The Thrones of Kronos (48 page)

Icy fear gripped the back of Halkyn’s neck.

The Masque’s thin lips curled up at the corner. “The Rats
again?”

“Correct,” the computer said.

“I am afraid that the children have disobeyed my orders,”
the Masque said to Halkyn, no longer smiling. “Confine them to their homes, no
contact, no duties, until morning. I will address them then.”

Halkyn bowed. “It will be done.” He realized that they were
finished for now—that the Masque was waiting to speak with the computer ghost.

Halkyn was happy to leave, and Metellus Hayashi watched the
frail old man walk slowly away.

When the lift closed behind the steward, Hayashi said,
“There goes a hero, all the more so because he is not the least aware of his
heroism.”

A flicker in the air beside Hayashi presaged the appearance
of the lean figure he called Jaspar. The dog’s ears came up, he sniffed, then
sat down.

Standing with his hands behind his back, the holographic
artifact looked after the old man. Of course, it could not really do so, nor
had it any need to. The computer was undoubtedly following the steward with the
web of sensors built into the fabric of the Palace.

This was one of the most disturbing aspects of the
apparition, how it mimicked human behavior. Or was it merely courtesy?
Certainly there was no way Hayashi could understand unmediated communications
from the computer. Was the human form therefore the best interface?

Hayashi mentally sidestepped the question, aware that he was
imputing interior awareness—consciousness—to a machine. There had been a time
when he would never have questioned the Ban, the fierce antipathy to the
counterfeit humanity of machine intelligence that ran so deep among the Exiles.

But then, he reflected wryly, there had been a time when the
idea of a midlevel Navy captain discoursing with Jaspar Arkad, progenitor of
the dynasty and founder of the now-shattered Thousand-Year Peace, would have
seemed equally impossible.

That was before Metellus had lived through a battle against
lethal odds, before he found himself commanding the Resistance of an entire
planet, before he had to address the problem of the collapse of civilization—a
philosophical problem embodied in the living, breathing presence of a few
hundred children.

“Heroism,” Jaspar repeated. The lined face regarded Hayashi
with perceptive humor. “You do not refer to a putative ability with sword or
jac?”

Once again, Hayashi couldn’t help thinking of the computer image
as a person, despite his unease. Its behavior was so far from the dispassionate
ferocity recorded of the Adamantines, the ancient enemy unleashed by the
Hegemony before the Panarchy was founded. Its behavior, in fact, seemed in
every way that of Jaspar Arkad.

And it had saved his life.

“He has the patience of the Sanctus Gabriel,” Hayashi said.
“It is not just his training, a falsely-patient front to be dropped the moment
he leaves a room. In his mind he holds the secrets—the moments of weakness—of
people from low degree to high, but I’ve yet to hear him speak a word of denigration.”

Jaspar gave a nod. “The first forty-eight hours after the
news arrived of Ilara’s death, the only person permitted into Gelasaar’s
chambers was Leontides Halkyn. His grandmother was just such a one: the only
person, it was said, who could dampen old Burgess’s rages.”

“Have you recovered all this as memory?” Hayashi asked.

“There are centuries of correlations condensing around
centuries of observations condensing around the events reported in centuries of
forgotten personal logs,” Jaspar said. “Does this correspond with memory?”

“It is more—and less,” Hayashi whispered. He usually did not
speak this much; pain, his constant companion until recently, flared in his
throat. “If you do not retain the emotional component that binds it all
together, and gives it meaning.”

“As I am more than human, and less.” Jaspar gave a soundless
laugh, and Hayashi felt a cold breeze stir. “And I contemplate the meaning of
my existence.”

“And?” Hayashi prompted.

“It is founded on a contradiction.”

“Contradiction?”

“I know that I ought not to exist, yet my existence seems
necessary.”

Hayashi shook his head. “To be or not to be,” he quoted.

Jaspar smiled wearily. Did the expression, the captain
wondered, correspond to any real internal state?

But what do I mean by
real?
Hayashi had often conferenced with others via real-time holovid;
never had he doubted the actuality of the other conferees’ inner states. He was
certain that the computer origin of whatever it was that called itself Jaspar
would have been undetectable in such a setting.

