Stardogs (36 page)

The enemy of liberty is not totalitarianism. It is bureaucracy. To destroy a prince utterly, add to his records, endlessly. The development of an effective computer filing and retrieval system may spell the death of revolutionaries as surely as a firing-squad. Fortunately, such systems as there are, were designed by humans and are run by bureaucrats.

Nicola Para-Machiavelli: Obliterating a Prince

Jarian had woken refreshed from his night’s slumber. He found his movement was restricted. Somebody had mummified him with a blanket and a length of rope. He squalled protests before he thought about it. Had he been slightly sharper first thing in the morning he might have pretended to still be passed out. It could have been more pleasant.

“Ah, my
dear
little nephew is awake.” Shari didn’t look as if she’d seen much sleep. There were dark rings below her eyes. And she hadn’t bothered to do any repairs to her hair. She looked very like the witch he’d accused her of being. A very bad tempered witch. “Well, Prince Jarian. Oh I forgot. Jarian. I gather you’re not even a Prince any more. Do you still support the order of command being dictated by the Coda de Gotha? Because I am telling you that you’re going to show us where you hid those antidote tablets.”

Jarian smiled at her. A nasty smile. She frightened him, but he held all the aces. “Certainly. On certain conditions.”

“I want those Ectipain antidote tablets, Jarian.”

“Untie me and we’ll talk about it.” He could see the softness now. He was sure she wouldn’t be prepared to torture him. Then Deo stepped forward. Jarian’s smile faded. There was something very frightening about that man.

Deo bowed respectfully to her. “As you know, Dewa. I carry antidote tablets.”

Shari was so relieved she could have kissed him, right then and there. All those bottle he carried! She’d only read the lables of the first three. But it was hardly surprising, considering…

Jarian’s self-satisfied world fell apart as the man held out a tiny bottle, virtually identical to those in his poisons case, except that this one’s label was neatly handwritten, not printed.

He was still thirsty when he showed them his stash, and after a little more persuasion the second hidden bottle. Shari allowed no expression to betray her feelings but her heart sank seeing those bottles. There was no way that there were enough doses for nine people for five years. Not even with Deo’s meagre supply added.

“Do I get a drink now?” moaned Jarian. “I’ve given you the pills.”

Shari raised her eyebrows. “Yes. You can drink your fill, while you fetch the water. You’re going to work for it, though.”

They’d brought all the empty bottles down with them. Now Shari had to grit her teeth and brave the geyser-hole again, to lead five of them down to the water. Jarian had been wrong about one thing. Someone who could face this a second time wasn’t soft. And she had been prepared to torture him… herself. She wouldn’t have asked someone else to do it, but for the others she would have tortured him… and, by doing so, hurt herself. But her pain threshold was far higher than his.

They emerged unscathed, laden with water, ten minutes before the next blow happened. They had water, they had antidote tablets for the foreseeable future. They were running low on food, and so Shari decided that they’d do better to carry the boy with the Denaari crown, and move on. It was frightening to leave the water, but they could come back. She could see no future, except death by slow starvation, in staying.

One can speed up computer transmission times to near lightspeed. If one is prepared to cheat a bit, and muck around with space/time and interdimensionality one can even exceed that, although the consequences are… well, cataclysmic. But all known attempts to speed up bureaucracy have only resulted in it dropping into a still lower gear. When computers (even biocomputers) take over bureaucracy, this slow-down effect is cubed. While circuits in the Ground-control pyramid played with daily weather predictions for ships that never came, and would be destroyed if they did, the request for more data on the input from the tracking-eye in security zone waited in a holding circuit. The Biocomputer in Ground-control was under-utilised, and could have dealt with this scrap of a request easily, but that is bureaucracy for you. Certain things transcend species.

Sector Delat civil defense biocomputer unit sulked. It had only tried to help when it had told central about the transmissions. Now it was damned if it was going to alert Central again, to be abused in that fashion. Even if the rate of travel of the transmission from Rat’s chip had speeded up by several orders of magnitude. Civil defense had been a new notion to the Denaari, who had never had internecine fights worse than the occasional mating battle. War had been a concept they’d struggled to master, even when the Sil attacked them. The sector Delat civil defense biocomputer kept tracking, however.

The boy was a puzzle. Where had he come from? He was wearing stationer clothes, or what was left of them. He had that Denaari relic, though. How had he got here? Was there another ship? And could they go the way he had come…. was there a way out of here?

Tanzo and Una had tended him all night. Mostly it had been Una, as Tanzo had fallen asleep mid sentence and Una would never have dreamed of waking her. An errant fact picked up somewhere in Tanzo’s voracious reading had been the need for isotonic fluids in cases of dehydration. The boy had been given their best effort: sugar, of which they had plenty, a generous pinch of salt, of which they had little, stirred into the water they poured slowly into him. An intravenous drip would have been far more effective, but… Anyway he was mostly conscious now, although he slept a great deal, even while carried. They had no poles for a stretcher, so Mark Albeer had hoisted the boy onto his back, and they’d tied him in place with a blanket. He still talked a form of clicky, squeaky gibberish when he was awake, and refused to part with the crown. Any attempt to remove it, even when he was asleep, would have him clutching frantically at it.

