In the Hall of the Martian King (13 page)

“Ready for pills?”

“Yes please.” Freshly formed pills dropped out of the bedside dispenser. Jak slapped them into his open mouth, clamped his
jaw, and fought down the urge to spit them out. He undressed, pulled on his skullcap, and stretched out on the bed. His purse
opaqued all the windows and turned off all the lights, leaving the room perfectly dark, and then projected a single, dim,
blue, slowly blinking light on the ceiling.

The little whirs and thump-thumps of countless machines nearby faded into a soft blur of white noise. A deep throb came in
under the white noise, in time with the light, synchronizing to a multiple of Jak’s pulse. The purse gradually, gently slowed
the blink-and-throb. Jak matched his breathing to it, four beats to inhale, four to exhale, filling and emptying his lungs
completely. The beat slowed. The blinking light dimmed. The throb faded.

He was alone.

In darkness.

At peace.

For some time he slept until his purse judged that his brainwave activities showed him to have healed enough and NMR of the
blood passing through his hand showed the drugs were present and active in adequate quantity. Then his purse started the stimuli:

And he was frozen and paralyzed on a table. Uncle Sib was beating him, slamming him harder and harder with the fists and feet
of a trained athlete, screaming all the time for him to defend himself, that he was unworthy of his training …

And he was at the club, dancing slec with Dujuv and Myx and Sesh, the very moment all the adventures of his life began, and
then Sesh looked at him with Princess Shyf’s eyes and said, “She’s gone and you’re a fool …”

And he was screaming, inside a dark bag, and no one could hear him and they were about to jettison it from a sun-clipper,
and he knew they would throw it through the cables so that he would be sliced open just at the instant he saw the stars, nothing
to breathe but vacuum, his face a screaming freeze-dried mask of horror for many centuries as he orbited past Pluto, out where
the sun is a bright star …

And he was in the Rubahy nightmares of his childhood, when he had hated and feared them in his ignorance. Madly cruel feathered
monsters who lived only to eat human flesh, and their teeth were closing around him, and he turned to his left and they were
eating Shyf alive, and to his right and they were eating Dujuv, and a calm voice said, “You know better.”

Jak looked up to see Uncle Sib walking among the fearsome monsters, just before they turned and began to eat him, but Sib
seemed very calm about it all.

Jak awoke, his skin as clammy with sweat as if from many hours of fever dreams, his guts clenching and squirming, his face
a sticky mess, his muscles sore from the savage contractions. The lights were coming up and the purse had selected soothing
music. Jak drew a deep breath, and recited the Short Litany of Terror, as he made himself settle into the neutral posture
that begins the Disciplines. “ ‘144: Death happens, anyway.’ Therefore ‘62: Since it doesn’t change anything, go ahead and
fear death if it makes you feel better,’ because ‘9: Fear is an excellent way to pass the time when there’s nothing else you
can do,’ but remember that ‘171: Courage is fear without consequences.’ ”

The comfort and courage began to flow down his spine from his skull, and Jak, far from the first time in his life, thanked
Uncle Sib silently for having taught him the Disciplines when he was so young that they had become automatic and so much a
part of him that he could not imagine not having them. Strange to think that Sib was probably only a kilometer away at the
very most, and that Jak could shake his hand at dinner and tell him directly. He made a mental note to himself to do that;
Sib was proud, even arrogant, about the way Jak had turned out (sometimes enough to be irritating—to hear the old gwont natter
on, you’d think that Jak hadn’t done any of the work!), and he’d get so much pleasure out of being thanked. (Enough to compensate
Jak for the annoyance of Sib’s preening.) Besides, if the horrible old gwont started puffing up with too much pride, Jak need
only say “Bex Riveroma” and “sliver in my liver” to deflate him like a bad tire.

Jak climbed into the warm, scented tub. The muscles between his shoulder blades eased; he no longer felt as if he were pinned
back like a bug in a display case. The cold that seemed to flow out from his lower belly to the rest of his body warmed and
dissolved in the gentle slosh of the warm water in low gravity. The pressure of his scalp muscles on the back of his head
diminished into the ordinary ache of overwork.

“Princess Shyf is at the door,” his purse said.

