Palace (31 page)

Hi moved the field up a level on the Map, until behind his eyes he saw the same map that Rico had seen, speeding over Tech Sect with its rivers of blue development lines and dots for stations. Pansect’s area had turned into one big black spot, as charred as burnt paper. Again, he found not a single trace of route markings beyond the completely expected and normal ones. What if this rogue master controlled an artifact like the Chameleon Gate? A frightening possibility, that. As Hi watched, a slither of new route markings appeared, but all included the ID of the Cyberguild, 666. Someone had told him once that this ID, the three sixes, contained an ancient joke, but Hi had forgotten what it was.

Dian Wynn’s code, and two journeymen - she was starting the repair job for Pansect, placing construct on the Map as fast as the two journeymen could create the code back at their waking-mind terminals in guild headquarters. For a few minutes Hi floated above, wondering what he was doing there. Someone else had already done all the preliminary work. Another master had compiled a full report. It would be sitting in his mail box, waiting for him. Once he got around to reading it, he could see if any of the information there jibed with the data from Arno about the mysterious tip and the dump at the Caliostro firewall. Arno.

‘Time?’

The numbers flashed in green: forty after the tens. Time ran fast when you were on the Map. Undrugged, his body began to impinge on his thinking - part of him felt numb, part ached. In his mind the fields of numbers were receding, growing faint; the words faded. Hi no longer needed elaborate constructs and gates to leave the Map. He opened his eyes, sat up, wiggled the cyberarm free, and saw on his screen code for an incoming call from Media Guild headquarters, from the master of the guild himself. He could guess what that was about. Some apprentice intake, stuck with the bottom-level job of hanging round the morgue, had learned of Arno’s murder.

Hi let the screen blink unanswered and stood up. He needed to comb his hair, needed to dress in full ceremonial robes, needed maybe to eat, even, though his stomach never growled or complained. He stood for a moment rubbing his face with both hands, then decided that what he really needed was to get out of this office and into the open air. Out behind the compound lay a formal garden, filled now with caterers and workers. In the middle of the turquoise lawn some Leps were snapping together a temporary stage while human men stood by with dark blue and gold drop cloths; up on the garden wall behind the stage, two human women were hanging a camera system. Caterers in spodess white coats set up trestle tables in the spotty shade of fern trees. In the midst of it all stood Jevon, her scriber tucked in one arm. When she saw Hi, she came hurrying over. Although normally she wore little make-up, her eyes were heavily darkened - to hide the crying she’d done, he supposed.

‘Master Jons, I have the investiture invitation list for you, your speech is queued on the podium, and the follow-up interview has been granted to Tarick Avon.’

‘From Pansect? Good. That will put them in a better mood about the Cyberguild.’

‘Theirs wasn’t the highest bid, but I wrung a couple of concessions out of them. I marked a couple of family subjects off-limits, and they agreed.’

‘Great! Sounds like you did your usual top job.’

Normally she would have acknowledged the praise, but now she merely glanced away, making him remember that he’d never bothered to smooth over the unpleasantness about his trip to Pleasure.

‘Look, I was out of line that night, the festival of Calios, I mean. You were right: I had no business running around without a bodyguard. And I sure had no right to shoot my mouth off at you. I know you were only doing your job.’

‘You’re the chief patron. I’m only your factor. I shouldn’t have argued with you.’

‘Yes, you should have. Look, any time I make an ass of myself, it’s part of your job to tell me.’

At that she looked at him with the beginning of a smile.

‘The day before the festival, weren’t we talking about a raise?’ Hi went on. ‘Jump yourself a pay grade.’

‘A whole - well, thank you, Se. She did smile, then, only to freeze, to look away and let the smile fade fast.

‘What’s wrong?’ Hi said.

‘Nothing. I mean. Well. What’s happened.’

‘Oh. Yeah, that. Well, that’s going to be with us for a long time.’ The act, he reminded himself. For God’s sake, don’t forget how you’re supposed to act. ‘I’m sorry, too, Jevon, but I mourned him a long time ago, when he checked himself out of that hospital and hit the streets.’

Jevon seemed to be watching the caterers, who had begun to cover the tables with seal-on sheeting from a big blue roll. ‘Well,’ Hi said. ‘There wasn’t anything else I could do.’

‘If you say so, Se Hivel.’

‘Now hey, wait a minute! It’s not like I didn’t try to get him to clean up.’