Juan-human was still subsurface and even Juan-Denaari wasn’t doing too well. But the boy was mending, and the crown-beast itself was doing much better. It was managing to configure human thoughtwaves quite well now. It could replay human thoughts and images perfectly. It could even probably get some Denaari thoughts to its new host, in a form it could understand, at least at a level much less coarse than its earlier image flood. The chaos inside Juan’s head still existed, of course. Large parts of his brain, hitherto unused, thought like a Denaari. Or as much like a Denaari as an alien could.

It was nearly evening of the next day, when Juan’s latest bearer had laid him down, that the royal barge castaways learned that he did know human tongue after all. Una had given him more of the home made isotonic brew, and he had helped her to control it instead of choking and spluttering on it. Then Rat had decided he needed a drink too. The previous night he’d appeared and been stroked and given water and a scrap of bread by Una. She hadn’t, of course, said anything. She never did.

This time Sam saw Rat too. “Dinner!” By the way he said it you knew it was not intended as a joke.

Juan managed to put a protective if battered hand over the animal. “Rat,” he said weakly.

“He said ‘Rat’. He spoke!” Una was alight with excitement and pleasure.

“I know it’s a rat. I reckon most of you folk don’t know that rat is good eating,” said Sam. “Especially a big fat one like that.”

“Oh! But this one is his pet. His friend! You can’t eat it,” said Una firmly.

The little thing was actually taking up a defensive stance in front of the boy. Sam was amused, despite himself. Then something struck him. “You’re supposed to be deaf, girl. How did you know what he said? How did you know what I said for that matter? The lock tickler always talks to you in sign-language.”

Now the girl looked frightened. “I lip-read. Not too well,” she said after a small pause, her soft voice full of terror. She’d had to think desperately to find that answer.

Sam grinned his lop-sided grin at her. “Well, keep it under your hat, kid. Useful trick.” He winked at her and went off to inform Tanzo and Shari that the boy was coming right, could talk sense, and had added another animal to their number. He didn’t for a moment believe Una’s clumsy lie, but he felt sorry for the girl. Sorry. Shit. What the hell? Was he going soft or something? It was these bloody people. Not his type.

He was actually completely wrong. He was in fact a second cousin to the noble lady whom Caro’s father had married. But he didn’t know that, even if his mother had.

Shari had shrugged at the news. The lack of sleep the night before and the knowledge that the Ectipain antidote she now carried was insufficient was wearing on her. “So long as he’s not going to get worse. I’ll give him ‘till morning to recover further. I need the rest myself right now.”

Tanzo’s curiosity about the crown was too intense, however. She hurried off, Sam, looking rather forlorn, in her wake. They were too late. Both the boy and Una were fast asleep, she cradling his head against her thin chest. She looked Madonna-like. There was a tiny smile on her face, for the first time that Tanzo could recall. The two didn’t stir as Tanzo tossed Una’s blanket over them. Only a pink nose came out and whiffled at the Yak and the Countess.

“She needed someone to mother, even more than she needed mothering, poor child,” Tanzo said softly. “Still, it must be nice to have someone care about you.”

“I care about you.” Sam Teovan. Caporegime in the Carrenzia-Heiki. One of the most feared men in the Yak underworld. He felt extremely stupid. He didn’t know why he’d said it. He just knew that he meant it.

It wasn’t the right thing to say, or at least not the right time to say it. Tanzo drew herself up to her full five-foot two. She’d lost weight and gained muscle tone and colour over the last five days. Also, without the thick-rimmed glasses and the misapplied make up, she was a great deal more attractive looking, the Yak thought. But now, she just looked furious. It had obviously been bubbling beneath the surface for some time, and it erupted with unexpected force. “Yes, you care for me. Like Hades! Where were you when I got beaten up trying to stop that child being raped?”

The Yak’s face changed. The unfamiliar tender expression fled, and he assumed his usual closed expression. He shook his head. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.

Tanzo found her way to her bed-roll with difficulty. She was so
angry,
so
upset
, so illogically miserable. She lay and tossed and turned, despite her tiredness. Eventually she got up. She tripped over Lila, and found the .22 muzzle pressed to her midriff. She had to explain. Apologize. And for reasons she could not understand she found herself pouring out the whole story, and several other details which she found somehow essential to tell the younger woman.

“But he was just behind Jarian. I was scared my bullet would go right through the little creep and hit the Yak.”

Tanzo blinked in the moonlight. “But… he was sitting next to me…”

“He slipped around in the dark, I suppose. It was a lot less stupid than running headlong at the little scumbag with a rock in your hands, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Are you sure…” Tanzo faltered.

“Ask Brettan. Or Mark Albeer. They both saw him.”

“My God, what have I done!?” she said guiltily.

Lila shrugged. “He’ll get over it. Men always do.”

“Where is he sleeping?”

“Just between those rocks. See, that pointy one with the moonlight on it.”

Sam Teovan wasn’t asleep either. He was wrestling with himself. What a fool he been. What a damned fool. Well, even Sal had let a woman get to him once. He heard somebody stumble in the dark, heading toward him. He pulled the chisel out of his waistband. Heard a quietly placed foot crunch on the gravel he always arranged around his sleeping place. Good. He could use killing someone right now.

He moved like a striking snake. The person he had seized was surprisingly soft and small. Startled, he slackened the arm around the throat of his would-be victim. “Sam. I just came to say… I care about you too,” she said, her voice held carefully steady, despite the fright she’d had. “I’ll go away, now, if you’ll stop pushing that knife against my ribs.”