“NO GUN! NO GUN!”
“If I succeed in relieving you of it, will you concede that the gun becomes mine? You must grant it to me willingly. Otherwise it stays attuned to you.”
The effort of communicating to Ikematsu seemed to have exhausted Pout. He sagged, sucking air into his throat round the intruding stock that nearly blocked his mouth. Slowly, his head nodded.
“Good…” Ikematsu mused. “But how is it to be done…?”
Tentatively he reached out a hand, touching the wooden barrel. Seizing it between thumb and finger, he tugged experimentally.
Almost without resistance, the gun slid out of Pout’s face. There was a plop as his features re-formed behind it.
Pout began to cry.
At last, kosho Hako Ikematsu permitted himself to exult, at last he held the zen gun in his hands.
Zen in the art of electronics…
Curiously there was no trace of its contact with the interior of Pout’s person. No slime or moisture. No body heat, only the ordinary cool warmth of friendly wood. Ikematsu turned it over and over, examining it at length.
He knew its age: more than three Earth centuries. He knew its provenance: the zen master who made it had been a member of the order from which his own had originally sprung. The external appearance of the gun was a testament to certain cultural concepts: it seemed improvised, unfinished, crude, yet in its lack of polish was a feeling of supreme skill… in the Nipponese language of the time it had wabi, the quality of artless simplicity, the rustic quality of leaves strewn on a path, of a gate mended roughly with a nailed-on piece of wood and yet whose repair was a quiet triumph of adequacy and conscious balance. It had shibusa, the merit of imperfection. Only incompleteness could express the infinite, could convey the essence of reality. Hence, the unvarnished wood bore the marks of the carver’s chisel…
These qualities were themselves but superficial excrescences of the principles on which the gun acted, principles so abstruse in character that one dictum alone succeeded in hinting at them: Nothing moves. Where would it go? Pout the chimera had succeeded in using the gun as an electric beam to hurt or kill, without regard to location. But that was the most trivial of its capabilities. Only a kosho could unlock its real, dreadful purpose…
12
Ragshok’s voice was slurred as he spoke to Archier. He had not been able to resist the intoxicating airs and beverages so freely available on the flagship.
“We’ll be in Diadem in less than two days,” he said. “Listen, you could be useful to us. Tell us which are the juiciest worlds. Where we’d go to forestall resistance.”
“I’m your prisoner, that’s all,” Archier said dully. “Don’t expect me to be a traitor as well.”
Ragshok took a long sucking drag on the foot-long charge cigar he was smoking. He grinned glassily at Hesper. “Work on him, love. Make him see the light. Simplex take it! I can offer you anything. Wanna be total dictator of a hundred worlds? Satisfy any kink you like? Come on, everybody’s got his price!”
Hesper snuggled closer to Archier and stared at the pirate distastefully.
“Aaargh…” Ragshok growled in his throat, his natural aggressiveness overcoming even the calming effect of the drug. “Who needs you, huh? Who needs you?”
The door slid open with a bang. Ragshok turned, eyebrows lifted, as someone burst into the small sitting room where they were talking. It was one of the women in his band, a middle-aged virago who had been particularly bloodthirsty during the takeover. Her face was ugly with alarm.
“There’s a fleet ahead of us, chief!”
“What are you talking about?” Ragshok’s surprise was almost comic. He took the cigar out of his mouth, rolling it between thumb and finger.
“It’s on the radar. A big Imperial fleet!”
Grumbling incoherently to himself, Ragshok lurched to his feet. He pointed to Archier. “Bring him to the Command Room.”
He ran through the door. Archier didn’t need the scangun that was pointed at his head to persuade him to follow. He went willingly, and in the Command Centre found Ragshok already on the throne, his lieutenants, Morgan included, grouped around him. In the air in front of them there hovered the radar report.
There was no doubt of it. The oncoming blips were in standard Star Force formation, and there were more of them than Ten-Fleet could currently boast. In fact, from the identifying symbols in the top left of the image Archier knew it to be Seventeen-Fleet.
Swivelling the throne, Ragshok glared at Archier. “So this is what you’ve been keeping quiet,” he accused, speaking the words round the huge, puffing cigar. “Diadem is defended.”
“I don’t really understand it,” Archier admitted mildly. “No fleets are stationed in Diadem. The last I heard, Star Force had been ordered to stay away altogether.” He smiled faintly. “That’s Seventeen-Fleet coming at us, and she’s nearly up to strength. You’d better surrender. Maybe you’ll be treated leniently—given remedial treatment, given homes in Diadem, even.”
“Made tax slaves, you mean. They haven’t even attacked yet, and they won’t when we put you onscreen to reassure them.”
“I’m afraid they will, whatever you make me say. We’re supposed to be somewhere else. Remember those funny cobweb things that were making people disappear? We are supposed to be investigating that. Turning up like this makes us look like a threat. You see.” He explained after hesitation, “there’s been a civil conflict inside Diadem. They probably think we’re aiming to mix in it. They must think it, in fact, or they wouldn’t be coming out to meet us.”
The radar picture suddenly disintegrated into a three-dimensional cross-patchwork. Then the operators briefly obtained a single magnified image of one of the dreadful front-line-o’-wars, already extending its immensely long gun barrels.
“They outgun us,” Ragshok muttered.
“Fight ’em, chief!” Morgan urged. “We’ve got plenty of guns too. They don’t outgun us all that much.”
“They know how to use what they’ve got, you fool, and we don’t!” Ragshok retorted. He took the cigar from his mouth and flung it away. “We’ll be smashed to pieces if we stay in formation like this. Order the fleet to disperse. Every ship to avoid contact as best it can and make its own way into Diadem. We can exert some leverage there. Civilians are always soft-bellied.”
When he heard this, Archier’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he yelled.
“SHUT UP! Get him out of here!”
He heard the order being relayed and was still protesting as the virago hustled him from the room. Outside, he stared blankly at the lens of the scangun she held on him. How much should he exert himself, risk his life even, for the sake of these people?
It was a grotesque death. But he would get his fleet back…
He remained wrestling with his conscience when she vanished, with a clap of air.
For a while he stood there. Then, slowly, he walked back into the Command Centre. It was empty, of course. With a dazed feeling, he took up the throne so precipitously vacated by Ragshok Hesper found him there a few minutes later, having followed at her own pace. “Where are they all?” she asked.
“Back in the Claire de Lune,” Archier told her dully. “But dead, of course.”
While she continued to stare at him in mystification, he waved at the radar picture. “Do you see that? It’s another Imperial fleet on its way to intercept us. To escape it Ragshok decided to scatter Ten-Fleet. But he didn’t understand about the intermat, you see. I don’t suppose hardly anybody outside Star Force does.