The Thrones of Kronos (52 page)

For the first time in what seemed years, he felt the urge
for some bunny fun with something—someone—besides his shestek.

“Care to lay a little bet?” he asked.

“What you got in mind?” she answered promptly.

“We’ll think of something,” he said.

Her lips curled, miming acute nausea, and she gave a snort
that sounded like some kind of mammoth creature pulling a hoof out of sucking
mud.

But he noticed she didn’t say No.

Corianor carefully extended the lookaround into the
cross-tunnel of the three-way junction. The ruddy walls surrounding him returned
the quiet snicking of the imager’s telescoping joints in a soft, chattering
echo. The image on the screen cradled in his palm trembled; he studied it for a
long time before stepping carefully around the corner.

His helmet lamp illuminated the corridor only a short
distance ahead. Beyond, lit only by the dim, unchanging glow of the Suneater’s
substance, the tunnel sloped up in irregular swales; its floor curved out of
sight perhaps one hundred meters ahead. Further on, he knew, it pouched out
into a vestibule with five tunnels opening on it. It was there that he had
found the efflorescence of what the Rifter Marim called Black Negus.

Corianor paused, every sense alert. Even before the Suneater
devoured the tempaths the more remote corridors and adits had seemed haunted:
never the same twice, though the differences had been subtle. Now he couldn’t
even be sure he would find the vestibule where it had been, let alone still
sprouting the prized Ur-fruit from every surface.

Even worse, beyond this point there were no stasis clamps,
only passive quantum interfaces. Corianor shuddered, the vid of the gray’s
sacrifice Barrodagh had shown him still vivid in memory. There had been no
stasis clamps in that chamber, either.

Corianor fingered the safety-comp on his belt dubiously—the
green light on it shone steadily. Any activity in the walls detected by the
interfaces within its range would change the light to red and sound a tone.
Supposedly, triggering the safety-comp would generate a destructive overload in
the interfaces, creating a stasis in the Urian quantum-plast that might enable
him to escape the terror that dwelled in the walls.

If this one even
works.
It would be just like Barrodagh to have given him one that didn’t.
He couldn’t test it. His superior would have him in the mindripper for
squandering interfaces.

Corianor wrenched his mind away from the image; it didn’t
matter. He had no choice. Even above the screams of the hapless victim in the
vid, Barrodagh’s acerbic voice was still etched in his memory. “I need not
describe the consequences if your role in obtaining the Ur-fruit the grays used
were to be revealed.” Then, to Corianor’s amazement, Barrodagh had continued,
“So you will give her the fruit only when I tell you to.” His face had twisted
into a painful, gloating smile. “You may even keep whatever it is you get from
her in exchange.”

Corianor burned with humiliation at the implication. Among
the Catennach, to doubt that another had truly been neutered was the ultimate
insult. But he was lowest in the Catennach here.

Corianor heel-toed slowly up the tunnel, pausing frequently
to listen, but he heard nothing save his own harsh breathing. The psychoactive
varieties of Ur-fruit, which could now be found only in the remotest tunnels
due to Delmantias’ efforts, had seemed a way up in the bureaucracy. He had been
building a web of dependence among the low-caste Bori and the grays, but
Barrodagh had been watching all along and had twisted Corianor’s efforts to his
own advantage.

He wasn’t watching now. There were no imagers this far out.
No Ogres, either, but at this point Corianor almost would welcome their
presence—if he could count on their protection.

When he reached the vestibule, he was relieved to find he
crop of Ur-fruit, the black-skinned, fist-sized spheroids glistening in the
weird light. He began twisting them off their stems and stuffing them into a
cloth bag, frequently checking his surroundings, especially the unreachable
adit climbing at a steep angle from its mouth in the ceiling. The thing in the
walls favored attack from above, it seemed.

Then he heard a strange rhythmic whine, accompanied by a
measured thumping, like footsteps. It was coming from the adit to his left.
Startled, he hastened back the way he’d come, then staggered to a halt when he
heard a tone from his safety-comp. The light shone red; ahead the ceiling
bulged strangely. He cringed against the wall as the bulge swelled into a
blister that split to reveal a pair of black boots. Another dead victim!

