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"Pray tell, my dear Lavrenti-Mikhailov, which is it to be with the cheena, cozer or coznik?" An appreciative titter arose from an unseen audience.
Lightyears, and an altogether different way of life, further away, Zakh Sorokin, soon to be 15 (and still, on occasion, surprised to be growing up at all), shook his head, emptied of any emotion he might have recognized. Soul of wit, the spirit of his times, unanswerable social arbiter or not, the famous and fictional Lisov Jaromir-Konstantinovich---or at least the celebrated parlor pieces which had been enfiled about him---surely got around.
Well, thought Zakh---he gazed with "blind" eyes through the open door into the next compartment, where a swath of clean red and Zhavorian-white on a towel rack just above the steaming surface of a hot bath (the one such luxury aboard)---for that matter, so have I.
He now knew all about practice capital-planet denizens called "cozer". The term referred to the manner in which fowl were force-fed, their feet having been cyanoed to the floors of their cages) so that their swollen, diseased livers might be compounded into an expensive delicacy. More generally, it signified variation after variation on the act of rape, sexual and otherwise, which all humanity claimed to deplore, yet which, on evidence, it couldn't do without, since it represented the very foundation on which civilization, or more to the point, those in authority over it, depended.
Zakh wished he could feel something about that. In the place he looked for his feelings, he found nothing but cold reason. When he had 1st discovered this condition, he had believed he was being drugged. Yet he had never heard of medicine that could strip away emotions, leaving a crystal clear and unbefuddled mind. He doubted it had anything to do with chemicals.
The garishly-furnished drawing chamber caught his eye again but failed to hold his interest. Behind his silver tsiolkovsky, the juvenile lead grimaced a question Zakh had once found incomprehensible, as, atrikeo music playing in the background, the aristocrat in the socrates twisted his inhaler delicately and thrust it up to his nostril. Zakh's scorn was all it had ever been. If Lavrenti-Mikhailov could not have lasted one hour in the forest of Genrich, he damn well would not have lasted one minute on the Zilvagabond's gundeck. Something had changed, however, since he had first watched this file, above all, his grasp of the realities behind the make-believe. The gold-chased quickblade tucked into a ruffled sleeve was a token that Lavrenti-Mikhailov, representative of his nonproductive class, would never have been required to pass any such test of forest or gundeck. The system was designed to preclude it. Upon Romanova they were always fussing in effeminate voices and egg-shaped tones over trivia, but they ruled an entire universe. Zakh had long since abandoned any notion that they were wanks in any sense of the word.
"....nyet, nor even coznik, for I have it upon good authority your enamorata plots her own course, toward some Dzendayn gentle of a germane gender." The audience erupted with laughter. Zakh, sadder and wiser than when he had first heard those words, extracted the file from the viewer on his blanket-covered lap and tossed it at a shelf across the cabin. Despite all that had befallen him, he was no more given to purposeless distemper than ever. His was a fury under such control that even he was not aware (not yet) of its extent. Any anger smoldering within him would henceforward make itself manifest in a more lethal and spectacular manner than self-indulgent display.
At his knee lay a less elegant, yet no less deadly, weapon than Lavrenti-Mikhailov's. Zakh had just removed it; its mark was on his flesh. Circuits switched so that only the designator functioned, at Putin's insistence he had practiced daily since regaining consciousness, aiming at a bulkhead for hours until he could no longer control his trembling, overtaxed muscles. Misguided by fingers shaking with fatigue (or rendered clumsy by new tensions to which his kinaesthetics were not yet accustomed), the file struck the wallow-proof shelf-edge, rebounded from a locker where his clothing was stowed, and fell to the deck. He made no move to correct his error. As he had discovered, should Putin or either of his plump wives catch him out of bunk, there would be the Premier to pay. That latter pair of self-appointed nurses had proven every bit as conscientious at what they considered their duty as Terrible Yvan or Mistress Maria---"adopting" him through his prolonged recovery---and would have moved him into their quarters had their husband not put down his massive foot. It had helped that an alternative was available.
For the first time in a long while, Zakh found himself thinking, for no apparent reason, of Zero, missing his demented squeaker, wondering, to no useful purpose, what had become of the coarse-furred glob. It occurred to him he should feel angry over all he had lost, but it seemed even this capacity had been stolen from him. At home among the cronsettos, retainers would be harvesting sirleafs in the meadow. Birds would be singing....He reached for another, more entrancing, file, one he kept on a chain around his neck, having learned, with some relief, that Omarov had no daughter he would own to. Zakh had no idea who the little dancing girl was.
