"One of the escort wenches. Do you get it, milady?" He gave El-Gaff a sidelong glance and lowered his voice. "They're continuously requesting particular surveillance of the ladies from Ukrainia."
Alexandra thought: They certainly are. But why is he drunk?
She frowned, turned to El-Gaff. "El-Gaff, bring a stimulant. I'd suggest caffeine. Maybe there's some of the spice coffee left."
El-Gaff shrugged, headed for the kitchen. Her unlaced desert boots slap-slapped against the stone floor.
Ukrainia swung his unsteady head to peer at an angle towards Alexandra. "Killed more'n three hunner' men f'r the Duke," he muttered. "Whadduh wanna know is why'm mere? Can't live unner th' groun' here. Can't live onna groun' here. Wha' kinna place is 'iss, huh?"
A sound from the side hall entry caught Alexandra's attention. She turned, saw Rasputin crossing to them, his med-kit swinging in his left hand. He was fully dressed, looked pale, exhausted. The diamond tattoo stood out sharply on his forehead.
"Th' goo' docker!" Ukrainia shouted. "Whad're you, Doc? Splint 'n pill man?" He turned blearily towards Alexandra. "Makin' uh damn fool 'a m'self, aren't I?"
Alexandra frowned, stayed silent, wondering: Why would Ukrainia get drunk? Was he drugged?
"Too much spice beer," Ukrainia said, attempting to straighten.
El-Gaff returned with a steaming mug in her hands, stopped uncertainly behind Rasputin. She looked at Alexandra, who shook her head.
Rasputin put his kit on the floor, nodded greeting to Alexandra, said: "Spice beer, yes?"
"Bes' damn stuff ever tas'ed," Ukrainia said. He tried to pull himself to attention. "My sword was firs' blooded on Matveev! Killed a Sepan...Sepan....killed 'im f'r th' Duke."
Rasputin turned, looked at the cup in El-Gaff's hand. "What's that?"
"Caffeine," Alexandra said.
Rasputin took the cup, held it towards Ukrainia. "Drink this, comrade."
"Doan wan' no more t'drink."
"I said drink it!"
Ukrainia's head wobbled towards Rasputin, and he stumbled one step ahead, dragging the guards with him. "I'm almighdy fed up wi' pleasin' t h' 'Mperial Universe, Doc. Jus' once, we're gonna do th' thing my way."
"First you drink this," Rasputin said. "Don't worry, it's only caffeine."
" 'Sprolly like all res' uh this place! Damn' sun 'stoo bright. Nothin' has uh righd color. Ever'thing's wrong or..."
"Well, it's nighttime now," Rasputin said. He spoke reasonably. "Drink this like a good lad. It'll make you feel better."
"Don' wanna feel bedder!"
"We can't argue with him all night," Alexandra said, thinking: This calls for shock treatment.
"There's no need for you to stay, milady," Rasputin said. "I can take care of this."
Alexandra shook her head. She stepped forward, slapped Ukrainia sharply across the cheek.
He stumbled back with his guards, glaring at her.
"This is no way to act in your Duke's home," she said. She snatched the cup from Rasputin's hands, spilling part of it, thrust the cup towards Ukrainia. "Now drink this! That's an order!"
Ukrainia jerked himself upright, scowling down at her. He spoke slowly, with careful and precise enunciation: "I do not take orders from a damn' Seppanen spy."
Rasputin stiffened, whirled to face Alexandra.
Her face had gone pale, but she was nodding. It all became clear to her---the broken stems of meaning she had seen in words and actions around her these past few days could now be translated. She found herself in the grip of anger almost too great to contain. It took the most profound of her Bala Garrasaid training to quiet her pulse and smooth out her breathing. Even then she could feel the blaze flickering.
They were always calling on Ukrainia for surveillance of the ladies!
She shot a glance at Rasputin. The doctor lowered his eyes.
"You knew this?!" she demanded.
"I heard rumors, milady. But I didn't want to add to your burdens."
"Botkin!" she snapped. "I want Eugene Botkin brought to me at once!"
"But milady...."
"I said at once!"
It must be Botkin, she thought. Suspicion such as this could come from no other source without being discarded immediately.
Ukrainia shook his head, mumbled. "Chuck th' whole damn thing."
Alexandra looked down at the cup in her hand, abruptly dashed its contents across Ukrainia's face. "Lock him in one of the guest rooms of the east wing," she ordered. "Let him sleep it off."
The two guards stared at her unhappily. One ventured: "Maybe we should take him someplace else, milady. We could..."
"He's supposed to be here!" Alexandra thundered. "He's got a job to do here." Her voice dripped venom. "He's so good at watching the ladies."
The guard gulped.
"Do you know where the Duke is?" she demanded.
