A Princess of the Aerie (37 page)

“The miners really need—”

“The miners really need a media consultant. They’ll get their schools and health plan and so forth out of this, but they should
be sitting at the table as one of the players in the solar system, and once again, they’re shut out. Too bad for them they
didn’t have a real hardcase bastard like Riveroma take over. He’d have gotten them somewhere.”

Jak discovered that the “calm love” command precluded arguing; he specked that was one of Sesh’s favorite things about it.
“Well, if you didn’t intend to send me after Riveroma, what did you intend?”

“I thought I could bend you and Dujuv, and maybe Myx, into a fatal fight with some of the Royal Palace Guards. Ideally I could
have provoked them into an attempted coup and the three of you could have foiled it, and several RPGs and ladies in waiting
would have gotten dead—I’d have rigged things to make sure it came out that way—and I’d have had several fewer problems to
worry about, and a lot of favorable coverage because Sinda’s story about you was bound to reflect well on me.

“Instead, that stupid half-animal, your tove, bonded right to the ones I most wanted killed. So Sinda wanted to send you to
Mercury, and Mattanga came up with a way to get you out of Greenworld—only Riveroma failed us, too. One of Mattanga’s best
schemes ever, too.”

“If she’s so good, why did you fire her?”

“I didn’t. She suffered an accident.”

Jak froze; he knew the game, he knew the rules, but he remembered Mattanga’s kindness to him, her gratitude to Dujuv—

Sesh sat up in bed, sucking in her gut, sticking out her breasts, and putting on a pouty face. “Now I know you’re angry; it’s
just the ‘calm love’ that’s keeping you from being able to touch the feeling. That’s why you feel weird and disoriented and
numb.”

He nodded; that was what he felt.

“It was nothing personal. All right, it’s soundproof in here … let’s have some excitement and danger. When you were a well-intentioned
goof with a nice body, you could be fun in the right mood, but now that I know the devious treacherous bastard underneath,
I’m toktru hot for you. Release rage. Hard.”

Halfway through, he looked into her eyes and knew that apart from the speed and force, what she was really enjoying was his
self-disgust.

When it was over, she put her arms around him and murmured “Calm love, calm love, calm love,” until he fell asleep with her
lying on his chest, breathing the dense synthetic pheromone mix from her hair, warmer and happier than he’d ever felt before.

Until the ship left, he did his Disciplines practice, enjoyed Myxenna’s body, wandered around Greenworld seeing the sights,
and made his nightly patrols. Always, while he watched the sprite, he willed it to turn suddenly toward the Heir’s Palace.
It never did.

When the time came, he packed his jumpie and, along with Shadow and Myxenna, boarded the
Ceres Throne,
a quarkjet liner; the Princess was generous about that.
Ceres Throne
had no need to run dark, like a warship; her quark-jets supplied a steady tenth of a g, exactly what passengers tended to
find most comfortable, and the 258 million kilometers from the Aerie to the Hive was a nearly straight line, clipping well
inside Venus’s orbit and taking only twelve days. Liners actually spent much more time having their thrusters rebuilt and
their Casimir volumes retuned—a necessity at every stop—than they did en route, but from a passenger’s viewpoint, it was great,
assuming you could afford a ticket that cost as much as large home on the light decks of the Hive. Jak didn’t expect he’d
be getting too many more rides like this one.

At Greenworld, on shipboard, and once he was home, Jak recorded and sent a message to Dujuv twice a day, giving him the same
story and explanation over and over; about every two weeks, Dujuv would send a short, curt note, text only, telling him what
he had been doing (mainly recording testimony, arguing with lawyers and agents, and occasionally working out in the field),
about his new hobby (Dujuv had gotten bitten badly by the ancient languages bug, as had Phrysaba, and the two of them were
now pen-pals in three dead languages), and about his political activity (Dujuv had joined the United Breeds, an organization
that sent whiny, hectoring letters to the media about stereotyping and tried to make breed children feel special—at least
that was as much as Jak could speck). No note from Dujuv ever referred to anything about their friendship or Jak’s behavior.

