In the Hall of the Martian King (4 page)

“Call in high-private scramble. It’s from Doctor Mejitarian, Hive Intel, Deimos office,” his purse said as he slipped his
hand back into the fingerless blue glove.

“On screen.”

Mejitarian was a kobold, with that breed’s characteristic large scoop ears and big intelligent kind-looking eyes like an orangutan’s,
about 175 years old, gray hair just starting to come into his curly beard. “I’ve been through your latest message from Princess
Shyf. We’d better apply some de-conditioning. Can we download software for that to your purse?”

“Please do.”

“The message was reinforcement for your existing conditioning; otherwise, there was no hidden content we see. Do you have
any unusual sensations or feelings?”

“Just sick and disgusted. Nothing unusual about that.”

While he was at Greenworld, Princess Shyf had drafted Jak into the Royal Palace Guards and had him conditioned to her; conditioning
was one of the favored tools of the aristos because it produced a state of psychological slavery that was far more reliable
than mere loyalty, self-interest, or terror. Jak had returned to the Hive from his second great adventure completely conditioned
into doggy devotion to the Princess’s whims.

Seeing an opportunity, Dean Caccitepe, both the Dean of Students at the PSA and a senior Hive Intel operative, had recruited
Jak to serve as a double agent. Hive Intel doctors had deconditioned him enough to be able to resist commands, but left as
much conditioning in place as possible, so that Greenworld Intel continued to think Jak was conditioned, and that they had
a valuable asset inside PASC. Hive Intel obtained copious information, and Jak’s career in the colonial bureaucracy was supposedly
being pushed along. Caccitepe and Mejitarian often assured him that if he performed this assignment well, he would eventually
cross over to Hive Intel with high rank and a dossier full of strong recommendations.

When Jak had first arrived on Deimos and been assigned to Mejitarian, he had thought him kind. He knew now that the kobold
was merely a thorough professional, good at expressing empathy and warmth for the same reason that Caccitepe was good at putting
together clusters of stray facts, or that his uncle was good with a gun. Mejitarian’s job was to be Hive Intel’s doctor, not
Jak’s, and he was indifferent to everything except his job.

As he usually did, Jak gazed steadily at Mejitarian’s right eye, to avoid looking at the notched left ear and the faded outline
of a brand in the fur of Mejitarian’s left cheek. On Mercury, where banking and other archaic horrors were still practiced,
several banks marked children born into peonage in that way. How Mejitarian had gotten away from that life, and into his present
one, was doubtless an interesting story, and one Jak was almost certain never to hear.

The kobold seemed to be seeing something in Jak’s face. “Something else? I’ve told you to report unusual feelings and thoughts.
Something you’re not sure you should report, perhaps? Or something you feel curiously reluctant to report?”

“Oh, I know what it is, and it didn’t come in the message,” Jak said, shivering because he was still wet and naked. He set
the dial on the towel to “extra absorbent” and gently pressed himself all over with it. “It’s frustration. How long will I
have to live like this and do this? I know you don’t have an answer, like a fixed date or anything, but I want to get really
deconditioned, go into Hive Intel on a regular mission, draw a Hive Intel paycheck, and stop infiltrating PASC. Sometimes
it’s hard to wait.”

“Perhaps Dean Caccitepe has not been clear. If you rise to be the head of PASC while giving us a marvelous backchannel into
the Karrinynya palace, and you do that across fifty years, you will have been a very successful agent. There’s no particular
virtue in drawing one of our paychecks, after all—rather the contrary, since the whole idea is to accomplish as much as we
can within our budget, so having our agents paid out of other offices is good. You are in your most valuable possible assignment.
You are a fast-rising star within PASC, which is
noticed.
And you are invaluable as a double agent. You are extraordinarily useful where you are, doing what you are doing. Now, when
you sleep tonight, be sure to run the deconditioning program that we’ve downloaded to your purse. Any other questions?”

“No, sir.”

The screen blinked off.

“Do you want to record your script now?” the purse asked. “Hive Intel has already sent it over.”

“Sure,” Jak said. “I’ll put on a shirt and let’s do it in the recording room. Prompt it from right below the camera.”

