Ruler of Naught (8 page)

“Don’t you even think of getting near me, you blunge-suck
excuse for a dilenja.”

The crewman grinned, then hastily withdrew as he caught
sight of Anderic’s face, but the Rifter knew he was still watching.

“I’m gonna find real satisfaction, with someone who really
cares,” Luri announced at the top of her voice, and flounced away.

As the hatch slid closed, Anderic remained slumped against
the bulkhead, looking around at the ruins of his cabin, knowing the crew would
be talking about it before Luri reached whoever it was she’d chosen.

o0o

Osri Omilov set the tray down at the bedside, anxiously
looking at his father though he tried not to see that gray stubble over his
scalp, and the healing scabs from the torture machine.

Sebastian Omilov smiled weakly. Osri tried to return the
smile, but couldn’t. He sent an angry look at Montrose, who hulked in the
doorway. Osri had been waiting a week to be able to talk to his father. The
surgeon had claimed it was necessary to put his father into a medical coma due
to the brain disturbances caused by the torture machine.

“A monster was in here... or was I dreaming it?” Omilov
asked, his thready voice managing to sound amused.

Osri forced a sort of smile. ‘You saw Lucifur, the ship’s
cat. And monster is right.”

Montrose put in cheerfully, “He’s big, he’s curious to the
point of obsession, and he’s got terrible taste in people.”

“He follows me everywhere.” Osri’s voice was dry. “He’s also
gennated.”

“Hard for a cat otherwise in free-fall,” Montrose added,
still cheerful. And he flicked a meaningful look at Osri.

“Eat,” Osri said to his father. “Regain your strength.”
We’re going to need it to escape from these people who won’t let me tell you
that we are prisoners.

Omilov blinked, then made an obvious effort to sit up. Under
him the bed adjusted.

“I believe I am able to distinguish now what is reality and
what is nightmares,” Omilov whispered. “We are on a ship, that much I know. And
Brandon is truly safe?”

Osri met Montrose’s eyes, licked his lips, then said, “The
Aerenarch is with us.”

“Aerenarch. Not Krysarch,” Omilov said, wincing. Omilov
struggled again, his right hand moving restlessly over the bedcover. “So I
remembered that rightly. What ship is this?”

“The
Telvarna
,” Montrose put in smoothly. “My name is
Montrose, and I am your surgeon. You must eat now, and sleep again. There will
be time enough for talk when you’ve recovered some strength. Your heart took a
great deal of damage.”

Omilov sighed, his hand relaxing. “Very well,” he said. He
smiled at Osri. “Come back and see me soon, son.”

Osri forced a return smile, though the violence in his heart
made it nearly impossible. What he really wanted was to strangle Montrose.
Except
it would take a Tikeris android to down that monster
, Osri though grimly as
he left.

He went back to the galley, as he was still technically on
the duty these Rifter scum had forced onto him. His hands were now skilled
enough at the chores he’d been allotted, so he did not need to pay much beyond
superficial attention to the preparation. His simmering anger rose towards
rage, liberated perhaps by at last being able to talk to his father. After a
short interval he swept the preparation area clean and slammed out of the
galley.

The corridor was empty, but a moment after he dashed headlong
toward the cabin he shared with Brandon vlith-Arkad, there was an odd whisper
in the air, and he felt the presence of the small white-furred sophonts who
called themselves the Eya’a. Sophonts? Psionic killers.

He stopped short as they emerged from a hatchway, both pairs
of multifaceted eyes staring straight at him. One of them opened its round blue
mouth, revealing rows of tiny teeth, and he shuddered and backed away. The
Eya’a passed on, their twiggy feet scratching faintly on the deck plates.

Osri stopped, trying to still the pounding of his heart.
Vivid images of the Dol’jharian torture chamber from which his father had been
rescued, as described by Lokri, forced their way into his mind: the fallen
Dol’jharians, their eyes exploded from within, and their screams beforehand as
the Eya’a boiled their brains with psi energy.

The captain of the ship appeared in their wake, her black
gaze brief but considering. Fully as tall as he, Vi’ya was in her own way as
unsettling as the Eya’a. She rarely spoke, but there was a disturbing undertone
in her soft voice; Osri detested her at least as thoroughly as he did her crew.

