In the Hall of the Martian King (32 page)

After a long time, Jak was able to form the words “What’s happening?” so that they could be understood. It was the most obvious
possible thing, but then the situation seemed to call for obviousness.

“Well,” Gweshira said, “it so happened that there was some old Greenworld business that Sib had been involved in, and that
Her Utmost Grace and I were taking advantage of the chance to talk it over. And the subject of you came up. And I happened
to have a visit with Bex Riveroma later that day, for quite different reasons—a little conversation about relations between
Circle Four and Triangle One, actually, perhaps leading up to an armistice, because our two zybots have been feuding rather
a long time with no gain to either. And between all the conversations, we realized that it was high time to just get rid of
that sliver, which has been forever making a mess of your life, old pizo. It was Bex Riveroma’s chance to destroy it and to
know it really was destroyed; your chance to have it removed with friends watching; my chance to put that whole intrigue to
bed for Circle Four.”

“And I had some personal reasons as well,” Shyf said.

“We didn’t think Hive Intel would approve if we asked you in the presence of your purse. And it was better for you to be given
no choice—that way you can’t be blamed. Anyway, except for a few millimeters of fresh scar, your liver is now just like anyone
else’s, and you probably won’t ever need to see Bex Riveroma again.”

“But what about Riveroma getting away, free as a bird, with all those crimes?”

“Oh, he always
was
going to get away. That was never the question. He was a pro—he’d probably never have been arrested, or not prosecuted, or
not convicted, or he’d have escaped—one way or another. And he knew that, about the five crimes whose files we had loaded
into the sliver. We, and he, knew that all of it was things that no government anywhere would ever actually touch. Every one
of them was crawling with nascent disasters for any polity stupid enough to prosecute Bex. And unless Clarbo Waynong becomes
supreme dictator, there will never be a government that dumb.

“That was always the whole point, Jak. He had kidnapped Princess Shyf on behalf of the Duke of Uranium. That was a pretty
normal crime, as crimes between aristos go. Not a big deal. We needed to make Bex want to release her more than he wanted
to keep her. So we needed some leverage, some threat that would make him change his mind, especially if he forced us to carry
out our threat. That was all there ever was to it.

“So we made the sliver and stuck it in you and threatened him, but what we were threatening him with were things that would
inconvenience him, make him do some running and hiding, force him to change some identities and abandon some schemes. The
idea was that we’d threaten to put a kink in his hose for a couple of decades, that was all. It was never about killing him
or locking him up, and still less about bringing him to justice (as if that idea meant anything!).”

“But he’s ruined people’s lives and messed up all of history—”

“We all have, silly boy. It’s what we do. Now, I’m going to get out of here because you and Shyf have things to talk about.”
She got up and left. Shyf waited a moment. She drew a breath and gently ran a hand over Jak’s face. “No doubt your purse is
recording this and relaying it back to Doctor Mejitarian at Hive Intel.”

Jak sat straight up struck as if by a kick to his solar plexus.

“Of course I
know,
silly,” Shyf said. “I discuss it now and then with some of the Hive Intel psych people, keeping the right balance, making
sure you don’t become either too independent or too dependent, things like that, masen? Think about it. That big monkey Dujuv
that you’re so fond of was panth-bonded to Myx, and I also had Dujuv conditioned to me, and after just a few weeks of deconditioning,
he’s been completely free of his bonding to either of us. And he’s a
panth.
The genies have programmed twenty generations of that bloodline to imprint and bond deeply, he’s naturally the most loyal
lover and friend you could have, the singing-on essence of the tove for life, and yet deconditioning worked on him in less
than three months. You’re an unmodified native-stock human, you get sessions a couple of times a week and at-home treatment
too, and it
still
hasn’t worked on you?”

