Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 14
Only then, feeling foolish, did he recall the instructions given by the Jennet, and say, "Your honor."
"I am here," replied the Savant in solemn voice.
"Sir, I wish to discuss — " he caught himself. He had made this mistake with the Jenney. Merely stating the fact that he had a wish was not, to these literal minded beings, a request for answer or action. He started again, "Sir, I am here to discuss the war situation in the Hvalens Sector. We must discuss it. I wish to — uh, that is — I shall convince you of the need to cast your vote."
The solemn, long-faced horse-creature did not answer.
Again, Napoleon remembered, and said, "Done."
Celarent said, "Incorrect. Revise your statement."
Now it was Napoleon's turn not to answer. He strode along the garden path, beneath the shade of scented cedar trees, wondering how in the world to talk to an Equine. In meetings, the formality of who had the floor, who spoke, who had the right to answer or ask, was all laid out and clear. Napoleon had never had a private conversation with a member of this elder race before. They were reputedly more intelligent than human beings; but, if so, they hid this fact behind a smokescreen of plodding dullness.
Napoleon said, "Please tell me how my statement is incorrect, or what needs revision."
Celarent said, "We are not here to discuss the war situation in the Hvalens Sector. That situation is self-evident, as is what the report of the committee should be, hence what vote to cast. We are here to discuss the topic of whether you must see me. Speak."
Napoleon slowed his footsteps, spreading his hands in a shrug, too flustered to speak. The Senator of Alpherat continued forward, unheeding. Napoleon jogged to catch up, and resumed his walk alongside the stately quadruped. Napoleon said, "Ah, sir, ah, you must see me in order to discuss the topic. That we are discussing. Now. Which is the war. Um. Thank you."
"Incorrect. Your remark is out of order. Return to the topic."
Napoleon rolled his eyes, and stared up at the sky, wishing for inspiration. He wondered what a canny politician like Hogarth of Keid would do.
He noticed that he had laid his hand on the mane of the Senator from Alpherat, and had been stroking it. It was some left over habit from his youth, for he had walked many a horse back and forth from the extensive stables of his home. He snatched his hand away, alarmed and ashamed, but stopped himself from stammering any apology. He was not sure if Equines knew what apologies were. The Senator did not slow his pace or turn his eye, or show by any sign that he had noticed anything amiss.
Napoleon gruffly stuffed his hands in his pockets. This was also against the manners he'd been taught, but he assumed the Equine would not care.
"Sir, why did you refuse to see me? If I may ask?" and, upon hearing no reply, he added, "Ah, I mean, please answer."
"You are familiar with the theory of Kirlian mental influence? It is a related set of supernatural phenomena the instruments of our race cannot detect. Many, including myself, remain skeptical of the theory. Nonetheless, your behavior indicates practices best explained by the provisional adoption of the theory. Considering the abrogation of the laws of psychology evinced recently by the registration of a negative vote by Senator Donner of Elnath, exposure to potential Kirlian practitioners seemed unwise. Equines have no natural defenses against Kirlian energies. Balanced against the clarity of the issues involved, dialog with you was expected to prove unfruitful — as, indeed, has proven to be the case. Proffer any information sufficient to revisit this decision, or make a concluding remark, and then our dialog is done."
Napoleon was too confused, and, it must be said, was too intimidated by the immense dignity of the Equine, the august demeanor and solemn surroundings, to answer. Instead, what spewed from his mouth was this, "But, sir, you cannot not believe in Kirlian — I mean, as old as your people are — who? You thought I was a Dark Overlord? Me, a practitioner of some sort of Mystification or Astral — the very idea is — no one in my family — well, except Lord Doomshadow, of course, but he is not the one who taught — ah — and I resent the implication that — Hold it! Wait! — you think someone meddled with Donner's psychology? A Kirlian art? Mesmerism or brainwashing? That would explain — you didn't want me here because you were afraid of me! — you have not been reading Mirko of the Scrutiny newsfeed! He cannot be trusted! — And what clarity do you mean of what issues? What is clear? Nothing is clear! Tell me what is clear? Ah, thank you."
