Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two (21 page)

Asan shrugged. “I am Tlar now.”

“Yes, Tlar.” Martok’s scarred lips twisted into a grotesque half smile, but his eyes remained cold. “Let us adjourn to the lab. There is a scientist on my staff who should hear about your transformation.”

“No,” said Asan firmly. “No labs.”

Martok’s shrill laughter rang out. “Beneath that splendid exterior you are still the suspicious street rat, aren’t you? Do you expect me to have you dissected? I am not so crude. Come, Asan, be generous. You came seeking a business partnership, did you not? Then—”

“Ruantl is composed almost entirely of precious and utilitarian metals,” said Asan. He held up his forefinger to show off the carbyx ring. “Diamonds, rubies, black carbyxes, and other jewels are as common as pebbles. Even the nomads carry knives of corybdium.”

Martok looked bored and impatient. “So you are rich as well as supreme. What—”

“I want off-world distribution. I want a link to your freighters and shipping lines. I want mining equipment and engineers who can both supervise and train my Bban metallurgists. I want protection from the GSI, either in the form of defense satellites or ships. The Institute is on my planet now. I want them off. And I want political lobbying to keep Ruantl from being claimed as a GSI protectorate.”

Martok sneered. “Is that all?”

“It is a start toward self-sufficiency and independence. I will also need to import food and industrial-grade water until we can improve the planet’s own fragile agrarian systems.”

“You’re insane. You’re asking me to split my empire in half, share my resources, my ships, my armed forces, and squander political favors bought at expensive prices for you. Why should I?”

“Because you hate the Institute, and if they get Ruantl they’ll be that much richer. They’ve reached into the Uncharted Zone. If they continue to expand in that direction, their territory will grow.” Asan paused, reaching for knowledge from the deeper memories. “There are more planets out there as rich as Ruantl. Some are even more valuable. You could have a base at the Institute’s back. Would that help you?

“And if we take a fifty/fifty split, then you will have almost unlimited wealth. Your resources will expand even more. You will have more power.”

“I have enough,” said Martok, yawning.

“No one ever has enough.”

“Fallacy. All your life you have been a wretch groveling for survival. Like all poor people you believe that money will solve your problems and reduce your inadequacies. You also believe that money will make you safe. It doesn’t. It increases your danger. I am beyond the reach of the law, but I have other enemies far more powerful. I can have every wish gratified. I enjoy every comfort. I live exactly as I please. My operations run smoothly, providing I don’t put too much trust in runners such as you.”

Asan grinned and cocked his head to one side. “I was the best you had, Martok.”

“Perhaps. I always knew that one day you’d betray me. But I misjudged when.” Martok stared into the bottom of his glass. “I don’t like failure, and I don’t like humiliation. You have to die, otherwise someone else will try to cheat me.”

“I didn’t betray you. I got caught.”

Martok glanced up. “In the end, the results are the same. I don’t need anything you have to offer.”

Desperation filled Asan’s throat. “Except Tlar technology.”

Martok laughed. “Hardly. It is interesting, yes, but it isn’t worth all you are asking for.”

“Isn’t it? You’ve been a cyborg for many years now. How long until those drugs you take in your wine cease to be effective and you get metal poisoning? No alloy, no matter how many times they experiment, ever really remains compatible with living tissue. How long until you can no longer control the unpleasant side effects? Who are you going to leave your empire to when you finally die, Martok? Lin Ranje?”

Martok’s glass shattered on the floor. “Damn you! I shall outlive you!”

“Really?” Asan walked up to him and extended his arm.

“This body is centuries old. Feel how firm the skin and muscles are.”

Martok stared at him in revulsion and resentment, but after a moment he grasped Asan’s forearm. His gloved fingers were made of hull steel. Asan could feel the ribs of their framework as they tightened on his arm. The pressure increased. Martok’s eyes glinted. Covering a wince, Asan realized Martok intended to crush his arm. But Tlar bones were stronger than human bones. Asan felt pity for a man who despite his wealth and power still had to play such petty games. Asan’s rings focused around his arm. He frowned slightly, concentrating, and the rings loosened Martok’s grip, then forced it away.

