Shadowkill sq-3, page 20
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
“You don’t understand him. I do. He’s a dangerous man, most dangerous when he looks most helpless.”
“That again.”
“I cannot guarantee to control him if you let him out of the holding cell. Leave him in there until we reach Bol Mutiar.”
“You made that argument to the Mimishay Council. They didn’t buy it, why do you expect me to? I was instructed to start the man working once we were in the insplit. I am going to follow instructions. If you’re so worried, come up with something specific you want done to tighten security. Otherwise stop carping and do your job.”
Betalli got to his feet, bowed, and left.
He was for Omphalos. It was the center of his life, his reason for existing. He believed passionately in what Omphalos stood for, in rule of the masses by a benevolent elite. He believed that ordinary people were incapable of regulating themselves and organizing their own lives. They needed direction, guidance, gentle coercion for their own good. Sometimes not so gentle, if they were resolutely wrongheaded.
He was honored by the Powers of Omphalos and honored them, but at times it seemed to him the lesser brethren had so little grasp of the Soul of Omphalos that they were scarcely better than the sheep they were being bred to rule. He’d met types like Quatorze before, all too often he’d brushed against them in his labors outside the comfortable ambiance of the Home Foci. He worked alone, a Focus in himself, no Brothers for him. The more conventional Brothers resented his self-sufficiency because it stood as a measure of their own limits.
Quatorze was a fool. Betalli walked into his quarters, sealed the door behind him, and sat at his console. He called up his plans and sat frowning at the schematics. Fool. Yes. The man had a small mind and a big grudge. Back on the Council with his armgraft still itching, Tierce had set this crawler over him. Tierce was an enemy. He betrayed Omphalos with every breath he took. Betalli marked that down. Quatorze was too small to bother with, but Tierce, yes. When this is over, I’ve got to do something about him.
Betalli leaned closer to the screen, began going minutely through his surveillance arrangements, trying to discover any place where Seyirshi might find the leverage to subvert the system. Seyirshi would find something, he was sure of it. He knew the man too well, he’d seen him poke and pry at systems until they collapsed in ruins, all the while flaking the destruction he’d set going.
Nothing. Betalli ran the system over and over, poking at it, trying everything he could think of, simple or complex. He found no entry for manipulation, but no comfort, either. He recognized his limitations; he was a plodder, no way he could follow the eccentric leaps of Ginny’s brain.
He tapped into the monitor, watched Ginny sit slumped on the cot, his face inscrutable, waiting with an iron patience for whatever was going to be done with him.
For nearly an hour he sat watching that stolid motionless figure. Then he called up record flakes of Ginny in his cell; he’d been over them before, over and over them, trying to discover what was happening in the man’s mind, seeing nothing he could put a finger on.
Finally he sighed, shook his head. Quatorze is a fool, he repeated to himself. Passionless words, worn-out litany. Most men were fools, that was the point of Omphalos.
He got to his feet, took off the impermasuit, the gloves, stripped to his skin, and walked into the cleansing chamber he’d had installed beside his workroom.
He sat a long time in the dry sterile heat, disciplining his mind as he disciplined his body. He had to be ready when Ginny went to the workshop, he had to watch the man’s every movement, hope he could spot trouble before it fruited.
Finally he retreated to his secure sleep chamber, lay under the flickering killights and slept, clean inside and out and weary beyond description.
3
Seyirshi felt the faint tingle as the ship dropped into the insplit. He tensed briefly, then forced himself to relax.
Security androids came for him, took his wrists, and led him to the workroom he’d requested. They stood in the middle of it, holding him until the release code was sent in from outside, then they separated and went to stand one at each end of the room, their scanners following every move he made.
He ignored them and walked about the workshop, checking supplies against a list on a handheld notepad, ticking off each item with meticulous care.
It took a day to finish the inventory and he logged five complaints about missing materiel, then let the androids take him back to his cell.
4
Betalli watched as Ginny checked his stock. It was a tedious process. Again and again he found his mind drifting off, again and again he jerked his attention back, acid in his mouth, wondering if he’d missed something. The process was being flaked, he could replay what was happening down there, examine it in detail-but that might be too late.
The day ended. He watched Ginny a while longer as he ate his supper from the tray delivered through the slot, watched while he washed, put on a nightshirt, stretched out on the cot, and slept.
Betalli left the screen lit, stripped, and went into his scrub room.
When he came out again, Ginny was breathing slowly, steadily, the readings said he was in the first stages of sleep. Betalli thinned his mouth, pulled on another impermasuit, sat at the screen and began replaying randomly chosen moments from the stock taking, slowing the action down, focusing in on Ginny’s hands. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
He tapped the screen black and brooded. The bland innocence of Ginny’s every move was not reassuring, it only meant he was getting ready for something-or he’d already done something and Betalli had missed it.
Missed it. Missed it. If he had, he had and would continue to miss it, his eyes sliding over and over the place.
He sighed and went shuffling into his sleeproom, stretched naked under the killights, and litanyed himself to sleep.
5
Ginbiryol Seyirshi adjusted the magnifier to a comfortable height, took a standard Eye from its pod and began peeling back its rough black skin.