After each message from Shyf, the Hive Intel AIs wrote a short script, which Jak then read from a prompter with as much sincerity
as he could manage; its purpose was to convince Greenworld Intelligence that Shyf still had functional control of Jak, plant
some disinformation, aid the Hive, and keep Greenworld from gaining too many advantages.
It’s nice that we’re allies,
Jak thought.
Because if we were enemies, this whole business might be toktru nasty.

The room camera recorded him reading the script as it rolled across the end wall of his sitting room, and his purse uploaded
it to Hive Intelligence for editing and enhancements. Nowadays he tried not to think about any of the words he was reading.

“Time for bed,” he told the purse. He slipped into his prewarmed bed. “Play the deconditioning program that they just sent
you. If it doesn’t specify how often, repeat it all night. Wake me at four. Bright lights, lively music, lots of coffee, and
something I like to eat.”

“Tomorrow’s going to be a good day,” the purse said, cheerfully, trying to catch his mood—something at which it was still
less than perfect.

“Tomorrow’s going to be a day,” Jak corrected.

T
he next morning, the bright lights came on almost with a pop, some gutty old blues singer belted out a lively version of “Saint
James Infirmary,” and the waitron flew into the room towing a container with a big flask of hot strong black coffee and a
mountain of delicate pastries.

Jak untethered and pushed off the warming pad, feeling as if he had a hangover, and slowly, slowly dispensed coffee into a
bulb. Usually when he was sleep-deconditioned, he had threatening dreams, frightening dreams, dreams that made him weep, none
of them coherent, all of Shyf; this time had been no exception. Jak had a sour taste in his mouth, a raw feeling in his throat,
and an oozy gray mess in his brain.

He drew a breath, told himself to be a grown-up, and stripped off the old “PSA Maniples First Chair” shirt he usually slept
in.

The music changed over to a medley of medieval American musical theatre songs, bright bouncy happy things about cockeyed optimists,
four-leaf clovers, and figuring that whenever you’re down and out the only way is up. (Conservation of momentum was apparently
unknown to medieval Americans.)

He ate only two small puff pastries, despite all the temptations the waitron offered. It would be close to dinnertime for
Sib and Gweshira, and Sib always sprang for a great meal.

Not that he would ever admit it to Sib, but Jak was looking forward to seeing him. Sibroillo Jinnaka had raised Jak, taught
him the Disciplines, pushed him to excel at everything, and usually been everything you would want your uncle to be. Of course,
there was a downside. Jak had gotten caught, more than once, in Circle Four’s deadly feud with Triangle One. Jak’s life could
have been much easier had his family name been something other than Jinnaka. But still, Uncle Sib had been right there whenever
Jak needed him, and if his advice had sometimes proved dead wrong, he was still Jak’s model of brains, skill, and courage.

Besides, I haven’t seen the horrible old gwont, or had a chance to tease him in person, for a whole year,
Jak thought as he airswam swiftly through the tunnels.
Hope I haven’t lost my touch.

Most passengers off
Eros’s Torch
had taken the launch directly down to Mars. Sib and Gweshira were the only passengers on the ferry. As Hive citizens entering
a Hive possession, they cleared security swiftly, and were out in the receiving area, pounding Jak’s back, hugging him and
laughing, within a minute of the green pressure light.

They went to the Parakeet, a pleasant-enough all-shifts restaurant. On the way, Sib commented, “Except for some minor changes
in the uniforms, this could be a hundred eighty years ago, when I used to come up here to go drinking and whoring.”

“Since I’m in charge of the place, I’m supposed to go somewhere else for that.”

“The burden of command,” Gweshira said, her eyes twinkling. She was a tiny woman, all muscle and gristle, and the deep brown
skin stretched over her square jaw was still firm and tight, though she must be close to two hundred years old herself. Her
silver hair had escaped from its clip, bobbing around her face as they airswam.

The Parakeet was centrifuged to one-tenth g, the grav that made “light” synonymous with “rich” or “high class,” in which soup
stayed in a bowl and one could walk, but lying on a hard floor was comfortable and motion easy. On the partitions in the dining
room, which blocked the view of people dining upside down over one’s head and doors whirling by every few seconds, screens
showed views from outside cameras; the restaurant appeared to be freeflying in Mars orbit.