A pair of raps within his quarters woke him up from a reminiscent study. Through the many-pained commanddeck windows, a ghostly purge-field flickered, a backdrop for mizzentier yards devoid of starsail. The Zilvagabond hove to, somewhere in the trackless Deep. The door opened inward, followed by Putin, bearing a tray of doughnuts and a tankard the sight of which---rather the shudder with which Zakh reacted to the sight---evoked less pleasant memories of Genrich. Beside it lay another object the boy recognized. Noticing Zakh's expression, the sometime baker set tray and tankard on a table with raised edges similar to the shelving, gave the boy a broad grin and a wink.
"Feeling a touch better, are we?"
"Mr. Putin," Zakh sighed. "I have always wondered why, whenever someone falls ill, for no apparent reason he becomes two people."
"I have often wondered the same," Putin laughed, nodding at the dreaded flagon. "Gulp it as fast as you can, vile though it is. I share the opinion indicated by your expression, but you must admit it's making you well. Though less rapidly than I expect you had hoped for." Waggling bushy eyebrows, Putin lifted up the container. Zakh made a face and gave in. Putin had that effect on him. "Take it like a topman! Concussion, decompression, traumatic acrophobia, hypoxia, and Deepchill all are serious matters, even one by one, as I, who have suffered them all, should know. And serious matters...."
"Must be seriously treated. Somehow I have heard this before."
The man shook his head. "You'd be scarce remembering all the talking we've done while you wallowed unconscioiuslike, wracked with fever and drug-delirium, the goodwives thinking you were going to jump ship." He set the flagon back on the table, making no move towards the other object on the tray. He grinned and stepped backward. "Valorously done. The crew and all the carg---uh, passengers are demanding to come pay respects to the child who saved their lives. Before I permit it, we have some talking to do." The giant offered Zakh a hand. "So get out of this bunk. Take care not to cause yourself undue strain. We'll talk, and afterward, see to such exercise as you need." He indicated the steaming tub with the colors bright above it. Zakh understood it was warmed by induction from the mast and, having risen from the gundeck (and set his old life aside as belonging to an alternate universe), was scandalized at the sybaritic waste. "Perhaps you can even have a soak in the captain's accommodation, as he has no further use for it."
The boy felt faint enthusiasm, not as much at the prospect of a bath, as at the end of enforced inactivity. He threw back the blanket and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk for the first time in what he had been told was weeks. By the calendar on the bulkhead, it was Yearday 254, 4121 by the ancient reckoning, a year and a day since he had first come aboard Zilvagabond. It was also the forty-third day of Zhovtana, 4th month of the 621st ponderous 819-day year since the colonization of Genrich. After the Genrichian manner, with its brief but familiar 341-day year, it was Octava 22, 2679. Whatever day it happened to be, in whatever year, he was indeed better than when he had surprised himself by awakening in this cabin. When he placed his shoeless feet on the mesh, he found that dizziness and infirmity still plagued him.
Putin straightened and cleared his great throat. "Ignoramus that I am, I am not altogether sure how this is done," he told the boy, "although I have seen reference from time to time in files and books from ancient times...."
Zakh supposed he was about to apologize for whatever part he had taken in what Omarov had done. That, or something, would be mentioned again about the desperado. Zakh found he took small delight in that vessel's destruction, and even less in that of the lives of those aboard her. But he was already aware of an amount of gratitude towards him on the crew's part.
"Ignoramus? Sir, you..."
"I've trouble enough beginning this," Putin shook his angry head. "It would please me just as well if you didn't call me 'sir,' Zakh Sorokin, ever again." He paused, at a loss for words. Curious, and a bit hurt, Zakh nodded, knees weak with the unaccustomed effort of standing. He watched as Putin tapped a hardened finger on the object in its tray, with its ancient embossery. The man picked it up. It lay in his palm like a toy. With a giant thumb, he pressed the button which released the ammunition cassette, filled it with just short of 12 diminutive chemenergic cylinders. It was, naturally, Zakh's tokarev-weapon which Putin had brought him, gleaming blue-black, freshly cleaned, and---frail reed though it was---still workable. Overcoming his apparent (and to Zakh, bewildering) embarrassment, Putin resumed. "Today marks a start, I think, of what will prove the most dangerous time of your young life. The crew, thankful for their lives, and disgusted by your treatment at the hands of Omarov, have, in absence of the rewards you were promised, chosen to give you the adventurer Zilvagabond. You are now the owner-in-command and the new captain!"