She said nothing to him as she passed by, a
strong-shouldered figure in unrelieved black, her only affectation the long
black hair clipped high on her head, swinging freely down past her hips. Her
tread was soundless as she disappeared into her cabin after the Eya’a.

Osri breathed relief, and slapped the hatch-panel to his
cabin, where the click and scrabble of dog toenails on deck plates warned him
that one of those dogs was in the cabin a second before he heard Brandon say,
“Platz.” The dog leaped down from the console chair and lowered itself to the
ground, haunches ready to spring, forelegs braced, head up and alert.

“Good platz,” Brandon said, and “Fry.” The dog leaped up,
tail wagging, tongue lolling as Brandon ran his hands over its face and ruff.
“Can’t sleep, either?” Brandon asked.

Osri entered, making an impatient sound as his knee collided
with the dog.

“Sitz,” Brandon said, and the dog sat, eyes shifting from
Osri to Brandon.

Osri stared impatiently, imagining that he read wariness in
the dog’s face when it looked at him, but adoration for its idiot master,
though that master didn’t look all that pleased. Brandon’s blue eyes were
marked with exhaustion, the skin across forehead and cheekbones taut with
tension.

It seemed two years instead of merely two ship-weeks since
the euphoria of escape from the Dol’jharians who held Brandon’s home on
Arthelion. They’d managed to escape seconds before a vicious death—but to what?

“Can you get rid of it?” Osri pointed to the dog.

Brandon’s brows rose, but he said “Raus,” and patted the dog
as it shot out into the corridor and away, toe clicking rhythmically.

Osri shut the hatch, tabbed the lock, and said hoarsely,
hating the strain in his voice that he could not hide, “We have to plan.”

Brandon’s eyebrows rose. “We? Have to plan?”

Taking his tone for offense at his presumption of equality,
Osri sketched a bow of deference—difficult in the cramped quarters—and said,
“Your plans, my lord Aerenarch.”

Brandon gave a dry laugh. “Sarcasm, Osri, should be subtle,
or it becomes merely caricature. One of the titles of lesser degree would have
conveyed your lack of respect for me quite nicely, unless you wish to make an
oath—and perform the required Reverence?”

Osri gritted his teeth.
I’ve always hated him, and he
knows it.
“I use the heir’s formal title to remind you of that which you
seem to have forgotten, namely that you are now the heir—through the most
appallingly regrettable circumstances—and that as such, you have a duty to
escape these criminals and to bring your father to safety.”

“I have not forgotten, Osri,” Brandon said.

“Then what is your plan for the taking of this ship so we
can seek whatever remains of the Navy? Tell me, I am yours to command!”

The silence in the small cabin grew protracted as Osri stood
gazing at Brandon, no longer trying to hide his anger.

Finally Brandon looked up at him, his expression sober. “How
would you handle it? We haven’t any weapons. Put a drug in the food, perhaps,
shove the crew into the galley, and bar the hatch? Or should we somehow kill
them all and dump them out the locks?”

“We are at war, Aerenarch, and it is Rifters who began it.”

“But not these Rifters. They are not allied with Dol’jhar. They
saved your father’s life, and ours.”

‘To what purpose? At best to make a profit, which apparently
you
offered them—”

“Why don’t you ask them?” Brandon said, hand out. “Or even
ask your father. You don’t really want my opinion, any more than you would
perform a plan of mine should I come up with one. Speak your piece, or clear
out.”

Osri went on formally, “If you cannot form a plan, Your
Highness, will you place yourself under my command?”

Brandon’s face slowly blanked again, into invincible—and
unreadable—politesse. “No,” he said. “Whatever their intentions toward us are,
whatever happens, I feel now that to attack the crew of this ship would be a
breach of faith.”

Osri clenched a fist and brought it down on the edge of the
bunk with a gesture of barely controlled violence. “A breach of faith,” he
repeated with bitter scorn. “To hear you mouth that phrase disgusts me beyond
endurance! For a light-forsaken coward, a deserter, who abandoned the highest
authority in known space in order to escape unpleasant duty and run to Rifters,
to talk of breach of faith goes past irony into the blackest dishonor.
Thousands of people have died performing unpleasant duties because honor
demanded no more than that! And millions more like them have sworn allegiance
to your family—would swear to you since the rest of your family is dead—”

Osri gritted his teeth, breathing hard. Brandon said
nothing, his only movement the twisting of the signet ring on his hand.