“But I get deconditioned all the time! After every message from you! Plus I see Doctor Mejitarian twice a week and he puts
me under and—”

“Jak, how do you know that what’s being done is
de
conditioning? Conditioning wears off naturally. I have to rework all the Royal Palace Guards all the time. Conditioning wouldn’t
last anything like as long as it has lasted in you, all by itself. And the messages I’ve been sending you haven’t been the
reason. It’s nearly impossible to condition someone—at least someone who doesn’t want to be conditioned—at a distance, and
non-interactively. At least some big part of Doctor Mejitarian’s ‘deconditioning’ has been ‘reconditioning.’ You didn’t realize?
Too bad. Of course it was all at my request, as you might guess. Greenworld and the Hive are old allies, masen?”

Jak gaped at her, as shivering-cold as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over him. Shyf was certainly a skilled enough
liar, but it was undismissably likely that at least some of what she was saying was true. “But why would they—”

“Oh, Mejitarian can explain all that much better than I can. And Dean Caccitepe better still.” She dismissed the entire issue
with a captivating little wave of her perfect, elegant fingers.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I don’t want you conditioned to me anymore, Jak. I had to use the conditioning, one more time, to get that sliver
out of you, but these nice people at Paxhaven have been working with you on deconditioning, and with me on—well, never mind,
that’s complicated. Anyway, I prefer you free to conditioned. So I am returning the toy Hive Intel gave me, and I’m maybe
telling him I’d rather he didn’t let Hive Intel play so rough with him anymore.

“It’s obvious, Jak, that all men are
not
created equal. Not even close. But a few men are crated eagles. And I’m the one that crated you, and your crate-er has just
decided to endow you with your unalienable rights. Sorry to give you your freedom in a series of bad puns, but that’s the
way it goes, sometimes, important gifts show up wrapped in old newspapers, masen? Send me a message or something sometime,
if you like, but I’d rather hear about you in the headlines and the gossip channels. Go fly. Make me proud.” She got up, bent
to kiss him, her mouth already opening … then stopped herself. She asked him, “May I shake your hand?”

“Sure,” Jak said, holding his hand up as if he were a dog presenting a paw on command.

“I don’t know, strictly, what I’m doing this time, Jak. Maybe I’m giving you the freedom because I want you to have it. Don’t
think this means I became your friend. It only means … you’re free.”

She let go of his hand and left.

After a while, Jak walked out into the warm sunlight of the polar night, through the quiet dark alleys, hearing and seeing
nothing, until at last he found a narrow stretch of sand, a dune that had blown into a crevice, where he could stretch out
on his back and sleep in the sun.

Borcles woke him with a touch on his shoulder. “And a pleasant morning to you,” Borcles said. “You’re absolutely right, this
is a lovely place to sleep, and it’s a fabulous change of venue for practice today. Let’s start on the tewaza, shall we?”

“So that’s the issue; now that we know what’s in that lifelog, do we turn it loose in the solar system? (In many places it
won’t be believed anyway … )” King Dexorth said.

“I don’t think it matters if it all comes crashing down, as long as what grows to replace it is founded on truth,” Dujuv said.

“But what if the Galactic Court issues an Extermination Order while we’re having a solar-system-wide religious war?” Myxenna
demanded. “And a lot of people are going to suffer in the upheavals. It’s not such a bad world, even if it’s founded on delusions—”

The argument went on for hours; the longer it went, the less Jak felt that he had a side.

After the meeting, Jak returned to his room to find Myxenna already in there, sitting on his bed. “I really don’t know why
I have a lock,” he said.

“I was going to ask you the same thing. Your purse badly needs an upgrade; its security is about shot.” She yawned and stretched.
“So, you’re rid of the Princess. She released you and the deconditioning seems to have worked. You’ll have troublesome feelings
now and then, but that will fade, and one day you’ll be completely free of her. Even now, she doesn’t really exert more than
a mild influence on your decisions. I am authorized to ask you if you feel better.”

“ ‘I am authorized …’ Are we still friends, Myx? Or do you just represent Hive Intel?”

“Depends on what moment you ask me, old pizo, but if it’s up to me, we’re always friends, solid pizos, toktru toves.”

“But you also are a rising star in Hive Intel. Whereas, at the moment, I’m a resource of dubious value,” Jak said. “And I
speck that has something to do with your being here.”

