The Nonborn King (28 page)

"I'll look into the matter tomorrow. Don't worry about it." Aiken swung the door open and touched a switch. A fluor ceiling lit. "I'll charm the socks off those mutineers, lovie. Now ... what do you think of thisT'

She stood transfixed. What was evidently a former dungeon had been converted into a storage dump. The stone walls were coated with plastic sealant, and the atmosphere, in contrast to that of the damp and musty stairwell, was temperature- and humidity-controlled and redolent of some sterilizing agent. There seemed to be endless aisles of racks and shelving. Some of the stored goods had been anonymously packed in pods, but other items were shrink-wrapped in clear piass. The variety of small twenty-second-century weaponry was impressive. There was also a plethora of other sophisticated equipment confiscated from time-travelers, all items that the feudal-minded Tanu deemed unsuited to their culture. Mercy saw every kind of solar power cell, small fusion units, collapsible vehicles, a shrouded thing labeled LINK-BELT MINIMINER, another called FAIRBANKS MORSE MARINE ION CONCENTRATOR, a third designated NOBLE GAS ATMOSPHERIC EXTRACTOR, MITSUBISHI HI LTD.

There were antenna dishes and excavating zappers and microorganic culture units. There were devices of unfathomable function shelved next to homely domestic appliances.

"I call it the General Store," said Aiken. He sat down at the console of a small inventory-control computer and spoke inaudibly into the mouthpiece. "Nodonn and Gomnol seem to have shared a certain pack-rat instinct for keeping paraphernalia that King Thagdal had ordered destroyed. The late Lord of Burask did. too, but on a much smaller scale. Gomnol's cache was raided by Bredejust before the Flood. Certain nonmilitary hardware was turned over to Elizabeth's little clique of dogooders. The rest must have been destroyed by the Shipspouse. My people have searched the ruins of Muriah and there's no trace of it. The Burask hoard, on the other hand, was captured by the Firvulag."

Mercy gasped. "Sharn and Ayfa won't scruple to use it!"

A small robot retriever came rolling silently along one aisle and stopped in front of Aiken. "Your requested material, Citizen," it said.

"Mucho thanks." He opened a top hatch, took out a small package, and stowed it behind his left paliette- Then he shut down the computer and headed back to the door. "That's that, lovie. Come along. Some other day I might let you have a little shopping excursion."

"In time for the war?" she inquired sadly.

"I won't be the one to start it."

"The Firvulag may try to assassinate you at the Loving. Inviting them was very rash. Their Great Ones are now capable of meshing minds even more effectively than the Host of Nontusvel once could."

He came close to her, the armor's sharp glass plates pressing through the thin voile of her gown. He still held the helmet in one arm. The other encircled her waist. "Having the Little People here as our guests shows strength. Lady Wildfire, and that's the lactic called for right now. Both the Firvulag and the Tanu are primitives. Sharn and Ayfa. The vacillating city-lords and shifty old Celo. Even crazy Felice is a primitive! Strength is all that barbarians understand. As for the danger of assassination. . .I'm a match for any Tanu or Firvulag while I'm awake. And when I sleep, well, that's why I came down here tonight- To get me a stem-shield generator. God knows what paranoid time-traveler thought he might need it to guard his mind in the Pliocene. But the gadget is made to order for me, since I'm not ali that good at self-redaction."

Her sea-colored eyes held admiration, and something else. "Ah, they've underestimated you until it's too late. All of them. I think you'll conquer them all with your tricks and glib tongue. But there'll be a price. I wonder if you'll pay it? Or will I?"

His gem-hard hand was behind her head, drawing her down until their lips met, electric and searing- He saw into her and laughed. "So it's mortal fear that's your aphrodisiac. Lady Wildfire?"

"As yours, Amadan-na-Briona."

"That's not a Tanu name. What does it mean? Stay open

to me, "

But her deep levels were walled off, and the passion was palpable and growing- "Amadan was a figure from the old Celtic folklore. Ajester. A Fata! Fool whose touch was death." Her laugh was reckless. "Let us go up, my Amadan! Out of this place. I've changed my mind about waiting, and you shall find your peace in my welcome home."

The April sky flared with auroras on that night of their first true coupling. And at the height of it, the castle of Goriah rang like a great glass bell.

VAUGHN JARROW, HANGING PRECARIOUSLY FROM THE PULPIT in the bow of the ketch, sent out the seductive telepathic call again.