“I do not contemplate cessation, as Prince Hamlet did,” said
the holo. “But that contradiction—and the conflict it sets up in me—does this
not correspond to guilt?”

The word sent a pang through Hayashi. How often did he
struggle against the impulse to wrest their fragile connection to the DataNet
to his own purpose, to send a message to Ares, to Margot? He knew where duty
lay—he could not so imperil that lifeline—but that did not lessen the guilt he
felt at leaving her to mourn. Knowing her, loving her as he did, his anguish
was compounded by the guilt he knew she must struggle with. For she, too, had
known where duty lay.

His thoughts went to the frozen puddle of bronze in a
shallow crater on the edge of a bay near the Palace, where he’d been told
Eusabian had landed in a terrifying display of power. It had been the Havroy,
symbol of the Exile. The Rats often gathered there, for no reason he knew. He’d
been too busy to ask. “‘And every step she took was as knives piercing her
feet,’” he murmured.

“What does that mean?” asked the image of Jaspar Arkad.

“It’s the pain of becoming human,” the captain replied.

Now it was Jaspar’s turn to quote. “You mentioned the
Sanctus Gabriel. Did he not say, ‘We cannot rest in being, for that is
entropy’s victory. The pain of change is the banner of the true human life’?”

Hayashi was suddenly very tired. Soon the pain would be
agony. It was time to lie down. The dog nudged him, uttering a soft whimper.

And although the holo of Jaspar did not move, standing
nearby with his hands behind his back, on the console before them alphanumerics
flickered, and a shoomp! of compressed air announced the arrival of a
transport. “You are tired,” Jaspar said. “You must remember you are still
convalescent. Let us go back to your quarters. I have a bit of news for you.”

Hayashi climbed into the pod. “More from the Suneater?”

Jaspar shook his head. “The constraints of my fundamental
impulse, about which I believe my personality coalesced, still prevent
effective action there. But I have hopes.”

The door shut him off from view as the transport slowly
accelerated. Hayashi sat down. They could have continued talking, for the
computer had sensors all along the route, but for some reason the computer
would not appear to him except as a holo, and there was no holo-jac in the pod.

Hayashi wished he had a noderunner to talk to. At first it
had seemed unnecessary as the computer cooperated so well with them—a good
thing, since that was one talent not well represented among the Resistance. The
Dol’jharians had been thorough in that regard.

But aspects of the computer’s motivations had proved to be
opaque to Hayashi. It seemed that the core—the seed crystal—of the computer’s
present nature was a worm unleashed by the Krysarch Brandon during his raid on
the Palace. Hayashi was unable to find out anything more about it—the computer
was unable, or unwilling, to discuss it—than the fact that it was focused on
Eusabian’s son, Anaris, who had been fostered in this very palace. The presence
of Anaris on the Suneater was a distraction to the computer that prevented
effective intelligence gathering, for the only information it could garner came
in the context of fragments of observation focused on Anaris.

This was frustrating in the extreme. The only consolation
was that it seemed that Ares had its own agent on the Suneater, one Sedry
Thetris, according to the computer, so it was likely the Navy knew more than he
did, even if it didn’t have access to the Palace computer or its agent programs
in the Dol’jharian arrays on the Urian station.

Assuming that we did
grab the hyperwave
. He still didn’t know if their plan had been successful.
He could only hope.

The pod slowed, the door hissed open, and in the nexus deep
underneath the lake north of the Palace Major, Jaspar reappeared.

“Before you give me your news, let me put to you a question
of psychology,” Hayashi said as they walked toward his room.

“Please,” Jaspar responded, and with a wry smile. “Though I
cannot promise to answer it, in finding my limitations I learn.”

“I wish I could say the same,” the Masque responded, though
the problem had disturbed him increasingly of late. “What is it in human nature
that permits the phenomenon I have witnessed here in recent weeks? I watch the
Dol’jharians, who appear to have a decreasing appetite for war and mayhem. At
first they seemed to enjoy mindless destruction, but all their actions anymore
are in direct consequence to instigation by our people.” He frowned. “Mostly,
our children.”

“It’s true,” Jaspar said. “Go on.”

