In the Hall of the Martian King (33 page)

Hisses and whooshes all around Jak; fifty big mounted lasers and dozens of fast missiles let go. Turrets all over this side
of the atoll erupted simultaneously.

Thundercracks as the air rushed into the vacuums the lasers had cleared.

A searchlight pinned Jak. A calm voice told him to put his hands up.

Even through the glare of the Paxhavian police lights, Jak still saw the bright white burning cloud that plunged from high
in the sky, over the horizon, and down into the pitiless ocean. They had shot down the spacecraft carrying Clarbo Waynong
and the lifelog, and from a crash like that there could be no survivors.

“Jinnaka, hand over the lifelog,” a hooded and masked man said, approaching him. “And then you can guide us to whoever that
shuttle dropped off.”

“The shuttle made a pickup, not a dropoff,” Jak said, standing there with his head still ringing from all the artillery fire,
and dazed by the sudden change of fortune. “The lifelog was on it.”

For many hours afterward, he was hustled from room to room, and people shouted at him. He kept repeating what he knew, and
finally they stopped asking.

Another part of the mission was utterly routine and conventional; once it didn’t matter; all captured agents were released
and exchanged. Paxhaven released Jak direct from prison to Dujuv’s custody, in the dusty little Harmless Zone town of Blue
Cyan Yellow Amber, whose major industry seemed to be being diplomatically neutral. Pikia was with Dujuv when he came to pick
Jak up; she hugged Jak, but Dujuv did not even shake his hand. “I am instructed to tell you that you should get your messages
at once, in secure mode,” Dujuv said, handing Jak his purse and goggles.

He put on his goggles and plugged them into his purse. There was one message from Myxenna; nothing more than the sentence
“Sorry, Jak, they didn’t tell me everything.”

There was also a message from Caccitepe. The man was an ange, and that breed’s long nose and long limbs always reminded Jak
of some bird about to swoop down—some bird whose dietary habits were generally nasty, fixated on Jak. The message reminded
Jak of nothing so much as Principle 203: “Nothing is so galling as praise from an enemy.”

Caccitepe smiled constantly as he delivered the message. “You may not realize this, but you have had considerable success.
Listen closely as this is a self-wiping message and it will play only once. Our possession of the lifelog would have been
highly desirable, of course, but the destruction of physical authentication for whatever material anyone may have copied is
more than adequate to our purposes. Thanks to you, and some censorship and some disinformation campaigns, the Wager will be
secure. In the matter of the loss of Clarbo Waynong: Mister Waynong’s performance on your joint mission had already caused
us to reconsider the wisdom of helping him to high office; we had begun to think that a man of his competence could help no
one, no matter how much he had been helped. He is no longer a possible future prime minister. This can only be seen as positive,
whatever the personal cost to Mister Waynong may have been. And his heroic death on a vital secret mission will enhance the
prestige of the Waynong family, with whom we retain close ties, and so the loss to the Hive, the Waynongs, or to Hive Intel
must be reckoned slight indeed.

“So, in short, the Wager is secure, and the political future of Hive Intel is secure, and those were our purposes. If we did
not achieve them in exactly the way intended, we still achieved them.”

When Jak put his goggles away, and turned to Dujuv, his old tove said, “This waiting room is secure. Jak, I’m going to tell
you a few things, and then leave. You can certainly get on the launch back up to Deimos without my help. First of all, I’m
going to resign from the Roving Consuls and start a career in professional slamball, a little late but still I should do all
right. The reason for doing that is partly that I still would like to play slamball for a few years, but also that I’m going
to use it as a springboard for running for office. On the Socialist ticket. I intend to beat every damn patrician whose family
has been running the Hive for the last five hundred years, and beat him or her so badly that he takes the long dive into the
black hole. Remember how we use to tease Myx about how soon she’d be running for prime minister? She’ll have to run against
me. And I’ll be running as the incumbent. And I’ll kick her overheated ass.

“And I’m hoping I won’t see you again. Because I don’t think the way you always wang your toves harder than your enemies is
deliberate, Jak. I don’t think the way you use and hurt everyone who cares about you is on purpose, but it always seems to
happen anyway, masen? It’s bad luck to stand near you.