"Give up on it," Elaby Gathen said, not bothering to mask his distaste.

"You just drive the boat and mind your own business." The eene trill rang out once more on an inhuman farspeech modeFrom the sparkling wavelets ahead came a faint, answering cry.

'Tally hoo'" Vaughn yodeled He raised the Matsushita RL9 carbine.

"You know what Owen told us, " Elaby began to say But at that instant the porpoise broke the surface in a joyous leap of welcome, and Vaughn fired, the red beam piercing the sea mammal's body just below the dorsal fin. It gave a dreadful tetepathic scream that mingled betrayal and anguish. Vaughn chuckled and fired again at the flailing shape with his zapper dialed to blade-ray The farspoken screaming choked off and the porpoise sank amid a spreading patch of maroon.

"You trigger-happy young cretin!" Owen Blanchard came raging topside and stood in the cockpit, swaying unsteadily. Elaby had been standing on the coaming, clinging to a shroud and steering the ketch with one foot on the wheel. Now he flicked on the auto and leaped to assist the older man, whose chronic seasickness seemed ready to yield to apoplexy. "I told you to leave the porpoises alone' I ordered you!"

Vaughn lounged against the pulpit rail, the carbine tilted over one bare shoulder He was naked except for a brief bathing slip and his overfed body gleamed with suntan emollients "I get bored on watch. I have to do something besides scan the bottom of the friggerty estuary."

"Zap sharks or manias!"

Vaughn shrugged "They won't come when I call "

"The porpoises are sentient, dammit'"

Vaughn diddled with the Matsu's beam selector- He grinned slyly, not catching Owen's eye. "So were the four billion noncoadunates you helped to kill in the Rebellion. Don't come over righteous with me, pops."

Elaby's coercion reached out to throttle his contemporary. "That's enough, Vaughn. Don't pretend to be any dumber than you really are Owen warned you that the porpoises might be able to communicate with Felice. She likes animals. They're her friends."

"Bullshit. Porpoise farspeech isn't loud enough to carry farther than a klom or two "

"We don't dare nsk it." said Owen "And besides. Felice is nowhere near here."

"We're not sure of that," Owen snarled, "and until we are, you leave the porpoises alone!"

Vaughn's gnn widened. He was slitty-eyed in the dazzle. "Okay, pops. I'll find me some new targets. Gotta keep sharp."

Owen dropped onto one of the cockpit seats His face was deeply flushed and the pouches beneath his watering eyes were more prominent than ever. He said to Elaby, "I've managed to complete the modification on the headset. The docilization gear is as ready as it'll ever be. But she'll have to be pretty naive to fall into our trap."

"And the lullaby-gun?" Elaby took the wheel again.

"Dead as mutton." Owen produced a handkerchief, knotted the four comers, and set the improvised cap on his sandy crew cut. "After twenty-seven years on the shelf in a tropical climate.. - you'd have more luck putting Felice to sleep with a mug of hot milk than with that thing."

Elaby cursed. The 60,000-watt hypnagogic projector, theoretically capable of dropping a rioting mob in its tracks at 500 meters, wouid have rendered their conquest of Felice almost easy. "It'll be up to you and me and Cloud, then. We'll have to lake on the monster harebrained, [f only Cloud and I hadn't worn ourselves out pushing the boat..."

It was April 2?. The transatlantic passage had taken nearly a week longer than anticipated when the westerlies failed them just beyond the Azores. Only Elaby, Cloud, and the ketch's skipper, Julian Morgenthaier, possessed the psychokinetic talent to generate useful winds, and they had not fully recovered from their labors in the doldrums when they were called upon again. The boat finally broke out of the stagnant air 900 kilometers off Spain; but the overworked trio still felt mentally below par, and Owen's crippling mal de mer had returned when the wind freshened Owen and Vaughn, the top farspeakers in the expedition, had attempted to notify Felice of the delay. But there had been no response. After the ketch entered the Gulf of Guadalquivir, Owen and Vaughn had undertaken a painstaking overview of southern Spain. They had not found Felice, even though her deserted eyrie was easy enough to locate. For some reason of her own, the madwoman was deliberately shielding her mind from metapsychic observation. "We'll just have to live cool and let her come to us when she's ready." Elaby had said. The others could find no fault with this conservative proposal.

