Hunted (36 page)
“Makes you wonder,” Festina said, “who
really
got the idea of dumping spores on the Fasskisters. Did Queen Temperance think of it herself? Or did the Balrog plant the notion in her head?”
“Generally,” a voice whispered, “we stay out of the heads of lesser creatures. But we do make exceptions.”
Kaisho hovered in her chair at the top of the nearby ramp. Behind her, the stairwell blazed as bright as a forest fire.
42
ACCEPTING THE INEVITABLE
Zeeleepull leapt in front of her, his pincers wide and ready. “Back, you,” he snarled. He looked more mad at himself than at Kaisho, because he’d let her sneak up on our backs.
“Dearest boy,” Kaisho whispered to him from behind her veil of hair, “you might stop
me,
but not my colleagues.”
She waved a lazy hand at the spores all around her. They gleamed on the surface of the ramp like a burning red carpet—not advancing but thickening, as if more and more of them were climbing up from below, accumulating layer after layer of alien fuzz.
Zeeleepull didn’t flinch. Mandasar warriors have a crazy fondness for doomed last stands. “Back,” he said again, and made a snipping gesture with his claws. “Smelly un-hume.”
Kaisho chuckled. “Easy, my dashing innocent. We aren’t here to swallow you up…just for a little justice.”
Festina straightened to her full height. “Justice against whom? Mr. Glass Chest here?”
“Amongst others,” Kaisho said.
“Because the Balrog doesn’t appreciate being used.”
“That’s right.”
Festina snorted. “Some aliens can dish it out but they just can’t take it. The damned Balrog had no moral qualms enslaving the woman you once were, Kaish—twisting your mind and body for its own mossy convenience—but heaven forbid a human ever takes advantage of a single fuzzy spore. Not that I’m defending our glass-chested clone here, but don’t you see the irony?”
Kaisho lowered her head. “I’m not enslaved,” she whispered. “Not quite. But I’m bound close enough to the Balrog to feel the suffering of the spore in that man’s stomach. Can you imagine the humiliation—the degradation—of being imprisoned like an animal, forced to transmit bestial human thoughts every second of the day? Barely kept alive by glimpses of sunshine and the cast-off waste of a human’s gut? Used as a debased go-between, a conduit for sordid schemes of violence and domination…”
Her voice broke into a sob. A real sob, out loud. When she spoke again, it was a normal human voice—no whispering, no taunting, just a genuine person talking. “Festina…all of you…I know you think the Balrog is evil. You see it as a threat because you imagine some terrible parasite eating you, stealing your soul. But it’s not like that. It’s…beautiful. Just beautiful. It’s wise, and honest, and gentle, and caring; I love it with all my heart. Of course I’m scared how I’m changing, and I have my moments of doubt…but I love this creature inside of me. I do. Because it’s so much more
holy
than anything I ever dreamed possible.”
She tossed her head defiantly, flicking the hair away from her face. Her mouth was a fierce line, and her eyes blazed with reflected red light from the moss as she stared at each one of us—daring us to argue. “Think how this bastard is using the spores he’s captured. There are three of them linked together: Admiral York on New Earth; this clone here; and that recruiter on Celestia…who’s another York clone, an earlier model without the fancy DNA. He had his features changed with plastic surgery so he wouldn’t be immediately recognized by people using the recruiters’ services, but it’s still the same old Alexander York. Three versions of the same man, touching mind-to-mind, thoughts kept perfectly in synch so they’re effectively the same person.”
Kaisho gestured to the man at my feet. “This is your father, Edward—body and brain. The cloned zygote was planted in a surrogate mother right here on Troyen, and born a few weeks before the war started; that glass thing was installed in the baby’s stomach a little while later. From that day on, the child’s brain was so dominated by transmitted thoughts, the infant had no chance of developing a separate identity. He
is
Alexander York: helping Samantha on Troyen, leading the recruiters on Celestia, playing Admiralty politics back on New Earth. A man with blood on his hands in three separate star systems, and the League can’t touch him because he never physically crosses the line.
“Now,” Kaisho went on, her voice still choking on tears, “can you imagine how it pains the Balrog to be caught up in this? Every day, Admiral York commits murder and war, using sentient creatures like disposable means to repugnant ends. Can you imagine how the Balrog feels, melded to such a putrescent mind? The entire Balrog race is in agony.
I’m
in agony, and I’m not holy, I’m just a lower animal out of my depth.”
