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17

Postwarfare Society

1. Called Out

He woke in the dark, disoriented, unable for a moment to remember where he was. Menelaus was aware of the emotion before he was awake enough to remember its reason: the fragrant warmth in his arms, the soft curvaceous body slowly breathing, the sensation of nude flesh cuddled against him. He remembered his joy before he remembered its cause.

I am a married man. I will never go to sleep alone, never wake up alone, not ever again. It was almost enough to make him believe in his stern old mother’s stern old God, just to have someone to thank.

A sensation of needles walking along his skin told him his arm, on which she was pillowed, had fallen asleep. He did not move his arm. He would have preferred to cut it off, rather than disturb her. In the dim light, he could see no more than the curve of her cheek near him, a hint of gold from the halo of mussed hair framing her head. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

What had wakened him? The pillow under his head seemed to be playing music.

No, not the pillow. He crumpled the pillow (awkwardly with his free hand) and saw beneath it, next to his ceramic knife, the red amulet of the Hermeticists, the one Vardanov had forced him to wear. A little ruby light, no brighter than a firefly, shined and winked in the metal, and three notes of music—the same notes that once had summoned Blackie to the Table Round—was playing insistently. That was a bad sign: he had set the refusal tolerance to nine, higher even than a police override or incoming subpoena could match.

Holding it in his teeth, he snapped it onto his wrist, and with his tongue he tapped the surface. Then Montrose blinked at a sudden illusion opening like a white window in space before him. The circuits in the metal wristband were firing pinpoint magnetics to activate specific phosphenes lining the rear of his eyeballs. The sensitivity and control was accurate enough to paint a blurry but recognizable image of a screen. Montrose thought the thing was damn creepy, shooting energy into his eyes, but it did not show any light or wake his wife.

An image formed like a ghost. It was Blackie Del Azarchel.

The crisis is here, old friend, and I regret to say I can think of but one way to stop it. Montrose had turned the sound off, so these words were being printed in Braille along the inside surface of the bracelet, the smart metal dimpling and flexing against the sensitive skin of his inner wrist.

He made sure the lip-reading application was running, so he could answer without talking aloud. His tongue and lips formed the words, “Blackie! You got some nerve, calling me now!”

He realized that Blackie—if this was a true image and not some jinx—was dressed in the heavy lobster-shell-like armor of a duelist. Only the helmet was off, and the long hair of Del Azarchel fell to his shoulders. It was a young face, with eyes burning, and the hair was black as ink.

Strangely enough, the armored image looked old, even archaic, a figure stepped from a musty history book, as if Menelaus, in a buried part of his brain, truly knew all the years that had passed since he last saw a foe adorned in such grim panoply.

The eyes of Del Azarchel—Menelaus saw them vibrate, as if absorbing every photon of information from the image Menelaus was sending through the pinpoint lens in his amulet, and then fix his stare on Menelaus with such intensity that he felt it almost like a blow, entering the optic nerve to jar the back of his skull.

Del Azarchel had solved his own version of the Zurich Run and the divarication sequencing. He had concocted and taken the Prometheus Formula, as Rania had not long ago deduced. He was Posthuman.

War is coming. The discontent of the factions among the great and despair among the small has reached a critical mass. I gather my troopers even as we speak, and will spread a cloak of fire over the skies of any lands that rise in rebellion against me. And yet, even at the last, I yearn for peace.

Menelaus was aware once more of the annoyance he felt hearing aristocrats, who were basically successful thugs, called great, and hearing honest workingmen called small. It added to the horror and hate he felt hearing Del Azarchel so calmly bragging of his plan to preserve his dominion over the planet by burning it.

Menelaus said, “I’ve seen the equations. The solution is that you abdicate. You and your poxy crew of mutineers who killed the first Captain ever to sail the stars, and the finest man I ever knew—you give up your stranglehold on power to the Advocacy. That will ease things up.” His tone of voice, had he been speaking aloud, would have been sharp, and so he hoped the lip-reading gear on Del Azarchel’s side was picking up the nuances.

The figure did not even bother to shake his head. Menelaus could almost feel the pride radiating like arctic wind from the dark-eyed Master of the World. The Princess could stop this war if she wished it. I have seen her work miracles of Cliometry ere now. She could do it again.

“She has solved it. You won’t accept the solution.”

If she does not abandon the world, if the dream of star-travel for men of flesh and blood is killed now in the unsteady public imagination, events will find an unwarlike resolution. It is Rania’s departure that brings this war; I command her to stop it! She shall not sail, nor you!

Menelaus said, “And I’d command you to bugger yourself, Blackie, ’scept your male member ain’t long enough to snake around to your own backdoor, and, unlike some folk in this conversation, I don’t give orders I got no right to give, and are plumb stupid impossible to carry out, nohow.”

The stern, cold face of Del Azarchel seemed to relax. History will show then that this is by your will, yours alone. Appoint a second and have him call to mine. The Learned D’Aragó shall answer for me.

“Plague! You calling me out? On my wedding night, you calling me out?”

The very wedding night that you despoiled from me? With the bride rightfully mine, that you have soiled with your seed in an act of seduction, if not rape? She is so far above you on the scale of evolution, you are like a monkey coupling with her! It would serve you well not to mention her.

“You shouldn’da said that, you pestilential bean-eating whoreson. Now I got to blast your innards out and boot your polished teeth down your lying throat when you roll on the red mud, guts bubbling out like pudding. Man like you deserves a better end, so I am going to feel powerful sorry for kicking a dying man in the face later on, when I hoist a beer to your memory.”

I am at the base of the tower, armed. Come alone, if you care for her. There is no need for my Rania to see these dark deeds.

“Pox on that and pox on you. Why should I get out of my nice, warm bed for you, Blackie?”

The honor of your name demands it.

“Could be. On the other hand, this futon is mighty comfy.”

The peace of the world demands it. If I perish, the Princess can craft whatever peace she deems will endure before you two depart. If you perish, she will not have the resource to fend off my suit, nor the courage, and she will stay chained near Earth where she belongs, my angel in a birdcage, and that also brings peace.

The image winked out.

Menelaus sat up, but even when he moved his arm, and Rania’s head dropped softly to the pillow, she did not wake, but merely snorted. Menelaus looked on, a tender feeling in his heart with no parallel in his life. His gaze lingered on the line of her neck, the curve of her cheek, the fine golden curls spread in wanton array. Surely he had not cared for his brothers or his mother like this: they could look after themselves, and got on his nerves besides. A wife was different. Even if she directly owned half the world and indirectly controlled the other half, Rania lived a hard life and lonely one, and it had been a hectic day. More than the wild horseback ride might have taken their toll on her …