Ruler of Naught (84 page)

Framed by the viewport, the Aerenarch gazed outward, and
Osri’s perspective shifted dizzily. Brandon vlith-Arkad, the last heir of a
millennial power, awaited by all aboard the station, each with their own
expectations of him—for a moment he was the fixed point in space, while the
ponderous, multitrillion-ton mass of Ares slowed to match its spin to his. Then
the navigator in Osri reasserted itself and the shuttle was again but a sliver
of metal approaching a human-made planetoid.

The glowing discharges of the electronic lock snaked across
the viewports. An unexpected chitter from the Eya’a caused a ripple of
reaction, nervous twitches and little laughs. A gentle bump in the shuttle
indicated they’d grounded in the bay.

Everyone stood up, including Brandon. The Navy officers
moved to the hatches, standing at attention. Murmurs of conversation went on
around, but Brandon stood silently, an island in the middle of a restless sea.
He appeared to be listening.

“You four will wait,” a Marine said to Montrose, Marim,
Ivard, and Lokri. “Captain Vi’ya, as translator for the Eya’a, you are
permitted to accompany—“

“I will remain with my crew,” the woman said, her accent
pronounced. “The Eya’a will know where to find me if they wish.”

Brandon glanced her way, just to encounter her back,
bisected by the long tail of hair.

Osri moved slowly to his father’s side.

The hatch opened and the Marine honor guard presented arms.
Beyond the ramp, Osri glimpsed a decidedly unmilitary scattering of people
waiting, their elegant formal dress startling after weeks of either uniforms or
hand-me-down clothing.

To the uninitiated eye the scattering might seem random, but
Osri knew that rigid hierarchy defined who stood where along the path; within
the hierarchy the perilous minutiae of deference dictated who stood forward,
and who behind.

Brandon gestured to Nukiel, and together they moved to the
hatchway. Just before he passed through, Brandon turned his head slightly, and
his eyes met Osri’s. The perfect Douloi mask broke, revealing a wry, curiously
rueful smile.

Brandon looked back and winked at Ivard as a hand motion
summoned the dogs to his side. Then, as peal after peal of the Phoenix Fanfare
shivered on the air, Brandon’s Douloi mask fell back in place, and in step with
Nukiel the Aerenarch walked down the ramp.

“Oh,” Ivard sighed, bringing Osri’s attention back to the
Rifters that he would leave behind momentarily.

Osri remembered another Rifter he’d left behind, the young Rifter
woman at Chang’s with her priceless gift of tenderness and passion. Priceless.
I
never even asked her name,
he’d thought as the bubbloid dwindled behind
Telvarna
and then winked out when the fiveskip engaged...

Around him the shuttle cabin dissolved.

The stars slewed around in a loose spiral as Osri fell away
from the mother ship. He sat up on the deck plates, his head aching. He looked
out the viewport, terrified to see the big ship falling away rapidly in the
vertiginous loop of a ship out of control.

He sprang to the con and fought the little courier, which
bucked and strained as the speed increased. The viewscreen flickered and
interference sparkled across it in nauseating swirls.

“I command you to go to Rifthaven.”

Osri tried to clear visual, but only audio came through. He
recognized that voice—the captain.

“But I don't want to go to Rifthaven,” Osri said. “I hate
that place—”

“You have to deliver the vaccine to Rifthaven,” the captain
cut in. “Do not evade me a second time.”

Second time?
Osri whimpered to himself, rubbing his
aching head. He peered out at the mother-ship, now a distant star. Was that how
he got this knot on his head?
I don't remember.

There was something he ought to remember, and it wasn't a
ship, it was... a church.

“A
church?
” he squawked.

“You will take the vaccine to Rifthaven, or they will all
die in the plague,” the captain said.

“I don't care if Rifters die of a plague! It would be great
if they die in a plague, and the nastier the better!” Osri yelled at the blind
comm. “In fact, they
are
a plague!”

But the viewscreen cleared to space. The communication had
ended.

“I don't understand.” Osri smacked the log tab with a
trembling fist.

There was the initial command. And then there was Osri
refusing to go, and trying an evasion tactic. He'd been caught in the
mother-ship's tractor...

