The Last Hawk by Catherine Asaro

  Translate Kelric thought, hoping Bolt's recovery had continued along with his own.

  I can't, Bolt answered. My transl^%´´ó@—+

  What?

  My library hasn't built up enough Coban words or grammar.

  Kelric shook his head at Dabbiv again, hoping his meaning was clear. The doctor considered him, then turned to Llaach. After conferring With the guard, Dabbiv nodded to Kelric and took his leave of the room.

  Llaach lifted a glass of water off the nightstand and offered it to Kelric. He shook his head, but she persisted in trying to make him drink They went back and forth that way for a while, until Dabbiv reappeared with Ixpar at his side.

  The girl smiled. "My greetings, Kelric."

  He exhaled with relief. "Can you tell me what they want?"

  "Dabbiv says you are deehi—what is the word? Dehydrait?" She took the glass from Llaach and tilted it to his lips. "Dried up."

  Kelric pushed it aside "No."

  ."You should do what Dabbiv says. He is a good doctor."

  "Does he put anything in my food? Drugs?"

  "Of course not. He brings your medicines for you to drink."

  "Are you certain?"

  "Yes. Why do you ask?"

  "I think the food and water are what make me sick."

  She frowned "You would not say this if you knew how much care the cooks use with your meals."

  "I appreciate their efforts. But I'm not Cohan. What's harmless to you could be poison to me." Particularly now, when his nanomeds were deactivated or dormant.

  Ixpar talked with the doctor, then turned back to Kelric. "Dabbiv says he will try to find you a better diet. And we can boil your water. Do you think this would help?"

  He smiled "Yes. Thank you."

  "We will right away talk to the cooks. But now you should rest. I Will tell all these worried-looking people to leave"

  Good luck, Kelric thought. He had been trying all morning to make them go.

  Ixpar spoke a few words to the others—and they left. Then she bowed and took her leave as well, without another word.

  Kelric blinked. Just like that his room was empty. What about his young nurse commanded such a response? It wasn't Ixpar's appearance, exactly; she was awkward with adolescence, all arms and legs. But she had a quality about her, something indefinable that made her seem larger than everyone else.

  In any case, the privacy was a relief. He lay back gazing at the ceiling, which was painted blue with clouds and a flock of birds. Skyroom. This was far better than a grave, which was where he would be if these people hadn't helped him. That Deha and Ixpar both spoke Skolian suggested an Imperial presence on planet. He had to report back to headquarters. By now Imperial Space Command must have listed him. as lost and presumed dead.

  A dim image formed in his mind: a floating green sphere. When he concentrated, it faded away.

  Retrieve image, Kelric thought.

  The memory has suffered degradation Bolt thought. I will try to improve resolution.

  As the sphere reappeared, a blur under it resolved into a line of hieroglyphics, It was a message his ship had, printed before the crash. Something about Coba. Restriction. Yes. That was it. Coba Was under Imperialate Restriction.

  It made no sense. The planet was obviously habitable and Kelric recalled no military briefing about a world called Coba. From what he had seen so far, it was a pleasant place, certainly no candidate for quarantine.

  Then again, he had only seen one room and a few people. Coba definitely bore investigation. It had gone unnoticed too long.

  With the help of the boy who had brought him lunch, Kelric managed to sit up, wincing as the edge of his bodycast jabbed his chest Pugged primitive, wrapping his body in plaster. Normally his nanomeds would speed the healing of his broken bones, but he wasn't sure how active they were after the damage he had taken during the attack and then the crash on Coba.

  As his nurse adjusted the pillows behind his back, Kelric shifted the tray on his lap and waved at the door, continuing his "conversation" with the boy. "You must know what I mean. The guards outside my room, the ones who always sit at that table, gambling or something. I see them every time someone opens the door. What are they doing?" He knew the boy didn't understand Skolian, but he talked to him anyway He had little else to do. Although he still slept most of the time, he felt well enough now to stay awake a few hours each day.

