Wrath-Pei smiled congenially. "Agreed?"
Save for Tarn's gasp, there was silence.
Wrath-Pei clapped his hands. "Very well, then! And now, back inside the temple! There's a young man 'itchin' for hitchin',' as we used to say! But first, my other wedding present! Lawrence!" he commanded. "Come here!"
From out of the wispy remains of the yellow cloud limped a young boy. His eyes were masked by a helmeted visor; his arms, which ended in stumps, held a large boxy parcel covered with bright paper and ribbons which sparkled with self-generating light.
"A gift for the newlyweds!" Wrath-Pei said, motioning for Lawrence to deliver it.
When it was handed over into Jamal's arms, Wrath-Pei added, "Please! Open it now!"
After a nod from his mother, Jamal did as instructed. On tearing off the wrappings, he opened the thin metallic case within, then stood looking down dumbly at what appeared to be a human limb: an ankle and foot, shriveled by preservation and swaddled in oiled rags.
"Do you like it?" Wrath-Pei laughed brightly, pointing to Lawrence's left boot, which Jamal now saw was overly large, of a solid piece, lashed to the abruptly ended stump of the boy's lower leg.
"Think of it as a rabbit's footâfor good luck!"
O
n his
fifth
day as a woman giving birth, Dalin Shar was visited by Erik.
There had been three more visits by the authorities, two in the last day alone, prompting more birthing performances and necessitating that the king remain constantly in bed, ready for another performance at a moment's notice.
"It is no longer safe for you to be here," Erik said brusquely. Dalin had the feeling he was being brusque so that Dalin would not challenge him.
"I can't argue with you, Erik," the king said, patting his prosthetic womb. "I don't know how many more times I can give life to that." Dalin pointed to the rubber doll's head, splashed in fake blood, which lay propped on the bed table like a guillotined horror.
To Dalin's surprise, Erik completely ignored his levity.
"It has been decided that you will be transported elsewhere," Erik said, as if the king had not spoken. After a moment he added, "Offworld."
"Offworld! That is impossible! How am I to fight my enemies if I am not here? NoâI won't hear of it!"
Erik now looked at him.
"It is not your decision, Your Majesty."
"Of course it is my decision! What you do for
me
is my decision!
I am your king!"
Erik spoke slowly. "It has been decided that you would be safer in another place, off the Earth. I have been ordered to help that take place."
Dalin's voice rose to an indignant shout.
"Ordered? By whom? Who has decided these things?"
"I am sorry, Sire," Erik said.
Behind Erik, an unsmiling Porto, along with the dour young man with hooded eyes, whose name Dalin had yet to learn, entered. The nameless man held a hypodermic tube firmly in one hand and now had a wry little smile on his face.
"Do what you must," Erik said, leaving the room as Porto took hold of Dalin's shoulders and held him firmly.
Raising the hypodermic, the dour man said, "Gladly."
Dalin awoke in darkness with a headache and a feeling of weightlessness, which was something he had never experienced. For a moment he panicked until he realized that he must be in the hold of a shuttle.
However, his explorations in the dark did not support this. His first discovery was stubble on his chin, which told him that he had been unconscious for a number of days. He seemed to be dressed in some sort of jumpsuit, which was secured with elastic bands to one side of the enclosure, keeping him from floating free.
After some fumbling he was able to undo the straps,, which allowed him to explore his surroundings.
There was not much to find. He was enveloped in a hexagonal box, barely wider than his own height. Four of the six walls were perfectly smooth. One was recessed with what felt like a window covering, but which was impervious to his efforts to open it. The sixth proved fruitful, for it was encased with what felt like a Screen and which proved, indeed, to be just that.
When Dalin ran his hand over the engage strip, the screen blazed into life, blinding him.
"Low light!" he ordered, and the Screen immediately dimmed, giving him his sight back.
Floating before the square screen, Dalin quickly took in his surroundings once more, this time bathed in soothing amber light.
The box really was empty, save for two vents set in one of the other walls, and a lockbox secured in a corner of a second. Dalin was dressed in a common dun-colored jumpsuit, used by maintenance workers on all Four Worlds.
"Raise window," Dalin ordered.
The thin sleeve over the window slid up. Once again Dalin was blinded, this time by outside illumination. He thought he was faced by the sun for a moment, but as his eyes adjusted he soon realized that the blinding object outside his window was the illumined face of Earth's Moon.
"Reporâ" Dalin began to say to the screen, but it suddenly came into life on its own.
A man Dalin had never seen before faced him on the screen. He was tall and solemn, dressed as one of Dalin's governors, in tunic and white ceremonial sash, though the emblem of his governorship was unknown to the king. The symbol was circular, with a large white flower, with centered delicate-looking petals.
"Whoâ" Dalin began, but the other cut him off. It was quickly apparent that this was not a live exchange, but that the other was represented by a recording.
The governor bowed, then straightened.
"Greetings, Sire, from your offworld provinces. I speak to you from the loyal colonies of Luna, who pledge eternal fidelity to your rule and to our planets, Earth and Moon."
Dalin mumbled sarcastically, "Is this where your eternal fidelity put me?"
The governor continued, "By now, you will be awake and, I trust, well rested. I apologize for the methods employed, but believe me, they were necessary for your safety. This will soon become apparent to you.
"By now, you will be in the orbit of Venus .. ." For a few moments of shock Dalin did not listen
to the governor's words; he swiveled his head to the window to make sure that the Moon was, indeed, outside.
"Wrong world, my colonial friend," Dalin said.
