“You’re hurt,” Xmary observed, looking at the pale, bruisy flesh of his right arm.
He swung it, then rubbed it, then swung it again. “I’ll be all right. I just need to get some blood back into it. Are we, uh, are we one man short? One more, I mean?”
She nodded. “We had to save Raoul in the fax. Conrad’s idea.”
Bascal’s gaze turned back on Conrad. “Quick thinking, boyo. Very good.” He paused a moment, then tapped his jaw and said, “Now that you mention it, we’ve got some other passengers aboard this fetula who weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the voyage. Maybe we should do them a favor as well.”
“Sir?” Ho said, gliding a step forward.
Bascal nodded at him. “Yeah. Ng, would you please escort Khen and James and Bert into the fax for safekeeping?”
He took her promise, for a start,
And took her hand in his, and,
In love he took her heart.
He took her lips against his own,
He took that girl apart!
— “Male-Ordered Bride”
BASCAL EDWARD DE TOWAJI LUTUI, age 12
Chapter nine.
Stowage
“Keep your hands off me,” Bertram said, gliding back along the wall.
“Fuck you,” James added. “Both of you shits.”
Ho Ng advanced. “Don’t you talk to the prince that way, bloodfuck. Get in the fax.”
“Nobody’s hurting anybody,” Bascal said, in a tone that fell rather short of reassuring.
“Stay away,” Bert said. He was still calm, but barely.
Ho leaped forward in a long, slow arc, his outstretched hands reaching for James’ shoulders. James tried to duck aside, and made the mistake of throwing a punch in the general direction of Ho’s face. It missed, and the two tumbled upward in a flailing mass, arms and legs against the logs and cement of the cabin wall. And then the Palace Guard was there, having dashed across the floor with characteristic grace, its feet held down by some invisible, gravitylike force. Conrad hadn’t quite seen it happen, but two of the mattresses in the robot’s path were now spilling out dust and flakes of foam rubber, their covers torn in patterns shaped like robot feet.
Conrad had expected the robot to separate the combatants, but in fact it simply restrained James, got his feet back on the floor, and let Ho continue to hang onto his other arm.
“Guard,” Bascal said lazily, “assist the process, please. Thank you.”
“Let go! Let go!” James yelled. His struggles intensified, but against the robot he had little hope of success. He attempted to drag his feet, but this simply resulted in their flailing in the air behind him, with the tie-down laces of his camp sneakers fluttering loose. He began to scream like a condemned man, which might very well be the case, because once he was in the fax there was no specific guarantee that he would be reinstantiated. Some archived copy of him would, sometime, but maybe not this one, with these memories. This particular James Shadat might well be on his way to the gods and the afterlife, or the blank nothingness, or whatever.
He shrieked when they hurled him at the plate, and the sound was cut off as his head passed through, and then there was only the pop and hiss of his body going in, every atom measured and logged and teleported away to a nearby buffer. Or something like that; Conrad didn’t really know how fax machines worked.
“Bascal,” he said, “you’ve got to stop this.” He felt sick. Responsible. The prince had gotten this idea from him!
“Nonsense,” Bascal said, with a wave of the hand. “They’re better off in there, out of trouble and out of harm’s way. Everyone will be happier. Plus, it’s too crowded in here anyway. Ho? If you’ll continue, please?”
“Pleasure,” Ho agreed, turning and leaping at Bertram Wang. The Palace Guard followed at a more stately pace, marching magically along the floor, but it got there only a few moments after Ho did.
Bert opted to retain his dignity, saying only, “Is this how you’ll lead the Queendom, ‘Sire’?”
“We may never know,” Bascal answered. And then Bert was gone.
Khen turned out to be another screamer, and afterward Emilio Roberts, one of the bloody-nose kids, lost his composure and started crying and kicking. “This can’t be happening! You can’t be doing this.” So they chucked him in the fax as well.
When it was done, the room was very quiet, and all eyes were on Bascal. He seemed to sense that he was in trouble, that he’d overstepped and lost the confidence of his followers. Nobody wanted to be next. But when he spoke, it was with a flourish and an easy smile.
“We knew the journey would be difficult, and we probably should have known there’d be friction and hasty compromises. I didn’t foresee this, and I apologize to all of you for the ugly spectacle. I promise, it won’t be repeated. But you know as well as I do: if we let those men wander free, the trouble will be much worse. Would you rather tie them up? Kill them? This seems to me like a prudent compromise. Agreed?”
“What do we do now?” someone asked.
“We sail,” Bascal answered simply. He looked at Xmary. “You, darling, will be administering resources. Can you establish meal schedules and such?”
“Yeah,” she replied, without great enthusiasm.
“Terrific.” He turned and launched himself back toward the bridge in a bounding leap.
Conrad followed him. “What’re you doing, Bas? What’s the grand idea here?”
“Well, first we turn the fetula so the sail is edgewise to Sol. That’ll reduce our risk of detection when we have to opaque it. We don’t want to glint, or blot out any stars. Too much risk of being seen.” Bascal was settling back into the navigator’s chair.
“That’s not what I mean,” Conrad said.
“Nevertheless, that’s what we have to do.”
“He bothering you, Majesty?” Ho said from the doorway.
“Nah. He needs to be in here, to pick up the art of steering. We’ll take it in shifts from here on.”
“No concern,” Ho said self-importantly. “You need me, I’ll be right out here.”
“Good. I’ll call when I do.”
The other Palace Guard was still in here, standing motionless in the corner. Between it and Ho, there was considerable reason to avoid antagonizing the prince.
Nevertheless, Conrad crossed his arms. “So I’m steering now, am I? You’ve been making a lot of decisions for a lot of people, Bas. You haven’t done much asking. Why don’t you let your buddy Ho pilot the ship?”
Without looking up from the controls, Bascal said, “Come off it, boyo. Anyone can steer—well, almost anyone—but you’re the only one here with a basic understanding of wellstone. How the system works together, collectively. And you’ve driven vehicles before. You and I are the only qualified pilots.”
“Get fucked.”
“I’m sure I will,” the prince said, then turned to face Conrad. “Look, I can do this without you. It’s inconvenient, but it’s not impossible. If you want to be useless and annoying, that’s your decision.”
“Yeah? You too, Mr. Cone-of-Silence. Are you helping the people on this ... this so-called spaceship? Supporting their interests, fighting for their rights? I used to think so.”
“Watch yourself,” Bascal said, then sighed. “I would like your help, all right? I’d like your support. I’m asking nicely.”
With his arms still folded, Conrad shook his head. “You can’t behave this way, Bas.”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” Bascal’s voice was mild. “I understand your problem: you keep thinking this is a lark. Some kind of joyride. But it really isn’t. We’re not doing this for our amusement; we’re doing it for the next million years of our eternal lives. We’ve got to start those lives off strong and hard, or we’ll never be taken seriously. I wish you could just get that fact into your head and keep it there.”