The Nonborn King (50 page)

KUHAL: Do not articulate the thought. I can see. I'm very sorry,

CLOUD: Papa loves us. I can't believe he would have done anything evil to us. Not knowingly.

KUHAL: Tell me the rest of the story.

CLOUD: The Rebellion took place in 2083. It lasted less than eight months in its overt phase- A large number of human operants were involved, and millions of normals, too. Almost all of the lower-echelon rebels died, and so did numbers of innocent people on rebel-occupied planets. Eventually, Papa was defeated by his own younger brother, Jon, and Jon's wife, Illusio Jon Rennllard was a mutant He was fourteen years younger than Marc. By the time he reached adulthood he had no body, only a naked brain that wore any sort of shape that struck its fancy I know he sounds like a monster, but the Milieu made him a saint when he put down the Rebellion. Jon's wife was a Paramount, like him, a metaconcert specialist. She had only half a face as a result of some psychocreative mishap and never had it regenerated because the deformity became a kind of symbol of her authority. She wore a diamond mask.

KUHAL: Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask. Gomnol spoke of them...

CLOUD: The pair of them died, but Papa lived. And he brought Hagen and me and a hundred or so of his surviving people through the time-gate

KUHAL: I remember the black day I fought against the invaders in the Battle of the Grotto Wilderness. Our forces were massacred. King Thagda! ordered the incident blotted from our history after the invading humans disappeared across the Western Sea.

CLOUD: Papa took his people to North America. He didn't want to fight you. Many of his followers were badly wounded and he himself was half-dead from temble brain-bums. We made a new home on an island off southeastern North America. It's very beautiful. We call it Ocala- All of the other children were born there.

KUHAL: But you left it. Why?

CLOUD: When we were young, we could imagine nothing other than following our parents' chosen way. Papa had brought all kinds of equipment to the Pliocene. After he recovered, he set up a farsensing observatory and began to search the stars, looking for another race of metapsychics. He knew that if he found such a race, he could prevail on it to come and rescue us. He hoped to reinstitute his great dream of human dominion in a world six million years younger than the Milieu. A fair number of his original followers believed he'd be able to do it. Papa... can make you believe in him. But as the years went on, and thousands upon thousands of stars were searched with no result, many of the older people became despondent. There were suicides, and murders. Some of the old rebels went mad and some psyched out on drugs and some just. . withdrew. We children watched it all happen while we grew up. Finally, we began to think for ourselves, beyond Papa's futile dream. Felice was a catalyst But we had been watching you long before she arrived. We put together a crude farsight combination and spied on you here in Europe as an entertainment.

KUHAL: Ah. The children of ennui while away tedious hours observing lower forms of life! We weren't real at all, were we, Cloud? Only ants busy in a nest And one day, you thought you'd see what would happen if you let the water in, !

CLOUD: No!

KUHAL; Why did you help Felice destroy us, then?

CLOUD. We coveted your Many-Colored Land. Not in itself, but as a stepping-stone back to the Milieu KUHAL. Back? Back through the time-gate^ But that's impossible!

CLOUD: No, its not. Elaby Gathen, the man who died in Aiken's fight against Felice, was certain that we would be able to buiid a duplicate of the original time-warping device that stands in the Milieu. We have a complete set of plans from our computer. And when my brother and the others fled from Ocala, they took all kinds of manufacturing apparatus and mineral resource charts.

KUHAL: And your father? How did he react to this?

CLOUD: He was violently opposed at first. Now I don't know. We forced him to rethink his own objectives. He knows now that we'll never go back to Ocala. Perhaps he's decided to let us follow our own destiny. And after what happened with Felice and Aiken Drum, he may even help us Just as he may help you.

KUHAL: What are you saying?

CLOUD; Hagen and the others marooned down in Africa spent some time studying a mental reprise of the fight with Felice. I've conferred with them about it. Since you Tanu are so metapsychically primitive, you probably don't fully realize just how many questionable things were happening down there on the Genii River! Let's hope Aiken Drum doesn't either.

KUHAL: Explain!

CLOUD: All right, consider the metaconcert program that Papa taught Aiken. We children have nothing like Papa's sophistication in things tike that. But it was apparent that Papa planned for both Felice and Aiken to die in that fight.

