Betalli didn’t wait until night to seize those EYEs. One of the androids took the tray as soon as Ginny set the fifth EYE in it, placed it in the vault, and locked the door.
Ginny smiled sadly, began filling firing tube inserts with drugs and tiny, blood-soluble darts.
15
On the tenth day in the insplit, in the third hour of the shipnight, one of the five big EYEs woke and hid.
On the eleventh day in the insplit, in the third hour of the shipnight, the big EYE raided the supply bins and vanished into the ventilation system to join the smaller EYES already hiding there.
On the twelfth day in the insplit, during the third hour of the shipnight, the EYEs acted. By the fifth hour Betalli and the Savant were the only individuals aboard the ship (other than the engine crew) alive and in possession of their faculties.
At the sixth hour, Ginbiryol Seyirshi rose from his bed. Ignoring the android deactivated in the corner of the cell, he dressed and went out.
By the eleventh hour, he held complete control of the kephalos and the Savant Quatorze was dead. He contemplated what he’d accomplished, smiled with satisfaction, and sent for Betalli.
Betalli stared at him from red-rimmed eyes, then he nodded. “Fools,” he said. “All of us.”
Ginny tapped the readouts. “Not you,” he said. “They should have listened to you.”
“You knew they wouldn’t.”
“Oh, yes. They have given me data enough to know them. You worked for me long enough that I knew you.”
“How?”
“How escape your surveillance?” Ginny chuckled. “I did not. Of course I did not.”
Betalli waggled the fingers of the hand imprisoned in the android’s fist. “Why am I standing like this if you did nothing?”
“I did not say that. Surely it must have occurred to you that materiel meant to subvert a world would be exceedingly effective at subverting a much smaller community?”
“I warned them and I watched you. I had the kephalos analyze your additions. It said every addition was passive, needed a triggering from outside. Had you gotten to the kephalos already?”
“Oh, no. Merely trusted my Luck and implanted a latency in one EYE.” Ginny smiled and lied; much as he was enjoying this, he knew better than to broadcast secrets promiscuously. “In the night, in the vault, the EYE woke and primed others. A pyramid, Betalli. Once the first triggering was done, the rest was mere reduplication.”
“The crew is dead?”
“Oh, yes. At least, all but those crucial to running the ship. You were greatly overmanned, you know. Waste of resources. I control completely everyone still alive. Everyone but you, of course.”
“I see.”
“Yes. I am sure you do. You betrayed me, Betalli. You were in my employ and used my trust to destroy me. It will take many years to repair the damage you have done to me. You and Omphalos. Your death will serve me two ways. It will discourage others from following your example and it will entertain my customers. Oh, yes. I have a new project, Betalli, a new Limited Edition. Something I haven’t attempted before. It has a simple title, no need for fuss. The Fall of Omphalos. Nice play of sounds, don’t you think?”
Betalli struggled.
Ginny flaked his struggles.
He had Betalli stripped and thrust naked into a disabled rescue pod, an EYE there to watch him as air ran out on him.
##
When the air was thick and stale, Ginny touched a sensor and a sac opened, releasing spiders and other many-legged wigglers to crawl over the prisoner.
Three hours after the pod was ejected from the ship, Betalli died, filthy and raving.
Ginny smiled and exploded the pod.
He didn’t want the little lives to suffer more than they had to.
He deployed Betalli’s android force to dump the dead out the lock, then took samples from the unconscious crewmen and brewed up a comealong that would turn them into permanent zombies. It cut their efficiency way down, but he wouldn’t need them long, just long enough to get him to the nearest clandestine Pit where he could hire some temporary efficiency and ersatz loyalty. He thought a moment about Ajeri and the Paems, sighed, and gave orders to his clutch of Zombies.
Crew first. Then Weersyll and Bolodo Neyuregg. Then Shadith. Then Mimishay. Then-
Trolling In The Tavern: Autumn Rose Begins To Play A Big Fish
1
Jacket hung round her shoulders like a cape, Autumn. Rose sat on a lichen-crusted bitt and watched the surging bay water as the sun set gaudily behind, her, turning the clouds into salmon chunks and touching the foam tips on the waves with a fugitive vermilion. There was a narrow alley past her left shoulder, a strip of weedy ground between two blocky warehouses, beyond that the street and across the street the Rumach where she was staying.
On the next wharf over a handful of ladesmen and night-watchers were sitting with their backs against a brick incinerator, chugging down dalbir from two-handled stoneware jugs and eating meatrolls they’d heated on wire skewers spread over the sluggish fire burning inside the brick enclosure. Even this far off with the wind blowing in off the sea, whipping her hair about her face, she could smell the grease and the gahwang.
Maybe she only imagined the gahwang. Everything she’d eaten during the last two weeks had been laced with the herb. Probably her own sweat stunk of it. She lifted an arm, sniffed at the inside crease of her elbow, straightened up, and smiled at the memory this evoked.
On the first morning Kikun slid out of bed, stretched and padded over to the basin; he opened the cold tap wide, cupped his hands to catch the stream of water, splashed his face and delicate leafform ears.
The light streaming through the window beside the basin turned them into jade, pale green and translucent. He soaped a washcloth, washed with care all the folds of skin on his face and body, then round his sheath and testicles. He extruded his bone-white penis, washed that with the same care, let it slip neatly back and lifted his foot onto the basin’s edge and began to wash it.
When he’d finished soaping himself, he rinsed out the cloth and went over his body again with the same meticulous thoroughness, cleaning away every trace of soap. Autumn Rose lay with her fingers laced behind her head, watching all this with bemused amusement.
He padded to one of the chairs, shook out his trousers and tunic and pulled them on, then slipped his feet into his sandals and turned to look at Rose, a challenge in his shining orange eyes, or so she read what she saw there, but all he said was: “Don’t forget to get a key made.”
She frowned. “It’s going to be a problem, isn’t it. You go out, I forget about you, so I forget everything to do with you. How do I remember the key thing? Or anything else I’m supposed to do for you?”
“Yes.” He scratched the folds beneath his chin. “I’ve been thinking about this.” He crossed to the bed, rested his fingertips on her wrist. “May I?”
For an instant she hesitated, but curiosity and need were more powerful than her faint revulsion. “Whatever. Unless you start biting off chunks of me.”
He grinned, then bent and nuzzled the inside of her elbow, rubbing his nostrils against her, moving back and forth, back and forth, his skin soft as old leather, warm…
She kicked her heels against the bitt. It sent shivers of heat along her body when he did that. You’ll remember now, he said, then went quickly to the door and was out and gone before she’d recovered enough to answer him. He was right-oh, yes. She wriggled on the smooth worn top of the bit. Every morning after that, he did the same and left. She understood what he was doing after she’d thought about it. He must have scent glands at the base of his nostrils. He was marking her. She couldn’t actually smell anything, but she certainly didn’t forget him again.