Martok’s eyes widened. He snatched his hand back and held it rigidly at his side.

“Whatever you are, I don’t want to become one. Even a cyborg is more human than you!”

“Do you think body transference requires becoming an alien?” Asan asked. “Select one of your supple vat boys from Lab 80 if you like. Just make sure you select someone with a weaker personality than your own.”

Martok licked his scarred lips, thinking it over while Asan held his breath, willing Martok to accept the offer.

But whatever functioned beneath that metal-capped skull was impervious to mental persuasion.

Martok reached across his desk and opened a drawer, punching a control before Asan could stop him. He faced Asan coldly, and with a sinking heart Asan knew nothing had been gained.

“Take him to the lab,” said Martok to the guards who came up behind Asan. “Get him ready for Saverson to examine. I want Colonel Pared there too.”

“You’re insane if you throw this chance away,” said Asan, trying to hide his fear. He’d die here and now before he’d let anyone dissect him on a slab. “Martok—”

“You’re still a street rat. Vicious and deceptive and deadly, yes, but stupid like all your kind. I intercepted GSI geological reports on planet KS-5 from the moment we received Udge Enster’s first message about you. I’ll take KS-5 from the Institute when it suits me. As for your transformation, well, my scientists will make quite a study of you. And when there is no more to be learned from the biopsies, then—”

“When I am dead, there’ll be no one to take you to—”

“When you are dead,” said Martok with his grotesque smile, “we shall still have the female to show us the way. Guards.”

Asan had gambled on Martok’s greed, but he’d misjudged the extent of it. Now he had to get out of here and fast.

He dodged to one side in a feint to distract the guards and gathered himself to seizert, but even as he vanished into that momentary lurch of displacement he heard the sound of a strifer being fired from Martok’s direction.

Of course, he thought in a queer sense of detachment, Martok must have had another weapon hidden in the desk. And Udge would have told Martok about Asan’s ability to disappear. Martok must have been expecting a move like this and was ready for it.

Asan felt the thin strifer beam spit him as cleanly and precisely as a jen-knife, high in the back under his shoulder blade and out his chest. He spun and tumbled in his mind, yet his body was nowhere, lost in the displacement between time curves. He was falling, falling hard, his rings lost in the chaos so that he was blind as well. It seemed to take an eternity, this falling, but with a lurch he was back in reality and a portion of his mind told him it had been a split second since he seizerted. He saw that he’d moved less than a couple of meters.

The floor was rising up to meet him very fast, then he hit it and heard his own grunt at the impact. Pain flooded him in a great cold wave.

Martok had won, he thought dimly. Aural had won.

It seemed a wretched way to die, gunned down in the back in the grim, damp coldness that would become his grave. Wretched for a former vat boy. Wretched for a Tlar leiil.

He blacked out.

Deep in the heart of the Tchsco Mountains beneath the caverns of M’thra in the dark, sealed chamber securing the computer Anthi, a special linkage sensor detected a signal lapse. A multi-nanosecond delay passed. The signal did not resume.

Warning synapses fired emergency circuits to the activity lobe, clearing interlocks for data flow. A diagnostic search flared out and found no system malfunction. The signal receptors on port 1001 received no input.

Data bits were shunted off standby and sifted, recombined, and compared. Advanced warning systems fired a series of synapses reaching all the way to Anthi’s primary lobe.

Anthi awoke from mandatory shutdown, her lights pulsing blue in the dark chamber as she came fully online.

She began the call, seeking the essential communications link that had been broken:

“Asan. Asan. Asan.”

In Altian, Aural paced the triangular circumference of the chamber of state in the palace. Tapestries that had illustrated the great moments of Tlar history hung shredded and charred upon the walls. The once-gleaming floor of polished jate stone was scuffed into dullness. The air was cold and stuffy with the smoky stench of torches. Gleiglits had chewed the tasseled fringe adorning the chair upon which Unar sat. Now and then Aural’s slipper crunched upon the splintered fragments of wooden sculptures which had comprised an exquisite collection.

“This is madness!” exclaimed Aural furiously. Tucking her cold hands into the wide sleeves of her gown, she turned to glare at Unar. “Your ridiculous superstitions cause us nothing but delay—costly delay!”

