Center shut down its radar beacons during the winter, for no one ever landed in the storms. This Subtwo knew, and planned for. The ship’s instruments traced out the wide, flat desert, the high mountain ranges bracketing it, and the single anomalous flat-topped peak jutting from its dark expanse. Echoes and reflections hinted at unusual geology. Subtwo increased the magnification until the three-dimensional image of the peak filled his screens and he could see the tiny plot of the blockhouse off to one side. He was hypersensitively aware of everything in the control room of his ship, everything and everyone, all human-machine and human-human interfaces, his pseudosib next to him quite prepared to take over, the other people in the control room almost as superfluous as the old navigator’s despondent young friend. All the instruments reported audibly, each on a different frequency: Subtwo could hear changes more quickly than his assistants could report them. But the crew was occasionally useful, and Subtwo did not begrudge letting them perform what they saw to be their tasks. Subtwo tolerated the trappings of leadership. He often thought Subone enjoyed them.
Subtwo’s hands and feet moved against controls, his tongue and teeth guided pressure-sensitive switches, his eyes directed the functioning of photoelectric cells, as the ship fell through the upper atmosphere and began to decelerate. Wrapped in the framework of the control cocoon, Subtwo felt very nearly happy. All his senses were in use; no perception of waste impinged on his sensibilities. He was fulfilled.
The voices behind him whispered and exclaimed: his raiders lay in their acceleration couches and stared out the observation ports, watching the wisps of cloud as they whipped past the ship. The clouds thickened as the ship slowed, growing darker until the sunlight was cut off, and the only illumination came from within the craft, shining out against swirling iridescent grains. They could hear the particles scraping and skittering along the metal skin; the sound was of a thousand tiny fingernails against dry slate. Subtwo silenced the voices by allowing the ship a single shudder in the wind, and immediately regretted it, for he could pilot in worse conditions than this; he did not want his skill doubted by even the least experienced of his people. Still, his action produced the proper reaction, and the control room remained silent as Subtwo let the image of the ship sink toward the image of the plateau, very near the blockhouse. His instruments musically told him the characteristics of the ship and its surroundings, atmosphere and wind and approaching surface, engines, fuel, and personnel. The harmonics sang of earth, air, fire, water.
The ship touched and settled, powered down, vibrated at a frequency above that which most human ears could detect. But Subtwo heard it.
A brief hesitation, like a tribute to gods: do not rejoice too quickly. Then a quick laugh and the voices again, and a scatter of applause. That, not the hesitation, was for Subtwo. He thought all the people who followed him quite mad.
“A fine landing,” Subone said. Subtwo saw that he had never integrated himself into the secondary controls, he extricated himself so quickly.
“Your trust is flattering.”
“You seemed to want to bring the ship down yourself,” Subone said, “so I let you.”
Subtwo’s absorption in the landing had protected him from Subone’s annoyance, but he felt it now. It made him guilty and contrite. “Did you want to do it? I didn’t realize—”
“Never mind. Let’s go in.”
Now that he had apologized, Subtwo realized that an apology had been unnecessary. Time and again he had asked Subone to communicate his wishes verbally, normally, instead of relying on the artificial biomechanical link between them. The link was no longer dependable, for which Subtwo was glad: he only wished it would finish dying and dissolve completely. Something must be wrong: he and Subone should have been free of one another long before this. But as they remained, they would always be too concerned each with the other; they would continue to have difficulty dealing with ordinary human beings, who could not and would never know automatically what another person was thinking. Something must be wrong: at times, Subtwo thought he could almost feel the link, implanted in the primitive part of his midbrain, growing, not dissolving, binding him inexorably to Subone. But he knew that was a delusion.
Subtwo and Subone prepared to leave the ship. They went alone, only the two of them. The young raider who would give no name but Draco, Subone’s assistant as much as anyone in their loose organization, stayed behind grumbling. He was only moderately pacified by having the responsibility for the second group. The pseudosibs were well over two meters tall, and Draco was a head taller, narrow, dark, fierce, with fluorescent flames painted around his eyes. He was a distinctive and intimidating presence. Intimidation was not yet their aim.
o0o
Jan Hikaru’s Journal:
We’ve landed on earth, but I don’t really care. The whole universe seems futile and ironic.
