A Princess of the Aerie (8 page)

As they approached, the arms were closer together and they saw habitats more full on and less from the edge, so that the habitats
in Jak’s view became an ever greater part of the sky. Finally
Up Yours
coasted on her cold jets a bare few kilometers above the wide metal plain of the docking body, a sphere six hundred kilometers
across, to which all seventeen arms of the Aerie were tied. From the ship’s cameras Jak could see five inward facing habitats,
each as wide as an eighth of the sky and separated from its neighbor by a gap of star-filled sky.

Jak was so lost in the view through his goggles, sitting on the suite’s sofa next to Myx, that he actually jumped from surprise
when
Up Yours
dove through one of the fifty-kilometer-wide docking entrances on the inner sphere, dipping into the dark below the metal
surface, extending her docking pylons to meet the linducer track on the inside of the huge sphere, and at last settling into
maglev contact with the barest of discernible accelerations. “We have turned off the helm,” the captain’s voice said, “and
we are decelerating normally on the linducer track. Relative to the inner wall of the docking body we are moving at about
six hundred kilometers per hour; we will be matched to local surface velocity and secured in our berth in about twenty minutes.
Final crew rendezvous and dismissal for off-ship leave will be ten minutes after we reach our berth and will begin at that
time exactly.”

Jak pulled off his headset and saw that his two toves were doing the same. “How about we get to Muster Deck A? That ensign
sounded serious.”

They were there in plenty of time, and because no one wanted the dismissal to run one second more than necessary, a lieutenant
came by to make sure the CUPVs knew what to do, though for some reason he made Ensign Petrawang give the actual instructions.

“All right.” Petrawang looked about as bored as was possible while keeping her eyes open. “Stand here. Salute when the Senior
Techny shouts ‘The Captain,’ and make sure the knife edge of your palm cuts across your sternum, singing-on forty-five, have
your thumb in line with your palm, and you want your left arm behind you at a ninety degree angle that you could use to navigate
with, fist squared and rolled
tight
. Hold the salute till the Captain says ‘Rest position.’ Then stand in rest position till he approaches you.
Do not look around, not even a little bit.
That’s one of his particular precessors.

“Salute again as soon as you can see him in your peripheral vision. Hold the salute while he makes small talk with you. Agree
with everything he says, appear to be pleasantly surprised by all of it (and look like none of it ever occurred to you before),
and do your damnedest to convince the whole world that you enjoy it.

“The techny walking behind the officers will tell you when to go back to rest position. Stand in that until the Senior Techny
shouts ‘Captain going out,’ then move to salute, hold that until the Senior Techny shouts ‘Per captain’s instructions, you
are dismissed.’ And at that magic moment, you get to turn and walk off the ship; your bags will be in the receiving area;
and once your back foot leaves the gangplank, you are no longer auxiliaries in the Hive Spatial, and you can resume your normal
lives.” She turned to the lieutenant. “Shall I ask the CUPVs that question?”

“Absolutely.”

“Why did you put in for CUPV? Passenger fare is the same, and you’d only have had to stay in your cabin. As a CUPV not only
did you spend all your time on tube maintenance, but if a war had broken out with us in flight, you’d have been in for the
duration. I haven’t been able to speck what you were thinking, or if.”

Myxenna answered. “We’re PSA cadets all headed for the special branches. Union points are useful, since we may be called on
to join the ASU, and we’re supposed to get as much different experience as we can.”

The officer supervising Petrawang spoke. “So you’re going to be spies or agents of some kind?”

“If we pass, sir,” Dujuv said.

“And you’re on some kind of training mission now?”

“That’s as close to the subject as we’re allowed to go, sir,” Jak said.

“You see, Ensign Petrawang? There
are
at least three people on this vessel with a more absurd job than yours. Under the terms of our bet, you owe me all I can
drink tonight.”

“I do, sir.” The lieutenant airswam away, clearly pleased. As Petrawang pushed off after him, she said, quietly, over her
shoulder, “Think seriously about taking a merchant ship home.”

The general attention siren whizzed twice, and the Senior Techny shouted “The Captain!” The CUPVs jammed their feet into the
parade straps on the floor and snapped into salute.