Zakh's reaction was a smile in remote appreciation of a fantastic joke. Putin allowed him no time to enjoy it, demanding that he take the offer seriously. He had an ally. The red and white object draped over the towel rack, having spent the morning enjoying a temperature and humidity closer to that of its home planet than it and its fellows had previously endured aboard Zilvagabond, curdled against the wall until it was half erect, and emitted a piercing whistle. Zakh winced.
Putin nodded. "It understands me better than I understand it. I think it says you should listen."
Sighing with resignation and fatigue, Zakh sat again upon the bunk-edge. Over previous conversations, Putin had explained that---as disgusted as the crewbeings which he, in truth, had always commanded, and convinced Zakh had died in an effort to save their lives----he had led the mutiny. Two passengers, Omarov, and officers loyal to him had been cast adrift in an auxiliary, more humane treatment than he had afforded Zakh. This had contented the crew. In the boundless Deep, between star systems, it had amounted to a death sentence. Putin had been relieved he need not kill his former captain outright.
At this point, an even more incredible thing had happened which neither Zakkh nor Putin was satisfied he understood even yet. During the mutiny, the latter had noticed that the "carg---uh, passengers" were restive, attributing it to the disturbance of battle. Uproar among the flatzniks had continued long afterward. He managed to learn that they not only knew who Zakh had been, but what had become of him. Insisting, to the limit of their communicative ability, that nothing supernatural lay in their insistence (but unable to explain it in terms which made sense), they had maintained that the boy was alive. Upon their account, while Omarov and his party were being cast off, a search was made aft of the carrack. Stunned by the explosion, with his oxygen supply all but gone, he was plucked from the Deep at the last moment, hauled back aboard Zilvagabond by mutinous---and grateful---crewbeings.
Zakh spoke. "I see why you insisted I take these quarters. Thank you, Putin, and I wish you would thank the crew for me. It is the most patently absurd idea I have ever heard. No one onboard is not better qualified than I, which, for the safety of all, is reason enough to reject this sentimental offer. Moreover, I have learned what a captain is."
Putin had found a chair. Meanwhile, the flatzniks had crawled from its rack to join the human, halting in the middle of the floor to raise its front half, to all appearances as interested in the boy's answer as the first officer. Putin had the notion, with nothing for supporting evidence, that this one had been delegated by its brothers to keep the boy company every moment since he'd come back aboard. "And what is a captain, young man?"
Zakh was careful. "One of those power wielders who place higher value upon property and profit than living beings. Not only is a love of money the root of all evil, as the proverb says, but of all which has befallen me, this poor being, and all my pitiable fellows among the crew." He took a breath. "Since joining the complement, I have watched myself change in ways I neither admire nor understand. I killed three men---it does no harm to admit it---and later something on the order of three hundred men. It appears a terrible trend has been established which I do not wish to follow further. I would not become one such as Omarov. Although it sounds foolish to be required to say it, I will not be captain, of the Zilvagabond or anything else."
Putin nodded and frowned. Even the flatznik seemed lost in thought. "Did you know, lad, that the Zilvagabond was considered a lenient berth?"
Zakh shook his head. "I did not. If I could feel anything, I suppose I should be shocked to hear that. So much the worse for sailors aboard the less lenient vessels. So much the better for the argument that I have now put forth."
"What of the argument that you cannot blame the flour for the sifter?"
"What do you mean?"
"Just that Zilvagabond was captained by such as those who want a captain seek. A candidate lacking the failings you mentioned, if they are indeed failings and not virtues seen under a wrong-colored sun, would never pass the Cosmopolitan commission which licenses masters."
Zakh's scowl matched Putin's, wrinkle for wrinkle, but it was a scowl of effort, conveying no more feeling than the wrinkles in his blanket. "You are saying none of the criminal atrocities aboard this ship would be possible if it were not that the captain had legal sanction to commit them?"
Putin nodded, watching the boy's face. The guardian flatznik shuffled closer, as if aware of Zakh's emotional paralysis and concerned. "Son, if I were sailing by your bearings, I'd be just as lost. How come you by a notion that people and property are separate? Those things you value most about people, their lives and liberties, are property---" The boy opened his mouth; Putin held up one hand. "The property they consider most precious." He stopped to take a breath. Zakh looked more puzzled than before. "This ship," Putin continued, "her cargo---excepting our friend, here---some hard-working soul spent himself to make or gain, risking it in hope of bettering himself on the treacherous bosom of the Deep. A captain carries life itself within his holds, along with the dreams of a thousand lifetimes. Life is property, property is life, both indistinguishable from liberty. The root of all evil---aside from forgetting that fact---lies in taking property (such as the liberty of this flatznik) against its rightful owner's wishes."
