In the Hall of the Martian King (3 page)

“I’ll keep a tight rein on Uncle Sib,” Jak reiterated, mentally crossing his fingers.

“You really do have considerable administrative talent.” Waxajovna smiled. “That was exactly what I wanted to hear, and as
Principle 106 reminds us, ‘Telling your boss what he wants to hear is the very essence of administrative talent.’ Now, you
are no doubt aware that I have a great-great-granddaughter, who lives with me, and who is named Pikia.”

“It would be difficult for me to be unaware of it, sir.”

Waxajovna tried not to smile. “Let me just guess at your private opinions.”

“Um.”

“I see your diplomatic technique is coming along, Jinnaka.

“Now, life is very dull for Pikia. If I were to take her to the Hive with me, she would have ample chances to make life exciting,
and do ten or so things that would keep her out of the PSA and therefore out of any decent career, forever. It’s a family
phase that I have now seen through five generations, masen? I need to keep her out here in the dull until she’s ready for
the world, and boost her record so that she’s admitted to the PSA.

“Now, I’ve arranged the sort of internship here, in our office, that one arranges for a relative. So she will be calling on
you, here, first thing tomorrow. Her job is to help you. Your job is to cause whatever she does to constitute help, so that
later you can write a glowing report about how helpful she was. And this way, everyone gets some help, and after all, we all
need help, don’t we?”

“I was just thinking that, sir.”

“Good thinking, pizo. Now, I really must go back to my quarters one last time, and make sure that my bags really were picked
up and are on their way to
Eros’s Torch.
Unofficially, hello to your uncle, tell him to behave, and tell him to stay away from the ones that look like opossums—uh,
better tell him that when his demmy’s not around.”

“You knew each other?”

“Much too well.
Everyone
knows your uncle. It’s a miracle that anyone named Jinnaka can get a job anywhere.” With a happy wave, Reeb Waxajovna airswam
out of Jak’s office, leaving Jak, for the first time, in charge of forty thousand people living in and on a tiny world.

I
n interplanetary travel, momentum is money, changes in momentum have to be paid for in scarce and expensive energy, and therefore
ships rarely descend into orbit, preferring to pass the planets, moons, and big stations at distances of anywhere from one
hundred thousand to one million kilometers, exchanging passengers and cargo via ferries, launches, or longshore capsules.

Reeb Waxajovna was now on a ferry headed out to
Eros’s Torch,
but had many hours to fly until his ferry would catch it; Sib and Gweshira were coming in on a different ferry, had only
just left the ship, and would not arrive until early the next morning. At least, Jak reflected, orbital mechanics usually
gave you enough time to clean the bathroom and hide the sex toys before off-planet visitors arrived.

Jak’s official quarters were one of his few real perks— 850 square meters on three levels, which gave him space enough for
exercise and full-viv rooms, a centrifuged lap-swimming pool, and a ballroom perfect for a party if he’d had any friends.

He stripped into the laundry freshener, raised his left hand to his mouth, and told his purse to “have the butron clean, press,
and hang all this. Order my standard Lunar Greek meal from Kosta’s, and have it delivered. I’ll want it after I practice the
Disciplines.”

The fingerless blue glove asked, “Shall I start preparations for an early bedtime?”

“Yes, thank you.” Jak stroked the reward spot as he walked into his dressing area. He opened the charging locker and pulled
on the fighting suit and viv helmet for the Disciplines.

Uncle Sib always said that the Disciplines was a martial art in about the same way that sex was a biological activity or chocolate
was a food—technically true but it missed most of what mattered. Most afternoons, when Jak began Disciplines katas, he was
instantly calm, focused, and alive. But his mind was not on it today. As he fought the endlessly attacking black figure, flickers
of color and flashes of light all over Jak’s own body indicated when his hands and feet were not on the right trajectory at
the right time, and to his disgust, he actually missed twice with the short blade and once with the slug thrower in the weapons
katas.

He had his purse delay his bath, and sat and meditated for a short while, but he found that even meditating was difficult,
and whatever was bothering him, it remained elusive. After a time, he sighed and gave up, asking his purse, “Bath ready?”

“Yes, at temperature.”