‘I know, Se. It’s not my place to be discussing this with you. If you have no more orders, I need to tend to things out here.’

Hi found himself wondering why he could think of nothing more to say about Arno, whether true or false. Shock. The word was acquiring a certain magic.

‘One more thing,’ Hi said. ‘Tomorrow Rico and I will be moving to Government House. We’ll need transports and lift bots, things like that. You’ll be coming with us, of course, and Nju and a few of the other staff members.’

Jevon stared, her mouth gaping.

‘Keep it quiet for now,’ Hi went on. ‘But I want it all over the screens tomorrow, okay? I’ll brief you tonight, but the gist is that the Cyberguild’s finally won back some old privileges.’

‘Of course, Se, of course. I can start the arrangements during the ceremony.’

‘You don’t want to sit down for a minute and watch? You’ll need the rest.’

‘No, Se.’ Her voice shook and badly. ‘I don’t want to watch.’

Before he could say another word, Jevon turned and marched off, clutching her scriber. All at once a hundred small things fell into place, a hundred memories of Jevon smiling when Arno came into a room, of Arno perched on the corner of her desk, telling her with a grin some long involved story while she smiled up at him. Hi was too stunned even to swear, that he would never have noticed their affair until now, when it was too late to signal his lack of censure. For a moment he watched her, standing straight and proud in a suit as grey as the turgid sky; then he turned and went back into the house to look for Rico.

Hi found his nephew up in the boy’s bedroom, where Rico was being helped into his dress clothes by a pair of saccules, wearing midnight blue sashes over their usual grey shifts. Today Rico would become a journeyman as well as the heir to his clan. No more apprentice’s smock for him - he wore trousers and a tight-fitting jacket, all in guild blue, with the details of collar and sleeve picked out in gold piping.

‘Hey, kid,’ Hi said. ‘You look great.’

‘Yeah?’ Rico turned round, and his face looked as Hi’s must have - dead pale, blank eyed, rigid with the stress of carrying on with the day. ‘Mom says I look like a scarecrow. I don’t even know what that is.’

‘Some kind of agricultural gadget.’ Hi glanced at the saccules, who were leaning against each other and smelling sour with anxiety. ‘Leave us alone, guys. Go get something to eat.’

Squeaking and honking, they scurried out. When the door shut behind them Hi sat down on the edge of Rico’s narrow bed. He meant only to yawn, but the sound came out sounding more like a moan. Rico caught his breath in a sob, but when Hi looked, he found his nephew dry-eyed.

‘I can’t cry either,’ Hi said. ‘It’s the shock.’

Too late he realized that he’d let the act slip. Rico sat down on the chair of his school desk, which stood at right angles to the bed. The top lay empty of cartridges and printout; a dust cloth covered the small Mapstation; the desk and chair both looked much too small for him.

‘I mean, uh, I had to think of Arno as dead a long time ago,’ Hi said. ‘But it’s still a shock.’

‘You don’t have to lie to me,’ Rico said. ‘Arno left me a message, telling me the truth. Uncle Hi? Remember the festival day, when I got so mad at you? I’m sorry. I didn’t understand then, about his working undercover.’

‘He - you?’ Hi turned furious - briefly. ‘Well, hell, doesn’t matter now.’

‘Yeah. Guess not. Do we have to go on pretending? Not about what he was doing - about

... about how we feel.’

‘I do. You don’t. Everyone knows how close you and Arno were.’

‘Okay. I don’t mind lying about the work he was doing, but I just can’t lie about...’ Rico let his voice trail away.

‘Well, yeah.’

From outside drifted music. Jevon had apparently picked recreations of ancient music for the day’s event, and they listened together to the sound of harps and flutes, some small percussion instrument, some instrument with many metal strings. Kephalon music. Hi placed it at last. Music from a dead planet for a dead son. It seemed appropriate.

‘Uncle Hi?’ Rico said at last. ‘Someone needs to keep on with what he was doing.’

‘Yeah, so they do. One of the last things he told me was that he figured you were the only one good enough to pick up where he left off.’

Rico almost wept - Hi could see it in the slackness of his mouth, the pain in his eyes - but the boy choked it back.

‘But you’re going to do it openly,’ Hi went on. ‘No more elaborate dodges. We’ve got to move fast, for one thing. The attacks on the Map are a lot worse than when he started looking into the problem.’

‘I figured that.’