Corianor’s heart bounded painfully as he darted into another
adit that twisted downward around a sharp bend. He was so intent on escape that
he banged his head on the ceiling and his light went out. Blinking tears from
his eyes, he crouched, terror clawing at his throat when he perceived in the
dim light a short distance away that this corridor pinched off into an
impassable cannula barely as wide as his head.

The thump, thump grew louder; he hoped that the swale in the
floor and the bend in the corridor would hide him from the nexus.

The noises stopped. There was a soft thump from further
away, followed by the sound of footsteps. Then a twin whine accompanied by
metallic sounds, which ceased abruptly at the sound of a deep voice: “Hold.”

The Avatar! Corianor began to tremble. The source of the
strange whining sounds was clear to him now: the Ogres.

“No Tarkans, Father?”

Corianor’s bladder burned. There was no hope for him now.
The other voice was that of the heir, Anaris.

“I need no longer depend on them,” said Eusabian. “With
these to guard me, the Suneater is mine alone.”

Corianor heard the double meaning. So did Anaris, it seemed.

“It seems neither of us need fear the
chorahin
, then.” That was what the grays now called the horror
lurking in the walls—a word derived from the long-dead Chorei.

“No,” replied the Avatar. “But fear of that fear?”

What did that mean? What could it be but Barrodagh, and his
insatiable desire to control everything—to know everything?

What would Barrodagh give for a recording? If Corianor could
just live through it, what would it be worth in the Catennach struggle?

The thought gave him enough courage to trigger the
lookaround’s memory. Then, with excruciating care, he carefully levered it into
position, careful not to bang it into a wall, and extended the bare tip of it
over the swale that concealed him from the two lords.

Eusabian stood between his pair of Ogres, his
heavy-shouldered figure shortened by the enormous battle androids with their
insane double faces. A few meters away Anaris faced his father, his hands
hanging easily at his sides. He stood directly under the ceiling opening; if he
was aware of it, he was not disturbed.

“Perhaps,” Anaris said. “It is you who has set a Chorei to
energize this place.”

Eusabian grunted. Was that a laugh or a growl? “The Avatar
uses even the karra to fulfill his will.” It sounded like he was quoting
someone.

“Just so,” Anaris replied. “And so the weapon grows dull in
your hand while you forbear to use it.”

“It is sharp enough for the purpose.” Eusabian looked
around. “This is a place of power, for both of us. But I can leave and still
draw upon its strength. Can you?”

“A pretty balance,” Anaris said, leaving Corianor even more
confused. “For how long?”

Eusabian gestured dismissively. “I do not fear the
conclusion.”

Anaris smiled slowly. “Nor I.” Then, after a further pause,
“I shall enjoy polishing your skull.”

Eusabian’s face darkened and he raised one hand, clenching
his fist. The Ogres came to life. But as they glided forward with shocking
speed, Corianor’s safety-comp toned softly and the floor of the vestibule
convulsed, knocking the machines off balance as a hump pistoned under the
heir’s feet and rocketed him up into the adit overhead, which shut behind him.

A rumble receded into silence as the Ogres reached toward the
ceiling.

“Hold,” the Avatar said again, staring up at the pucker.

Corianor held his breath as Eusabian lowered his gaze and
looked around. Had he heard the safety-comp? Had the Ogres? But he left, the
Ogres whine-thumping ahead and behind him.

Corianor let his breath trickle out. He was still too weak
with reaction to trust his legs. When his heart quieted, he collapsed the
lookaround and returned to the vestibule. He studied the pucker in the ceiling,
now flattening out like one of the many organic curves of the Suneater, and
began picking Ur-fruit again.

He was still alive. And with that recording!

Let’s see Barrodagh
sneer at me now.

o0o

Barrodagh did not sneer. He curbed his impatience, an
effort made easier by the flush of triumph accelerating his heartbeat.

“Very well,” he said to Corianor. “You will be suitably
rewarded. For now—” He let threat sharpen his voice. “—no one is to know about
this.”

Corianor’s eyes widened, and Barrodagh held out his hand.
“I’ll take care of that.”

