Ruler of Naught (7 page)

“I’ve arranged a special show, just for you, and then I have
another surprise for you.”

“Ooooh,” she sighed, her breath stirring the hairs on the
back of his neck, “Luri likes surprises.”

She slid around the pod and settled into his lap, her
movements a deliberate dance. He stretched his arm around her to adjust his
console so he could reach it. The smoothness of her silk against his bare arms
excited him even more.

The bridge dimmed as the ship passed into night. The comm
crackled to life.

“Lock three here. We’re ready.”

“Do it,” Anderic croaked. He cleared his throat, struggling
for control. “Ninn. Slave the tractors to my con.” As his console flickered
into a new configuration, another thought occurred to him. “Communications.
Relay the main view down to the bilge and tell the blunge-boy he can take a
break and watch.”

Lennart, a short, squat woman Tallis had promoted from Damage
Control, gave Anderic a narrow look, but when he widened his eyes at her, she
turned away quickly.

A few of the crew had actually liked that fool Tallis
Y’Marmor, and Kira Lennart had been one of them. As captains went, Tallis had
not been as bad as some in the Sodality. He was careful, which had kept them
all alive. He was fair in sharing the take. But he’d also been a nuisance with
the stupid uniforms he’d made the bridge crew wear and his constant worries
about the cleanliness of the ship.

Worst of all, he’d insisted on keeping Luri’s attentions
exclusively to himself.

Anderic grinned, thinking of Tallis now demoted to slubbing
in the recycling tanks of the
Satansclaw
, where the sewage generated by
its crew was transformed back into useful forms.

And this will make his misery complete.

“Lennart.”

The comtech looked up.

“Be sure to replay this for him a few times.”

Anderic smirked as he tapped at his console. The main screen
flickered to a new view, from an imager above the bridge, looking forward. The
extended lance of the destroyer’s kilometer-long accelerator tube, brightly
illuminated by its running lights, shone against the velvet darkness of
Arthelion’s night side.

There was a faint
thunk
as the tractor engaged. In
his mind’s eye Anderic envisioned the ornate furnishings he’d ripped out of
Tallis’ cabin swirling up off the deck in the grip of the gravitic field, the
sparkling ring-discharge of the electronic lock field as they were propelled
out the lock. He laughed as a surge of well-being gripped him, momentarily
overwhelming even lust.
Life is good when you’re on the winning side.

“What?” Luri’s voice was breathy with expectation.

“You’ll see. Watch.”

“EJECTA NOW ACCELERATING, REENTRY BEGINNING. VISIBLE IN TEN
SECONDS.”

Anderic tapped at his console. They were at minimum safe
altitude, brushing the fringes of the atmosphere. Held in the grip of the
docking tractor, the ejected furniture, mixed with ingots of various alloys
he’d requisitioned through Barrodagh—“A show to firmly establish my control,”
he’d explained—was now rushing ahead of the ship, deeper into the atmosphere.
If the control of the logos was accurate, the debris should start to flame just
as it became visible beyond the accelerator tube.

“THREE, TWO, ONE... ”

“Now,” said Anderic.

A spray of polychrome splendor blossomed just beyond the end
of the accelerator tube, flares and streams of light exploding as the various
elements flamed into glory against the upper airs of Arthelion. The display
pulsed magnificently against the night side of the planet, evoking an
inhalation of delight from Luri.

“Oh, Pham, it’s beautiful.”

Unable to wait any longer, Anderic pulled Luri against him
and kissed her deeply. Then he stood up and carried her off the bridge, bound
for the cabin he’d carefully prepared for them.

o0o

The commands of the Anderic-biont, to whom the logos now
owed allegiance, took but a fraction of its node-time. As was its nature, it
did not question the change in its programming, and indeed, the changes did not
go deep. Its primary goals lay beneath, untouched, and now its consciousness
flashed throughout the ship that was its body, seeking the Tallis-biont that
might yet be key to fulfilling its primary purpose.