A few hours ago my friend called me to her. She could hardly breathe, and she was feverish and weak. I tried to go for help, but she stopped me. She wanted to go to the observation bubble, so I carried her. Once there, she leaned against me, turned toward the growing crescents of earth and moon as though she could see their light. It shadowed her fine old face, all the lines of character and time, her white hair, her clouded black eyes. The reflection seemed to give her warmth, as though it were the sunlight from which we were shielded. I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. I knew she was dying and I knew this was the closest she would ever get to touching her home again. We sat together, quiet and still, for a long time. Her breathing became easier. “Tell me what it looks like.”
The moon was a sliver of silver and gray, and the earth was gray and dull brown. I lied to her. I never told her a word of untruth before, but this time I lied to her. I described a world more like earth when people first left it than when they last abandoned it. I told her that there were clouds, not that they looked filthy. That was when my voice broke. She touched my face and told me not to grieve, for she was close enough.
I embraced her, but there is no way to give a friend real strength. She began to fight for breath, and I couldn’t stand by doing nothing any longer. I tried to leave, to get help, but she gripped my hand and would not let me go. Then, quite suddenly, she stopped fighting.
I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there refusing to believe she was dead until warm hands took her cold hands away, and led me to an acceleration couch for the landing.
Now the ship sits in a desert, in the midst of a terrible storm, and we sit in the ship, waiting, I suppose, for permission to enter the city that is supposed to be nearby. All I want is permission to bury my friend here, as I promised her I would do, and then permission to leave.
o0o
The wind made a dreadful, destroying sound. The pseudosibs used the airlock so the sand would not gain access to the more delicate workings of the ship. As soon as the outer seal was cracked, they were surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust and sand, as the wind filled every empty space. It would have torn their flesh away had they not been wearing vacuum suits.
They fixed a cable to the safety clamps and went out into the storm.
Subtwo found himself leading. His sense of direction was perfect, so he had no fear of losing the blockhouse. He supposed he deserved to break the path, to form with his own body a lee, a minor respite from the wind for Subone, since Subtwo had taken the pleasure of landing the ship for himself.
Even expecting the blockhouse, Subtwo was startled by its abrupt appearance, as though it had popped up out of the ground. The sand caused the illusion: one volume of its airborne granules was sufficient to block all sight; one step, one increment less of sand-filled space, and the wall of the blockhouse showed the curtain to be a colloidal suspension of sand in air.
Subtwo banged on the door with his gloved fist. Nothing happened, and he banged again. The people within must have felt the ship land, they must still have sufficient curiosity to wonder who could perform such a feat.
The door crept open past him. He moved forward and stood in the doorway, half-blocking the blowing sand. The interior of the blockhouse was almost dark, its instruments shut down, but several people stood within, all dressed differently, as though they had been interrupted at leisure activities, except for one young guard in uniform, with a cast on her wrist. Subtwo found the uniform amusing. He did not understand trying to turn any such rabble as he had collected—as the Lord’s shipowners must have collected—into even a quasi-military organization. He could not control his own followers completely, so he did not dictate to them at all.
“Gods,” someone said, “don’t just stand there.”
Subtwo entered, with Subone beside him, in a leisurely manner. The storm-walk had not tired, only challenged him. The Lord’s people stared. The guard gripped the handle of her laser lance, but did not draw it. The door squealed shut, forcing itself against sand. Subtwo realized from the reactions of those around him that the longer he stood hidden from them in suit and facemask, the more disturbed they would become, perhaps to his advantage. He gazed about the room until he was sure nothing had escaped his notice. The equipment was obsolete and worn.
He opened his faceplate. Subone mimicked his actions; they were mirror images. Subtwo took off his helmet and shook his head; his long black twisted hair fell out straight and free around his shoulders. He began slowly, silently, to remove his suit. Tiny avalanches of black sand fell to the floor around him. Beneath the suit he wore a simple coverall of a sturdy material, cool gray in hue. Subone wore the same, though the color of his was warm gray: tinged with red instead of blue. Around them Subtwo saw the usual reactions to their supposed similarities, though to Subtwo he and his pseudosib were very different, as different as the colors of their clothes: at opposite ends of a spectrum.
“Where is Blaisse?” Subtwo asked.
A ubiquitous tension filled the room, as though everyone there had expected the pseudosibs to remain silent moving statues for the rest of time. No one spoke until the attention finally focused on the uniformed young woman. She looked from side to side, and finally answered stiffly. “The Lord is in his Palace.”
“Take us to him.”