While on
Ceres Throne,
Jak did his CUPV duties mostly around the reactor and synthesizers, and started to learn a little astrogation from Shadow.
He saw little of Myx; turned loose among fashionable young rich men, she was nearly always busy.

On his off shifts, he sat in the observation lounges, beside Shadow. Occasionally he listened to the strange, violent, seemingly
aimless stories of the Rubahy. Mostly they just sat facing outward toward the dark dotted with stars.

* * *

“Well, what an interesting year for you,” Dean Caccitepe said, meeting Jak as he airswam through the dilating door. “Probably
most interesting because you’ve seen so little of me. Grab a seat, we’ve a little talking to do, but I don’t think any of
it will be unpleasant, or at least I have nothing unpleasant on the agenda.” He airswam back to his own seat, behind the desk,
but then popped over the desk and perched on its edge near Jak. It was much more informal but it also put the tall ange into
a position where he loomed over Jak like a vulture, sitting reared back with his long legs and arms tucked in close and looking
down his long nose. But the Dean’s smile seemed kind and genuine. “Not only did you start off with a brilliantly completed
Junior Task, but you also did better in all of your classes than you’d ever done before in your life—I know students hate
the expression, but you lived up to your potential.”

Jak shrugged. “Everyone keeps telling me what a success my Junior Task was for the Hive, and I know that I learned a lot.”
It seemed like a safely neutral thing to say.

“And,” the Dean said, “I would have thought it was impossible, but I have not had you in here all year, this year, though
in your previous two years you might as well have had a cot in the waiting room. I have had no disciplinary in-fractions of
any kind to deal with. Now, though I am forced by circumstances to believe that Jak Jinnaka can go a year without getting
caught, it is beyond my power to believe that Jak Jinnaka can go a year without doing anything.” The Dean cocked his head
to the side as if to get a better angle on a worm. “So, what’s going on? Is it that Dujuv is on leave, and you don’t have
anyone to do things with?”

“Um, no.”

“Is it that he was always the least adroit liar of the team and often got you caught?”

“It’s nothing to do with him.”

“You have lost your taste for pushing your luck to see where it breaks—”

“Not a good guess.”

“You no longer enjoy getting caught.”

Jak was about to deny that he had ever enjoyed getting caught. But the Dean would be pleased with himself, and therefore pleased
with Jak, if one of the guesses proved right. “I was going to try to convince you that that one isn’t true, sir, but I
have
learned to really enjoy not getting caught, and … well, I guess that’s all. I don’t like being a bad boy anymore. I really
like being a successful sneak.”

Dean Caccitepe smiled as if he had just killed something. “I have no doubt that someday you will be one of the Hive’s finest
operatives. We worry about such things. There are, unfortunately, people who are masters of deceit but cannot leave their
good work alone. Some of them—it’s all too common—are obsessed with truth, and that is
why
lies fascinate them. Indeed they become such proficient liars
because
their minds are constantly nattering on, in the background, about the issues of truth: what
should
it look like, how does each individual tell truth from lies, how can all the different kinds of truth-filters be spoofed,
are there any that can’t be, how does the fit between the true part and the false part make a lie more or less effective.
But they are people who should be philosophers, not operatives.

“I have an acute interest in this myself, you know.” He wrapped himself in his own arms and stroked his long-fingered hands
down his own long, lean triceps, unconsciously preening. “If you check the library you will find three monographs of mine
on just that personality type. Furthermore, I shall authorize you to access the fourth one.” Jak at least had learned how
to recognize a completely unsubtle hint, so he said, “Well, I’ll read all of them. They sound interesting. If it’s okay to
ask, though, the classified one sounds like the most interesting, so what’s it about? Or do I need to read the unclassified
ones to dak it toktru?”

“It isn’t classified, Jak. It was conditionally suppressed.” This was beyond strange; conditional suppression was the category
the pokheets and courts used for heresy and for peaceable sedition.

“But,” Jak said, “you can clear me to read it?”

