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Greenworld to Psim Cofinalez, demanding that he release the Crown Princess (in
the neighborhood of the truth); that doing this was extremely risky (mildly
risky Psim was thought to have relatively little of the celebrated Cofinalez
personality made up of equal parts of rage, im-petuousness, and aggression);
that Jak had volunteered to do it (true) because everyone else was afraid to
(false); and that Jak was therefore risking his life for love while
professional diplomats cowered at home (absolutely false). Supposedly Jak
would be taking a ransom offer to the second son of the Duke of Uranium, who,
it was hoped, would then release Princess Shyf instead of holding her prisoner
(vaguely like the truth); the offer was all that
Greenworld could afford but most likely not enough (false); and once Psim
refused, Jak was to deliver an ultimatum that would begin a war between
Greenworld and Uranium (false) and was therefore facing imprisonment and
probably torture himself (completely false) all for love (again, vaguely like
the truth).
Sib's instructions had been to appear confused when people asked questions
about the secondary, and then to divulge the primary to anyone who seemed to
be friendly and trying to win his trust. "Don't even think about the real
story," Sib had said, "always keep reasserting the secondary cover even in
front of people who already know the primary, and gabble like an idiot about
the primary."
Within a mere few days, therefore, as Piaro, Pabrino, and Brill had
successively become close enough friends, Jak had leaked the story to them.
Since they had sworn to maintain absolute secrecy, they had told only a few
toves, who had each told only a few toves, until in less than a week the whole
ship had heard the story.
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Because Jak was pleasant and friendly and delivered the story with the same
wide-eyed sincerity he usually used when lying to Uncle Sib about some
illegal, stupid, or immoral thing at which the authorities had nearly caught
him, most people felt deep sympathy for the brave young man in a hopeless
quest to rescue the princess who was far above him socially. Jak would
explain, "I probably won't even get to see her, or any part of Earth except
the spaceport, a couple of palaces, and a jail. But it's something I can do
for her, and I get to feel like I
tried"
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/B...20-%20The%20Duke%20of%20Uranium%
20v0.9.html (62 of 154) [10/15/2004 12:44:05 PM]
John Barnes - The Duke of Uranium
What neither Jak nor Sib had reckoned on was that aside from being a good
story, Jak's primary cover was also a good story
, and although the custom was for crewies to avoid passengers that they might
be attracted to, reducing expensive exogamic crew loss, communication within
the crew was very free, so the younger female crewies heard about it quickly.
Soon Jak was madly popular with a dozen girls who had never seen him (nor he
them).
When Jak did become aware of it, it changed his life forever and afterward, he
could never decide whether that was for the better or not.
He had finally gotten to play Maniples with Pabrino. When he had agreed he had
had no idea how big a deal this would be; his first clue was that they not
only had to find a suitable double break in Pabrino's schedule, they also had
to find a break in which most of the middle cohort of bachelors could watch
the contest, and the con-test was carried live on shipboard viv, with probably
a third of the crew experiencing it in real time and many of those who had to
work recording it for later.
The crewies were excited because as far as they were concerned, the match
meant something. Pabrino was the youngest ship's champion ever at Maniples,
good enough to have defeated champions from four other ships during co-orbits
and co-approaches over the years, the first when he was just eleven. In fact,
Pabrino had never been beaten in intership play. Jak was a worthy opponent he
had played second singles for his gen school team and been ranked around
number ten for gen school seniors in the
Hive and because ship and Hive players played each other rarely, it was
difficult to learn much about their relative strengths by comparing their
records. This made the whole match much more uncertain, and crewies like to
gamble numerous desserts, cleaning shifts, graveyard watches, and outside rec
times were at stake. But it also meant a chance to find out how Pabrino might
do out in the wider world, and that was even more exciting; was he just
"pretty good for spaceborn" or was he just possibly one of the rare masters?
Everyone said that Maniples was loosely based on chess, but they might as
reasonably have said it was based on real warfare, or on
intrigue-and-adventure fiction, or on scissors-paper-stone. There were two
sides, Green and Black, each with a small fleet of warcraft and a small force
of B&Es. Their home bases, armed with enormous numbers of bomb and beam
weapons, were armed, slowly-mobile space stations in synchronous orbit around
a planet, beginning at a point 180 degrees away from each other, so that
neither base could see the other at the start. A great deal of the micro-game
consisted in trying to move forces through the always-shifting Dispu-Zone
visible to both bases. The planet was always arbitrarily created just a half
hour before play began; it would be the size of Mars, but much wanner, fully
habitable, with the surface exactly fifty percent ocean and the land divided
into prairie, forest, desert, polar caps, mountains, swamps, permafrost, and
jungle according to the arbitrary generating program.
The objective of the game was to get a fast missile targeted and locked in on
the enemy base, at which point the enemy would be forced to surrender. If the
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