Emperor of Gondwanaland (20 page)

Bloedwyn slipped out of Geisen’s embrace. “How could you assume anything, since I myself do not know how I feel? All these developments have been so sudden and mysterious! Your father’s cruelly permanent death, your own capricious and senseless abandonment of your share of his estate … How can I make sense of any of it? What of all our wonderful dreams?”

Geisen gripped Bloedwyn’s supple hide-mailed upper arms with perhaps too much fervor, judging from her wince. He released her, then spoke. “All our bright plans for the future will come to pass! Just give me some time to regain my footing in the world. One day I will be at liberty to explain everything to you. But until then, I ask your trust and faith. Surely you must share my confidence in my character, in my undiminished capabilities?”

Bloedwyn averted her tranquil blue-eyed gaze from Geisen’s imploring green eyes, and he slumped in despair, knowing himself lost. She stepped back a few paces and, with voice steeled, made a formal declaration she had evidently rehearsed prior to this moment.

“The Vermuele marchwarden has already communicated the abrogation of our pending matrimonial agreement to your house’s governor. I think such an impartial yet decisive move is all for the best, Geisen. We are both young, with many lives before us. It would be senseless to found such a potentially interminable relationship on such shaky footing. Let us both go ahead—separately—into the days to come, with our extinct love a fond memory.”

Again, as at the moment of his father’s death, Geisen found himself rendered speechless at a crucial juncture, unable to plead his case any further. He watched in stunned disbelief as Bloedwyn turned gracefully around and walked out of his life, her fluttering scaly train visible some seconds after the rest of her had vanished.

The cluttered, steamy, noisy kitchens of Stoessl House exhibited an orderly chaos proportionate to the magnitude of the preparations under way. The planned rebirth dinner for the paterfamilias had been hastily converted to a memorial banquet, once the proper, little-used protocols had been found in a metaphorically dusty lobe of the marchwarden’s memory. Now scores of miscegenous bestients under the supervision of the lone human chef, Stine Pursiful, scraped, sliced, chopped, diced, cored, deveined, scrubbed, layered, basted, glazed, microwaved, and pressure-treated various foodstuffs, assembling the imported luxury ingredients into the elaborate fare that would furnish the solemn buffet for family and friends and business connections of the deceased.

Geisen entered the aromatic atmosphere of the kitchens with a scowl on his face and a bitterness in his throat and heart. Pursiful spotted the young man and, with a fair share of courtesy and deference, considering the circumstances, stepped forward to inquire of his needs. But Geisen rudely brushed the slim punctilious chef aside, and stalked toward the shelves that held various MREs. With blunt motions, he began to shovel the nutri-packets into a dusty shoulder bag that had plainly seen many an expedition into Chalk’s treasure-filled deserts.

A small timid bestient belonging to one of the muskrat-hyrax clades hopped over to the shelves where Geisen fiercely rummaged. Near-sighted, the be-aproned moreauvian strained on tiptoe to identify something on a higher shelf.

With one heavy boot, Geisen kicked the servant out of his way, sending the creature squeaking and sliding across the slops-strewn floor. But before the man could return to his rough provisioning, he was stopped by a voice as familiar as his skin.

“I raised you to show more respect to all the Implicate’s creatures than you just exhibited, Gep Stoessl. Or if I did not, then I deserve immediately to visit the Unborn’s Lowest Abattoir for my criminal negligence.”

Geisen turned, the bile in his craw and soul melting to a habitual affection tinged with many memories of juvenile guilt.

Brindled arms folded across her queerly configured chest, Ailoura the bestient stood a head shorter than Geisen, compact and well muscled. Her heritage mingling a thousand feline and quasi- feline strains from a dozen planets, she resembled no single cat species morphed to human status, but rather all cats everywhere, blended and thus ennobled. Rounded ears perched high atop her densely pelted skull. Vertically slitted eyes and patch of wet leathery nose contrasted with a more-human-seeming mouth and chin. Now anger and disappointment molded her face into a mask almost frightening, her fierce expression magnified by a glint of sharp tooth peeking from beneath a curled lip.

