The Duke Of Uranium (9 page)

“The family that controls the fissionables monopoly, of course. It’s the house that owns the Duchy of Uranium.”

“Right, sorry, sometimes you show so little interest that I expect even less of you than you actually achieve, hard though that is to believe. Well, if Triangle One is going to build up their triangle of what’s basically church, treasury, and army, they need to get that treasury leg unified—which means helping the great monopolies to grow and strengthen, and then merging them into one vast combine.

“Now, the Duchy of Uranium has always played rougher and been faster and looser about the rules than almost any other monopoly. They got their monopoly in the first place by a hundred-year campaign that looked more like organized crime than shrewd business organization, and they did it in clear violation of all of the Wager’s social principles—there’s no way they should have the sole license for uranium, plutonium, and thorium, everywhere in human space, not to mention having it for all of mining, extraction, synthesis, breeding, recycling, operations, and disposal. And not only did they get that monopoly by illicit force, they maintain it that way. Of all the great monopolies, they have the biggest and best-trained army, and they’re the most willing to use it, and of course if you depend on fission for energy, and you annoy the Cofinalezes enough, their beanies will take your fuel rods back—no matter how many bystanders they have to kill, or how much of what gets spilled in the process. So the Cofinalez family is Triangle One’s kind of people, and they have a long-running alliance.

“Now, fission is pretty well essential in the upper solar system—try to use anything else for mobile, highdensity power on Triton!—but way down here in the lower system, there are quite a few alternatives, including solar, and for religious reasons that are very confusing and go all the way back to its founding, centuries before the Wager, Greenworld has a religious proscription against nuclear power, and has been a center for the development of solar power. Not just for the technology, although they do make and license some of the very best solar power equipment there is, but also they’re major promoters of solar power, and more than that, they regard it as kind of a religious duty to get space habitats switched over to all-the-way solar, so they’ve always been a thorn in the Cofmalez side. Greenworld and Uranium have been on opposite sides of three declared wars and four unofficial ones in the last two hundred years, in fact, with a nice scattering of atrocities on both sides, some assassinations against both ruling families, everything that people tend to remember for generations after. There’s plenty of bad blood between Cofinalez and Karrinynya and deep grudges between their ordinary subjects, and a real clash of interests between Greenworld and Uranium, so between all of that, there’s not going to be any love lost.

“Now, this quarrel between the Karrinynya Dynasty and the House of Cofinalez would be of only minor interest to Triangle One, just a locus for an occasional favor to an old ally, if it weren’t that the last two Karrinynya kings have been extremely influential as minority leaders in the Confederacy of the Aerie.

Are your eyes glazing over yet?”

“I’m doing my best, Uncle Sib, but let’s see if I can stay awake if I speck the rest. If I remember right, the majority party in the Aerie is those heets that want to unify it under one system of government, the way we are here in the Hive, but that takes more than a majority to do it—two-thirds?”

“Three-quarters.”

“Three-quarters. And the minority has always been much more than a quarter of the Confederacy Assembly, so they have been able to prevent that change, so all the hundreds of little individual habitats that make up the Aerie have stayed independent nations. I can see where Triangle One wouldn’t like that much. So what are they going to do, threaten to hurt Sesh—Princess Shyf, I mean—unless her dad, the King, changes the way he votes?”

“Not a bad guess, but, no, it’s nothing that crude. The deal is this. If Shyf would consent to marry a Cofinalez in a full marriage-of-lines, then the House of Cofinalez, which is more senior even though all they’ve got is a duchy and she’s in line to be queen, would subordinate the Karrinynya Dynasty, and Greenworld would pass under their control.”

Jak felt ill, which was strange. Not long ago he’d have been surprised at the idea of anyone his age getting married, though he knew some people did, particularly in the Tolerated Faiths. Certainly the idea of Sesh getting married would have seemed ridiculous.

But if she was going to marry anyone, then toktru it ought to be Jak. And the idea that it would be part of a property arrangement—”What would Uranium want with Greenworld, if it’s so incompatible with what they do? Would they just want to destroy it?” And would they take my beautiful, wonderful demmy and use her for a marker just so they could wreck one small kingdom? he thought. Suddenly the world seemed very cruel; he couldn’t stop thinking of her smile and her laugh.