“Kaisho.” Festina’s voice was soft, more tender than I’d ever heard it before. “Please don’t cry. Please. What does the Balrog want?”
“To free itself, of course. To detach itself from that awful man.”
“And to punish him?”
Kaisho met Festina’s gaze for a moment, eye to eye. Then she reached up and fluffed her hair back over her face, hiding once more behind her natural veil. Her voice dropped down to the old familiar whisper: back to speaking for the Balrog instead of herself. “If someone doesn’t do something, he’ll keep playing the same tricks. He has more spores—commandeered from the navy hospital that examined me.”
Festina contemplated the unconscious man at her feet. “Suppose we take him to Gashwan for surgery. Have the gadget removed from his gut.”
“We get the gadget,” Kaisho said immediately.
“Of course,” Festina agreed. “As for the man himself…if he’s committed crimes, and I don’t doubt that he has, we’ll turn him over for a proper trial. Considering that the Balrog has heard York’s every thought for the past few decades, it won’t be hard getting a conviction.”
“Yes it will,” Kaisho said. “Where is he going to get a proper trial? Even if
Jacaranda
rescued us this very moment, you couldn’t take this man back to the Technocracy. He’s a dangerous non-sentient creature; if you try to move him out of this system, the League will kill you as well as him. And if he stays on Troyen, he’ll be acquitted by the new High Queen Samantha.” Kaisho shook her head. “Sorry, Festina dear, but you can’t arrange any ‘proper trial’—you’ll never find a suitable legal authority.”
‘There is one,” Counselor said. “There’s
Teelu”
Silence for a moment. Then the other Mandasars nodded enthusiastically, ignoring that I was waving my hands no, no, no. “I’m not a legal authority,” I protested.
“You’re as legal as your sister,” Festina said, “and you suffered through the venom treatments before she did. When it comes to being royal, you’ve got seniority.”
Tobit grunted. “Not to mention you’re older than she is.”
“Just ten minutes!” I objected.
“They tell me you were the high queen’s consort,” Plebon put in. “That makes you the last surviving member of the old regime.”
“I was just a glorified bodyguard!”
Festina took me by the sleeve and pulled me close, pressing her helmet against my ear so I could hear her whisper. The smooth plastic visor was surprisingly warm where it touched my skin. “Edward,” she said in a low voice, “if you don’t say you’ll do something, the Balrog may take the law into its own hands. That’s a precedent we want to discourage.” She drew in a breath. “I’m not asking you to pass judgment on the spot. Just agree you’re the closest thing we have to lawful authority, and that you’ll consider all the issues at an appropriate time.”
I turned to look at her: those grave eyes of hers were inches away but half-lost in the shadows inside her helmet. My lips almost touched her visor…probably the closest I’d ever get to kissing her.
Silly ideas can go through your head at the strangest times.
I stepped back from her, faster than I meant to. Everyone was watching me—even the Balrog. Its red glow focused on me like a scarlet spotlight: not shining brightly, but making me feel conspicuous.
Suddenly, another silly idea went through my head: that all this talk of trials was pure moonshine, especially in our current circumstances. We weren’t going to convene a court out here on the ramparts while enemy troops were charging the palace. But somehow, Kaisho had wangled us all into thinking about it, and I was half a second away from saying, “Okay, I’ll declare myself in charge here.”
Which meant I’d be claiming the throne.
Was that what the Balrog
really
wanted? How much of the past few weeks was a big Balrog plan? If you let your imagination take over, you could start believing the Balrog had brought about this whole expedition to Troyen, just to rescue the single solitary spore inside this guy’s stomach. But if that were true, I was so far out of the game I didn’t have a chance of understanding what was really going on: who was good, who was bad, what was planned, what was sheer dumb accident. Better just to do the right thing as best I understood it, and hope that was good enough.
“All right,” I said, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart. For a second, I didn’t have a clue what to say next; but then the words began to come—not like being possessed, but as if a spark had suddenly jumped across a dead-gap inside my head.
“In the name of High Queen Verity the Second…” I felt strange, as if something was waking up inside of me.
“In the name of her daughter and rightful successor, Innocence the First…” The words kept flowing—from my own head, but some part I’d forgotten was there.
“In the name of my obligations as defender of the crown, and bearer of the burden of royal blood…” Like there’d been a whole section of my brain that’d closed itself off, shoved down dormant till the day I finally faced up to everything I’d known but not admitted—that my sister and father were monsters, that I was someone special, that I had a duty I’d been trying to escape for years and years.
