Behind me, the other guards were shouting — they must have heard the stunner’s whir. I raced through the door, knowing I’d never outrun four Mandasar warriors but not having a lot of other options. The most important thing was getting around a corner fast, so I wouldn’t be in the line of fire from the stunners. At the first side corridor I dived off to the right, just as guns whirred behind me. I rolled to my feet and was about to start running again when a voice whispered behind me, "Psst!"
I turned. Directly across from me, where the side corridor continued, someone stood in the shadows. Even without lights, I could make out the buttercup yellow of her shell. The warriors raced up the main hall toward us. As they came level with Innocence and me, it was like the four of them were clotheslined by a wire running across their path at nose height; but there was no wire, just the smell of royal pheromone driving up their snouts and into their brains. The guards fell twitching. I stepped out of cover and drained the batteries of my stunner, making sure they wouldn’t get up.
Old Queen Verity, ever the long-range planner, had left an escape route for her newly royal daughter. Outside in the royal gardens, a shed held one end of a Sperm-tail transport tube. The tube led off to parts unknown, maybe halfway around the world, to a secret safe house where Innocence could grow up in peace. I carried my daughter to the shed, all wrapped in black so her bright yellow body wouldn’t be seen by mutineers; and I personally fed her into that Sperm-tail, then smashed the anchor that held the Unshummin end of the tube in place. The tail slithered off, like a string yanked from the far end… and that was the last I saw of my little girl, my daughter, the high-queen-in-waiting.
I dearly wanted to go with her — where else did I have to be, who else was left that I cared about? But someone had to smash the anchor. Besides, if I disappeared, the navy would search for me… and I didn’t want anyone snooping around, for fear the world would learn about Innocence. She was only seven years old; till she grew up, it was safer if nobody knew she existed.
Me, I headed back to the queen’s royal chamber. I avoided the pockets of fighting; too tired to help the good guys. Anyway, how would I tell the good from the bad? And with everyone dead or gone, what was worth fighting for? So I slunk through the palace as if I were the only man left on Troyen — alone, with Samantha, Verity, and Innocence all taken from me.
In the high queen’s chamber, the bodies had disappeared. I imagined them carried off by mutineers, so the corpses could be displayed as somebody’s trophies. Sickened by that thought, I fell to my knees in the sticky patch of blood where Sam had been lying… pressed my hands down on the dampness, and lifted my red-stained fingers to my nose…
Then it was days later, and I was on the navy’s moon-base. No memory of how I’d gotten from one place to the other. They said some navy security guards found me and dragged me onto an escape shuttle — abandoning a planet gone mad, transporting me to the safe airless silence of space.
With Verity dead, no one on the planet could maintain order. Everybody who could leave got out fast. Including the Fasskisters who started the whole mess.
The Fasskisters had one last indignity to dump on poor old Troyen: what they called the Beneficent Swarm. Without telling anyone else, they’d left huge caches of nano in Fasskister warehouses all over the planet. At the very instant the last Fasskister left Troyen’s atmosphere, all those caches opened wide… spreading clouds of self-replicating nanites in every direction.
According to the Fasskisters, the nanites were designed "to protect the Mandasars from themselves." In a way, that was even true — because of the Swarm, the Mandasars didn’t have a chance to nuke themselves to oblivion.
The microscopic robots ate plastics, particularly those used to insulate electrical wires, to build circuit boards, and to act as glue or sealants. Within a week, much of Troyen’s technological base had literally fallen apart… including all computers, the power grid, and most communication systems. The nanites also shut down nuclear weapons, nerve-gas missiles, and a bunch of labs where clever Mandasar doctors were studying alien organisms for their germ-warfare potential; the Beneficent Swarm even wrecked important chunks of military planes, tanks, and submarines. The Fasskisters could honestly say they’d saved the Mandasars from a war of total extinction.
On the other hand, you can kill a lot of people with spears and crossbows. For twenty years, that’s exactly what the Mandasars did.
Laughter. People were laughing. I came to myself and realized I was at the captain’s table on Jacaranda, still possessed by the spirit that kept shoving me out of my body. Whatever the spirit just said must have been hysterically funny… the way Prope giggled into her hand and Festina’s eyes glistened. Even Kaisho, face hidden by hair, was chuckling. I guess higher organisms aren’t immune to being disarmed by the occasional joke.
I wished I knew what’d just come out of my mouth. For the past little while — I don’t know how long — I’d fallen out of touch with what I’d been saying. Blanked out in my own thoughts, of Innocence, of Sam, of the night everybody died.
Had I told about that? I didn’t know.
Prope, Festina, and Kaisho just kept laughing… but when I glanced to my right, Lieutenant Harque didn’t look nearly so chuckly. Yes, he was smiling; but it was the strained sort of smile people wear when they don’t have a choice. I wondered whether I’d made a joke at his expense. I didn’t think so — if the others were laughing because I’d teased him, they’d glance his way from time to time, just to catch the look on his face. So far as I could see, all three women acted like he wasn’t even there. As if I was the only man at the table worth listening to.
Which explained why Harque looked so sour.
Slowly the laughter eased away. Prope’s eyes remained shiny — beaming straight at me, glimmery bright. I couldn’t mistake the look… and I was returning it, strong and clear, like electricity passing between us. Terrified, I fought the thing that wanted to lock me with the captain in that heart-pounding gaze. Sometime in the past hour, while I wasn’t paying attention, the spirit possessing me had built upon Prope’s light little flirtations and made them bloom into…
Into…
No, With a burst of willpower, I grabbed back control of my body and forced myself to lower my eyes. Maybe if I shied off, I could undo the effects of wooing the captain… and of wooing Festina and Kaisho too, by the look of them. All three women simmered with the same gush of attraction, as if my wit and my charm had dazzled them all.
Scared and ashamed, I turned away from the table. Would it be so bad if I just muttered, "Excuse me," and ran to my cabin? Rude, yes, but would it be so bad?
My eyes swept over the Mandasars at the next table. The five of them were shaking, shuddering like a group attack of epilepsy. Their nostrils had flared wide, inhaling to the very bottom of their lungs.
Only one thing could make Mandasars react that way. Somehow, undetectable to human noses, the air must be filled with the pure piercing scent of royal pheromone.
27
WATCHING FESTINA PUNCH
I was still staring at the Mandasars when someone at a nearby table gasped. "Are they sick?"
"No," I said. "Not sick."
More crew members were looking now: standing up to see over other people’s heads, and muttering, "What idiot brought diseased lobsters aboard a navy ship?" Things escalated to a general kerfuffle, with Veresian getting called, and nervous folks running out, and Prope glaring at Festina for exposing everyone to contagious aliens, and Festina asking me what could be wrong, and me saying I didn’t know when I knew full well, except where the pheromone was coming from. Eventually, the captain cleared the lounge "to give the doctor room to work." I wanted to stick around to make sure the Mandasars were okay; but Prope took me by the arm and walked me to my cabin, all of a sudden starting to talk in a giddy girlish voice you wouldn’t expect from a starship captain. Half the time, I couldn’t even follow what she said — I was getting sleepier by the minute thanks to space lag, being shifted off my body’s day/night cycle.