“The work is about a century old, Jak. So in the eyes of the law there are two separate Caccitepes. There is Caccitepe who
long ago wrote a scholarly study that was ruled heretical and conditionally suppressed, and who also long ago served his sentence.
Then there is Caccitepe the distinguished scholar with forty years in Hive Intel, who is now the Dean of Students at the Public
Service Academy. And that latter Caccitepe has the power to authorize any student to read any suppressed work.

“Now, as for why it was suppressed, I say with some pride that my heresy was not just any heresy. We were just discussing
those talented-but-oddly-handicapped liars whose propensity, proficiency, and perspicacity in lying all arise from their fixation
on the truth. They very often, you see, later in life, change overnight to rigorous truth-telling.

“This is so common that for millennia the secret services of every nation have been bedeviled with people who keep deciding
that ‘the public must be told.’ I argued that just such a personality—the truth-obsessed liar—was evident in the historical
record of Paj Nakasen. Mostly back when he was plain old Bob Patterson and the Wager’s naming convention had not yet taken
hold.”

Jak winced at the mention of the forbidden name. And why was the Dean telling him so many things it was dangerous to know?
This game was clearly far more than just recruiting talent for Hive Intelligence. Well, as Uncle Sib said, when in doubt,
sow confusion, and as Nakasen said in Principle 212, “If you are thinking of changing the subject you already should have.”

Jak said, “Mreek Sinda and Princess Shyf wouldn’t have been able to pull that hoax on me unless they had someone helping them
in the Hive. That had to be my Uncle Sib, whom I know it wasn’t, because I checked—or Dujuv, who wouldn’t do it in a million
years—or you. I can show you the evidence, if you’re interested, that it was you. You were in it with them all the way back
to composing that phony message. Bex Riveroma was as surprised as anyone when I turned up; you people put me within his reach.
Now I know that Sinda did it because it was good viv, and Princess Shyf hadn’t actually planned on it … but why did you? Were
you just shopping me freelance for the money?”

Caccitepe smiled, pleased that his pet had just executed a trick flawlessly. “Think, Jak. Yes, I did conspire with a few people
to put you where Riveroma could get at you. It was nothing personal, and I did rather hope that you’d come back alive and
successful. But it was neither my intention that you should live or that you should die, and it was only of passing interest
whether you succeeded or failed on the mission. So why would I shop you? The PSA and the Hive would have to know. Why would
they let me?”

“Because you don’t like me, and neither do they?”

“I don’t, and they don’t, but that’s not the reason.”

Jak stared into space. “Does this have to do with the problem liars you were talking about before, and how happy you are that
I don’t seem to be one of them?”

“What do you think?”

“I speck that your job is to turn out what the Hive needs. And for some jobs, the Hive … just like Greenworld or any other
serious player … has to have some real rat bastards. People who will stab a friend in the back without even remotely thinking
about it, people whose only loyalty is to themselves—”

“And who does the Hive have who is like that?” The Dean got up to show him out. “Congratulations and welcome. You and I will
doubtless have much more to do with each other, without enjoying any of it, for I very much doubt that we will ever become
friends. So rather than spend time in each other’s company before we must, I suggest you leave now.”

Jak airswam out of the office, his mind utterly blank. As he descended a rung tube into the main part of the PSA, down where
the grav would be too heavy for airswimming, he remembered to check, and locked his legs around a rung before bringing his
purse up to his face. “Time check.”

“You have sixteen minutes. Estimated time there if you take Pongo and pay premiums for speed is fourteen and a half, if you
go to the nearest station.”

“Do it and direct me to the nearest station.”

“Down this rung tube, nine more levels. You can drop it if you don’t mind a disciplinary infraction.”

At least his restored purse still was willing to help him break rules. It was good that he’d made two real friends in the
last few years, even if one of them was a blue glove and the other was a feathered lizard.

Jak kicked off and let himself fall; it wouldn’t do to be late. When he swung through the door, he could see a couple of campus
pokheets just turning to walk toward where he was emerging—they’d have him marked and ID’d anyway, so there was no point standing
around waiting for them to lecture him on safety. He bounded hard to where his purse directed, a siding that he wasn’t authorized
to use. Pongo was just grounding, its canopy already sliding open.