Vernor Vinge - The Witling

Pelio looked at her as she spoke, and his face creased with a shy smile. By human standards that face was strange—all round, with scarcely a chin or a point of a nose—and she wasn’t sure quite how to read it. Certainly no other person had ever looked at her the way he did. “The lake is for transport. We’re within one league” (one jump?) “of five different royal roads, so the members of my family can come quickly into the Keep even from outside the palace. That’s the whole point, you know: the royal family must have some retreat safe from all attack—a Guild attack excepted, of course.”

There it was, that “Guild” again. Sometime, she was going to have to learn more about that organization. But right now, she was much more interested in getting at their equipment; even with the maser they might have problems calling for help. It wasn’t a matter of power: Novamerika was at conjunction, not more than fifty million kilometers away. The maser could easily punch through to any medium-sized antenna at that distance—if the antenna pointed in her direction. But what if she and Ajão and Draere’s people had all been given up for dead? Then, the only time the Novamerikan colonists would aim their receivers at Giri would be to monitor the robot telemetry station Draere had left on that godforsaken island on the other side of the planet. She might have quite a problem synchronizing her transmissions with that station.

Once on the Keep’s main floor, Pelio guided them around the edge of the lake. The four-footed ball of fur that Pelio called Samadhom kept right at their heels.

Her eyes were adjusted to the dark now, and the place seemed like an open harbor lit by hundreds of tiny green moons. The air was not absolutely still; a faint draft riffled gently by her dress. The walls of the cavern swelled inward to the central lake, forming little hillocks along the floor. Pelio pointed to the holes in the walls. “Most of the rooms here share the air of the entire Keep. It’s too much trouble to reng fresh air into each room separately; the fewer servants allowed into the Keep, the better. And in general, no foreigners get in except when we have diplomatic receptions here. My family stores too much of value in the Keep to let just anyone enter.” Yoninne almost smiled at the unconscious pride of his tone. He was so self-contradictory. “I’ve had everything that was found where you were captured put in my own storage room.” They turned right and moved away from the central lake. In the dim green light she saw the rock rising on either side of them: they were walking up a miniature valley cut across the long axis of the Keep. The “valley” narrowed till it was more like a hallway without a ceiling. Finally they came upon a small transit pool.

Pelio said, “We could have jumped directly here, but I wanted to show you the Keep.” He turned to the guards as they caught up. “Jump us into my storeroom,” he said quietly, pointing at the nearest wall. “It’s about twenty yards in that direction.”

The shorter of the guards shut his eyes in concentration. “I seng it, Your Highness,” he said softly, matching Pelio’s tone. Somehow even small sounds seemed loud in the emptiness.

They slipped into the pool and emerged seconds later from a similar one in the interior room. The green-lit room was crowded with wooden cabinets and bronze bowls—the bowls filled to overflowing with what must have been gems and precious metals, though in the dull light their sparkle and flash were muted. Yoninne looked across the tangled heaps of treasure. The place was more like an unkempt attic than anything else. What was the use of all this stuff if they kept it hidden away?

Pelio started across the room, then came to an abrupt halt. The others piled up behind him, looked down, and saw the bodies. There was not a mark on them and their kiltlike uniforms seemed in perfect order, yet they lay on the floor like puppets with cut strings. One of the bodyguards pushed past Pelio, knelt beside the bodies, and felt for a throat pulse.

“They’re not even warm, Your Highness. Shall we sound alarm?”

“Yes—no!” The boy clenched and unclenched his hands. “Stand outside the room now. I must think—I mean, I must inspect the room for loss.”

“But, Sir-”

“Go!” he said. The two guards snapped to attention, but left only after they had convinced themselves no one was hiding in the room.

After they were gone, Pelio stood for a long moment as if dazed. Yoninne looked at him, then at the bodies. “Were they murdered?” she asked.

The prince nodded abstractedly. “Kenged, I should think,” he said, then noticed her blank look. “Someone jumbled their insides.” He said something else she couldn’t understand, but it sounded like cursing. “I just don’t see how something like this could happen here , in the Keep.” He was talking to himself now.

Samadhom sniffed mournfully around the bodies, as if trying to wake them. Yoninne looked abruptly away. The Azhiri race didn’t need knives or pistols; their Talent was enough. Those two men-servants by the look of them—had simply been … turned off. Draere’s death had been bad enough, but at least it hadn’t been murder.

You sentimental fool. Get off your tail and find that maser. The thought brought her back to her normal, efficient self. It was just her luck that when she finally got near her goal, some palace intrigue would get in the way. She moved closer to Pelio, and said, “The equipment? Where is that stored?”

Pelio glanced up, pointed carelessly at a cabinet across the room. It was a big one, more than four meters on a side. Its massive, deeply carved door was ajar and through the opening she could see a jumble of parachute fabric. The sight affected Pelio, too. “That door should be closed!” He strode swiftly across the room, Leg-Wot close on his heels. The prince pulled the door open wide and they waded through the knee-deep fiberene chute material. The ablation skiff and the burned-out hulk of the motor sledge sat within the cabinet, along with a rack of empty metal trays. A cold and unpleasant certainty was forming in Leg-Wot’s mind; most of their equipment had burned up with the sledge, but the maser and the machine pistols, at least, should be here. She scrambled around the side of the skiff to look in the hatch. Even in the dim light she could see it was empty. There were the sealed instruments and the web restraints, but that was all. The maser was gone. Gone.

She described the missing items to Pelio. “I had those all put here,” he said, pointing at the metal trays. From the stricken look on his face, she knew this was not some elaborate game he was playing with her. “So they killed to get just those things. … But how could anyone steal from the royal Keep?” His eyes widened. “Unless the thief were a Guildsman … or a member of the royal family.”

Leg-Wot turned angrily away from him. Now she and Bjault really were marooned—and under a death sentence to boot.

That morning Ajão Bjault pretended to be asleep as Leg-Wot rose and dressed in the skimpy green kilt she had worn the night before. The pilot was exceptionally quiet and Bjault guessed she would be just as happy if he didn’t wake. After she was gone Ajão got up and washed in the room’s primitive lavatory. A few minutes later, two servants emerged from the transit pool with breakfast. The food didn’t taste bad, though the thought of the insidious poisons it contained made him want to gag. Bjault finished the meal and watched morosely as the servants slid back into the water and disappeared. It was all very well that Leg-Wot was having so much success with Pelio, but he was going out of his mind with boredom and suspense.