Hunted (20 page)

26

EATING AT THE CAPTAIN’S TABLE

Since it was the first night of a new voyage, Captain Prope held a formal dinner in the lounge—the kind of dinner where people wear dress uniforms and try to act gracious. Everyone moves a bit more slowly; talks a bit more
expressively;
keeps conversation on “social” topics, instead of the usual, “What blazing idiot designed those damned fuel filters?”

Me, I wasn’t so good at witty repartee. I’m not much of a talker at the best of times, and it didn’t help that
Jacaranda’s
onboard clock was way off my current day-night cycle. My brain was still synchronized with the shifts on
Willow
…so dinner at 8:00
P.M.
Jacaranda
time felt more like three in the morning for me.

The problems of space travel that no one ever talks about.

The VIPs had to eat at the captain’s table: Festina because she was an admiral, Kaisho because her legs were the most advanced species on the ship, and me because…well, maybe Prope wanted to keep me under close watch. Not so long ago, she’d been ready to dump me on some ice moon; and I was still a man who knew too much.

The Mandasars had a table of their own right beside us. Naturally, it was lower than ours—only a few centimeters off the floor, with passable dining pallets laid all around. That had to be the work of Tobit and Benjamin: Explorers are always the ones stuck with figuring out how to make aliens comfortable. (Explorers spend a lot of time learning about alien customs; knowledge like that helps you survive on strange planets. You’d be surprised how many races will slit your throat over bad table manners.)

As for Tobit and Benjamin themselves, they were stuck at the back someplace, rubbing elbows with the enlisted. Since Festina, Kaisho and I sat at the head table, Prope must have decided there were plenty of Explorers on display already.

Festina sat on Prope’s right: the position of highest honor and the only possible place to seat a visiting admiral. For some reason I got the second best spot, on the captain’s immediate left. Next to me was that smarmy fellow Harque, who seemed to hold some privileged status aboard
Jacaranda
, even though he was only a lieutenant. Much-higher-ranking personnel—the chief engineer, the commander of Security, even the XO—all got shunted off to other tables. Maybe they had enough clout to
ask
for those seats; Harque was the one stuck under the steely gaze of both a captain and an admiral.

For the first part of the meal, Prope aimed most of her attention at Festina, trying to wheedle juicy gossip about power struggles on the High Council. The captain was one of those people who went all oozy with charm when she wanted something. She had a pretty good touch with it too—all warm and winning, so you found yourself smiling even when you knew it was only an act. The secret was that Prope herself didn’t realize she was an awful hypocrite; she thought this was as genuine as anyone ever got. I’d seen the same thing in diplomats: honestly believing they were paragons of truth because they thought everybody else was a bigger liar than they were.

Festina didn’t work nearly as hard on the social niceties as Prope. One word answers. No little stories about the time a Myriapod ambassador gave birth at the breakfast table. I got the feeling Festina had some grudge against Prope, one she’d been nursing a long time; she was making an effort not to be petty, but refused to go any farther than frostily polite.

As for the actual content of the conversation—like which high admiral said what to whom during a recent summit on some race called the Peacocks—I sleepily let it pass by till Prope asked me, “So what did your father think of it all?”

I jerked awake. Felt myself blushing. Prope knew who I was; and as I glanced around the table, Harque smirking, Festina looking grim, Kaisho hidden behind her hair but tilting her head to one side as if she was eager to hear my answer—I realized they
all
knew. Since I’d come aboard, they must have had time to look over my navy records.

Dumb me: I should have expected they’d check. Smart people learn who they’re dealing with. I just wished…I don’t know. I wished I could have stayed Edward York instead of becoming Alexander York’s son. Especially with the way Festina felt about High Council admirals.

“Um,” I said. “Um. My father has never told me what he thinks about anything. Except maybe when he was talking to somebody else and didn’t notice I was in the room. I haven’t heard a word from him in the past twenty years; and even back then, he sent letters to my sister, not me. After Sam died…” I stopped, remembering Sam wasn’t dead. “My father and I aren’t close,” I mumbled, hoping folks would leave it at that.

