CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
VOLMER.
The price of obtaining that single word had been high, but orders had been to spare no expense. Upon being told what his money had bought, Justin Hostro nodded and issued more expensive orders yet.
A ship. Two dozen men of the first rank. Weapons. All to be assembled immediately and sent forthwith to Volmer.
Matthew bowed and saw that all was done as ordered.
IN THE END, he relaced his shirt, pulled on his boots and stood to wrap his belt around his waist. From the weapons pile he pulled back Clan knife, throwing knife, gun. Rediscovering in himself the strong distaste that he’d felt as an agent-in-training for the pins, doodads, and acid, he pushed those aside; he hesitated briefly before reclaiming the creditcard and wire.
Taking the pile of discarded junk to the far side of the room, he opened a compartment in the seemingly blank wall, piled everything inside, and shut the door. At the control board, he touched two knobs in sequence, nodding in satisfaction at the slight vibration that followed.
Miri glanced up from her labors with dinner as he returned to the table. “What’d you do?”
“Spaced it. I never liked them.” He shrugged. “The first time I saw that little pillow filled with acid I nearly lost my last meal.” He perched on the edge of the table, watching her.
She put the cover over the bowl that would eventually contain a mushroom soufflé, picked up two nearby mugs, and handed him one, waving at the bowl.
“Dinner takes about forty-five minutes to reconstitute. I hope you like mushroom soufflé a lot, ‘cause that’s all that’s in that box. An’ I hope the wine’s okay, ‘cause the other case is full of nothing but.” She grinned. “Sorry ‘bout the stemware—came with the kitchen.”
“It looks fine to me.” He sipped, one eyebrow lifting in appreciation.
“I was afraid it was gonna be real good,” Miri said wistfully.
“It is good,” he said, puzzled. “Taste it.”
She sipped gingerly, then sighed. “Yeah. Trouble is, stuff like this tastes so fine you want to keep drinking it. Kind of ruins your mouth for kynak.”
“Liz said you like fine things,” he murmured.
“Liz said,” Miri corrected sharply, “that I got no sense about beautiful things. That I think pretty can’t hurt as bad as ugly. It’s an old line.” She glared at him.
He endured it, sipping.
After a moment, she shrugged. “Edger says you’re gentle and good. So what?”
His face tightened with the unexpected bolt of pain. “Certain people have thought so . . . .”
“Yah.” Her tone was disbelieving.
She did have some reason to doubt that, he thought. Who, indeed, might have thought such a thing?
“Edger,” he began, suddenly needing to hear the names of those who loved him. “Shan, Nova, Anthora—”
“Relatives,” she jibed.
“Daria—” Too late, he clamped his mouth on that name.
Miri raised her brows. “Daria? Who’s that? Your first grade teacher?”
“We were lovers.”
“And then she discovered your true nature.”
He took a large swallow of wine and looked into the depths of the mug. “She died,” he said clearly.
“Yeah? You kill her?”
He gasped, head snapping up, eyes sharp with outrage. His mouth twisted and he forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. “No,” he told her. “I had not yet reached the place where I might slay what I love.”
Slapping the mug to the table, he slid to his feet and walked out.
Miri stood for a long time, breathing—only breathing. When she was sure of herself again, she picked up the mug and went to find him.
HE WHO WATCHES was ushered into the presence of his T’carais by four human guards and roundly ignored while that exalted person offered them food and drink. They refused, politely enough, if briefly, saying that duty required them to return to port immediately they had relinquished Watcher to his kinsman’s custody.
Thus they took their leave, and Edger at last turned his attention to the son of his sister’s sister.
“Have you an accounting of your actions to lay before me?” he inquired in Trade.
“Kinsman,” Watcher began in their own language.
“No.” Edger waved a hand. “We shall speak in the tongue known as Trade, since you require practice in its use.” He motioned permission to speak. “You may proceed with your accounting.”
“Kinsman,” repeated Watcher in the barbarous shortness of the language called Trade. “I am ashamed that I allowed myself to become so unnerved by the behavior of the persons to whom you found yourself indebted to the extent that they might claim the use of—of our ship—that I offered violence to a creature—a being—so much weaker than myself—”
“Cease.”
Watcher obeyed and stood silent, striving to maintain personal dignity while the T’carais stared at him.