“Put her on voice.”

Shyf’s voice was the warm kitteny purr he remembered from when she had been Sesh, back when it had seemed natural that an
elegantly beautiful girl should want to be with him all the time. Now it was like a spike through his heart— a spike he couldn’t
help wanting desperately. “Jak, open the door.”

“Purse, let her in.”

Jak heard the main door out in the living area sigh open—or was that his purse sighing?

When Shyf walked into the bathroom, she had already taken off her clothes. “Don’t get your hopes up today, silly boy. I’m
going to wash your back and give you a nice huggy. I just didn’t want to get my clothes wet. Lean forward.”

Her hands on his back were soothing, lovely, perfection in touch in the way that her appearance was perfection to sight. He
relaxed utterly, all the pain and stress gone. If time could be frozen so that Jak would live in this second, forever, he’d
have stayed right here and now till the sun burned out.

For someone who seemed to treat the rest of the human race as either audience or servants, Shyf gave a surprisingly “good
backrub” as Jak trusted himself to grunt, after a long period of utter heaven.

“Are you content with your life?” she asked, her voice as low and even as if she had asked him if he wanted the water reheated.

“I guess. Maybe. I don’t know.” He stretched, bringing his face down almost into the warm, scented water. The steam-thickened
air opened his sinuses and felt good on his rough, overstrained throat. Her hands were working his lower back. “That must
sound stupid,” he added.

“Maybe. Or maybe you’re just trying to please me (you’re so toktru good about that, masen?) or it could be just honest confusion.
Keep talking.” Her voice was as gentle as a peck and hug, but as firm as an order given with the crack of a whip.

“Well, I guess I really don’t know if I’m content. Right now I have a mission to complete. That’s what I think about. It’s
good to have that to think about. I don’t like the job on Deimos much, but it’s better than not having a job, and I won’t
be a vice procurator for very long.”

“Oh.” Her hands kept working but though they were as gentle and accurate as before, they were indefinably less tender and
eager, as if Jak could feel her falling out of love with him directly through the palms, heels, and fingers of her lovely
graceful hands. Melancholy gnawed through his heart like a ravenous blind worm.

At last she said, “It’s just …” and sighed before starting again. “It’s just that, well, five years ago you seemed so bright
and promising. Everyone said so.
I
was really in love with you. And you pulled off that amazing rescue mission for a captive princess—me, you no doubt remember—and
you were in all the media, maybe the most famous teenager (well, at least the most famous one that didn’t sing or dance or
suck dicks on viv or wear a crown) in the solar system for at least ten days. And. Well. You … you just really—you stood out
in a crowd, you were kind of … magnificent, masen? If you see what I mean.”

“Five years ago I was an ignorant kid trying to live my life by the standards of intrigue and adventure vivs. That meant I
was walking around with a ready-to-grab manipulate-me handle, which was grabbed and used by more people than I could count,
friends, enemies, everybody with more of a clue than I had (which was pretty much the same thing as everybody). And I was
proud to be that kind of gull, dupe, gweetz, whatever you want to call it. If there was anything magnificent about me, it
was like being the best-looking pig at the slaughterhouse.”

“Hmmmph. ‘Principle 149: Real beauty is whatever is loved by people more important than you.’ You were beautiful then. More
beautiful even than that beautiful Waynong boy is today.”

Jak shuddered. She was deliberately stimulating his jealousy. He knew why, of course. But his recent deconditioning was overwhelmed
by the intensity of her presence, so that he did not even move before he felt the slight sting of the injector on his back.
She waited a few minutes, continuing to rub his back. He felt more and more in love.

“ ‘Hard.’ ”

It had been years since she had used any of the conditioned commands on him, but this one had certainly not faded. She pressed
Jak’s knees together and pushed back gently but firmly on his chest, so that he was neck deep in the warm bathwater. She straddled
him. “Now watch the show.”

Afterward, she sat on the edge of the tub, gazing with a fond little grin at the sobbing, gasping, aching Jak. Her voice was
barely above a whisper when she added, “Now, if I make it a command and say, ‘Calm love,’ you know how you’ll settle very
quickly and easily into that state they call the ‘Sunday Morning Bliss-blur,’ masen? That warm, comfy, cozy, loved-all-over-forever
security? You do remember that?” This seemed to be more like an interrogation than an afterglow.

