The Duke Of Uranium (3 page)

“I’m going to see if I can get on a professional slamball team.” Dujuv said, his voice oddly tense. Jak noted that Dujuv’s usually relaxed shoulders were hanging high. This was something Duj cared about and was expecting a fight about, so Jak resolved at once that no matter what, he was going to back his tove.

Even though this might be, toktru, the stupidest idea he’d ever heard.

“Well,” Jak ventured, “you’re a hell of an athlete even for a panth, and you’re a determined sort of a heet, and I think you’ll probably make it.”

Duj smiled at him. “Thanks.”

But Jak couldn’t quite stop himself from saying, “It’s just that I can’t quite believe you were worried about

me getting killed in battle if you’re planning to play slamball.”

“People are not supposed to die at slamball.”

“But they do.” Jak knew he should shut up, but he couldn’t seem to make himself. Dujuv was too important to him, and he could practically hear his Uncle Sib’s often-repeated comment that slamball was something like the ancient Roman arena and something like medieval American television but without the intelligence and compassion of either. “Dujuv, last year was a safety record for the league—they only killed twenty-eight players. Most of those were goalies. And a panth—especially an athlete like you—will be a goalie!”

“Jak, toktru, I did my homework on the subject. Even goalies don’t get killed if they’re good. There’s two hundred teams in pro slamball, and they all have five goalies. It was only sixteen out of a thousand, and at least half of those were heets who should have retired years ago and just stayed in too long. Krayjnean, the Hive National goalie that got killed, was depressed and suicidal about getting too old to play, and he had told people he wanted his league life insurance to pay off to take care of his family—you can’t really count that death as an accident. There’s usually a couple like that every year, masen? So those shouldn’t count. And like I said, if you’re good, you don’t get killed. See, I did the research.”

Jak wanted to argue further but he was already breaking a promise to himself. “Yeah, I dak it’s mostly marginal and too-old goalies that get killed. And you’re not going to be marginal, ever, and by the time you’re getting to be a gwont, with your brains—assuming nobody scrambles ‘em for you—you can move into coaching or managing, especially if you have a good record.”

“I’m going to have a great record.” Dujuv’s gaze was level and serious. “You and I are not so different.

We’re both willing to take a little risk to get some travel and adventure. My goal, to start with, is to make it onto Hive National within a couple of years, and volunteer for the travel squad. They go everywhere, even Earth.”

“Earth? With all the other opportunities, why do you want to go there? It’s a giant collection of pocks in su-perhigh grav.”

“Have you seen the pictures of the beaches around those pocks? And the girls on the beaches? Like say in the pock clusters in North Australia or in Arizona?”

Jak nodded. “I can see your point. If it’s not a sore subject, where does Myx fit into this?”

“She’d look light on a beach, toktru, but you can trust me this time: Myxenna Bonxiao and I are completely, totally, utterly, toktru through, masen? Never again. She’s not my demmy and I’m not her mekko and we won’t be again. All over.”

“Weehu, I’m sorry to hear that,” Jak said. He did not believe a word of what his tove was saying. After all,

it had never been true in all the many times that Dujuv had said it before. But though he didn’t believe it, he knew that right now his tove needed sympathy, and Jak had plenty of practice at extending sympathy in the circumstances.

“What happened?” Jak asked. This time, he thought.

“Oh, some of it’s happened so often that you could almost just say ‘the usual,’ masen? She just won’t leave other heets alone, and she’s always very sorry and acts toktru sweet and does outrageously kind and considerate things, afterward, and then I go running back. But I’ve decided that this time I’m never, never, never going running back. We’ll still be friends and be in touch all the time, masen, because we have a long history and I adore the girl and all, and if either of us needs it the other one will be there, that goes without saying, and so forth, of course, but I’m not going running back. It’s just too far beneath any reasonable semblance of my dignity.

“But anyway, look, Jak, we were talking about my career choice, and I can tell you’re biting your tongue trying to support me, which toktru I appreciate more than I can say, because none of my family and none of my other friends are doing that. So what I can admit to you is what I can’t admit to them: I dak the odds are rotten, but—I’m ambitious. Furthermore, thanks for the compliment but I’m not very smart, not even for a panth. The genies made me to be an athlete, cop, or soldier, not any kind of great brain. The jobs I could get in the more conventional line would be the Army (and I already told you how I feel about that), or asteroid pioneering (which means being out in the void for most of my life), or being a pokheet—hassling teenagers to keep them from doing stuff that looks like harmless fun to me.”

