In the Hall of the Martian King (34 page)

At least the King had had the decency not to look smug.

And his meaning was utterly clear: Paxhaven would release the lifelog and let whatever happened happen. “Un-pause.”

The King’s face appeared on the wall again. “—and soon. Make your plans accordingly.

“Now, some people will be very upset by the truth that is about to come into the world. Large numbers of people will begin
to run in circles and scream and cause trouble.

“It may seem irresponsible of us to unleash this thing, but when a mighty tower is built upon a narrow foundation in soft
ground, and story after story and annex after annex are added at the upper levels year by year, it is inevitable that the
djeste will fall. It is only a question of when. The longer it stands before it falls, the more will fall, from a greater
height. It’s not whether there will be a smash, but how big a smash there will be. The later, the bigger, you see. So we choose
sooner rather than later.

“You can therefore expect that forces will be put in motion which will change the world around all of us, drastically. For
Paxhaven—well fortified, safe, and thoroughly dakking who we are—this will be no very great change. But you, Jak Jinnaka—new,
raw, open to the world, not yet wise, and unknown most especially to yourself—will be slung, hurled, and yanked every which
way, like a single electron in a solar storm, your path always determined by forces vastly greater than yourself, and yet
incalculable to anyone.

“There is nothing any of us here can do for you,” Dexorth said, his eerily calm eyes never wavering from the camera, “nor
would any of us care to, if we could. But a medieval American poet said that ‘Home is where, when you have to go there, they
have to take you in.’ Strictly speaking, we will never have to take you in. But still we’d appreciate it if you think of us
when you have to go somewhere. Meanwhile, find your path, Jak.”

The message stopped and the room lights came back up to full. “Know where you are, Your Perception,” Jak Jinnaka said to the
sudden chill of the now-so-blank wall in front of him. He swallowed hard as he thought of how alone he now truly was.

He was just reluctantly opening the large file of nonurgent approvals—things where his judgment was not really needed but
his handprint was legally required—when his purse said, “An urgent message, eyes only, has just arrived.”

“Well,” Jak said, “ ‘prepare to receive eyes-only message,’ again. Screen it as soon as you’re ready.”

The crossed magnifying glass and dagger insignia of Hive Intel appeared on the screen, then the long vulturish face of Caccitepe.
“Hive Intelligence hereby invokes its rights under Code Article 83, to cross-list or transfer such personnel from either Hive
agencies or from other Forces, as Hive Intelligence may require. That’s the officialese, Jak.

“Informally: I’m sending you on a mission for which you are well suited. It does not require more than what we covered in
Advanced Intelligence Operations, at the PSA, and I know you did quite well in that class. You were, in fact, one of my star
students.

“Your mission is this: you will be infiltrating a sunclipper crew, specifically the crew of
Umbriel’s Glory,
which as you know is making a flyby very shortly at Deimos. We have created an identity for you in the UAS as a Crewman-Second,
and made you look like exactly the fellow they have been trying to hire.

“Report to Hive Intel Deimos Office, two hours from now, for an orientation session, identity chip for your new identity,
quick body makeover, pack of clothing, cache of concealed weapons, and of course a new purse in your new identity. All of
these will be waiting for you.”

Jak had taken a few chances, in his teens and early twenties, to accumulate union points to join the UAS, because it had been
more interesting than traveling as a passenger; he only hoped that his skills weren’t too far below those of a real Crewman-Second.

“
Umbriel’s Glory
is upbound to Triton. We know from some of your previous reports that you are acquainted with the Canaan legend.
Umbriel’s Glory
’s crew, both officers and regular crewies, is thoroughly penetrated by the Canaan cult. Also they are carrying contraband
to the Tritonian underground, and there has been Tritonian penetration of the crew. We have been trying to prove a connection
between the Tritonian government in exile and the Canaanist faction in the Council of Captains for decades; we are sure that
crewie society is not maintaining the strict neutrality it claims, and we can make excellent use of any clear evidence of
this. Your job, then, Jak, is to get that evidence. It need not be anything that would stand up in a court and I need hardly
mention that there are no restrictions on how you get that evidence.