“They’re not going to succeed at any of it,” Gweshira reminded him, firmly. “And anyway even a very small kingdom is too expensive to acquire it just to wreck. But unfortunately, there is some method to the madness. They already have quite a few territorial holdings— some on Mars, some on Mercury, many in the Aerie, and of course their big home base in Africa on Earth—so adding Greenworld would expand that territorial base, not to mention adding one of the best middle-sized armies in the solar system to their forces.

“It’s their longer-run goal that’s really insane. If the Cofinalezes can get Greenworld under their thumb, they’d have an excellent springboard from which to expand their monopoly and eventually take over fusion, gravitational, planetary thermal, and Casimir effect power, and thus eventually, instead of Duke of Uranium, Mun Cofinalez, or more likely (since Mun is old and failing) his son Pukh, could be King of Energy.”

“But there’s no such thing!”

Sib nodded emphatic agreement. “Nor should there be. It would be like having a Kingdom of Money, or a Kingdom of Information. Far too much power in one place. But that’s what the House of Cofinalez are driving at, or so we believe. And it starts with getting Princess Shyf to marry a Cofinalez.”

“So why didn’t they just put a gun to her head, hold the ceremony, and have done with it?”

Gweshira made a face, as if she’d smelled something bad. “Because we are a somewhat more civilized civilization than that. Emphasis on the somewhat. No level of marriage below full marriage-of-lines will subordinate one dynasty to another; Shyf can have a consort, or six of them if she wishes (Greenworld has legal polygamy for aristocrats), and it doesn’t affect her status—she’s queen as soon as her father dies. She can have a hundred term marriages if she wants, and has the energy, without changing a bit of her legal status. But if she goes into a full marriage-of-lines with a line senior to her own, she forfeits the title to

Greenworld to her husband. Those are the rules.

“Now, not surprisingly, the aristocrats have surrounded marriages-of-lines with a fence of very strict legal restrictions. And one of the strictest is that consent of both parties has to be verified by a full deep brain scan. That means, among other things, that Shyf has to agree to it without reservation—no detectable coercion. So whichever Cofinalez it is that they want to marry her to, he’ll have to win her heart for real.

No drugs. No threats. No hypnosis. Not even any lies.

“Princess Shyf knows enough to be pretty hard to persuade. So it’s going to take them several years of keeping her in comfortable captivity, during which at least one Cofinalez brother is going to have to exhibit all kinds of charm that his family has never had. That’s part of why we’re almost sure she’s in Fermi—because the most logical person to marry her off to is Psim Cofinalez, since he’s second in line for the throne of Uranium, and his father and older brother are both already married, and (for a Cofinalez) he’s practically fit company for human beings, and just before Princess Shyf was kidnapped, Psim had a new, beautiful palace grown, with a very high rooftop garden, which is perfect for a prison without bars.

Psim’s garden palace is in Fermi, which is also where his father’s ducal court is, and Psim has been living in that house like a recluse ever since.

“But it will take more than a pretty house to make her forget that she’s Crown Princess of Greenworld, or the political realities of the situation. It will probably take at least a year of very gentle persuasion before they can even stop guarding her and keeping her locked in—right now if they leave any escape route open (not likely with the people they have on the job) she’ll be out like a greased snake. She’s got a cool head with a good brain inside it, and Pritararu and Feyxorra trained her well— give her an instant’s opportunity and she’ll take it and be on her way.

“They have to honestly change her loyalty, and Psim won’t have even begun to make a dent in it yet. Four weeks’ delay to get you well was time well spent. Now we just have to get her out of there before her captivity becomes normal and she starts to think she likes the company—which will take quite a while, since most people understandably are apt to hold a grudge about being kidnapped. Actually, having known a Cofinalez cousin or two, I can’t imagine that she’s ever going to get to like it, but we don’t want her stuck there for years, with everyone on our team paralyzed, while reality sinks in for Psim. Now, admittedly, there are rumors that Psim has table manners, brushes his teeth, and often wears matching shoes, which makes him an effete fop next to any other Cofinalez. But still, an elegant, brainy girl like Princess Shyf must be pretty safe against all the charm he can muster.”