Once the Captain began small talk, it became immediately apparent why Petrawang and the officer had gone out of their ways
to prepare them. The captain was an ange, like Dean Caccitepe, but even taller and at least two hundred fifty years old, maybe
three hundred. When the Captain stooped to talk to him, Jak noted how deep, wise, and kind the Captain’s eyes seemed to be,
and tried not to note the faint whiff of gin and citrus.

The Captain cleared his throat. “So you three were CUPVs on this mission.”

“Yes, sir,” Jak said, since the Captain was looking at him.

“And that was as part of something you were doing for the PSA, I understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Dujuv said, for the Captain had moved down the line.

“And the PSA is the Public Service Academy, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.” Myx managed not to sound puzzled or surprised, and Jak silently gave her points for that, since he wasn’t sure
he could have managed.

“Well,” the Captain said, after a very long pause and stepping back to look them all over, “the Public Service Academy is
a very fine thing. It encourages public service. I hope that all you young people will seriously consider going into public
service.”

He wandered on up the line; a few seconds after he was out of Jak’s peripheral vision, the techny who had been the last in
the little party of ship’s officers said, “Rest position, CUPVs, and keep it neat.”

After a very long time, during which there was plenty of time to meditate on the ever-softer and more distant drone of the
Captain’s voice talking to each of the higher ranks, the Senior Techny shouted ‘Captain going out,’ and Jak and his toves
went back to salute position. Jak had read somewhere that the salute originated a thousand years ago in the old Martian Empire,
as a signal of submission, indicating that you were willing to cooperate in either your own torture or your own execution.

Jak spent some no-time mentally in Disciplines meditation before the Senior Techny shouted, “Per Captain’s instructions, you
are dismissed.” Muster Deck A rang with a sustained cheer and the three toves were nearly bowled over by an extremely orderly
flying stampede. In the docking body, grav was less than one percent of standard, and airswimming was fast and easy. The crewies,
officers and enlisted alike, all moved fast and stayed close but gave way to the person on the right or of higher rank, so
quickly and neatly that there was hardly any turbulence or drag to the flow of thousands of bodies; they went through the
big main doors like water swirling down a drain.

Since Jak and his toves were somewhere below a toaster in rank, they were quickly swept to the back of the flow by the tremendous
tide of precedence, but the overall flow was so swift that still it was less than three minutes before they made their last
touch on the gangplank and bounced into the receiving area to claim their luggage—civilian once more.

D
ujuv asked, “Well, now what? Do we just take the gripliner out to Greenworld, go to the Royal Palace, knock on the door, and
say ‘Hi, we happened to be in the neighborhood?’ ”

Myxenna wrapped her bags in a cargo tow and grabbed the sling. “I suppose it would be politer to call first. There must be
some public access terminals around someplace? Speck you shouldn’t call direct on your purse, Jak, security and all that.”

They airswam down a long shopping corridor that appeared to be mostly duty-free liquor stores; Myxenna airswam close to Jak
and whispered, “I know somebody who will be shopping here soon.”

Jak made a little raspberry and snickered. “Yeah, I was wondering if anyone else noticed.”

“I suppose the job must be mostly ceremonial, in peacetime.”

They found a Pertrans stop before they found public access terminals. “Well, they’ll have them for sure at the gripliner station,”
Jak pointed out. “Let’s just go there.”

The docking body of the Aerie was less than a fifth the size of the Hive, and because it did not have a black hole enclosure
at its center, routes could be much more direct. The Pertrans whisked them right across the big metal sphere to Station Eight,
where gripliners came in from Arm Eight, in about five minutes.

It was an icy five minutes. Myx and Dujuv stared out windows in opposite directions, despite the fact that all there is to
see out a Pertrans window is either the tunnel wall or the instantaneous flash of a passing window. Jak could see no way to
get them to even start being civil to each other. He was beginning to miss the imposed courtesy of the battlesphere.

Near the ticket counter in the gripliner station, they found some public access terminal booths. All three of them piled into
a large booth and locked the door; then Jak told his purse to get Sesh on a fresh back channel.