  The youth regarded him curiously. Dressed in blue trousers and a white shirt, he looked more like a schoolboy than a nurse. Only the medic's patch and Dahl suntree emblem on the shoulder of his shirt said otherwise He poured Kelric another glass of tawmilk and offered it to him, but Kelric shook his head.

  As the boy persisted a laugh came from the other side of the room "Maybe milk is not so good, heh?"

  Kelric looked to see Deha Dahl standing in the door arch. She spoke to the nurse in their language and he bowed. Then he withdrew, leaving Kelric alone with the Manager.

  "My greetings, Prince Kelricson." She came over to the bed. "Or perhaps you prefer a military title? Tertiary Valdoria?"

  "Actually, I prefer Kelric. "

  "Kelric" She smiled. "Dabbiv Says you seem better since we worked out this special menu for you."

  "Much better." He hesitated, grappling with the awkwardness that always plagued him when he wanted to express something important—like gratitude to the person who had saved his life. "Manager Dahl what you've done for me—I won't forget."

  She watched him with an inscrutable expression. "Do not be so quick to thank me. Almost we didn't bring you here."

  "Because of the Restriction?"

  "Yes." She sat next to him on the bed. "When we ask for the Restriction, never did we imagine you would happen."

  "You asked to be Restricted? Why?"

  "We don't want your ISC occupying our world."

  He stared at her. "As part of the lrnperialate, you would have access to our technology, sciences, arts, nearly a thousand worlds—all of it. You. gave that up because you didn't want ISC here?"

  "You use loaded words." She spoke carefully. "Others use words such as military dictatorship for your Imperialate."

  He tensed. "The Imperator is not a dictator."

  She considered him. "Tell me something. What are you prince of? An ancient dynasty, yes?"

  "The Ruby Dynasty. But the Rhon has no power anymore."

  "The Rhon?"

  "My family. That's what the Skolian people call us."

  "And what do the Skolian people call the Imperator?"

  He regarded her warily. "The Imperator?"

  "You play games with me. He is your brother, yes?"

  Kelric inwardly swore. It would have been better for him had these people been less adept at digging information out of his ship's wreckage. "Half brother Kurj and I have the same mother. But he came to his position through work. Not heredity."

  Kurj?

  "The Imperator."

  "So," she said. "You call the Imperialate's dictator by his personal name."

  "He's not a dictator, damn it."

  "No?" .

  "No." The nature of his brother's violent rise to power was territory he had no wish to trod with this stranger She was already too unsettling.

  Heart rate and blood pressure anomaly, Bolt thought. It accessed his optical nerve and a translucent display appeared, superimposed on Deha, with diagrams of Kelric's Vital signs.

  Terminate display, Kelric thought. You can give a synopsis. Had Bolt been working right, he wouldn't have needed to ask for brief mode; he had long ago set that as the node's default.

  The display vanished Your hypothalamus is producing certain hormones, which in conjunction-

  Skip the tech-talk, Kelric thought. Just- tell me what's wrong.

  Nothing is "wrong." Unless you consider sexual arousal a problem.

  He flushed. Just what he needed, a voyeuristic computer in his spine.

  "Kelric?" Deha asked. "Are you all right?"

&nb
sp; He scowled. "I'm fine."

  "You look tired " She reached out to brush a curl out of his eyes.

  In pure reflex, Kelric grabbed her wrist. As she froze, his mind caught up with his reflexes and he stopped. Bolt's combat libraries could direct reflexes far more complex than grabbing a wrist and the hydraulics that controlled his skeleton could as much as triple his response time. Any more would have required greater than the few kilowatts of power produced by his internal microfusion reactor, generating too much heat for , his body to dump even with the reflective adaptations of his skin.

  Deha sat utterly still, watching him. Disconcerted, he loosened his grip.

  "I didn't mean to startle you," she said.

  He rubbed his thumb over her palm. "My reflexes overdo it sometimes."

  Her face gentled. Then she withdrew her hand and cleared his lunch tray, setting the remains of his meal on the nightstand She took a pouch out of her robe and set it on the tray. "I bring you gift."

