Further Revelations

15

Further Revelations

    Drouwh got back from the city very late at night, in the ground-car. Jhl had no difficulty in making him believe the clansmen were on duty around the property, though it wasn’t exactly a pleasant task.

    “Tired?” said Pleasure Girl Roz as he threw himself into his big chair and leaned his handsome head back.

    “Mm? Oh—yes,” he said, sighing and smiling at her. “I am tired. Things are going from bad to worse at Court. Fh’Ly’haiyn and Rh’n’lhd seems to be teaching the boy to forget every principle he’s ever learned. He’s spending all his time riding and fencing. –I suppose that’s better than spending it with the Court cats.”

    “Fencing?” she fluted in bewilderment.

    “Uh—fighting with long-swords, Roz: it’s a sort of game: practice bouts.”

    She got up. “I see, Lord. –M’ri’s left a pot of stew simmering; would you like some?”

    Yawning, he accepted, and urged her to put it and the salad on the one plate. Jhl would have, anyway. Silently she handed him the food and sat down in the rocker. He ate ravenously. She got up and poured him a mug of the local ale.

    “Ale?” he said with a grin. “Wonderful!” He tipped his head back and drank thirstily.

    Pleasure Girl Roz found she was gripping her hands together very tightly in her lap at the sight of the working of his strong throat. She swallowed, and was silent.

    “Is the prisoner asleep?” he asked.

    “I think so, Lord. He was given his food at the usual time. Jh’mmaiy’h Mk-L’ster said he was drowsy after that.”

    Drouwh smiled grimly. “I’ll be bound he was. I’ll just check on him, and then I'll be off to bed.” He yawned. “I’ve been driving all day. Had to come the long way: the rivers round Kt-fr and L’pgow are swollen, and there’s several bridges out. The snows have lingered on the high reaches this year;” he said, yawning again. “You get off to bed, Roz.”

    “Very well. Goodnight, Lord.” She got up, then hesitated. “Mk-L’ster—” she said in a low voice.

    “What?” he said, looking up and smiling the long, slow smile that was so like Shan’s.

    Jhl bit her lip. “I was talking to K’t-Ln about Choice 542. Would you ever agree to compromise on the point of the monarchy?”

    “No. They’re a drain on the country’s economy.”

    She swallowed. “What if the Regent’s party agreed to compromise over the devolution question?”

    “He’ll never agree to that!”

    “But if? Say he agreed to fifty percent devolution until the boy comes of age, then, uh, another referendum?”

    Drouwh’s golden brows drew together. He got up and took her by the shoulders. “Has he been getting to you?” he said fiercely, glaring into her face.

    “No. Only we didn’t think it was sensible for the two of you to carry on like this. We thought that maybe you could reach a compromise.”

    He tried without success to read anything more.

    “I think your way’s more sensible,” she said faintly.

    “Of course it is!”

    “If only it didn’t entail kidnapping the Regent! What’ll happen to you after F-Day?” she cried.

    His lip lifted a little. “What do you care, Pleasure Girl Roz?”

    “Of course I care, you cursed fool,” she said in a low, angry voice.

    “Do you? Tell me who you are, then!” he said bitterly.

    Jhl swallowed. She was pretty sure she could control him… And he deserved to be given the same chance as his brother. Without preamble she said: “I’m Captain Jhl Smt Wong. I’m a merchant trader captain with a Master’s Ticket, and a Lieutenant-Pilot in the Wavey-Sp—in Space Fleet Reserve.”

    The colour drained completely out of the handsome, high-cheekboned face. “Bears’ claws,” he said faintly.

    “Sit down,” said Jhl.

    Drouwh sank limply back into his big chair. He couldn’t have said for the life of him if his knees had gone so weak because of the shock or because she was controlling him. “Say that again,” he croaked.

    Jhl repeated without emphasis: “I’m a merchant trader captain with a Master’s Ticket, and a Lieutenant-Pilot in Space Fleet Reserve.”

    He passed his hand over his face. After quite some time he said: “Who sent you?”

    Jhl replied flatly: “Your father.”

    His mind was in a turmoil, but she could see he was sorting out earlier impressions and surmises and coming to some sort of conclusion, so she just waited.

    The man swallowed. “He was an off-worlder, then?”

    She sat down opposite him. “A cursed Feddo: yeah,” she said drily.

    “So—so it’s not from The Old Woman?” he said, very low.

    “No, it’s different genetic material entirely,” said Jhl, rather forgetting her company.

