Earthblood (28 page)

"You like music?" Quex asked, leaning across the table. There were purple, juicy stains at the corners of his mouth and his eyes bugged more than ever. He had loosened his collar, and Roan saw red scars down the sides of his neck where something had been surgically removed.

"I don't know," Roan said, because he had never heard the word before. "Is it something to eat?"

"The sounds," Quex said. He waved a hand at the orchestra, bleating and shrilling in the corner behind their screen of foliage.

"It's all right, I suppose," Roan said. "Back in the 'zoo, they were louder."

"You want it louder?"

"I remember a sound I heard once," Roan said, thinking quite suddenly of the deserted park in the Terran city on Aldo Cerise. "Real Terran sounds. Pretty sounds." He was feeling the wine, he realized. He took a deep breath and sat up straighter, and felt for his gun with his fingertips.

"Terry music?" Quex clapped his hands and a slave popped up and leaned close to get Quex's instructions, then slipped away. Roan glanced at his men. They were still chewing with their mouths open, reaching across each other's plates for juicy gobbets almost out of reach, wiping thick fingers on now-greasy silks. Henry Dread had picked his Gooks for size, not beauty, he was thinking, when he became aware of a sound penetrating the bellowed talk and laughter. It was an elfin horn, picking its way lightly above the uproar, and then it was joined by other sounds, deep and commanding, like the tramp of marching armies, and now the horns darted and flickered above like the lightnings of a coming storm while a bugle called demon troops to the attack. Roan pushed his glass aside, listening, searching for the source, and his eyes fell on the noisemakers behind the flower boxes.

"Are they doing that?"

"A clever group, eh, Lieutenant? Oh, they know any number of tricks: they can make a sound like a wounded dire-beast charging—"

"Shut up," Roan said, not even noticing he'd said it. "Listen . . ." Now a lonely horn picked out a forlorn melody of things beautiful and forgotten, and Roan remembered the glimpse he'd almost had, once, of how life must have been in the days of the Empire. The music faded to silence, and the players mopped at their faces with soiled handkerchiefs and reached for clay mugs. They looked tired and hot and ill tempered and frightened, all at once.

"How could a crew of ugly Geeks make sounds like that?" he wondered aloud.

"You like it?" Quex said coldly. He was fingering the braid on his sleeve rather pointedly.

"I'm sorry, Commodore," Roan said. "I was quite carried away." Quex managed a sour smile. "It's some ancient thing about a Prince called Igor," he said. "Would you like to hear another? They do a rather clever thing called Jivin' Granny—"

"No," Roan shook his head to clear away the vision. Quex chose an attenuated cheroot from a blue-and-orange inlaid box a cringing slave offered him. The slave lit it, and when the lighted match fell on the floor from the creature's trembling hand, Quex planted a solid kick in its side. It grunted and crawled over to Roan and he took a cigar and watched the slave crawl away. When it thought it was out of sight, it patted its injured side and wept silently.

"Now, Lieutenant . . ." Quex blew out smoke impatiently, as though he enjoyed knowing he was smoking a rare weed, but was annoyed with the actual process. "You've just reported in from a long cruise. You deserve to relax—"

"I don't want to relax," Roan said. "I'd like to know about the Niss. What kind of fleet can they put in space?"

"Surely all that can wait," Quex said blandly. He waved his glass and wine slopped on the floor and a slave scrambled to lick it up. There were other slaves under the table, eating scraps, and still more crowded in, offering finger bowls. Another girl had gotten into his lap somehow, and she was breathing erotica into his ear. Roan was aware that he was dizzier than he should be, and he pushed the slaves away and forced his eyes to focus.

"I've waited long enough," he said. He could feel the thickness of his tongue, and he worked on getting angry enough for his temper to boil the lethargy away.

A slave shoved a vast plate of foamy stuff in front of Roan. Quex was clapping his hands again and there was a stir, and two immense dull-faced troopers were hauling someone small and struggling into the open space at the center of the square of tables.

