The Knights of the Black Earth (2 page)

The intercom had
no answers for him. The room seemed to heave a bit, and so Bosk—knowing that it
would be a long wait while his guest climbed nine flights of stairs—stumbled
back over and plunked himself down in his dilapidated recliner.

Directly across
the room from him, the vid was blaring loudly. James M. Warden, personable
television personality, was conducting an interview with His Royal Majesty,
Dion Starfire.

Bosk gulped a swig
of jump-juice from a cracked glass, focused blearily on the screen.

The young king was
answering a question about the late Warlord Derek Sagan.

“He was not
perfect. No man is perfect,” His Majesty was saying gravely. “He made mistakes.”

“I beg your
pardon, Your Majesty,” James M. Warden respectfully contradicted, “but some
might consider the word
mistakes
inappropriate for what many consider to
be heinous crimes.”

“Try
murder!
”
Bosk yelled loudly at the screen.

His Majesty was
shaking his head, almost as if he’d heard Bosk’s” comment. “Lord Sagan was a
warrior. He acted out of his own warrior code, which, as you know, is a harsh
one. But he held to that code with honor. He took part in the revolution
because he believed that the government under my late uncle’s rule was corrupt
and ineffective. That it was about to collapse into anarchy, which would have
put all the people in the galaxy in the gravest danger.

“When Lord Sagan
discovered that the new government under President Peter Robes was every bit as
corrupt as the old, the Warlord concluded that he—one of the few surviving
members of the Blood Royal—had the right to try to seize control.
Circumstances, the Creator, Fate—call it what you will—intervened. Lord Sagan’s
ambitious and, some might say, his despotic plans failed.”

King Starfire’s
hand clenched. The famous Starfire blue eyes were lit from within by a radiance
that looked well on the vidscreens. The red-golden lion’s mane of hair framed a
face that was youthful, handsome, earnest, intense. His godlike looks, his
vibrant personality—all were rapidly making a reluctant deity of a very mortal
young man.

“But I tell you,
Mr. Warden, and I tell my people that I would not be here now, I would not be
wearing this crown, the galaxy would not be at peace today, if it were not for
the sacrifices of Lord Derek Sagan. He attempted to correct the great wrongs he
had done and, in so doing, gave his life that others might live. He is one of
the greatest men I have ever known. I will always honor his memory.”

Bosk tossed the
remainder of the jump-juice at the vidscreen. “Here’s that for his fuckin’
memory.” The juice trickled down the screen, soaked into the threadbare carpet
which covered the floor of the shabby studio apartment.

A crisp knock
sounded on the door.

Lurching to his
feet, Bosk went to answer it. On his way, he made a detour to the bottle,
poured himself another drink. Reaching the door, he peeped out the one-way
peephole, saw a man dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase. The man didn’t look
threatening. He didn’t look anything. He had one of those faces you meet and
five minutes later you can’t recall ever having been introduced to him before.
Bosk was more interested in the briefcase. It is said that Adonians can smell
money.

Bosk’s nose
twitched. He opened the door.

“Yeah?” he said,
looking first at the briefcase, then finally lifting his gaze to meet the
stranger’s. “What’s the deal?”

“I don’t believe
it would be wise for us to conduct our business in the hallway,” the stranger
said. He wasn’t even breathing hard after the long climb. He smiled in a
pleasant and disarming manner. “Your neighbors don’t need to know your affairs,
do they?”

Bosk followed the
stranger’s glance, saw Mrs. Kasper standing in her half-open door. He glared at
her.

“I heard a knock,”
she said defensively. “Thought it might be for me.” She sniffed. “Another of
your ‘clients’?”

“Nosy old bitch!”
Bosk retorted. He opened his own door wider. “C’mon in, then.”

The stranger
entered. Bosk shut the door, took a look out the peephole to make sure Mrs.
Kasper had gone back into her apartment. She had a bad habit of loitering in
the hall, listening outside closed doors.

Sure enough.

Bosk flung the
door open, nearly knocking Mrs. Kasper down.

“Care to join us?”
He leered.

Disgusted, she
flounced back inside her apartment and slammed her door.

