In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (9 page)

Although it’s better not to remember it’s cooked over dung fires
, he thought, taking a drink of water that had a slightly metallic taste.

Granted, the animal in question essentially shat thumb-sized pieces of pure charcoal, but the thought was still a bit off-putting if you dwelt on it.

“Okay, let’s go over your mission,” Bob said.

He touched the screen with fingers that were thick, muscular, and nimble. A map of Mars sprang up, then narrowed down to the section around Zar-tu-Kan; it was the product of satellite photography combined with local knowledge.

“If your interpretation of the chronicles is right, there’s not much doubt that the lost city of Rema-Dza is around
here
,” he said. “Out where the dead canal runs. But that’s bad country—dust storms, nomads, God knows what. Keep in close touch. Even the atmosphere plant dies out there sometimes.”

Jeremy and Sally nodded soberly. That low-growing, waxy-leaved plant was the Martian equivalent of grass . . . and also, ecologically, of oceanic plankton; it kept the oxygen content of the air. It had a fantastically efficient version of photosynthesis, flourished nearly everywhere, and stood at the bottom of nearly every food chain. An area too hostile for it was likely to be bleak indeed, even by this dying planet’s standards.

Holmgard poured essence into their cups. The purple liquid glowed faintly as it made a graceful low-gravity arc, with motes moving within it. Stars shone many and very bright through the dome above, making the mild springlike temperature—tropical warmth to Martians—seem like the small bubble of life it was, in a universe coldly inimical. The gasbags of floatlights shone as well, a light cooler than electrics and tinged with red, circling the building as they sculled themselves along with feathered limbs. Things rustled and clicked in the dense groves and gardens that separated the mansions and palaces of Zar-tu-Kan’s inner zone.

“And on that cheerful note . . .”

Teyud za-Zhalt finished her last inspection of the
Intrepid Traveler
as the sun rose eastward behind the highlands. The air was slightly cool, just enough to leave a rime of frost on exposed stone, and the din and clatter of the port sounded sharp through it.

The landship was a sixty-footer with a central hold and two internal decks fore and aft; a hundred fifty tons burden, which made her medium sized. Old but sound, with a single hundred-foot mast and an auxiliary engine that could supply enough hydraulic pressure to the rear axle motors to move the craft at better than walking pace in a pinch. The layout was standard for a vessel of her size, with one fixed axle at the rear, another amidships, and a longer pivoting one forward. Axles, mast, and spars were single-crystal growths; unfortunately there was no way of telling how old they were—the slight yellowish tinge to the clear flexible material meant only that they weren’t new.

They could be a hundred years from the plantations and good for another thousand, or a thousand and likely to go to dust at any moment. Bearings, cables, and sails all looked reliable, and there was a good ring-mounted darter on the quarterdeck.

The crew . . .

She grimaced very slightly at the score of them: a collection of scar-faced toughs,
tokmar
addicts with a faint quiver to their hands, and obvious lowbreeds. One was nearly noseless, with nasal slits that closed and opened nervously, and he had a russet brown hue to his skin—some sort of hybrid from the deep deserts. They stood waiting, a few working on their personal gear or playing
atanj
, while
De’ming
trotted from the stone wharf across the boarding rams to stow bundles of dried meat and
asu
-fruit, ceramic casks of pickled eggs, ammunition and gun-food, spare cable, and stores of a dozen kinds, down to glow-rods and blood-builders. Half a dozen of the little subsapient laborers went and squatted on the foredeck when the loading was finished; she’d bought those for the usual tasks. Ordinary workers attached a hose to fill the tanks; this district had a water tower and pressure in the mains.

Several of the crew came more erect as they felt her gaze. She knew that a yellow-eyed stare was disconcerting. Old legends
spoke of it. Others remained dully indifferent, and one kept chewing on a
kevaut
on a stick he’d bought from a vendor with a portable grill, spitting out bits of carapace as he sucked out the last shreds of flesh.

“What do you think of the engine?” she said to the hireling who had an engineer’s hairdo.

“Middle-aged, and the temperature is just a little higher than I’d like, so I would advise not straining it,” the hatchet-faced woman said. She was short, a full foot shorter than Teyud’s seven-two. Shaking her head, she went on, “But it’s of a good local budding strain, it doesn’t cough or have the runs, the tentacles are well-bonded to the sleeves of the cranks, and it’s been adequately fed and the sludge-tanks are full. As long as we eat and our bowels function, it won’t starve. I’d rather replace the drive-train gearing and put new bearing-races on all axles before starting a long trip, but all should function for the next few months.”

Exactly my own analysis. Jelzhau didn’t try to cheat us. Extraordinary. Even more extraordinary, this
Baid tu-Or
seems to know her work. I wonder why she wants to get out of Zar-tu-Kan badly enough to sign with us. At least she will probably play an acceptable game; I have yet to meet one of the
vaz-Terranan
worth setting up the board for
.

A little reassured, she checked that all six of the addicts had sufficient
tokmar
to last out the trip; of all the fates available, being trapped in the wilds with a
tokmar
sniffer deprived of his or her daily dose was one of the least attractive.

One of them
didn’t
have enough, and asked for an advance to buy; she simply let her hand fall to the hilt of her dart pistol and looked at him until he shuffled off. That one didn’t have much longer to live. The tremor was turning into jerks, and the mental effects of his habit had obviously gotten beyond the point of mere recklessness—nobody but the reckless would have signed up for
this
cruise—to outright loss of survival instinct.

“Now listen to me, you fodder for the recycling vats,” she said, pitching her voice to carry and using the Imperative-Condescentative tense. “I have no interest in how you feel about the
vaz-Terranan
, as long as you fear
me
as you do personal extinction. Do you?”