    He looked at her blankly, then after a moment said on an incredulous note: “Can you tell?”

    “I can look if I want to, yeah. –Look, I couldn’t before I came here; I suppose a—a combination of several factors has—uh, helped to develop my powers.” She gave a little shrug.

    “Several factors! Like passing through the x’nb web?” he said, staring.

    “Possibly. The capabilities were latent. I guess I just hadn’t been that interested in using them, before.”

    “By the bears,” said Drouwh slowly. “You came through the x’nb web knowingly, then?”

    She shrugged again. “I did volunteer, as it happens—yes.”

    He stared at the small black-haired figure in the pretty pale yellow garment that was one of A’ailh’sa’s.

    Jhl just waited.

    Finally he said tightly: “Why? Who are you? What’s this off-world father of mine to you?”

    “I've known him for a long time,” she said neutrally.

    “Are you my sister?” he demanded hoarsely.

    “No.”

    There was a short silence.

    “I suppose you’re reading everything I— Of course you are,” he said dully.

    “No, I’m not. I find I don’t need to bother, with beings I know rather well. –Apart from the fact that it’s cursed bad manners,” she added drily.

    “Bad manners!” he said with a loud, angry laugh.

    “Only bad IG manners,” said Jhl lightly.

    After a moment, to her surprise, he flushed and said stiffly: “Yes, I see. I beg your pardon.”

    “Not at all, Mk-L’ster.”

    He thought it over. “So—so why—”

    Jhl raised her eyebrows slightly. “Perhaps I wanted the adventure.”

    “You’re not that crazy!” he said strongly. Then he scowled. “Or so I had hitherto supposed,” he added bitterly.

    “You were quite right.” Jhl bent forward a little. “Mk-L’ster, knowing a being isn’t just a matter of being able to look at its mind or its genetic encoding. You can trust your instincts, they won’t take you far wrong. I don’t deny I’ve had my crazy moments, especially when I was younger, but I certainly wouldn’t have volunteered to trip out on klupf, let alone come through a x’nb web, for fun.”

    “No,” he said limply. “–Younger? How old are you?”

    “I’m about the same age as you: thirty-three in Old Rthfrdian years.”

    “Thirty— I’d have put you down as no more than twenty-two.”

    “No humanoid of that age could possibly have attained its Master’s Ticket.”

    “Shut up,” he said bitterly. “Bears’ claws, why do you always have to be so literal!”

    Jhl murmured with a funny little twist of the lips: “It must rub off.”

    “What? Oh—never mind. I suppose I beg your pardon again. –I can’t stand having these cursed facts rammed down my throat all the time,” he muttered.

    “If I correct you on matters of fact, it’s nothing personal. It’s just a habit. It’s the responsibility of the captain of a ship to make sure no being aboard makes an error.”

    “Old gods of Rthfrdia,” he muttered, passing his hand across his face.

    This time there was a very long silence before he looked up again. “Look, will you just state clearly who my father is, and why you’re here?” he said harshly.

    “I could make you understand much more clearly without stating it.”

    “I don’t want—” He broke off. “I suppose I can't stop you. Old gods! You must have been laughing up your sleeve at us ever since I found you beside that cursed lifter!”

    Jhl replied steadily, ignoring this last remark: “Of course I could communicate with you whether or not you wished it, but there is a code that beings with mind-powers are supposed to respect, and I’m trying to respect it.”

    “Go on, then,” he said harshly.

    She saw that he was very much afraid, and leaned forward, touching his knee gently. “Don’t be frightened.”

    “Just get on with it,” he said tightly.

    She sighed. “I’m not going to fill your mind with lies, why should I?”

    “Just get ON with it!” he shouted.

    It was more difficult to decide how much to tell him than she had blithely assumed. Unlike Rh’aiiy’hn, he needed to be told that his father was a Whtyllian, and— Oh, get with it, Smt Wong!

    Finally he said: “Rh’aiiy’hn’s my brother?”

    “Yes.”

    Drouwh leant his head against the back of the big old leather chair. “It’s ironic; I always wanted a brother, when I was a boy.”

    A tear was trickling down his cheek. She got up and silently fetched him a shot of uissh, pouring one for herself while she was at it, she Vvlvanian-cursed-well needed it.

    “Thank you,” he said faintly, downing it in one gulp.

    Jhl drank hers more slowly. It was a bit like qwlot but without the delayed kick.

    “I see you’re not unaccustomed to strong liquor,” he said grimly.

