Jack L. Chalker - Moths & Candle.rtf

MOTHS AND CANDLE

A BRISK WIND HAD CAUGHT THE GREAT SAIL OF THE ship; oars were laid to, the drum mallet that beat the cadence was stilled, and the great quiet on the waters was broken only by the splashing of the ship cutting through the chop the wind created on the ocean, and the sound of the spray coming up over the bow and misting gently onto the deck.

It was a good wind, but there were no signs of storm. It was near sunset, and the brilliance of magenta and crim­son on the horizon, unblocked by any land or structures, painted the wispy clouds differently from moment to moment, creating an unreal, almost magical effect. Kol­don stood there watching it with appreciation, although knowing he would pay a price for dalliance. Not that she would deign to come up on deck or make any move to see what his delay might be. No, that would be beneath her dignity. Better to yell and scream and fume and take her anger out on him than actually do something. Royalty didn't do things; people did things for royalty.

Even if she had decided to come up on deck, it wouldn't have mattered. She was not the type to ever find beauty in a sunset-hell, she was color blind anyway like the rest of them-or majesty in the quiet sounds of wind and wave. Beauty, for her, was found only in a mirror.

It had seemed such a simple, easy job. Her parents were the monarchs of Anrijou to the south; a vast feudal breadbasket land with good soil, ample rains, and the best drink on the planet. With preservation of natural foods next to impossible and an army of little critters that couldn't be kept out of any such stores, they made their ample surplus into various kinds of whiskey and other forms of liquor and traded that for the manufac­tured and artistic goods they desired or needed. They had little metal down there; even basic blacksmithing re­quired the import of iron and bronze. Yet they were a rich, self-sufficient nation and would have been almost an idyllic place had they not also attracted, for that very reason, the worst bandits and marauding tribes known. That forced them to spend a tremendous amount of their gross national product on an army, and mercenaries, and sufficient weaponry, walls, and castles to protect what they could, and that was the reason for all this.

Three days to the north, across this vast sea, lay Tourkeman, a smaller, leaner kingdom whose major product was war and defense. Everybody was in the army and much of its vital fighting forces were rented out to kingdoms like Anrijou who needed them. Anrijou had been paying through the nose for a Tourkemanian standing army of almost three thousand which had the bandit problem under control but cost just about as much as the bandits had stolen over the years including the cost of repairs. King Lugai of Anrijou had been desper­ately looking for a way to compromise on this and restore good profits to his land. He was by nature a benevolent monarch who really wanted to give his peo­ple the highest standard of living this bronze-age culture could provide, but could not so long as he had to pay and indulge the whims of the mercenaries, one of whom might, without that protection, get the idea to be king himself.

Koldon's employers thought this was a good idea as well. They had great plans for Anrijou based very much on the careful introduction of certain specific genetic techniques that would allow the southern kingdom's produce to travel well and resist the creatures and spores that now made that next to impossible in quantity. The bandit gangs had nasty habits, like burning whole fields of grain and otherwise disrupting the kingdom such that agricultural innovation was extremely difficult to pursue openly. A merger of the kingdom of arms and the king­dom of plenty was clearly called for, at least as much of a merger as geography permitted. When King Mindor of Tourkeman had tripped on a carelessly stored chain and fallen over the battlement of his castle to the ground far below, it had brought his son Shorn prematurely to the throne, and Shorn had not yet wed.

Koldon wasn't sure whether the old boy had tripped so conveniently because of Providence, an overeager heir, or perhaps his own people, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was that the king of Anrijou had a beautiful daughter of marriageable age, and Shorn needed quickly to provide stability to his throne, being the last of his line, lest some other nobles get their own ambitions and arrange another unfortunate accident. It was probably a marriage made in Heaven-or at least in orbit, where the Exploiter Team command ship with its senior staff and computers lay trying to solve the puzzle this world presented and at the same time form a useful pattern. Koldon had been down here the better part of two years, living among the natives undetected and car­rying out assignments while learning what he could, Va­liakean biological wizardry having made him appear as one of them. The world and its people seemed so simple and basic, yet they remained mostly a mystery to him.

