Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two (25 page)

Silence surrounded him. Slowly, damp and shaking all over, he lifted his head to look around.

Lu’ke was gone, consumed by the energy. Zaula and Udge, however, remained huddled together by the turnaround, their faces pale and strained. Zaula’s rings must have protected them. Asan drew in a breath, then a deeper one, and reached out to the console to haul himself onto his feet.

The side of the console next to him was melted down and twisted in a fantastic shape. Alarmed, Asan checked the controls, but only a few seemed damaged beyond recovery.

“W-what the hell was that?” asked Udge. He sounded as though all the wind had been knocked out of him.

Zaula’s eyes shone. She lifted her fingertips to her lips and brow in the formal sign of respect. “The Goddess Anthi has returned,” she whispered. “We live again.”

“Yes,” said Asan, too troubled to correct her. He frowned, still shaken by the encounter. “I was wrong to shut her down. I never realized the lack that everyone else felt when I did that. Not until now, when
I
couldn’t contact Anthi either did I understand—”

“Hush,” Zaula said, coming up to stand beside him. “A Tlar leiil need not explain his actions.” She smiled up at him, then grew shy. “It pleases me to see thee whole again, Great One.”

He smiled back, touching his fingertips to hers and separating one small ring of pleasure to share with her.

Udge cleared his throat. “Well, it don’t please me. Whatever you are, you ain’t Tobei. You’re—”

“Udge.” Asan stared directly at him. “Why did you rescue me?”

Udge turned scarlet. “I thought I was rescuin’ Tobei. Guess I was fooled, just like everyone else. You ain’t Tobei. You never were. All this time I been believin’ it on account of the thwart, but you must be one of them aliens that absorbs the full consciousness of your victims. Vyarians got superstitions about that sort of thing. They never eat the brains because they’re scared their meat will possess them. But you—”

“Udge,” said Asan gently. “You haven’t been fooled. I used to be Tobei and Blaise Omari. I used to be that skinny, scared vat boy with the big mouth and enough guts to get myself off Dix IV. But now I am what you have seen. And I thank you for your help.”

“Blame the little dandy. She did a brain-twist on me and got me to do it. I even left my reward money behind. Now where the hell do I go?”

“Beside me,” said Asan. “Where you have always been.”

Udge laughed and crossed his arms. “Hoo-loo, what a boo you are, boy. I’d end up scrag in one of those blue fits of yours. You’re worse than a dozen flamethrowers. No thanks. I’ll get off at Jxtn Junction just like I planned. You do what you want.”

“I already am,” said Asan. “I have turned this ship toward Ruantl.”

“That ain’t fair!” said Udge in alarm. “I helped you out. Now you return the favor. I don’t want no part of your war.”

“I am fighting the GSI,” said Asan, but even as he spoke a part of him turned over in fresh despair. How could he fight with no crew and an old smuggler ship? He didn’t stand a chance.

“I’m not anti-GSI like you and Martok. Speakin’ of whom, boy, you’d better watch your back from now on. I aim to dig me a hole so deep Martok will never find me.”

“He can’t reach you on Ruantl.”

Udge snorted. “Don’t be naive. Martok’s plannin’ on takin’ over your small dustball as soon as the Institute has whipped it into shape.”

“He can try, but it is mine. And my people’s.”

“Sure, whatever you say.” Udge lifted his palms. “Just drop me off, like I said and—”

“No, Udge.”

There was a beat of silence, then Udge ducked his bald head and grinned a little.

“I guess you figure I’ll run straight back to Martok with details of where to find you?”

A reluctant smile tugged at Asan’s lips. “Perhaps. You’re in my army now, Udge. You might as well get used to the fact.”

“I don’t like to be on the losin’ side.”

“We won’t lose.”

“That’s what you say, boy. Looks to me like you’ve lost already.”

Asan hesitated. Then he started to draw the black carbyx ring off his finger.

“I hope your finger itches and you’re just scratchin’ it,” said Udge, glaring at him. “I hope you ain’t about to insult me in some way. ’Cause if you are, then you can forget it. Seems to me that when one scrawny little bloatwit manages to luck out and finally make it big, then no one ought to take it away from him. Unless he’s just a fool, and you never were.”

Asan’s throat tightened. For a moment he had no words. “Thank you doesn’t seem to be enough.”