    “Not particularly, no.”

    “It must have been cursed hard, maintaining that Pleasure Girl stuff,” he noted unpleasantly.

    “What? Oh, Asteroids of Hhum, didn’t I—? No. Look, if it’s relevant, which I strongly doubt, I was under the impression that I was a Pleasure Girl from the time I crashed the lifter up until… I can tell you the exact point in time. It was at that frightful village fête. We were sitting round the table and Mh’aii’rhi Roz was encouraging you males to make intergalactic clowns of yourselves by making up pathetic rhymes.”

    He swallowed and looked at her doubtfully.

    “That was when I realised I was me. I didn’t remember what had happened to Shan until the horse trials. I nearly passed out. You were very kind: you took me back to the ground-car.”

    “I see,” he said feebly. “I thought it was merely an after-effect of the klupf.”

    “That was certainly an element. It took a while for the rest of the fumes to clear.”

    “I noticed you were different,” he said slowly.

    “I know!” said Jhl with feeling.

    “So, when I thought it must have been your real self showing through—?”

    “It would’ve been up until the fête, yeah. Well, and afterwards it would have been, too!” she admitted with an urchin grin. “I got so fed up with the asteroid-headed female!”

    “Uh—with Roz: yes, I see.”

    “Possibly Shan knew that that would happen—which possibly solves the question of whether he knew precisely what the effect of the klupf and the x’nb-web would be.”

    “Ah… yes. That’s what you call him—my father?” he said, reddening.

    “Mm.” Jhl could see he was trying to visualise him so she kindly sent him a picture of Shank’yar on his bridge.

    “He’s so like Rh’aiiy’hn!” he said dazedly.

    Jhl just waited.

    “But if that’s correct,” said Drouwh on a grim more, “he’s a cursed sight harder than Rh’aiiy’hn will ever manage to be!”

    “Yes. I still haven’t grasped exactly what his purpose is, but I think his disappointment with what he perceives as Rh’aiiy’hn’s softness, in the same way as you do, is a large part of the reason why he sent me. Perhaps he had no specific purpose,” she said, frowning over it. “Perhaps his intention was to—to juxtapose our personalities, and see what would result.”

    “Yes. –Mother thinks he’s dead,” he said harshly.

    “What? Oh: yes. He pictures her as a very intuitive being. She must have sensed it when he lost his consciousness of himself and regressed to a neonate state.”

    “To put it clinically—yes,” he said, staring at her.

    Jhl suppressed an impulse to shrug. “You felt how it affected me, Mk-L’ster, that day at the fête. I had to sit down on a seat without a back, don’t you remember? You put your arm round me: I don't think I’ve ever been so glad of another being’s support in my life!” She smiled, rather shakily.

    “I think I remember, but how can I trust any of my impressions any more?” he said, clenching his fists.

    Jhl scratched her head. “Oops—sorry,” she muttered. She withdrew the mini-web carefully, and swept her hair back behind her ears with a sigh. “I don’t think there’s any way of getting over that one. You’ll have to deal with it for yourself. If I told you that I think one of the reasons Shan chose me for this job was that, as beings go, I’m a reasonably scrupulous one when it comes to interfering with another being’s free will, there’s no reason you should believe that any more than anything else I’ve told you or shown you.”

    “No.” He leant forward and buried his face in his hands.

    Jhl just waited, whiling the time away by trying to figure out how plasmo-blasted Sh-Rn’s had customised the mini-web. Ooh! –Uh, no. Vvlvanian curses.

    “Given that attempting to disbelieve every image or syllable you’ve presented me with would only result in madness,” said Drouwh at last, “why did you— Are you listening?”

    “Mm? Oh—sorry.” She looked at the mini-web in despair. “It’s a plasmo-blasted trade secret,” she muttered.

    “LISTEN TO ME!” he shouted.

    “I’m tempted to say the whole forest’s listening to you, Great Lord,” said Jhl, eyeing him drily, “but actually, I’ve put a shield round this room.”

    “I’m sure you have,” he said tightly. “And don’t call me—” He broke off.

    “Go on,” she said neutrally.

    “What should I call you?”

    She looked at him with interest. “Your brother quite naturally addressed me as Captain. While at the same time inviting me to call him Rh’aiiy’hn.”

    “He would,” he said grimly. “What shall I call you?”

    Jhl replied politely: “You’d better call me Captain, too. I can see you’re trying to remember my name, but I’ve made it deliberately fuzzy, because I decided earlier not to tell anyone on this world, just as a precaution.”