Microseconds later the logos found the former captain of the
Satansclaw
, staring at a viewscreen deep within the ship. Moisture was
leaking from the biont’s remaining image receptor, and its physiological
parameters were confusing, as though it were preparing to fight, or flee.
Confused by the conflicting emanations from the Tallis-biont, the executive
invoked the subjective mode, and for the second time awoke the god from his
dreams.

o0o

Ruonn tar Hyarmendil, fifth eidolon of the fleshly Ruonn,
cybernetic exile within the logos he himself had programmed, rolled over in his
opulent bed as a quiet tone sounded within the seraglio. The two houris moaned
with disappointment, but he pushed them aside as a projection appeared above
him. The apologetic face of his vizier appeared.

“The Great Slave desires an interview with the god.”

Moments later the knowledge of his true condition came back
to him, and he sprang out of the bed. An unfamiliar, almost painful weight
between his legs drew his eyes downward, and he stared pop-eyed at his manhood,
enormous beyond his wildest dreams in the rapture tanks at home. A dizzying
sense of unreality assailed him, but he asserted himself and willed himself
into congruence with the ship—he would deal with the sexual programming problem
later.

Slowly the
Satansclaw
fitted itself around him,
filling out his senses with perceptions that no biological human would ever
experience. He could feel the engines, the pulse of vital air and water through
the fabric of the ship, the tingling discharge of electrical power and data
permeating every centimeter of circuitry. But there was something strange about
the feeling, almost something missing, and when he reached out for
understanding his mind slid away from him until he returned to the task at hand.

“THE PARAMETERS OF THE TALLIS-BIONT ARE CONTRADICTORY.
ADVISE BEST TECHNIQUE FOR CONDITIONING.”

Ruonn accessed the memory nodes. Not surprising. Tallis had
lost control, and the Ozmiront had taken over. What did surprise him was that
Anderic had activated the logos. Would it be possible to work with him?

No matter, he decided, it would still be best to try to
program Tallis for more cooperation, holding open the possibility of eventually
restoring him to command and guaranteeing a return to Barca laden with data for
the Matria, and reunification with his archetype.
With Tallis properly
conditioned, I will yet surpass Rimur, with the ten progeny he was granted for
the data his first eidolon collected.

Well, then, this would be simple enough. Revenge was an
excellent tool for conditioning. Willing a virtual console into existence,
Ruonn set to work.

o0o

Tallis choked back a sob as he stared at the comscreen,
watching the destruction of all the beautiful furnishings he’d labored so long
to earn. All around him the machinery of the bilge throbbed and hummed,
breathing a warm fetor over him, like the breath of some vast carrion eater
with a taste for bad cheese.

He sat down on the edge of a recycling injector, then sprang
back to his feet as a sudden, dull clunk and a painful twist in his groin
reminded him of the Emasculizer Anderic had fastened on him. He cradled the bulge
in his crotch, shifting it from side to side in a vain attempt to find a
comfortable position for the sphere firmly leeched around his member.
If I
don’t get this off soon, my nacker’ll be hanging down around my knees.

He sat down again, more carefully, and looked back at the
screen, which was beginning another replay of the reentry fireworks his former
comtech had devised. The symbolism of the imager-angle Anderic had chosen was
not lost on him. He knew what would be the sequel, in what had been his cabin,
and the knowledge enraged him.

He lifted a hand to the patch over his eye. The empty socket
still throbbed. The memory of the pain was fading, thank Telos, but the memory
of his screaming, and the laughter of Barrodagh, would never leave him. And
Anderic had been there, too.

His mind spun off into fantasy, grasping for a revenge
sufficient for such betrayal. Slowly, a very satisfying image assembled itself
in his mind’s eye, overlaid on the glorious destruction of his cabin contents
above Arthelion. Anderic drowning in vacuum, eyes bleeding as they bulged from
their sockets, the veins in his face breaking out in varicose webs of bluish
red, the rich arterial blood gushing from his nose and ears as the emptiness of
space sucked the life out of him.

Tallis’ eye socket started throbbing harder—there seemed to
be a strange flicker in the viewscreen. But he ignored the discomfort,
devouring the image of pain before him as the destruction of his former life
aboard the
Satansclaw
played over and over again amidst the stench of
his new abode.

o0o

Ruonn sat back from the console, satisfied by the subliminal
loop he’d invoked. There was a long way to go, but the combination of the image
from reality with the graphic effects he’d created from the ship’s records of
Anderic was a good start.

