King's Test (29 page)

"Not that I
don't trust you," the dealer said, and began slowly counting the
money.

Dion and the
messenger walked on ahead toward a small copter, parked on the flat,
green-tinted Laskarian terrain.

"Very
well." Anselmo tucked the bills into a greasy wallet, thrust it
into a cavernous pocket. "Be sure and don't make a mess, will
ya?"

"Yeah. Ill
keep my particular spot of the junkyard neat and tidy. Say, Anselmo,"
Tusk said conversationally, leaning near the junk dealer, all the
time keeping one eye on the messenger, "you know everyone in,
on, or around this planet. You ever seen that guy before?"

Anselmo grunted,
shook his head. "And if I never see him again, it'll be too
soon. When you come back, Tusk—
if
you come back—don't
bring the stiff with you." Waddling off, the junk dealer rolled
through the junkyard's fence gate, slammed it shut behind him.

Tusk started to
follow Dion, but Nola yanked him back.

"Now what?"
he asked irritably. "C'mon, will ya?"

He tried to drag
her forward, but Nola was a strong woman, her short, compact body
difficult to dislodge once she planted her feet.

"Look,
sweetheart," Tusk said in wheedling tones, "we can't let
Dion and the corpse just waltz off—"

"Will you
listen to me a minute?" Nola hissed. "Go on. Start walking,
if you must, but move slow. That Snaga Ohme he was talking about!
He's
the one I was investigating for General Dixter!"

"Huh?"
Tusk still had holo stars on his mind.

"The
weapons genius, on Vangelis! The one who was in touch with Lord
Sagan! I found out that this Ohme character had been on Vangelis,
working on some sort of top-secret project. I told Dixter what I
found out. He never said any more to me about Ohme and when I asked
the general, he got that kind of funny, tight-lipped look on his face
and told me to forget I'd ever heard the name. That was right before
the battle with the Corasians."

"So that's
it!" Tusk said bitterly. "It's all beginning to make sense.
That's why Sagan turned on us. He didn't want us, he wanted Dixter,
and he had to make it look good so no one would suspect. And Dixter
knew it. That's why he warned us to be ready. And now Sagan's got
him! Damn! I knew we shouldn't have left!"

Tusk halted,
looked irresolute, as if contemplating turning around, going back.

"Tusk,"
Nola whispered, "it
might
be coincidence that brought
Dion here, to the planet where Snaga Ohme lives. It
might
be
coincidence caused that messenger to actually exhibit some type of
life-form response when the name Ohme was mentioned—"

"Yeah,"
Tusk cut in, "and I
might
be chairman of the Derek Sagan
for Dictator fund-raising committee! But why the kid?"

"I don't
know. But if Dixter is still alive, like Link said, we might be able
to do him more good here than anywhere else. Not to mention keeping
an eye on Dion. I think we should be careful, though. Real careful,"
Nola added. The two had started walking again and were nearing the
'copter. Dion was waiting for them, impatience visible in every
straight-edged line of his body.

"Yeah, I
think you're right," Tusk said, and closed his hand reassuringly
over his lasgun. "Wait a minute, though," he added with a
low whistle. "How the hell did that creep know my real name?"

The 'copter,
driven by the messenger, chopped through the hot and arid Laskarian
air. Seated in front, Dion caught a glimpse of a large spacebase off
in the distance to the right. Tusk, behind him, informed him that the
base was Fort Laskar. Glistening tall buildings on their left marked
the location of the city of Laskar. They glided over its outskirts.
The streets were empty, dead as the messenger's eyes.

"It looks
abandoned," Dion remarked.

"What?"
Tusk bawled over the noise of the rotor.

"It looks
abandoned!"

"Hell, kid,
it's mid-afternoon!" Tusk shouted.

Dion tried to
look as if this made sense. The 'copter swerved away from the city
and flew over open country. The only sign of civilization was a long
ribbon of highway, stretched out along the desert sand. The highway
appeared as abandoned as the slumbering city, except for a billowing
curl of black, oily smoke rising up into the cloudless sky.

"Something's
on fire!" Dion pointed.

"Tanker
truck," Tusk said, leaning out at a perilous angle in an attempt
to see.