Someone snickered. Subtwo gazed in the direction of the laugh, drawing his eyebrows together. Subone still followed his lead and his actions. The snicker faded into a cough. Subtwo did not understand why anyone would laugh at such a simple request. It occurred to him, of course, that he might be violating some protocol. This did not disturb him, as soon all of them would be following his protocol.
“This way,” the guard said abruptly.
She led them from the functional blockhouse into the Palace proper, down a long ramp, into tunnels covered wastefully in rich fabric and precious gems. Subtwo saw no use in upholstering hallways. The young woman moved ahead of them, walking fast and straight and steady, yet increasing her pace gradually, after looking back once and starting at the pseudosibs’ proximity.
The passages continued on and on, until Subtwo felt their irregularities affecting him. His balance began to falter. He liked level floors and right angles; this was a place of bumps and projections and random curves. At first he sensed the same reaction from his pseudosib, and was comforted that he was not, at least, alone, but as they progressed Subone’s discomfort decreased as his interest rose. Subtwo was upset and wished again that the lock between them would complete its dissolution. He felt increasingly these days that he was being forced to vibrate on a frequency not his own.
The young guard stopped and held aside a curtain. “In here.”
Shoulder to shoulder and in step with Subone, Subtwo passed her without hesitation, though a trap might await. He felt the chance was low enough to take.
The immense room beyond was paneled with embroidery that followed rock curves ten meters upward to join a translucent dome that seemed to admit cold winter sunlight. A throne—a throne! Subtwo almost laughed aloud—stood on a golden platform at the opposite end of the hemispherical chamber, but it was empty.
“Where is he?”
The guard looked from Subone to Subtwo and back again, as though trying to determine which had spoken: not an unusual reaction. “He’s coming,” she said; Subtwo detected an uncertain bravado and was pleased that his arrival had caused consternation and confusion.
“I—” Subone said, and corrected himself. “We don’t wait.”
Subtwo turned with him; they crossed the throne room, still in step. They both had had trouble learning the first-person plural pronouns: such a strange usage, like verbal sexual intercourse. They climbed the steps to the throne and passed through the curtains beyond it. The young guard hesitated, then sprinted after them. “Just a minute—” She caught Subone’s elbow. Using the whole force of his powerful shoulders, he swung back his arm and caught her across the ribs, tossing her against a tapestried wall. They continued; behind them, she cursed.
They had been told the layout of Stone Palace: Blaisse’s suite connected directly to the throne room. Of course they met no stationed guards, coming as they did from this direction, in the winter. The young woman caught up with them as they entered Blaisse’s bedroom.
Blaisse appeared to be asleep, but an alien humanoid sat up in his bed beside him and stared at the pseudosibs, terror in her face. Subtwo identified her species, her world, the customs of her people: parents raised themselves from abject poverty by selling their children into slavery. It was not a Sphere world. Subtwo realized he was probably looking at a slave, the first true, classical slave he had ever seen despite his travels. With difficulty, he controlled a wave of annoyance, directed toward the sleeping man.
“You’ll have to wait in the anteroom.”
Subtwo turned to the uniformed young woman. “But we never wait,” he said, quite reasonably.
“You will now.” She touched the cross-holstered laser pistol with her left hand. “No more games.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Subone. “Shoot me and hit him with your cast?”
The jibe angered but did not fluster her: in her hand, the lance was steady. “In the anteroom.”
Subtwo’s wide peripheral vision showed Subone glancing at him, though he himself did not have to turn. He did not see any necessity for a confrontation with an underling. He shrugged—a gesture he had consciously learned and practiced—and followed the direction of her pistol. In the next chamber, a sitting room built on a comparatively modest scale, he waited, disturbed by the absence of doors, of privacy. That told him much about the people who lived here: the rulers did not impinge frequently on each other’s living space, and the servants were not important enough for their opinions to matter. These facts conflicted grossly with Subtwo’s roseate image of the way reality should be, an image that dulled and contorted as by successive approximation Subtwo altered it to conform to the way things were.
Subone began to wander about the room, opening drawers and cabinets.
“What are you finding?”
“Nothing,” Subone said. “Alcoholic beverages. Dirty old books.”
“Books—printed books?”
“Very amusing.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” The Lord held himself poised in the doorway, only partly dressed, wearing leather pants.
Subtwo did not react to the theatrical entrance. “We understood that your hospitality is granted to shipowners of a certain type.”