Jak pulled off his fighting suit and dropped it into the freshener; the butron would move it to the charging locker once it
was clean.

In the bathroom, Jak set his purse down within easy reach (purses were waterproof but disliked immersion in dark, sudsy water).
He had barely settled into the suds when his purse said, “Two messages from top priority people.”

Jak leaned out of the tub and pushed the reward spot again. He might be spoiling this purse slightly, but it was essential
that it be loyal. The purse did so many routine tasks for its wearer that the right to wear one was part of the Hive Charter.
But to have the necessary judgment and sensitivity to be the constant companion of a human being, a purse had to be far too
smart to be programmed; it could only be trained. And like any personality, much of its nature was determined by the subtle
accidents of its physical nature.

Thus, when Bex Riveroma had forced Jak’s old purse to suicide—murdered it, really, as far as Jak was concerned— his new purse
had had to be trained all over again to be able to access the restored memories, in much the way that a new arm grafted onto
a tennis player had to re-learn, before it could play as well as its predecessor—and it would never play the
same.

This was a good purse, but Jak missed the old one. One more score to be settled with Riveroma. (If Riveroma didn’t settle
first.)

“All right, then,” Jak said, “you can put the first message up on the wall across from me.”

Jak looked into the utterly expressionless face of his old toktru tove and oath-friend Shadow on the Frost. Shadow lived among
humankind, instead of in the Rubahy colonies in the Pluto/Charon system, for reasons that probably made sense to a Rubahy.
Human and Rubahy politics and institutions intertranslated badly, but as far as Jak could make out, his Rubahy tove was thought
to be so promising that too much was expected of him for any Rubahy to fulfill, thus offending both his allies and his enemies
whenever he succeeded (because it damaged their own relative standing) and whenever he failed (because it showed him unworthy
of either their love or their hatred). Or it could be something else entirely. Perhaps in another thousand years human and
Rubahy would dak each other better, if they didn’t annihilate each other and if the Galactic Court didn’t order both species
exterminated. Meanwhile, Shadow on the Frost was a pizo to have with you when it all went into the soup, and a toktru tove,
and that was all Jak really needed to know.

Shadow was slightly short for a Rubahy, which meant he was tall for a man. His large jaws and long front teeth, with extra
slicers, marked him as hereditary warrior caste, and as on most warriors the pinfeathers that densely covered his body were
white with one black patch on the back of his right shoulder. His scent organs, on top of his head, were two big loose flaps
of flesh covered with special feathers, and looked much like ears. His were unusually long and elliptical, causing other Rubahy
to call him “Bunny,” a nickname that he hated passionately.

Because of the scent organs, square jaw, and black button eyes, speciesist humans sometimes called Rubahy by the insulting
term “terrier,” but there was really nothing doglike about them. Rubahy looked something like tall thin feathered apes with
baboon-jaws, and something like thin tyrannosaurs with gorilla arms, but to anyone who had ever seen them, they looked like
Rubahy; once you knew a few, they tended to look like warriors, truth-tellers, makers, teachers, or any of the about ninety
other castes; and to Jak, Shadow just looked like Shadow.

“Jak, my toktru tove, it is my obligation to message you now and then, since we are oath-bound. I have no real news; being
bound to both you and your tove, Dujuv Gonzawara, I have chosen to be where the danger and excitement are greater, thus giving
myself a somewhat better chance to win real honor, but to tell you the truth, Jak, old tove” — Shadow’s soft, whistling voice,
which was as much like a flute as the human voice was like a trumpet, dropped into a warmer, more informal style—“it is so
dull down here that I cannot imagine how it can be duller up there. We travel from capital to capital within the Harmless
Zone, we see five or eight or eleven nations a day, and the greater part of my time is spent sitting watchfully as Dujuv signs
his name and puts his thumbprints on various documents. I have concluded that the nations of the Harmless Zone are a very
elaborate prank which you humans are playing on we poor Rubahy.” He told some stories of how they had flattered this petty
king or that one, observing that “Your nations are like dogs, and whereas the large ones will merely emit a disgruntled woof
when small children tug their ears, the small ones go into yapping frenzies for every fancied insult. And the Harmless Zone
is filled with toy poodles and chihuahuas.”