The ship bucked, and Osri fought the controls. Tiredness
strained his neck and shoulders, and bleared his vision. There was no fiveskip;
the courier flew under geeplane, whizzing through system after system—

It's a dream!
he thought, immensely relieved.
It
can't be real, there's nothing like this in the universe. I'm dreaming.

Great! Superlative! He looked around the shadowy little
courier. “I can wake up now,” he said out loud. “I'm asleep, but now I'll open
my eyes, and I'll find myself asleep, in my—”

Where? Confusion vanished when the courier bucked and
plunged, forcing his attention back to the controls.

“Why me... ” he muttered, slapping the scan magnification. “Why
me?”

Exhaustion and depression pressed on him, so when at last he
saw the familiar Bloodclot and Bruise, it was almost a relief.

The relief soon disappeared. As he slowed for the approach
to Rifthaven, he found himself floating past windows and corridors.

“Who are you?” the comm demanded.

“Special courier,” he said, staring into a window where an
old man hunched over a console, hacking at his gangrenous arm with a knife. In
the chair next to him a body, stiffening in death, sat in a grotesque parody of
efficiency.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

The next com came from an ugly, scar-faced woman who huddled
in her pod, the lower half of her body a rotting mass of bleeding blisters.

“Special courier,” he said again. He wanted to get away as
fast as he could.

She passed him through.

Disgust churned inside Osri as he moved down the long,
pitilessly lit corridors with their piles of corpses. The plague worsened
steadily. Everyone was losing limbs, or hacking at extremities in a desperate
attempt to fight the contagion.

At last he reached a command center, a huge space filled
with the dead and dying. Osri clenched his jaw to keep down the acid burning
the back of his throat as he tried not to see the corpses stacked along the
walls, the dying near them, their limbs worming futilely, and the extremities
with black-rotted connective tissue lying strewn in his path.

He carried a heavy case in both hands. He knew it contained
the vaccine; the silver case bore a carved bird on it, a symbol of freedom for—

Ivard. The coin. What is this? It can't be real.

Osri stopped before a great console streaked with drying
blood. Transfixed across it was a naked woman, her face stiff and cold in
death. Great claw marks had slashed down her body, the blood dark and
congealed.

Reth Silverknife
, Osri thought, sickened.
Jaim's
Rifter mate aboard the
Sunflame.

He shut his eyes. This was a dream, and dreams could be
ended. He simply had to end it, open his eyes, and go back to his proper post,
at the Academy.

The Academy is gone
.

That wasn't the dream. He shook his head violently, but when
he opened his eyes, the young woman was still there before him, eyes gazing
sightlessly upward.

“Why have you come?” husked a hideous old woman with one leg
amputated and an eye sewn shut. “What do you hide there?” she went on, groping,
groping.

“The vaccine,” he said. The bird on the top of the silver
case gleamed. In spite of the tug of possession he thrust the case at the
woman. “It's yours. Take it.”
It's not mine! Why did I pick it up?

“We accept your shipment,” she cried in gratitude.

Osri found himself once more in the courier, maneuvering
through the red-lit streets. Everywhere, deformed Rifters lurked or sidled,
staring as he floated through in his little ship.

Disgust and fury grew in him until he finally found his way
out of the labyrinth of horror. Then he tabbed his comm and sent a plaintive
message to the ship: “It's done, and you may's well hit me with a ruptor if I'm
to be forced into any more worthless duties like that.”

He ended the communication, but the comm lit anyway. “Why do
you complain, Omilov? You took the duty, you took it yourself.”

Osri cut the connection and lifted his hands from the
controls, determined to let the ship continue on autopilot; if it made it,
fine, if not, well, what was the worth of living in a universe where the decent
people are being blown up by Rifters?
But who will save the Rifters?

They didn't deserve to be saved. By committing the Riftskip
they abrogated all their rights to the protection of the law.

But not their rights as human beings
.

It was an inner voice, not an outer one. “I hate this
dream!” he shouted. “I want it done!”

He opened his eyes, blinking against the light of a sun. He
reached for the con to steer away, then dropped his hands to his lap. He'd
force the dream to end—or he'd die.