“And you are shipowners? Of that… type?”
The slave, naked, knelt before Blaisse, fastened the top button of his pants, and clasped a silver belt around his waist. He seemed not to notice her, despite her unflawed form and the strange blue of her skin and hair, the sky-silver of her eyes. Gazing at her, Subtwo wanted to pull her to her feet and ask her if she had no pride or dignity. Then she fastened a stained, coiled whip to Blaisse’s filigree belt, and Subtwo put aside his questions of dignity.
“Our ship is on the field,” Subtwo said.
Blaisse looked past him to the turned-out drawers and disarrayed shelves. “What is this farce? Yale!”
The guard came in, scowling.
“I thought I made it clear: no one from Center is allowed here.”
“They just landed,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“They landed a ship. On the landing field. In the storm.”
Subtwo watched the changes in Blaisse’s expression as the Lord took his time putting on the leather jacket his slave held for him: anger, astonishment colored by skepticism, and finally curiosity. He took a sharp breath and straightened, as if to reprimand them, but suddenly stepped toward them. “In the storm?”
“Yes,” Subtwo said.
Blaisse’s attitude changed again. “I don’t believe it.”
Subone’s voice was a sculpture. “You would be well advised,” he said, “not to call us liars.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“We came to talk,” Subtwo said. Blaisse was right, in his way: it was not yet the time for threats. “Merely to talk.” This did not seem to be the man they had been told about; he had been described with contempt, but Subtwo was not facing a contemptible man. Unpredictable, perhaps, and distasteful, but there were power and assurance in him, though they blended strangely with childishness and cruelty.
“What did you come to talk about?”
“Division of power.”
The young guard, Yale, caught her breath, and touched the handle of the laser lance again; she, at least, was taking those words as threat. But Blaisse hardly reacted. “This is mine,” he said calmly. “Here you take my orders.”
“That’s what he said you’d say.”
Subtwo wished Subone had not spoken, but he could not do anything now; he was affected by his pseudosib’s excitement at the prospect of violence. But Subone’s excitement could not obliterate Subtwo’s increasing perceptions of guilt.
“Who?”
“A shipowner allied to you. You did lose a ship, recently—?”
“You—!”
“Shut up, Yale.”
Sullenly, she obeyed. Blaisse’s developing anger seemed to have been dissipated by hers; he sat down in a soft chair and stretched out his legs. “We assumed Sphere officials had killed it.” He waved toward misshapen hulks of furniture. “Sit down. Have you names?”
“I am Subtwo. My pseudosib is Subone.”
Blaisse raised an eyebrow, whether from the strangeness of the designations or because he was familiar with them, Subtwo did not know. He sat down on a couch with room for Subone next to him, but Subone sat farther away, watching the young guard and smiling slightly so his teeth showed past his thin lips.
“We’ll have a drink. Saita!”
Dressed in silver and sapphires, the slave appeared almost instantly. She served first Blaisse, then the pseudosibs, with a thick blue liqueur. She did not offer anything to the guard.
Blaisse sipped from his crystal goblet. Subtwo raised his, to sniff the volatiles: heavy, varied, incompatible with organic life. He did not drink; he did not choose to dissolve the nerve sheaths of his brain cells with ethanol. But nearby, Subone tasted the offering.
“Now,” Blaisse said.
“You are undefended. We have our whole crew.”
“I’m not entirely alone.”
“Twelve people hardly make an army.”
Blaisse raised his head, an involuntary minuscule motion of surprise. Subtwo felt sure that he now believed that the pseudosibs, not the Sphere, had killed his ship.
“They guard me adequately in the winter. When my ships return in the spring, my forces are more than sufficient.”
“The crews—even the shipowners—would follow us.”
Blaisse sat back in his soft chair, sipped his drink, and rubbed his forefinger back and forth across his upper lip as though in deep concentration. “I don’t know about that.”
“They would follow us. They would follow whoever controlled their sanctuary.”
“Oh, that’s quite true,” Blaisse said easily. “Except a few of them, perhaps, but they could easily be gotten rid of.”
Yale, behind him, shifted uneasily, as though she too could hear capitulation in Blaisse’s words. Subtwo smiled, ready to accept a bloodless surrender.
“On the other hand,” Blaisse said, “then you would have to fight the Families.”
Subtwo made no involuntary movements of surprise, but this was new data, needing to be processed. “We are accustomed to opposition.”