‘By the Eye, we need help! Two of us aren’t enough. There’s one cybermaster in particular that I really want to bring into this. Him I know I could trust. But I can’t use him, thanks to the goddamned new laws. He’s a Lep. Ri Tal Molos. Ever heard of him, kid?’

‘The Molos Utilities?’

‘That’s the one, yeah. Goddamn laws! I’ve worked my butt off, trying to get them repealed, but there’s always some goddamn group like this lousy UJU movement to keep the newsgrids stirred up.’ Hi was surprised at how suddenly good it felt to be angry. ‘Now there’s a group that could use a little suppressing, if you ask me. Why the hell should they go hiding behind the free speech laws when they won’t let other groups speak freely? Them and their damned vandalism! No-one even knows what their lousy name stands for. Round them all up, that’s what the Peronida ought to do, round them all up and send them to the education camps!’

‘Se Hivel?’ Jevon was standing in the doorway. ‘Se Barra asked me to tell you that it’s time for you to dress.’

‘Right, yeah. Sorry.’ Hi got up and paused to lay a hand on Rico’s shoulder. ‘I’ll see you in a while.’

‘Sure.’ Rico glanced at Jevon. ‘Tell my mom I’ll be right down, will you? I’ve just got to think for a minute.’

Much to his horror, Hi found the gather filled with guests, and the only convenient route to his wing of the compound lay through it. Muttering apologies, calling out greetings, he walked in, kept walking, kept muttering, until he reached the far door and came face-to-face with Dian Wynn, Rico’s teacher, stout and impressive in her master’s robes. She touched his arm with two fingers.

‘Jons, you don’t have to apologize for being late. We’ve all heard the awful news by now. I’m just surprised you didn’t cancel this get-together.’

‘Oh, well, that wouldn’t have been fair to Rico.’ Hi forced the muscles of his mouth to relax into the semblance of detachment. ‘As for Arno, hell, he was dead to me months ago. And now that’s the end of that. Too bad. Arno could’ve been a good cybe, if he hadn’t taken to the drugs like a jadewing to the air.’

Wynn nodded, sadly but in agreement. When Hi glanced round, he saw the same or very similar expressions on the faces of the other guests. Only Barra, standing by the window, watched him with one eyebrow raised. She didn’t believe a word of it, he knew, and of course, she was right.

‘Well, I’d better get dressed,’ Hi said. ‘It’s time to invest a new heir. The old one’s dead and gone, right? Life goes on.’

They nodded, sighed, murmured condolences. One more obstacle stood between Hi and the safety of the door, Ymel Rethe, a cybermaster who liked to fancy himself the second-in-command of the guild. He had the years of experience, yes, and he had the skills, but at times Hi found himself wondering if this were the Map vandal, this pale and muscular man who dyed his beard and moustache in a brindle of azure and turquoise. He had no proof, unless you could count Rethe’s taste for petty malice proof, but Hi’s intuition went off like an alarm every time he saw the man.

‘So sorry, Jons,’ Ymel said. His dark voice rumbled like distant thunder. ‘Damn! This is a bad day for the guild.’

‘Yeah, sure is.’

Ymel glanced around and whispered.

‘Interesting choice you made, to replace Arno, I mean.’

‘Yeah? I see this as a family matter, not a guild matter.’

Ymel raised one turquoise eyebrow.

‘Scuze,’ Hi snapped. ‘I’ve got to get dressed.’

Hi stepped round him and dodged through the door into his private hallway. He found himself thinking of Rico more than of Arno and felt his throat tighten over tears. It was time to bring another child into the line of fire.

* * *

Rico would always remember the investiture as one of the worst moments of his life. At least he could grieve, unlike his uncle, but still, he was forced to smear his cousin’s memory with lies. When he walked into the gather, Gran handed him a drink, fruit juice heavily laced with alcohol, which normally Rico left alone. That afternoon he needed it. It seemed that every guildmaster there had to wag a solemn finger in his face and warn him about the terrible evils of abusing cyberdrugs. Each time Rico would have to agree and shake his head sadly, that his brilliant cousin had fallen so low.

The ceremony itself was mercifully brief. Hi simply announced that he’d jettisoned his prepared speech to save Rico the agony of sitting on a stage when he was in mourning, and the assembled guests all clapped, solemnly but with one eye on the refreshment tables under the fern trees.

‘You all know why we’re here,’ Hi went on. ‘I publicly acknowledge Rico Hernanes y jons, my sister’s son, as my full heir. All the legal forms have been transmitted and registered. You can always look them up if you don’t believe me.’