“There may be some residual effects from the oxygen overdose.” The pale man stood up, favoring Elroy with a sad smile as he turned to leave the room.
“Won't matter much longer.” Both wolves laughed, full human sounding laughs through their long toothy jaws. “Come on, boy, it's time for your confession."
They pulled Elroy to his feet, almost dropping him to the floor as he slid off the exam table. Elroy stumbled with them, a thumbed paw gripping each of his arms far too tightly.
“Where are we?"
“Heligan.” The wolf to his left snickered. “Some of us will live to enjoy it."
Heligan. One of the Gardens of Sweet Night. Elroy looked around as the wolves yanked him into a corridor. The hallway was carpeted and paneled with dark hardwoods, like the public halls of the monastery of the Little Brothers of High Impact. Nothing at all like the metal burrows of the Concilium.
“Where are the plants?” He stared at the wooden walls with brass hand grabs punctuating them.
The security wolves laughed again, both relaxing their grip as they walked. The left one, the apparent spokesman, flexed the claws of his thumbed paw into Elroy's arm, puncturing skin even through the silver suit. Elroy could feel blood welling inside his sleeve.
“You'll be seeing them from inside the soil soon enough. Our Lord Liasis likes the freshest fertilizer."
The time had come for defense, Elroy realized. The vows he had taken, then broken in Wiggles’ service, would never require him to go meekly to his death.
The knife was still in his jacket pocket, unreachable beneath the silver space suit. Elroy found his center, as he had learned in the Glass Mountains of Oklahoma. His perception of time stretched, each footfall on the carpeted floor like the slowest of drumbeats.
If he accepted a ragged wound in his right arm from the clawed grasp of his captor, he could bring that arm at full swing across the chest of the wolf to his left, while moving his left hand still inside the other wolf's grip to close both hands in the rib smashing technique the Little Brothers called “Kitten and Ball.” He had learned at the land train that security wolves could be fought like men.
The Little Brothers taught that plan was thought, thought was action, action was deed. Elroy slumped to the left, then spun on that heel into the grip of the lead wolf. He pulled his right arm against the loose set of the right hand wolf's claws, gaining the painful ragged wound he expected, joining its pain to that of his bruised bones.
Increasing his spin, Elroy brought his right arm across the chest of the wolf, twisting his body so the flat of his left hand could provide counterpressure to the coming blow. With a crunch of collapsing ribs, the surprised wolf faltered in his step, allowing Elroy to break free on that side and spin around.
As the injured wolf fell, his partner swung the black energy pistol up to fire it at Elroy. Elroy finished his spin, slipping into a snap kick that threw the energy pistol upward in the grip of the second wolf. Shoulder first, Elroy slammed into the second wolf's chest as a violet bolt of light struck the wooden ceiling of the hall. The wood above him charred as Elroy drove the wolf back into the wall. Elroy grabbed the wolf's armored vest at the left lapel, using it to slam the wolf against the wall.
The vest slipped off the wolf's torso and down its arm as the Animal spun. Elroy fell away, surprised, clutching the vest so that it was ripped entirely off the security wolf. His momentum carried him to carpeted floor, next to the weakly kicking foot paws of the first wolf. As fire alarms screamed above his head, Elroy tensed for a counterstrike from the second wolf.
It slumped against the wall, whining and whimpering. Elroy saw a braided silver strand dangling down its back, emerging from the fur at a point several vertebrae below the joining of neck and shoulder. He flipped the vest over in his hand.
Torn silver filaments on the inner side of the vest matched the strand. The wolf muttered, dropped to all fours and began to stagger away, gun, vest, and Elroy forgotten.
Elroy shrugged on the vest, which fit him loosely, then grabbed one of the energy pistols. The first wolf rolled to look up at him as Elroy aimed the pistol at its head.
“You will never escape my Lord Liasis.” The security wolf grinned through pained gasps. Elroy could barely hear him over the din of the alarms.
“I don't plan to.” Unwilling to pull the trigger, to kill a weakened enemy, Elroy reversed the energy pistol. He smashed the butt into the side of the wolf's head. It slumped onto the carpet, still breathing.
Elroy left the other security wolf's vest alone. He walked down the hall past the wolf's creeping, whining fellow, humming a battle hymn from the Little Brothers in counterpoint to the whooping fire alarms.
He wondered how to find Wiggles.
* * * *
Elroy ducked through several hatches until he found a maintenance closet in which to rest. He had begun to tremble in the aftermath of the fight. The whooping fire alarms were an increasingly distant wail, and Elroy had the cold sweats.
He laid his energy pistol against one of the lockers in the closet, rested his hands on his knees and took a deep, shuddering breath. He had trained with the Little Brothers to acquire focus and strength, not to render Animals into beasts.
“Detachments moving within fifty meters,” whispered a flat voice from his collar.
Elroy jumped, slamming his head against a locker. He twisted around, seeing the bunched silver hood of his suit overlaying the paneled black of the armor vest.
“Do you wish to evade?” It was the voice inside his hood again.