Subone seemed to be paying no attention at all to the conversation; Subtwo felt alone. He wished his pseudosib would stop his benign gazing at Yale: he understood her glare.
“You don’t quite understand.”
“Understanding is not necessary.” Subtwo performed his shrug again. “If they oppose us, we will destroy them.”
A small smile of pleasure began to form on Subone’s face, and Yale’s fingers curled around her belt near the holster of her lance.
“You’ll destroy Center if you insist on total power.” Blaisse did not sound perturbed.
“You dealt with these ‘Families.’”
“No, that was my father, years ago. He was… a very ambitious man.” Blaisse’s expression was contented. “Your information is incomplete.”
“Indeed?”
“My presence saves the shipowners from having to concern themselves with alliances in Center itself, you see, but my ties are indispensable all the same. An attack on me is an attack on the Families. And it’s they, not I, who control the city.”
“Ties may be cut and rewoven.”
“Not ties of blood.”
Subtwo thought of arcane rituals, the piercing of veins, vampirism. “Blood?”
“It was thought appropriate, since I control access to other worlds, that I be partnered with the eldest child of the Family which controls access to the rest of earth outside Center. My brother, in turn, lives with her people.” As Blaisse explained, Subtwo slowly understood that he did not mean “blood” but genetics, and biological and social relationships. It was a most ridiculous way of forming alliances, though perhaps no more ridiculous than some he had witnessed. It was the way Center was ruled.
He saw that his choice was between dealing with the existing situation and engaging in an extended conflict. His and Subone’s people could take over the Palace easily; they could even make it self-sufficient. But it would be exactly that, a closed citadel, lacking interchange with Center. They could build a citadel anywhere. But old earth was one place no official of the Sphere would ever come; and Subone had chosen this spot on the planet simply because of the city.
Subtwo’s enthusiasm for this conquest flagged rapidly, for he saw that afterwards they would have to function within limits others had set. He wondered if this was what he had escaped to: a return to ancient history, with children traded between kingdoms for a joining of lineages.
“Perhaps,” Subone said in a tone of preoccupation, still gazing on the young guard, “the partnerships could be rearranged.”
Blaisse stared at him for a moment, then began to laugh, a loud, low, barking sound. He stopped when Subtwo half-rose from his chair, though he did not look afraid.
“There can be no ‘rearrangements’ of the Families,” Blaisse said. “My blood is their blood. The ties are unbreakable. The Families would prefer suicide to capitulation.”
“Then our problem would no longer exist.”
Subone leaned forward, letting the motion bring his hand very close to his lance. Yale tensed at his actions.
“Neither would you, nor the city,” Blaisse said. “Center is powered by a fission reactor. I understand that it is not difficult to make it—‘go critical’—is that the term?”
Subtwo was disgusted by the very idea of a filthy fission reactor; that any human being, civilized or not, would even consider allowing one to explode was inconceivable.
The slave, Saita, lowered her head and touched a lock of her long silver-blue hair to Blaisse’s instep.
Blaisse chuckled. “After all, I’m much more suited to the position than you. You’d be unhappy, confined to Center the rest of your lives. But I’m reasonable, and I’d be glad to be allied to anyone who can overcome our seasonal isolation.”
“We will not be subordinates.”
“The relationship could be arranged in a businesslike manner.” He reached out and patted his slave’s head absently, as he might an animal’s.
In his mind, Subtwo rearranged images of the manner in which he had expected this meeting to proceed. As he was accepting the changes and making himself pleased with them, Subone stood up and strolled around the small room. By his carriage Subtwo knew he was neither pleased nor resigned. Subone paused next to the small grid of the intercom, and touched its controls. To anyone else, it would appear that he was fingering them absently, but Subtwo knew he was inferring the capabilities.
“Why should we believe you, about these ‘Families’?”
Blaisse looked up at Subone abruptly, eyebrows arched, and his mood shifted instantly to fury as he rose from his chair and stood shaking. “Do you think I care if you or any other of your castoffs believe me?”
Subone spoke into the intercom. “Draco?”
“Here,” Draco answered in his laconic manner. “All’s well.”
Subone observed Blaisse’s anger calmly. “We are in control now.”
“In control? My patience is ended. If you refuse the protection of my alliances, then try to make your own. I’ll laugh at you from hell—and I’ll welcome you there soon.”