Geisen noted instantly, with a small shock, the newest touches of gray in Ailoura’s tortoise-shell fur. These tokens of aging softened his heart even further. He made the second most serious conciliatory bow from the Dakini Rituals toward his old nurse. Straightening, Geisen watched with relief as the anger flowed out of her face and stance, to be replaced by concern and solicitude.

“Now,” Ailoura demanded, in the same tone with which she had often demanded that little Geisen brush his teeth or do his schoolwork, “what is all this nonsense I hear about your voluntary disinheritance and departure?”

Geisen motioned Ailoura into a secluded corner of the kitchens and revealed everything to her. His account prompted low growls from the bestient that escaped despite her angrily compressed lips. Geisen finished resignedly by saying, “And so, helpless to contest this injustice, I leave now to seek my fortune elsewhere, perhaps even on another world.”

Ailoura pondered a moment. “You say that your brother offered you a servant from our house?”

“Yes. But I don’t intend to take him up on that promise. Having another mouth to feed would just hinder me.”

Placing one mitteny yet deft hand on his chest, Ailoura said, “Take me, Gep Stoessl.”

Geisen experienced a moment of confusion. “But Ailoura—your job of raising me is long past. I am very grateful for the loving care you gave unstintingly to a motherless lad, the guidance and direction you imparted, the indulgent playtimes we enjoyed. Your teachings left me with a wise set of principles, an admirable will and optimism, and a firm moral center—despite the evidence of my thoughtless transgression a moment ago. But your guardian duties lie in the past. And besides, why would you want to leave the comforts and security of Stoessl House?”

“Look at me closely, Gep Stoessl. I wear now the tabard of the scullery crew. My luck in finding you here is due only to this very demotion. And from here the slide to utter inutility is swift and short—despite my remaining vigor and craft. Will you leave me here to face my sorry fate? Or will you allow me to cast my fate with that of the boy I raised from kittenhood?”

Geisen thought a moment. “Some companionship would indeed be welcome. And I don’t suppose I could find a more intimate ally.”

Ailoura grinned. “Or a slyer one.”

“Very well. You may accompany me. But on one condition.”

“Yes, Gep Stoessl?”

“Cease calling me ‘Gep.’ Such formalities were once unknown between us.”

Ailoura smiled. “Agreed, little Gei-gei.”

The man winced. “No need to retrogress quite that far. Now, let us return to raiding my family’s larder.”

“Be sure to take some of that fine fish, if you please, Geisen.”

No one knew the origin of the tame strangelets that seeded Chalk’s strata. But everyone knew of the immense wealth these cloistered anomalies conferred.

Normal matter was composed of quarks in only two flavors: up and down. But strange-flavor quarks also existed, and the exotic substances formed by these strange quarks in combination with the more domestic flavors were, unconfined, as deadly as the more familiar antimatter. Bringing normal matter into contact with a naked strangelet resulted in the conversion of the feedstock into energy. Owning a strangelet was akin to owning a pet black hole, and just as useful for various purposes, such as powering star cruisers.

Humanity could create strangelets, but only at immense cost per unit. And naked strangelets had to be confined in electromagnetic or gravitic bottles during active use. They could also be quarantined for semipermanent storage in stasis fields. Such was the case with the buried strangelets of Chalk.

Small spherical mirrored nodules—”marbles,” in the jargon of Chalk’s prospectors—could be found in various recent sedimentary layers of the planet’s crust, distributed according to no rational plan. Discovery of the marbles had inaugurated the reign of the various houses on Chalk.

An early scientific expedition from Preceptimax University to the Shulamith Wadi stumbled upon the strangelets initially. Preceptor Fairservis, the curious discoverer of the first marble, had realized he was dealing with a stasis-bound object and had unluckily managed to open it. The quantum genie inside had promptly eaten the hapless fellow who freed it, along with nine tenths of the expedition, before beginning a sure but slow descent toward the core of Chalk. Luckily an emergency response team swiftly dispatched by the planetary authorities had managed to activate a new entrapping marble big as a small city, its lower hemisphere underground, thus confining the rogue.