“Do be careful.
Umbriel’s Glory
is Jovian League registry and therefore you are committing espionage, which is a capital offense.

“You need not revisit your apartment as our crews will store everything there; you may not take along any mementos or keepsakes.
They will all be waiting for you, along with your purse, when you return to the Hive after this mission. Your two hours are
intended to give you time to message friends and relatives so that they won’t come looking for you, thereby possibly accidentally
compromising security, in the next few months. Tell them enough to keep them quiet, but for your own safety we advise you
to be vague in your good-byes.

“You could, of course, avoid this mission by resigning, and hope that PASC is not going to fire you, and will find some suitably
punitive backwater for you. But you will instead do no such thing. This is exactly what you have been wanting—a deep-cover
mission in which you can use your crewie skills. So I know you will take the job.

“Therefore, in advance: thank you for your cooperation. Good luck.”

The message clicked off. It was immediately followed by three lower-priority nonconfidential messages, in which Jak successively
authorized his own transfer (he had no choice anyway), signed up for the considerably better benefits package available to
him in his new position, and authorized Hive Intelligence to grab everything out of his apartment and move it to the Hive
for storage. (He was very glad he’d never gotten the kitten he had been wanting.)

He looked at the clock. One hour and fifty minutes to go. He set up his purse for messaging, faced the camera, checked his
hair and made sure nothing was between his teeth, and spoke. The first one he recorded was:

“Dujuv, old tove, I hope you are not so angry that you’re going to wipe this message without reading it. I’ve received new
orders. I will have to be out of touch for a long while. I am going to hang on to my hope of someday renewing our friendship,
and therefore, as soon as I am able, I will be back in touch. That will not be until I am done with this present mission which
is going to take months or years and about which I can say no more than that. I am sorry for any pain I have ever caused you.
I know that there has been plenty. I don’t deserve your forgiveness but I would love to have it. Take all care of yourself,
succeed at whatever your heart most wishes to achieve, and as they say in Paxhaven, ‘Find your path,’ old tove.”

His next message was shorter and more formal:

“My oath-friend Shadow on the Frost, our paths diverge for the moment. Take care of Dujuv; he will need your protection. I
have not forgotten my oath-friend and could not in any case. You
will
hear from me again. It will be a long time. It is an honor to have my name mentioned with yours. Be strong and well and don’t
lose that sense of humor.”

His last message was shorter still.

“Myx, that was slick. Hive Intel assassinated a potential disaster of a future politician and established a basis for claiming
that anything coming out of the Nakasen lifelog is a forgery, and if anything had gone wrong, it would have been me holding
the bag. Was that Caccitepe’s trick, or are you just his best pupil?” He thought of a dozen crude remarks he could make, swallowed
them with difficulty, and clicked off.

He had an hour and forty minutes left.

He could drift around saying good-bye to his staff and to various Deimons he knew slightly, but he could see little reason
for that; he had always preferred to come and go like a cat, saving the big productions for the hellos and simply vanishing
for the good-byes. What to do with all this time?

He told his purse to unlock the door, and airswam out by Pikia’s desk, where she was plowing along, obviously desperately
trying to stay awake, through a collection of business even more routine than what Jak had just dismissed.

“Your boss has gone mad,” Jak said, cheerfully, “and has decided that for today only, you are getting a long break, and you
are having coffee with him, to discuss a variety of things around the office. This actually has to do with yet another chance
to distinguish yourself. Unless you’d prefer to keep filling out forms.”

“I was wondering how you could claim to have gone mad till that last sentence,” she said, grinning. She pushed a button to
complete an approval, told her purse to shut down her desk screen, and bounced out of her chair.