    “I see,” he said tightly.

    “You’re tired. We could go on with this tomorrow,” she said kindly.

    “No: wait. Why did you tell me all this at this juncture?”

    “Because I’ve told your brother. I felt it wouldn’t be fair not to tell you, too.”

    Drouwh stared at her. Eventually he said: “But why tell him? Was that part of the mission?”

    “I don’t know,” said Jhl simply. “Shan didn’t know exactly how things stood here, his spies weren’t getting anything out through the World Shield and the x’nb-web.”

    Drouwh licked his lips. “Weren’t you afraid at all?” he said hoarsely.

    “Yes. When I had to take the klupf, and when I came to myself at the fête—though the klupf fumes shielded that, for a while. Since then, no. I’ve started to… explore my powers, I suppose you’d say: I haven’t been afraid for myself.”

    “For anyone? For my father?”

    “Yes. All the time,” she said simply. “And very much for the beings I’ve had to, uh, control.” She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure it would work. Um—well, the first time I let my shield down so as the it-being could pick me up, the kids and the cats heard me. I had to remove the memory.”

    “That was hard, was it?” he said, and she shuddered, nodding. “I see. You were afraid you'd kill them?”

    “Mm. I did kill T’m’s Kitten,” she admitted, “but I managed to get it back. Well, me and The Old Woman.”

    Drouwh looked rather sick, but said only: “I see. Yes, that would be a heavy responsibility.”

    “Mm.” Jhl waited for him to say, but then, she must be used to responsibility, but he didn’t—or think it. So she said on a dry note: “I am used to responsibility, Mk-L’ster.”

    “What? Oh! Yes, you must be.” He leant forward, hesitating. “Captain, could you possibly put my mother’s mind at ease?”

    She hadn’t imagined that pause before he’d been able to call her by her rank. Jhl eyed him drily but not unkindly. “I don’t think so. I wouldn’t mind looking, but I've never dealt with a sick mind: I don’t think I ought to take the risk. If you get her into a Mullgon’yan nursing-home, they’d have no trouble at all in curing her. It’s the sort of thing they deal with all the time.”

    “I’m told they don’t let them come home unless there’s a one-hundred-percent cure,” he said, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his fists on the arms of his old chair.

    “No,” she agreed.

    “Bears’ claws, you don’t give a curse, do you?” he said bitterly.

    She swallowed a sigh. “I’ve never met your mother. But I would like to see her cured, for your sake and your sister’s. I said: the Mullgon’yan nursing-homes deal with that sort of thing all the time. But if you want to go on worrying that they might not be able to cure her, feel free.”

    Drouwh got up and strode over to the window. He peered out into the dark, not speaking.

    Jhl went and poured herself another shot. She sat down with it and eyed him cautiously. “It goes with the territory.”

    “What?” he said angrily, not turning round.

    She swallowed uissh. The stuff grew on you, even without the delayed kick like a Quarvaynian oorlp that she involuntarily still waited for. “Worry. Uncertainty. Goes with free will.”

    Drouwh leant his forehead against the window glass. “Mm.”

    “But if you like, in this specific instance I could endow you with my amount of certainty about the capabilities of the Mullgon’yan Full Surgeons,” she said mildly, and waited.

    “No, thanks,” he said grittily.

    Jhl smiled wryly. No—quite. Not Drouwh Mk-L’ster.

    “Look,” he said, turning round and frowning down at her: “I can’t see— Well, the man you’ve shown me is no altruist! Don't expect me to believe he sent you here merely to see his sons were safe! What’s in it for him?”

    “He’s half of the W-M Anonymous Consortium.”

    Drouwh’s jaw dropped. “Thundering herds of grpplybeasts!”

    “I’ve no doubt he’s been planning this pwld thing for years. I picked up something from the fat man—uh, Representative M’Klui’shke’aigh,” she corrected herself on a weak note, “about Feddo influences in the East—”

    “By the old gods, has he been manipulating the electorate in the Eastern Sector?” he cried.

    Jhl shrugged. “It would be like him.”

    “So it appears,” he said grimly.

    “Uh—look, I’m not a Whtyllian, so it doesn’t mean much to me, but I think he’s also looking for an heir.”

    “It must mean someth—What are you?” he said, suddenly going very white.

    She sighed. “Come and sit down by the fire, for Federation’s sake. I'm a mammalian humanoid, the same as you, except that I’m a female. –Don’t look like that, your brother wondered if I was a metamorph, too.”