Hayashi shook his head as they entered his quarters. The
ghost made the transition between holo-jacs without even a hint of a flicker.
“These are not lawless brats bred up in the gutters of some Rifter habitat.
Most of the Rats are the offspring of military personnel who are dead,
imprisoned, or in hiding. The children used to be hardworking, some headed for
brilliant careers, and all cooperative and law-abiding. But now it is
impossible to get them to dress appropriately, much less to pursue their studies.
They seem to live for war games, and the only reason they are not baiting the
Dol’jharians into attacking back is their fear of the Masque. I’m afraid if
they find out I’m only a destroyer captain—some of their parents ranked me
manifestly—they won’t obey even me. It’s almost as if they are swapping places
with the enemy!”

“What I have witnessed on both sides is a relaxing of
customary constraints,” Jaspar said.

“It’s easy to condemn the Dol’jharian rules,” Hayashi said,
fighting a sense of loss. “But it desolates me to find that our children could
so readily reject civilization and order.”

“Peace was given freely. They took it for granted. Let them
earn it. Maybe they will value it again.”

“I hope so,” Hayashi said. “Tomorrow I’ll do what I can, in
a fiery castigation. I’ll give it to ’em in military terms, too. If worse comes
to worst, I’m going to have to get the dogs to patrol the areas I want
off-limits, though that puts them in danger, because the Dol’jharians still
have orders to shoot them on sight,” he added dryly, then sighed. “So, what is
your news?”

“From Ares, through correlation, not overt announcement,”
Jaspar said. “Margot O’Reilly Ng was named high admiral, although the
Dol’jharians believe Jeph Koestler holds the position.”

Margot.
“That’ll keep
them guessing,” Hayashi commented, the ache in his chest expanding. “They’ll be
planning for the wrong kind of tactics.”

Jaspar nodded. “And evidence suggests that she is on her way
to the Suneater. Probabilities are hard to assign, but I would expect the
attack within a month—depending on whatever it is that the Ares agent on the
Suneater is doing.”

Hayashi stared at the ghost. He no longer had the choice to
tell Margot he still lived. All he had now was hope, not to be denied by the
mathematics of battle and the odds of war, that they would be reunited. The
exquisite poignancy of the situation forced the words from him. “Do you know
what a port wriggle is?”

The image was quiet, and Hayashi wondered if it was
marshaling its resources across Arthelion in a search for meaning. Then it
replied, “No. Why?”

Hayashi waved his hand in dismissal and sat down heavily on
his bed. One hand toyed absently with the filmy mask, then traced the contours
of the scarred flesh beneath.

Jaspar looked at him searchingly, then linked his hands.
“You require rest,” he said. “I will withdraw.”

He whipped away like smoke and vanished.

Margot. High Admiral?

Metellus Hayashi gazed up at the ceiling, as if scanning the
distant stars. The Rift would not even show in Arthelion’s night sky, but he
felt his spirit wing its way across the light-years, and he wished he could be
at her side. See her. Touch her.

Margot, facing Eusabian at the Suneater . . .
within a month.

There was the
Suneater, a weird red, writhing mass. It moved closer, on a parallel
trajectory, so that the reddish tentacles were clearer, and visible at the ends
the lifeless figures of human beings. The Telvarna Rifters. Metellus Hayashi—

Margot Ng swung a fist in the darkness, welcomed the sharp
stab of pain that flashed from her knuckles as they stubbed against the light
control beside her bed.

Her cabin lit. She steadied herself with the sight of the
familiar space. Clean. Functional. Pleasant in design without
ostentation—selected by a rational being.
A
rational being whose decisions will affect uncounted lives.

With a sigh of disgust, she got up and went into the bain.
Under the hot, stinging water, she acknowledged the tangle of emotions that the
nightmare had drawn up from her subconscious. If she didn’t, those same
emotions would warp her conscious thoughts.

She missed Metellus, an emotion intensified by grief and
guilt and question. That was easy enough. Not knowing whether he was alive, and
if so where—those questions had been dream companions for many long months.

This vision of Metellus at the Suneater was new. Its factual
existence could be promptly dismissed, whether or not Hayashi had survived the
Battle of Arthelion.