Ruler of Naught (36 page)

The man sat in midair as one who commands, light eyes
watchful, his arms folded. One of his hands held something tightly against his
body. He did not at all resemble the young man who had greeted them on the
catwalk.

So it was with half the people in the room. Their heads were
oriented in the same direction. They were also armed, and, with the exception
of one woman, did not look like Changs.
Just your usual gang of jackers,
he
thought.

(The Changs are unarmed,)
came Vi’ya’s warning.

The Changs—there were only four of them—floated at all
different angles around the room. They were also positioned with their legs
near a piece of furniture. Is that a nuller instinct? His hand reached to tap
his boswell, but the eyes of one of the jackers raked over him, a weapon came
up, and he overrode the impulse.

Now I see why we’re stupid Panarchist tourists,
he
thought, fighting again the weird urge to laugh as Lokri, bruised as he was,
looked around with a proprietary air, his posture languid.

The bundle of sticks on the sedan chair opened the biggest
pair of shining black eyes Osri had ever seen, revealing an unbelievably aged
woman. To Osri she looked like a doll made from dried fruit that he’d received
from some ambassador when he’d visited the Mandala as a boy.

(Granny Chang,)
came Vi’ya’s voice in his head.

“Welcome, daughter,” said the apparition in the chair in a
surprisingly clear, strong voice. “You bring us guests?”

Vi’ya inclined her head. “Health and prosperity to you, venerable
mother.” She motioned to Marim, Jaim, and Lokri. “My crew you know.” Pointing
to the Eya’a and to the Panarchists, she said, “And these passengers paid us
for a tour of the best entertainments in this octant. The Oblates are under
Silence, but they still wished to sample the delights of the Extravaganzoo, as
do these genz.”

As if on a cue, Brandon chimed in, “An entirely astonishing
pleasure, mezda Chang.”

The jacker in the wig sneered at Brandon’s ripe, plummy
accent, emphasized by his growing inability to breathe through his nose.

Brandon executed a formal deference—equal-to-equal with the
seniority-acknowledged overtone—but with a clumsiness bordering on parody that
reminded Osri again of Markham’s mocking mimicry that long-ago day on Minerva.
“This is most sensational, I must say—” he began, flapping his hand airily at
the room.

“May your daughter inquire of her mother an introduction?”
interrupted Vi’ya.

Granny lifted her arm in the wig man’s direction. Osri felt
a tingle of near disgust at the fragility of the limb. It looked like he could
snap it between two fingers. The old woman appeared crippled, but in null-gee
there was no need for muscle bulk.

“I have formed a new syndicate. This is Nokker, my new
partner.”

(That’s got to be blunge. Granny’s run this place alone
for almost two hundred years, since her husband died,)
came Marim’s voice.
Osri noticed her drifting slowly to one side, her boswell arm hidden by a piece
of furniture.

Osri decided to stay put, knowing that his clumsiness in
null-gee would make any movement on his part obvious. The Eya’a leaned at an
angle. The jackers barely looked at them.

Brandon had made himself the center of attention as he twisted
around, staring. He was clearly trying to mimic the fool tourist, but subtle
anomalies drew the eye. Uneasily Osri recognized the discrepancy: Brandon’s
goggling attitude did not match the grace and assurance of the rest of his
body, causing Osri a cold jolt of fear. Brandon stood out among the tight
angles of the jackers and the helplessness of the Changs. It stirred a memory
that Osri knew was important, but danger was too immediate. These jackers
might not know High Douloi usage, but they surely could recognize
inconsistency.

“Health and prosperity to you, Nokker.” Vi’ya nodded to the
man, then addressed Granny Chang again. “May this one approach her mother?”

“You’re doin’ just fine where you are, dolly.” The man’s
voice was a strangled hiss, as though something had damaged his vocal cords.
“Granny tires easily these days. Perhaps you’d better just give her that
present and come back later.”

Vi’ya reached slowly into her pouch. The jackers tracked
her, hands clamped on their weapons. Jaim drifted back toward a wall, and
Lokri, grunting with pain as he fiddled with the catch on the side of his cast,
bounced from a piece of furniture toward a clump of people. He waggled his
hands and feet, mouth open, “Oh dear, how can I...”

