“Would you gamble on that?”
He considered, now realizing that his own hide could be on the line too. “I will meet you after the ball. Tomorrow morning?”
She smiled bittersweetly. “Thank you, Rrllo.” She was learning how to handle the reins of power.
After that, she came close to enjoying the dance, though she kept thinking of the Sword of Damocles. That was the case of the courtier who was given a fine meal to eat, with a heavy sword hanging by a thread over his head; distracted by that threat, he hardly enjoyed the meal. Thus the King showed him the liability of power. Colene now had an excellent notion how the poor man had felt.
NEXT morning, more appropriately dressed for going places, she went with Rrllo. “Now show me Panama,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
The translator ball hadn’t caught up with that one yet. She felt a small morsel of satisfaction. “I would like to see how the other half lives. The folk who don’t get to go to fancy balls. Who don’t hobnob with the Emperor.” For it was in her mind that it would be from this class that a revolution would most likely brew.
“The servant class,” he said. “We can’t afford three nulls for each person, but there is a cadre of nulls that passes from house to house to catch up on business.”
Nulls. Her expectation deflated. There would be no revolution there. “I changed my mind. Let’s just go to your place and talk.”
“As you wish.”
His place turned out to be an elegant futuristic (to her perception) cottage on the edge of a lakelet, with pleasantly exotic trees and shrubs surrounding it. His wife was exactly the kind she expected, and the neighbors were too. Rebellion? This just didn’t seem to be the place for it.
He remains intrigued by you. There is a certain naïve sincerity you evince which is normally lacking in consorts. He may cooperate.
“Look,” she said forthrightly. “You folk used to have a lot of power in the Empire, and now you’ve been put out to pasture. I guess that’s a comedown. But why would Ddwng think there’s a rebellion brewing?”
“There is no rebellion brewing!” Rrllo protested. “We are satisfied retired citizens.”
“But he has spy-eyes to check every nuance of every reaction of every person. He has to know you’re up to something. Why he figures it’s anything I can do anything about is beyond me.”
“You are speaking with unusual candor.”
He’s getting interested.
“I’m from another reality. I was on my way to meet my—the man I love, and this reality was between, so I passed through here, and he came from the other side, and now we’re both in Ddwng’s power and if we don’t do what he wants we’re in trouble. So I’m doing what he wants. He wants me to fix things here. So if there’s anything I can do, I’m damn well going to do it, so I can get on out of this reality. Now, if you’ll just tell me what you want, maybe just maybe I can do you and me some good. I admit it’s unlikely, but why not give it a try?”
Rrllo was amazed. “You are from another reality? There has not been a connection between realities in a thousand years!”
“There is now. Ddwng wants to get our Chip so he can go into other realities. We’d rather not give it to him, but we don’t have a lot of choice, so we’ll do it. It’s better than lobotomy.”
Then she realized that she had made a terrible mistake. She should never have mentioned her knowledge of the lobotomy, because now Ddwng would know she knew, and he hadn’t told her. He could have the hint that she had a source of information he didn’t know about, and that could expose Seqiro and ruin everything.
“You are inadvertently speaking treason,” Rrllo said.
She nodded grimly. “Yes, I guess the news is already at Ddwng’s HQ. But what does he expect when he abducts travelers and threatens them to make them do his bidding?”
He thinks you are trying to trap him into treasonous dialogue.
“There are no recorders here. It would be too expensive to mount and maintain them in an unimportant site like Kyvrn. This conversation is private. But you are mistaken if you suppose we have any animosity toward the Emperor.”
“No cameras?” she asked, hope flaring. “You mean no one will know what I just said, if you don’t tell them?”
“I would not presume to report on the private words of a consort. Surely you have excellent reason for your utterances.”
She smiled. “I guess you couldn’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know.” Apparently the man did not realize the significance of the lobotomy reference. What a relief! “But I’m really not trying to trick you. I’m just telling you that I have a different perspective. I’m really not the Emperor’s mistress; it’s just a title he put on me so he has a pretext to put me here.”
“But he introduced you as—”
“Yes. But it’s not real. I guess he wanted you to think you rated higher than you do. But Rrllo, I’d sure like to make good even though it’s hardly possible. If you’d just help me a little bit, maybe we can both come out ahead.”
He is impressed by your directness. He is inclined to trust you.
“Let me tell you then what I assumed you knew,” Rrllo said. “This planet is a retirement community for officers of the Empire. As such, it is elite, and we receive excellent care. There is no poverty or crime. But some of us feel that we were retired too soon, and that we could have given further years of service to the Empire, and maintained the associated perquisites. Instead we have been displaced by younger, relatively inexperienced officers. Are you surprised that we feel a certain dissatisfaction?”
Colene shook her head, perplexed. “Why retire you if you’re still doing well?”
“This is our question. We feel the policy is misguided, particularly since genetic deficiencies are appearing more frequently in following generations. In all candor, we feel that those who replace us lack, as a whole, the ability we have, even after allowing for the difference in experience.”
“And I guess it wouldn’t do much good just to say that to Ddwng.”
“It has been said to him already.”
“And he responded by sending me.”
“This is the case.”
True.
Colene pondered for about forty seconds. “Maybe it’s his way of changing his mind. If I suggest something he’s ready to do anyway, then he can say he’s doing it for me, and no one will think he’s wishy-washy.”
“Oh, he does not wish to wash anything himself!”
Colene paused, realizing that she had slipped another colloquialism past the translator. “I mean that he’s given to changing his mind readily.”
Rrllo smiled. “He is not given to that.”
“See, I’m about as unusual a consort as he could have, when you get right down to it. I might come up with something pretty wacky, because I’m from out of town. Rather than make it seem that he sent an unqualified consort, he might just agree to what I suggest. So maybe what you need to do is to tell me what to suggest, and maybe it’ll happen.”
Rrllo stared at her. “You are a most unusual young woman.”
“I guess I am. But why don’t we try it? Because suddenly this makes sense of things. That he knows what he’s doing, and he thinks you have a case. So my chances and yours aren’t nearly as remote as we figured—if we play it right.”
You have surprised him. He has decided to go along with you.
“As it happens, we do have a proposal, if the Emperor does not find it insulting.”
“I have a feeling he knows what it is, and that he’s ready to do it.” She was coming to a better appreciation of Ddwng’s subtlety. The man was a cunning and unscrupulous customer, but what he did made sense. She only hoped that he had underestimated her more than she had underestimated him. It was an excruciatingly dangerous game she was playing.