Jak shrugged. “You don’t seem crazy to me, Duj.”

“Too small a sample for a valid poll!”

The boys started at the sudden voice outside the door. With a soft ping, the booth door went transparent and Sesh and Myx were standing there. Jak clicked the unlock, the girls slid in beside the boys, and the door closed, locked, and opaqued again. Sesh grabbed Jak and kissed him passionately; she was a great kisser, so Jak stopped thinking about anything else except how good her tongue felt in his mouth and how nice her body felt in his hands. When they came up for air, Sesh had that soft, damp-eyed smile that always made Jak’s heart pound.

Sesh nodded to her left, grinning, and winked at Jak. Myxenna and Dujuv were kissing, or rather Myxenna was kissing and Dujuv was pinned to the wall, but she was doing enough kissing for both of them. Sesh breathed in Jak’s ear, “He’s been all jealous and cranky lately, so she’s trying to get him out of it.”

“Might be working,” he muttered back. “Either that or he’s about to pass out from hypoxia.”

While they waited for Dujuv to give in or Myx to give up, Jak enjoyed looking at Sesh; he couldn’t

imagine ever having a demmy he liked better. She was tall and slender, and at least one of her ancestors must have been a gracile, for her muscles had the flat, long, strong, chiseled look of that breed, and she always moved from her center, with smooth power, like a natural athlete. She tan-patterned her light coffee skin, so that her face and body were marked with a deep brown tiger stripe; she had deep blue eyes and flame-red hair. Her white one-piece coverall, short-legged and short-sleeved, fit her loosely enough to be modest but did not hide the fine-ness of her body; like everything else about her, it was perfectly chosen and singingon right for her.

Duj and Myx gave no signs that they were ever going to stop. Sesh shrugged. Loudly, she said, “Ahem, I say, ahem. Myx, let’s tell the boys what we came here for.”

“I think my boy has a pretty clear idea,” she said, sitting back. She was a tiny young woman, with thick, full, black hair, green eyes with blue starring, and pale skin spattered with small freckles. The violet clingsheath she wore fit high on her thigh and she had tugged it higher on one side.

She put on her little puckish smile—the one that had lured Jak, a few times, into things that truly made him appreciate Sesh’s tolerance—and said, “Well, we came here to check up on you, and to cheer you up.

Once you access your own scores, they become public domain, so we found out what happened to you.

Then we called the monitors on your purses, and we saw what your moods were like, and here we are, the Sunshine Squad, to cheer you up.”

Duj was obviously processed. “I thought you and I agreed we wouldn’t monitor moods through the purses—”

“That’s what we agreed,” Myx said, “and we did switch off the monitors on each other’s emotions. You seemed to want to do that and it made you so happy when I agreed.”

“But then you switched on again!”

“Well, of course. Just because I could make you happy by switching it off, didn’t mean I was going to leave it switched off. I wanted to dak what you were feeling. I just didn’t want you to dak what I was feeling. That’s important to a demmy, Dujy. I’d think you’d know that by now.” To avoid looking at him, she made a show of fixing her lipstick.

Sesh sighed. “Duj, if you ever want to be treated as nicely as you deserve, just let me know, and I’ll find you someone who will think the world of you and treat you accordingly.”

“Mom’s already married,” he said, gloomily. “So if you two are here to cheer us up, you must have done all right yourselves.”

Sesh raised her shoulders and lowered them, a shrug made into a dance, calling attention to her long, beautiful neck. “Myx sailed right through. I told you I didn’t feel very much like I did a singingon job,

right after the test. As it happens, I didn’t make it—in fact I bombed out. So that’s the score for our little crowd—three losers and one winner.”

Myxenna spread her hands, as if she were looking for some way to apologize for her success. “I’m still kind of baffled, myself. Toktru, I thought the test was way too hard and I didn’t think I did very well. But apparently I guessed right an awful lot of times, or just dakked the overall rhythm somehow, because I got 9241.”