“That’s right,” she said. “There’s a very simple plan that can completely redeem the mission for you. You’ll get the lifelog
for the Hive, and you’ll get the credit to Clarbo Waynong, and you’ll get a regular posting with Hive Intel. Or, of course,
you can wander off in anger and self-pity just because the world isn’t what you want it to be. Your choice.”

“What if I decide I just want to walk away from everything? Take a regular civilian agency posting, maybe even see if PASC
will take me back as a low-ranker?”

“You’d be the assistant administrator at some mine in the asteroids, you know.”

“I could do that job.”

“You could.” She said it flatly, obviously agreeing that it was possible. “Shyf just turned you free because she thought you
were too much of a hero, a do-er, an achiever, to be her slave. I always thought you were
the
friend of mine who was going places. And your Uncle Sib—well, that isn’t really fair to mention him, at a time like this,
masen? But you’re right. I know you could put your head down, suck up the boredom, and do that.” She looked at him. “I just
don’t think you will.”

With a sinking feeling, Jak said, “All right, what’s the plan?”

It occurred to Jak that this was his third attempt at stealing the Nakasen lifelog, and the first for which he had any faith
in the planning. Myxenna had procured a Harris Fast-box recording block of a matching age and general description. She had
penetrated Dujuv’s and Xlini’s purses to obtain passwords. The plan was simply that she would let Jak into the archive, he
would switch the empty recording block for the Nakasen lifelog, and he would deliver it to Clarbo Waynong, who would immediately
be picked up by a Hive submersible shuttle, which would then jump up to orbit with him, thus taking the Nakasen lifelog into
Hive Intel’s possession. Jak knew that though there were undoubtedly many partial copies, the full and authenticated copy
was irreplaceable to begin with (since only the block itself could vouch for the recording within Nakasen’s lifetime, as opposed
to its being a clever forgery) and furthermore, since most lifelogs contained literally decades of vid footage, it was unlikely
that it had all been copied even yet. Even if it had, without the physical block to authenticate, Hive Intel would always
be in a position to disinform against anything unacceptable that came out of the Nakasen lifelog, making sure that respectable
people thought it was a forgery.

Jak was wearing a gi, cloak, and high-tops to be less conspicuous, all black to blend in better. The side door of the archive
opened to his purse’s command just as it was supposed to. He walked through the silent shelves of books, papers, and recordings,
following a tiny infrared sprite in his goggles.

The high security archive room opened easily, and Jak stepped inside. The little vault, just big enough for the lifelog, also
popped open at his purse’s command. He pulled out the lifelog and put in the fake; closed it back up; and retraced his steps,
locking doors behind him. In three minutes he had the thing.

Waynong was waiting right where he was supposed to be. Myx had made it clear that Jak was to wait until Waynong was actually
on the submersible before taking his eyes off the young patrician and the lifelog. So they stood there in the dark, on the
narrow pier, waiting.

“I don’t exactly know how to thank you,” Waynong said, after a while.

“For what?”

“For being so good at your job. For letting me see how much I’m not good at it. For being polite to me when you had every
reason not to be. King Dexorth was right, you know. There’s a lot for me to learn. And I’ve been resisting it most of my life.
You helped me to see that it really did make a difference what I learned, and how I did things. I’ll probably never be very
smart, nor even very well informed, but thanks to you, and Dujuv, and to King Dexorth, and Paxhaven generally, I don’t think
of knowledge or learning as some kind of nasty conspiracy intended to keep me from my rightful place. I might not even think
I have a rightful place anymore. Not, at least, till I know a few things.”

The smooth black water in front of them stirred. A dark smooth surface rose, and water ran off it. A hatch opened, forming
a darker circle within the dark ovoid of the exposed submersible shuttle. Waynong and Jak clasped forearms, and then Waynong,
carefully clutching the precious object to his chest, stepped down into the waiting craft. It closed up and was gone.

As Jak walked back through the narrow alleys, he thought about how little excitement there had been on that mission—tension,
yes, but excitement, almost none—a textbook demonstration about how things got into textbooks—

Distant thunder—the submersible would have waited to break surface till it was over the horizon, and now it was rising from
the Phobos-lit sea, ascending in a stream of water and flame.