Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 28
Only a few minutes remained before the session reopened. Wrangling over the budget was sure to last into the wee hours. Napoleon would not be able to look into this matter, at least, not himself.
But a few minutes was time enough. A few corridors away, in a newer part of the edifice, was an empty Robing Room. He stuffed himself into one of the wardrobe closets, locking the door behind him, pushed aside the hanging vestments to make room, and sat on the floor.
"Ye natal stars who shone benign upon my masters' birth, thy auspicious favor now align, and bring thy power to earth. Unseen Servants of Eternal Light! Enfold me in the mantle of the mystery of night!"
He found himself standing above his sleeping body. He made the Fourfold Sign, calling on the Fourteen Celestial Helpers to circle him with prayers and protection while he slept. Then he stepped through the wall.
As he passed through chambers and vaults, many of the caryatids and gargoyles of the ancient chambers turned their eyes toward him, but none raised a hand to molest him. The greater powers and potentates, with heads like beasts and eyes like stars bespangling their terrible wide wings, visible to him now, standing sentry on keystones, or sealed in sacred pillars, Nightshadow was surreptitious and wary enough to avoid. The Robing Room was in a newer section of the building, and so the old, strong, deeply-rooted wards and protections of the ancient architects were not gathered here. He knew where to find unguarded crannies and unwarded drainspouts through which his insubstantial shadow-self could slip.
He found police sergeant Ugaf, one of his agents, an Iss accursed with second sight, who had fallen asleep in a public bath, soaking in steaming-hot mineral waters. Nightshadow entered Ugaf's dream, tormented him with his memories of his crimes, and, once the quaking Ugaf consented, took possession of the lizardman's body.
The body of Ugaf arose, dripping, and bought a one-use comdisc from a vendorbox. It was not until the comdisc was in his hands that Ugaf himself awoke, and saw what his hands were doing. He began quivering in terror, but Nightshadow prevented him from bolting or speaking. His fingers typed out a set of codewords and ciphers whose meaning Nightshadow knew, but Ugaf did not.
The return code showed that Robolone had received and understood the message. Under Nightshadow's direction, Ugaf smashed the comdisc, and fed the broken bits into the furnace beneath the bath pools.
When Nightshadow released him, fleeing up out of his lizard body like a black smoke, Ugaf dismissed the lizard-girl masseuse he had hired for the evening, threw his opium stash into the trash, and visited a nearby ancestral shrine, spending the rest of the evening in penance and meditation.
It was not until hours later that Napoleon was free to return by darkened corridors and empty balconies to his apartment. As he walked along a high bridge, in the distance, over the mutter of endless air-traffic, he heard bells in the spire, and voices chanting the Vigil. An annoyed corner of his mind noted, since it was after midnight, it was Twospan-Threesday of Seven: annoyed, because the Imperial Calendar had been out of use since he was born, but counting things by tens was so darned useful, it was hard to shake the habit. It was much more poetical, not to mention patriotic, to call the day the Ides of the Coronation of the Queen of Heaven, five days before the Eve of the Feast of Whitsuntide.
Robolone was waiting for him, seated behind his desk, looking like his perfect double.
Napoleon locked the door behind him. "You are not one to breach protocol. There can never be two of me at large at once."
Robolone said, "Both this suite and the committee chambers are triply shielded against spy-rays and eavesdropping, I thought it worth the risk. I was able to approach the spaceport as normal, through the servant's entrance, in my W4U housing, but the Equine maintain a separate launchtower and liftpad, which non-Equine may not enter."
"How were you able to get in as me?"
"Disguised as you, I wrote a note for Celarent and signed your name. The gate mule recognized franking and hand-delivery privileges from the Fifth Era, eight thousand years ago, and that rule was never removed from the books. He could not bar a Senator on official business pursuing an investigation into vote-tampering. Which you will remember in tomorrow's session to introduce into the record. You can do this before the others arrive, call the question, and bury the record as top-secret, in your capacity as Sector Field Chief, then redact the record as Chairman, pending a vote you need never call for. In any case, armed with this note, I was able to intercept Celarent and compel him to answer under oath."