"He's at the command post, milady."
"Is Botkin with him?"
"Botkin's in the city, milady."
"You will bring Botkin to me at once," Alexandra said. "I will be in my sitting room when he arrives."
"But, milady..."
"If necessary, I will call the Duke," she said. "I hope it will not be necessary. I would not want to disturb him with this."
"Yes, milady."
Alexandra thrust the empty cup into El-Gaff's hands, met the questioning stare of the blue-within-blue eyes. "You may return to bed, El-Gaff."
"Are you sure you have no further need of me?"
Alexandra smiled grimly. "I'm sure."
"Maybe this could wait until tomorrow," Rasputin said. "I could give you a sedative and..."
"You will return to your quarters and leave me to handle this as I see fit," she said. She patted his arm to take the sting out of her order. "There is no other way."
Abruptly, head high, she turned and stalked off through the house to her rooms. Cold walls....passages....a familiar door...She jerked the door open, strode in, and slammed it behind her. Alexandra stood there glaring at the shield-blanked windows of her sitting room. Botkin! Could he be the one the Seppanens brought? We shall see.
Alexandra crossed to the deep, old-fashioned armchair with embroidered cover of schlag skin, moved the chair into position to command the door. She was suddenly very conscious crysnozh in its sheath on her leg. She removed the sheath and strapped it to her arm, tested the trop of it. Once more, she glanced around the room, placing everything precisely in her mind against any emergency: the chaise near the corner, the straight chairs along the wall, the two low tables, her stand-mounted tsitra beside the door to her bedroom.
Pale light rose glowed from the suspensor lamps. She dimmed them, sat down in the armchair, patting the upholstery, appreciating the chair's regal heaviness for this occasion.
Now, let him come, she thought. We shall see what we shall see. And she readied herself and Bala Garrasaid fashion for the wait, accumulating patience, saving her strength.
Sooner than she had expected, a rap sounded at the door and Botkin entered at her command.
She watched him without moving from the chair, seeing the crackling sense of drug-induced energy in his movements, seeing the fatigue beneath. Botkin's rheumy old eyes glittered. His leathery skin appeared faintly yellow in the room's light, and there was a wide, wet stain on the sleeve of his knife arm.
She smelled blood there.
Alexandra gestured to one of the straight-backed chairs, said: "Bring that chair and sit facing me."
Botkin bowed, obeyed. That drunken fool of a Ukrainia! he thought. He studied Alexandra's face, wondering how he could save this situation.
"It's long past time to clear the air between us," Alexandra said.
"What troubles you, my Lady?" He sat down, placed hands on knees.
"Don't play coy with me!" she snapped. "If Rasputin didn't tell you why I summoned you, then one of your spies in my household did. Shall we be at least honest with each other?"
"As milady wishes."
"First, you will answer me one question," she said. "Are you now a Seppanen agent?"
Botkin surged half out of his chair, his face dark with fury, demanding: "You dare to insult me so?"
"Sit down," she said. "You insulted me so!"
Slowly, he sank back into the chair.
And Alexandra, reading the signs of this face he knew so well, allowed herself a deep breath. It's not Botkin.
"Now I know you remain loyal to my Duke," she snapped. "I'm prepared, therefore, to forgive your affront to me."
"Is there something to forgive?"
Alexandra scowled, wondering: Shall I play my trump? Shall I tell him of the Duke's daughter I've carried within me these few weeks? No---Nicholas himself doesn't know. This would only complicate his life, divert him in a time when he must concentrate on our survival. There is yet time to use this.
"A Truthsayer would solve this," she said. "But we have no Truthsayer qualified by the High Board."
"As you say. We've no Truthsayer."
"Is there a traitor among us?" she asked. "I've studied our people very carefully. Who could it be? Not Gustav. Surely not Grady. Their lieutenants are not strategically enough placed to consider. It's not you, Eugene. It cannot be Alexei. I know it's not me. Dr. Rasputin, then? Shall I call him and put him to the test?"
"You know that's an empty gesture," Botkin said. "He's conditioned by the High College. That I know for sure."
"Not to mention that his wife was a Bala Garrasaid slain by the Seppanens," Alexandra said.
"Have you not heard the hate in his voice when he speaks the Seppanen name?"
"You know I don't have the ear," Botkin said.
"How have I earned this base suspicion?" she asked.
Botkin frowned. "Milady puts her servant in an impossible position. My first loyalty is to the Duke."
"It is because of that loyalty that I'm ready to forgive much," she said.
"Again, I ask you: is there something to forgive?"
"Stalemate?" she asked.
He shrugged.
"Let's talk about something else for a minute, then," she said. "Grady Ukrainia, the admirable fighting man whose abilities at guarding and surveillance are so esteemed. Tonight, he overindulged in something called spice beer. I hear reports that others among our people have been intoxicated by this brew. Is that so?"