Prope didn’t. “Frankly, I’m astounded,” she said, “that you and your dad are…estranged.” She gave me a sympathetic smile. Prope’s kind of sympathy anyway. “You look so much like him, you know. A chip off the old block. Only better—more handsome.”

She laughed lightly. I tried to laugh too, but didn’t do such a great job; no matter how stupid you are, you get good at spotting when someone is flirting with you. If you don’t flirt back, you’re being rude, or a prig. Except that I never think fast enough to toss off sexy banter, especially when I don’t
feel
sexy. (If you really want to snare me into bed, convince me you’re lonely, not coy.)

So for a second, I just sat there with no idea what to say. I didn’t want to talk about my father, and I
definitely
didn’t want to talk about being handsome. Then I found myself replying, “Sorry, Captain, but the real chip off the old block was my twin sister Samantha. Another case of ‘my father’s looks only better’—stupendously better, almost as beautiful as the lovely ladies here at this table—but Sam inherited Dad’s personality too. His force of will. Which I’m afraid led her to a bad end.”

“You have our sympathies, Your Majesty,” Kaisho whispered. She stressed
Your Majesty
just a bit, not sarcastically but pointedly. As if she knew she was talking to more than boring old Edward York, Explorer Second Class.

Yes. I’d been possessed again—a backseat passenger watching someone or something else take the wheel.
Almost as beautiful as the lovely ladies here at this table
…I’d never say something like that. I wondered why Festina didn’t demand, “What’s wrong with you?” Even if we’d only known each other a single day, she should have noticed the difference. But she just said, Tell us about your sister, Edward. What really happened to the mission on Troyen?”

“The thing controlling me was only too happy to give its version of those long-ago days…a version filled with jokes and sly asides, many of them directed toward Prope. “Oh Captain, you should have seen…” “If only I could have shown you…” “Perhaps someday we can walk through the…” Nudging her on the good parts, making Troyen’s descent into war sound like a series of silly missteps and goofed-up blunders rather than a desperate fight to avoid a fight.

As the spirit possessing me made Prope’s eyes gleam, smirking over tales of disintegration, I thought about what really happened. The truth.

What really happened were the wrong ideas at the wrong time. I guess that’s an old, old story in human history, and it’s just as common in other parts of the galaxy.

Mandasars were genetically programmed for monarchy…anyone could see that. But not everyone could accept it. Least of all some of the races who started visiting once Troyen joined the League of Peoples.

You know what I’m talking about—you’ve probably watched
The Evolution Hour
at least once, where that purple Cashling with the high-pitched voice yells at everybody how Totally Selfish Anarchy™ is the only way for any race to advance up the ladder of sentience. Then there are those “free sensuous VR experiences” that really just send you to a Unity Arcana Dance, and the “traveling art shows” that the Myriapods think will inspire you to reject the decadent Culture of Entertainment they say has poisoned human civilization. A lot of aliens are fanatically determined to make humans see the error of our ways.

But humans have always had it easy compared to the Mandasars. We never pissed off the Fasskisters.

The same way Mandasars specialized in medical stuff, the Fasskisters specialized in robotics. You wouldn’t think there’d be much overlap between the two fields, but there is. Fasskister robots have a lot of biological components, because there are fancy things you can do with organic chemistry that are real hard to match with electronics. The other place medicine meets cybernetics is the whole area of nanotech: doctors really love teeny microscopic robots that can get inside a person’s body, snip away at tumors, scrape guck out of arteries, that kind of thing.

So Troyen always had tons of trade with the Fasskisters—selling sophisticated new tissues for use in robots, and buying smart little nanites for doctorish tricks. Both Mandasars and Fasskisters should have been happy with the booming business…except for one tiny problem: Fasskisters can’t
stand
royalty. It drives them positively manic.

A long time ago the Fasskisters had royals of their own, a whole separate caste like Mandasar queens; and overall these rulers were pretty decent types, competent, generous, not too tyrannical. In fact, that was the problem. One day, someone from the League of Peoples showed up and declared that the royals were sentient, but the commoners weren’t. Next thing you know, most of the noble caste left the home planet for upscale homes in the stars. The normal folks who were stuck behind got so mad they killed the nobles who stayed and swore they’d never tolerate monarchy again. Even after the commoners got civilized enough to be accepted into the League (a thousand years later), the Fasskisters were still totally rabid on the subject of crowns and thrones and palaces.