Subone smiled.
Subtwo understood abruptly what was about to happen. He stepped forward as Subone made one jerky, indefinite, deliberate motion of his hand toward his lance. Subone hesitated a fraction of a second while the young guard, left-handed, clumsy, pulled her own weapon. Yale had no chance against him. He shot her in the chest. Her spine arched backward at the shock, and she fell against the wall, collapsing to the floor. Her body convulsed once. The reek of burned flesh permeated the room.
“Stop—” Subtwo took the lance from his pseudosib’s hand. A few months before, he would have known from the beginning exactly what Subone was planning. Not having known this time, an indication of their growing independence, did not comfort him.
Blaisse sat heavily in his chair, but his voice was steady. “That was unnecessary.”
“She would have killed me,” Subone said. He pointed to Yale’s weapon, flung into a corner.
This was the second murder Subtwo had been involved in so directly, the second by burning, and he did not like to be forced back to his earlier memory. He did not know how to expiate his guilt, yet he did not say that Subone had provoked the incident. They had not yet grown that far apart.
“This is unfortunate,” Subtwo said. “To… disrupt us, just as we agree.”
“Agree—!”
Clamping his fingers around Subone’s bicep, Subtwo brought him to a sullen silence. Though their characters had diverged, Subtwo still led, and Subone had insufficient emotional leverage to affect his pseudosib in this matter. “We will be your equals,” Subtwo said, “but you will retain your position.”
Blaisse did not even glance toward the small crumpled body shrouded in his colors. Uncertainly, Blaisse said, “If she did something foolish…”
Subtwo spoke quickly, to deter the Lord from any thoughts of revenge. “Then we are agreed?”
“For the moment,” Blaisse said, and sighed.
“Subone?”
Subtwo responded to Draco. “We’ve made an agreement with Blaisse. Did you follow orders?”
“Didn’t hurt anybody,” Draco said.
“They are not prisoners. We are not in conflict.”
“They’re kind of mad at us.”
“Hold their weapons until they are calmer.”
“Right.”
Subtwo turned off the intercom. Subone glowered at him. “We don’t need Blaisse. You’re underestimating our abilities.”
“No,” Subtwo said. “Those are amply demonstrated. I took into account energy expenditures and our own preferences.”
“And if Blaisse is lying?”
“What does he gain but a few hours?”
Blaisse, in his chair, seemed far from relaxed. “We can benefit each other,” Subtwo said, putting on his artificial, practiced smile.
“I’m sure,” Blaisse said. “Let us discuss terms.”
They negotiated in another room. When they were finished, Blaisse reached up and pulled a silken rope. He was smiling again. Subtwo did not understand his good humor, and did not trust it.
“When you’re settled,” Blaisse said, “we’ll have to get together. I’m… very anxious… for you to meet Clarissa.”
A tall woman in black and silver entered and bowed. Subtwo had had to train himself to look for details of expression and to interpret them in a conscious way: the people around him, normal people, did it unconsciously. This woman showed no surprise; her gaze, quick and hooded, flicked over him and his pseudosib, though she seemed to keep her attention completely on Blaisse. She must have passed through the sitting room to reach this chamber, and the cloying scent of death hung close around them even here, but she did not react to that either.
“These gentlemen will be staying on the second level from now on, Madame,” Blaisse said. The title was not one of respect, Subtwo realized, simply a habit, perhaps derisive.
The woman bowed slightly. “It is ready, Lord.”
“They have their people with them.”
“I will see to the arrangements.” She spoke to the pseudosibs. “If you will come with me.”
Blaisse stood up, rather lazily. “I think I’ll come along.”
Madame bowed again, without expression. Subtwo looked for signals of hatred or dislike or even distaste in her demeanor, but there were none. Neither were there signs of admiration or respect. The bow and the words were empty of feeling. Subtwo did not understand what the relationship between Madame and Blaisse could be.
She led the way out of Blaisse’s suite, down a corridor, and into an alice tube. Subtwo experienced distress at the waste of the energy used by such a worthless toy, especially if Center’s power came only from fission, rather than fusion or matter-antimatter.
Blaisse shrugged when Subtwo suggested that an elevator would be much more efficient. “I like it this way.”
They descended.
