Crown of the Serpent Read online

  Crown

  of the

  Serpent

  Rikard Braeth

  Book II

  Allen Wold

  For Diane, and for Ooglio Babba,

  Queen of the Spaceways.

  And a special thanks to Brian Thomsen.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  Part Two

  1

  2

  3

  Part Three

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Part Four

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Part Five

  1

  2

  3

  4

  Part Six

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Part Seven

  1

  Prologue

  The Federation encompasses hundreds of inhabited worlds among thousands of star systems. It is, on the whole, a Utopia, at the peak of its golden age. Each world is independent, with its own idea of the good life, free to make its own laws as it sees fit, to define for itself its ideal culture. Thus, not every Federal world is itself a Utopia. Some have achieved a stable society that Plato would envy. Others are in a dynamic state of growth and decay, flux, change. Still others, such as Nowarth, have made a wrong turn somewhere.

  Most people who live in a Utopia are happy with their situation—that's part of what makes it a Utopia. Crime and trouble are quite rare. But another aspect of Utopia is that it's boring.

  Some people are just not content with the easy life. For these, the Gestae, the ancient Chinese curse is not a curse at all— they seek interesting times. They live by their wits, moving from world to world, looking for something exciting to see or to do or to be. They do what they do not for wealth, or for power, but for fun. For a Gesta, the greatest thrill comes not from breaking a law but from slipping through the cracks. Which doesn't mean they don't frequently find themselves in trouble.

  Nowarth was not a world any Gesta would have chosen to visit, at least not without a rather specific reason. Its towering city-buildings were partially empty or wholly abandoned. Its single, planet-wide government was one of the most conserva­tive and restrictive in the Federation. But the man who was calling himself Jack Begin, and his companion, now known as Ann Tropius, had a reason. It was here that Jack's "client" in­sisted that they do business.

  Jack and Ann had come to Nowarth well ahead of their ap­pointed meeting time. It was a simple matter for them to pick up the local dialect, learn how to wear local clothing, adapt to the average daytime schedules. Good camouflage was, of course, part of the repertoire of any Gesta.

  Good camouflage would not, however, help them if they were caught exploring the empty, monolithic city-buildings late at night.

  Part One

  1

  The two Gestae rode up silent lifts toward the top of the abandoned city which, like its neighbors not many kilometers away, was an irregular tower that seemed shorter than it was by virtue of its girth. In fact, when it had been alive, its upper floors had been pressurized to compensate for its height, though now there were too many windows missing, and occasional places where the outer wall had been broken out and, with the cessation of the air-conditioning, pressure had been lost. The tower was only about a kilometer and a half tall, however, so the reduced pressure was little more than an inconvenience.

  The tower had not been abandoned that long ago, and for the most part was intact, the only damage being that caused by vandals rather than due to the weathering of the elements. In­deed, though most of the city was dark, many of its systems were still powered, a function of the automatic backup genera­tors and batteries rather than feed from the planetary grid.

  There was enough power, at least, so that the gravity lifts were working. There were few lights on in the tower, but the lifts that Jack and Ann chose, and their lobbies, were near the outer edge of the tower, and dimly illumined by the skylight coming through the great window walls. None of the lifts went more than a couple of hundred floors, however, so they had to change frequently. But at last they neared the top, yet still below the penthouse levels, and stepped off the last lift into a small but luxurious lobby.

  Jack, as he called himself, was twenty-eight in Earth years, still a youth by the standards of the day when two centuries was the average life expectancy. He was very tall and slender and rather dark, but not very handsome. He moved with a lazy grace that made him seem almost sleepy, though now he was alert to every sound and shadow. Beside him, the woman who called herself Ann seemed even shorter than she was—her head barely came up to his shoulder. She was a couple of years younger than he, attractive in a hard, smooth way, and where Jack seemed lazy, she was like a compressed spring.

  There was no one else in the lobby, though they were not the first to have been here, and the corridor on their right showed reflected light from beyond a corner. There was rubbish on the floor—fragments of ragged clothes, papers, broken cardboard boxes, other things less identifiable—and the dust on the now-gray carpet was thick enough to show footprints. The window wall of the lobby was intact, and somebody had smeared some­thing unpleasant across it just at eye height. Beyond the win­dow they could see several other towers, some black and silhouetted against the night sky, others lit or partly lit.

  Jack had been carrying a heavy case the whole way, and now he put it down to adjust the belt with its holster and heavy six-shot .75 caliber pistol so that he could draw quickly—his long coat tended to get in the way. "I would have thought," he said, almost in a whisper, "that our friend would have chosen a place where nobody came at all."

  "On the contrary," Ann said. In spite of her youth, she had many more years' experience than he. "If you're the only one here, then you can't escape notice. But if you're just one among many, then you won't seem special to anybody who might be watching." Her holstered laser pistol was strapped to her right thigh, just below the edge of her short jacket.

