"Like what?" Murph demanded angrily.
"Like I rigged the unit to go down in a couple of months. And when it goes busto, my dear companions in adversity... you're going to need me again. I guarantee it"
Kea fell back into the cot. "Now, go, dammit!" They went.
They found the air leak a week later.
"It's not my fault, Murph!"
"You were supposed to check, dammit!"
"I checked. Not my fault, if I missed something. I'm no engineer." Two of her eyestalks turned to peer at Kea's figure, prone on the cot. His duties had been shared out among them. Kea stayed silent.
"Let's not get into this bickering again," Ruth said. "The leak's plugged. Fine. Now, the question is, Do we have enough?"
"Not a chance," Murph said. "Not with most of the five months to go. And—" He broke off. A long silence.
Then Vasoovan finished it: "And four of us breathing."
There it was. Kea had been waiting.
"Yeah," Murph said.
"Yes... I can see that," Ruth said.
They all turned to look at Kea. Eight eyes upon three living forms peering at his own, air-consuming self.
"It'd be close," Murph said. "Still be maybe a month short."
"By then," Ruth said, "we might find other means..."
"What about the drive unit?" Murph said. "The little trick he played on me?"
"I think he lied," Ruth said.
Kea smiled at them. A big, broad smile. A smile right up from the warrens of Maui.
"Yeah, and maybe he didn't," Vasoovan said. The eight eyes turned away. But Kea remained watchful.
"What'll we do?" Murph asked.
"Simple," Vasoovan said. "We gotta have Kea. We gotta have you. And we gotta have me. I'm the nav—"
Kea didn't know where the hatchet came from. It was painted the slick red of emergency tool gear. The handle was short. The blade blunt. Ruth brought it down between the four eyestalks. She was a small woman, barely coming to Kea's chin. But she swung with the force of survival. The hatchet buried itself in the Osiran's brain globe. The haft protruded back—giving Vasoovan a protuberance that looked like a long human nose. Pink goo blobbed out and dripped to the floor. The tentacles shuddered, then were still.
Ruth stepped back. She looked Murph full-on. "Well?‘ she said
"She kinda got on my nerves, anyway," Murph said. "All that twittering."
"The rations are getting low," Ruth said. "I noticed. Let's make some soup."
He dreamed of kings. Of empires.
Menes was the first. A crafty old devil who welded upper and lower Egypt into the first empire. He ruled for sixty years. And was killed by a hippopotamus.
The Persians bowed before Alexander's sword. He died in a swamp. Kublai Khan got it right. He quelled the mighty Chinese. And died of old age.
The Romans pushed the bounds of the known world and beyond. They fell to thieves on horseback.
Elizabeth was fine. The best of them all. She was the dazzling acrobat of the monarchs. Kea sometimes wondered why she hadn't killed her sister sooner. Instead she bore the threat of deadly plot after deadly plot The romantics said it was deep, sisterly feeling. Kea believed it was simply because Elizabeth hadn't thought it was time.
He had learned much from these people during those long hours of offwatch reading. His interest was not casual. The nature of the powerful had confounded him. He had been smacked on his ignorant blind side. Kea was determined to understand. So he had gone at it like an engineer. Taking each monarch and his kingdom apart. Putting it back together again. Piece by piece. Sometimes rearranging those pieces to see how it might have turned out. An empire, he had discovered, could take several forms. It could be crown and throne. Altar and blood sacrifice. An army standard with its accompanying secret police. A presidential seal resting on stolen votes. A company logo above a penthouse suite. But they all had one thing in common: an idea. An idea of a perfect life. Real, or promised. And for the idea to work, it had to satisfy from top to bottom. Starving masses do not praise their monarch's name on Feast Day.
In one of the folktales he had read, one of the ancient kings went among his subjects in disguise so he could learn firsthand how to sweeten their disposition. The king's name was Raschid. In the real world, the ward bosses, commissars, and priests fetched food and comfort up tenement stairs to sell for votes. The Robin Hoods—Huey Long, Jess Unruh, Boris Yeltsin— stole from weakened kings to create their own power bases.
Dictators preferred triage. Kea thought of it as rule by the three G's: genocide, gulags, and gendarmes.
Still... No matter the form of the empire, or the means to maintain its rule, all of it circled back to the idea that was in the heart of the king who founded the empire.
And Kea had AM2.
His arm hurt. This was good. Like the pain before. He would be able to use it soon—though he had kept this from Murph and Ruth. He had a fever. An infection. A boil on his belly the size of a saucer. He'd have to hide that, too.
Kea heard whispers in the darkened room:
"C'mon, honey. I'm hurtin‘."
"Get away from me."
"We done it before. What's another hunk?"
"Yoь reneged on your bargain. You lied."
"I couldn't help it, honey. I was hungry. Real bad hungry. I'll give you halvsies in the morning. Swear it."
"Get it now," Ruth said. "Give it to me, now."
Silence.
Ruth laughed. "What's the matter... Daddy doesn't want to play slap-belly anymore. What's this. Tsk tsk. It's hungry. But Daddy's going to be selfish, isn't he?"
Murph made no response.
Then Kea heard Ruth gasp. And for one... two... three heartbeats, a violent, muffled struggle. Then a distinctive crack.
Kea felt a knot in his gut untighten. A sudden release of pressure. A terrible odor rose up from the burst boil. Then sudden chills. And sweat. Good.
The fever had broken...
He awoke with Murph standing over him. "You're lookin‘ better," he said.
Kea didn't answer. And he didn't look around the room for Ruth.
Murph stretched. "I'm hungry," he said. "Want some soup?"
"Yeah," Kea said. "I'm hungry, too."
"It's gonna take longer than we thought," Murph said.
"I can see that," Kea answered. He was looking at the latest computations on the screen.
"Damned Vasoovan," Murph said. "Lousy nav officer. Good thing you spotted her screwup and set us right."
"Real lucky," Kea said. He hobbled back to his cot and eased himself down.
"Maybe it won't be so bad," Murph said. "Maybe we'll get picked up when we first get inta range and they hear our SOS."
"That could happen," Kea said.
"Only one bug in that chowpak," Murph said. "And that's if we lose a buncha time puttin‘ that little trick of yours straight. When it blows." He grinned. "How long did you say it would take to fix again?"
"I didn't," Kea said.
Murph looked at him. "Naw. You didn't... did you?"
Kea clamped his bound arm tighter and felt the edge of the filed-down plas spoon. An old, familiar boyhood friend. Murph came closer to him peering down with bloodshot eyes. Flesh hung loosely from his big jock's frame. His cheeks were hollow, face pale as death. "You don't look too worried," he said. "About the delay and all. ‘Specially with your delay on top."
"We'll make it," Kea said.
"I'm not what you call clever," Murph said. "I know that about myself. And it don't bother me. I leave clever to guys like you. More power to ya, I say."