For one things, they had no history to speak of. Records went back at most five generations, and the old­est structures were no more than four hundred standard years, give or take a few. There were no references, not even legends, taking them one year beyond that, and the artifacts that did exist showed a culture, society, and level of knowledge not much different then than now. There weren't any artifacts dating back more than a few centuries, nor, in fact, any ancient remains that could be discovered showing how these people came to be. His own ancestors on his own world had clearly evolved from fierce, hairy, taloned carnivores with a clear history that went back tens of thousands of years. Common an­cestors still existed on his home world. Not here, though. It was as if some powerful god had simply looked upon this world, snapped His giant fingers, and brought it all into being pretty much as it was.

They were humanoid; closer to the Earth-type hu­manoid than he was in his natural form, or so at least they seemed to him. Their bodies were covered with very short, coarse hair except on the palms and soles of their feet and a few other places, although it flared out into a heavy head of hair on top, and their eyes were big, brown, somewhat bulging; excellent for seeing detail, shapes, and movements but color blind. The males also had short, stubby horns coming out of their head, le­monlike, just at the top of their brows, while only the females had long, bushy tails looking like second sets of hair extending from the base of their spinal columns.

Well, maybe they didn't look all that Earth-human, but they looked closer to Earth-humans than to anything else on this planet.

Maybe it was the fact that, like most life bigger than a fist on this world, they were vegetarians, and he was from a proud if somewhat gory race of carnivores. At least there had been a lot of big carnivores on this world in the past, but they'd been mostly hunted to extinction by these people.

Their language was pretty, even a little elegant, but also very practical, with little range or subtlety. It was a unitary language with only mild dialect differences be­tween the kingdoms, which was also significant. They had basic math but no written language as Koldon would regard it, or, it appeared, much desire for one. But if you had a talent for memorization you could go far around this place.

They were not a very imaginative lot, it was true. In fact, for a civilization this well organized, they really weren't all that bright. Even their religion was dull-a pantheon of five gods who were immortal and all-power­ful but walked the world in the shape of men and were mostly seen as unwelcome meddlers. Their music was monotonous, their art was basically blocky and crude and, of course, colorless, their legends rather pedestrian, even their foods were pretty bland. Yet they were true craftsmen; this ship had been built at least twenty years ago, entirely by hand, yet it was tight as a drum, effi­cient, fast, and kept in almost new condition by its crew as were almost all things of consequence on this world.

The current theory was that these were all the descen­dants of some colony, or perhaps some wrecked ship never meant for this planet, whose members lost most everything and quickly descended into savagery before some bright ones with just a little ancient knowledge managed to get things stable. That theory was the most important reason why Koldon and his employers were wasting so much time and resources here. These people were unlike any known; if there was another spacefaring civilization out there not already co-opted into the Exchange, it was a potential threat and competitor until and unless it was discovered and enfolded into the system. Besides, if there were any clues to be had here that might lead to these people's ancestors and relatives, the first Company to find them got exclusive rights on all those nice ideas every alien civilization develops that are useful but which nobody else ever thought of. That was the profit. Just one new thing could repay a Company a hundred times over and make every Exploiter propor­tionately wealthy. Koldon, for example, had a half a percent on any valid patent from this operation.

It sure wasn't going to come from this hole, though, he thought morosely. He often wondered if the alien ship that had spawned them was carrying their retarded to a nice, safe world of their own.

Grupher the Sailmaker slid over to him as he stared at the steadily darkening sea. "Couldn't take too much more of her wailin', eh? Don't blame you. My ears hurt just to think of her."

Koldon grinned. "Just part of the job. Bad ears, lots of patience, and a hard head. She's aimed one too many jars and plates at it already."

"It's 'cause she's a virgin," the old man noted sagely. "Once she gets settled in she'll be okay. Uh-she is a virgin, isn't she?"

"Sure. It's her job, old man. Her role in life. Prin­cesses are brought up as pampered, spoiled brats and taught only what they'll need to do the job, but the payoff is that they'll get to be queens someplace. If the captain needs a sailmaker, he looks for someone with long experience and high skills in sewing canvas, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"So, a condition of the job for her is that she be a virgin. Nobody has her but the king. Then her job's to make babies, and the more the merrier, to keep the line going. She doesn't even have to raise them or teach them-they have people who do that, even wet nurses if needed. In exchange for making babies she gets fine jewels, the best perfumes, the best food all fixed for her by the best cooks, fancy beds and elegant stuff, a nice castle with all the servants she ever would need and where everybody has to bow to her and call her `your highness' and cater to whatever her mood may be. If she's smarter than her husband the king, she'll wind up running things through him. If not, she stays a spoiled child forever. It's a fair deal."

