The Lost King (38 page)

"At least now I
have a name."

Even in heaven they
don't sing all the time.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
from
Pictures of the Gone World

A million dark suns
revolved erratically around in Tusk's brain. Suddenly and without
warning, they all exploded into fiery life.

"
Good
morning!" sang out XJ. "Rise and shine!"

"Sufferin' Satan!
Damn and blast you to hell and back again!" Tusk clutched his
head, squinched his eyes shut.

"No swearing!"

The computer turned the
lights up to full power and opened the viewport. A flood of blazing
sunlight drowned Tusk. Groaning, he staggered to his feet and
vanished precipitously into the head.

XJ hummed to itself and
lay in wait.

"Where's the kid?"
the computer demanded when Tusk reappeared. "You didn't lose him
in some game of seventy-eight, did you?"

Tusk fell face-first
onto his hammock and lay there wondering if his head was going to
remained attached to his neck or just float off into the sky like a
balloon. He found himself devoutly hoping it would leave before it
exploded.

"I asked you a
question!" XJ snapped.

"I'll answer it as
soon as I shave the fur off my tongue," Tusk mumbled into the
pillow. "Whadaya mean, where's the kid? He went into town with
Link."

That didn't sound
right, Tusk thought. I should tie a string on my head. Tie the other
end around my wrist . . .

"That was
yesterday afternoon, you rummy! The kid didn't come home all night.
I've been worried sick! You're no help. You stroll in after a hard
day at the gaming table boozed to the—"

"Didn't come
home?" Tusk sat up, holding onto his head with his hand. Someone
was trying to stick a pin into his balloon. "I didn't play
cards. I was with Dixter." The explosion sent shattering pain
through his throbbing temples. "Dixter! The kid! Sagan!"
The mercenary staggered to his feet and headed for the hatch.

"You can't go see
the general looking like thatf' the computer cried, scandalized. "Put
on a shirt! And a pair of— He's gone." XJ sounded
disbelieving. "Everybody'll blame
me
, I suppose! Well,
it's not my fault he goes around looking like a refugee!"

"That's as far as
I could get, General," Nola Rian said. "The door was sealed
shut, from the inside. No one in that factory knows a damn thing
except that they went to work one day and there was nothing there. No
furniture, no computers, no files—nothing except the electric
outlets. You understand, sir, that the people I talked to were the
ones who wouldn't be likely to know much about the
business—maintainence, groundskeepers. The people who did, the
people who knew things— Well, they're gone."

"Gone?"

"Just . . . gone."
Nola spread her hands, encompassing empty air. "The business was
obviously a front for something else, something really big. I came up
with a name. It may or may not mean anything. One of the secretaries
had to bring coffee to a meeting of the general managers one day and
he heard the name 'Snaga Ohme—'"

"Ohme!"
Dixter stared, his heavy eyebrows meeting in a frown.

"Yes, sir. The
secretary remembered it because he'd been reading a mag about a party
this Ohme fellow had thrown on Laskar. Apparently he's one of the
rich and the beautiful."

"One of the rich
and the deadly. He's—"

A buzz made Nola start.
Dixter depressed a button.

"Tusk's here,
sir."

"Thank you,
Bennett. Send him in."

The last was
unnecessary. Tusk flung open the door. "The kid's gone! He
didn't come home—"

"Come in, Tusk,
please, and shut the door." Dixter was calm, unperturbed. "You
remember Driver Bian?"

"Nola!"

Looking at her, Tusk
saw her looking at him and he realized he was standing in General
Dixter's office in nothing but a pair of filthy, stinking blue jeans
and rope sandals. His hair was uncombed, unwashed, his body was
unwashed and half-undressed. His eyes must look like Tison's twin red
suns, and Tison's desert sands were in his mouth.

"I'm sorry, sir,
I—"

"Sit down, Tusk.
Rian, would you please wait in the outer office? This won't take
long."

"Yes, sir."
Nola rose to her feet. She cast a worried, concerned glance at the
mercenary, who was too upset and preoccupied to return it. The door
closed behind her.