He didn’t like exposing his secrets this way-the extensive modifications he’d devised for the EYEs that made them as undetectable as dreams, that enabled them to collect emotions as well as full sensory data from his targets. When the Omphalites wanted him to do this work onplanet, under the recorders of the Foundation, he wouldn’t. He hadn’t argued with the Council or the Chom, he simply said no and refused to amplify his refusal.
He began preparing the EYEs exactly according to the plan he had worked out for the subversion of Bol Mutiar, humming contentedly as he constructed then tucked in new elements. What was effective for Bol Mutiar was even more so when applied within the closed system of the ship. The Omphalites had overlooked that-or if they hadn’t overlooked it, they expected to be able to control the EYEs and him. He smiled. They’d lost control the minute they’d transferred him here with his prosthetic arm intact. If he’d been in charge, he’d have removed that arm, replaced it with one he could be sure of. They’d scanned it, of course, and found nothing except the minute forces that controlled its movements. And they’d left him with it. Fools.
He attached a notepad to the EYE, ran the program and input additional instructions, using his own intensely compressed prog-langue. When he was finished, he zipped up the EYE, set it in a vault tray, and took another EYE from its pack.
He worked steadily until his midday meal, lay down on a cot he toed out of the floor, and took a long nap. When he woke, he went back to work on the EYEs.
6
Betalli bent over the screen, running over and over the sections where Ginny was altering the EYE programs, trying to work out just what he was doing, calling up the inputs and studying them until he was forced to admit he didn’t understand what he was seeing; he loathed the kephali that ran most ships and many cities, he didn’t trust them, thought of them as whores giving out to anyone who tickled their pads, hostile whores who took a perverse delight in tempting men into destructive situations. He had no choice now, he had to turn the program analysis over to the kephalos and try to prevent the results from going to anyone but him.
He set the analysis going, then replayed the dayend records. He watched Ginny put the EYE he was working on into its slot in the vault tray, pack up his tools, watched him hold out his arm for the android escort and go placidly off to his cell.
The second android lifted the tray of EYEs and, carrying them delicately, took them to the heavy vault that Betalli had installed in the workroom. The android set the tray on its insulated shelf, tugged the door shut and set the time-lock, then settled in front of the vault, keyed into guard mode, ready to burn anything that moved in the 180 curve of his watch area.
Smooth. Not a glitch anywhere he could see, nothing he could smell, taste, nothing but a cold certainty that Ginny was plotting something. What? That scratched at him, an irritant that wouldn’t go away…
He touched the screen black, stripped and went into his cleanroom, sat in the heat until his brain was baked, then lay brooding under the killights until he finally managed to shut down his mind and sink into a dream-ridden sleep.
7
Three hours into shipnight Ginny twitched, opened his eyes. He got to his feet, crossed to the fresher, drank a glass of water, then returned to the cot. He bent down, took hold of the cot edge with his prosthetic hand, twisted the hand slightly and pushed down. A moment later he lowered himself heavily to the mattress, swung his feet up, and went placidly back to sleep.
8
In the vault two of the EYEs stirred, began to throb.
The tiny spherical nodes slipped through slits in their skins, rose a hand-width above the tray and hovered above the discarded husks, minute lasers sealing the escape holes. The naked EYES slid down behind the tray, clung to the plastic; they hummed briefly, spun a chameleon field about themselves and effectively vanished.
9
Betalli sat, watched Ginny work on the EYEs.
The report from the kephalos lay at his elbow; he hadn’t read it in detail, but on the surface its conclusions were reassuring. The additions were a series of commands to internal elements whose capacities were not fully apparent. That might have been worrying, but the report went on to state that the additions were entirely passive, that they needed an outside trigger to begin operating. And there was no way Ginny had access to such a trigger.
He began a slow search of the workroom, then probed at Seyirshi.
Nothing.
Other than the toolfields, the only forces operant in that room were the minute motors and fields woven though Ginny’s prosthesis.
He scowled at the arm, at the lacy schema of struts and wires. No connection with the outside. No apparent connection. He considered removing that arm. There was no way to get it off without damaging some very sensitive linkages, crippling the man and canceling his usefulness. Yes, he thought. I can’t have it off, but I can put a read on that arm. If it does anything at all beyond its ordinary output, I’ll have it off, I don’t care what the Savant says.
10
Ginny looked up as a third android touched his arm. “A moment,” he said. “I cannot stop right now.”
The android stepped back and waited until Ginny set the EYE on the tray. It took hold of his prosthetic arm, swung him around, straightened the arm out. It slit Ginny’s sleeve, glued a sensor strip to the pseudoskin, released the arm, and walked out.
Ginny touched the dangling sleeve, sighed. “Dear me,” he said aloud. “How annoying.” He used a small laser to cut it away, then went back to work.
11
Three hours into the shipnight, the free EYEs clinging under the table woke and pulsed.
Inside the vault two more EYEs woke, slid out of the skins and went to ground behind camouflage fields, waiting for the vault to be opened.
12
Ginny slept the six hours he allotted himself without moving. He woke, exercised, ate, went back to work.