"You have your reports, milady."
"True. Don't you see this drinking as a symptom, Eugene?"
"Milady, you speak in riddles."
"Then apply your Technopathic abilities to it!" she snapped. "What's the problem with Grady and the others? I can tell you in four words---they have no home."
He jabbed a finger at the floor. "Their home is Dyuna. Nowhere else!'
"Dyuna is an unknown! Eser was their home, but we've uprooted the. They have no home, and they fear the Duke is failing them."
He stiffened. "Such talk from one of the men would be cause for...."
"Oh, stop that, Eugene. Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly? My only intention is to cure the disease."
"The Duke gives me charge over such matters."
"But you understand that I've got a certain natural worry over the progress of this disease," she said. "And maybe you'll grant I have certain abilities along these lines."
Will I have to shock him severely? she wondered. He needs shaking up---something to break him from routine.
"There could be many interpretations for your concern," Botkin said. He shrugged.
"Then you've already convicted me?"
"Of course not, milady. But I cannot afford to take any chances, the situation being what it is."
"A threat to my son got past you right here in this house," she said. "Who took that chance?"
His face darkened. "I offered my resignation to the Duke."
"Did you offer your resignation to me---or to Alexei?"
Now he was openly angry, betraying it in quickness of breathing, in dilation of nostrils, a steady stare. She saw a pulse beating at his temple.
"I'm the Duke's man," he said, biting off the words.
"There is no traitor," she said. "The threat's something else. Maybe it's got to do with the phasguns. Maybe they'll risk secreting a few phasguns with timing mechanisms aimed at house barriers. Maybe they'll...."
"And who could tell after the blast if the explosion wasn't nuclear?" he asked. "Oh, no, milady. They'll not risk anything that illegal. Radiation lingers. The evidence is hard to erase. No. They'll observe most of the forms. It's got to be a traitor."
"You're the Duke's man," she sneered. "Would you destroy him in the effort to save him?"
He took a deep breath, then: "If you're innocent, you'll have my abject apologies."
"Look at you now, Eugene," she said. "Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person. You and I, Eugene, of all those who love the Duke, are most ideally situated to destroy the other's place. Could I not whisper suspicions about you into the Duke's ear at night? When would he be most susceptible to such whispering, Eugene? Must I draw it for you more clearly?"
"You dare to threaten me?" he growled.
"Indeed not. I merely point out to you that someone is attacking us through the basic agreement of our lives. It's clever, diabolical. I propose to negate this attack by so ordering our lives that there'll be no chinks for such barbs to enter."
"You dare to accuse me of whispering baseless suspicions?"
"Baseless, yes."
"You'd meet this with your own whisperers?"
"Your life is compounded of whispers, not mine, Eugene."
"Then you question my abilities?"
She sighed. "Eugene, I want you to examine your own emotional involvement in this. The natural human's an animal without logic. Your projections of logic onto all affairs is unnatural, but suffered to continue for its usefulness. You're the embodiment of logic---a Technopath. Yet, your problem solutions are concepts that, in a very real sense, are projected outside of yourself, there to be studied, and rolled around, to be examined from all sides."
"You think now to teach me my trade?" he asked, and he did not try to conceal the disdain in his voice.
"Anything outside yourself that you can see and apply your logic to it," she said. "But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really gnawing on us."
"You're deliberately attempting to undermine my faith in my abilities as a Technopath," he rasped. "If I were to find one of our people attempting thus to sabotage any other weapon in our arsenal, I shan't hesitate to denounce and destroy him."
"The finest Technopaths have a healthy respect for the error margin in their computations," she said.
"I've never said otherwise!"
"Then apply yourself to these symptoms we've both seen--drunkenness among the men, quarrels---they gossip and exchange wild rumors about Dyuna; they ignore the simplest..."
"Idleness, no more," he said. "Don't try to divert my attention by trying to make a simpler matter seem mysterious."
She stared at him, thinking of the Duke's men rubbing their woes together in the barracks until you could almost smell the charge there, like burnt insulation. They're becoming like the men of the pre-Guild legend, she thought: Like the men of the lost star-searcher Akakios---sick at their guns---forever seeking, forever prepared and forever unready.
"Why have you never made full use of my abilities, in your service to the Duke?" she asked. "Do you fear a rival for your positions?"
He glared at her, the old eyes blazing. "I know some of the training they give you Bala Garrasaid..." He broke off, scowling.
"Go ahead, say it," she said, "Bala Garrasaid enchantresses!"
"I know something of the real training they gave you," he said. "I've seen it come out in Alexei. I'm not fooled by what your schools tell the public: you exist only to serve."