"And?"
"And he has no memory of casting the vote."
"W-what? How can that be?"
"I am at a loss to explain it, sir."
Napoleon's eyes grew round and haunted. The Equines were an annoying race, but their mental discipline was nearly perfect. Napoleon said, "He could not be lying to you. They do not even have a word for lies in their language. They call it 'saying the thing that is not.' He could not be insane. They don't go insane. He could not be mistaken about this, or … or… by the Void! Can he explain it? What did he say he did?"
"The event is a blank span in his memory. He cannot account for his acts, nor can he account for a blank span. You understand that Equines have memories of robotic perfection."
"More perfect," grunted Napoleon, circling the desk to find the drawer hiding his whiskey bottle. "Robots can be tampered with. Equine cannot. Drugs and black-tech, and all those horror-toys of the Deathguard, could not make them crazy nor even knock them unconscious." He paused a moment to wrestle the bottle cork free with his teeth. "Why was he leaving Septentrion?"
"Celarent regards himself as unfit for duty."
"Beg pardon? He what? What a jackass!"
"He is reporting to the physicians of his homeworld either to be cured or committed to an Asylum for the Unfit. Equine do not allow imperfect members of their race their liberty."
"They are a cruel people."
"They have a zero crime rate. In old days, they euthanized their unfit rather than hospitalize them."
Napoleon drank from the bottle, and the burning sensation in his throat and belly brought tears to his eyes, and a belch of satisfaction. "Why! You sound as if you like them!"
"I am a robot. They are a very logical race. There is cause for admiration."
"Jackasses! I'd admired them more if Celarent had stayed, and helped me petition the Consul to have his vote impeached and retracted."
"Senator Celarent explained that to me as well, when I expressed the same idea to him in your same exasperated tone of voice. As I knew, he must return from his world with a writ and petition signed and sealed by his homeworld government that the vote as cast was outside Celarent's allowed discretion, in order for the Consul to act."
"What? As you knew? What do you mean?"
"I was mimicking you, after all, sir, and had to ask the same dumb questions you might ask, even when I already knew the answer."
"For that, get the hell out of my chair." Napoleon slumped down behind the desk, growling, eyes smoldering. "Bad news, Bucky. I am going to have to punch someone, and you may be the only person in arm's reach. Because you know what this means! Without Celarent to back me, I cannot approach Qa'a the Iss with any hope of success. Senator Qa'a did not even come to the session today. He has not voted for a decade, on any measure. Why should he vote with me on this? The ancient races regard humans as greenhorns and hatchlings barely out of the egg. Who knows what Qa'a thinks of me?"
"I may have a clue, sir." With a perfect impersonation of Napoleon's own crooked and wonderfully smug smile he himself used when needling his brothers, Robolone now pulled a folded paper note from his breast pocket, flourished it a moment in the air, and slapped it down on the desk before Napoleon.
"What the heck is this?" asked Napoleon.
"Proof that there are people smarter and older even than me still running around on this old world, sir."
The letter was sealed with the seal-cylinder of Qa'a of Rasalhague. His personal seal, not the seal of his office.
Robolone said, "Careful as I was to travel to and from Celarent's yacht slip, the Iss had watchers who spotted me. One of them passed me this note."
Napoleon opened it. It was written in Iss hieroglyphs, which he allegedly learned how to read when he studied on Mira, but which he actually could only decipher with a lexicon open on his lap and a strong drink in his hand.
He had the drink but not the lexicon, so when the note suddenly shivered and turned to ash, he let out a stream of blistering curses.
Robolone started to speak. Frustration erupted in Napoleon's brain. He stood and swung a roundhouse punch toward the copy of his own face. Imperturbable, Robolone swung the face open on a hinge at his ear, so the delicate cyborg contrivance of flesh and facial hair, nerve and capillary would be unbruised. Beneath the flesh mask was Robolone's true face, a skull-like metal faceplate with optic lenses and speaker grill into which Napoleon smashed his knuckles. The faceplate rang like a gong, but the metal was unmarred.
