Ruler of Naught (56 page)

He regain the present, becoming aware of Morrighon staring
in utter horror. He realized that he was smiling, a rictus that made his face
ache.

“Sit down,” he ordered. Morrighon flopped bonelessly into a
chair, staring up at him, still fearful.

Anaris looked at him thoughtfully. It had taken some courage
to bring him that news. Fear, the underpinning of the Dol’jharian state, was
often as much an impediment to knowledge as a lash to efficiency. He had sensed
that between Barrodagh and his father—he could not afford that between
Morrighon and himself.

“You did well to awaken me, and you need not fear my wrath.
I bear the blame for this.” He saw the astonishment replace fear as he
continued. “We are not finished on Rifthaven...”

Just as he finished outlining his plan the room comm chimed,
signaling the deposit of a recorded message. He tabbed it on.

“This is Barrodagh, speaking for the Avatar. The Heart of
Kronos has been recovered. Preparations are beginning for departure to the
Suneater. The Panarch and his remaining councilors will be transferred to the
Fist
of Dol’jhar
. Your father desires you to hold yourself in readiness to
accompany them.”

Anaris tabbed acceptance and looked up. “He was rather vague
about the schedule.”

“He probably doesn’t know it yet,” replied Morrighon. “That
will be for Juvaszt to figure out.”

Anaris nodded, his thoughts running ahead, following the
implications of the Avatar’s decision. His father would be the last to leave
the planet, as required by Dol’jharian custom. But the face that filled his
mind’s eye was not Eusabian’s, it was Gelasaar’s. Did his father intend them to
meet face-to-face? What would he say to him? Barrodagh’s message had been
vague—deliberately, he was sure—concerning the nature of his escort duty. Would
he see the man who had fostered him or not?

As he turned his attention back to Morrighon to plan for
this new development, Anaris didn’t know which he would prefer.

o0o

Anderic’s fingers jerked spasmodically. He forced himself to
control his hands as he sidled a glance around the bridge. Most of the pods
were empty, their monitors on Z-watch. He’d promised sho-Imbris extra points in
whatever action they might meet if he’d do longer hours, and Ninn didn’t seem
to mind being in his pod most of the time. Neither looked up.

His fingers snaked out and he tabbed the keys to make certain
the logos was turned off.

Then he tried to calm his slamming heart as he watched
sho-Imbris lay in the new heading that Anderic had just required—a course
suggested by the logos.

But did I turn it on first or not?

He couldn’t remember. He squeezed his eyes shut, but there
was no refuge there, the dark behind his eyelids marred by the kaleidoscopic
frenzy of another visual migraine. He wondered if he was going mad—or maybe
Tallis’ eye, transplanted into his body against his will, was forcing him into
madness. Three times, now, he had spoken to find the logos on already, and he
did not remember turning it on.

He’d begun to convulsively tab it off every few minutes,
trying to make certain. And what about the flickers? It had to be the guilt
imposed by his Ozmiront upbringing creating those half-seen movements, like
disapproving faces, that thronged the corners of his vision when he was
fatigued, which was most of the time now.

If I could only sleep.
Anderic was sleeping in his
uniform—he’d had some of Tallis’s stripped of most of the bric-a-brac. He
couldn’t afford to be away from the bridge when the inevitable Panarchist
counterattack came. He’d programmed an immediate tactical skip away from
Arthelion in case of an attack, to give him time to get to the bridge and
maintain the illusion that he was fighting the ship. But he wasn’t sure the
logos wouldn’t just start fighting the ship without him instead.

The logos... and the crew. The uniform seemed to keep
discipline better, but it just accelerated his isolation from the crew, which
he feared was daily more under the sway of Kira and Luri. It seemed lately that
everyone on the
Satansclaw
was involved in the secret orgies—everyone,
that is, but its captain.

A pang in his eye reminded him of one of the reasons they
shunned him. The main reason? He flickered another look around. How could the
crew not know about the demonic presence of the logos haunting him, waking and
sleeping? Especially Kira Lennart, who must be puzzled by her inability to
overcome Anderic’s control of the computer, despite her greater experience.

