In the Hall of the Martian King (15 page)

“But they are a good place to vanish, and that’s what Kawib needs to do if he’s ever to have his freedom.

“And—this sounds so stupid that I don’t want to say it, but I guess I should—they’re more real there.”

“That doesn’t sound stupid,” Jak said, noticing that the wine was beginning to take hold of him.

“Maybe I should say it sounds like a lot of stupid people sound, so it’s sort of stupid by association. I don’t think that
being uncomfortable, overworked, and exploited makes anyone more real. I don’t think misery creates wisdom. Really the opposite.
But what working hard with the physical world, for not much reward, does do for a person, is it keeps them from thinking that
little games that happen in the brain
are
real. A heet who spends all his time setting probes or running a separator, so that his quacco won’t be seized and he won’t
be sold off as a peon, doesn’t necessarily know much about what is real (his perspective is too narrow and he may not have
time to think about it). But he does have a singing-on sense of what’s
not
real—like most of politics and practically everything that’s reported on the news: He does know that most of the jockeying
between aristos is no concern of his.”

“You’re sounding heretical,” Jak said, “and verging on republican.”

“ ‘Then make the most of it,’ ” Dujuv said, obviously quoting someone (Jak didn’t know who, but since Duj was an enthusiast
for dead languages, it could have been any of a very large number of obscure dead people). “Ever notice you can recite all
two hundred thirty-four Principles, and read all through the Teachings and the Suggestions, and you still won’t find a single
word about kindness, or gentleness, or keeping your honor? One of the best things about a heet busting his tail down in a
mine, or out on the lines of a sun-clipper, is that he knows that kind is better than cruel, and that he’d rather be around
people who told the truth than people who didn’t. Most of the affluent people in the ‘better’ parts of the solar system seem
to have missed those points. So yeah, I guess I lean republican these days. Maybe even Socialist, which will get me fired,
of course, but I can always go play slamball or sign on a sunclipper. It just seems to me that we’ve got nearly unlimited
resources at hand and we’ve been in space for fifteen hundred years; we ought to think about getting rid of at least poverty
and slavery, and on nights when I’ve had enough wine, I sometimes think we ought to get rid of torture and political repression
too.”

Jak snorted. “And if people weren’t forced by poverty or prods, who would do the shitwork?”

“People who were paid enough.”

Kawib jumped in. “Oh, toktru masen. What are you going to do, pay a resourcer on Venus more than you pay an orchestra conductor
on the Aerie?”

Dujuv shrugged. “As a whole, humanity could afford to pay everyone like a king. And there are a lot of jobs that could and
should be done by robots anyway. What’s two hundred years of a human life worth? That’s how much most miners on Mercury lose
out of their life spans.”

“Most of them are criminals. Mercury was settled by prison ships—” Jak said.

“See, this is what mystifies me about the way people think, Jak. Anyone who asks his purse can confirm this in about three
seconds, counting your talking time: most prisoners who went to Mercury went for debt, not for crimes, and anyway the present
population is mostly their descendants, not the original debtors or criminals. Even if you actually do think that overspending
your credit rates a century off your lifetime, and living as a slave in a tunnel in hell, should that happen to you because
of what your grandfather did? Come on, you were on Mercury too, would you send somebody into a krilj there, as a peon, because
his mom was a compulsive shopper?”

“If you made any changes like what you’re talking about,” Jak said, “the great majority of people in the solar system—who
are well off and comfortable—”

“Now why is it that before there can be any improvement for people who have nothing, the people who already have too much
have to get more?”

“Because,” Sib said, sitting down beside Jak, “they like what they have and if you want them to change you have to offer them
something they will like better. Your alternative would be robbing them at gunpoint, which I assume you don’t favor.”

“That’s why I spend a lot of time thinking,” Dujuv agreed.

“You should spend more. Some professions and some philosophies just never work together—and with your talent, you shouldn’t
lose track of your profession.” Sib’s voice was curiously hard-edged and insistent for casual conversation, but he sat down
and poured a glass like anyone else and said, “Kawib Presgano, we haven’t met before, but I’m Sibroillo Jinnaka, Jak’s uncle,
and also a stringer for Hive Intel. Which post, I hope, will not last much longer, because a regular agent should be here
in a few days, and they really need someone who outranks the agent they’ve got in charge.”