In the fullness of time, Edger spoke again. “It would perhaps be instructive for you to tell me further of the persons who came and claimed our vessel for their use. Do so.”
“They came together, T’carais: one dark-furred, the other bright; both very small. The dark one interrupted me as I began to introduce myself, saying it was in too much haste for the exchange of names and that I must instruct it—”
“The proper syllable is ‘he’ in this instance, as the person you speak of is a male of the human species. The brightly-furred companion is a female of the same species and shall be referred to as ‘she’ or ‘her’ in accordance with rules of grammar applied to this tongue. Continue.”
Watcher clenched himself in mortification—to be instructed so, as if he were an eggling!—and took up the thread of his tale.
“. . . that I must instruct him, T’carais, in the piloting skills necessary to take the vessel where he desired. This I did and set in coordinates for the planet named Volmer or V87350273, as he instructed. Then did he bid me to say to you this . . . .” He paused, awaiting permission.
It came: a flick of the hand.
Scrupulously adhering to the original phrasing and inflection, Watcher repeated: “I would that you say to my brother Edger . . . .” He paused once more when he reached the end of it. The T’carais waved at him to continue.
“Then he bade me go, saying that I must do so in the greatest of haste, as he would cause the ship to enter into labor within five of Standard minutes. At no time, kinsman,” Watcher cried, unable to contain himself longer, “was I treated with courtesy or consideration by this person, who offered neither his name nor that of his companion nor asked after mine. Nor did he—”
“You will be silent,” Edger commanded. He closed his eyes and, after a time, re-opened them.
“You are young,” he said, “and it is perhaps possible that you have no knowledge of the person of whom you speak. This might account for something of your discontent with his behavior, though I feel that the fact that he is my brother should have borne more heavily with you.
“Know then, Uninformed One, that this person is named, in present fullness: Val Con yos’Phelium Scout, Artist of the Ephemeral, Slayer of the Eldest Dragon, Knife Clan of Middle River’s Spring Spawn of Farmer Greentrees of the Spearmaker’s Den, Tough Guy. Know also that I make no being my brother who is not worthy. And know at last that the person who tends this name is yet—even yet—of an age where he would not have attained the first of his shells, were he of our race.” He paused, allowing Watcher time to think on what he had heard.
“Further reflect,” he continued, “that the tenor of his message indicates that my brother was in danger of his life. Appreciate now that he paused in doing that which was necessary to preserve himself and his companion to make known to me his death desire, as is fitting between brothers, and to assure me of his honor and affection. I fail to find in this action discourtesy or aught less than what might be expected of an honorable and great-hearted person of any race. I am ashamed that one of my Clan should be so far lost to propriety that he could fail to see and understand this.”
Watcher bowed his head. “I will think much on what you have said, T’carais.”
“Do so. For the moment, however, continue with your accounting. How came it to pass that Herbert Alan Costello has been maimed by a member of my Clan?”
“After your brother dismissed me, T’carais, I passed down the tunnel at a rapid rate, sealed the inner door, and signaled that I was without. I felt the vibration of the vessel entering drive and at the same moment heard a person shouting in Trade. The words were ‘Hey, you!’ I did not understand that they were addressed to me until this person who is Herbert Alan Costello laid his hand upon my arm.” Watcher could not quite control his blink of revulsion at the memory. Edger motioned for him to continue.
“He asked where your brother and his companion had gone and, when I did not answer, he spoke words which I feel were threatening, stating that, should I not say where these two had gone, that there were ways to make me do so. I was at that present upset by my inability to appreciate your exalted brother and when Herbert Alan Costello said these words and pushed his fingers at my face, I bit him.” Watcher bowed his head. “That is what transpired, T’carais. I am ashamed.”
“As is proper. You will now present yourself to your kinsman Selector and make known to him my desire that you serve him as he requires. Also, think on what I have said to you, as I will think upon what you have said to me. We will speak of your punishment at another time.”
“Yes, T’carais.”
HE WAS IN the atrium, lying on his stomach on a patch of springy blue grass, chin resting on his folded arms. If he heard her approach, he gave no sign.
Looking down at him, she considered slitting her own throat, but rejected that as a coward’s answer and sat cross-legged at his side, where he might see her if he chose to turn his head.
He did not so choose.