That was the logos’s doing, but its inhuman perspective
couldn’t help him deal with the increasing chatter on the hyperwave. It was
getting harder and harder to sift useful data out of the flood of rumor and
braggadocio flooding the system.

Lennart could, though.

Jealousy burned in Anderic. Too bad if he interrupted her
usual fun and games. She was the worst of them, the ugly toad—seemed like every
time he spied on one of his crew, he interrupted bunny fun, and she was almost
always in it.

He smiled meanly.
Too bad, Lennart. Time to work.

He tabbed the locate.

o0o

Luri’s full red lips parted in a soft laugh. She hefted the
pot she’d brought out from the galley, and Kira Lennart smelled the scent of
fresh-melted chocolate.

“What’s that for?” she said.

“You shall see,” Luri whispered. “Luri has fun in mind.”

Kira laughed, her heart squeezing inside her. She couldn’t
help it. She knew Luri was not even remotely constant. In fact the only reason
why she saw as much of her as she did was that Kira participated willingly in
Luri’s plots to get rid of Anderic, but she didn’t care.

When she bunks me out I’ll hurt, and the rest of my life
I’ll probably bore people with the tale of my one great romance,
she
thought with rueful irony as they hurried down to the bilge area.
But until
then, I am going to build those memories.

Tallis looked up with painful expectancy in his one
remaining eye when they entered. Luri set down the pot carefully by her side,
and as her perfume and the chocolate chased away the faint, unpleasant tang of
bilge pervading the room, Kira realized why she must have brought the
chocolate.

It certainly had no part in their plans.

Kira tapped her boswell, and it flashed green. No monitors
active in the room. “It’s clear. I’ve finally gotten through some of Anderic’s
coding—I don’t know how he got so good. But now, if he runs a locate, we’ll
have a few seconds’ warning. I haven’t been able to do anything about the
spy-eyes yet.”

Luri touched Tallis’ cheeks. “Tal-lis must remember that he
doesn’t want Luri here, hmmm? If Anderic spies.”

Tallis sighed as the woman’s hands ran down his body, then
caressed the metal ball hanging on his member, hidden by the thin fabric of his
trousers.

“Luri will find out how to remove that,” she added softly.

Jealously stabbed at Kira, and to banish it, she said,
“Should we get to our planning? Tallis, you said next time you might have
something to tell us.” She added doubtfully, looking around the bilge chamber
which Tallis was unable to leave, “What have you found out?”

Tallis Y’Marmor rubbed his forehead. “It’s nothing I’ve
found out, it’s something—” He stopped, then said abruptly, “There’s a logos on
board.”

“A what?” Luri asked.

Nausea roiled Kira’s insides. “A what!”

Tallis looked from one to the other, then said to Luri,
“It’s a—an artificial intelligence.” He got it out quickly, avoiding looking at
Kira. “I had it installed. One of the ways it communicates is through an eye
implant, which is why Barrodagh did that to me.”

Kira fought back her revulsion, thinking quickly. “Anderic’s
an Ozmiront,” she said. “He won’t use it—”

“He already has,” Tallis said.

“How do you know that?”

Tallis shrugged, indicating his console. “I think it has
tried to contact me,” he said, looking distinctly greenish around the jowls.

Kira suppressed a shiver. Only Luri seemed supremely
undisturbed; whether because she was ignorant of what the logos was capable of,
or merely because anything which did not relate to her immediate plans was
automatically insignificant to her, Kira did not know.

“This makes things different—” Kira began. Then her boz’l
buzzed against her wrist. “Locate.”

Luri laughed, stood up, and in one magnificent gesture
ripped her gown free of her body. “Kira, you too.” As Lennart complied, excited
and confused at once, she turned to Tallis. “We shall return,” she murmured to
him, leaning forward to kiss him. “Now, remember: you are miserable, we are
teasing you with what you cannot have.”

She picked up the chocolate pot and held it in both hands.
Kira felt another buzz from her boz’l; the imager had now activated.

“Tal-lis,” Luri said in her breathy singsong. “We are here
to alleviate your bore-dom. You get to watch while Kira and Luri have fun.” She
lifted the pot and spilled the half-congealed dark liquid down the front of her
naked body, then stepped forward and spilled more on Kira, who jerked as the
liquid flowed down her chest, kindling an answering warmth. “You get to watch
and see if Kira and Luri can lick each other off in... would you like to guess
how long it will take?”