"... after a rendezvous near Earth's Luna, you were transferred to another cargo freighter bound for Venus. You may very well not be aware of the fact that the tiny colonies on the Moon have remained steadfastly loyal to Your Highness in the current crisis; I hope this provides some comfort to you. You will be transferred from Venus orbit in a matter of hours. If all goes to plan, you will spend the foreseeable future as the guest of our good friend Targon Ramir. When things have. . . quieted down on Earth, you will return to rule."
The governor bowed again. "I hope to speak with you soon in person, Sire. May your days be filled with blessings and peace."
The Screen blinked out to soothing amber once more.
"Wonderful," Dalin Shar saidâbut barely had the sarcasm left his lips than the blinding white light of Luna was eclipsed.
Dalin turned to the window.
"There's the answer to my question," he mumbled.
Close enough to touch, the blasted hulk of a freighter slid by. It had been hit repeatedly in the belly; gaping wounds showing torn metal, frayed cables, and burned innards speckled the ship's bottom, while the entire engine section floated separately near the freighter's stern, rotating in place as if about to dock. A seared black line marked where it had been cut by massive raser fire.
Floating free, like fireflies circling near a flame, were hundreds of hexagonal containers.
The dead freighter moved slowly past; before long it would slide out of sight, no doubt as Dalin's tiny orbit once again brought his enclosure between it and the Moon, which rose again hot and bright in the window.
"Screen," Dalin ordered, "replay battle events."
"That information is not available to me," Screen responded.
"Why not?"
"I have no recording capability," Screen said. Dalin said, "Status report, then. Oxygen. In Earth days."
"There is approximately one point two days of usable oxygen," Screen responded.
A cold feeling gripped Dalin. "Is that all? What about reserve?"
"There is no reserve oxygen capability."
"Food and water?"
"There are rations for three meals; water capability is four liters."
Dalin turned to the lockbox, pulled up its lid, and found three meal containers and a medium-sized container of water.
"Screen," Dalin said, "what are rescue options?"
"That information is not available to me," Screen responded.
"Maneuverability?"
"Enclosure is nonmaneuverable. Currently it is in an orbit of point twenty-four days around nearby object. Orbit will decay in one point one days."
"Decay? What do you mean, decay?"
"Enclosure will come into contact with vertical area sixteen five three, horizontal area three six twelve, in one point one days."
"What in damnation does that mean?"
"It meansâ"
"Never mind! Show it!"
On the Screen, an exact model of the crippled ship outside appeared; a target area began to blink, outlined in red, and the view then closed in to show in detail how Dalin's enclosure would strike a sharply studded area just under the freighter's blackened nose in less than a day and a halfâjust before Dalin's oxygen was depleted and he began to choke on his own carbon dioxide emissions.
"Screen, what is the possibility of enclosure surviving impact?"
As the Screen answered, Dalin was given a visual clue; there was a flash in the window behind him, and as the Screen droned its answer, Dalin turned to see another hexagonal container hit an area near the freighter's broken tail. In a fraction of time, amid a blip of light, it was scattered into a thousand splinters. Almost instantly it was followed by another, which seemed to just brush up against the hull and immediately was torn to bits.
"Shut up, Screen," Dalin said, and Screen instantly returned to warm, comforting amber.
Outside, the dead freighter slipped out of sight. The Moon once more rose; huge, and Tycho slid into view, its crater walls massively shadowed at this near distance. Barely a hundred miles from Tycho lay one of Earth's two small Lunar colonies. Though he tried, Dalin could not for the life of him remember much of what they looked like. He had been no more than nine or ten when he had last even heard them mentioned by Faulkner. There had been sharply etched pictures of a sharply etched place: jagged, stark whites, grays and blacks under a looming clear dome that stretched halfway to the horizon. The panels were impressively large, framed in thick black octagons. The soil itself looked bleached brown; and, in his studies, Dalin recalled one picture of a man standing proudly beside a single timid row of flowers, thin olive stalks bearing brittle white petals, sad, ugly little things like the one Dalin had seen on the governor's emblem.
Tycho slid majestically away, revealing other, smaller versions of itself: dead, black-etched bleakness, parched basalt, and uselessâwasn't that why there were only two Lunar colonies?
Sickened by the Moon's dead whiteness, Dalin ordered Screen to shutter the window.
He was now bathed only in amber light.
Retrieving a food packet and the jug of water from the open lockbox, the king ate and drank, and tried not to think about the coming death that awaited him.
Hours later, Dalin was awakened from a light sleep by the sound of the Screen gently beeping.
Even opening his eyes, the king still felt happily drowsy. It was easy enough to get used to weightlessness; and it was easy enough to feel completely relaxed when one's body had no drag of gravity upon it. Perhaps he would just slip off into sleep, thinking perhaps of Tabrel Kris and that kiss in the garden that now seemed so far away, when this hexagonal box smashed into the nose of the dead freighter, scattering Dalin and his dreams into a thousand pieces.
Finding Tabrel's face in his memory and floating it before his closed eyes, Dalin once more sought to drift off to sleepâbut the Screen's insistent beeping became even louder, finally rousing him from slumber to anger.
"Shut up!" he ordered.
The beep ended, but the Screen said, "There is a communications pattern that has crossed my sensors. Do you wish to monitor it?"
Instantly awake, Dalin said, "Yes."
An urgent voice abruptly arose from the blank screen:
".
. . deadline has passed, Governor Marsden. Do you thinkâ"
The answering signal was weaker, sounding far away with a slight crackle. It was the voice of the man who had addressed Dalin in the recording: "There is nothing left to think! Acron wouldn't dare
follow up on his threat! Even Besh wouldn't stand for itâit violates every treaty ever signed between the Four Worlds! It would mean total war!"