“Toktru.” Jak splashed a little water on his face and smeared his hand around.

“Well, if you really want me to, I’ll give you the ‘Calm love’ command, but I think you’d be wiser not to take it.”

“Why?” Jak asked.

“I don’t really know, exactly.” She squatted into the bathwater and washed for a moment. “If this seems a bit confusing, and
I’m sure it must, that’s mostly because I’m making all this up as I go along.”

She borrowed his spare towel, programmed it for extra warm and fluffy, and dried herself, while Jak lay in the cooling bathwater,
feeling the cold black vacuum where his heart had been.

“Why?” he finally asked, again.

“I told you,” she said, quietly, sorting her clothes into order. “Self-press,” she said, and they smoothed. She turned and
flipped the manual control on Jak’s tub, setting it to re-warm.

“You told me that you didn’t know why, yourself.”

“That’s what I told you. I am making everything up as I go.” She loosed her hair from its clips, flopped it forward into the
towel, wrapped it into a turban, and then unwrapped it; her hair fell dry and clean down her back, and she pinned it back
up. “Jak, if you try to dak what I’m doing as part of a plan, you won’t—because I don’t have one. And if I tried to tell you
my intentions, you’d only be more confused, because I don’t know them myself.” She tugged on her clothes, gave Jak a quick
hug and peck on the cheek, and walked through the dilating door, which constricted behind her before Jak could think of anything
to say.

He slowly climbed out of the water. “Purse, get me Doctor Mejitarian. Did you record my conversation with Princess Shyf?”

“Yes, per your standing instructions. I also got a view from several cameras.”

“Good, integrate that as well.” This was hardly the time to be modest. “Relay the recording to Mejitarian, ask for his immediate
review, and then put him right through to me as soon as he calls. Meanwhile, set up a light hypnosis protocol and knock me
out till Mejitarian calls, or until it’s time to go to bed for the night, whichever comes first.” Jak lay down on the bed.
The room became pitch-dark, the low thrum came to him through the white noise, and the blue light on the ceiling pulsed. It
seemed to Jak that he rose toward it, and floated gratefully upward into unconsciousness.

“D
octor Mejitarian asked me to wake you for a conversation with him in five minutes.” The lights came up, simulating a swift
local sunrise, though in fact it was close to nightfall.

“All right.” Jak got up, washed his face with a single big splash of cold water, patted his face once with the towel, and
shrugged on a robe. “Ready, I guess.”

When the kobold’s face appeared, projected on the wall, he didn’t seem even to be trying to hide how precessed he was. “I
can’t believe that she did that to you—or that we did such a poor job of deconditioning that you couldn’t resist.” Mejitarian
had obviously not brushed his facial fur since getting up to look at Jak’s message; one side was matted flat and the other
stuck up in tufts. “The instant that you have obtained the lifelog—and the credit for Clarbo Waynong— we will have you completely,
permanently deconditioned.”

“Sir, I’ve already accepted that deal. But I should tell you, Clarbo Waynong is a far bigger idiot than anyone seems to realize,
and he is absolutely the only reason this mission wasn’t completed successfully long ago.”

Doctor Mejitarian looked even more sad and tired. He stared at Jak for a surprisingly long time, and finally said, “You’re
right, of course, and all of us know that. Now, I am going to tell you several things that it is utterly contrary to policy
for you to know. Do you know why I am going to do that?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither do I.” The kobold shut his eyes briefly and seemed almost to fall asleep. “First of all, whereas King Scaboron of
Greenworld has been an ally and friend to the Hive, he is getting old and his longevity treatments are not taking as well
as they should, and he has no more than eighty years left, perhaps as little as twenty. And it has become apparent that Queen-to-Be
Shyf will be neutral, or may even slide over toward a hostile side. Our one best chance was foiled, very unfortunately, by
yourself and Dujuv Gonzawara some years ago; if she had assassinated her father successfully, and pulled off the coup with
our help, we might have gotten her into our pocket for at least a long time.”