Prolonged silence followed for the three of them. When the boy spoke again, his voice was quiet, as if he were still in thought. "Mr. Putin, when I came aboard, I was on my way to Romanova to summon help for my family."
The man nodded. "It was my understanding that's what you were here for."
"I had time for thought as the ship's lowest crewbeing. More since Arkvitius's predecessor, Murad, approved the black deeds of Zaytseva. The family Sorokin have no friends on the capital planet. It was pointless to make my way there."
"I think you're right."
Zakh gazed out the window overlooking the maindeck, not seeing anything in particular. All he had suffered had been to no good purpose, though he was wise enough to understand that he had only traded one set of hardships for another he might have suffered a woodsjack upon occupied Genrich. "For a thousand years, two powerful imperia-conglomerate have been locked in mortal combat. This is what my tutor and my sister-in-law taught me, Mr. Putin. Comprised of millions of star systems, quintillions of subjects, spanning vast areas of the known galaxy, their resources are enormous---everything they can extort from those they rule---but by no means without limit."
Putin gave him an odd look. "Might I ask what you're getting at?" He found he must restrain himself from adding, "sir," whether due to the boy's educated accent or something happening this instant, he could not determine. Zakh looked Putin back in the eye, inhaled, exhaled, and set his mouth.
"Not until I finish reasoning it out, if you don't mind." Now Putin knew. Zakh failed to notice the delighted twinkle in the older man's eyes, and the way the flatznik folded itself upon the carpet, well satisfied.
"In our age, as in some previous, every circumstance exists for banditry to spring into being. The frontier is unimaginable in extent, little explored. But the basic fact of the forty-second century is that purge-physics has yet to develop the equivalent of lasercom or radio. Communication between systems is no faster than transportation." Putin nodded, not wishing to interrupt.
"Given the martial and economic situation in which they find themselves, the imperia-conglomerate extend their prowess at minimal cost by issuing letters of marque, adding to a desperado's already rich opportunity. This suits my purpose, as I assume it suits a man who believes no compliment would follow a baker, but might it also suit a young hero guided by an older and wiser officer?"
Putin inhaled, exhaled, and nodded. "That was the idea, comrade."
Zakh laughed, not a pleasant sound. His body trembled with unreleased tension. "Mr. Putin, I understand the arrangement and approve. Because I trust you, I who should have had all trust burned out of him. I agree to it. I accept the commission you offer me."
Putin clapped the boy on the back. "Good boy..." He held up his hand and examined it as if it were something foreign. "I mean, sir."
Zakh was inclined to grin but sobered as thought reestablished itself. "You have swayed me in more than this, for, although we shall not live as brigands, it will be a purpose. I shall not make a war, as I believed I might, in the name of persons against property, but against those who live by stealing property---life and liberty---for its rightful owners."
Putin nodded. "I shall be proud to serve you, Captain Sorokin."
"I shall take a new name, Mr. Putin, under which, although I didn't know why at the time, I signed on board the Zilvagabond. That of my first friend, murdered by Zaytseva as he took my native Genrich, one who shared with me his love of ancient lore, and died attempting to save my life."
"Sir?"
"In his name shall I wreak vengeance until the whispered words 'Yvan Dragomilov' strike terror into the hearts of thieves and hypocrites who benefit from the imperia-conglomerate! Zilvagabond being no fighting ship, Yvan Dragomilov shall take the desperado. Placing a few he distrusts least aboard Zilvagabond, he shall repair the desperado where she lies, rename her Scopa, and appoint you second-in-command." He turned and looked at Putin. "What others called banditry, he shall call vendetta! Taking suitable ships, he will arm them as he can, expanding his fleet rather than selling them. His crewbeings will be satisfied, for what they lose in prize money, they shall make up for in plunder."
"Yes, sir!"
"Yvan Dragomilov will raid planetside, razing every article of Cosmopolitan property! Every field, mine, and factory owned by the hated merchantilists will be reduced to the sort of rubble Cossacks leave behind! He will search the ashes and execute every last Romanovan vassal and retainer!"
The boy leapt to his feet. "We sail in search of fortune---and revenge!"
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