“You had better keep your faith with your Rifter scum,” Osri
said finally. “When I get my father off this ship and back to our people—and I
shall do it, or die trying—it will not be duty but pleasure to speak to all who
will hear me about your sense of honor. I only hope your father is dead so he
will not have to suffer the shame of hearing it, for not even my allegiance to
the Panarch will silence me.” He stopped, his breathing ragged, and glared down
at Brandon, who lifted his hands.

“Do what you want, Osri,” he said wearily. “I hope your
honor and duty will always be so simple to define, and to follow.”

Osri lifted his fist, hit the hatch control, and lunged out
before the hatch was fully open, seeking privacy.

It was hard to find, harder to keep. Since his first moment
on this ship, wherever he’d gone, aside from his cabin, a Rifter had either
been there or one showed up. None of them showed any shame at the open use of
their boswells.

He finally ended back in the galley, where he slapped at his
wrist to record his thoughts, before he remembered that his own boswell was
gone.

He dropped onto a stool and gripped his head in his hands.

o0o

The angry-one directs anger at you. Perceive you danger,
shall we amend with fi?

No. Again I repeat, if I perceive danger from other
humans I will share direction, but again I repeat, you do not amend a human
with fi, you cause its cessation. Again I repeat, each is a one.

We move in a chaos of noise, we fear.

You Eya’a are among us to seek knowledge of us, therefore
again I repeat, contemplate cessation. Your world-mind had once a beginning, it
could have an end. This end would not be amendment, it would be cessation for
the Eya’a.

The one-with-three contemplates cessation, in fear. It
seeks amendment.

One with three?

Damaged-one with new memories of three-nonhuman.

We will amend the damaged-one-with-three so he will not
cease.

In our next withdrawal we will celebrate knowledge of
cessation.

You can protect yourself from danger from humans with fi,
but again I repeat, you are not amending human actions, you are destroying an
entity.

Amendment promotes growth in Eya’a. We seek to amend the
chaos, we seek wisdom from Vi’ya.

Again I repeat, this chaos is formless, it is many minds
existing but disunited. Again I repeat, continue to separate-and-hear
one-patterns. I shall now bring forth the object you have named the
eye-of-the-distant-sleeper, for our contemplation...

o0o

Montrose tapped at the main med console, catching up with
his notes, glancing up from time to time at the patient he was now most
concerned about.

He had brought Ivard’s bed out into the main dispensary, where
the boy now reclined before the big wallscreen, watching a vidchip on the Kelly
that explained the breakthrough in understanding between humans and the green
sophonts who always moved in threes.

Trev trotted in, giving Montrose a brief sniff and a flick
of tail. Before Montrose could react, the big dog leaped up onto the bed.
Montrose raised his hand, words of protest shaping his lips, but the animal
settled down carefully on Ivard’s free side. Gray, the wounded dog, was already
lying next to Ivard on the other side, its spine against Ivard’s leg. Ivard’s
hand stretched over Trev, and Montrose went back to work.

From time to time Ivard snickered as the vid displayed
impassive Panarchists, resplendent in their formal gowns and tunics, slapping
and poking at the Kelly headstalks with as much grace as they could muster. The
Kelly really were graceful, their continual dance as they patted and touched
one another mesmerizing, the ribbons covering their bodies writhing and
fluttering as if sentient. The trinity’s honking and twittering voices also
made Ivard grin.

The vid went on with some information about the Archon’s
phratry, showed scenes from the lush, humid Kelly planet, ending most
startlingly on a huge mountain whose stone was carved faithfully into
facsimiles of three human faces.

“There were three of them,” a Kelly bassooned. “Most
Kelly-like.” The Kelly made a sound like a prolonged ratcheting sneeze and the
two larger ones on either side of it slapped it gently on top of its torso.

“Three,” Ivard said, his fingers rubbing the dogs’ ears at
either side. “There are three of us, eh, dogs?”