    “Oh,” he said, dropping limply into his big chair.

    “I’m a Bluellian. The concept of inherited wealth is almost unknown there.”

    “What?” he groped.

    “The state owns all of the land. Individuals own the buildings they put up on the land for their lifetime, and then their tenants or their offspring have first claim on them. Individuals can only inherit moveable property.” She smiled at him. “And no-one has much of that, Bluellia’s a poor world.”

    “Oh.”

    “So the sort of fuss over inheritances that the Lords of Whtyll go in for doesn't make much sense to us!” she finished cheerfully.

    “Uh—no.”

    “You and Rh’aiiy’hn are Shan’s only full sons—I explained that, didn’t I?”

    He nodded, grimacing.

    “That seems to matter. He’d leave A’ailh’sa out of consideration altogether: on Whtyll women can’t inherit property or, uh—Vvlvanian curses—those things that mean you’re a lordship.”

    “Titles!” he said impatiently.

    “Right.”

    “Our system is very similar,” said Drouwh stiffly. “Though a woman can inherit if there are no male heirs.”

    “Yes, that’s why I thought you’d understand. Actually, it’s probably why Shan chose Old Rthfrdia in the first place.”

    “It’s mad!” he said, ruffling his red-gold curls. “Why not marry a woman from his own planet?”

    “He couldn't find one that had the genetic encoding he was looking for.”

    “And Mother and Mh’aaiivh of Old Rthfrdia did?” he croaked.

    Jhl shrugged. “Apparently. Look, we could discuss this until the grqwaries came home, Mk-L’ster: we still wouldn't get any further, because I can’t relate to it emotionally, I can only discuss it rationally, and to you it obviously isn;t a rational question.”

    “I suppose you’re implying it ought to be,” he said tightly.

    “No,” said Jhl with a sigh: “I’m not. –I’m cursed tired: can we get off to bed?”

    “How can I sleep, knowing that you—” He broke off, swallowing.

    “Just TRUST me!” she shouted, suddenly losing her temper.

    He stood up, his mouth tight. “I suppose he trusts you?”

    “Rh’aiiy’hn? Yeah, he trusts me. He trusts me because he’s not aS stubborn as a Quarvaynian oorlp!”

    “Added to which you’ve got him off the drugs and unshackled him,” he said nastily.

    “You’re drug-free and unshackled, Mk-L’ster,” returned Jhl nastily, getting up.

    They glared at each other.

    Then Drouwh sighed and passed his hand wearily across his face. “I can see—if I believe you at all—that you’ve been very fair. I suppose I ought to thank you. I may do so tomorrow, if you allow me to retain any of this. Just at the moment I don’t feel capable of it.”

    “That’s good,” said Jhl through her pearlized teeth, “because if you did, I’d give you a kick in your stubborn guts like a Qu—” She broke off, gulping.

    Drouwh raised his eyebrows. “Like a Qu’?”

    “Like a Quarvaynian oorlp,” she admitted feebly.

    “Oh, they kick, do they?”

    “They’ve got a kick like—uh—a Quarvaynian oorlp,” she said limply.

    “Mm. You’re not Roz, that’s one thing I can believe.” He went over to the door. “Goodnight, Captain,” he said, going out.

    “Goodnight, Mk-L’ster,” she said grimly.

    Drouwh went out like a kfft-fly ten seconds after his head touched the pillow. He barely had time to register that the pillow smelled of newly-dried fl’oouu catkins: someone must have refilled it.

    Jhl was just about to go up when she realised— She opened the back door. The big dog came in looking meek, wagging his tail slowly.

    “Can’t you tell him I’m genuine?” she groaned.

    Brown looked at her anxiously.

    “You’re right, it wouldn’t do much good, it’s the genuine bits of me that stick in his stiff-necked lordship’s craw.”

    The dog pressed silently against her leg: Jhl gasped, and grabbed at his collar to retain her balance. “Yes, all right, come on.” –Bark if any being comes near the house.

    I will, he sent. Or something to that effect; it was in Dog, but clear enough.

    She led him upstairs and stealthily opened the Mk-L’ster’s door. Brown went over and got on the end of the bed.

    “Out like a snu-fly in summer,” she muttered.

    Drouwh was breathing steadily. She tiptoed over and looked down at him.

    When she found her fists had clenched so that the naturally cultured nails were digging into the skin of her palms she took a deep breath and went out, not looking back.