“Yes, they do.” Kawib made a face. “I don’t speck what you’re saying about the philosophy and the profession not going together—”

“Very often it’s not what attitude you take, or what beliefs you hold, but the fact that you try to do anything about them
that makes a mess. ‘Follow your sword through life, for if you are behind your sword, and it moves forward, and you wield
it with alertness, you are in the safest place you can be.’ ” Sib tasted his wine and nodded.

Though politics was Jak’s profession, he didn’t want to talk shop right now. “I
like
the idea of following the sword.”

“You were raised to it,” Sib pointed out. “But it’s a viewpoint that only makes sense if we never question the people we follow
the sword
for
.” He tugged at his goatee. “Get used to the idea that even their vices are virtues. Cruelty and aggression enhance their
power. Incompetence and silliness enhance our loyalty. I’ve had a very pleasant and interesting life, all spent following
my sword, metaphorically speaking of course—and that’s because my sword always had the common sense to go where it did the
most good for the aristos. They’re the ones who have the money to pay for us.”

Dujuv sighed. “I speck you but I don’t want to dak it, masen? It all seemed much simpler on the ground.”

“That’s because on the ground your main concerns are staying alive and carrying out your mission,” Sibroillo said, and this
was the first time this evening that his tone to Dujuv was polite and gentle. “Because you just followed your sword, and left
the question of who to fight (and why) to the people that the question belongs to. Now, tell me about this draft for slamball
players that you’ve been caught in?”

Accepting the peace offer, Dujuv sipped his wine and said, “Well, it happens every few months. I’m not sure why it made the
news this time. I had a real good record at the PSA. I guess it’s not too immodest—more just the truth—to say that I’m probably
the best player around who isn’t in school or signed to a pro team. So every time a minor league team gets into trouble and
the head coach is trying to keep his job, they use some of their draft points and claim they’re going to get me; because usually
if you’re trying to turn a team around in a hurry, and you can only afford one real change, a young hotshot goalie is what
you want. I’m not sure why this time it made all the vid and viv sports channels; usually it’s just a little flattering attention
in the low-priority ‘other news’ category.”

“You may have more friends than you think,” Sibroillo said. “You seem to like your present job, but there are those who would
say that when people are good at one job and magnificent at another, they shouldn’t be allowed to be merely good. And therefore
some busybody may have planted the story—perhaps Venus National, since they’re the ones trying to draft you.”

“Could be,” Dujuv said. “And there are times when my mood tips toward just going and doing it.”

The conversation wandered off into Disciplines technique, the new tactics in Maniples that had made Pabrino Prudent-Reckoner
(a crewie pizo and tove of Jak’s and Dujuv’s) the youngest Greater Master in more than a century, what the perfect all-night
drunk required, why the Uranus System moons remained quiet backwaters compared to everywhere else (Sib thought it was that
their culture was programmed to fail, Dujuv thought it was caused by poverty, and Kawib and Jak thought it was important to
get the two of them off the subject).

When they were very drunk, Sib started on the subject of adolescent pranks for which he had had to pay bribes to keep Jak
out of jail. “Going climbing in the light shaft got the most press and might have been the most impressive,” Sib said, “but
it was relatively cheap. And the ventures into commercial pornography and intellectual piracy were almost amusing. The one
that cost me plenty, and most of it spent keeping Jak’s name from getting into the media so that there wouldn’t be angry mobs
looking for him, was that nasty trick with the Pertrans cars.”

“I told you not to do that one, old tove,” Dujuv said.

“I know,” Jak said.

“I haven’t heard this story,” Kawib said, slurring his words; he seemed pretty drunk.

Sib said, “Not much to tell—”

“—but if we make Jak tell it, he’ll be much more embarrassed.”

“Thanks so much, Duj.”

“What’re toves for, old tove?”

“Am I gonna get this story?” Kawib demanded.