Tusk slumped into a
chair. He couldn't believe Dixter. The general was cleanshaven,
uniform clean and no more rumpled than usual. His eyes were clear.
His shoulders were hunched, but that seemed to be from a heavy burden
he was carrying rather than the effects of yesterday's brandy. The
painful throbbing in Tusk's head moved to his heart.

"Sir, I think we
should send out patrols—"

Dixter interrupted,
raising a hand. "That won't be necessary, Tusk. I know where the
boy's gone."

Tusk knew, too, then.
He stared at the general in bitter silence. Suddenly, he jumped to
his feet and started to leave.

"You couldn't have
stopped him."

Tusk whirled around. "I
sure as hell could have tried! Sir!" He grabbed for the
doorknob, missed, and nearly fell over backward.

Dixter sighed. "Tusk,
sit down and listen to me. That's an order."

Tusk didn't know
whether to obey or throw the chair through the door. Discipline and
his better sense won out. He relapsed into a seat, his face angry and
brooding. He kept his eyes on the floor.

"You know how it
is, Tusk, to be one of the Blood Royal."

"I'm only half,"
Tusk muttered, not looking up. "My mother wasn't. My old man
never did anything right."

"But you know—"

The mercenary stirred
uncomfortably. His head hurt, bad. "Yeah, I had delusions of
grandeur. Once. That's why I joined the Air Corps. Got beat out of me
real quick."

"Your father tried
to stop you from joining, didn't he?"

"That was a
helluva lot different, sir!" Tusk lifted his head, glared at the
general. "I was going to flight school, not throwing myself into
a terminator!"

"You knew your own
name, Tusk. You know who you were, who your father was. And, yes, you
were going to flight school. You weren't going out to find a throne."

"The only throne
that kid's gonna sit on is the kind you flush. Why did you let him
go, sir? The woman—Lady Maigrey, if that's who she was—gave
him into your trust!"
I
gave him into your trust, Tusk
added, but had sense enough not to say aloud.

"No, Maigrey said
that if Dion needed help, he could trust me. The boy did. I answered
his questions. I told him all I could. But I can't live his life,
Tusk, and neither can you. If it's any comfort, I don't believe Sagan
will execute the boy. There's something about Dion. He's got
'destiny' stamped in large letters across his forehead."

"But you let him
go alone, sir!"

"Who would you
have sent with him? You? Me? Sagan would have terminated both of us,
without a moment's thought. You're a deserter for God's sake, Tusk!
I'm traitor. Not to mention the fact that Sagan's carrying a grudge
against you for swiping the kid out from under his nose in the first
place. I think that was another reason the boy went—to protect
us. Besides, Dion's not alone. Lady Maigrey's with him."

"Good!" Tusk
grunted. "Great! A ghost."

He was still mad, but
he didn't feel like he was going to throw things anymore. What Dixter
said made sense—or at least Tusk figured it would when the
balloons quit bursting in his head. He wasn't mad at the general. He
was mad at himself. And at Dion, he thought. Damn fool kid. I let him
down. But why'd he have to make me care, anyway?

Dixter's lips parted in
a wry smile. "I don't think she's a ghost. Tusk. I think she's
with Sagan, probably a prisoner, too."

He
hopes
she's a
prisoner, Tusk realized fuzzily. God, that man's hurting. Love. You'd
think, after all these centuries, they could have found a cure. He
rose unsteadily to his feet.

"I'm sorry, sir,
for the way I acted."

"Apology accepted.
I understand. I felt like hitting someone myself when I woke up this
morning."

Tusk paused, hand on
the doorknob that he managed to find this time. "Sir, do you
think I can fly my plane now? The Warlord's got what he was after,
and anyway I really don't give a damn. If he wants me, he can come
and get me."

"Sure, Tusk, go
ahead. This war isn't going to last that much longer. The
government's about ready to negotiate. Marek estimates they're losing
twenty million on the uranium shipments daily."

"And when it's
finished?"

"I've already had
offers from three other systems. I'll take the one that's farthest
away. There's nothing here for either of us anymore, Tusk."