  They did not go up the lighted corridor, but instead turned to the left, following the instructions Djentsin had given them when they'd agreed to meet in this place. Their feet crunched occasionally in the near darkness, where they trod on the re­mains of the baseboard security lights, each of which had been methodically knocked out. Jack felt the scar on the palm of his right hand itching. He flexed his fingers, but did not scratch, did not grab the butt of his gun.

  The corridor paralleled the outside of the building. The doors on the inside of the corridor they could just barely make out as they passed. Those on the outside were sometimes solid, others windowed. What light there was in the corridor came from those, from the offices beyond on the outer side of the building, themselves only dimly lit through their window walls. This had once been a very exclusive part of this city, though its decline had begun long before it was abandoned. Most of the rooms that they could see into were empty, the furniture either broken by vandals or removed by scavengers.

  They had not gone very far before the broad corridor ended in an L to the left. The corridor around the corner was short, without any doors that they could see, and absolutely dark, though at the far end was a pale gray luminance. Jack could not make out anything about what was at the end until they got there and found themselves in a large, interior plaza.

  The dim luminance came down from security lights on the narrow balcony along all four sides on the floor above them. There were three other corridors entering the plaza; benches arranged in sociable clusters; containers that held now-dead trees and plants and, around the outside wall, the rem
ains of a few small service shops, their contents stolen or smashed. A central lift, unenclosed, stood in the center of the plaza. A broad and ornamental stair spiraled squarely around it to an intermediate landing below the balcony, then to another landing that surrounded the lift at the balcony level and with narrow walkways leading to it, then rising uninterrupted to a deeper mezzanine one floor above that.

  They paused to listen, but there was no sound other than their breathing. Jack thought he could even hear his pulse. He turned to look at the dark corridor behind him, but heard nothing any­where.

  This was just the way Djentsin had told them it would be, but that didn't make Jack feel any easier. He and Ann had met Djentsin on Balshpor a quarter of a standard year previously, when trying to find a buyer for certain cultural artifacts they had "liberated" after having taken care of certain other obligations of a more public nature. They had been using different names then, as had Djentsin, not the ones they had been known by during their more public business. But though Djentsin had made them an offer they found hard to refuse, he was not a Gesta. He'd tried to pretend to be one, and Jack didn't trust him. This place was too good for an ambush.

  "So what do you think?" Jack asked at last. It was hard to speak above a whisper. The security lights on the balcony, re­flecting as they did off the carpeted floor and then back from the mezzanine above, cast too many shadows for his comfort. In spite of that, the plaza was all but black.

  "Too good to believe," Ann answered. "But if he had wanted to just pick us off, there were plenty of opportunities at all the lift changes we had to make."

  "But none of the lobbies offered as many opportunities as this."

  "You only need one clear shot," Ann said.

  In spite of the itching scar on his right palm, Jack did not put his hand on his pistol butt. He took a deep breath and stepped out into the plaza. Nothing happened. He turned to look back at Ann, who was standing where she had been, almost invisible in the darkness.

  "Not taking any chances?" he asked.

  He could not see her smile, but he knew it was there. She stepped out to stand with him. Together they walked to the lift.

  But the lift wasn't working. Either the power had been cut off at this level, or the lift itself had been disconnected. They went to the broad, shallow-stepped stairs that climbed around it, and went up.

  At the first landing they paused. There was no movement, no sound. They went on to the balcony level. Still everything was silent and dead. Jack's hand itched abominably. They went up to the mezzanine.

  It was, except for the opening to the lower levels, one vast lobby. The security lights were lit up here. Eight alcoves, in the center of each wall and in each corner, opened off the mezza­nine, which held only couches in groups, planters of dead things, and low tables with low comfortable chairs. "Right corner from the top of the stairs," Ann said, reciting Djentsin's instructions.

  So that was where they went, and found a smaller lobby opening off the alcove, and a stair going up, as they had been told. They went up, to another lobby over the one below but not open to it, with corridors where the alcoves had been on the lower level. Set into the walls between the corridor entrances were at least one restaurant, what looked like it might have been a hair parlor, a bar now totally demolished, and several other suites that they could not identify. This had been for the convenience of the penthouse residents only.

  They could go no higher here. Only a hundred of the richest and most important families of this city could have lived in the penthouses to which these corridors gave access.

  "Seems like he's making it awfully difficult," Jack said.

  The residences were on the outer edge of the tower, surrounding this last lobby area, large enough in itself to have accommodated a dozen families on the world in which Jack had grown up. He and Ann did not pause to look around, but went up the corridor, directly opposite the top of the stairs, its secur­ity lights still intact but shining only dimly, and took the left hand of the T at its end. The doors on this corridor opened only off the outer side, double doors, massive and ornate, each with a symbol instead of a number. At the far end of the transverse corridor was a thin edge of light near the floor, as if the door there were just slightly ajar.