One of the jackers snickered and shoved him with the butt of
his jac toward a houseplant, where he got tangled in the leaves.

The fat man’s eyes shot a warning at the jacker, then narrowed
speculatively as Vi’ya held up the little statue.

(Arkad, we need a distraction.
Marim?)

Marim bozzed,
(Ready when you are, Vi’ya. Schoolboy, you
take those two nearest you.)

Osri’s heart thumped against his throat, and he tried not to
wipe his sweaty hands down his clothes. Near Granny one of the dogs slowly
stirred his tail, watched by the Eya’a.

Nokker leaned forward to take the statue, then paused.

“Br-a-k! Snorfle. Sniff. Kaff.”

The jackers shifted their attention to Brandon, who sniffed
and rubbed at his nose, uttering a series of strangled snorts gradually increasing
in volume.

“Excuse me.” He coughed, sniffing repulsively. “But the
incense—uh... uh... hubba... urp...”

Vi’ya cut a glance toward the Eya’a. Marim had drifted a
distance away, unnoticed. The jackers divided their attention between Vi’ya,
still reaching for her gift, and Brandon, who was making noises as if building
toward a titanic sneeze.

“Get out!” Nokker yelled. “Get that chatzer out...”

WAZOO
!
Brandon sneezed rackingly, expelling a copious
cloud of snot globules into the air. “Your pardon,” he gasped in his best
Panarchy-blit tones, “but I’m not accustomed to—”

KERFLOOSH!

Another blast splatted out, aimed at the nearest jacker, who
turned a somersault trying to get out of the way of the snot cloud.

The brown dog behind Granny chose that moment to move
lithely through the air at an angle over Nokker’s wig, and lift his leg.

A clear stream of urine splashed directly into the wig,
which emitted an explosion of sparks and smoke. Several of the fantastical
insect-constructions abruptly zoomed away at high speed, emitting shrill
squeals, as if in pain.

“Gyyyyaaaaagh!” Nokker screamed, his cry echoed by another
jacker whose face had intercepted one of the insects.

Lokri launched his houseplant directly at a knot of jackers,
and Jaim, cool and expressionless, picked two off with deadly precision. The
jackers began firing. Jac-bolts sizzled this way and that as everyone scrambled
for cover.

Osri pulled his jac, but by then the two Marim had directed
him to “get” had launched themselves in different directions, firing as they
went. He took refuge behind a nearby cluster of wicker chairs, his legs and
arms swimming desperately as he looked around, trying to make sense of the
fight.

KABLOO!

Lights exploded from the wig, sending more objects flying,
and filling the air with the stench of singled hair. Several rolls of hair
began to vibrate, impelling the writhing Nokker upward. The smoke swirling from
his head made him look like one of the flying warships in an ancient flatvid
Osri had once seen, falling out of the sky after losing a midair duel. Nokker
flung his arms wide and the control he’d been clutching in his hand flew across
the room, directly toward Osri.

He lunged out and caught it in his hand.

And that was what Granny and her children had been waiting
for. The lights went out, leaving only the glow of the incense burner. Osri
ducked as a jac-bolt sizzled past, shouts and screams impacting his ears from
all directions. A globe of light bloomed around Granny’s chair—
that’s got to
be the smallest tesla shield I’ve ever seen,
Osri thought distractedly—and
a bolt of plasma lanced out of it and fried Nokker, silencing his screams.

Dull fires glowed, revealing that the dogs had disappeared
entirely, and crew, Changs, and jackers alike had taken cover around the
room—save one of Nokker’s gang whose inexperience in null-gee betrayed her. As
a jac-bolt from Vi’ya sizzled past her she tried to duck, and instead pulled
her feet off the deck. Trying to defend herself, she made the mistake of firing
her jac in midair, which threw her into a tight spin. She vomited noisily,
throwing off a wheel of foulness, and began to choke.

This is becoming a real festival of excretions,
thought Osri with a sort of desperate hilarity just before a near-miss jac-bolt
ignited a streak across his wicker shield. He used it to launch himself toward
a wall behind an ornate cabinet. Heat singed past his ankle and one shoulder,
but he arrived safely. Peering around a corner, he scanned for allies: he
couldn’t see the Eya’a anywhere, and he’d lost track of Brandon.