Reaching up to his left
earlobe, Tusk jerked out the earring that was in the shape of an
eight-pointed star. He stared at it, fingering it, then stuffed it
into the pocket of his blue jeans.

"Yeah," he
agreed. "Not a thing!"

Necessity and chance

Approach me not, and
what I will is fate.

John Milton,
Paradise
Lost

It was ship's night of
the day following the day of the meeting with Dion. Maigrey hadn't
seen Sagan, she hadn't seen the boy. She'd kept herself apart from
both. Going to the library on board
Phoenix
, she returned to
her quarters with a book. She had just started to read it—she'd
finished about sixty pages—when she came to this passage:

'"In our course
through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from
many strange places and by many strange roads . . . and what it is
set to us to do to them, and what it is set to them to do to us, will
all be done.'"

The words struck
Maigrey and chilled her, and she looked back to reread the paragraph
with more careful attention.

My lady.

Sagan's thoughts
suddenly entered her mind, startling her as much as if he had
suddenly entered the room.

My lord
. Maigrey
closed the book, keeping her fingers between the pages to mark her
place, and waited in trepidation. Sagan had spent the night in
prayer; she'd sensed his thoughts. She'd spent the night awake,
staring into the shadows.

I intend to initiate
Dion.

You can't be
serious!

I am, and you will
assist me, my lady. You should be pleased. It will lengthen the days
of your dance.

The boy isn't
prepared! It takes years of study, training. The thought came to her
reluctant and unbidden. What if he fails?

I have no choice.
The President and the Congress know that he is in my possession.

Captain Nada
,
she guessed.

Yes. He has just wit
enough to serve my purpose. He feeds Robes's paranoia, and a fearful
man is a clumsy man. I am close, very close to gaining what I've
always sought. I must know completely the will of the Creator in
this, my lady, before I make my final move against the leaders of the
great and glorious Republic.

The sneer was almost
audible.

If you have so
little respect for Robes and his principles, why did you join the
rebellion? I know you considered our king weak and unfit to rule. I
know you believed he had lost his mandate from heaven. But was it—she
hesitated. Did you truly believe the worlds would be better off under
a democracy?

They could hardly
have been worse, or so I thought at the time, Sagan replied. It seems
I recall having this conversation before, my lady. Don't you
remember?

No, she didn't
remember. They must have talked that night . . . before the killing
started. He must have given her some hint, some indication of what he
intended to do. He couldn't have concealed his purposes from her.
Which meant she must have known, must have condoned and gone along. .
. .

Their silences merged
and she sensed him thoughtful; sensed, too, the disillusionment that
had corroded the once strong, true steel of his ideals.

Yes, my lady, I
believed in Peter Robes. You didn't know him then. You considered him
beneath you
—

That's not true. I
didn't like him. I didn't trust him.

It is true. You
could never forgive him for being one of us and yet for renouncing
us. I believed in his goals, his principles—or what he wanted
us to think were his goals and principles. I believed in the people.
Pah! Do you know, lady, that in the last election only twenty percent
of the citizenry bothered to vote? And those who did elected the
candidate who spent the most money to woo them. Never mind that Robes
is proven corrupt. Never mind that the once great empire is crumbling
into pieces.

Edmund Burke, Sagan
continued, is said to have predicted that the French revolution would
lead to a military dictatorship . . . and there was Napoleon,
reaching into the ashes to fan destiny's dying spark. I am reaching,
my lady, and it is almost within my grasp.

Maigrey carefully shut
the book and lay it down upon her reading table.

And why the boy, my
lord? Why this obsession with him?

Isn't it obvious, my
lady? To keep sentimental fools like you from raising up another
Starfire—another weak king who couldn't decide if he should
part his hair in front or behind.

You'll dazzle Dion
with power. He'll come to love and respect and honor you, and then
you'll betray him just like you betrayed
—

Maigrey checked her
heedless, headlong rush down a path she'd never meant to take. She
drew a quivering breath, wiped a stray tear from her face, and
searched for a handkerchief. She never had one; it was some sort of
law with her. Finding none, she wedged herself into the tiny
bathroom, grabbed a face cloth and doused it in cold water.