"Sorry if I seemed to have been dilatory in handling this matter," Quex was saying, "but I always think executions go better with the dessert. . ." Roan blinked while the two troopers held the girl down on a short bench with her head over one end. He recognized her as the one who had first gotten into his lap. Her gold-dusted hair was in disarray now, and her thin pantaloons stuck to her legs. One of the men holding her down got out a knife with a foot-long blade and casually thrust it into the side of her neck. She screamed once, and then she was slack, and the trooper was sawing away, holding the head by the hair. He got it free and held it up. There was blood on his hands to the elbow, and more was spreading out on the floor. Roan got to his feet, and his girl pulled him back, laughing.

"Clumsy oxes," Quex said. He picked up his cigar and drew on it, and then tossed it into the soup tureen. "You'd think they were butchering swine. Try your ice cream. It's rather good, considering."

Roan's men were staring at the body of the girl. They were used to bloodshed, but they'd never seen anything like this. The executioners trooped off, one with the head and the other with the body, and a slave came with a bucket of water and a nauseous-looking rag. It was a female slave, and her row of teats dragged along the floor as she scrubbed.

"What—what—" Roan stuttered.

Quex raised his plucked eyebrows. "The creature annoyed you. That's something we Terrans don't tolerate in slaves. . ."

Roan got to his feet, and the girl on his lap squalled and slid off onto the floor.

"All right, men! Up!" he bawled. "The party's over! Let's march!" In the sudden silence, Sidis laughed foolishly. The ITN personnel stirred at their places, glancing toward Quex. Roan went along the table to Sidis and slapped him so hard it hurt at the other end of the room. He jerked him to his feet and turned, and Quex was holding a long-barreled nerve gun in his hand, aimed at Roan.

"Not so fast, Lieutenant—or whatever you are," the commodore said in a voice like chipped glass. "You made a poor choice of identities." The identity disk Roan had produced dangled from his finger. He tossed it to the floor. "Lieutenant Commander Endor was lost in action some six thousand years ago. You're under arrest for mutiny in Deep Space and the murder of Commander Henry Dread."

Roan looked along the table and caught Askor's yellow eye. The men were still in their places, waiting for the word. The garrison men were getting to their feet, gathering in clumps, watching. Some of them had guns out now. Roan moved toward Quex and his gun, staggering a little more than was necessary.

"What do you want with me?" he said thickly.

"That's neither here nor there. Now, before we got any further, if you'll take off your jacket, please . . ."

Askor stirred, and Roan flickered an eyelid at him, and the half-breed settled back. Roan stripped off his braid-heavy jacket and tossed it on the floor. The Imperial Terran symbol over the pocket made a loud clink when it hit.

"To the skin, please," Quex insisted. Roan pulled off the silky white shirt, and the crowd staring at him drew in quick breaths. Quex got up and came around the end of the table, not bothering even to kick the crouching slave, and his eyes were round, taking in Roan's smooth, unscarred hide, the scattering of reddish hair across his chest.

"Your feet," he ordered. Roan pulled out a chair and sat down and pulled off his boots. The spurs clanked as he tossed them aside. Quex leaned close and stared.

"Unbelievable," he said. "You're a Terran. A real Terran. A textbook case." He looked into Roan's eyes with an expression almost of awe. "You might even be a Pure Strain . . ."

"Hurry up and shoot, if you're going to," Roan said. He picked up a glass and drained it. It would have been easy to toss it into Quex's face, but he wasn't ready for that yet.

"Where did you come from? Who were your parents?"

"My parents bought me as an embryo." Roan was watching Quex's face.

"Where?" Quex snapped.

"At the Thieves' Market on Tambool."

Quex raised a hand and brought it down in a meaningless gesture. "Of course. There is a certain fantastic inevitability to it! A Pure Terran, cast among Geeks; naturally, he would seek out his own—"

"What do you know about me?" Roan interrupted Quex's soliloquy. Quex stepped back, signaled for a chair, sank down, watching Roan over the gun. He laughed shortly, a silly laugh. "I suppose I shall have to abandon the idea of shooting you. I'll make it up by planning something rather special for these animals of yours who've had the effrontery to plump themselves down at table with gentlefolk." And Quex tittered again, enjoying himself now. "In a way, I'm almost a sort of parent to you myself." He crossed his legs, swinging his foot.