Then something like a comet streaked across the room,
screeching imprecations. It was Marim. She had unfolded the hinged projections
on her jac and put her feet on them, and was using it as a combined weapon and
propulsion system.
That canister must be reaction mass
.

Marim twisted expertly and fired. The jac-bolt emerged at an
angle and spun her around. She landed on a wall, jumped off in another
direction, and fried one of their opponents with a jac-bolt. She used the
momentum from that blast to jet off in another direction and carom off a
potted plant—sending it into the face of another of the jackers, who whirled
away with blood splattering from his nose. Jaim coolly picked him off.

The room erupted in brilliant lines of crossing jac-bolts,
causing an increasing glow of smoldering furniture. Marim jetted past again,
jac-bolts crossing behind her as she fired, spun, and fired again, Jaim backing
her from the best position in the chamber.

Then it was over. The lights came on. Granny’s chair hung in
the center of the room as before, but now the other Changs were armed with
their foes’ weapons and moved purposefully around the room, vacuuming foulness
from the air, towing corpses toward hatches, and dealing with the wounded with
brusque efficiency.

Osri winced as one of them casually plunged a dagger into
the back of a wounded jacker’s neck; the victim convulsed and went limp.

Marim drifted up next to Osri, breathless and merry. “They’d
just space ‘em anyway—this is quicker.” She grabbed his arm and beckoned to
Brandon. “C’mon, Granny wants to meet you two.”

She launched them across the room to the sedan chair, braking
them with bent legs on its base. they ended up floating only a couple of meters
from the ancient proprietor. Around her neck gleamed a shock collar.

Silently Osri offered the control still clutched in one
hand, and the bird-claw fingers took it. The huge black eyes regarded Osri and
Brandon unblinking, than a smile split Granny Chang’s face, shifting the mass
of wrinkles as she sketched a gesture that Osri recognized as a deference in a
style that nowadays was only seen in historical serial chips.

“The House of Chang is honored, young Phoenix,” she said in
a whisper just barely audible. “How is it that a scion of the Mandala finds
himself at the back end of nowhere?”

Brandon stilled in surprise, then bowed, the innate grace
confirming her guess even as he pulled the domino off. “I’ve come to meet you,
of course,” he said with a debonair grin, as his hair floated in a black halo.
“What better pilgrimage is there?”

Granny Chang gave a sharp crack of laughter: “Be easy, O
Arkad. Nothing said here today will go beyond these walls. You have a story to
tell: you must give it to us when we celebrate. First you will clean up, while
we prepare a feast. It is a special day indeed that brings an honored daughter
and a Krysarch to us, and it is doubly blessed when the honored guests gift us
with our lives.”

Eloatri came to the top of the grassy hill, then stopped,
horrified, when she recognized the spires of New Glastonbury thrusting
arrogantly into the sky before her. The last light of day gilded them with
ruddy health, emphasizing their heaven-storming reach, drawing earth and sky
together in confident embrace. Faint on the air drifted the sound of chanting,
and then, in a clangorous summons that the last dregs of her spirit cried out
against, a peal of bells.

It was too much. She turned her back on the cathedral and
sat down, weeping. Of all the faiths of Desrien, of all the faces of Telos, why
had this one been chosen for her? It was everything her heart had always
denied, even as she granted it the tolerance demanded of every inhabitant of
Desrien for every faith there planted. The world not as illusion to be
surmounted, but a story to be lived; the celebration of attachment, even unto
bloody suffering and death.
No way out. No way out.

It is too much.
She stood up and without a backward
glance, made her way down the hill again, away from her hejir.

o0o

Night came, and with it a dense fog, rising up out of the
earth like the breath of some vast beast. Eloatri felt the potentialities
trembling around her, and she trembled in response. It was the
pekeri
,
the dream fog of Desrien, and it had swallowed her.

Now she was truly lost, but every time she tried to rest, an
irresistible restlessness, a spinning sensation in her breast like an engine
out of control, shook her tired frame and impelled her forward. Some time back
she had lost her staff, her cloak, and her sandals; she clutched her begging
bowl with grim intensity. Her yellow robe was damp with dew. It clung to her in
a clammy embrace, like the shroud of a drowned corpse.