Their pilot flew
the copter over the highway, avoiding the smoke. He pointed at a vast
expanse of lush green, springing up suddenly out of the sand. "The
estate of Snaga Ohme."

Dion barely
glanced at it. Tusk and Nola appeared to take a great deal of
interest in it, however, and the young man wondered idly what it must
be like to be a famous celebrity, have your face splashed on mags and
vids, people dying to know what you ate for breakfast, whom you slept
with after lunch.

If I were king—
Dion stopped, almost laughed out loud. King! What right do I have to
be thinking about regaining the throne, the throne my uncle lost
through weakness and indecisiveness, the throne my own father never
lived to see.

Kings are
made, not born.
So Sagan told me. And all I've made thus far is a
mess of everything. I disobeyed orders, led a squadron of brave men
into trouble, and then didn't have the guts to lead them out. They
died, because of me. I was captured by the Corasians, forced Sagan
and Maigrey to come to my rescue, nearly got all three of us killed.

Oh, sure, I was
responsible for pulling the trapped mercenaries together on
Defiant,
I thought up the plan for helping them escape. I guess you could say
I risked my life, single-handedly attacking the control room.

Attack. Most of
the men weren't even armed. The ones who were didn't even bother to
aim them. Kid. Go run along and play, kid. They didn't take me
seriously. Well, at the end, they took me seriously. Dead serious ...
all of them. Dead.

"Kid!"
Tusk's hand was on his shoulder. He was shaking him, yelling in his
ear. "You okay? You look kinda green. Never rode in a chopper
before, huh? If you're gonna be sick, lean your head out over the
side—"

Dion did as he
was told, deposited most of his breakfast on the Laskarian landscape
below. Tusk hung on to the back of his shirt collar to keep him from
falling out.

His Majesty the
King.

The 'copter set
down on a flat, barren, rock-floored canyon in an area referred to
either as the middle of nowhere or the middle of Laskar and amounting
to about the same thing. The messenger had seemed to take a
circuitous route, perhaps to show them the sights, or perhaps to make
it difficult to ever find this place again. Dion had quickly lost his
bearings and he gathered, from what he could overhear of a muttered
conversation between Tusk and Nola on landing, that the mercenary
hadn't done much better.

A building
erected on the sun-baked rock looked extremely incongruous and out of
place. It was built out of a strange concoction of flat rectangular
panels—each panel the same exact width and length.

"It looks
like it's made out of playing cards!" Nola said with a giggle.

"Prefab."
Tusk grunted, staring at it.

"What's
that?" Dion asked.

"A home
away from home. Made for those who don't like to leave their comforts
behind. Those panels can be hauled aboard just about any
middling-sized transport—a shuttlecraft, for example. The
panels're super-fused cardboard. Lightweight, tougher than wood,
almost as hard as steel. They snap together and, when they're up,
they'll stay up for years. Kind of an odd place, though, " Tusk
suggested quietly, "for the Lady Maigrey to be. Don't you think
so, kid?"

Dion studied the
house stacked up in the desert. It was windowless, doorless, quiet.
Several other copters stood on the landing site near where he and his
companions had touched down. A large shuttlecraft was parked nearby.
The green sun, slipping toward the horizon, cast long shadows that
moved across the house of cardboard, making it appear to change in
shape—growing longer, then shortening, then taller, then
sinking. The house seemed more alive than anything around it.

"This way,
if you please." The messenger waved a polite hand toward the
house.

"Is the
Lady Maigrey in there?" Dion stopped him.

The messenger
presented a face barren as the rock on which he stood. "Not
precisely," he said.

"What do
you mean?" Dion felt a pang of fear and was immediately furious
at himself. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, the blaster in
Tusk's hand, Nola coolly leveling the needle-gun. Dion groped for the
bloodsword, closed his hand around the hilt. "We're not taking
another step until you tell us what's going on!"

"
I
will tell you what you want to know, Dion Starfire," shouted a
voice.

A man stood in
the doorway of the cardboard dwelling. He was clad in magenta robes
and gave the impression, by being bent and stooped, of great age. But
his movements were swift, his voice strong. He started toward them,
covered the distance between Dion and the house with surprising
speed. Reaching the young man, coming to stand in front of him, the
man drew the magenta-colored hood from his head.