“Horace? Wiggles?"
“Status unknown.” There was a brief crackling noise. “Tactical interface feed is being conducted through your suit communications."
Elroy felt a sharp prickle of fear. “Are you the vest?"
“Cognitive prosthetic, canid, combat, model one seventeen bis."
Robust technology, thought Elroy. It made sense. Every Animal he had ever seen wore a single item of clothing on their upper body. Elroy had always thought it was to emphasize their differentiation from beasts. With the size of most of their brain cases, Animals must store portions of their consciousness in these things.
“I want to find Liasis,” he said. Where Liasis was, he would find Wiggles as well.
The vest whispered, “Exit this locker, proceed twelve meters to your left and pause. I will direct you from there."
Elroy grabbed his pistol, stepped out of the hatch and proceeded twelve meters to his left.
* * * *
The vest guided him down corridors and through access tubes that climbed up and down. As the vest tracked the location of wandering security wolves, it told Elroy to make sudden pauses, and sometimes changed instructions even as he moved.
Elroy thought to ask it if he was visible to other vests.
“This unit has a tracer function."
How strange that the other security wolves had not yet used it to track him. Elroy was beginning to feel very set up. “Can you turn it off?"
“Disable tracer is a priority four order. Do you have priority four authority?"
Wiggles. Wiggles was supposedly Chancellor, or had been. “Chancellor Wiggles ordered me to help him."
“Tracer disabled."
Wiggles, it seemed, still had a name to conjure with.
“What else can you do?"
“Level one help is available. Options are: armor characteristics, biometrics, canid interface, cognitive extension, external communications, maintenance, memory and storage, miscellaneous settings, product specifications, shielding, smart matter, stealth, tactical support, weapons interfacing, user preferences. Please specify your desired path."
Elroy sighed. It was far more complex a technology menu than he had time to deal with. “Never mind. Just keep telling me how to find Liasis."
“Wait thirty-five seconds, then open the hatch to your right and proceed downward two levels."
Elroy counted to thirty-five, then opened the hatch.
&
nbsp; * * * *
The vest whispered through his open hood. “Once you exit this service tunnel, proceed left thirty meters and you will be before Liasis’ audience chamber. Enter the chamber and you will be free to proceed to target."
Elroy was moved by an impulse he couldn't define, rooted in a vague belief that anything that spoke must have desires of its own. “I don't need to take you in there."
“Where else would I go?"
“I could take you off, leave you here. You would be safe, free.” Even as he said it, Elroy felt foolish.
The vest made the static noise again, several times in a row. Elroy wondered if that was its thinking noise or its laughing noise.
“I am a cognitive combat prosthetic. I am an item of clothing for an Animal. What does freedom mean to me?"
“You know enough to ask that question,” Elroy pointed out.
More static, then silence. Elroy waited, listening for noises behind the door. He heard none.
“There are four security wolves in front of Liasis’ chamber,” the vest finally whispered. “If you are prepared, you can overwhelm them with your energy pistol."
“And you?"
“I will come. If you win free again, I will still be with you."
“I'm not going to make it, am I?"
“In order to avoid panic dysfunction I have disabled my risk assessment functions. However, it is obvious that you should commence operations immediately."
More wolves, wolves he would certainly have to kill. Elroy already had too much blood on his hands for the sake of Wiggles. Having come this far, he could see little point in turning back. Elroy said a brief prayer for those about to die. He checked the charge on the energy pistol, placed his finger on the firing stud, and palmed open the service hatch.
* * * *
Welcome Into the Presence of the Lord
Elroy stood before a great pair of double doors. They were carved each from a single brass-bound slab of teak four meters tall, decorated with complex motifs of twining leaves. The grand hall where he stood was littered with the burnt corpses of four security wolves. Part of the carpet was on fire. He mildly regretted the flash burns on the glorious doors. Three different kinds of alarms wailed in the distance.
Elroy raised a spacesuit-clad foot and kicked open the right hand door.
Like the chamber of the Animal's Concilium, the audience chamber of Lord Liasis was transparently roofed. Elroy stepped forward then stopped, his eyes drawn up by a green glare.
There were no stars, no depths of space above him. Instead, a network of greenery rose, curving out in two directions to meet in the sky high over his head, extending unguessably far in its long axis. It had to be at least two or three kilometers to the far side of the green sky. Adrenaline rush of combat forgotten, Elroy stared into the infinite life of plants.
He was accustomed to the riot of the green jungles of Texas, lianas and giant ferns and glossy dark-leaved orchids in the lower reaches, punctuating the echoing silences of the deep forest, while high above in the middle layers and the canopy a violent profusion of epiphytic and parasitic plants hosted butterflies, monkeys, insects, birds and animals of all descriptions. His home tree in Pilot Knob stood amid a roaring chaos of viridian life, changeless in its endless cycle of destruction and renewal.