“Just the same, if you send me a message, I’ll answer—probably—masen?” Dujuv said. The door constricted before Jak could even
squeak out a good-bye through his suddenly too-tight throat. He lurched to his feet, too late, and saw Dujuv’s hovercar already
pulling away. Very tentatively, Pikia put her hand under his arm; he rested his other hand on hers, and after a moment, he
began to cry.

J
ak wasn’t sure why Pikia had followed him back to his apartment, but she was company, and friendly company, and he was grateful
to have her there. His bags had been sent on from the warshuttle and were sitting in his front entryway when they airswam
in; Jak ordered coffee in bulbs and a box of mixed rolls vacced over from the Sweet and Flaky, and while they waited, he unpacked,
just tossing clean and dirty clothing alike into the freshener’s slot. The vac door in the kitchen chimed; he opened it to
find two big coffee bulbs and a box of his favorite rolls with “Nice to have you back—Avor” scribbled on the lid.
At least I’m appreciated by someone,
he thought.

“So what are you planning on doing next?” Pikia asked, digging into an immense creamhorn.

Jak sipped the coffee and thought how much he wished he could say there would be a couple of months of pure bureaucratic boredom.
Perhaps there would, but he was no longer willing to bet on it. “I don’t have much control of my life, you know. So I guess
I don’t really need to do much planning. Later on, I might try to persuade Dujuv to sit down with me and talk it all over—but
I doubt that he will, and chances are that neither of us will have the time, and, oh, well. I wish he saw things differently
but toktru he’s just responding to the way he really sees them. In his place I’m not sure I’d see it any other way, either.
When I plot myself in his orbit, I come out the same place he does, masen?

“So … I’ve lost a tove.” Jak tossed the last of his laundry into the freshener. He hung up his empty bags and gave his toiletry
bag to the butron to be unpacked in the bathroom. “Well, that’s all the unpacking. Home again.”

Pikia watched him from the wall perch she had grabbed; the creamhorn had vanished and she was now making a similar assault
on a prune danish. She looked as if she really wanted to say something, and watched Jak as if looking for an opening, but
she didn’t speak. Finally, after a few more bites had erased the danish, and a big squeeze of coffee had washed it down, she
seemed to shrug at the obviousness of her own comment, but she said, “Well, maybe you’ll think of some way to patch things
up with Dujuv before you go.”

“I don’t think there will ever be time enough for that in all the world, Pikia. If it were just one thing I had done, something
very out of character or something, and there were some reason for Dujuv to think that it wasn’t ever going to happen again,
I think he might manage to forgive me. But not the way things have gone.”

“This is crazy.” She had a strangely angry expression.

Jak looked at that for a long breath; Pikia’s face was set as if for a fight, and her eyes were focused far away, as if she
were lost somewhere inside her own skull, her jaw muscles tensing and flexing to the rhythm of whatever argument was raging
there.

Jak could not even see, at all, what any of it even had to do with her. “This is really bothering you.”

“Yes, it is.” She didn’t look away, exactly, but her eyes met his, and then returned to that faraway imaginary place. “I …
Jak, out of all the smart ambitious young people I have ever seen pass through Deimos, you’re the one who has toktru come
the closest to making any sense to me. I always knew what you were trying to do and why. And you were completely devoted to
Dujuv. No question. No reservations about it. You just were. So for him to reject you because of a few things you
had
to do … well, it scares me. Toktru it scares me. Because I don’t want to lose the few toves I’ve got to some weird set of
rules and judgments that don’t make any sense: I mean … I guess I mean that I think you and I are sort of two of a kind, Jak,
maybe that’s what I found out on this adventure with you. I want to be like you, if you can forgive my saying it. I think
maybe in a way I already am. And I understand that we are friends, even though we might sometimes have to do some bad things
to each other. So I can imagine what it must feel like to lose your toktru tove that way.”

He dakked her singing-on, and he didn’t feel like politely pretending he didn’t. “You’re right. People are weird.”

Pikia smiled at him, looked down, and said, in a complete non sequitur, “So, are we going to stay in touch?”

“Is one of us going somewhere?”

