A Princess of the Aerie (15 page)

“And the killers?” Dujuv asked.

“Escaped completely. Psim has pledged to find them no matter how long it may take. Anyway, the Aerie is the second stop on
the Duke’s Big Circuit, and he’ll be here tonight. I’m assuming he’d be glad to see the two of you?”

“I think so. We’d like to see him,” Jak said.

“Then I’ll station you both inside the ballroom. That means you can’t have any projectile or beam weapon of any kind, but
if armed commandos crash through Palace security, building security, wing defenses, and room defenses, killing all the real
guards on the way—with the three or four hovertanks it would take—then you are allowed to stop them with your bare hands.”

“Just so it’s a fair fight,” Dujuv said.

Y
our basic job,” Kawib said, his sardonic half-smile firmly back on, “is to be attractive. Try not to spend too much time around
the canapés, make pleasant conversation with wallflowers—
not
concentrating on wallflowers your own age and of your preferred gender. If anyone wants to invite you for something in a
private room, you can accept but only for when you’re off duty. Unless, of course, it’s the Princess. Don’t consume alcohol
or anything else that might alter your judgment. Don’t duck out and catch a nap. And toktru, you’ll be tempted.” The more
experienced guards in the room chuckled. “All right, Xabo has overall command inside the ballroom. Call me if the rich people
riot, masen?

“I’m feeling good about Vifu, Yib, Coxiz, and Pelorni, at the moment, so you lucky devils get to stand ceremonial guard at
exterior doors with me. You’ll be farther from the food and the ladies in waiting but also there’s less danger of having to
make small talk with some bored aristo. Kewoi, Pusaf, you have the outer-doors receiving area. Jak, Dujuv, walking post around
the central staircase, which is between the kitchen and the dance floor. If anyone suddenly goes berserk while dancing, it’s
your duty keep them from getting their hands on a pastry cutter. I regret to say, toves, it’s about time, so make sure that
your uniforms look presentable, take five to visit the little room, and we’ll all walk over to the King’s Palace together.”

Forty minutes later, Jak and Dujuv were standing with their backs to a pillar, trying to avoid leaning or moving, when a whistling
voice behind them said, “Jak Jinnaka, and his tove Dujuv Gonzawara, I am astonished to find you here! Clearly my gods are
pleased with me!”

“Shadow!” Jak embraced his Rubahy oath-friend. “I had wondered if the Duke would bring you along.”

Before he had gotten to know Shadow, Jak would have sworn that all Rubahy looked alike: a tyrannosaur wearing a gorilla’s
arms, a Yorkshire terrier’s head, and a rabbit’s tail, covered all over with chicken feathers. Now he could have picked Shadow
out anywhere—his friend’s long slicing teeth were slightly, distinctively crooked to the left; a small extra curved lobe extended
down the arm from the big black patch on his right shoulder that indicated he was of warrior ancestry; Shadow’s squarish head
was squarer than most; and he was slightly short for a Rubahy, taller than most tall men. Because his scent organs (two flaps
of flesh covered with thicker feathers, on the top of his head) were longer and narrower than average, about the size and
shape of short bananas, some of the Duke’s Rubahy guards had nicknamed him “Bunny” (he detested that; he had explained in
a message to Jak that rabbits were the most common Rubahy pet back on Pluto, so it was like nicknaming a human being “Doggie”
or “Woofums”).

At the moment Shadow on the Frost wore a heavy, short leather skirt with many pockets, serving as holster and bag, and of
course his purse on his left hand. Rubahy have no facial muscles, and their eyes have no whites, so he had no expression,
but his scent organs stood up straight, catching and treasuring the welcome scent of his friends. “You have kept your sense
of humor? You have learned things that mattered to you?”

Jak had only accidentally befriended Shadow. At one strange moment during the wild adventure of rescuing Sesh, Jak had happened
to say exactly the words that, translated from Standard to the Rubahy language, constituted a binding honor-oath, which had
made Shadow his devoted friend for life.

“My humor is intact and my knowledge is greater,” Jak said. He asked the ritual question for a warrior in service: “Do you
gain honor by your service to the Duke?”

Shadow on the Frost said, “Well, for tonight, we have very similar duties—I will do for the Duke what you do for the Princess.”

Jak glanced sideways at Dujuv. His tove was compressing his lips and trying very hard not to laugh out loud.