"Umph. Maybe. Me, I like the sea and movin' around and seein' the world a bit and meetin' all them different folks. Maybe I ain't got no royal blood or nothin' spe­cial, but give me somebody with a good, solid skill ain't too many others can do."

"A fair idea," Koldon replied agreeably. "You got a wife or kids someplace, Grupher?"

"Yeah, sure. Several. Wives, that is. Dunno 'bout the kids, but I pretty well bet on it. Gettin' so I got to pick my ships and routes real careful or one of 'em's gonna catch up to me."

Koldon chuckled, then sighed, steeled himself, and went below and made his way aft along the narrow corridor to the captain's area. He paused at a door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

"Yes?" came her voice from inside, sharp and imperi­ous.

"It's Koldon, your Highness. Just checking in."

"Enter!"

He opened the door to the spacious cabin and walked in. She was lounging on a silken divan idly going through samples of exotic material. For a race that had fur and insulating layers beneath it, the nobility's focus on fash­ion was an odd quirk. The common folk, both male and female, tended to dress for protection against grime and wear-work pants and boots, sometimes a pullover apron if need be, not much more. He himself was wear­ing worn, black, lined boots, a pair of traveling shorts with drawstring, and a matching cape that marked him as an official or agent of a king. She, on the other hand, wore a rather elaborate outfit designed to cover much of her, with bloused, satiny pants, a top of the same mate­rial, fancy jeweled belt on her hips, and enough jewelry to ransom a king-all for staying in her cabin and being bored. Upper-class women's fashions fascinated him because all women had those enormous tails-hers was "up" and as coiffeured as her almost-matching hair-that had to be accommodated, and all design was based on geometric patterns. However, to one who was not color blind, the combinations a color blind society blithely used were often hilarious-although they proba­bly looked great in gray scale.

"You took your time up there," she said accusingly. "I called for you a number of times."

He sighed. "I regret that there was no way to bring along personal servants, your highness, but I am not a servant," he said for perhaps the ten thousandth time. "You know we must do this as secretly as possible. There are many in the royal house of Tourkeman who do not wish this union and might stop at nothing to see that it doesn't come off."

"I don't care if it doesn't come off," she pouted. "I am being hauled away from my own lands against my will to be married off to some lout I've never met in a desolate place where the national occupation is fighting. For this I'm forced to stay cooped up in this hole, half sick from all the rolling about, and when I can eat it's horrid food, terrible wine, and incredible boredom. There's no staff, not even to make the bed or clean the place, and I will not have this room violated by those-those creatures that sail this rotten hulk."

"They're just good, common seamen doing their jobs. They're pretty crude and they're not very sensitive to higher tastes, but they're people all the same, and without their kind this world would fall apart."

"They're vulgar dests," she retorted. She had never gotten used to being contradicted when she made a state­ment of opinion. The dest was this world's beast of the field-the source of milk and dairy products, the beast of burden, even the source of the leather for boots and belts and the like. They were big, lumbering, incredibly ugly animals but they made civilization possible. The entire economy and way of life of the world was dependent on them, but, of course, they were not exactly animals of respect and to call people dests was insulting-and just about the way royalty around here thought of the common folks. "I would not have one of them touch me," she added.

"Well, we'll be in port tomorrow. That's when it'll be most dangerous-we still will be three days' ride from Tourkeman."

"I don't see why they just couldn't send a military escort," she said, shaking her head. "They're the sol­diers, and I'm to be their queen, aren't I?"

"Yes, Highness, but I'm afraid that it's the soldiers we have to be most cautious of. If something should happen to the king, then each of the barons would have about equal claim to the throne, and the barons each control a division of the army. Most are loyal, but we can't know which might not be. Some guesses, yes, but there would be no way of knowing whose troops were meeting us or who they were loyal to. Once in the capital and safely in the castle you'll be secure. The King's Own Division is loyal to the death."

"Then why couldn't they send them for me instead of making me skulk around in the shadows and sneak into my new kingdom like some common thief?"