“So how are we going to get her out of there?”

Jak had rarely seen such an unpleasant, and yet joyful, smile on anyone before, let alone on Uncle Sib.

“We’ve got something to trade that will get Princess Shyf back to Greenworld, Greenworld back to its rightful place as a leader in the Aerie, the House of Cofinalez into deep shit, and just possibly Triangle One back to square one— where they all belong. Not to mention driving a deep wedge between Triangle One and the Duchy of Uranium.”

“If they’ve got so much at stake, will they just give up? Is the information that good?”

“Well, this whole scheme of theirs is very important to Uranium but it isn’t really a priority for Triangle One— they just supplied an expert snatch team, because the Duchy of Uranium didn’t have the finesse to do it competently. Now that the princess is in their hands, the operation is all Uranium, except for one Triangle One member—and that person is our target. His name is Bex Riveroma, and he’s about as nasty a piece of work as you’re going to find, as human beings go. We’re going to swap him some old stories in exchange for Princess Shyf—old stories about five very unpleasant events connected with Bex Riveroma, including where and what the evidence for those stories is. Any of that evidence might get him executed, if told in the right part of the solar system.

“Naturally Riveroma would like to see that evidence destroyed. Now, since Riveroma has been placed as the head of security in Psim’s new palace, it would follow that if anyone could spring Princess Shyf, he would be the one. How he’s going to do it, I couldn’t tell you, but the man is a pro—his only good point—and we are offering him the chance to destroy information for which he might be imprisoned or killed at any time. He’ll do it well.”

“All right, so far I dak where this is going. So I’m going to go to Fermi and—make an offer to Bex Riveroma, I guess—and then when he says yes, give him the information—”

Sib nodded. “Right idea, but it’s slightly more complex than that, because Riveroma can’t be trusted at all.

So you won’t be carrying the information, you’ll be carrying the address for the information—in a complicated way that means that it will be much easier for them to get that address with your cooperation than against your resistance, so that they have some interest in treating you decently. And you won’t give it to him till you get word from us that Shyf is back somewhere safe, with loyal troops between her and recapture. But you did speck the basic idea.”

“Why me? I mean, I want to do it, but why me and not a professional courier or a Circle Four member?”

Gweshira nodded at the question, clearly pleased with him. “First reason: because you’re a close enough blood relative to one member of Circle Four so that Riveroma will know that if he tries anything, he’ll be triggering a blood feud. That makes you safer. Not that he’d always object to a blood feud, mind you, but as I’ve said before, he’s a complete professional, and he won’t stand for an unnecessary one. Second reason: because if Riveroma decides he wants to play rough or if he just isn’t feeling as professional as he should, he can’t get any information about Circle Four out of you, since you don’t know it.”

“But—he might try.”

“Well, certainly. It’s always possible that we’ve miscalculated. Perhaps he’s not as afraid of Sib as he ought to be, or perhaps Triangle One will have reasons to accept the risk of outright feud or war. But even if that happens, try not to worry too much. Torture isn’t such a big thing in our modern age; generally they do just enough of it to force you to think about any secrets you’re keeping, while they have you under

deep brain scan, so that they know whether to do a destructive extraction on your brain. Once they confirm that there’s nothing in there, you’re perfectly safe.”

“And I’ve been saying there’s nothing in that brain for a long time,” Sib added.

“Shut up, you silly old gwont, Jak’s entitled to be worried. Anyway, even if that happens (and it’s very unlikely) they might do some bad temporary damage, but it won’t be anything worse than what you’ve just been through.”

“Comforting.”

“Comparatively, it is. Anyway, third reason: if you should, by any chance, happen to find you like the work—or if we discover you’re good at it, which probably won’t happen because this is a milk run—then we may recruit you into Circle Four.

“Now, we’ll be putting a sliver into some vital organ of yours. To retrieve and decode that sliver, Riveroma needs a string of information that will be found coded onto a specific antibody which he will find in your bloodstream. You’ll be carrying directions that will tell him why the information he’s being led to is valuable, and how to isolate the antibody that will let him retrieve the sliver.”