The Heligan Garden was a different order of nature altogether. Elroy's energy pistol dropped to point toward the carpet as he stared up at roses, ivy, yew, boxwood and a thousand plants for which he had no name. In all their shades and color they grew in glorious array, relieved by paths and walls and smooth rolled meadows, interspersed with pleasaunces and statuary and cunning ponds whose banks had clearly been laid stone by stone at the direction of generations of master craftsmen.
An overpowering scent of green, tame and orderly but powerful, swept through him. Elroy realized Lord Liasis’ audience chamber roof was not transparent. It was absent. The room was open to kilometers of the most cultivated garden in existence.
“Just one of my seven gardens. Admittedly, perhaps the finest."
Elroy picked up his pistol, turned to look at Lord Liasis. The High Commissioner of the Cis-Lunar Justiciary and Lord of Implementation for the Atlantic Maritime Territories was a thin man, slightly shorter than Elroy's two meters, with flowing white hair. His eyes were a piercing shade of green, and his smile had a natural bonhomie. Clad in a blue morning suit, he carried a glass of wine in his right hand.
Wiggles stood next to Lord Liasis, looking down at his feet and smoothing his flowered green waistcoat with his thumbed paws. Elroy thought Wiggles’ tail wagged.
Behind them the audience chamber stretched for several hundred meters, unroofed in glorious green and carpeted in burgundy and gold. There was no furniture save a wooden throne against the distant wall.
“What of the apples of your Lord?” Elroy asked in a soft voice.
“My gardens have many trees.” Liasis’ smile stretched to a toothsome grin. “Some bear strange fruit."
“And your tale, sir pug?"
Wiggles looked up at Elroy. “True, as far as it went. Not the entire truth."
Elroy stroked the trigger of the energy pistol. The vest whispered risks and priorities in his ear, but he ignored it. “What would be the entire truth?"
Liasis’ smile dropped away as he spoke, his voice mild and his tone almost bemused. “One legacy of the La Grangian restoration is a strong prohibition against hereditary power. The Secretaries-General taught them that lesson. When a man ascends to a position of great responsibilities, there is a certain, ah, physical price that must be paid."
“Some do cheat,” Wiggles added, “but it is frowned upon. There are no children, normally."
“I have need of a young man, a human, of compassion and strength, wit and ruthlessness. I have strong preference that he not spring from the Great Families of the high places, so as to be free of our politics and alliances. Lord Deimos offered a younger nephew, but the eventual price would have been far too high."
“My home is in a tree in the jungles of Texas, with the family I hope to establish. I have no wish to meddle in the business of the Lords of the High Places."
Liasis gestured with the wine glass. “Would you care for some? From Scandinavia's finest vineyards. Orbital wine is never quite the same, you know."
“Elroy.” Wiggles’ voice was earnest. “Let me be plain. I was sent to travel among the people of Earth, to find and test a worthy successor from outside the circles of the ruling classes. I required a young man who would bring no untoward ambition with him into the Gardens of Sweet Night. You are the one success I encountered—capable, thoughtful, ethical and strong. At my recommendation, and on the strength of your journey here, Lord Liasis now seeks you for his heir, to train and mentor that you might someday become a Lord of space."
Elroy shook his head. “What a strange way to choose an heir. Had you asked me to come here and be a gardener, I might have rejoiced.” He laid the pistol down on the carpet, careful to point it away from the Lord Liasis and his chancellor.
“Had you brought me here and shown me the curve of the blue Earth and your wondrous Gardens, offering me dominion in exchange for loyalty freely given, I might have rejoiced. Instead, at your behest, I have beaten, wounded and killed, staining my soul with blood. I made an Animal into a beast. Four wolves lie dead outside your very door, other men and Animals maimed and wounded along the way. My vows are broken, lives have been ruined or taken, all for your little game.” Elroy dropped the vest to the carpet.
Lord Liasis’ voice was gentle. “No. Not for a game. For dominion over the kingdoms of the Earth and the high places. A small price to pay for proof of your fitness to succeed me. We test those outside the pale because it is the only true way to find new blood."
Elroy began to strip off the silver space suit. “Lord, in taking service with Chancellor Wiggles, I sold my freedom and made choices to do things I regret. Acting on my own I would not so much as kill a man to
take an apple from him. Why would I kill for something as foolish as dominion over the kingdoms of the Earth? All I ever wanted was to start a family—the very thing you would deny me even with all your proffered riches."
Elroy dropped the space suit, then tossed the purser's coat onto the carpet, followed by Nero's knife and his carefully hoarded pay. He turned to walk away, stopping before the door to look back at Liasis and Wiggles once more.
“The world, Elroy,” whispered Liasis, spreading an open hand. “I can give you the world, and these gardens in the sky. What greater gift is there?"
“Lord Liasis, dominion is a hard sentence to serve. My greater gift to myself is that I choose to remain free. I leave your service as I entered it."
“Many wolves wait outside,” said Wiggles. The pug's tone was both hopeful and sad.
“I know.” Elroy looked up one last time at the Heligan Garden, breathed in the peaceful scent of green, then opened the door to walk out free and unafraid.
* * *
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