The Harmless Zone was called that, not for its harmless people, but because it was an area for nations that were engineered
to be harmless to other nations. Nakasen’s Principle 23 was that “A functioning metasociety meets the demand for as many different
kinds of society as possible.” The Harmless Zone was where Principle 23 was most aggressively applied. The Chryse Basin had
been an industrial center almost from the days of early settlement, and afterward the economic heart of the Second Martian
Empire, but at the end of the Seventh Rubahy War, the Second Empire was dead, and the all but depopulated, ruined Chryse was
demilitarized and divided among hundreds of refugee bands. Today, of the six thousand human nations, more than one thousand
were in the Harmless Zone, and not one of them had the significance of a fruit fly fart.

Since Shadow would not care that Jak was in the bath, Jak fought down his Hive-bred impulse to get fully dressed before messaging,
and recorded a short reply immediately, confirming that it really
was
that dull on Deimos, and passing on what little gossip there was.

The butron brought in dinner, the Lunar Greek meal that Jak had loved since he was a small boy (baked hamster with bechamel
on glutles, mango pastry for dessert), and set it up on a lap table over the tub. Jak finished the main course and another
glass of wine; it was so pleasant to eat his favorite meal, and to have something to hold off loneliness this evening. He
had saved the second message from a friend to enjoy over dessert. Maybe Dujuv would have an interesting story to tell, or
perhaps Phrysaba would want to talk about the concept of solidarity and why it was necessary, something she had been arguing
with Jak about for years—“All right, let’s see the second message.”

“It’s from Princess Shyf.”

Jak swallowed hard. “Mark for reverse semiosis, then.”

“Marking …” for about two minutes the purse analyzed the message, identifying hypnotic effects and enhanced images. It restored
Shyf’s original message, putting in a small green “emphasis bar” in the upper right-hand corner to indicate where effects
had been added.

“Ready.” Jak would have sworn his purse sounded as if it were bracing itself.

“All right, let’s see it.”

Shyf was nude, her back turned. Gracile genes in the Karrinynya Dynasty’s official genome (some ancestors had liked models
and courtesans) gave her long limbs and small globular buttocks; her red hair brushed them as she stretched up on her toes,
arched her back, and turned her hip. She revealed one beautifully formed breast, and peeked at Jak with one twilight blue
eye beside the beautiful red curtain of her hair. “Hello, Jak. I know it’s been a while, but you’ll forgive me, because after
all” —her smile deepened—“I know that I’m your special little princess. I know what I mean to you, my darling.” The tip of
her tongue delicately rested on her upper lip.

His usual surge of desire proceeded directly into his usual overwhelming feeling of guilt.

“A long walk together sometime, Jak, just you and me, holding hands,” Shyf said, in the message, turning to show herself full
on. “You know how I hate the silly ceremony and restrictions in the Royal Palace. How I wish I could be plain old Sesh Kiroping,
your demmy, once again …”

“That’s a lie,” Jak said, to her unhearing message.

The green bar flickered. “And you’ve lost all those people that you thought were your toktru toves—they deserted you as soon
as times got tough—”

“You did your best to make me lose them,” Jak said, staring at the steady, bright green bar. Whatever she wanted was coming
next.

“It kind of makes me feel extra bad that while you’re so lonely and stuck in such a dull job and feeling so deserted by your
friends, I have a wonderful new correspondence with Duke Psim. I so need to know that you love me and I’m still your princess,
and I want you to look into my eyes and pledge yourself to me, and then … if you do that … maybe sometime soon …” She smiled
and struck a more overt pose.

Jak tensed, grunted, and sighed. “Frankly,” he said to her image, “fucking you isn’t half the fun of taking a good dump.”
His bowels coiled at having said that to her.

The message clicked off, and Jak said, “Report that call to Hive Intel, please.”

The purse said, “Accessing Hive Intel AIs. This might take several minutes.”

“Thank you,” Jak said.

He gulped his cold, tasteless mango pastry, and thought about having the tub rewarmed—no, too much trouble. He set the tray
aside, swished in the not-quite-right slightly-too-soap-gray water, and stood up to towel off. All around him, blobs of gray
bathwater, drifting in the microgravity, swirled away into the exhaust system.