After this incident, the formerly disdained deserts of Chalk had experienced a land rush previously unparalleled in the galaxy. Soon the entire planet was divided into domains—many consisting of noncontiguous properties—each owned by one house or another. Prospecting began in earnest then. But the practice remained more an art than a science, as the marbles remained stealthy to conventional detectors. Intuition, geological knowledge of strata, and sheer luck proved the determining factors in the individual fortunes of the houses.

How the strangelets—plainly artifactual—came to be buried beneath Chalk’s soils and hardpan remained a mystery. No evidence of native intelligent inhabitants existed on the planet prior to the arrival of humanity. Had a cloud of strangelets been swept up out of space as Chalk made her eternal orbits? Perhaps. Or had alien visitors planted the strangelets for obscure reasons of their own? An equally plausible theory.

Whatever the obscure history of the strangelets, their current utility was beyond argument.

They made many people rich.

And some people murderous.

In the shadow of the Tasso Escarpments, adjacent to the Glabrous Drifts, Carrabas House sat desolate and melancholy, tenanted only by glass-tailed lizards and stilt-crabs, its poverty-overtaken heirs dispersed anonymously across the galaxy after a series of unwise investments, followed by the unpredictable yet inevitable exhaustion of their marble-bearing properties—a day against which Vomacht Stoessl had more providently hedged his own family’s fortunes.

Geisen’s zipflyte crunched to a landing on one of the manse’s grit-blown terraces, beside a gaping portico. The craft’s doors swung open and pilot and passenger emerged. Ailoura now wore a set of utilitarian roughneck’s clothing, tailored for her bestient physique and matching the outfit worn by her former charge, right down to their boots. Strapped to her waist was an antique yet lovingly maintained variable sword, its terminal bead currently dull and inactive.

“No one will trouble us here,” Geisen said with confidence. “And we’ll have a roof of sorts over our head while we plot our next steps. As I recall from a visit some years ago, the west wing was the least damaged.”

As Geisen began to haul supplies—a heater-cum-stove, sleeping bags and pads, water condensers—from their craft, Ailoura inhaled deeply the dry tangy air, her nose wrinkling expressively, then exhaled with zest. “Ah, freedom after so many years! It tastes brave, young Geisen!” Her claws slipped from their sheaths as she flexed her pads. She undipped her sword and flicked it on, the seemingly untethered bead floating outward from the pommel a meter or so.

“You finish the monkey work. I’ll clear the rats from our quarters,” promised Ailoura, then bounded off before Geisen could stop her. Watching her unfettered tail disappear down a hall and around a corner, Geisen smiled, recalling childhood games of strength and skill where she had allowed him what he now realized were easy triumphs.

After no small time, Ailoura returned, licking her greasy lips.

“All ready for our habitation, Geisen-kitten.”

“Very good. If the bold warrior will deign to lend a paw …?”

Soon the pair had established housekeeping in a spacious, weatherproof ground-floor room (with several handy exits), where a single leering window frame was easily covered by a sheet of translucent plastic. After distributing their goods and sweeping the floor clean of loess drifts, Geisen and Ailoura took a meal as their reward, the first of many such rude campfire repasts to come.

As they relaxed afterward, Geisen making notes with his stylus in a small pocket diary and Ailoura dragging her left paw continually over one ear, a querulous voice sounded from thin air.

“Who disturbs my weary peace?”

Instantly on their feet, standing back to back, the newcomers looked warily about. Ailoura snarled until Geisen hushed her. Seeing no one, Geisen at last inquired, “Who speaks?”

“I am the Carrabas marchwarden.”

The man and bestient relaxed a trifle. “Impossible,” said Geisen. “How do you derive your energy after all these years of abandonment and desuetude?”

The marchwarden chuckled with a trace of pride. “Long ago, without any human consent or prompting, while Carrabas House still flourished, I sank a thermal tap downward hundreds of kilometers. The backup energy thus supplied is not much, compared with my old capacities, but has proved enough for sheer survival, albeit with much dormancy.”