  A gift? He picked up- the pouch making its contents rattle and click.

  Deha had the same type of pouch hanging from her belt. She took it off and emptied a profusion of small shapes onto the tray: balls, cubes, polyhedrons, pyramids disks, squares, rods, and more, in every color of the rainbow.

  Intrigued, he poured a similar set out of his pouch "What are they?"

  "Dice."

  "What do we do with them?"

  "Play Quis."

  "Is that a gambling game?"

  "Sometimes." She pushed the pieces to the edges of the tray, then set a blue cube in the center the tray. "Your move."

  "If they're dice, don't we have to roll them?"

  Deha shook her head. "We say 'dice' because many centuries ago the pieces, they have numbers on them, and these numbers, they tell you what moves you can make. You pick a piece, roll it out, and the number that comes up tells you—" She paused. "What is this word I want? Elections? No . . . Options! Yes. This is the word."

  "The number gives you options for doing something?"

  "This is right. Options for placing your piece in a Quis structure." Deha lowered her voice, as if revealing a confidence. "Back then, Quis takes less skill. Now we build structure's using strategies based only on rules. It takes much more work by the brain." She grinned. "But still we gamble on who wins. So. Make your move."

  He laughed. "I've no idea how to play."

  "Try anything. We see what happens."

  Enjoying himself now, he set a bar on her cube. She pushed a purple cube up against her blue one. He placed a purple bar and she responded with a magenta cube.

  "You know," he said, setting a square in the structure. "I have no idea what we're doing."

  "I explain when we finish." Deha snapped her fingers. "But I forget. We must make a wager." She considered. "Two tekals. Is reasonable for beginner."

  "What's a tekal?"

  "A coin. One tekal buys you a sausage at market."

  "I don't have any tekals."

  Deha smiled. "You owe me then."

  "I might win, you know."

  She placed a red cube against her magenta cube. "We see."

  He put a disk on top of her cube. "Your move."

  "Not my move." She set an orange cube by her red cube.

  "My game."

  "It is?"

  "Very definitely."

  He counted the dice. "You made more moves than I did. Don't I get to finish the round?"

  She regarded him with approval. "Is true, you can finish. But is no way for you to beat me now."

  "How did you win?"

  "I made a small spectrum." She tapped her cubes. "Blue, purple, magenta, red, orange."

  This was certainly a better diversion than arguing with her about his infamous brother. "What does it mean?"

  "A spectrum is like a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Then starts over with red again. Also you can put—what is the word? Interm?" She paused. "Intermediate. You can use intermediate colors if you want, like magenta between purple and red. For small spectrum, the line of dice must be more than four pieces. A grand spectrum is ten or more dice."

  "Suppose I had blocked your line of cubes?"

  "Ah." She nodded. "You learn fast. A block would stop me. Then I must go in another direction."

  "Can you use different shapes?"

  "Not in a spectrum. You can in a builder. Color stays the same in a builder and shape changes." She tapped a cube. "The number of sides is the order. Cube has six sides, so it is sixth order." She made a line of dice on the tray: pyramid, pentahedron, cube, heptahedron, octahedron. "This run follows order so it is a builder. If it follows both color and order, it is a queen's spectrum."

  He grinned. "If I make a queen's spectrum, will I win back my tekals?"

  Deha chuckled. "Maybe." She made a sweeping motion of her hand. "Many more structures and patterns exist. Spectrums and builders are only a start."

  "I'd like to learn." He picked up a handful of dice. "If you have time to teach me."

  "We all teach you. Everyone's Quis has a different personality." She lowered her voice again. "Really, it is more than gambling. The better one plays Quis, the greater her influence. We . . . I keep losing the words. Talk? We talk with Quis. It is like a net that spreads to everyone. The better a person plays the net, the better her position in life."

  "Is that why you manage Dahl? Because you play Quis well?"

  Deha shrugged. "l have some ability. It is one reason the previous Manager chose me as her successor. But it works both ways. Managing Dahl gives me knowledge that aids my dice."

  He regarded her, fascinated. "It sounds like more than a game."