“In the name of all that I am, all that I have been, and all that I should be…I accept responsibility as steward of this realm, regent until such time as the true monarch of Troyen assumes her proper throne.”
I could barely catch my breath. My head felt so
clear…
as if I could sense all of creation as one unified whole all around me. For one brief second, I swear I knew what was coming a heartbeat before it happened. I was already turning around when the words came.
“That’s so sweet, brother,” Sam said from behind me. “I must compliment whoever wrote that speech for you. Pity you’re going to have the shortest regency on record.”
43
CONFRONTING THE BLACK QUEEN
Without the slightest pause, Festina dropped and rolled.
You wouldn’t think someone could move that fast in a bulky tightsuit…but in the blink of an eye, she’d spun across the parapet and grabbed the scalpel Plebon used to cut open the front of her outfit. Another blink and she was poised above my father’s clone, holding the blade to his throat.
Only then did she look up to see where my sister’s voice came from.
At least this time we hadn’t let someone sneak up under our noses—nothing was anywhere near us. My amazing sensation of comprehending the universe had begun to fade, but I still had a sense of exactly where to look: out past the palisade wall, all the way to the second canal.
Soaring high above the water was a huge glass cube, three stories tall, three stories wide, three stories deep. A faint blue glow glimmered inside—softer than candlelight, barely enough for the cube to be visible against the night’s blackness. Shadowy somethings moved about within, but it was too far away to make out anything clearly…just wavery motions that meant nothing to me.
I’d soon have my chance to look again from closer up: the cube was flying straight at us, fast as a horse could gallop.
As it drew nearer, I noticed a parabolic dish mounted on the cube’s roof—one of those fancy gadgets for eavesdropping on people a long way away, and for talking back to them if you felt like it. That’s how Sam had heard what we were saying and put in her two cents worth. When you thought about it, that kind of communication system would be pretty useful in a war like Troyen’s. Thanks to the Fasskister Swarm, there were almost no radios on the planet…so if you wanted to talk to soldiers on the other side of a battlefield, you had to use something different, like tight-focused sound waves. The big hearing dish would also be handy for listening in on enemies: picking up battle plans, status reports, and juicy stuff like that.
So here was another reason Sam had won the war. No other queen would have a flying command post with all kinds of complicated audio equipment. It was kind of surprising
Sam
could have that kind of stuff…but then, she was doing business with the Fasskisters and our own navy. She must have got them to smuggle in a few goodies that were immune to antielectronics nanites.
As the cube soared over the palisade, defenders on the ground peppered the glass with crossbow bolts; but the arrows bounced off as if they were toothpicks. The instant after firing, the guards ducked for cover…because the cube had an escort of four Laughing Larries, one floating under each bottom corner, like round gold casters holding up a floor-model fish tank. None of the Larries tried to fire—they weren’t even making a big howl, just a leisurely spinning whistle—but the warriors below weren’t taking chances.
The cube stopped a stone’s throw away from us, hanging in midair, level with our parapet. The blue glow coming from inside still didn’t reveal much; nothing but unidentifiable shadows. It occurred to me, we probably weren’t seeing the interior at all—just a video projection, all murked up, like a thick gauze curtain that hid almost everything but let through enough to catch your attention.
No matter how hard it was to see
in,
I was sure Sam could see out just fine…with fancy nightscopes and sensors that showed our group as bright as if it were sunny afternoon.
“So. Edward.” Sam’s voice sounded clearly from the cube, as if we were talking face-to-face, not separated by thick arrow-proof glass. “You’ve finally come back to me.”
“I’ve come back,” I said. “But not to you.”
“To whom then? Those poor castaways from
Willow?
By now you must know there’s only one left; Daddy rather used up the other one. I can’t tell you how angry he was that they stayed behind—he hates loose ends.”
Tobit gestured to the unconscious man with Festina’s knife to his throat. “At this moment, your dad’s a loose end himself.”
“Yes, I figured you’d take him hostage.” Sam gave a theatrical sigh. “Pity you won the tug-of-war. Daddy was up on
Willow,
cannibalizing parts to make some more Laughing Larries—”
Plebon gasped. “You’ve got
Willow
here?”