Miri pinched herself to make sure she was really there, and wet her lips. “It is my sorrow to have caused you sorrow,” she began in stumbling High Liaden, “and my pain to have incurred your displeasure. In my need to say that which I felt to be of importance, I wounded you. That my motives were of the highest does not excuse me.” She took a deep breath and concluded in rapid Terran, “I’m a rude bitch.”
His shoulders jerked and he turned his head to look at her. “Miri. . . .”
“Hey, I’m sorry! But you could cut me some slack, y’know? I didn’t expect you to fall for it! Could’ve knocked me over with a snowflake—”
He was laughing. “Miri, how can you be so absurd?”
“I practice,” she told him earnestly. “Every day. Even when I don’t feel good.” She held out the mug. “Here’s your wine.”
He made no move to take it, though he rolled into a cross-legged seat facing her, arms resting on his thighs. “Liz did say that you were less than wary of beauty.”
“Yeah, well, at least she didn’t tell you I was good,” she said, frowning down at the mug.
“Most likely she felt I would see that for myself.”
She snapped her eyes to his face, unsure of the expression there. “Now you are laughing at me.”
“Am I? Terran is a hard language in which to make a compliment.”
“Not like Liaden,” she agreed, “which it’s impossible to make sentences in.”
“The High Tongue can be inflexible,” he conceded thoughtfully. “But that is because it’s very like Terran in its purposes: imparting information, dealing with technical and trade concerns, keeping people at a polite arm’s length. The Low Tongue is for expressing feelings, relationships—human things. Much of the meaning is in the inflection—something like working the sound stops on a ‘chora, to get more mileage out of the words.”
“Sounds hard to learn.”
“Easier to learn than to explain, I think. Anne found that. I believe that is the reason she never finished her second grammar.”
Miri shifted, irritably conscious of the mug she held. “Edger has her book on High Liaden in his collection. Thought I’d learn the language right, since I got almost three weeks to kill.”
He looked at her closely. “Will you go to your family, then?”
“I ain’t got—Oh. You mean Clan Whoever-they-are.” She shook her head. “They ain’t family.”
“Erob is your Clan, Miri. I am certain they’d be honored to learn of a child such as you.”
“Well, I don’t know why they should be,” she said, puzzled. “They don’t know me from Old Dan Tucker.”
He lifted a brow. “From who?”
“See? And we were even introduced.”
He shook his head, frowning. “You are a daughter of the Clan, one who is courageous and strong, quick in perception and thought. I know of no House so wealthy in its members that it would shun you. You would be an asset to Erob. They would welcome you and provide you your birthright.”
“It don’t figure,” she told him. “I don’t know them and they don’t know me. I sure wouldn’t go to them if I was in trouble. I’d go to Edger before them.”
There was a small silence. “Perhaps it would be best,” he said softly, “to go to Edger, were you in trouble.”
Miri set the mug carefully on the grass between them. He did not appear to see.
“How’d you get to be Edger’s brother?” she asked, more because she was uncomfortable with the lengthening silence than because she had planned to ask the question.
He lifted a brow. “By right of the dragon we slew between us.”
“Dragon?”
“Grant me some knowledge of the species; a dragon figures prominently in Korval’s shield.”
“And it breathed fire and everything?”
“It is possible,” he admitted, “that we struck it down before it had completed its graduate work. Indisputably, however, a dragon. I believe it compensated for any handicap attendant to an inability to breathe flame by growing at least three times more teeth than were necessary, and growing them three times longer than I feel was strictly required. Quite terrifying.”
She studied his face, sensing a joke of some kind; she caught the barest gleam of what might have been—mischief? “So you and Edger killed it between you,” she guessed, “with just a crystal knife and a handful of pebbles.”
“No, Edger had a lance. I had a pellet gun, of course, but the thing was so large that it was simply a waste of time to shoot it.” He shook his head. “I was stupid with fear and reached for my belt, feeling for a bigger gun. The best thing I had was a flare gun, so I fired at its face. That distracted it long enough for Edger to make the kill. Luck.”
“Some people got it all,” she agreed, unconvinced. “You sure you’re not leaving something out? Or making something up?”
“It happened exactly that way,” he said, eyes wide. “Why should I invent it? Edger will tell you the same tale.”
“Why do I doubt that?” she wondered and held up a hand. “Never mind. I’d hate for you to perjure yourself.” She pointed. “You want that wine or don’t you?”
“I would very much like to have the wine,” he said, making no move to take it or, indeed, even looking at it. His face was completely sober now, and he kept his eyes on hers. “Miri. Why?”