One side of the dining room showed the red-green-blue-white landscape of Mars, spattered with small lakes, interrupted by
tight white cyclones and smeared with the black smoke of prairie fires. On the opposite side the screens were lit with the
wild rainbow flame of
Eros’s Torch,
a stream of exotic matter tortured to the borders of existence, cooling into a thin smear of plasma, fifty thousand kilometers
long and a million kilometers away, against the black star-showered velvet of space. “Well, the ferry with my boss on it should
be reaching
Eros’s Torch,
right about now,” Jak said. “And since they don’t turn them around for anything, I guess I’m in charge. How long do you think
I should wait before staging a coup and declaring a provisional government?”

Sib laughed, coping with difficulty with his mouthful of salad. “You should call and ask him. It might be a welcome stimulus.
The poor man is about to be bored to death.”

Gweshira nodded vigorously as she picked bones out of her fish. “Neither of us had traveled in decades, you know, we’d spent
all our time on the Hive, and before when we traveled, it was always ‘business.’ ” The way she said it meant “Circle Four
business.” “We hadn’t quite realized what a month on a quarkjet liner would be like—nothing much to do but the Disciplines,
gambling, reading, and catching viv entertainment … they’re mainly set up for younger people to stand around watching each
other try to be beautiful. I’m afraid we’re turning into a couple of old gwonts who think life was better in their youth.”

“Well, maybe it was,” Jak said.

Sibroillo half smiled. “At least our youth was better for us, eh, old pizo? Just remember that someday you’re going to be
describing this as the golden age.”

“I don’t think Deimos has ever had a golden age, Uncle Sib. At best it’s had a tar age. But I appreciate your not being too
discouraging. I’m looking forward to some very dull months, and my orders are to keep them that way if at all possible.”

Sib beamed. “Now, that was nicely put, pizo. Very nicely put. You’d rather not offend me, but you’d rather not be left holding
the bag for whatever I might do.”

“Um, very blunt, but toktru.”

“Well, Gweshira and I, having had one good meal and a night’s sleep here, are going to head down to Mars. Deimos is only interesting
because you’re here. Is that good news?”

Jak made a face. “I never thought I’d be saying this, Uncle Sib, but I want to stay out of trouble.”

Sib and Gweshira roared with laughter so merry that Jak joined in. “What’s the joke?”

Gweshira shrugged. “Back when we were both at school on Mars—this was in different decades, by the way—each of us had the
experience of a certain teacher—also the teacher of Bex Riveroma—”

Jak shuddered. “That data sliver still in my liver—”

Sib shrugged. “In a few years the information will be outdated and he won’t care. Till then just be careful. He’s crazy, evil,
and dangerous, but rational enough—in fact that’s why he’s so dangerous. This teacher whose name we won’t mention always said
he thought of Bex as one of the two most dangerous people he’d ever trained.”

“Were you the other one, Gweshira?” Jak asked.

Jak and Gweshira waited to laugh until Sib’s face was a mask of fury. A moment later Sib was laughing too. “I don’t know why
I always fall for that.”

“Because it gives us such pleasure,” Jak suggested.

“Possibly.” Sib held up a finger, recalling his point. “Well, anyway, when you said you wanted to stay out of trouble, it
reminded us of something. During our training, believe me,
we
said that often. ‘Out of trouble’ was all we wanted. And every time we even thought that phrase, this teacher-we-won’t-name
would say (I can’t intone like he could), ‘You are invoking the Great God Murphy Whose Will Is Law, and he will be moved to
act.’ And because we’re planning to visit him as soon as we fly down to Mars, he was on our mind, and you triggered the memory.”

When Sib and Gweshira had finished eating, they were tired, so Jak called a sprite to guide them to their hotel, and they
airswam after the little twinkling glow.

At the office, the tasks accumulated overnight consumed ten minutes, and it still wasn’t officially start time; Jak had nothing
to do for the rest of the day except interview Pikia. While he waited for her, he set up a flask of coffee and two bulbs.

“Pikia Periochung is here for her interview,” Jak’s purse said.

“Send her in.”

The door dilated and Pikia, dressed in a nicer-than-required coverall, airswam in. Jak had met her at many receptions; he
was usually the only person present within fifty years of her age, so they often chatted, but only about his brief periods
of media fame (which he would rather have forgotten), and the usual “do you like school” things that adults use for awkward
small talk with teenagers.