Tallis gave a low whimper.

o0o

Anderic groaned. Again! He watched, fascinated, his nacker
painful as the two women writhed, glistening with streaks of chocolate in
fascinating accents against Luri’s amber and Lennart’s coffee-colored flesh, in
front of the miserable one-eyed Tallis. Anger, jealousy, and lust burned in
him; he might as well be down there in the bilge with Tallis, a dyplast ball on
his nacker, for all the bunny he was getting.

Then a thought struck. Quickly he tapped open a record bank
and started storing the image from the bilgebay, ignoring the curious looks
from sho-Imbris and Ninn.

Then he waited until Luri and Lennart reached the climax of
their chocolate romp, squealing with delight.

Smiling, Anderic sealed the record under his own personal
code and then patched it into the hyperwave for random replay. Lennart would
find it and cancel it despite the coding, he was sure, but by then
someone—several someones, no doubt—would have recorded it, and made certain it
would become staple entertainment on the Rifter bilge-banging session that
formed an increasingly large part of the traffic on the hyperwave.

Then he tabbed the call key. “Lennart, I need you on the
bridge.” He cut the connection without waiting for an acknowledgment and
returned to his command pod.

He was looking forward to Lennart’s reaction to her newfound
fame.

Osri Omilov stepped back and surveyed himself in the mirror.
He was as ready as he could be for his first meeting with Captain Nukiel. A
haircut, a new uniform, and behind him the familiar dimensions of the standard
lieutenant’s cabin, and he felt as if the universe had righted itself again.
Looking at the reassuringly routine sight, he could almost pretend that the
past weeks of flight and captivity had not happened, that life was normal
again.

But they had happened, and neither outside nor inside this
ship was life normal. Over everything loomed the mystery of Desrien. Why were
they going
there?
Osri’s mind shied away from the question. He’d been
hoping for some sort of explanation during the debriefing he’d expected as soon
as he officially reported in. Instead he’d been assigned to the captain’s watch
and told to hold himself available. Then an invitation to breakfast with the
captain—extended also to Osri’s father, a civilian.

Osri grimaced. The irregularity was of a piece with
everything else. Somewhere in the bowels of
Mbwa Kali
, the crew of the
Telvarna
now enjoyed the hospitality of the brig—which apparently had expanded
drastically since the battlecruiser took up station off Rifthaven. Elsewhere
the now-Aerenarch Brandon vlith-Arkad enjoyed a sumptuous guest suite.

With Sebastian Omilov, Osri’s father, as his guest.

Osri turned away from the mirror and opened the drawer where
he’d put the flight ribbon and the coin. The return of the latter had been a
surprise to him, especially given the recognition in the eyes of the warrant
officer who’d restored the artifacts to him.
Another anomaly.
Perhaps
the woman’s muttered comment as he’d turned away, not meant for his ears, was
the fact of the matter.
Supercargo.
For a piece of history so rare its
value was incalculable.

He took a perverse pleasure in the fact that the Rifters,
safely housed in the brig, did not know that he had the two items, nor would
they be likely to find out. Nor would Brandon know.

Osri’s mood sobered as he turned his thoughts from that to
his father’s situation.

Breakfast was to be not in the Senior Officers Mess, but in
the guest suite that Sebastian and Brandon shared. Osri did not know why his
father had insisted on this, though he spoke of health reasons. Perhaps it was
to gauge how cooperative the Navy really was—since the invitation was basically
a summons to an interrogation—and perhaps it was just more of his oblique
diplomatic sidestepping.

Just before retiring, Omilov had asked his son to join him
early.

Osri’s fingers groped at his left wrist, a convulsive
movement that reached consciousness when his finger pads hit the standard
boswell he’d been issued. He fought back the urge to record his thoughts;
instead, he scooped up the ribbon and the coin and put them in his breast
pocket.

Walking quickly up the corridor towards the transtube, he
thought about telling his father about the artifacts, and discovered he was
reluctant.