13
Betalli watched and fretted, went over and over the records of the previous nights, over and over the report from the kephalos. He’d missed something. He knew it. Ginny would never submit this docilely to control. But there was nothing. Nothing at all.
Betalli wasn’t sleeping well, even under the killights in the sterile security of the saferoom. In his worst nightmare he woke and found himself staring up into Ginny’s smiling face, watching Ginny’s hands pour filth on him.
He doubled the watch androids, left three in the workroom every shipnight, sent one into Ginny’s sleepcell with instructions to burn him if he did anything at all out of the ordinary.
And all this time Ginny plodded stolidly along, never deviating from the path he’d laid down back on Arumda’m.
14
On the tenth day there were only five EYEs left. Ginbiryol Seyirshi did some special work on these, more modifications to the circuitry, more complex instructions added to the standard program.
Betalli didn’t wait until night to seize those EYEs. One of the androids took the tray as soon as Ginny set the fifth EYE in it, placed it in the vault, and locked the door.
Ginny smiled sadly, began filling firing tube inserts with drugs and tiny, blood-soluble darts.
15
On the tenth day in the insplit, in the third hour of the shipnight, one of the five big EYEs woke and hid.
On the eleventh day in the insplit, in the third hour of the shipnight, the big EYE raided the supply bins and vanished into the ventilation system to join the smaller EYES already hiding there.
On the twelfth day in the insplit, during the third hour of the shipnight, the EYEs acted. By the fifth hour Betalli and the Savant were the only individuals aboard the ship (other than the engine crew) alive and in possession of their faculties.
At the sixth hour, Ginbiryol Seyirshi rose from his bed. Ignoring the android deactivated in the corner of the cell, he dressed and went out.
By the eleventh hour, he held complete control of the kephalos and the Savant Quatorze was dead. He contemplated what he’d accomplished, smiled with satisfaction, and sent for Betalli.
16
Betalli stared at him from red-rimmed eyes, then he nodded. “Fools,” he said. “All of us.”
Ginny tapped the readouts. “Not you,” he said. “They should have listened to you.”
“You knew they wouldn’t.”
“Oh, yes. They have given me data enough to know them. You worked for me long enough that I knew you.”
“How?”
“How escape your surveillance?” Ginny chuckled. “I did not. Of course I did not.”
Betalli waggled the fingers of the hand imprisoned in the android’s fist. “Why am I standing like this if you did nothing?”
“I did not say that. Surely it must have occurred to you that materiel meant to subvert a world would be exceedingly effective at subverting a much smaller community?”
“I warned them and I watched you. I had the kephalos analyze your additions. It said every addition was passive, needed a triggering from outside. Had you gotten to the kephalos already?”
“Oh, no. Merely trusted my Luck and implanted a latency in one EYE.” Ginny smiled and lied; much as he was enjoying this, he knew better than to broadcast secrets promiscuously. “In the night, in the vault, the EYE woke and primed others. A pyramid, Betalli. Once the first triggering was done, the rest was mere reduplication.”
“The crew is dead?”
“Oh, yes. At least, all but those crucial to running the ship. You were greatly overmanned, you know. Waste of resources. I control completely everyone still alive. Everyone but you, of course.”
“I see.”
“Yes. I am sure you do. You betrayed me, Betalli. You were in my employ and used my trust to destroy me. It will take many years to repair the damage you have done to me. You and Omphalos. Your death will serve me two ways. It will discourage others from following your example and it will entertain my customers. Oh, yes. I have a new project, Betalli, a new Limited Edition. Something I haven’t attempted before. It has a simple title, no need for fuss. The Fall of Omphalos. Nice play of sounds, don’t you think?”
17
Betalli struggled.
Ginny flaked his struggles.
He had Betalli stripped and thrust naked into a disabled rescue pod, an EYE there to watch him as air ran out on him.
##
When the air was thick and stale, Ginny touched a sensor and a sac opened, releasing spiders and other many-legged wigglers to crawl over the prisoner.
Three hours after the pod was ejected from the ship, Betalli died, filthy and raving.
Ginny smiled and exploded the pod.
He didn’t want the little lives to suffer more than they had to.
He deployed Betalli’s android force to dump the dead out the lock, then took samples from the unconscious crewmen and brewed up a comealong that would turn them into permanent zombies. It cut their efficiency way down, but he wouldn’t need them long, just long enough to get him to the nearest clandestine Pit where he could hire some temporary efficiency and ersatz loyalty. He thought a moment about Ajeri and the Paems, sighed, and gave orders to his clutch of Zombies.
Crew first. Then Weersyll and Bolodo Neyuregg. Then Shadith. Then Mimishay. Then-
Trolling In The Tavern: Autumn Rose Begins To Play A Big Fish
1
Jacket hung round her shoulders like a cape, Autumn. Rose sat on a lichen-crusted bitt and watched the surging bay water as the sun set gaudily behind, her, turning the clouds into salmon chunks and touching the foam tips on the waves with a fugitive vermilion. There was a narrow alley past her left shoulder, a strip of weedy ground between two blocky warehouses, beyond that the street and across the street the Rumach where she was staying.