Celarent turned his long, solemn horselike head on its graceful, deerlike neck and intoned gravely. "It is clear that a vote in favor of war in the Hvalens Sector is necessary. All the conditions for just and prudent use of lethal force to defend the social order are fulfilled, and no countervailing imperatives impede. It is also clear that your closing statement is incoherent, and provides no cause to reopen the decision to avoid dialog on the matter. No further information is needed. Depart."
At this last word, the quadruped halted so abruptly that his hoof raised a cloud of dust and pollen from the dirt and grass underfoot. Napoleon, startled, stumbled and coughed.
Nor, when he finished fumbling with his handkerchief, and he found the solemn eye of the Savant still transfixing him with a cold look, did he find any words to say. In silence he bowed, and backed away several steps, and returned down the path to the interior of the building, scowling and frowning and blowing his nose.
But then, as he walked through the vast naves and shadowy colonnades of the temple, the true meaning of all the words said seeped through to him. By the time he found the exit, he was smiling and whistling. He waved a cheery farewell to the bespectacled Jennet at the portico, and went skipping down the stairs. She did not look up from the painstaking tat-work of her lace.
5. High Hopes
A long walk and a short air-cab ride later, Napoleon allowed himself a rare moment of relaxation.
His idea of rest and relaxation did not involve wine, women, or fine dining. Those things, to him, were matters of unending and painstaking playacting, part of his daily duty. They were toil. His idea of rest was simpler.
He was soaking in the fierce, relaxing warmth of a bubble bath, feet being massaged by timed water-jets protruding from the sides of the oversized tub, a sugary soft-drink bulb bobbing in the water near his head, within straw-reach.
His comdisc was projecting in the steamy air overhead a three-penny videoplay about an orphan boy who rescues, adopts, and trains a ferocious racehorse no one else can tame, and rides him in competition.
The play was mawkish and simple, meant for schoolgirls, but all the equestrian training tips were accurate. The robotic writing house who compiled these stories must have had an actual horse trainer on staff.
As a boy, Napoleon had rewatched scores of sequels, memorizing tunes and words. The first was The Swift Stallion, and The Swift Stallion Returns. Later came Son of the Swift Stallion, Swift Stallion and Misty Mare, Swift Stallion and the Speederbike, Search for Swift Stallion, Swift Stallion's Secret and Swift Stallion Goes to War. No one had read them all. Minor characters, Misty Mare or Rescue Racer, Old Warhorse, or Shaggy Pony, got to star each in his own branch-off series. Even Dalmatian the Firehouse Dog had a trilogy.
No matter how many sequels the robots cranked out, the popularity never waned. The formula never varied: the next race was always harder than the last, and this time the odds were impossible, the champion unbeatable, the record unbreakable.
And there was always a love triangle, a spy ring, a prison break-out, or a plague outbreak, that only the boy's sound heart and swift steed could solve. Earlier episodes of the story, written long ago, also had witchy curses and mournful ghosts for the boy and his horse to banish or allay, but the Empire censored those.
Napoleon wondered if other readers liked the stories not for love of horses, but out of spite for Equines. Usually, it did Napoleon good to see a biped lording it over a quadruped.
But not this time. As the warmth of the bath seeped into his bones, and the harmless bubbles of a non-alcoholic drink tickled his nose, he found his admiration for the fictional steed, so swift and bold and so loyal to the lonely boy, sponging away his annoyance at the curt and cold Celarent. After all, had not the Senator granted him a victory beyond hoping?
Robolone entered the bath without knocking, carrying a silver tray.
When Robolone looked like him, Napoleon habitually covered his nakedness; but when he wore his stiff metallic disguise and facemask to pass for a normal robot, Napoleon could not convince himself to feel embarrassed.
"Ah! Finger food!" sighed Napoleon. "Just the thing after a hard day of bar-hopping with a Duck and slow-footing with a Horse. What delicacy have you prepared?"
"A rosette of pickled peach slices glazed in lime and cilantro, sir."
"One of my favorites for eating while bathing," Napoleon said grandly, "Since it tastes like soap anyway. Why did mother tell you to put this ragweed in my snacks?"