“Same old Shadow, I can tell,” Jak said, and the Rubahy made noises like big slow bubbles in a metal bucket (the equivalent
of laughter). One of Shadow’s favorite jokes was to pretend to misunderstand Standard, or human culture, say exactly the most
inappropriate possible thing, and watch humans struggle to decide whether or not to explain.

“It is good to be with humans who dak jokes, again,” Shadow said. “The Duke of Uranium is a fine person, but he lacks your
gift for laughter. I have been promoted to his personal guard. No merit involved, I assure you—it was just essential for me
to have some post other than common soldier in his Rubahy mercenary battalion.”

“Essential?” Dujuv made the mistake of asking.

“A simple matter, really. My uncle-group-for-shared-honor was at odds with my uncle-group-for-bloodline-distinction, over
the behavior of a few distant cousins, and everything else got pulled into the dispute—you know how these family things can
be. Anyway, all of my uncle-groups at least agreed that my service to the Duke gained honor for both me and my family, which
meant of course that my sister-side cousin-friends therefore felt I was gaining too much of the sort of personal honor that
could upset the political balance in the family, and they threatened to have me recalled, which might actually have been merely
a ploy by some of our noble houses to get me where it would be socially acceptable to assassinate me. You can imagine I was
not in favor of
that
. So a friendly aunt, married into my circle of mutual and interlocked oath-friends, happened to be the cousin-sex-partner
of my commanding officer, who, I am happy to boast, did not want to lose me. He promoted me to a higher rank at which point
I could no longer serve under him but would accrue less honor for each act, which perfectly qualified me to be a bodyguard,
and then recommended me to the Duke, who graciously accepted.”

“I’m glad things worked out,” Dujuv said.

“And your schooling, Dujuv, tove of my tove, it goes all right?”

“It goes better than mine,” Jak admitted. “Dujuv works harder, plus, toktru, I speck he has more brains.”

“I’m a panth,” Dujuv said, firmly.

“And that is a chair, and I am a Rubahy,” Shadow said, gravely. “It is good to see both of you. I have duties now, but we
will be in the Aerie for a month or more, and surely it can happen that we will all have some off-duty together.”

“I’d like that a lot,” Jak said.

“Well then, a quiet night to us all, and I will call you in the morning.” Shadow moved away into the crowd.

After a few more minutes of watching well-dressed people mill around, Jak specked it was “quite possible that the most exciting
part of the evening has already happened.”

“Toktru, masen? And no naps. I think I’m going to stretch the rules and get into the food; Kawib can always tell the Princess
that if you’re going to keep a panth, you’ve got to feed a panth.”

“I speck I can hold this job down by myself till you get back,” Jak said.

Duj vanished into the crowd, leaving Jak alone with what passed for thoughts.

“Excuse me, er, Jak?”

It was Seubla, Kawib’s demmy, in a pale lavender gown that had probably been chosen for her by the Princess, since it seemed
deliberately unflattering. With her nearly-white hair pulled back, accentuating her plain proletarian features, she looked
like a vacuum-welder’s daughter going to a costume party as the fairy queen.
And this is someone Sesh fears so much,
Jak thought, and was glad, not for the first time, that there wasn’t a drop of aristo blood in his own veins.

“Yes,” Jak said.

“I have a message from the Princess, and excuse the rudeness, but she insists that I tell you that it is absolutely an order.
‘You are to talk to Mreek Sinda, who is waiting outside to interview you. You will give her exactly ten minutes of your time,
and answer all questions in a way suitable for accesscasting, and not do anything stupid.’ All a quote, Jak, I’m sorry, that’s
not how I’d have said it.”

Jak allowed himself a slight smile. “I know that, Seubla. I recognize the style.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “It’s nice to be understood.” She disappeared into the crowd.

Jak sighed and went out for his interview with Sinda. It wasn’t terrible—none of the ones back when she was making her hit
series had been, either. Jak’s answers seemed bland even to him, but Sinda didn’t seem terribly worried about it one way or
another, and she thanked him, nicely enough, at exactly ten minutes. He headed inside. Apparently tonight was going to be
a series of switches between dullness and dullness, with dullness in between.