“We fear you exceedingly, even to the relaxation of sphincters!” they chorused, in the convictive-metaphorical tense; and spoke
honestly, she thought, except possibly for the hybrid with the nostril slits and the long bow over his shoulder. “You are pain and death in sapient form!”

“Good. Maintain an attitude of terrified submission and harmony will be sustained. Suddri, Xax, Taldus, crew the darter. The rest of you, on board and to your stations, make ready to depart. Show speed!”

She turned to survey the docks as the
De’ming
finished their load and trooped back toward the warehouses under the touch of the supervisor’s rod. The
Traveler
was at the last of the docks that still saw regular use; beyond to the south was a tumble of wharfs half buried in drifted soil with a sparse cover of atmosphere plant, and a wilderness of broken-roofed buildings eroded to snags by wind and abraiding sand. The tops of actual trees showed there—the ruins would concentrate stray moisture.

Northward, every second slip was occupied, and a big three-master was in the graving dock, with the planking off its hull and artificers crawling about within. A crane extended a tentacle as she watched, hoisting some massive fabrication out of the structure and onto a repair platform.

She kept an ear cocked backward; the sounds indicated the scratch crew had some idea of what they were doing. Her eyes narrowed to focus on two craft that had stayed at anchor out on the plain. They were long and low, a bit bigger than the
Traveler
, and lay quietly with furled sails. The hulls had few openings and no walkways or balconies, and all the hatches were closed.

Not local, by the lines
, she thought, then shrugged. Trade from all around the planet found its way here.

The
vaz-Terranan
arrived, with their surprisingly scanty baggage.

This voyage will be both profitable and an interlude of respite from boredom
, she told herself.
The life of an exile is irritatingly lacking in long-term goals
.

She had dreams enough: what she would do if she sat on the Ruby Throne, for example. That was about as likely as a trip to the Wet World. Though with her broader experience of how the Real World fared . . .

The taller Terran smiled. His face was rough, as if hewn from
rock by a not very skilled sculptor who used a percussive method, but oddly engaging, even intriguing in its open mobility.

Teyud allowed her lips to turn up very slightly.

Mars, City of Dvor Il-Adazar (Olympus Mons)
Ministry of Hydraulic Management
February 1, 2000 AD

High Minister Chinta sa-Rokis sighed in exasperation.

“No,” she said. “I do
not
consider the reactivation of that reservoir by the Supremacy’s Terran
tembst
a positive development.”

She waited patiently while her three carefully selected listeners blinked at the blunt contradiction of the Tollamune will.

The listeners were all members of the High Council. They sat in recliners around a black jade table, their postures of informal communication, as one did with social equals. If you looked very closely, you realized that the seemingly solid block of the tabletop had been carved until it was as insubstantial as lace in a pattern of repeating fractals that could hypnotize the unwary. The essence in the globes each held was of an antique pungency and swam with a living culture that guaranteed vividly entertaining—or terrifying—dreams to the user. The floor was a slab of living honey-colored wood whose rippling grain responded to body warmth by exuding a pleasant scent. Rugs crawled to envelop the feet of the four officials, warming and gently caressing.

By contrast, the heroic murals on seven of the eight walls were boringly antique, depicting the semilegendary construction of the Grand Canal in the early years of the Dynasty. Their very age guaranteed that the Minster must endure them, however, and since they celebrated a notable Imperial accomplishment, modification might be taken as a gesture of disrespect. Nobody else was present, except for a brace of her personal
De’ming
, and they were of a special subspecies with no sense of hearing. The glassine eighth wall looked over nothing but empty courts until the farmlands at the city’s foot, and her personal Coercives manned the towers between.

The silence stretched. All of the other High Councilors she had invited for private consultation were, in Chinta’s opinion, nitwits,
though not in any technical sense. Their minds had rotted from disuse. One was obsessed with collating an encyclopedia of the poetry of the Terminal Lilly Period; another spent nearly every waking hour on the records of
atanj
tournaments although she was no more than a mediocre player herself; the third provided an essential source of
valuata
for the city’s more expert commercial specialists in parareproductive entertainment.

I despise them all
, she thought.
Ironic, that this makes them the most suitable to my purposes. I may take consolation that I also further Prince Heltaw’s purposes . . . at least to a certain degree . . . and he is a man to respect. And hence to fear
.

The three High Ministers’ accumulated resources and the influence of their Lineages, however, were far from contemptible. And besides that, they all shared genetic linkages with her, common among the bloodlines of the upper bureaucracy. Competitive examination for office had been the rule since earliest Imperial times, but you could breed for success in that capacity no less than for any other. If you did so and hoarded your genome strictly, you could expect a practical monopoly.

“It seems to be of long-term benefit that our water resources be increased,” one said cautiously, sipping at his essence. “Water is life.”

“ ‘Benefit’ is a relational term, not an absolute,” Chinta said, wincing slightly at the ancient cliché about the fluid. “The question is, how do
we
benefit—or the reverse.”

“How do
you
benefit, or the reverse,” another pointed out, which, if obvious, was at least not sententious.

“We will
all
suffer losses,” Chinta said forcefully. “A ten percent addition to the flow will profoundly disrupt the productive patterns of this area—patterns from which we derive our incomes. True, there will be benefits, but the benefits will accrue to individuals either not yet born or to those presented with new opportunities. The costs will be immediate and to established interests, which is to say, to us and our client lineages. First and foremost, the value of the water allocations to our properties will be depressed
at once
as prices decline.”