Ah, hell, she thought. “Why which?”
Val Con pushed the hair off his forehead, brows up. “Shall I determine the order of the explanation, then?” He waited, but she waited longer, and his mouth twitched slightly.
“Very well. Why did you push, not to say entrap me?”
She hesitated, hearing his voice in memory: “It is my intention to tell you the truth . . . .” So many debts, she thought suddenly, all to be paid in kind.
She licked her lips, and tried to explain.
“I wanted to make the point—to make sure you understood—that it might be true that you ain’t the person you used to be. But I don’t think you’re the person you think you are, either.” She paused, fighting for clarity. “Everybody who does things, sometimes does things they ain’t proud of. It’s just that you gotta—gotta learn from it and get on with things and try not to make that mistake again.” She took a breath and resisted the temptation to close her eyes.
“And it ain’t—right—for you to take the whole blame for the things you did ‘cause somebody else forced you. ‘Specially not,” she concluded in a rush, “when it’s clear they’ve been walking inside your head with combat boots on and screwing around mightily with the wiring!”
His smile flickered. “Why take the burden of proving this point upon yourself? When, whether you choose to believe it or not, I am dangerous and unpredictable?”
“I don’t—I don’t want you to die . . . Being made over to somebody else’s specs—that’s dying, ain’t it?”
There was a small pause. “Perhaps. But why do you care?”
She moved her head, not quite a shake, not quite breaking eye contact. “You said you’d been a Scout—First-In Scout. . . .”
“Yes.”
She felt herself tensing and tried to ignore it. “You remember what it was like—being a Scout?”
His brows pulled sharply together. “How could I not?”
“Just checkin’.” She kept her voice matter-of-fact. “Scouts ain’t the same as spies.”
“True,” he said calmly. “A Scout must complete quite a bit of training in order to become a spy.” He paused, then continued gently, “I have completed all of that training. Miri.”
“So you said. But you remember what it was like when you were a Scout and that’s more’n I expected—” She cut herself off and began again, on what seemed a tangent.
“You know about friends—there’s Edger—and about partners . . . okay,” she said, apparently now having it sorted to her satisfaction. “I care because you’re trying to be my friend. Maybe you don’t even know why—that’s okay, ‘cause I’m your friend and I’m damned if I know why I should be. And we’re partners—though it don’t look like either one of us is very good at it.
“People,” she continued, as one spelling out basic truths, “help their friends. That’s what holds it all together. If people didn’t help their friends, then everything would fall apart. I’m in favor of holding things together, so I help my friends.” She looked at him closely, wondering at the unease she saw in his face. “You understand all that, Tough Guy?”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head.
“Do I lose?” she asked after what her stretched nerves insisted was a very long time.
His shoulders jerked and he looked up. “I hope not,” he murmured. He straightened abruptly, smiling into her eyes.
“It is good to have a friend.” Picking up the mug, he drank deeply and offered it to her.
She paused with her hand half-extended to take it, searching his face. His smile deepened, lighting the depths of his eyes, and he nodded slightly.
Stomach fluttering, she took the mug and drank what was left, returning his smile.
He grinned and snapped to his feet, bending to offer her his hand. She slid her hand into his.
“Do you think dinner is ready by now?” he asked as they went down the garden pathway toward the flower-shrouded doorway.
“I think dinner’s ruined by now,” she said. “I never was a very good cook.”
THE DRIVE HAD kicked in half an hour before. Val Con paused as he reached for his mug, his attention captured by a movement behind Miri’s shoulder.
The floor was beginning to ripple, shading from brown toward purple. Sighing, he closed his eyes.
“Starting up already? Didn’t it take closer to an hour last time?”
His eyes flicked open. “You, too?”
“Think you’re special? Though I’m not getting any—oh-oh, here we go.” The wall directly behind his head flared orange. “Ugly. Orange never was one of my favorite colors.” She sighed. “Damned silly way to make a space drive, anyway.”
Val Con sipped wine. “It seems I should have paid more attention in school.” He gestured with the mug, encompassing the room at her back. “This is an effect of the drive, you think?”
“Have it on the best authority,” she assured him. “Space Drives for Dummies says that the Electron Substitution Drive works on a principle that involves the ability of an electron to arrive in a new orbit before it leaves the old one. So the ship and everything in it—that includes us—must be in two places at once all during the time we’re in drive.” She took a drink and ignored the fact that the table was beginning to pulse and shimmer.