“Aw, hell, don’t act soap-brained. Since I’m out of a job, you might offer me one. General is a nice startin’ position.”

Asan laughed. “Yes, I think that can be managed.”

“Just don’t give me any stupid orders. If I try real hard, I can almost forget the snot-nosed punk you used to be. If I try. But don’t push me.”

“I’ll push you just as hard as I can,” said Asan, grinning. “And I’ll pay you so much you won’t care.”

“Yeah, payment.” Udge nodded at the ring and wiggled his fingers. “Now an advance on salary wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it, boy?”

“You must learn to address him as noble leiil,” said Zaula with a frown.

“Oh, no!” said Asan, tossing the ring to Udge. “His job is to keep me humble when we run the GSI off like the shin-nicked fleeters they really are. Without Udge around, I might go back to drinking wine and watching dancing Henan women all day.”

Zaula gasped. “You never did such things.”

“Not even when I was just the usurper?”

Her cheeks darkened, and at once he sobered.

“Just teasing, beloved,” he said, putting his arm around her. “We must laugh now in order not to be afraid. There is a hard fight ahead of us.”

She sighed and turned up her palm. “Can we not take this ship and search for another place? I know you said Tlartantla is gone. But is there no other home for us so that we do not have to fight?”

“Zaula.” Serious now, he grasped her by the shoulders. “Ruantl and Tlartantla are the same world.”

She flinched back, shocked. “No!”

“Yes. I am sorry for what I told you earlier, but it is time you knew the whole truth.”

“It cannot be! Tlartantla is—was—very beautiful. Ruantl is ugly. And why did you tell me—”

“I destroyed the beauty of Tlartantla,” he said quietly, feeling the ancient guilt roll out from the deeper memories. “I was too stubborn to surrender. I refused to stop fighting until we had nothing left.”

“No, it cannot be true. Ruantl is just a colony world, a place of exile for the ancestors of the Bban’n. Nothing more. It can’t be
our
home.”

He frowned, searching for the right words. “In existence, Zaula, there are parallels. Exact inverses to what we are and see. Ruantl is the inverse to Tlartantla. When we were facing annihilation, ships went out carrying the lineages that exist on Ruantl today, the men, the families, the servants, the possessions. They went through the black hole, through the reverse of time, and came out to what we call Ruantl. The scarred, slowly recovering remains of Tlartantla.”

She began to cry and pulled away from him. “Your words are hard. They take away all hope and promise.”

“It was the only way to survive,” he said helplessly. “After all of this, I cannot now let the humans take it from us.”

“No,” she breathed. “No.”

Across the flight deck, Udge glanced up. He said, “Humans. You no longer consider yourself one?”

Asan’s gaze snapped up, and in him was anger at being asked to justify himself. “It was necessary,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good to ask myself if I would go back. I can’t.”

Silence stretched around all of them, then Udge stretched himself, making one of his bulging vest pockets pop open.

“So,” he said, “how long is it till we get to this dustball of yours?”

Asan told him.

“Your course trajectory going by the Stestos system?”

“Why?”

Udge met his gaze with a wicked little grin. “I’m a general, remember? If we stop off there long enough to sell the zine bales hidden in our hold, we can buy a tidy cache of munitions.”

Asan slowly began to grin back. “Illegal ones?”

“Sure. What else? You want the GSI to win or something?”

“I’ll make the course change now.”

Twenty-six hours short of Ruantl, Asan aroused himself from the lightest of meditations and glanced briefly around the tiny cabin as though seeing it for the first time in several days. He had purposely cloistered himself away, even from Zaula.

Her expression had grown pinched and pale, and in her eyes came a cloud of worry. She knew all too well the role of the Tlar leiil in battle. She knew the demands of stringent personal preparation and made none of her own.

Her rings burned about him. He lifted a hand and rubbed his gritty eyes. Over and over again he had drilled himself in the mental exercises, angry to find himself so out of practice. That carelessness might prove to be a fatal mistake. Still, he knew what had to be done now, and he meant to carry it through.

Inside his cabin he had a bunk, a facility, and a vid-screen. He could stand in the center of the room and extend his arms to touch the walls on either side. The ceiling brushed the top of his head.