KUHAL: Great Goddess.

CLOUD: Papa knew very well that as an individual, he couldn't measure up to Felice. Even using the metaconcert, throwing every available bit of mindpower against her, it would be touch and go. (Of course, if they'd had that photon Spear working, they'd have had the edge.) Now, there are a number of different options for setting up an offensive metaconcert. Some are much more hazardous to the prime executive than others. Papa gave Aiken a program that should have squeezed the last erg of psychoenergy out of the lashup if Aiken used it at full zap, as he'd be likely to do instinctively in a panic situation- And a full zap of thatr potential tunneled through Aiken should have killed him as well as Felice. But Aiken didn't throw the whole basketful at her in the first strike. He'd been scared by his test blast up on the mountain and so he mitigated the flow, keeping it sublethal. As you may recall. Papa was fooled into thinking that the first strike finished Felice.

KUHAL: Abaddon said that he couldn't detect her mass or energy. But then, and ! admit I did not understand mis, he said Felice jumped.

CLOUD: He said she d-jumped. It's a meta slang term, short for dimensional-jump or translocation. A faculty that's extremely rare in the Milieu. Sometimes a variation of it is called teleportation.

KUHAL: Brede's Ship!

CLOUD: What?

KUHAL: The giant organism, her spouse. The Ships were capable of faster-than-light travel via hyperspace, using their mind-power alone. Do you mean to say that Felice,

CLOUD: She might have done it inadvertently, as a defense mechanism. Perhaps just skipping out of range. But Hagen thinks that she followed Papa's farsense beam, it was in peripheral mode, and scragged him!

KUHAL: But she attacked Aiken,

CLOUD: It could have happened in a split second. When Felice reappeared above Aiken, Papa's psychocreative input was altered. We reran the memory and proved it. He had been handling the defenses except at the very instant of the first strike, when he flashed briefly into the offensive mode on main channel. After Felice's jump the whole screen started to go. Owen Blanchard dropped dead. He might have been hit by Papa's flashover, given the configuration- We think Papa was able to pull himself back together in lime to reweave the disintegrating defense, then participate in the final zap.

KUHAL: You believe that Felice did no significant harm to your father?

CLOUD: On the contrary. And if he was hurt, it would tend to explain his strange withdrawal after the fight, and the fact that he's remained incommunicado for more than a month now.

KUHAL: But your father continued to function after the d-jump incident.

CLOUD: And he was hooked into a cerebroenergetic rig strong enough to bottle a small H-bomb! He's a Paramount, and he was operating with God knows how many factors of augmentation. It's when he shucks the armor plating and the superconductive artificial nervous system that the headache is likely to begin. Hagen knows more about this kind of thing than I do. He suspects that Papa was on the receiving end of a coercive-creative zorch heavy enough to send him to the regen tank, and that's why the aether between here and Ocala has been so peaceful lately.

KUHAL: How fortuitous for you and your peers.

CLOUD: And perhaps for you.

KUHAL: ?

CLOUD: Listen up. and try to understand. I think that you Tanu and my own people and even Papa now share a common nemesis. We may all have to cooperate if we want to survive much longer.

KUHAL: Aiken Drum?

CLOUD: Aiken should have died. He didn't. It almost seemed as though Felice siphoned the bulk of that psychoenergy away from Aiken herselfat the last minute- God knows how or why- She's dead. But Aiken's very much alive, and only a little wonky, and by now he's figured out that Papa was out lo screw him. He's in a position to do some heavy mindwork himself now, thanks to Papa's gift of the metaconcert program. It won't be hard for him to adapt it to safe use. When he dismantles the mental booby traps, he'U go after your brother Nodonn and his faction, and when your brains are barbecued he'll turn his attention to Papa.

KUHAL: Or you.

CLOUD: All my people and I want is to go to the Milieu. You'd lose nothing by helping us. And we have a lot to offer you.

KUHAL: You have already given of yourself to me.

CLOUD: Mutual, if you like. I'm nearly healed, and three times faster than a tank could do the job in our Ocala infirmary.

KUHAL: I had thought Boduragol's suggestion to be futile. The loss of my twin brother seemed an irreparable calamity. Our biotechnology of the Skin holds out scant chance of regenerating an entire brain hemisphere. And yet we see what is happening.