The shock must be severe and he's almost ready for it, she thought.
"The Duke and I are father and mother surrogates to our people," she said. "The position..."
"He hasn't married you," Botkin said.
She forced herself to calmness, thinking: A good riposte, that.
"But he'll not marry anyone else, she said. "Not as long as I live. And we are surrogates, as I've just said. To break up this natural order in our affairs, to disturb, disrupt, and confuse us---which target offers itself most enticingly to the Seppanens?"
He sensed the direction she was taking, and his brows drew down in a lowering scowl.
"The Duke?" she asked. "An attractive target, yes, but no one with the possible exception of Alexei is better guarded. Me? I tempt them, surely, but they must k now the Bala Garrasaid make difficult targets. And there's a better target, one whose duties create, necessarily, a monstrous blind spot. One to whom suspicion is as natural as breathing. One who builds his entire life on innuendo and mystery." She darted her right hand towards him. "You!"
Botkin started to leap from his chair.
"I have not dismissed you, Eugene!" she flared.
The elderly Technopath almost fell back into the chair, so quickly did his old muscles betray him.
She smiled mirthlessly.
"Now you know something of the true training they gave us," she said.
Botkin tried to swallow in a dry throat. Her command had been real, peremptory---uttered in a tone and manner he found completely irresistible. His body had obeyed her before he could think about it. Nothing could have prevented his response---not logic, not passionate anger---nothing. To do what she had done spoke of a sensitive, intimate knowledge of the person thus commanded, a depth of control he had not dreamed possible.
"I have said to you before that we should understand each other," she said. "What I meant was that you should understand me. I already understand you. And I tell you now that your loyalty to the Duke is all that guarantees your safety with me."
He stared at her, wet his lips with his tongue.
"If I wanted a puppet, the Duke would marry me," she said. "He might even think he did it of his own free will."
Botkin lowered his head, looked upward through his sparse lashes. Only the most rigid control kept him from calling the guard. Control---and the suspicion now that woman might night allow it. In the moment of hesitation, she could have drawn a weapon and killed him!
Does every woman have this blind spot? he wondered. Can any of us be ordered into action before he can resist? The idea staggered him. Who could stop a person with such power?
"You've glimpsed the fist in the Bala Garrasaid glove," she said. "Few glimpse it and live. And what I did was a relatively simple thing for us. You've not seen my entire arsenal. Think about that."
"Why aren't you out destroying the Duke's enemies?" he asked.
"Just what would you have me destroy?" she asked. "Would you have me make a weakling out of our Duke, have him forever leaning on me?"
"But, with such power...."
"Power is a two-edged sword, Eugene," she said. "You think: 'How easy for her to shape a human knife to thrust into an enemy's vitals.' True, Eugene; even into your vitals. Yet, what would I accomplish? If enough of us Bala Garrasaid did this, wouldn't it make all Bala Garrasaid suspect? We don't want that, Eugene. We do not wish to destroy ourselves." She nodded. "We truly exist only to serve."
"I cannot answer you," he said. "You know I cannot answer you."
"You'll say nothing about what's happened here to anyone," she said. "I know you, Eugene."
"Milady..." Again the old man tried to swallow in a dry throat.
And he thought: She has great powers, that is so. But would these not make her an even more formidable tool for the Seppanens?"
"The Duke could be destroyed as quickly by his friends as by his enemies," she said. "I trust now you'll get to the bottom of this suspicion and remove it."
"If it proves baseless," he said.
"If," she sneered.
"Yes, if," he said.
"You are tenacious," she said.
"Cautious, and aware of the margin for error," he said.
"Then I'll pose another question for you. What does it mean to you that you stand before another human, that you are bound and helpless and the other human holds a knife to your throat---yet this other human refrains from killing you, frees you from your bonds and gives you the knife to use as you will?"
She lifted herself out of the chair, turned her back on him, "You are dismissed, Eugene."
The old Technopath arose, hesitated, hand creeping towards the deadly weapon beneath his tunic. He was reminded of the bull ring and of the Duke's father (who'd been brave, no matter what his other feelings) and one day of the corrida long ago: The fierce black beast had stood there, head bowed, immobilized and confused. The Old Duke had turned his back on the horns, displaying his shield boldly to the spectators, while cheers rained down from the stands.
I'm the bull and she's the knight, thought Botkin. He withdrew his hand from the weapon, glanced at the sweat glistening in his empty palm.128Please respect copyright.PENANAdHRT2mQF4E
And he knew that whatever the facts proved to be in the end, he would never forget this moment nor lose this sense of supreme admiration for the Lady Alexandra.
Quietly, he turned and left the room.
Alexandra lowered her gaze from the reflection in the windows, turned, and stared at the closed door.
"Now we'll see some proper action," she whispered.
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