Val Con was staring, a look of stark disbelief on his face. “Correct me if I’m in error. That means that every electron in the ship and everything in it—including, as I am reminded, us—is firing twice for each individual firing in normal space?”
“Sounds right to me, but I’m a soldier, not a physicist.”
He looked over her shoulder at the control room. The floor was flashing wildly now, torn by dark lightnings, while the board oozed violet and magenta vapors, and the pilot’s bench glowed blue with serpentine streaks.
Taking a deep breath, he expelled it and said something softly in a language that sounded like glass breaking around a steel maul.
“Come again?” Miri asked, interested.
“Never mind. It is not fitting that the youngest of Edger’s siblings hear his brother speak of him so.”
“I was thinking about that,” she said, finishing off her wine setting the mug on the shimmering table with care. “How different is Edger from us in how he—thinks about—things? Maybe all this stuff happens too fast for him to notice. Or maybe he can’t see it at all.” She frowned slightly. “Do we see it?”
He moved his shoulders. “If the mind processes something as experience, then it is experience. Reality is perhaps more difficult to define than truth . . . .”
“The visuals ain’t so tough,” Miri offered after a minute. “Best thing seems to be to concentrate on something else and let ‘em fade into the background. Or we could sleep for the next three weeks—maybe not. Had some real weird dreams last sleep. How ‘bout you?”
He was contemplating the navigation tank, which seemed at this moment to be filled with busy multicolored fish of varied sizes. “I don’t dream,” he murmured absently, then shook his head slightly and returned his gaze to her face. “It is my feeling that though it is—mushroom soufflé will become just a bit boring in three weeks. Would you care to help me concentrate on a tour of the ship? Perhaps we can find a storeroom containing different kinds of human food.”
Her eyes lit. “Coffee!”
He grinned and stood, stretching. “Stranger things have happened.”
YXTRANG COMMANDER KHALIIZ considered the scan-tech’s data: A single ship, poorly shielded, with three life-forms showing. No doubt Terran, and normally not worthy of the hunt, but booty had been scarce thus far, and the crew was hungry.
“Enter normal space.”
The quarry was abruptly before them: a private yacht, with speed alone to its credit. The Commander had seen two of these in the past; both had been personal spacecraft, owned by individuals rather than a Troop. They’d had no weapons and only pitiful shields.
“Scan contact,” the Adjutant announced as the low gong sounded. A moment later, he added, “Intruder scan. We are seen.”
In the screen the vessel was turning and beginning to accelerate.
“Local radio,” the Adjutant reported. “It seems they are calling for aid!”
“Signals responding?” Khaliiz asked.
“None.” The Adjutant’s voice was filled with the joyful anticipation of battle.
Khaliiz found an answering joy within himself. “Pursue.”
EDGER HIMSELF ANSWERED the comm and inclined his head in recognition of the caller. “Xavier Ponstella Ing. A pleasant day to you.”
“And to you, sir,” Ing replied, bowing his head deeply. “I have the information you requested concerning Herbert Alan Costello.”
“You are kind. Is there further news, also, of this person’s physical state?”
“The fingers have been replaced and the nerves are disposed to grow and the bones to knit. Another few days will tell the whole tale, of course, but the physician is most optimistic.”
“This is welcome information. I shall inform my kinsman, who will rejoice.”
Ing doubted it, but neglected to say so; it wouldn’t do to offend the old gentleman. “In terms of the other things you wished to know: Herbert Alan Costello is employed by a man named Justin Hostro, who is a private businessperson in Econsey. I am sorry that I have been unable to ascertain from Mr. Hostro’s assistant the precise amount of Herbert Alan Costello’s wages—”
“This person Hostro is known to me,” Edger said, cutting him off in a most un-Clutchlike manner. “We have done business together. I shall myself treat with him on this matter. Yes, I believe that will be best.” He inclined his head once more to the man in the screen. “Xavier Ponstella Ing, you have been most helpful and courteous. I thank you for your care of my kinsman and for your willingness to allow us our customs. My Clan will not forget.”
“It is mine to serve,” Ing assured him, “and I rejoice to have served well.”
“Joy to you, then, Xavier Ponstella Ing, and a good, long life.”