"It contains vitamins and anti-oxidants, and acts as a natural detoxing agent to clear heavy metal compounds from the brain and bloodstream."
"And yet, somehow, it still tastes like soap. But, no matter! I am in a holiday mood! Sound the trumpets and ignite the skyrockets! You may join me in the bath, if you like."
"I admire the offer, sir, but must decline. My appliances for aquatic environment adaptation are not at hand. Shall I bring you an aperitif, sir?"
"What? I only drink when I am on duty. You know that. Why would you ask?"
"I notice hard liquor sobers your demeanor. Soft drinks made you gay and giddy."
"Ah, but I have cause for gaiety! Celarent will vote with Zethes and me to publish the committee report to the War Committee, which allows the Consuls to open the Michaelian Gate of the War Temple, and deploy the fleet! Now, if Hogarth has calculated the angles correctly — Dad always said he was a canny old Duck — the prestige of Celarent's support will allow me to approach Qa'a of Rasalhague."
Robolone tilted his facemask, since, at the moment, he had no eyebrow to raise. "Who never speaks and only votes when so directed by the Elder of Elders on Thuban, which is — on average — once a decade. He voted to ratify Iss worlds as signatory to the Grand Charter. That may have used his allotment for the century, sir."
Napoleon took a bite of pickled peach. It did taste like soap. He did not really mind. He spoke with his mouth full, because when he was alone with his robotic servant was the only time he was allowed. "That's the spur. See? The Elder of Elders wants this new government not to fail. He voted for it. Planet Rasalhague convinced their old homeworld of Thuban to join, and that convinced all the Iss world combinations and federations to join. So why not this vote? Logically, it has to follow."
"Sir, if I may, the logical vote was the one you just had confirmed. The Iss are old and strange. Consider that, as old as I am, I am but a child to them."
"The guards at the Senate Dome seem nice enough."
"Sir! Don't be deceived if their hatchlings serve as bodyguards and lictors and policemen! Their young are like the young of any race, and the elders put them to dangerous duty to toughen them up, drive intoxicating ideals from their young minds, show them the face of battle."
Napoleon frowned. He had left the comforts of his father's rich estates for precisely that reason, and was an oddity among the young men his age for doing so. Perhaps the Iss learned from their ancestors more clearly than humans did. And they had a lot more ancestors.
Robolone must have been thinking a similar thought, for he said, "Their ways go back ten or twelve millennia. And even then, older than records reach, they were stalking among the stars, chained by traditions already ancient beyond even their memory."
Napoleon washed down his soapy treat with a mouthful of bubbling sugar-drink. "No matter! In this case, if Iss like stability, and they side with the Constitutional government, they will side with this. Somehow, I have to get Qa'a to see this — assuming he did not see it long ago, before I did. That makes four votes in favor. Even if Ksar sides with Evro, that only makes it a tie, with Hogarth getting the deciding vote."
He took another swig of soft drink. "I cannot rely on him, but I can bargain with him."
"Much can still go amiss, sir. Prepare for all eventualities."
"Ah! I cannot be gloomy as a night shadow all the time. This is a moment of victory. Let me savor it."
"All the sweeter because it is so rare, sir?"
And with those words, the mood was broken. Napoleon scowled furiously, and turned on the cold water. It shocked his skin and made him yelp and groan and stand up, dripping. He shut off the comdisc. The swift stallion and his dauntless jockey-boy would have to finish his impossible race another day.
To Robolone he said, "I was unprepared when I blundered in to talk to Celarent, and was saved by dumb Dame Fortune — to whom I am grateful, but let me not rely on her good graces in the future. So! I will dress myself while you retrieve the secret files we have on Qa'a, and bring them to my Inner Sanctum." This buried chamber was not only spy-ray proof and triply secure, but warded and blessed against night-walking apparitions.
"Very good, sir."
Chapter 6: Lost In The Gardens Of Abundance
1. The Many-Colored World
Galactic Year 12821, Coma Berenices
A time came when the Hasty Sluggard entered a system of six suns: a blue giant with two satellite suns, yellow and cyan, grouped at the center of the system, a binary of red dwarfs some forty light-hours away, and a white dwarf whirling in a highly eccentric orbit far beyond that, bright as an acetylene flame.