"Because it's difficult to keep secrets in a royal court, as you should well know, and anybody can get some proper uniforms and swords and claim to be the King's Own. No, better to get you there this way than risk plots."

She snorted an imperial Hmph! "What's so hot about you that you can do it alone?"

He wasn't about to tell her that. Nor was he about to tell her that no one could really surprise him on this or many other worlds. Koldon's race needed no speech nor sound signals except as specific supplements to their thoughts. At will he could read the conscious, surface thoughts of anyone he wished. He would, of course, in­stantly know friend from foe, but mere knowledge wasn't useful if you were outnumbered twenty to one. This ability made him and his race perfect for this sort of job. No state secret was really safe from him, nor could foe ever be foisted off as friend to later betray him. He could not reach down to the deepest thoughts and plumb the very depths of others' psyches, but what he had was damned effective, if a little bit depressing. He'd read the minds of a hundred races, including some so incompre­hensible in their thought patterns that he couldn't make them out anyway, but this was the first race where, it seemed, that what you saw was what you got. With others you always got disjointed fragments, some pro­cesses going on in the background while their foreground thoughts were on you, sort of like being at a party and having a friendly conversation with someone while your mind thought, What a bore. I wish this party was over.

Not here, with these people. What you saw and heard was what you got. It was one reason why the barons tried to stay away from the king and the king tried to have constant contact with the barons. Every damned one of these people was a lousy liar and hypocrisy was almost always easily revealed. The real danger lay in these transition times; clearly the barons as a group didn't like being under this young and inexperienced whelp whom they had no reason to fear or respect, and at this point, and until he earned that trust, it was nearly impossible to discern who simply disliked the king but believed in the continuity of the royal house and the royal line from those who figured their genes were better and to hell with tradition. Baron Rodir's loyalties, for example, were in question. He had little use for his na­tion's mercenary role; armies were to be used best in the service of their own king. Although loyal to young King Shorn, Rodir was not above arranging things to his own ends and leading the boy down his own paths. A failure to deliver the princess would be a very nice pretext for turning a mercenary army in Anrijou's employ into an instant army of occupation.

Koldon was confident, however, of his ability to get her there. His people were keeping close watch on all the players and forces in Tourkeman that might intervene; other agents using technology undreamed of by these simple people would be waiting the moment they hit the dock to insure that the cordon of protection was not as obvious as an army escort but more dependable and far more resourceful. It was slow work building up a culture and creating a true civilization, but no matter what, it was worth it. A hundred political foundations would pay a fortune just for the right to shepherd these people into their own ideas of the millennium.

"Just get some sleep," he told her. "The ship's on time and should be getting in a little past midday tomorrow. Before we come in to the harbor we'll get off in the small boat and row to shore. It'll be only a short walk to a safe house that's been prepared for us. Just try and act a little less like a future queen if we meet anybody or you might as well announce it to the world. It's your neck as well as mine if they find out."

Not that they'd been able to keep such knowledge from the ship's crew. She was just too imperious and too spoiled not to blow their cover. He knew that the crew would keep quiet about it for a while, though-a fat bonus awaited everyone aboard ship if nothing leaked out until they were safely away, and he wouldn't give a fingernail for the health and long life of any man who blew that for the rest of them.

He bowed and left, going to his own small cabin next door. Tomorrow was going to be a very long day.

Koldon was awakened by the sounds of feet pounding the deck above him. He yawned and stretched, knowing it was by no means late enough to get up, but this much activity bore investigation. He pulled on boots, pants, and cape and splashed a little water from a pitcher on his face to wake himself up, then went out. He stopped briefly by the princess's door and heard her stirring. There were shouts now from up top, and he could feel the ship coming about, and he didn't like it at all.

It was just after dawn, but most of the crew was on deck, and Koldon saw as he went topside that the off-duty men had been issued bows and swords. That wasn't good at all.

"Can you make her sail mark now?" the captain called to the lookout.

"No, sir," came the reply. "The sail appears totally black, without any symbol on her."

Koldon peered out into the just lightening sky and finally spotted it. A ship, all right, smaller and faster than this one. More like somebody's private yacht than any merchant vessel. It was still hard to make out since it seemed to be painted completely black, including the large sail, which boded very ill indeed. All ships were registered by the symbol of their owners painted large on the sail as well as elsewhere on the ship so they could be instantly identified. An "X" on a black field might well have meant pirates, but this was all black, something that just wasn't done.

