Дэймон Найт - Orbit 3

“What!” She had pulled away, astonished, with a reckless hiss of indrawn breath. Methodically he began poking her in the side and giving her little pushes with his other hand—she moving away, outraged—but all in silence. In the distant reaches of the building something fell—or someone spoke—and without thinking, they waited silently until the sounds had faded away. He resumed his continual prodding. Alyx, her teeth on edge, began to creep forward, passing a cat that sat outlined in the vague light from a window, perfectly unconcerned with them and rubbing its paws against its face, past a door whose cracks shone yellow, past ghostly staircases that opened up in vast wells of darkness, breathing a faint, far updraft, their steps rustling and creaking. They were approaching the governor’s nursery. The fat man watched without any visible horror—or any interest, for that matter—while Alyx disarmed the first guard, stalking him as if he were a sparrow, then the one strong pressure on the blood vessel at the back of the neck (all with no noise except the man’s own breathing; she was quiet as a shadow). Now he was trussed up, conscious and glaring, quite unable to move. The second guard was asleep in his chair. The third Alyx decoyed out the anteroom by a thrown pebble (she had picked up several in the street). She was three motionless feet away from him as he stooped to examine it; he never straightened up. The fourth guard-(he was in the anteroom, in a feeble glow that stole through the hangings of the nursery beyond) turned to greet his friend—or so he thought—and then Alyx judged she could risk a little speech. She said thoughtfully, in a low voice, “That’s dangerous, on the back of the head.”

“Don’t let it bother you,” said the fat man. Through the parting of the hangings they could see the nurse, asleep on her couch with her arms bare and their golden circlets gleaming in the lamplight, the black slave in a profound huddle of darkness at the farther door, and a shining, tented basket—the royal baby’s royal house. The baby was asleep. Alyx stepped inside—motioning the fat man away from the lamp—and picked the governor’s daughter out of her gilt cradle. She went round the apartment with the baby in one arm, bolting both doors and closing the hangings, draping the fat man in a guard’s cloak and turning down the lamp so that a bare glimmer of light reached the farthest walls.

“Now you’ve seen it,” she said, “shall we go?”

He shook his head. He was watching her curiously, his head tilted to one side. He smiled at her. The baby woke up and began to chuckle at finding herself carried about; she grabbed at Alyx’s mouth and jumped up and down, bending in the middle like a sort of pocket-compass or enthusiastic spring. The woman lifted her head to avoid the baby’s fingers and began to soothe her, rocking her in her arms. “Good Lord, she’s cross-eyed,” said Alyx. The nurse and her slave slept on, wrapped in the profoundest unconsciousness. Humming a little, soft tune to the governor’s daughter, Alyx walked her about the room, humming and rocking, rocking and humming, until the baby yawned.

“Better go,” said Alyx.

“No,” said the fat man.

“Better,” said Alyx again. “One cry and the nurse—”

“Kill the nurse,” said the fat man.

“The slave—”

“He’s dead.” Alyx started, rousing the baby. The slave still slept by the door, blacker than the blackness, but under him oozed something darker still in the twilight flame of the lamp. “You did that?” whispered Alyx, hushed. She had not seen him move. He took something dark and hollow, like the shell of a nut, from the palm of his hand and laid it next the baby’s cradle; with a shiver half of awe and half of distaste Alyx put that richest and most fortunate daughter of Ourdh back into her gilt cradle. Then she said:

“Now we’ll go.”

“But I have not what I came for,” said the fat man.

“And what is that?”

“The baby.”

“Do you mean to steal her?” said Alyx curiously.

“No,” said he, “I mean for you to kill her.”

The woman stared. In sleep the governor’s daughter’s nurse stirred; then she sat bolt upright, said something incomprehensible in a loud voice, and fell back to her couch, still deep in sleep. So astonished was the picklock that she did not move. She only looked at the fat man. Then she sat by the cradle and rocked it mechanically with one hand while she looked at him.

“What on earth for?” she said at length. He smiled. He seemed as easy as if he were discussing her wages or the price of pigs; he sat down opposite her and he too rocked the cradle, looking on the burden it contained with a benevolent, amused interest. If the nurse had woken up at that moment, she might have thought she saw the governor and his wife, two loving parents who had come to visit their child by lamplight. The fat man said:

“Must you know?”

“I must,” said Alyx.

“Then I will tell you,” said the fat man, “not because you must, but because I choose. This little six-months morsel is going to grow up.”

“Most of us do,” said Alyx, still astonished.

“She will become a queen,” the fat man went on, “and a surprisingly wicked, woman for one who now looks so innocent. She will be the death of more than one child and more than one slave. In plain fact, she will be a horror to the world. This I know.”

“I believe you,” said Alyx, shaken.

“Then kill her,” said the fat man. But still the picklock did not stir. The baby in her cradle snored, as infants sometimes do, as if to prove the fat man’s opinion of her by showing a surprising precocity; still the picklock did not move, but stared at the man across the cradle as if he were a novel work of nature.

“I ask you to kill her,” said he again.

“In twenty years,” said she, “when she has become so very wicked.”

“Woman, are you deaf? I told you—”

“In twenty years!” In the feeble light from the lamp she appeared pale, as if with rage or terror. He leaned deliberately across the cradle, closing his hand around the shell or round-shot or unidentifiable object he had dropped there a moment before; he said very deliberately:

“In twenty years you will be dead.”

“Then do it yourself,” said Alyx softly, pointing at the object in his hand, “unless you had only one?”

“I had only one.”

“Ah, well then,” she said, “here!” and she held out to him across the sleeping baby the handle of her dagger, for she had divined something about this man in the months they had known each other; and when he made no move to take the blade, she nudged his hand with the handle.

“You don’t like things like this, do you?” she said.

“Do as I say, woman!” he whispered. She pushed the handle into his palm. She stood up and poked him deliberately with it, watching him tremble and sweat; she had never seen him so much at a loss. She moved round the cradle, smiling and stretching out her arm seductively. “Do as I say!” he cried.

“Softly, softly.”

“You’re a sentimental fool!”

“Am I?” she said. “Whatever I do, I must feel; I can’t just twiddle my fingers like you, can I?”

“Ape!”

“You chose me for it.”

“Do as I say!”

“Sh! You will wake the nurse.” For a moment both stood silent, listening to the baby’s all-but-soundless breathing and the rustling of the nurse’s sheets. Then he said, “Woman, your life is in my hands.”

“Is it?” said she.

“I want your obedience!”

“Oh no,” she said softly, “I know what you want. You want importance because you have none; you want to swallow up another soul. You want to make me fear you and I think you can succeed, but I think also that I can teach you the difference between fear and respect. Shall I?”