At his station by the main staircase, Jak found Dujuv standing and chatting with an old, good friend—Psim Cofinalez, the Duke
of Uranium himself. Psim shook his hand as if he were grasping a lifeline, and his smile was warm with pleasure. “What an
odd—but delightful—coincidence that you were here just when we were. It’s so good to be able to see someone who was a friend
back before they had a reason to be.” The Duke was about ten years older than the two toves, and he was muscular, with wide-set
shoulders, very dark hair and mustache, and very pale skin. “We’ll have to find some time when we can talk without formality—I
know that’s always impossible but I also know that it’s always worth it to try.”

“That would be wonderful, sir.”

“I’m also delighted to hear from Dujuv that you are continuing to be your usual selves at the PSA.” The Duke’s eyes twinkled.
“Just remember you promised to defect to the Hive, and that I don’t want two proficient bureaucrats showing up at my door
when you graduate.”

“Not a chance.”

“Though two corrupt graft-grubbers are always welcome.”

Subsonic thunder announced that slec was about to begin. “They’re founding the first set,” Jak said. “I didn’t speck they’d
do slec when they have so many older guests.”

The Duke grinned, a flash of that common touch that the media played up so much. “Thanks for not adding ‘such as yourself.’
This is the Princess’s party, even if her father is here. She gets her way. I can’t imagine that that’s unusual. Anyway, I
must go demonstrate that I dak slec; Princess Shyf won’t speak to me if I don’t.”

He bowed and faded into the crowd, working his way toward the dance floor. Jak climbed up a few stairs for a better view.
He was curious. He’d only seen slec in a big sphere with gravity low enough to airswim—all three dimensions equivalent. Here,
in two-and-a-fraction dimensions, on a dance floor, it seemed tighter, more constricted, apt to fall into repetition.

Dujuv, standing next to Jak, said, “It’s not obvious, but the problem is the Princess. See how she’s almost always on a screen
and how often that screen has the green dot? They’re mostly sampling off her, and barely changing the synesthesia. So it’s
not as much of a conversation as it’s supposed to be. Kind of like if she was talking and people kept asking her to talk more
about her favorite subjects and retell her favorite jokes—she gets more attention but it encourages her to be less interesting.”

Jak nodded. “How did you know that was what I was trying to figure out?”

“The way you kept scanning from screens to floor and back. Sesh used to be so graceful, creative, and clever—slec groups would
beg her to attend because they loved sampling off her. Isn’t it toktru strange that now that she has control, she makes herself
duller?”

Jak’s thoughts spiraled off; somehow it seemed to fit with Sesh’s slow torment of Kawib and Seubla, and with how friendly
and cheerful Psim was after having had his brother thrown to his death just weeks ago, and even with the way—

“Weehu, watch the King,” Dujuv said.

King Scaboron was a small, slender man. He might have been a fencer or a gymnast in his youth, 150 years ago. He stood at
the edge of the floor, watching his daughter mesh slec with Psim Cofinalez—they meshed well.

The King frowned, advanced onto the floor, and, to Jak’s surprise, slowly swayed to the midbeat, the slowest at the moment.
Scaboron glanced at a screen; he moved less tentatively, more firmly, he was definitely dancing now, and a green light went
on as the low beat and the three high beats all began to sample off the King’s motion. Sesh looked enraged for just an instant;
Jak thought only he had seen it, until Dujuv whispered, “Well,
that’s
precessed her.”

“I don’t think the King wants his heir interested in a Cofinalez,” Jak murmured back. “They went to a lot of trouble—hell,
we
went to a lot of trouble—to prevent any possibility of a match. And she’s definitely got the look for Psim.”

Scaboron advanced slowly onto the floor, and the crowd parted around him. Behind him, a few of the older ladies followed,
copying his moves, creating a kind of impromptu line. He danced seriously, precisely, never reaching beyond what his body
could do, displaying his command of a farrago of the steps of the last two hundred years. Responding, the musician-engineers
extended the synesthesia and opened its loops, adding dimensions and moving the quadratics into their period doubling and
period quadrupling ranges.

The slec became more architectural, less tactile, the harmony more aggressive about its ambiguity. Chords marched through
it in ranks of feeling, counterpoint congealing into alert flanking guards of meaning. The line behind King Scaboron formed
a long spiral that turned toward the center. The timbre flavored its way through woodwinds and cymbals and then spiraled sideways
into horns and bells. It wasn’t slec as Jak had ever heard or seen it before, but it was beautiful.