  "This is true. If you play Quis well enough, it can tell you stories." Deha considered. "I give an example with Varz Estate." She set a black dodecahedron on the tray. "Varz is a too—powerful Estate, second only to Karn. Varz has always challenged Karn for the Ministry. So we must help Karn gain advantage against Varz."

  "Why not help Varz?"

  She snorted. "I would help a scumrat before Varz."

  "Ah." He smiled. "I see."

  "So. I build structures that tell about, say, inequities in Varz import practices. I sit at Quis with my aides, they sit with their aides, their aides sit with others. Soon my input into the Quis spreads like ripples in pond. It reaches a logger in Viasa and she says to merchant, 'You know, I read much in the Quis lately. Much about Varz and all of it bad. It is a good thing Karn has the Ministry.' "

  "Which doesn't sit well with Varz, I take it."

  "Ah, but Manager Varz makes her own ripples." Deha lifted a handful of dice. "So the merchant tells the logger, 'You play Quis with dull—wits. If Karn keeps running things, soon we will all pay so much for goods we have no money left for Quis. Then, my friend, you never get paid what I owe you.' "

  "Who wins?"

  "This is the crucial point, yes? Everyone is in the Quis net. With so many people, ripples bounce back and forth, reinforce, cancel, make new ripples." She paused. "Perhaps that is our ultimate wager. Power. Control the Quis and you control the Twelve Estates."

  Kelric wanted to ask more, but he was tiring. He leaned back in the pillows to gather his strength for new questions.

  "Ai," Deha murmured. "I should let you rest."

  "It's all right." He regarded her. "I meant to ask you—what news is there about the starport?"

  Her inscrutable look came back. "I wrote the Ministry, as you ask. They verify what I tell you. After your people made the Restriction, they took away their ships. I am sorry. We have no port here."

  "There must be some outpost."

  "None."

  "They would have left a base," he said. "I can find it with equipment on my ship."

  "The crash destroyed your ship."

  That wasn't what he wanted to hear. ISC had started to experiment with combining the EI brain of a Jag starfighter and the biomech web of its Jagernaut pilot. So the Jag's routines could run on Bolt and Bolt's could ru
n on the Jag. When he disconnected from the ship, it usually felt like the mental equivalent of logging off a computer. What he felt now was different, a void, as if part of him had vanished.

  Bolt, he thought. Have you had any luck reaching the lag?

  No. However, at this distance from the crash site, it is unlikely I will pick up any significant signal.

  Surely you can get at least a residual interaction.

  This is a logical assumption. However, I detect nothing.

  Kelric considered Deha. "If the crash destroyed my ship that thoroughly, how am I still alive?"

  "You don't remember? You ejected."

  Bolt, did the Jag eject me?

  It considered that option. My records of the crash are too garbled to determine what actually happened.

  Kelric felt an unexpected grief at the Jag's destruction. It was an effect he ought to report. The ship's designers needed to know their latest modifications were creating a complex mental symbiosis between the ship's brain and its pilot. But Deha claimed no ISC personnel were on planet for him to contact. No starport, no base, no outpost, no nothing.

  He didn't believe it.

  Prepare Kyle probe, he thought.

  Your Kyle centers are injured, Bolt thought.

  Kelric tensed. Why didn't you say anything before?

  I was too damaged. As I effect repairs to myself, I can better monitor you.

  If his Kyle centers were injured it meant he had suffered brain damage. Kelric had always known that linking a biomech web to his brain had its risks, but realizing that in theory and facing the reality were two different things.

  His Kyle centers were microscopic organs, the Kyle Afferent Body and Kyle Efferent Body. KAB and KEB. The KAB acted as a receiver, its molecular sites activated by fields produced in other people's brains. The KEB acted as a "transmitter," strengthening and modulating the fields his own brain produced. Everyone had a KAB and KEB, but in most people the organs were atrophied. In rare cases like his, the genes that controlled KAB and KEB growth were mutated, unable to carry out their duties. So the Kyle organs continued to grow.