection. “Then we’ll find my aunt’s tribe and throw ourselves on her mercy, and perhaps she’ll take us in. Or at least Valye. We must convince Valye to go with her.” He cocked his head back suddenly. “If you married Valye, then it might be perfectly respectable.”

“If I
married
Valye!”

Yevgeni chuckled. That he could still find humor in anything, out in this rain, in this horrible situation, amazed Hyacinth. “I thought you didn’t mind women.”

“I don’t, but—” Faced with the prospect of living out his days among these savages, married to one of their women, carrying on discreetly with her brother, and enduring, year after year after year, the rain and the dirt and the filthy tasks they engaged in—none of which he was suited for—Hyacinth found himself appalled. And trapped. He felt trapped. He had a pretty good idea that if they left him, he would die. Even in the time it would take for the transmitter to recall help, he could die. He was a drag on them; he knew it, and they knew it, and yet they had never once taxed him for it, and Yevgeni apologized to him for what he, Hyacinth, had given up for Yevgeni. Their generosity so eclipsed his that it shamed him.

“I love you,” said Hyacinth, because in its own way it was true. Yevgeni made a strangled noise in his throat and no other response, only stood there, holding on. One of his hands clenched and relaxed. The rain ceased, finally. A wind came up.

“Oh, gods,” said Yevgeni at last in a muffled voice, talking into the collar of Hyacinth’s tunic, “I want to go there so badly, to this place where you come from, this
Erthe,
where there’s no shame for a man to tell another man that he loves him.”

“Of course there’s no shame! Why should there be?” Hyacinth stroked Yevgeni’s hair.

The sound of a horse crashing through brush stirred them. Yevgeni spun away and drew his saber. But it was only Valye, returning empty-handed from her hunt. She swung down and kissed her brother on the cheek and nodded to Hyacinth. Yevgeni went back to the fire, to try to spark it to life, but it smoldered and refused to give either flame or heat. Valye unsaddled her horse and rubbed it down and hobbled it with the others, under the shelter of a grove of scrub trees that ringed a little pond. Birds skittered across the water on the far side. Birds. But perhaps Valye wasn’t a good enough shot to kill birds for dinner.

Valye cast a practiced eye up at the lowering sky. Darkness swept down on them. “I think it’s going to rain again tonight,” she said to her brother. “I’d better set up my tent.”

Again. She kept setting up her tent, and Yevgeni always had to sleep there. Yevgeni didn’t want to offend her sensibilities, even though she knew damn well what he had been banished for. “It’s stupid,” said Hyacinth suddenly, surprising even himself, “for you to set up your tent. Mine is warmer.”