Corianor surrendered the lookaround, bowed, and left.

As soon as he was gone, Barrodagh copied the lookaround’s
recording into his compad, then erased the memory. Dropping the tool into a
corner on top of a stack of flimsies, he tabbed the compad and watched the
interaction again, and a third time, with the avid fascination of one who has
been too long thwarted in his ambition to witness the Avatar and the heir
together—alone.

I shall enjoy
polishing your skull.
Was that the opening move in the war of the
succession, or did they always issue such overt threats to one another when
they were alone? In the presence of others, they were either impassive or
cooperative—the Avatar being very specific about the transfers of power to his
son—and once or twice Barrodagh suspected they were sharing a secret amusement,
laughing at him.

He brought a hand up, gnawing at a ragged nail. Familiar as
his nightmares was the old wish that he had been farther up in the Catennach
hierarchy when Jerrode had made his move against Urtigen, the then Avatar. He
had not been privy to any of the planning; he had only suspected imminent
action after observing the exponential increase in tension among the upper
hierarchy.

He remembered being woken up one night and issued explicit
orders, which he carried out with no deviation. On his return to the Catennach
tower he’d discovered his predecessor standing over the mangled remains of
Urtigen’s secretary.
Just as Morrighon
expects to come after me,
he thought, anger tightening his guts again.

Unless I get you
first.
So how to use this new data with the most effect?

The screen was frozen on Anaris’s sardonic smile. Barrodagh
clenched his jaw. How he loathed that smile, and the fearlessness and sense of
superiority that prompted it. He tabbed the screen again and watched Anaris’s
spectacular exit.

Telekinesis.

All the anomalies fell into place: the flying objects in the
landing bay when Norio died, the theft of the drugs from Norio’s quarters—
so Morrighon
didn’t
know I was using them
—and Anaris’s mysterious insistence that he be
apprised of the experiments with the tempaths, only to hide instead of observe.

Barrodagh was certain that if Anaris had had this ability
previous to his arrival at the Suneater, it had been negligible. But the
station had somehow enhanced it.

Which means he was
born with the taint of the Chorei.

For inexplicable reasons, the Avatar had chosen to delegate
certain powers to Anaris. Of course the heir did his best to augment these at
his father’s expense.
And mine
. One
of the most serious erosions of the Avatar’s power, Barrodagh felt, was through
the strengthening bond between the Tarkans and Anaris.

Favored of Urtigen, the Tarkans called the heir.

Barrodagh sat back, contemplating the Tarkans. Fiercely
loyal, austere, and unimaginative, they scorned political maneuvering—and they
were sincere in cleaving to Dol’jharian superstition. Their leader was all of
these things to an extreme.

Barrodagh smiled, savoring Chur-Mellikath’s likely reaction
when he saw this evidence of Anaris achreash-Eusabian’s tainted Chorei blood.
Nothing short of an exhibition of cowardice, which unfortunately was not a
remote possibility with Anaris, could more effectively undercut that alliance.

And best of all,
Morrighon will not find out,
Barrodagh thought, and laughed.

o0o

Marim woke up in a good mood.

At first she couldn’t identify why, and she had to laugh at
herself. Good mood? At the Suneater?
I
must be going crazy-bad, and I don’t even know it
.

She sat up, seeing the others waking up as well.
Unfortunately they were all used to emergencies, thus were light sleepers. If
one person woke, everyone did.

“Markers,” Lokri said sleepily.

They all tossed a coin into a bowl. Montrose dropped a data
chip on the table, averted his eyes, and shook the bowl until the coins had
fallen out near the chip. Everyone glanced down to see where his or hers had
fallen. The owner of the coin closest to the chip got a shower first.

For once Marim was in ahead of everyone else.

Under the stinging water, she thought over her day and
identified the cause of the good mood: anticipation. Rec room—and Hreem. Safe
under the rushing water, she snickered.

Who would have thought it? She actually had fun when the
chatzer came in to play. She loved insulting him to his face, and it was even
more fun to destroy him at L-3. Though lately she’d lost almost as many as
she’d won, and those wins were tougher to make.