“Both. Hive Intel won’t leave you here long. And I’m going to the PSA. I talked with Great-great-grandpa Reeb and he said
that to
not
be admitted into the PSA now, I’d have to be convicted of excessive cruelty while killing my pimp. The weird thing is that
even though he now knows you were always working for Hive Intel, Great-great-grandpa Reeb really does like you, Jak, and he’s
very proud of both of us.” She stepped closer to him, and not looking at him at all, said, “And I’m proud of you too, if that
matters.”

Smiling in what he hoped was a brotherly kind of way, he caught Pikia’s hands in his own (it kept her from closing into a
hug). “Well, you know that it matters. You’re a tove, Pikia. You and I are going to stay toktru toves forever. And in touch
with each other. I would miss you if we didn’t.”

When she hugged him she held him close, but she didn’t press against him. “Dujuv’s a real gweetz,” she whispered.

Something forced Jak to admit, “Uh, I think actually he just wants friends who are as good a friend as he’s a friend, if you
see what I mean, and I’m afraid Duj is a pretty good judge of character.”

She held him closer. “Jak, you
are
a toktru tove. The
best
. You just aren’t the kind that Dujuv is. But”—she pulled away, still holding him by the arms, but looking at his face seriously,
as if trying to confirm that he heard and believed—“you’re the kind of tove that I want and that I need to have. Someone who
is going places, and won’t be happy unless he goes places, and wants
me
to go places.”

“Well,” Jak said, “as far as I know, tomorrow, I’m going to the office, and so are you. After that, who knows? But I’m glad
we got to know each other.”

“Me too.” She let go of his arms as if she had only just realized she was holding them. “Hey, want to do something stupid
and dull like catch a viv together?”

“Oh, sure. Anything without sex or Mreek Sinda.”

“Then I guess the new ‘Sex with Mreek’ series would be out …”

It was a feeble joke, but he laughed anyway. They ended up just hanging around in one of those endless conversations that
is really about nothing except the friendship itself—no matter what the subject may appear to be—and it was late before she
left and he got to bed. His last thought before falling asleep was that he used to have conversations like that with Duj,
often, and that he couldn’t remember when they had stopped.

Next day, at work, just as he had made his last pointless note on the last bit of uselessly referred trivia, his purse announced,
“Message from King Dexorth Verklar of Paxhaven, marked highly confidential and personal.”

“All right, ‘prepare to receive eyes-only message.’ ”

The door locked, the windows opaqued, and in a moment the screen flickered to life on the back wall. King Dexorth gazed out
at Jak calmly; behind him, the Korolev lagoon rippled with the big slow waves of low gravity, as the long slow twilight of
Mars crept across the sky.

“Dear Jak,” he said, “I have been thinking about recent events here. I have some thoughts I should like to share with you.

“Let us start with that so-slippery issue, the truth. It is unlikely that the truth is the best thing for anyone to believe,
but it is surprisingly easy to agree upon for most cases, and its secondary effects are more predictable. It is therefore
very valuable and like any valuable intangible, it should be given away freely.

“So my decision is that the truth will be given away, freely and soon. Make your plans accordingly.”

“Pause!” Jak barked at his purse.

“Got it. Back up two seconds and wait?” the blue fingerless glove asked.

“Please.” Jak sat back and stared into space. Perhaps the King just meant that they would release their partial copies—

It was as if Sib sat at his shoulder, laughing and saying,
“Old pizo, think of the oldest trick in the book. It’s the one they did. Tricks get to be old because they work. So you were
escaping with the fake …”

Uncle Sib’s presence felt so real at that moment that Jak nearly turned and spoke aloud, but he checked himself; in a universe
with an almost infinite supply of listening devices, you
“never say an unnecessary bit of the truth out loud,”
Sib’s voice seemed to remind him, as it had so often as he was growing up.

I miss you, you horrible pushy rude pigheaded old gwont,
Jak thought.

Yeah, well, so what’s the answer?

They left a fake in the vault,
Jak thought.
And I swapped them a fake for a fake. Clarbo was blown to bits trying to steal it for Hive Intelligence, and to restore his
own mess of a résumé. Nakasen’s hairy bag, what an absolute waste of effort by everyone.