Free The Witling by Vernor Vinge Page A

pinched in one side of his mouth. “Do whatever you please, Bre’en.” He dived into the pool and disappeared.
    For a moment after Aleru’s party left, no one spoke. Behind the Snowman, his servants stood at blank-faced attention. Quite likely, they were witlings; no person with Talent could be as completely intimidated as a witling. It was rumored that the Snowking valued fear and oppression so much that he was systematically breeding a race of witlings to rule over. In the long run such schemes were laughable. In the short run they were ghastly grotesque, even to Pelio.
    Bre’en smiled, and leaned forward to gesture Ionina out of the shadows. “I am captivated by Your Highness’s acquisition. She is beautiful-almost supernaturally exotic. Tell me, little one,” he addressed the girl, who was anything but little, “to reach the Summerkingdom from County Tsarang you must have crossed the Snowkingdom. Did our land please you?” For all the man’s ugliness, he had an engaging smile.
    The girl seemed puzzled by his question, finally said faintly, “I no … I mean, I don’t know.”
    Bre’en’s laugh was cheerful, yet not mocking. “You don’t know? In just four words my entire kingdom is consigned to obscurity! I am crushed.” He turned to Pelio, and abruptly changed the subject. “Your Highness, it was not by our request that we deal with your father through Prince Aleru rather than yourself.”
    Pelio nodded woodenly. Another time, he might have speculated on the Snowman’s motives. As it was, the words scarcely registered.
    Bre’en bowed and walked toward the transit pool. His men followed with stiff, almost awkward precision. As soon as they were gone, Pelio started for the pool himself. Ionina caught up and said, “We go to show me those things now?”
    The prince shook his head abruptly. “No. Later, it will have to be later.” To his surprise, she seemed more upset by his refusal than by anything else that had happened. His hand came up and he almost patted her shoulder. “Really,” he said in a more kindly tone, “we’ll do it another time. Soon, I promise.” But the promise could be an empty one. If Aleru suspected Ionina was a witling, he might check Pelio’s story; if he looked hard enough, the story would collapse. And that would be the end of them.

Eight
    B y the time Yoninne arrived at the prison-cell- cum -guest house, twilight had darkened into night. One of the moons had risen over the rim of the ancient volcanic cone, and its silver-gray light sparkled off wavelets in the central lake, limned the sloping sides of the boats floating there, and turned the beach she walked along into a pale, curving strip. From somewhere across the lake, still in the shadow of the cone’s wall, there were sounds of laughter and splashing, and a pleasant smell that could only have been barbecue.
    One of her guards—guides?—drew her off the sand onto a path that angled up the hillside into the palmlike trees. The moonlight scattered into triangular silver fragments as it sifted down, and the smell of green things hung all about. In the humid air, her dress was only beginning to dry, but the material was so soft and light that she scarcely noticed the dampness—while the flight suit she carried in one hand was still sodden, even though it had been lying on the windowsill all day long.
    This was quite a change from her treatment that morning, when she had been hustled off a straw pallet in a doorless cell and unceremoniously hauled from one pool of water to the next. Now her guards were almost solicitous; after Pelio said good night they had even agreed to walk her to her quarters rather than teleport there.
    Ajão had certainly been right about the boy Pelio. As the number-one son of the biggest wheel on the continent, he was spoiled rotten, but it hadn’t taken long to see that behind his bluster was a kind of soft-hearted naivete. That had puzzled her through most of the day until, there in that