“And a ship of my own,” Sam told him. “A pretty black one. We do a lot of manufacturing up there, where we don’t have to worry about Fasskister nanites. Anyway, I told Daddy not to try a landing, but he insisted it would be safe. He’d tapped into your own satellite sensors, and watched Edward break that anchor box. He thought it was the only one you had. Idiot. And speaking of idiots, brother, why
did
you smash the box?”
I didn’t answer. Eventually, Sam sighed again. “I’m hurt, Edward. You never used to keep secrets from me. But then, you’re probably upset. I’m sure Gashwan has been telling all kinds of awful truths about me.”
The front of the cube bloomed into a big view of my sister’s face, as if the whole surface was a single huge vidscreen. Even blown up three stories tall, Sam still looked beautiful: eyes warm and twinkling, her skin flawless, her face gaspingly perfect.
“So, Edward,” she said, “I figure you have an hour before my troops kill you. Any last words?”
“Yes,” I said. “We surrender. Any terms you want. Just call off your soldiers.”
She shook her head sadly, the way she always did when I was too stupid to understand something obvious. “You heard what I said about loose ends—Dad doesn’t like them. Two weeks from now, a group of navy diplomats are scheduled to show up here, ready to establish new relations between the Technocracy and poor war-torn Troyen. By then, we don’t want anyone left alive who knows what actually happened. That means we have to kill all of you, plus Gashwan and anyone you might have talked to.”
“What about the High Council of Admirals?” Festina asked. “Don’t some of them know the truth?”
“Certainly not—it’s Daddy’s little secret. Not even Admiral Vincence knows…despite all the energy he’s devoted to meddling in Daddy’s affairs. The High Council is always such a hotbed of spying on each other. Do you realize, Vincence had bought off the Executive Officer of Daddy’s own ship? That’s right: the XO of
Willow
was in Vincence’s pocket. It was the XO’s idea to pick up Edward on
Willow’s
way out of the system; that wasn’t in Daddy’s plan at all. He wanted Edward on that moonbase, where we could keep an eye on him. When Daddy interrogated your Explorer Olympia and learned
Willow
was taking Edward back to civilization…my, my, my, there was quite the tantrum.”
“Why would Dad care?” I asked.
“Because you
know
things, Edward. And you
are
things. I’m sure you don’t understand what’s going on, but if you ever got home and told Vincence everything you’ve seen…well, Vincence has brains.”
“Unlike us,” Tobit muttered.
“Don’t pout,” Sam told him. “The average Technocracy citizen is simply less
capable
than humans once were. The Admiralty has statistics to prove it; four hundred years ago, when the navy began testing recruits, they scored much higher in almost every area. All nine indices of intelligence…psychological maturity…emotional stability…you name it.
Homo sapiens
as a species has gone into decline, and nobody knows why. Maybe our pampered lifestyles. Maybe too many people with inferior genes, surviving and having children. Maybe some environmental factor was present on Old Earth but not where we live now. Navy researchers are quietly trying to figure out what’s gone wrong, but the diminishment is undeniable, especially on Technocracy core worlds. Four centuries ago, idiots like Prope on
Jacaranda
wouldn’t have been allowed to command a rowboat; now she’s the best captain the navy can find. Isn’t that appalling?”
Samantha paused for us to comment…but she didn’t wait too long. Sam loved making speeches, especially to a captive audience. “So what to do? The civilian governments are gutiess incompetents; they lost control of the fleet ages ago, and don’t even realize it. As long as there’s no interruption in imports of Divian champagne, they don’t give a damn what the navy does. Same with most of the navy itself. Captain Prope is the rule, not the exception.”
“Not in the Explorer Corps,” Festina answered. Her voice was quiet, but tough as iron.
“I wouldn’t know,” Samantha replied with a breezy wave of her hand. “Explorers have nothing to do with anything. All I’m sure of is the Technocracy suffers a major shortage of brainpower. It’s time for new management to take the situation in hand.”
“Meaning you,” I said.
She smiled. “Old Japanese proverb:
Who will do the harsh things? Those who can.”
Kaisho growled. “In defense of my ancestors, they were talking about shouldering difficult responsibilities. Not acting like a bitch because you can get away with it.”
“I know what they meant,” Sam said, “and I mean the same thing. People in the Technocracy are no longer able to govern themselves. Someone more gifted has to take charge. So my father and I intend to create the best leaders humanity has ever seen.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Festina replied in a bored tone. “Super-kids, able to fabricate pheromones, linked into a communal mind, blah, blah, blah. Sounds like a VR game I played when I was six.”