He sat down on the bunk that was too short and narrow for him, broke open a ration bar, devoured it in two bites, and opened a case stashed beneath the bunk. From it he drew a leadweave cloak, mask, and gauntlets which he’d had manufactured during their stop in Stestos. All were in bronze, the color of his supreme rank, and his mask was inlaid with the symbols of his house, most ancient and honored of all the Tlar bloodlines. He donned trousers, boots, and tunic. The decorations won during the terrible Duoden Conflict had not been worn since the day of victory. The old Asan had not wished to boast further in the faces of his defeated enemy.

The present Asan had no such compunctions. He put the decorations on, and they shone against his tunic. He belted on a strifer which felt small and awkward in his palm.

Unlocking a second case also pulled from beneath the bunk, he withdrew a jen-knife and held it a moment to let the light gleam along its blade.

It was not fashioned from corybdium with a hilt bound in gold wire. No one would manufacture a weapon from such precious metals, at least not on Stestos. Frustrated at first, Asan had reached into the deeper memories of life on Tlartantla and found that the original jen-knives were carried on ceremonial occasions only and were made of a white alloy of now-extinct metals.

The knife Asan held resembled the originals. Its blade was burnished hull steel, harder even than corybdium and capable of holding a sharper, tempered edge. The hilt was wrapped in bronze wire. Etched into the blade was the star emblem of Tlartantla.

The second object in the case was more archaic. He drew out the sword from its scabbard.

During season when he had sat huddled in the Tchsco stronghold with nothing to do but watch the men play kri-gri and tell stories, he had heard descriptions of his battle with the tyrant Hihuan recounted again and again with elaborate detail. He had no direct memory of the battle, for the consciousness of the man whose name and body he now wore had fought it instead.

But swords were even more legendary and ceremonial than the jen-knives. They had not been seriously used since the days of his youth, when he was only an unknown member of the jen forces and undistinguished. Although most Bban warriors carried them out of a lack of anything more sophisticated, among the present Tlar’n only a Tlar leiil had the right to carry such a weapon.

He balanced the weapon in his hand, frowned, and sent blue fire rolling down the blade to the point. It gleamed there, then disappeared.

Feeling slightly self-conscious in his armory, Asan slid the sword into the scabbard and buckled it on. He wondered if he would clank when he walked. He would have had he been wearing battle shielding, but in the days of Asan’s youth, the greatest warriors scorned wearing shielding, saying it was for cowards and the feeble. He wanted to reappear on Ruantl looking as much like the legendary Asan as possible.

Udge bellowed with laughter a few minutes later when Asan entered the flight deck cloaked and gauntleted, his sword banging on one hip, his strifer on the other, and his jen mask tucked under his left elbow.

“Demos, Tobei! Why are you foolin’ with all that junk? One max .28 jambolt would save you a lot of weight.”

Then he saw Asan’s expression and quickly sobered.

“All right. All right. No jokes today. But isn’t it a little early for the costume?”

Asan tossed his mask down in a chair and seated himself at the navigations console. “Are we still on course? Any GSI craft on our scanners yet?”

“Only one blip at maximum range. It’s that damned black hole that bothers me.” Udge spat. The whole flight deck stank from his chew. “It’s a lot closer than you said it would be.”

Asan frowned. “Almost time for season again. Its elliptical orbit around the other sun creates periodic havoc with Ruantl’s climate.”

“As long as it doesn’t pull the planet into its gravitational sphere. What about us?”

Asan activated the viewscreen. The vast, terrifying nothingness of the black sun filled it. He squinted against the dreadful radiance that hurt his eyes despite the screen’s filters. All those deadly X rays were bombarding them; in spite of a dozen checks to determine if they had adequate shielding, he still worried. At the far edges of his vision blazed the corona, too terrifying to look at, yet mesmerizing. Its extreme danger made it almost beautiful.

“Shut it off,” said Udge. “I get nightmares.”

Asan flicked a switch and the screen blanked. Udge shuddered.

“We’re too close to the ergosphere. This ole crate ain’t got a chance in hell of pullin’ out of something like that.”

“We’re fine. It’s a tight fit, but if we try anything fancier on our approach we’re likely to scare out some of the patrol ships I know have to be here. They’re probably hiding in among the other two planets.”

“Yeah, but I still get nervous.”

“Just be thankful it isn’t a Schwarzschild. Then you could get nervous.”