The system's one gas giant was a hyperjovian world. Had it been even slightly larger, it would have ignited under its own gravitational pressure and formed a seventh sun in an unplaneted system. Instead, it was the source of astronomically rare gasses and liquids useful to spacefaring races, and its ring systems, containing the ejecta of old volcanic actions, were peppered with tumbling asteroids and flying hills of quartz and carbon crystals, strange geodes, uranic metals, and inexplicable beads of amber and resin.
One of its larger moons was rendered habitable with a minimum of terraforming: a garden from pole to pole, a world of archipelagoes and wild seas. The equator bulged dramatically, for the garden-moon turned swiftly. The gravity here was below standard, and so the islands rose sheer like sudden mountains from the waters, but the waves also reared gigantic, pulled and tossed by the tangle of tides from moons and worlds and ever-changing suns.
Night was rare. When the Hasty Sluggard approached the planet, only a thin wedge of the globe was in shadow. Different suns both far and near shined down in opposite directions, some in retrograde, forming overlapping hemispheres of color. As they orbited, one sun after another came from behind the limb of the world until Flint was dazzled.
Moons crowded the sky, crescents in blue, but gibbous in gold, painted emerald where the sunlights overlapped.
They passed over cities, rooftops slated with silver solar panels, which glistered like jewels. Human cities were built on hilltops, behind dikes and walls to fend off the outrageous tides and frequent tidal waves. Fuliguline had colonies of paper houses set on stilts on the seashores, which they rebuilt on a daily or weekly basis, apparently being too stubborn to move and too lazy to erect dikeworks. Devonian cities floated in the water, a network of houseboats under painted sails held high like parasols against the suns. In the deeps gleamed the fanes and museums and roofless halls of the Ceti, the spiral pink and nacre pleasure-palaces of Ellyll, the windowless termite mounds of Xiphians.
Now the barge descended to the area where the various suns were below the horizon, or eclipsed by the gas giant above, and here it was night. They passed over a large island. Here was a spaceport and landing tower seated in a rocky bay along the coastline; and another one, miles later, in an aerie atop a mountain. The Hasty Sluggard bypassed both, and instead hovered over a wide glade, a blue-black shadow in the gloom.
The trees and bushes here had been planted and cut into lanes in the traditional shape of a landing field, but there were no lights, no people, no tower.
To land, the Hasty Sluggard tilted her carousel at her hub, to bring it flush above the main hull of the barge, which allowed landing gear below to extend. The decrepit barge groaned on her landing gear, metal sighing dangerously, but did not fall over.
The rear of the hold swung down and formed a ramp. Flint watched in disbelief as the Grandmaster simply allowed the horses to gallop down the ramp and into the field, followed by a small flood of hopping bunnies. The parrots and songbirds, confused by the darkness, were convinced it was night, and did not move from where they roosted, even though, by the ship's clock, it was noonwatch.
The animals were a little uncertain on their feet, not yet accustomed to the subterrestrial gravity. The horses danced like springbucks, whinnying with the strange pleasure of it, and the rabbits twitched and spun with alarm as each hop became an overlong, extended glide through the night air.
The Grandmaster emerged. He was wearing his farm-boots and poncho, and leaning on a tall stick. His sword was at his belt, and the scabbard tip peeked like a wagging tail from beneath the poncho hem.
He took Flint down the ramp, across the dew-kissed grass, and to a stile. Flint had not seen one before: it was a set of a few steps leading over the hedge and down the other side, a simple way to keep animals within a hedge. Flint wondered how the rabbits would be kept in, since they could both bound up steps and dig under hedgerows. But the only question he asked was, "This landing field. You own it?"
"Faith, no!" said the Grandmaster. "Is not earth and sky alike a great gift from the stars? Mortal men be but stewards and nurses of the gifts life gives: how can we own anything? Beside, I hope I can bribe the owner with a stallion or two, to let me graze while I find buyers. Come!"
On the far side of the stile was a crossroads. In the light that spilled out of the space barge's big hatch and seeped through the hedge leaves, Flint could see the scene.
