Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

Bassin shook his head. “I bring news.”

She sniffed. “Bad news, if I know that tone. What’s bad enough to raise you from the dead?”

The old woman inched toward Jeeb, in small steps, then bent forward, and eyed him through a round lens she held on a short gold stick.

Jeeb’s optics swiveled up at her, like two jeweled Oreos, and he whined.

The Queen’s eyes widened, then she straightened, shuffled back to her chair, and rested her hand on its arm. With her back to us, she rapped her cane on the marble floor. “Out with it, Bassin! Bad news doesn’t improve with age, and neither do I.”

Bassin stepped alongside her and steadied her with a hand on her elbow. “The Receivers crossed the Wall. The Peace of the Fair was broken. The Fleet was destroyed. So many died that some bodies were burned on pyres, Casuni-fashion. The smoke turned the sky black to the horizon. The Stone Trade is shattered.”

A leathery pterosaur glided above the sea and wailed. Wind flapped the terrace awning.

The old woman’s shoulders sagged, until she seemed to shrivel inside her silver gown.

Then she straightened, turned toward Bassin, and whacked his ear with her cane, so hard that the crack echoed across the water. “That’s a vile joke to scare an old woman on her birthday. I expect better from my only child.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

MY JAW DROPPED so far that I chinned my command-circuit audio alarm, and Ord’s voice came back. “Sir?” I chinned the alarm off.

Bassin rubbed his ear. “It’s true, Mother.”

The Queen stepped around her chair, and collapsed into it, trembling and rubbing her forehead. “How?”

“The Fair went like it has three hundred times. Then the Receivers appeared without warning.”

“Are you sure—”

“They look like the old storytellers said they look. Worms in black armor. Once the Peace of the Fair was broken, we assembled troops, and counterattacked. Casus himself led a counterattack, simultaneously.”

The Queen jerked her head toward Bassin, and narrowed her eyes. “You trusted that slobbering barbarian?”

Bassin glanced over at me, paused, then continued, “Pure coincidence. But the black worms were wiped out. To the last one.”

The Queen sighed, and stroked her temple. “For now.”

“For now.” Bassin nodded.

“Your spy play has brought the end of the world upon us.”

Bassin shook his head, and ticked off on his fingers. “No! Mother, because of the census, I now know reserves, and I know deliverability. I have calculated percentage leaked to smugglers. Any fool can see it was the right thing—”

“The only fool I see is the one whose adventuring has cost his eye and his leg. You could have ordered…” The Queen reached up and touched her son’s cheek, below the eye patch, and her eyes glistened with the beginning of tears.

Bassin reached up, held her fingers, and said, “Mother, surely you never taught me that ordering others to die can be right?”

The Queen stood, and sighed. “It can not. But it can be less wrong.”

Bassin said, “Because of the census, I know we’ve delivered—”

The Queen stiffened. “Of course we delivered! Your grandmother would strike me from her grave if we didn’t. And her grandmother before her, and so on, and so on.” The Queen’s eyes narrowed again. “Then what’s brought the end of the world upon us?”

Bassin looked over at me, and waved me toward them.

Crap. Why did this always happen to me? Bassin had brought me along to blame me for the end of the world.

Following Bassin’s example, I popped my neck ring, tucked my helmet beneath my arm, and walked over and knelt before the Queen.

Bassin said to her, “I present Major General Jason Wander.”

The Queen tapped my cheek. “Stand with me, General.”

General Cobb was right. The title got Advisees every time.

After I stood, she stared up at me, then frowned at my half-breed eyelids. “You’re — ah — as young as my son.”

She rapped her knuckles on my sleeve armor. “I know the forge of every armorer in Marin. Where did your mother bear you, General?”

I sighed, and hoped that, for once, the truth would set me free. “Colorado.”

The Queen’s eyes narrowed and she swayed. I braced for her to whack my ear with her cane.

Bassin said, “Shall we sit, Mother?”

The Queen rapped her cane again, this time against her chair. Footmen in green silk livery appeared and set a table in front of her chair, and two more chairs alongside it.

Bassin seated his mother at the table’s head, and as he stepped around to the table’s foot, he motioned me to fill the remaining side chair.

A footman stepped forward with a covered tray, but Bassin waved him off, and motioned for me to set up the holo gen on the table.

I waved it on, and the first shimmering image that popped was an overhead of the Fair, smoke, corpse piles, shipwrecks.

The Queen’s eyes widened. “Dreams?” She snorted. “I don’t govern by sniffing janga. I leave that to Tassini Headmen.”

Bassin sighed. “No, Mother. This is quite real. As though you were looking through the eyes of the six-legged machine.”

The Queen stared at Jeeb, whose hydraulics hummed as he squatted on the terrace beside me and preened his antennae.

“You miss my meaning, Bassin. Dreams can be more real than flesh. And this is no machine.” She stared down at Jeeb.

Bassin rolled his eyes. “Mother, its bones are steel. It just looks—”

The Queen looked in my eyes. “The little one belongs to you, General?”

I held Jeeb’s Department of Defense salvage title. “Yes.”

“And whatever the little one’s bones are made of, whatever hardheads like my son say, you believe the little one is alive?”

Everybody knew the notion that TOTs imprinted their Wrangler’s personalities was anthropomorphic crap. Only an idiot would admit he believed otherwise.

The Queen didn’t blink. “Well, General?”

I breathed deep. “Yes. He reminds me of someone I was close to. A comrade in arms.”

The Queen turned to Bassin and sniffed. “You see?”

Bassin threw up his hands. “See what, Mother? I just explained for you how I can rely on what the machine may tell me. No more and no less.”

The Queen stared at me. “And I am explaining for you, Bassin, how I can rely on what the General may tell me. A lie would have been expedient. The General, here, told me the truth, even though it made him look a fool. A man who lies about small things will certainly lie about large ones.”

She turned back to her son. “Bassin, men only rule machines. Kings rule men. Pay attention. Learn how to do the job you’re born to, while I can still teach you!”

I let out my breath.

Not the first quiz I passed by dumb luck. If her Majesty wanted the truth…

I cleared my throat. “Your Majesty, the truth is that we came here from another world. In a ship that sails in the sky. We captured it from the black worms. We’ve fought them before. And, because we know them, we think now you’re going to have to fight them, or they will wipe out every human being on this planet, most especially the four of us.”

Bassin’s jaw dropped, and he muttered.

The Queen shot a look at him, then at her cane, and Bassin clammed up. “General, if you tell me it is so, it is so.” Then she leaned forward on her elbows and stared into the holo gen. “You may brief me.”

I sat back in my chair and exhaled. Now I was on familiar ground. I’d winged a hundred Advisee briefs, if I’d winged one. Sometimes even to royals doing a ceremonial stint in their country’s uniform, though Colonel Bassin was no toy soldier. I began, “As to Mission—”