It was an odd time on the shift, so it was no trouble to find a café that had no one else in it, where no one knew either
of them. They chose a centrifuged booth for greater privacy. Jak bought coffee and rolls and briefed her quickly. “You may
have trouble staying awake, but your résumé is about to be spectacular,” he said. “You’re a line officer. The only one. You’re
going to be in command of the civilian side of Deimos. Of course, good as it all looks on your résumé, you have to do well
at it for it to really count. But your great-great-grandfather gives very wise advice, there’s a good chance that not much
will come up, and the staff know much more than they admit to. If you really get into trouble and you’ve been nice to them,
they might pull out some of that knowledge to save you. And if you succeed—I think you will—it won’t hurt to enter the PSA
with a reputation already walking in ahead of you—especially a good reputation. I could tell you a few things about going
in with the other kind of reputation.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Bet you could.”

Jak smiled. “Well, once upon a time, Dujuv Gonzawara thought it might be fun to climb a light shaft—”

It wasn’t necessarily the greatest story, but she laughed at it, so he counted it a victory. Then he heard a couple of accounts
of how her feelings were terribly confused because … well, she just had so many of them … and was reminded of why he was glad
not to be seventeen anymore. And the time crept on, and finally he said, “Well, I’ll have to go. I’m sorry that I can’t tell
you anything other than sudden transfer, I’m going out on
Umbriel’s Glory
, and I can’t be in touch for a long time. Don’t come to see me off. There are security considerations and besides I don’t
know which ferry I’ll be on, masen?”

“Toktru. Find your path.”

“Know where you are.” He got up, and they shook hands.

It was only about ten minutes’ airswim to the Hive Intelligence office. Machines swore him in and did the medical examination;
more machines walked him through the briefing in the unreal world of viv, so that in three hours he experienced three weeks
of briefings. While he was “under” for the briefings, yet more machines worked on altering his body, changing his skin color
to two shades darker, a sort of rich chocolate; reshaping his face for higher, sharper cheekbones, fuller lips, and a softer
chin; erasing the tanpatterning he’d been wearing and putting in something more old-fashioned and bland, to fit in better
with the more conservative crewie society. When he staggered off the treatment table, he knew a great deal more about a very
wide variety of subjects than he ever had before, and his skin and what was immediately under it had been stretched, pulled,
abraded, poisoned, and depoisoned. He wasn’t sure whether his brain or his body hurt more. He was now Pari Patzeron, a crewie,
his second class badge still shiny and new and marginally qualified for, with a brief record of violent crime calculated to
be unalarming (to any ship’s security officer) but interesting (to anyone looking to recruit rebels).

After the surgery and the pumped learning, they left him twenty minutes to unpack Pari Patzeron’s bags and repack them, becoming
familiar with what was in them, and forming another impression of his persona.

The time came. He was supposed to make it to the ferry in the last few minutes, so that there would be as little time as possible
to mess up his cover, since there was always the risk, even with all the modifications, that someone might recognize him.

So since he had to start late, he had to airswim through the corridors quickly and with many push-offs. When he hurried through
the departure area, his new appearance fooled Pikia, who was waiting near the departure gate despite what she had said. He
swam right by her, per orders, glad that she had been there and sorry that she would think she had missed him.

He had just time to strap into the ferry before it began to move up the track onto the loop, for launch to
Umbriel’s Glory.
Through his viewport, he could see the great sails of the sunclipper, much farther away than Mars, enclosing a greater volume
than that whole planet with a mass less than that of Deimos, a thin tissue over a vast nothingness.

Jak had not known that he would have a new face, name, and mission this morning. Now he did. Perhaps life would get busy,
and he might remember his old life only rarely.

He was looking forward to that.

With a slight tug, the ferry whipped around onto the superconducting loop, Mars whirled by the viewport in a blur of red,
blue, green, and white, the sun’s reflection flashed in the great sails ahead, and they were hurtling around the loop to launch.
Jak settled into a mental review of the Disciplines, blanking his mind, getting ready for a nap. As Uncle Sib always said,
you never know what’s coming next.