When Napoleon was done wincing and dancing, cursing and nursing his bruised hand, Robolone continued his comment in a voice like that of a patient schoolmaster with a dull child.
"If I may? The Senator writes he is taken by surprise by the lapse of perfect logic in the perfectly logical creature called Celarent of Alpherat, and disheartened by the lack of perfect honor in the perfectly honorable gentleman called Donner of Elnath. As the child of Duke Riphean, who alone of living men slew a Dark Overlord in personal combat, the stars have woven a shadow through your fate. In this darkness you alone might shine a light on these strange events. Senator Qa'a says he will meet with you for luncheon in the Phoenicopterus Tea-Room opposite the Museum of Forgotten Signs and Wonders, in the Vatic district, fifth day before the Feast of Whitsuntide Eve, Month of the Flowering Crown. In case you do not recognize the old designation…"
"He means tomorrow. Or, since right now is tomorrow, he means today. Shed light on strange events! What does he think I know?"
"You will only discover by meeting him, sir. I have never known Senator Qa'a nor Senator Qahotep before him, to invite anyone to a private meeting."
Napoleon had finished taping his skinned knuckles, and so took up his bottle again. "In a way, my going to see Qa'a is stranger than any strangeness Qa'a might expect me to explain. I find it highly disquieting that he thinks I know something."
"I am sure you know nothing, sir," said Robolone, neatly snatching the whisky bottle out of Napoleon's hand. "But your disquiet will be less if you retire to your bed, soberly, with a low blood alcohol content, and get a proper number of hours of sleep before your meeting with him tomorrow. Sir."
"I am still in command here, robot!"
"Self-command, I hope you mean, sir. Shall I get you a cup of warm milk to help you sleep?"
With ill grace Napoleon let himself be exiled to his bedchambers for a nap.
4. A Last Draught
Napoleon was under his coverlets, head on pillow. As his robotic valet was, true to his word, bringing him a bedtime cup on a tray, in midmotion Robolone stopped. He cocked his head to one side, and stood stock still, something Napoleon had rarely seen before. It meant all the circuits in his positronic brain were engaged, operating at high speed.
When Robolone blinked and stirred, looking quite human once again, it was to say this: "Sir, this is most disquieting. Senator Qa'a mentioned a Dark Overlord as the pretext for presuming you would have insight into strange events. In the original, the word used also could be uncanny or unnatural. But the context of the sentence makes the remark superfluous."
"What does that mean? You've been at this game longer than I have. Tell me."
"It means Qa'a believes a Dark Overlord is here, on this world, manipulating events, but is unwilling to say so directly."
"Why would Qa'a think such a thing?"
"It is something you must discover from him, sir, on the morrow."
Napoleon felt a moment of eerie fear, like a man touched from behind by a ghost. Dark Overlords were figures from the tale his parents told him as a child. Could such fearful things be real?
On reflection, it seemed less impossible than Donner the Cervine acting dishonorably, or Celarent the Equine acting illogically.
Napoleon nodded. "Arrange that, after my meeting with Qa'a, my other appointments are cancelled. Tell everyone I am returning to my homeworld for instructions. Hold down the fort while I am gone."
"Sir? What does this mean?"
"For once I am being straightforward. I am actually in need of a visit to my home. I studied on Mira, but I am not a Templar. If a Dark Overlord is involved, I am swimming out of my depth. Mother and Father have killed Dark Overlords before: they will know what to do."
"Very good, sir."
Napoleon lay awake in bed. A cold sensation in the pit of his stomach hindered sleep. A Dark Overlord! Such figures were from his father's time. All were dead. How could one be alive again?
And yet a thrill also was creeping up his spine, a sense of readiness for action. Had he not suspected exactly this? Had he not known?
The warm milk, as it turned out, calmed his stomach and lulled him to slumber.
Chapter 13: The Malign Tower
1. Enforcers in Armor
Five watches passed, twenty hours, before it was safe for spearmen wrapped in furry parkas and coatings of insulation and blubber oil, carrying no metal tools and no energy sources, to emerge from hiding and continue north.