"I was rather active in my younger days. The admiral honored me by dispatching me as his personal agent among the renegade pigs of the Gallian World. It was they who initiated the experiment. I took a chance—don't imagine I wasn't aware of the risks! I lifted the entire lot—the wealth of the Nine Gods, and you could hold it in your hand! The fools were careless, they practically invited me. And then I made my error. Trusting Geeks! I was an idiot!"

Roan saw Quex's finger tighten on the firing stud, and he tensed, ready to jump, but the commodore drew a shuddery breath and calmed himself.

"I was fool enough to divulge the nature of the consignment to the stinking animal who called himself captain of the Gallian vessel on which I had arranged passage. It was necessary, actually; I demanded refrigeration facilities, and one explanation led to another—

"He tricked me. At the end of a tedious run, I discovered he had changed course for his own world. We landed and he turned me and my so carefully guarded prize over to his Shah. This heathen considered that it would be a tremendously impressive thing to parade a palace guard of Terrans—Pure Terrans, and all identical. Can you imagine it?" Quex held out his hand and a glass appeared in it, and was filled. He looked at Roan. "Am I boring you?"

Roan let out a breath. "Go on," he said.

"Alas," Quex continued. "At this crucial moment, a spontaneous popular uprising broke out. The Shah, his two hundred and thirty-four frightful little whelps, and anyone else who happened to be standing about were killed."

"Spontaneous?" Roan asked. He looked at the nearest slave, who crouched away, quivering.

"It was as spontaneous," Quex answered, smiling with his bright, cruel slits of eyes, "as the ITN could make it. My messages to Rim HQ had gone through before landing, of course; the forces arrived within a week to restore order. Of course, the natives were not so well domesticated then; they had a certain animal spirit which had to be curbed before they were made useful possessions. I was only one hundred and fifty-two at the time—some twenty-five years ago now, Terry reckoning—but I had a natural bent for such things." He waved a hand. "The rest is history."

"And how did I get to Tambool?" Roan cut in.

Quex frowned. "The discussion begins to tire me," he said. "You're a valuable though insolent property, and Admiral Starbird will be delighted when I report that I've recovered the breeding stock that slipped through our fingers all those years ago—"

"No, he won't," Roan said. "One of his spies has already slipped out by the side door to report on you—"

Quex jerked around to look where Roan had pointed and Roan's foot caught the gun, knocked it high in the air. With a bellow, Askor went into action in the same instant, and then Poion and Sidis were on their feet, reaching for the nearest ITN man. One aimed a gun at Askor and the giant half-breed dropped his first victim and charged for the man, knocked him spinning under the table, then whirled on a group of backpedaling dandies, cracked their heads together, tossed them aside, caught two more. Roan was holding Quex by the neck now, and drinking wine from the bottle with the other hand. The ITN men in the rear milled in loud confusion, unable to get a clear shot.

"You Gooks stand back, or we'll shoot!" A frightened-looking Navy man had climbed on a chair and was pointing a fancy power pistol wildly around the room. Sidis took aim, shot him in the head; he leaped back in a spatter of blood and fell among his fellows.

There were more shots now as the astonished hosts realized that their outnumbered victims intended to fight back. It was a mistake. Four pirate guns went into action, blasting wholesale into the screaming, panicked diners, who jammed into the corners and against the doors, making effective resistance by the few determined men among them impossible.

"Belay that!" Roan yelled over the din as a glass smashed beside him. He hauled Quex into a chair, shouted again. There were moans and howls from the wounded, bellowing from the enraged crew, the buzz and crackle of guns. Smoke poured up from smoldering hangings ignited by wild shots. There was a stink of blood and spilled wine in the air. Roan jumped on the table and shouted for order. By degrees the tumult abated.

"All right," Roan said. "They shot first and I don't blame you for getting annoyed, but I don't have any time to waste. I've got a few more questions to ask old rabbit-ears here." He stepped down from the table as the men began rifling the bodies and pulling fancy ornaments off the living. Quex stared at him with wide, shocked eyes.

"You can't—we outnumber you fifty to one—a hundred to one . . ." The commodore's voice rose. He started to his feet. "Attack them!" he screeched. Roan put a foot against his chest and slammed him back, then pulled a chair up and sat in it. There were two slaves mewling under the table; as they realized they were in view, they scuttled farther back. There was blood trickling down into Roan's right eye and around his face and onto his neck. It annoyed him, like an insect.