He stopped a crewman he knew. "You think it's pir­ates?"

The man shrugged. "Hard to say. Captain ain't takin' no chances, though. Ain't nobody paints all black unless they don't want'a be seen, though. She's a fast little craft, too. Be on us in half an hour tops. We ain't gonna outrun her, that's for sure."

Koldon turned and went below, rapping hard on the princess's door.

"What is it?" she snapped.

"Maybe trouble, Highness," he replied. He didn't wait for the invitation but opened the door. She was up and just starting to put on some royal-looking clothing. "Uh uh! No, Highness, now's the time for stealth. There's a ship coming in, no identification, closing fast. It might be pirates, in which case the last thing we want is for them to know that someone of importance is aboard. You wouldn't like being their captive. They have no respect at all for royalty except ransom, but by the time you were ransomed you would have been through hell."

That unnerved her a little. Pirates were nothing more than seafaring bandits, and she had seen bandits in chains before their execution and could imagine being entirely in the hands of animals like that. "What should I do?" she asked him.

"Put on the plain skirt, wrap, and sandals," he told her. "Stay below and keep out of sight. If they force you up, keep quiet, hold your temper, and stick to the cover story. If it is pirates, that might help somewhat. If your enemies have outguessed me and decided that this was the most vulnerable point-well, I'll fight hard and you'd better, too. They will have come to kill you anyway."

He went back to his own room and took out his small case, opening it with a security combination system beyond the ability of anyone here. He hadn't really fig­ured on something like this-none of them had. They had joined the ship off the Anrijou coast after it sailed, using a small skiff, and he had been certain that it had been done in complete secrecy. None but the captain had known in advance about them coming aboard at all, and even he hadn't known who his passengers would be. Because there were so many Tourkemanian troops around Anrijou, no one, not even the Queen Mother, had known when they would go or when they had, nor how the trip was to be accomplished. Even then Koldon had paid six ships' masters going to six different destinations the same amount and given them the same instructions, so that there had been little chance of anyone knowing which ship or port he would use.

After two days at sea, it was clear that those mea­sures had worked. Any leak would have to come from the Anrijou side, and they would have been intercepted long before this. This ship was coming from the direction of their destination, yet it was bearing down on them with all deliberateness. There was no mass communica­tions here and they'd made good time. This couldn't have anything to do with the princess. It was just rotten bad luck.

He reached into the lining of the case and removed a needler, then got a cartridge and snapped it into place, watching the little indicator as it rose and registered a full charge. He didn't want to use such weapons if he could avoid them, but, damn it, if they were pirates, then they might well be ready to kill the crew and take the ship as prize-and, to them, he'd be crew as well. Only the princess would survive, and he wasn't minimizing her fate if that was the case. They would have their sport with her before they ransomed her, and that would not only destroy her value, it would break her and brutalize her as well. Well, it was known that his company em­ployed great magicians. It might be necessary to show a little deadly magic here.

He clipped the needler to the inside of his belt in the small of his back, so that the cape would conceal it. His eyes went to the communicator, but he decided not to use it. It was only for local service, really, and wouldn't likely be in range of anybody yet. The panic alarm was there, of course, but it wasn't time for that yet. Besides, he wasn't certain whether it would bring help or instant oblivion to protect the other secrets of the case.

He closed and sealed it again and went back topside. The atmosphere was tense as the black ship continued to close, its fearsome shape now quite visible in the bright light of morning, its distance no more than a kilometer now.

Grupher the old sailmaker stared at the stranger. "I seen a ship like that once," he muttered.

Koldon heard him. "Huh? What is it? None of the others seem to know it."

"Not too many seem 'em and live to tell. It ain't no natural ship. See-you can make it out right good now. See anybody on the lookout or in the riggin'? See any lights?"

It was still a bit far for that to be conclusive, but the captain had slowed his own ship, understanding that he couldn't outrun the smaller black one. Still, the old boy was right. The thing was sailing along very nicely, but it didn't seem to have a single human being on board.

"God ship. Ghost ship," the old sailmaker muttered. "Nothin' good ever came outa one o' those."

Koldon stared a moment at the old man, then turned back to the black newcomer. A god ship. A supernatural vessel for one of their five god...