Much had been done before then.
Athos spent the first watch of these five, but no more, connected to the tubes and scanners of the first aid kit clamped above a wall-cot behind the operator's cabin of the errant land-barge. The supplies for the convicts included hard tack and grog. It was no worse than the normal fare aboard a pirate ship. To him, it was a feast. Wrapped in thermal-induction blankets set to maximum warmth, he felt strength returning with every bite. He would have preferred the week of bedrest the medical readout recommended.
He rose, consulted with his men, inspected the barge, gave orders.
In a walk-in locker he found pairs of skis used by the robot guards, but which could be fitted to human boots. He could use these. Here also was an emergency survival tent for low-pressure and ultra-frigid environments. Could he use it? The tent was bright orange, highly reflective, designed to be spotted by rescue teams. The cells powering life support and air supply could be easily detected. Even with no satellites aloft, it was not safe to assume the icy wastes of No Man's Land were entirely free of spy rays or sensors.
As he stood in the locker, the deathmask of the Ancient Mariner emerged from a ventilation panel and dropped into his hands.
Athos paused a moment to look into the fierce, frozen, iron expression of his one-eyed ancestor. He could not suppress a twitch of distaste. It was true that the thing had saved his life. It was also true he had nearly killed himself by pushing his body beyond even the limits of superhuman endurance. Was there no safety feature, no warning, to prevent such a thing?
But he knew the artifact only spoke when it saw the need, so he did not try to provoke it into answering. With no word, he tucked the eerie, lifeless heirloom into the tunic beneath his furs. The metal grew flexible and lay flat against his chest.
Meanwhile, beyond the mouth of the ice tunnel, cryogenic rainstorms had rendered surface travel impossible, even in the heated and pressurized land barge.
During the second watch, the ghastly storms of ultra-freezing chemicals passed. All gasses which could be condensed out of the air as precipitation had been. A colder, thinner, and strangely silent atmosphere hung over glaciers of solidified gasses and lakes of liquid nitrogen. The land-barge could move, but no man not wearing a pressure suit.
By then, each debtor or desperado had signed the articles of brotherhood, and sworn fealty to Captain Rackstraw, in the way of the old corsair code. As their first act of piracy, donning pressure suits, the ex-convicts emerged from hatches and turned the captured blast-rifles of their jailors against the upper lip of the exit of the ice cave. Under the fusillade, an avalanche came down with a bone-jarring roar, and shook the earth. The northern mouth of the tunnel was blocked. Safe within the tunnel, the massive land-barge, laden with preposterous wealth, was theirs.
During the second and third watch, the massive caterpillar-track machine travelled south through ice tunnel and canyon and across the open ground, moving at full speed under black and empty skies, engines roaring. Roaring as well was the sound of song and celebration, that echoed within the armored walls of the wayward land-barge.
If fortune smiled, and no break-downs caused any delay, the land barge would reach Port Bedloe before curfew ended. A windowless city whose inhabitants were not allowed aboveground during those hours would see nothing, and suspect nothing, while the Fame's Fancy was loaded.
That was the one unknown in the plan. Athos had never seen the newest ship to join his small armada take on a load, and had no idea how long it would take. An hour? A watch? A day? Once the local enforcers for the Syndicate learned of the theft, pirates would be the first suspects, and ships large enough to haul the loot the first place to look.
In the fourth watch, one of the Quod-lamp satellites, an artificial sun blindingly brilliant, came above the horizon, staring down like an unwinking, all-seeing eye. The icy landscape was aflame with eye-dazzling ground glare. This dawn brought a host of orbital heat-beams of unprecedented power to bathe the wasteland.
The atmosphere thawed in a storm of screaming whirlwinds that seemed to shake the continent. Tumult beat against the roof of the ice tunnel. This was the cacophony of evaporating gasses and mists rushing upward in great gusts and eruptions from the melting lakes of nitrogen, cloud upon cloud.