The woman whose image appeared on the screen was
very
not Sesh. She had pale beige skin, big prominent teeth, and little green piggy eyes that glared at them around the nose of
an unsuccessful ex-boxer. Her hair was that mud-gray color of age familiar from old photos, but Jak had never seen it on a
living person before. Perhaps she was a follower of one of the Tolerated Faiths, rather than the Wager? According to the Solar
System Ethnography class, many of them prohibited anti-aging treatments.

“My name is Jordesta Mattanga, and I need to know immediately why you are attempting an unauthorized communications access
to Princess Shyf. I also need your names and citizenship.”

“Myxenna Bonxiao, Hive.” “Dujuv Gonzawara, Hive.” “Jak Jinnaka, Hive. Uh, we’re her friends, and we came at her specific request—”

Mattanga looked annoyed. “I have no record of any such request.”

“I don’t know if you necessarily would,” Jak said; “because I don’t know your communications and security arrangements, but
the Princess requested us through back channels, and she specifically asked that we not recontact her till this point in the
mission, for security reasons. I am unaware of who else she might have told.”

“I see. One moment.” The screen froze, leaving Jordesta Mattanga’s image glaring, one big lumpy gray eyebrow raised like a
caterpillar crossing something that hurt its feet.

Of course, their camera was still on, so they couldn’t do anything without being observed. Down by Jak’s knee, Dujuv’s hand
signaled,
Weird-bad … weird-bad … weird-bad. …

There was a clanging noise as the overrides barred the booth door. Mattanga’s image began to move again. “Talk to Princess
Shyf. She has graciously agreed to give you an exact two minutes of her time. You had better persuade someone that this is
not the stupidest youthful prank ever pulled, because if we don’t like what we’re hearing, we will send out security agents
to bring you here by force and jail you all till we hear answers we like. You have two minutes.”

Sesh came on the screen. “What are you three idiots doing here? I know Jak has to be the idiot-in-chief, but how could either
of you be stupid enough to follow him? And Jak, I know you’re not the brightest thing that ever put on trousers, but this
is dumber even than I’d have expected from you. Didn’t you get my message?”

“That’s why we came,” Jak protested.

“How could you be that unbelievably stupid? Didn’t I say not to communicate in any way? And how in all of Nakasen’s theorems
could you have afforded to get here anyway?”

“You paid our passage,” Dujuv said.

Sesh stared at him as if he’d really gone mad. “Is that what Jak told you?”

“It’s true,” Jak said. “You arranged CUPV passage for all three of us—”

“Ridiculous!”

“And you specifically asked us to come and not to call you till we got here.”

Sesh’s eyes were flashing fire. “A one-minute message that said I didn’t want to hear from you, ever again, and not to try
to contact me—how could—”

“It was almost twenty minutes long, Sesh—”

“I am Princess Shyf. You will address me as ‘Princess Shyf,’ or as ‘Your Utmost Grace,’ idiot boy.”

Jak fought down his own rising temper and said, “I have a copy of the message. On my purse. Security stamped and everything.
Let me send it over and you look at it. This is the last message I ever got from you, till now.”

“Send it,” the Princess snapped.

“Do it,” Jak murmured to his purse, which said, “Sending last message from Princess Shyf over current com link, fully secured
version.”

Then the screen froze again, this time with an image of Her Utmost Fury glaring out from it. The door remained locked. Dujuv’s
left hand had stopped signaling
weird-bad
and was now just signaling,
Weird … weird …weird … ,
more tic than communication. An hour went by. Jak wished that he had stopped off at a restroom earlier.

Jordesta Mattanga returned to the screen and said, “I am commanded to communicate apologies from Princess Shyf for the tone
of her remarks. The message copy is clearly authentic in that its internal evidence shows it was received by you when and
where you say it was. It is, however, an extremely good fake. This obviously raises grave questions about the Princess’s personal
security. We would therefore like to invite you to come and stay at the Royal Palace for at least a brief period, to talk
to our security people. We’re negotiating with Hive Intelligence, since you were nominally working for them, to see if they
will cover the cost, one way or another, of getting you back home in a timely way.” Then she allowed herself something that
seemed almost like a smile. “On the purely personal level, thank you for your patience in dealing with this mess. It was not
of either of our making, to be sure, but apparently it will take both your efforts and ours to clean it up.”