Unar scowled at his scuffed boots. His elegant clothing had been long ago replaced by a jen uniform coated with dust and worn shiny in places from hard use. He held a battered mask upon his lap. His dark brows were drawn into a scowl that told Aural he would not listen to her arguments tonight any more than he had listened to them yesterday or the day before. His face was as gaunt as the gnawing in her own belly. They were all starving, and Unar was a fool, and if she did not reach through his stubbornness soon, they would perish and only the
n’kai
would remain to rule Ruantl.

“Unar!” she said.

This time he glanced at her. His palm went down. Her breath hissed in through her teeth.

“You fool—”

“No!” he shouted, standing up. “You are the fool, Dame Aural. The Soot’dla have united with Bban tribes, and by dawn so will the Spandeen and the Mura-an.”

Aural stiffened in disbelief that he would dare challenge her at last so openly. The blue force of her anger glowed around her fists.

“The Mura-an are your house, Noble Unar. Do you go to our enemy?”

“Enemy?
Enemy?
It is the
n’kai
who are our enemy. Have we come to crave power so much we blind ourselves to the truth?”

“Stop playing the tragic conscience, Unar. When I offered you the chance to be regent, you did not hesitate. But now that the stakes are higher, you have become an old woman.”

Unar’s face darkened. He tossed his mask onto the chair. “The House of Mura-an no longer acts under my order. You have around you only a handful of people while not one house remains at your back. Or mine. Or the child’s. The
n’kai
take, but they give us nothing save the ashes of death in our mouths.”

“It will not always be—”

“You blind yourself.”

Unar turned away and began to pace, shivering, back and forth. He still limped from the attempt of the Soot’dla assassin. Aural’s eyes narrowed in contempt. She hoped the wound festered.

“No, Unar,” she said. “Of us all, I am the only one who can see clearly. You must—”

“Even to ally myself with the Bban’jen would bring more honor to my blood than this.”

“The Bban’jen will be destroyed,” said Aural. “As will the Tlar’jen who march with them—”

“Is that what you want? I see you smile. Does it truly please you to contemplate the destruction of our race by these outsiders? For the first time within the memory of our people, we have been conquered.
N’kai
march through our streets. Tlar blood has been dishonored. And why is that, revered dame?” Unar slammed a fist into his palm. “Because you and I let the
n’kai
in. We are the traitors and the executioners of all that we hold dear.” His voice sank to a whisper. “We have killed our people.”

For an instant she felt a tiny pang, but shrugged it off. Unar could contemplate moral suicide without her.

“You should have performed onstage with ty-dancers,” she said, choosing words to cut. “Our people have not been conquered. They have formed a new alliance. The sooner they accept it, the better for them.”

“No.”

“Unar, listen to me!” She gripped his sleeve, and the coarse cloth scratched her fingers. “Commander Notini has promised me full support in exchange for our cooperation. We shall be part of the Institute alliance, a protected planet, partaking of all the benefits of technology supplied to us. We can export the Bban savages as slave laborers. The precious metals are another—”

“I won’t listen to this!” Unar pulled away. “I want no part of it!”

She had to fight herself not to strike him down. The pang came again inside of her, more sharply this time. She grimaced, pressing her fist against her heart. It was hunger, she told herself, nothing more than that. She had expended too much energy trying to keep little Cirthe from weakening, and now she needed rest.

“Do you so easily relinquish the power I have fought to give you?” she asked raggedly. “The people rebel because they are ignorant fools. When they are under submission, then we shall have time to teach them the points of advanced diplomacy.”

“The people are hungry.”

Aural sighed. The days when she could control his rings were gone. Now he did not even heed persuasive tone.

“I have told you I can bring Anthi back—”

“No!” Horror filled his face. “It is not permitted. You may not commit this sacrilege.”

“Again and again we circle this like two hungry vitches. It is simple expediency, not sacrilege. Many years ago I was Asan’s ring-mate. I can reproduce his mental pattern sufficiently to reactivate Anthi. I’m sure of it.”

“No. You must not. It was the will of Anthi to turn her face from us because we did not honor Asan her chosen one.”