“There’ll be ships,” Martin said with complete assurance. “And you’ve got a cornucopia, you’ve got a whole portable military-industrial complex. If it can make us a lifeboat, I’m sure I can program it to manufacture anything we need to survive until we’ve got a chance to get off this godforsaken hole.
Right?”
“Probably.” She shrugged. “But first I really ought to make contact, if only to verify that there’s no point in handing the luggage over.” She began to walk back toward the lander. “This Rubenstein is supposed to be fairly levelheaded for a revolutionary. He’ll probably know what—” There was a distant cracking sound, like sticks breaking. At the other side of the clearing, Vassily was running back toward the luggage. “Shit!” Rachel dragged Martin to the ground, fumbled for the stunner in her pocket.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“Damn. Well, looks like they’ve found us, whoever they are. Nice knowing you.” A large, hunched thing, hugely, monstrously bipedal, lurched into the clearing: a vast mouth like a doorway gaped at them.
“Wait.” Rachel held him down with one hand. “Don’t move. That thing’s wired like a fucking tank, sensors everywhere.”
The thing swung toward the lander, then abruptly squatted on its haunches. A long, flat tongue lolled groundward; something big appeared at the top of it and stepped down to the meadow. It swept its head from side to side, taking in the decrepitating lifeboat, Vassily hiding behind it, the rest of the clearing.
Then it called out, in a surprisingly deep voice. “Hello? We arrive not-warfully. Is there a Rachel Mansour here?”
Well, here goes. She stood up and cleared her throat. “Who wants to know?” The Critic grinned at her, baring frighteningly long tusks: “I am Sister Seventh. You come in time! We a crisis have!”
People began gathering outside the Ducal palace around evening. They came in ones and twos, clumped shell-shocked beneath the soot-smeared outer walls. They looked much like any other citizens of the New Republic; perhaps a bit poorer, a bit duller than most.
Robard stood in the courtyard and watched them through the gates. Two of the surviving ratings stood there, guns ready, a relic of temporal authority. Someone had found a flag, charred along one edge but otherwise usable. The crowd had begun to form about an hour after they raised it to fly proudly in the light breeze. The windows might be broken and the furniture smashed, but they were still soldiers of His Imperial Majesty, and by God and Emperor there were standards, and they would be observed — so the Admiral had indicated, and so they were behaving.
Robard breathed in deeply. Insect bite? A most suspicious insect, indeed. But since it had stung the Admiral, his condition had improved remarkably. His left cheek remained slack, and his fingers remained numb, but his arm—
Robard and Lieutenant Kossov had borne their ancient charge to the control tower, cursing and sweating in the noon-day heat. As they arrived, Kurtz had thrown a fit; choking, gasping, choleric, thrashing in his wheelchair. Robard had feared for the worst, but then Dr. Hertz had come and administered a horse syringe full of adrenaline. The Admiral subsided, panting like a dog: and his left eye had opened and rolled sideways, to fix Robard with a skewed stare. “What is it, sir? Is there anything I can get you?”
“Wait.” The Admiral hissed. He tensed, visibly. “’M all hot. But it’s so clear.” Both hands moved, gripping the sides of his wheelchair, and to Robard’s shock the old man rose to his feet. “My Emperor! I can walk!”
Robard’s feelings as he caught his employer were impossible to pin down. Disbelief, mostly, and pride.
The old man shouldn’t be able to do that; in the aftermath of his stroke, he’d been paralyzed on one side.
Such lesions didn’t heal, the doctor had said. But Kurtz had risen from his chair and taken a wobbly step forward—
From the control tower to the castle, events had moved in a dusty blur. Requisitioned transport, a bouncing ride through a half-deserted town, half the houses in it burned to the ground and the other half sprouting weird excrescences. The castle, deserted. Get the Admiral into the Duke’s bedroom. Find the kitchen, see if there’s anything edible in the huge underground larders. Someone hoisted a flag. Guards on the gate. Two timid serving women like little mice, scurrying from hiding and curtsying to the service they’d long since been broken to. A cleaning detail, broken furniture ruthlessly consigned to the firewood heap that would warm the grand ballroom. Emergency curtains — steel-mesh and spider-silk — furled behind the tall and shattered windows. Guards on the gate, with guns. Check the water pipes. More uniforms moving in the dusty afternoon heat. Busy, so busy.
He’d stolen a minute to break into Citizen Von Beck’s office. None of the revolutionary cadres had got that far into the castle, or survived the active countermeasures. All the Curator’s tools lay handy; Robard had paused to check the emergency causal channel, but its entropy had been thoroughly maximized even though the bandwidth monitor showed more than fifty percent remaining. His worst suspicions confirmed, he made liberal use of the exotic insecticides Von Beck had stocked, spraying his person until the air was blue and chokingly unbreathable. Then he pocketed a small artifact — one that it was illegal on pain of death for anyone not of the Curator’s Office to be in possession of — left the room, locked it behind him, and returned to the duties of the Admiral’s manservant.
The aimless cluster outside the Ducal palace had somehow metamorphosed into a crowd while he’d been busy. Anxious, pinched faces stared at him: the faces of people uncertain who they were, bereft of their place in the scheme of things. Lost people, desperately seeking reassurance. Doubtless many would have joined the dissident underground; many more would have made full use of the singular conditions brought about by the arrival of the Festival to maximize their personal abilities. For years to come, even if the Festival vanished tomorrow, the outback would be peopled by ghouls and wizards, talking animals and sagacious witches. Some people didn’t want to transcend their humanity; a life of routine reassurance was all they craved, and the Festival had deprived them of it. Was that an army greatcoat lurking at the back of the square? A sallow-faced man, half-starved, who in other circumstances Robard would have pegged for a highwayman; here he was just as likely to be the last loyal dregs of a regiment that had deserted en masse. Snap judgments could be treacherous.
He looked farther. Dust, rising in the distance, perhaps half a mile away. Hmm.
The grand hallway opened from the front doors and led to the main staircase, the ballroom, and numerous smaller, more discreet destinations. Normally, a manservant would have used a small side entrance. Today, Robard strode in through the huge doors that normally would have welcomed ambassadors and knights of the realm. Nobody watched his dusty progress across the floor, treading dirt into shattered tiles and bypassing the shattered chandelier. He didn’t stop until he reached the entrance to the Star Chamber.
“—other leg of lamb. Damn your eyes, can’t you knock, man?” Robard paused in the doorway. The Admiral was sitting at the Governor’s desk, eating a platter of cold cuts — very cold, preserved meats and pickles from the cellar — with Commander Leonov and two of the other surviving staff officers standing attentively by. “Sir. The revolutionary guards are approaching. We have about five minutes to decide whether to fight or talk. Can I suggest you leave the rest of your meal until after we have dealt with them?”
Leonov rounded on him. “You bounder, how dare you disturb the Admiral! Get out!” Robard raised his left hand and turned it over, revealing the card he held. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”