CLOUD: A novel adaptation, certainly. In human medicine, the left brain has very often been successful in teaming to assume right-brain ftinctions, and vice versa.

KUHAL: Perhaps what you have done is teach me to be human.

CLOUD: You need more work. But that can be arranged Boduragol opened his eyes and smiled. The duel of PK and redactive force flowing between the two patients was supremely harmonious. He really wasn't needed any longer. He slipped down off his stool and went to the two motionless bodies, the man torced in gold, the woman crowned with heavy braids of lustrous reddish-yellow hair.

"Why don't I just leave you two alone to get on with whatever you're doing? Another week, and you'll probably both be well. Most gratifying."

Stooping. Boduragol made a minute adjustment in the Skin around Cloud RemiHard's ivory feet "Gratifying," he could not help repeating, and went out leaving the healing to proceed.

WHEN MERCY FINALLY RETURNED TO GORIAH AT THE END OF July, the deadly languor that had afflicted Aiken ever since the fight with Felice began at last to lighten, and his wounded brain to heal. The Queen's tale was a thin one: that she had suffered amnesia when her boat was caught in the landslide and had wandered alone in the jungle east of the Genii, to be rescued at last by bareneck plant hunters who did not recognize her, and who brought her back to Afaliah only after having gathered sufficient numbers of rare orchids for the conservatory of Lady Pennar-la, Celadeyr's wife. Implausible though this story was, Aiken accepted it without question, nor did he attempt to delve into Mercy's mind. She was back, she was unharmed, and her response to his lovemaking was once again fervent- It sufficed, and he was content.

One fine August day they went out to the dune hills along the Strait of Redon to see Yosh Watanabe and his crews demonstrate the different kinds of fighting kites being readied for the upcoming Grand Toumey. Aiken and Mercy and a large party of Most Exalteds lounged about beneath a shady canopy, enjoying the sea breeze and the novel entertainment. There was an abundance of picnic food and iced honey wine, and the kite battles were diverting and occasionally dangerous.

First into the air were agile, lozenge-shaped Nagasaki hata, with their flying lines coated in crushed glass, vividly decorated in stylized designs of red. white, and blue. When one kite managed to saw through the line of a rival, the well-rehearsed Tanu nobility yelled out the traditional cry, "Katsuro!" and paid off their wagers, while Yosh beamed and strutted and explained the future history of the events.

The wind picked up after the sun crossed the meridian, and the big kites soared aloft. There were Sanjo rokkaku. hexagonals half again as tall as a Tanu male, bearing gaudy portrayals of samurai warriors, Japanese demons, and mythical creatures;

and there were rectangular Shirone o-dako. 6.? meters high by 5 meters wide, ornamented with magnificent fishes and birds. figures from folklore, and abstract motifs, Crewed by five to ten humans, these fighting kites were too ponderous to attempt line-cutting maneuvers. Instead they engaged in stately dogfights, crashing into one another while the competitors attempted to foul their lines. A losing kite, deprived of aerodynamic lift, would falter and tumble down out of control. Its victorious attacker would perforce follow it to the gound since the lines were entangled; but the winning kite usually maintained its dignity to the end, landing safely while its foe crashed to the sand, a mangled mass of torn paper and higgledy-piggledy bamboo bones.

When the wind was deemed suitably strong and steady, the truly enormous kites were trundled onto the beach, the combatant carriers that were destined to play a part in the Tourney proper rather than the preliminary events. Two o-dako measuring 14.5 by 11 meters and weighing more than 800 kilos apiece were hoisted onto temporary scaffolding so that their many bridle lines could be attached, braided, and fastened to the flying cable. This last was connected to a heavily weighted winch. The kite warrior would be suspended from the lower framework in a light breeches buoy- Three maneuvering lines joined to key bridles gave the fighter some control over his kite's flight; but the principal guiding force came from the ground crew of fifty, who were equipped with running control lines that joined the main cable by means of large D-shaped carabiners.

When the pair of giant o-dako were ready for launching. Yosh came to the royal enclosure, trailed by his assistant, the dour Lithuanian gray-torc, Vilkas Yosh was attired in his gorgeous samurai armor and Vilkas in the only slightly less ornate harness of an ashigaru, or foot-wamor