Samantha said it was a big psychological thing: the Fasskisters still had this bred-in drive to be ruled by royals, but they felt all betrayed and abandoned by their leaders, so they overcompensated with aggressive antimonarchical something or other. Like humans who don’t have a mother, and feel this big hole in their lives, even if they have kindly nannies and all the toys in the world.

So no matter how much the Fasskisters depended on Troyen for trade, they just couldn’t stomach the idea of queens. In fact, they took every possible chance to rabble-rouse, preaching how a democratically elected parliament—or a republic or an oligarchy or technocracy or even a random selection of two hundred people from the Unshummin census database—could run the planet better than High Queen Verity and the three lower queens.

This stirred up trouble…not a lot at first, because Mandasars pretty well ignored what the Fasskisters said, but as time went on, the Fasskisters learned how to play on the natural discontents of the people. Whenever anything went wrong for the Mandasars—a deal falling through, a tissue graft that didn’t hold, natural disasters, or even just at the end of a long slogging workday—you might find a Fasskister there, whispering how the queen was to blame.

Naturally, it made the queens furious. Several times they expelled the worst of the troublemakers, but that was bad for business. Not only did it sour trade with the Fasskisters, but it upset other races too: Troyen wasn’t “alien-friendly.” So mostly the queens had to let it go—grumble to themselves as they kept their claws tight shut and their stingers tucked away.

But they still hated it. In the end, they approached a third party to see if anyone could get the Fasskisters to back off.

Enter a small diplomatic mission, headed by Samantha York of the Outward Fleet.

First day on the job: an official reception in the Great Hall of Verity’s palace in Unshummin city. It was a huge space, three stories high with mezzanine galleries, and long enough to hold an Olympic javelin throw…but no artificial lights at all. Instead, the place was filled with
Weeshi,
a bioengineered insect that was like a firefly with no flicker. Little glass dishes of sugar water were hung overhead to feed the
Weeshi,
so light tended to concentrate around the dishes; but there were still plenty of
Weeshi
just flitting about on their own—like tiny roving stars glittering in every direction.

In honor of us navy folks, the room was swathed in a turquoisy blue that Verity had designated the caste color of
Homo sapiens.
(Mandasars felt sincere pity that humans didn’t have a set color scheme—we were all different skin tones, not to mention shades of eyes and hair—so Verity insisted on giving us official title to that turquoisy blue. That way, we wouldn’t feel all bashful and inadequate among people who had a real caste color.)

I didn’t look so bad in turquoisy blue. Sam, of course, looked fabulous…especially since she was wearing the color in a slinky evening gown with one skintight sleeve and the other arm bare. Sam had our outfits made before we left New Earth; and I can’t tell you how snippish other diplomats got, that no one else was told about dressing in that color. They were all stuck with a bunch of ugly shapeless jumpsuits made by Mandasar tailors. (The tailors knew that
Homo sapiens
had two arms, two legs, and a head, but that was pretty much the limit of their familiarity with the human form.)

Since it was our first official function, my sister kept me close to make sure I didn’t get into trouble; but I couldn’t really tell what she thought I might do. Go dance in the fountains that were spritzing up turquoisy blue water? Munch on the turquoisy blue floral arrangements? Climb the turquoisy blue draperies that had been hung on the walls and the ceiling and the stair-ramps, so that the whole place looked like a sea grotto lined with velveteen?

No—I knew how to behave in public. It was the Fasskisters who needed a lesson in manners…because they came dressed as hive-queens.

You may have noticed I haven’t described what a Fasskister looks like. There’s a reason for that: even today, I’ve never seen one in the flesh. Whenever they go out among other species—and maybe even on their homeworld, for all I know—they always ride inside custom-made robots. Really. When they visit New Earth, they show up in android thingies, pretty humanish-looking except they have big chests the size of beer barrels. Those chests are basically cockpits; the Fasskister sits inside and drives the machine, making the legs walk and the arms move and the mouth chatter away on the bad points of royalty. You never see the Fasskister itself, just its robot housing.