Sam couldn’t keep her eyes from widening in surprise; I think she truly believed no one was smart enough to see through her plan. But Festina was still talking. “Let’s get back to the present, can we? You have the armies, we have the hostage. What are we going to do?”
“Why should I care about your hostage?” Sam asked. “If he’s stupid enough to get himself caught…”
“Um,” I said, “I think you have a soft spot for stupid people, Sam. Especially ones you brought up yourself. You raised this clone from a baby, didn’t you? He was born just before the war started. So the instant I left Troyen, you got a baby Edward substitute; and you had the fun of playing mother to me all over again, just like when we were kids.”
Sam stared at me. “Did you think of that all by yourself, Edward?”
“Yes. I’ve also thought of who this guy actually is. He was produced on Troyen, twenty-one years ago, which means he couldn’t have been cloned from Dad—by then, Dad was way too non-sentient to leave New Earth. So where did the DNA come from? Either from me or from you: we’ve both got Dad’s DNA too. Except Festina says it’s not healthy to clone a clone; it’s better to go the old sperm and ovum route. Am I right, Sam?”
“Edward,” she said, “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“No, you haven’t,” I agreed. “But I’m right, aren’t I? This man is our son: you and me together. Gashwan could have got the sperm from me when I was delirious from Coughing Jaundice. You donated the egg, and the fertilized result was planted into a surrogate…but he’s still our child, isn’t he, Sam, even if he was put together in a test tube.”
My sister’s eyes had turned glittering sharp. “Brother dear, when did you get so smart?”
About the same time you made me a father,
I almost answered. But I didn’t say anything out loud. I was too busy mulling over the effects of hive-queen venom.
What happened when a gende changed into a queen? She got stronger, she got bigger…and she got smarter. Gashwan might have dumbed down my original DNA, but the venom mutated me, just like venom mutates a Mandasar girl. For all I know, Gashwan may have deliberately designed my brain to kick into high gear when it got hit with venom—just to make things interesting.
However it happened, the venom gradually stopped me from being stupid. It was scary and hard to admit…but it was the truth. I’d stopped being stupid. Nobody could tell the difference while I was all sick and poisoned, but by the night Sam killed Verity…”
Yet again I remembered kneeling in Verity’s chambers, smelling the blood on the floor, knowing it was fake…me seeing in a flash of insight that everything had been a setup, and that my sister was a horrible murdering butcher. I understood it all; I even understood that I must have got smarter, because the old Edward would never have figured out any of the awful stuff that had happened. The old Edward had been slow but happy, with a kind, beautiful sister who never did bad things to people.
It hurt to be smart. Understanding what really happened in the world just made you sick to your stomach.
So I turned that part of me off: just put it to sleep. I don’t know how I did it—you couldn’t call it a conscious decision—but something in my head had become so clever, it knew how to hide away my excess intelligence so I wouldn’t have to suffer. I packed up the memories too…just forgot them all. Like a completely separate person I didn’t want to be.
For twenty years, I went back to dumb old Edward. I might have stayed dumb forever…except I got dosed with a new shot of venom. That woke something inside of me—the seeds of memories, plus that separate person I’d set aside so long ago. Who was the spirit that kept possessing me? The spirit was me too: the brainy part of me, who saw I needed to be smart again. Bit by bit, Smart Me worked to join back up with Slow Me. I couldn’t tell if the process was finished, but accepting my responsibility as king had sure closed a lot of the gap.
There were still a lot of questions to answer…like why the clever half of my brain had smashed the Sperm-tail anchor and marooned us all on Troyen. Why trap us in a war zone? What kind of scheme had it worked out with Prope? Was Smart Me so keen on a showdown with Sam that it cut off our only escape route, leaving us no choice but to play this out to the end?
No way to tell. A lot of my brainy half’s thoughts were still out of touch. Nothing to do but keep going and hope I was suddenly smart enough to deal with whatever happened.
But I didn’t say any of this out loud. The last thing I wanted was Sam taking me seriously. Let her keep underestimating me, the way she always had. That might give me a tactical advantage.
In the back of my mind, some old-Edward part of my soul felt a twinge of sadness: how I was already scheming, using deceit to get the better of my own sister. The stakes were too high to do anything else…but I knew why, twenty years ago, I’d decided I didn’t want to be smart.