But as he neared the sun, the temperature in the cabin rose
until he was faint from the heat. Still, he sat back, enduring what he hoped
would be the last of a humiliating life until the comm came on, again without
his having used the controls.

“Omilov,” the captain said, “where are you?”

“Near a sun,” Osri answered.

“You've plotted a false course,” said the captain. “Correct
it. I have more for you to do.”

A false course—a stupid dream. I have never plotted a
false course in my life.
“Why?” Osri said bitterly, to the swirling miasma
of color in the viewscreen. “I'm better off dead.”

“What are you angry with?” replied the Captain. “The sun
about to burn you up?”

“At least it obeys natural law,” Osri said. “I hate Rifters.
They ruined the Panarchy.”

“The Panarchy is not yours to declare ruined, or not,” said
the captain. “Our duty is to save the third overculture. They need leadership. They
have unexpected resources.”

Third overculture
. That was the phrase Sebastian had
used, long ago, in a conversation about Rifters.

Sebastian. My father. Who thinks there are good and bad
among the Rifters, just as there are good and bad among us...

For once Osri acted on an impulse prompted by something
besides anger. He walked back across the cabin, grasped Ivard’s skinny arm and
stuffed the coin and the ribbon into the breast pocket on the flight suit Ivard
had insisted on wearing for the occasion. He zipped the pocket closed, and
before Ivard could say anything, he joined his father and walked down the ramp.

Osri scanned the faces watching the Aerenarch’s slow
progress. He saw curiosity, politeness, interest, wariness, but no friendly eye
anywhere in sight. These were the High Douloi; their ineluctable formality
seemed to close around them like an icy force field. Even the dogs orbiting
Brandon seemed to move in preordained paths—

But formality did not triumph, after all.

A high, clear keening like a wind instrument beat the air
above the formal music, and a Kelly trinity danced along the path, stopping
before Brandon. As the Kelly performed a kind of obeisance, ribbons fluttering
and headstalks whirling, Osri heard a snorting sound from inside the shuttle.

A muffled “Hey! You can’t—” sounded, and then footsteps
pounded down the ramp.

Ivard bounded past, nose twitching.

The Marines whirled, pointing their weapons, but Nukiel
quickly raised his hand.

The Kelly then swarmed around Ivard, tweeting and blatting,
touching and gently slapping him all over. He responded in kind, his arms
writhing, hooting weirdly, joy informing every part of his body.

Then the two Eya’a moved swiftly down the ramp, their twiggy
feet scratching. A whisper went through the gathered humans there; several
attempted bows, which looked foolish as the little white figures moved past
without noticing.

Two people, a man and a woman, stepped up to Brandon,
dropping gracefully to one knee. Osri recognized the tiny, exquisitely gowned
woman: Vannis Scefi-Cartano, the former Aerenarch’s consort. Her eyes, and her
smile, were brilliant as gemstones. Next to her, in faultless Navy dress
uniform, a man, older and suave: Admiral Nyberg.

Their obeisances were elegant and protracted; together they
managed to draw the eye away from the Kelly and Ivard. Once again, Douloi
formality prevailed.

But it had been shaken, Osri thought, watching the silent
stewards lead away the four figures. A hint that things were not, after all,
the same, and could never be again.

Osri smiled.

First Edition Dedication (1993)

Our thanks to Debra Doyle, Jim Macdonald, and Andrew Sigel
for reading this book in draft, and making encouraging noises; and to Dave,
Ray, and many others in the Genie Spaceport RT, for their help in designing the
Standard Orbital Habitat

Second Edition Dedication

To Aharon, shaman and magister; Falstaff, Nemo, Kije, and Oka, for
tutoring in the Art of Dog; and, as always, the Privy Council, especially Barry
Messina, Randy Papadopoulos, Andrew Presby, and Paul Vebber, for helping breathe life
into the Panarchist Navy.

First Edition 1993, Tor Books

Second Edition

Book View Café

December 27, 2011

ISBN: 978 1 61138 148 1

Copyright © 2011 Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge.

Cover art by Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein,
Charibdys Prints
.