The second level was similar to Blaisse’s part of the Palace, and as richly appointed. Followed by his silent, obedient alien slave, Blaisse pushed back curtains and peered around corners and scuffed his sandals in the deep carpet. He found neither dust nor disorder; this level was as well kept as what Subtwo had seen of the other. Subtwo waited for Blaisse to give Madame the ritualized compliments the pseudosibs had been taught were proper. Blaisse said nothing; Subtwo felt the need to fill the vacuum of drilled-in courtesy, but remained silent.
“It stinks down here,” Blaisse said. He made it sound as though they were breathing the rank odor of standing sewage.
“I regret that any uninhabited rooms gather a musty flavor, Lord. The situation will cure itself.”
He grunted and forged ahead through the velvet halls. Subtwo felt himself becoming more and more unnerved. Nothing in this place was composed of straight lines. The curtains fell in waving gathers. The rooms were round, or irregular, or, worst, almost square. The angles were slightly flawed, the lines slightly crooked, the floors slightly uneven. Subtwo’s feet touched minor irregularities. He felt Subone walking closer to him. He discovered a fantasy in which they walked across a rug that had nothing under it and it fell away beneath them. He shook himself out of the dream. Real people, ordinary human beings, lived this way. They did not demand living space built to the tolerances of a precision instrument.
Blaisse’s inconsequential chatter infringed on Subtwo’s determination to deal with the real world. Blaisse bothered him on a level even he could not analyze. He did not seem to be the same person his shipowner had told the pseudosibs about. Subtwo wished to be contemptuous, but Blaisse he could not discount.
“As you see,” Blaisse said, “you don’t need all of Stone Palace.” Subtwo was not certain, for ordinary people were so changeable and contrary, but he thought Blaisse was amused. “Yes,” Blaisse said, “we must have a party. I’m looking forward to introducing you to the Families.”
They arrived at a foyer through which flowed a small stream bridged by delicate silver paths. Blaisse stopped. “If you want to inspect the barracks before your people move in—”
“The—‘barracks’?”
“Yes. Separate quarters. For your people.”
“Our people stay with us,” Subtwo said.
“What, here?”
“Of course. There is ample room.”
Blaisse frowned at them curiously, then shrugged. He slid his hand up Saita’s back to her neck, and beneath her long hair. “If that’s what you want.” He glanced around, and suddenly seemed very bored by them and by his surroundings. “If you want anything else, speak to my steward. Don’t bother me about it.” He left them, without a word or glance of farewell.
“‘Madame’?”
“Yes, sir?” Her gray eyes flicked back and forth as she attempted to find from expression or word which of them had spoken.
“Is that your name?”
She caught Subtwo as the speaker, looked directly at him, then dropped her gaze and turned away. “It will do.” She went down a corridor. Subtwo moved up on her right and Subone on her left to walk beside her. The programmed manners moved in. “Always learn their names,” they had been taught. “Remember their names and impress them.” That Madame was not someone they were required to impress did not occur to Subtwo. That she might not want to talk about herself was inconceivable.
“But it is not a name.”
“I will answer to anything you care to call me, sir,” she said. Subtwo noticed the tension in her. He was interested; this was the first indication of any feeling she had revealed.
“I’d rather call you by your name,” he said, pushing her for the interest of it.
“I was eight when I was captured,” she said. “I have not had a name since my freedom and my childhood were taken from me.”
As the mind so often works, in defiance of entropy, bits of information were shaken randomly by her words and came down in a pattern that evoked memories Subtwo would have preferred to avoid. He pulled himself back to the present. The dark woman looked away from his face when she saw that his attention had returned.
“A person should have a childhood,” Subone said. The slave woman started at his voice. Subtwo composed his own expression, as he realized it must show the same emotions as his pseudosib’s: a faraway look with none of the pleasant nostalgia of usual reminiscence.
They walked in silence for a distance, until they reached another alice tube. “This leads to the first level,” Madame said. “One of the corridors there goes back into the Palace, the other goes upward to the blockhouse.”
“Our crew will be hungry and tired,” Subtwo said.
“I will have a meal prepared,” Madame said. “The rooms are ready. Will you require special services?”
“That’s up to them.”
“Do you require slave quarters?”
Subtwo almost snapped at her, but calmed himself. “We have no slaves,” he said. “Slavery is an inefficient use of energy, and a waste of human potential.”
She bowed to him, from the waist, a very slight inclination.
“Come in the morning. We’ll want to acquire some building materials.”
“I will be available when you are ready, sir.”
Subtwo led the way up the alice tube.