Dion had seen
many strange life-forms in the galaxy, seen aliens considered
disgusting to the human eye—people with eyeballs where their
feet should be, people with heads in the general vicinity of their
stomachs, people who looked somewhat like broccoli that's taken a
turn for the worse. But Dion had never seen anything more loathsome
than the sight of this man. Involuntarily, he took a step backward.

The old man's
bald head perched on a scrawny neck that seemed as if it might snap
beneath the weight. Patches of peeling skin, cracked and dry, dotted
his domed forehead. Two large nodes swelled outward from the base of
the head at the back and a series of welts ran along the major nerve
paths up the neck, the face, around the skull. Despite the fact that
the temperature where they stood must be well over one hundred
degrees Fahrenheit, Dion noted that the old man, though clad in
extremely heavy woolen robes, shivered as with a chill.

The old man
stretched out a bony left arm in a gesture of welcome. Welts twined
up the arm like snakes. When he moved it, bits of decaying skin
flaked off, fell unheeded to the ground.

The old man
spoke humbly, reverently. "Welcome to my house . . . Your
Majesty."

Journeys end in
lovers meeting.

William
Shakespeare,
Twelfth Night,
Act II, Scene 3

"I have the
schematic, your ladyship."

"You do?
Bring it up!" Maigrey had been pacing the small cockpit of the
spaceplane, four steps one way, four another. She nearly leapt at the
computer when XJ spoke, then clutched the back of the pilot's chair
and leaned over to look intently into the screen.

A
three-dimensional view of the crystal space-rotation bomb appeared,
showing in detail its complex circuitry and construction.

"Rotate it
a hundred and eighty," Maigrey instructed.

The computer
obeyed.

"Back again
ninety."

The bomb on the
screen obligingly turned. Maigrey viewed it from all possible angles,
top and bottom. Suddenly, with an indrawn breath, she sank down into
the pilot's chair.

"My God!"
she whispered. "What have I done?"

"What
have
you done?" XJ demanded nervously, not liking her tone, not at
all liking the fact that this powerful bomb was in the computer's
spaceplane.

"That's why
Snaga Ohme wanted it back. Not to sell it to someone else, but to use
it himself! And I gave him the means! Dear God. Dear God!"

"You gave
him the means to arm the bomb?" XJ asked, shocked, completing
Maigrey's somewhat fragmented statements. "Are you certain, your
ladyship? Begging your pardon, ma'am, but I've analyzed the bomb and
run through every conceivable armament device known to man and alien,
plus several that I just came up with myself, and nothing.

Absolutely
nothing. Therefore I don't see how it's possible—"

"Try this,
XJ." Maigrey lifted the stylus, drew a shape on the screen,
inserted the shape into the schematic drawing. It fit perfectly. "And
this chemical composition." She read it off.

"By gum!"
XJ said, stunned. "That's it! You have one of those
eight-pointed whoozles and you put it into the bomb and blam! But
what are these things? Just a moment, I'm running it. They're . . .
they're . . . Oh. Oh, my." The computer lapsed into an
uncomfortable silence.

"Yes,"
Maigrey said wearily. "A starjewel. The Star of the Guardians.
It's absolutely perfect, the one substance Sagan could be almost
completely certain no one but he himself possesses. Except me, of
course. And where was I when he was designing this bomb? Far away, no
possible threat. Until I return and then I
am
a threat, if I
find out about the bomb, and then John Dixter, my poor John, stumbles
on the information, and then . . . and then . . . and then what do I
do? I give my starjewel to the Adonian! Of course Snaga Ohme would
recognize the jewel as the arming device. He built the damn bomb!"

"Your
ladyship, please," XJ began awkwardly, distressed by her obvious
despair. "I'm certain things aren't as bad as they seem—"

"Oh, no.
Not yet. But just wait, " Maigrey predicted. She let her head
slump into her folded arms. God, she was tired! She longed to go to
bed, go to sleep, never wake. . . .

She wrenched her
head up. What was the matter with her? That awful experience on the
highway. The sight of those creatures had rattled her more than it
should have, drained her of energy, of the will to go on fighting.
She had the bomb, after all. She would keep it, find a way to get the
starjewel back. A Star of the Guardian taken by force has a way of
returning to its owner. But one given away freely? . . .