“I guess so,” Jak said, pouring another glass he didn’t need (the room was already slowly rotating) as a way of delaying it
just a few more seconds. “It was pretty simple, really. I hacked into the Pertrans message control database, the thing that
tells a public Pertrans car what to say to you. The Pertrans car confirms your ID so it knows who to bill, and that also means
that it knows everything else about you. So it knows which people have a fear of enclosed spaces, or which ones are bothered
by the fact that those cars go at up to three thousand kilometers per hour, and so on, and it has extra-reassuring messages
for them, for any time acceleration goes above point seven g for example. I just programmed it so that every so often instead
of saying, ‘This high acceleration is routine,’ it would crank the volume way up and scream, ‘The line broke! We’re all going
to die!’ Now if those poor gweetzes thought about it for a moment they’d know that if a linducer track breaks or depowers,
all that happens is you glide to a stop, and anyway they never break—”

Dujuv shook his head. “Phobias aren’t rational, and you were scaring the piss out of people who already have more than enough
fear in their lives. Not adventurous, not funny, that’s why I bowed out.”

“And that’s why I thought about adopting Dujuv,” Sib added. “And having you neutered and keeping you as a pet. But there is
a funny part coming. Tell Kawib why you got into trouble—it wasn’t merely because you frightened some unfortunate people so
badly that some of them had to have medical treatment.”

Jak groaned. “Oh, all right, it
was
mean. But the other thing was really stupid, and that’s much more embarrassing.”

“Really?” Dujuv asked.

“Really what?”

“You’re really more embarrassed about having been stupid than you are about having been mean?”

“Well, yeah. Toktru masen.”

“My fault, I suppose,” Sib said. “I raised him that way. Let’s not let him wriggle out of telling the story.”

“Toktru.”

Seeing no way to avoid it, Jak explained, “So, I was very involved with hacking at that time, loved it more than any other
part of tradecraft class, spent a lot of my spare time for a couple of months getting good at it. And there happened to be
this Dean of Students who I hated very much.”

“Dean Caccitepe,” Dujuv filled in. “Philto Caccitepe. You may know the name—”

“The head of staff for Hive Intel’s counterintelligence unit? Yes, any security heet has heard of him,” Kawib said, and began
to giggle, partly from seeing where this was going and mainly because he was exquisitely, excruciatingly drunk, even more
so than the rest of them. “Oh, Nakasen’s furry pink bottom, Jak, don’t tell me you hacked into his home number.”

“Nothing that painless. I found a number associated with his account that wasn’t marked for any purpose—”

“And even though Genius Boy here knew that Caccitepe was involved in Hive Intel—” Dujuv added.

“Oh, Nakasen,
because
I knew. You know, that spirit of you’re going to commit a crime and get caught, why litter or shoplift or park illegally
when you can get caught raping the president’s pets in a secret weapons plant on top of a bag of
xleeth
? You know, that go-for-the-record spirit. So I took this number, which I knew must be something, but did not realize was
the hotline for urgent counterintelligence calls, and I put it into a special message that played in that Pertrans message
database. If it gave anybody the ‘We’re going to die!’ message, one minute later it would say, ‘This joke was brought to you
by the Pertrans company to brighten your day. If you’d like to thank or compliment us, or if you’re a humorless crybaby sissy
who wants to complain, please call …’ and gave them that number.

“Dean Caccitepe was sub-impressed and infra-thrilled. Especially because he had five ordinary law-abiding citizens in jail
for calling him on a high-security line and making threats—and thirty agents investigating—before they got hold of someone
coherent enough to tell them what had happened, and checked the database, and figured it out.”

“It cost a small fortune,” Sib said. “Only a small one because the Dean and I are old friends and colleagues. As for what
consequences it might have for Jak … hmm. Well, as long as I’m alive, and able to keep an eye on things, limited consequences.
But if I die before the Dean does, Jak, you could do worse than to defect.”

“I thought you believed in absolute loyalty,” Dujuv said. It came out as “Athaw yabeleeved nabsloo loytee,” but after a moment,
everyone pieced it together. He pulled himself up straighter said, “Shouldn’t Jak ‘follow his sword’?”