  And that was where they found the symbol they were looking for, a triskelion in green and yellow and black, the significance of which Jack did not know, over leather-padded double doors that were, indeed, slightly ajar. With a tentative hand, Ann pushed open the right-hand leaf.

  Beyond was a foyer as large as the average living room, with closets on either side, and another double door opposite the entrance. This stood open, and was from whence the light was coming. They entered the foyer and now could see past the inner door to a spacious living room, even by this tower's stan­dards. The outer wall, which had once been all window, was smashed and open to the high night air. They were impressed in spite of themselves.

  As they went on into the living room they could hear, through the gaping window wall, the dim sounds of night outside—the noise of the living cities not that far away, the susur­ration of the wind. After the darkness of the outer halls, the skylight seemed bright, and it was that only which they had seen through the hairline crack below the leathern double doors.

  To their right was a spacious dining room which, lit by its own intact window wall, seemed large enough for a banquet of twenty or more. To their left, through an arch, was a parlor, less formal than the living room, the place where, obviously, the family that had once lived here had spent most of its time. Unlike the lower floors of the penthouse level, this place had not been vandalized. Its outer doors must have remained locked until just recently.

  Another arch opened off the far side of the parlor, and from there a corridor, its security lights in the baseboard still glow­ing, led back into the private part of the suite. There was a bathroom, an office, a library, a study, and at the end a sitting room with three other doors. They were all shut tight, and if there were lights behind any of them, they could not be seen.

  They chose the door in the middle, as they had been instructed. There was light on inside, enough to let them see a luxuriously comfortable but understated sitting room, separated by a broad arch from the bedroom beyond where, sitting in the dim light of a table lamp beside the bed, was a man, looking at them as if waiting for them. It was Djentsin. In his lap was a 6cm scattergun pistol, a "defender."

  "Come in," he said as he let his hand rest on the butt of his gun. "You're right on time."

  Jack tried to make his movements seem casual as he went halfway to the middle of the room and stopped. On his right, Ann walked easily but angled away from him a bit so as to make a more difficult target if Djentsin should decide to shoot. The "defender," at that distance, could hit anything within half a meter of its aiming point.

  Djentsin, as they did this, remained seated, looking very calm. "You brought it with you?" he asked.

  "We did," Jack said. He put the case down on the floor. "You have the Leaves?"

  "Just one this time. It's on the bed." He did not gesture or take his eyes off Jack.

  Jack turned to the bed, where he could see the dim glimmer of the elongated diamond shape of a silver Leaf of Ba'Gashi. But even as he took the first step toward it, Djentsin raised his gun and pointed it steadily at Jack's head.

  "You're in no hurry," Djentsin said. "You can see the Leaf, but where's the Shanteliar?"

  Jack glanced down at the case. "In there."

  "Like hell it is, unless you've broken it up. And if you've done that, you're dead."

  "It's a special case," Ann said. "It's a lot bigger than it looks."

  Djentsin's eyes never flickered, his hand did not waver. "I'll just bet it is," he said.

  Jack had to admire his poise. "The only way to find out," he said, "is to look inside." He gave a small smile. "Do you want to open it or shall I?"

  "You open it," Djentsin said.

  Jack went to kneel behind
the case and turned it on its side so he could work the latch. For the first time Djentsin's eyes moved to Ann. "You," he said to her, "stand behind Msr. Begin, with your hands on his shoulders where I can see them."

  Jack waited until he could feel Ann's hands on him. There was no tremor, but then the armor under his clothes wouldn't have let him feel anything as delicate as that. The armor wouldn't do him any good, however, if Djentsin shot him in the head.

  He thumbed the catches on either side of the case and it split in half. He raised the top half and let it open all the way back to the floor. The inside appeared to be solid. He glanced up at Djentsin. The man was watching his eyes.

  In the middle of each of the two newly exposed surfaces was another catch, recessed into the interior cover. Jack reached for them and—

  "How convenient," came a male voice from beyond the doorway behind him.

  Jack was so startled that he almost knocked Ann off her feet as he half turned to see who was there. She barely regained her balance by clutching his shoulder so hard that it hurt, and they both stared into the doorway, but it was too dark to see the intruder. Jack caught his breath, and heard a small rustle of coat sleeves folding as Djentsin changed his aim.

  "Easy," said the unseen man, "easy." His voice was smooth but uncultured, his accent that of a lower-class local. "I got a hair trigger on this thing," he went on, "and it can take out the whole room." Then the shadows moved and the man stepped forward, just into the doorway and the edge of the light. In his right hand was a battered blaster, aimed negligently in their general direction.

  "What do you want?" Djentsin asked. Jack glanced back to see Djentsin's "defender" now pointed unwaveringly at the in­truder. He let his right hand fall negligently to the butt of his own pistol, but a fold of his coat was covering it.

  "I want," the intruder said, "whatever you've got. You're trespassing, this is my scally. Now you just riff out your pockets, and you can go home. Otherwise I'll drop a bolt in front of your chair and the whole room will go out the wall."