“9241 is brilliant,” Jak said, swallowing envy as fast as he could.

Dujuv nodded. “So you’re in for the PSA, and I guess that means eventually you’ll be Prime Minister Myx

“

“I think maybe Minister for External Affairs Myx. It’s where I’m best qualified.”

Dujuv made a little, coughing laugh. “If I’d said that—”

“You’d better not even think it, Dujy. All right, so I’m in public service, and what are you toves going to do?”

“The Army.”

“I’m going to try out for pro slamball.”

Jak noted with approval that neither of the girls voiced a word of disapproval. “So what are you planning on, Sesh?”

She sighed. “Can you be nonjudgmental?”

“I can try,” Jak said, and Myx added, “Of course we can.” Dujuv nodded.

“Well, there’s a lot of money in my family. I don’t think I’ll be picking any occupation.”

After a painful, dead silence, Myx said, “You can’t possibly mean you plan to register S.P.”

Sesh nodded. “I do mean that.” After an awkward pause, when she seemed to be waiting for one of them to say something, she added, “It’s not such a big deal anymore. Toktru it’s not. And you can still do lots of interesting things if you’re registered S.P. You just can’t do anything for money or have any responsibility. That’s not a big deal.”

S.P. stood for Social Parasite—a person who lived off family money. A registered Social Parasite was a

pariah with sharp restrictions on legal rights: S.P.S could own common stock but the government voted it; they had the same free expression rights as anyone else but couldn’t vote; they could sue but not speak in court or serve on a jury. Getting your feets back after registering S.P. was painfully difficult, beginning with a mandatory unpaid five-year hitch in the Forces and continuing through four years of re-education and probation. It was a permanent repository for idiot children of the rich, hopelessly ec-centric artists, dangerous incompetents, and the incurably annoying. Although people no longer suicided when they were declared S.P., most 350-year-olds, the oldest generation still alive, would rather have been registered as sex criminals than S.P., and even among young people there was still widespread support for sterilizing S.P.S.

“You’re really going to do it,” Jak said.

“Toktru.”

“But, you’re not superrich or anything. I mean you don’t dress especially well—”

“Thanks.”

“I should have said, you don’t dress rich. Don’t change the subject. I mean I’ve never seen any evidence that you were rich, and we’ve been mekko and demmy for more than two years. You don’t vacation on the moon or anything.”

“Not lately. I’ve been there, though, on vacation, when I was younger. And I’ve been to the Aerie many times. And to Mars, and to Earth. It’s just that that was all before you knew me. I didn’t travel for the last three years because I wanted to finish gen school. Toktru, once I’m registered S.P. and don’t have to hide the trust fund from my toves anymore, I’ll probably travel much more.”

All of them stared at Sesh; none of them had any idea what to say. “Look,” she said, “it’s not a big deal.

I’m not evil. The Wager makes perfect sense if you’re smart and ambitious and need to make money because your trust fund isn’t big enough. But I’m glib more than smart, my main ambition is nice things and lots of time off, and I can afford all that without any job. And it makes sense to teach the Wager to people so that they’re more predictable and easier to get what you want from, but I don’t care whether I’m predictable or whether anyone gets what they want from me. The Wager is a great set of values to channel people trying to make it into useful pathways, but I was born with it made, and I have no intention of being useful, which is the first step on the road to being used. I’m not going to wear a skirt that doesn’t suit my long legs or go out with a heet that doesn’t suit my sarcastic taste in humor, so why should I have values that don’t suit my real position?” She sighed. “It’s nice to just tell you all this. I’m tired of having to tell you that I won an advertising contest or a sweepstakes or something whenever I want to take you somewhere pricey.”

“Oh, no,” Myx said. “So you were just—”

“Toktru masen! And I’m doing it again. After all, there’s so much money, toktru it doesn’t mean anything to me, but my friends mean a lot to me, and fun means a lot to me. I can afford the lightest, usually many times over, and I like taking you all to places that are light. So—no arguments!—I’m financing some fun with my friends, tonight.”

“Sesh, no—” Dujuv began.

“I just happen to have four tickets for the closing performance of Y4UB.”