Bosk shut his door
again, turned around to face his guest. The stranger was tall, well-built,
handsome if you went for older guys with hair graying at the temples, which
Bosk did not. The clothes were expensive but not ostentatious. Snaga Ohme would
have approved the choice of colors: muted blues and grays. The face was a mask.
The lines and wrinkles had been trained to betray nothing of the thoughts
within. The eyes were one-way mirrors. Bosk looked in, saw himself reflected
back.

Having once been
close to some of the most powerful people in the galaxy, Bosk recognized and
appreciated the quiet air of control and authority this man exuded, like a fine
cologne that never overwhelms, never cloys the senses.

“I assume that you
are the Adonian known as Bosk?” The stranger was polite.

“I’m an Adonian
and my name’s Bosk. That answer your questions?”

“Not all of them.”
The stranger continued to be polite. “Were you once in the employ of the late
Snaga Ohme, former weapons dealer?”

Bosk swallowed. “I
wasn’t in his ‘employ,’ mister! I was his goddamn friend! His best friend. He
trusted me, more’n anyone. He trusted me. I knew ... all his secrets.”

Bosk brushed his
hand across his eyes, wiped his nose with his fingers. Adonians are a sensitive
race, who have a tendency to get maudlin when they’re drunk. “I was his
confidant. Me. Not those other fops, those pretty boys—fawning and preening.
And the women. They were the worst. But he loved me. He loved me.”

Bosk drained the
glassful of jump-juice.

The stranger
nodded. “Yes, that is consistent with my information. Snaga Ohme told you all
his secrets. He even told you about his project code-named Negative Waves.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”
Bosk eyed the stranger warily. “You want a drink?”

“No, thank you.
Mind if I sit down?”

“Suit yourself.”
Bosk wandered back to the bottle.

The stranger
walked across the small room. Bosk watched him out of the corner of his eye.
The stranger’s movements were fluid, controlled. He was in excellent physical
condition, with a hard-muscled body, good reflexes.

Pity he’s not
twenty years younger, Bosk thought.

The stranger
pulled up a battered metal fold-out chair—one of the few articles of furniture
in the apartment. In front of the chair was a computer. A highly sophisticated
and expensive personal computer, it looked considerably out of place in the
poverty-stricken surroundings. The stranger seated himself in the chair,
regarded the computer with admiration.

“That’s a fine
setup, Bosk. Probably worth the price of this whole apartment building.”

“I’d sell myself
first,” Bosk said sullenly. He
had
sold himself first, but that was
beside the point. He hunched back down in the recliner. “Snaga Ohme gave that
computer to me. It’s one of the best, the fastest in the whole damn galaxy.”

A photograph of
Snaga Ohme—bronze, beautiful, as were most Adonians—stood in an honored place
beside the crystalline storage lattice.

The stranger
nodded, smiled in sympathy, placed the briefcase on his knees, and waited for
Bosk to resume talking. But Bosk’s attention had been recaptured by the
vidscreen. The king was speaking again, this time about the long-expected and
widely anticipated birth of the royal heir.

“Fuckin’ bastard,”
muttered Bosk. “I hate the fuckin’ bastard. Him and that fuckin’ Derek Sagan.
Wasn’t for that fuckin’ Derek Sagan,
he’d
be alive today.”

A glance at the
photograph of Snaga Ohme clarified the pronoun.

“Tell me about
Derek Sagan, Bosk,” the stranger suggested.

Bosk tore his gaze
from the vid. “Why d’you wanna know about Derek Sagan?”

“Because he was
the reason for the Negative Waves project, wasn’t he, Bosk?”

Bosk hesitated,
regarded the stranger suspiciously. But the Adonian had had far too much to
drink to make the mental effort to play games, keep secrets. Besides, what did
it matter anyway? Ohme was dead. And when his life had ended, so had Bosk’s. He
didn’t even have revenge to keep him going anymore. So he nodded.

“Yeah. Sagan was.
I don’t care who knows it. If His Majesty sent you—”

“His Majesty didn’t
send me, Bosk.” The stranger leaned back comfortably in the chair. “His Majesty
doesn’t give a damn about you, and you know it. Nobody gives a damn, do they,
Bosk?”

“You do,
apparently,” Bosk said with a cunning not even the jump-juice could completely
drown.

“I do, Bosk.” The
stranger opened the briefcase. “I care a lot.”