Now the yacht cruised up the narrowing gulf in a leisurely fashion, hugging the southern shore, making for the Rio Genii, which flowed down from Mulhacen. Pink sand beaches fringed with fruiting palms were separated by low headlands that led back into lushly forested foothills. On the southern horizon, poking through a layer of haze. were the Betics, Mulhacen, at 4233 meters, tipped with white in disdain of the tropical climate.

A farspoken signal came from Cloud in the galley Mess call in ten! Right! "How's that cove look below, Vaughn? Any reefs?" Elaby altered course to starboard.

The farsensor exerted himself minimally. "Seems clear. Drive right in."

The chop smoothed as they came into the lee of a small promontory and glided toward the anchorage- Elaby used his PK to roll the mainsail and mizzen. He kept the jib neatly filled with his own light air.

"Coming up on fifteen meters," Vaughn said.

"Let go the lunch hook."

The ketch drifted broadside to, then swung her head into Elaby's zephyr as the small anchor bit and held. When Vaughn had them snubbed down. Cloud and Jillian, duty cooks of the day, appeared carrying platters of grilled pompano, palm-heart salad with sweet-and-sour dressing, and rice popovers. To drink there was watermelon cooler.

"But without the rum." Cloud stared pointedly at Vaughn. "Someone has been swilling more than his share, and we're running tow."

"What d'you expect when neither of you broads will have me?" Vaughn's mental tone was martyred. "Grog is my only friend. And food. Pass my plate."

The cove was a tranquil and inviting spot, sheltered and deep. A stream came splashing down a notch in the rocks at the base of the headland and flowed a short distance into roseate sand before disappearing. In the transparent waters, shoals of sizable fish came to inspect the intruding boat "There are worse places we could stay in," Elaby remarked.

Jillian nodded. "Vaughn and I could take care of maintenance and foraging while you three rested up for the hunting of the snark."

"Hey! I'm ready for a hunt right now!" Vaughn had engulfed his lunch in three minutes flat. Now he came clambering into the cockpit. "Just let me throw a few clothes on. Do a job on the dinghy for me, will you, Jill love?"

"Anything rather than you," she told him as he disappeared below. She went lo the stern and began to ready the inflatable tender. "I heard the porpoise," Cloud said to Owen quietly "Its cry went though my brain like a knife Do you really think it might have identified us to Felice?"

"I don't know," the old rebel said "They're sentient, and they communicate telepathically with each other That's the factor that worries me, nol the death cnes of the individuals Vaughn potted three yesterday and seven the day before Today there was only one, and it was adolescent Inexperienced "

"You think the word's gone out?" Elaby asked

"Who can say?" Owen set his nearly untouched plate aside "Why the devil you brought that blockhead on this expedition escapes me "

"He's one of the original group who planned this." Elaby said, "and the best farsensor of all of us He may be a bit thick, but we never would have known about Felice in the First place if he hadn't been farsensmg Europe just for the hell of it last fall"

Look All of you Quickly

Jillian's thought drew them to the stem, which had swung about to face the beach At the edge of the jungle stood four little figures, the two largest about the size of six-year-old children and the others shorter Their bodies, except for the faces, were clothed in smooth, tawny hair

"Aren't they adorable?" Cloud breathed "Are they monkeys?"

"Apes," Elaby decided "Dr Warshaw said we'd probably run across them in Europe These could be Dryopithecus, ancestors to the chimps of our era. But they're so small and upright.I think they must be Ramapithecus. The ancestors of humanity "

"I get images from them," Owen marveled "Crude self awareness and innocent curiosity Like a baby two, three years old A lot different from the inhuman sentience of the porpoises It reminds me of the indigenes on a planet where, "

A scarlet beam of coherent light blasted from the boat's cockpit behind them The tallest of the creatures toppled, zapped through the head Jillian cried out Cloud leaped at Vaughn.

"You rotten shithead!'

Tears streaming down her cheeks, she hauled him up. laser carbine and all, and threw him overboard On the beach, the surviving ramas were frozen, gazing down at their dead companion and then at the boat A split second later, only the single huddled shape could be seen

Vaughn came paddling around toward the stem step, coughing and swearing Elaby ignored him and went to soothe Cloud Jilhan plucked the marksman and his weapon from the water with a rough PK hoist "That was nice going. Ace Even for you "

"So what's the flap? We need provisions, right? You gonna be squeamish about monkey stew?" Vaughn inspected the zapper. muttering, "Damn You probably shorted it out Now I'll have to spend the afternoon taking it down "