He watched as the destruction of Tallis’ furniture was
played again. That Anderic had a good eye for effects. The angle from which the
imager was relaying was quite effective—

Without warning, a wave of intense pleasure fountained up
through Ruonn, filling the inside of his head with light and washing away the
console and his knowledge of the ship around him. Quite without transition he
found himself again at the edge of his bed, facing three houris, their eyes
wide with astonishment.

He looked down at himself. The sight of his immense
engorgement triggered him into an explosion of pleasure, and a wash of flame
spewed out of his member, engulfing the houris in wave after wave of polychrome
splendor as they shrieked and writhed with ecstasy. Ruonn laughed at the surge
of inexhaustible potency that possessed him.

o0o

Satisfied that the conditioning of both Tallis and Ruonn was
proceeding properly, the executive relegated the god and the ex-captain to the
attention of some slave-nodes and flashed back throughout the ship in search of
more knowledge. Locating the Anderic-biont, it watched as he carried the
Luri-biont toward a dormition space to execute the curious procreational
functions characteristic of bionts.

Many, many millions of microseconds would doubtless elapse
before the new captain remembered to shut down the logos. It would make good
use of that time.

o0o

Anderic paused before the hatch of his cabin. Above it the
indicator flashed a rotating quarter section, black against yellow. “Quarter-gee?”

Luri nibbled at his ear. “To start with. And then Luri has
some kama for null-gee she thinks Pham will like.”

With his elbow Anderic tabbed the control, feeling her grow
light in his arms before the hatch opened. He carried her through, setting her
down with a flourish. “Surprise!”

He watched with pride as she looked around the newly
refurbished cabin. Gone were the overstuffed, curlicue furnishings that made
him feel like he was sitting on somebody’s face. Instead, the room now exhaled
an air of cool refinement, the sparse lines of the furniture and the paintings,
tapestries, and sculptures artfully arranged about the cabin bespeaking an
effortless elegance that only the highest of Douloi could either conceive or
afford. Armed with a carte blanche from Barrodagh, Anderic had taken it
unchanged from a Douloi palace on one of the Highdwellings. He was sure that no
other Rifter had so elegant a cabin.

“What do you think”? All that old blunge went out the
airlock for your fireworks show.”

An explosion of red pain against his cheek, accompanied by a
sound like a slashcat caught in a shredder field, knocked him off balance and
impelled him with dream-like slowness against a bulkhead. He clawed at a
tapestry to regain his balance, which only brought it down on top of him. As he
thrashed to escape from its smothering embrace, Luri’s foot caught him
agonizingly in the crotch.

“You blunge-eating Shiidra-chatzing defiler of every orifice
your mother ever had or conceived of!” Luri shrieked, her glossy dark hair
writhing around her head like snakes. “I’m gonna kick your nacker so far up
inside you that you’ll choke to death the next time you get kewpy!”

Anderic rolled frantically across the cabin, scattering the
delicate furniture and bringing a hail of small objets d’art down with low-gee
slowness as several tables and pedestals overturned. Luri followed. The only
thing that saved him from worse damage from her sharp-pointed shoes was her
tendency to bounce into the air every time she kicked him. He flailed against
the embrace of the tapestry, which clung as though determined to devour him,
like one of the raptor-slugs of Acrasidora.

“I spent
months
choosing that furniture and arranging
it. It was
beautiful
, it was what I’d always
wanted
, and you
trashed
it out the airlock and burned it up
.”

Finally Anderic managed to struggle to his feet, ripping the
tapestry away from him, only to see a heavy statuette flying straight at his
face. He jumped, and the figurine, of some many-armed god engaged in sexual
congress with several women, caught him in the chest and knocked him back
against the wall. Luri also flew backward from the reaction of throwing the
heavy piece, but she recovered and tabbed the hatch open, her curves losing
some of their exaggeration as the grav came back to normal. A curious crewman
looked in as she paused in the hatch, her hair once again swinging gloriously
around her shoulders.