Bosk stared. The
briefcase was filled with plastic chips—black plastic chips, stamped in gold,
arranged in neat stacks.

Bosk rose slowly
to his feet to get a better look, half afraid that the liquor might be playing
tricks on his mind. It had been almost four years since the night Snaga Ohme
had been murdered. Four years since the night Warlord Derek Sagan had seized
control of the dead man’s mansion and its wealth. That night, as Sagan’s army
marched in the front, Bosk had exited the mansion via the secret tunnels in the
back.

During these
intervening four years, Bosk had never seen
one
black chip stamped in
gold, much less . . . how many were in that briefcase? . . . He took a
conservative guess on the number of chips in each stack, counted the number of
stacks across, counted the number of stacks down, did some muddled
multiplication, and drew in a shivering breath.

“Twenty thousand,
Bosk,” said the stranger. “It’s all yours. Today.”

Bosk found his
chair with the backs of his legs, sat down rather suddenly. Life up till now
had been an endless lineup of jump-juice bottles, selling his favors in cheap
bars and bathhouses, and dodging the local collection agency.

“I could go back
to Adonia,” he said, staring at the black chips.

“You could leave
tonight, Bosk,” said the stranger.

Bosk licked dry
lips, took another drink, gulped it the wrong way, coughed. “What do you want?”

“You know,” said
the stranger. “You tried to sell it a couple of years ago. Bad timing. No
market.”

“Negative Waves.”
Bosk’s gaze strayed to the computer.

The stranger
nodded, closed the lid of the briefcase. The light seemed to go out of the
room.

“Tell me about the
project, Bosk. Tell me everything you can remember.”

“Why do you want
to know?”

“Just to make sure
we’re talking about the same project.”

A mental hand was
tugging at the coattails of Bosk’s brain, trying to get his attention. But the
jump-juice and the gold-stamped black chips combined to cause him to shoo it
away.

“Yeah, sure,” Bosk
said. He reached for his glass, discovered it was empty, started to head for
the bottle.

He found the
stranger holding on to it. Bosk staggered back, blinked. He had no clear
recollection of seeing the stranger move, yet the man was standing right in
front of him.

“We’ll have a
drink to celebrate closing the deal,” said the stranger, smiling and holding on
to the bottle. “Not before.” He walked back to his seat by the computer.

Bosk was going to
get angry and then decided he wasn’t. Shrugging, he went back to his chair. The
stranger returned to the folding chair, set the bottle down next to the
computer, beside the picture of Snaga Ohme. On his way past, the stranger
flicked off the vid. Congenial reporter James M. Warden and His Majesty the
King dwindled to insignificant dots, then were gone.

A commentary on
life, Bosk thought, staring at the empty screen with watery eyes.

“Where should I
begin?”

“The
space-rotation bomb,” specified the stranger.

Bosk glared,
suspicions returned. “You
must
be from the king. No one else knew about
that.”

“I’m not from the
king, Bosk,” the stranger said patiently. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you where I
am
from. But for now, I’d say you’re being paid enough not to be curious.
Let me help things along.
We
know about the space-rotation bomb. We know
how Warlord Sagan came up with the design for it. How he needed someone to
build it. Needed it done quick and quiet, because he was planning to overthrow
the galactic government. And so he went to Snaga Ohme.”

“The only man in
the universe who could have built that damn bomb,” Bosk said with moist-eyed
pride. He sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Whoever had that
bomb coulda overthrown six billion governments.” He gazed back into the past,
shook his head in admiration. “It was sweet. Best work Ohme ever did. He said
so himself. Blow a hole in the fabric of the universe. Destroy all life as we
know it.”

“That was only
theorized.”

Bosk waved his
hand, irritated at the stranger’s slowness of thought. “That’s not the point.
Blackmail. The threat. Hold it over their heads. Sword of something-er-other—”

“Damocles,” said
the stranger.

Bosk shrugged, not
interested. He coughed, licked his lips, looked longingly at the bottle.

The stranger
ignored the look. “Ohme built the bomb according to the Warlord’s
specifications, using Sagan’s financing. But then it occurred to Ohme that,
with this bomb in the Warlord’s possession, Derek Sagan might get a—shall we
say—swelled head?”