CHAPTER TWENTY
THEY EMPTIED A box containing dehydrated escargot and filled it with dried eggs, vegetables, a quarter-wheel of cheese, dried fruits, and tea. There was, to Miri’s vast disappointment, no coffee.
“What’s wrong with Edger, anyhow?”
Val Con grinned. “Possibly he did not expect you—and I don’t like coffee.”
“Don’t know why you didn’t take him up on that offer and stay,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d sure hang onto anybody took that much care of me.”
He bent to add a package of cocoa and another of dry milk to their supplies. “I didn’t become a Scout in order to stay in one place all my life.”
Miri shut up. She knew she was on dangerous ground and she wasn’t feeling up to any danger just then. “See any bread?” she asked.
He straightened, frowning at the boxes piled high on all sides. “I don’t think—” The frown lightened, and he pointed at a carton by her right hand. “Will crackers do?”
“Suits.” She pried open the top, hauled out a metal tin, and handed it to him, trying to not see that yellow and turquoise sparks were raining over her hand. “That okay for awhile?”
“It seems to be enough food for a day or two,” he said dryly. “Do you mind waiting here a moment? There is something else . . . .”
“No problem.” She waved him off, retrieving the bottle they had been sharing from beside a case of sardines. “But if I’m drunk when you get back, you gotta carry me home.”
He grinned. “A fair bargain,” he said, and then the towering boxes swallowed him.
Miri settled on the floor next to their supply box and closed her eyes, wine bottle forgotten in her hand. The ship had been in drive for—what? Four hours? There were only another four to live through. You’re that tough, ain’t you? she said to herself.
Her thoughts settled on Val Con, where they tumbled like the colors in floor and walls. Talk to me when the drive goes off, huh? she thought. What the hell does that mean? Damn Liadens. Never straight with anybody . . . She shifted sharply, setting the bottle aside without opening her eyes, and revising her opinion of whether she could sleep for three weeks.
She might even have drifted off, for she was not aware of his return, nor of the hand that hovered for an instant over her bright head before he took it away and sank to his knees before her.
“Miri?” He spoke softly, reluctant to disturb her, but she started violently, eyes snapping open, shoulders tightening—and relaxing instantly.
Silently, he offered three things for her inspection.
The first was recognizable through its flowing iridescence as a portable ‘chora. The colors of the second thing writhed and shimmered too much for her to wrest sense from them. And the third—
She took it from him, shaping her hands around it to be sure, then brought it to her mouth, blew a ripple of notes, and sawed them back and forth. She looked up to find him grinning, and she grinned back.
“I ain’t asking, notice, how you knew I play harmonica.”
“Is that its name? I had never seen one before. I thought perhaps you might know . . . .” He was still smiling, delight showing in his bright green eyes.
“Harmonica,” she affirmed, rubbing her fingers over the smooth metal sides. “Also, mouth organ.” She squinted at the unidentifiable something. “What’s that?”
He turned it over in his hands. “A guitar. I think. Something with strings and a soundboard, at least.” He came smoothly to his feet and slid the two instruments into the food box. “Would you like to put the harmonica in here as well?”
“Do—” She frowned at him, loath to give the mouth organ up. “It’s Edger’s, ain’t it? I better put it back.”
Jerkily, she came to her knees, then stopped, because he was in front of her, hands out, inches from disaster.
“Miri, if it gives you pleasure, keep it. Edger named you kin, and this ship is Clan property, belonging to all equally. If you would repay Edger for the gift, play for him when next you meet.”
“I don’t steal from my friends,” she insisted. “And Edger only said I was his sister because of—” She caught herself, dropping her head into her hands. “If this ain’t the stupidest damn way to make a space drive!”
“Because of?” he asked, though he knew what the answer would be.
“Because of you,” she said, and he longed to touch her, so worn did she sound. “He made a mistake. Said the knife you gave me—back in Econsey . . . ” She couldn’t finish it.
Val Con took a breath and let it out, very gently. “Edger thought I had knife-wed you,” he said, keeping his voice even. “A reasonable assumption, from his standpoint, though I had not spoken to him, as would have been proper in a young brother. The fault is mine. I did not think. And I am sorry to have caused you pain.”
He balled his left hand into a fist to keep from touching her and continued. “Of this other thing: Edger would not have named you sister only to rescind the honor. He has accepted you into his Clan. Whether we are wed or no, you carry a blade given you by one of his kin and he considers you worthy of it.” He sighed when she still did not uncover her face, and tried once more.
“I can attempt to explain all I know of the tradition and customs of the Clutch and of Edger’s Clan, though it will take a bit longer than either of us might find comfortable sitting on the floor here. Will it suffice you at this moment to know that Edger does not allow unworthy persons into his family; and that being named kin is a great burden and a great joy?” He bit his lip and leaned back, wondering if she had heard him at all.
“What this means in practical terms, right now, is: Does the harmonica please you? If so, you must take it and strive to master it, to the betterment of the Clan. It is no less than your duty.”
“Yaaah!” Her whisper carried the inflection of a scream. She looked up suddenly and shook her head. “Well, it just goes to show you that things’re never as bad as they look. When I started this run, I didn’t have anything—no unit, no money, no place to go. Now, when I think I got even less, it turns out that somewhere along the line I picked up a husband, a family and a—what? hundredth share?—in a space rock powered by the looniest drive going. Two families,” she amended and snapped to her feet, harmonica gripped tightly in her hand.
“Maybe they oughta lock me up, ‘cause I sure don’t know what I’m doing.” She looked down at him for a moment, then waved her hands helplessly and spun away, marching unsteadily out of the storeroom.
Val Con came to his feet slowly and bent to retrieve the box.
“Three families,” he murmured.
THE BOUNCECOMM BEGAN to chatter, bringing Jefferson, cursing and on the run.
He scanned Hostro’s incoming instructions and jabbed the button for a hardcopy. Cursing ever more fluently, he cleared the board and warped a message to Tanser. The machine chattered, went silent, and chattered again before spitting back the message he wanted to send. The ship was in drive.
Curses exhausted, he set the comm to resend the message every ten minutes until received by Tanser’s ship, and then sat staring at the screen, stomach tight.
Abruptly, he thought of his son; and, shaking his head, he tried to assure himself that the message would reach Tanser before Tanser reached the prey.
* * *
THE STUFF EDGER used for soap was sand. Miri used it liberally, relishing the minor pain, then unbraided her hair and washed that, too.
Music filled the poolroom, though she hadn’t thought a portable ‘chora had that kind of range on it. There was, as far as she could tell, no order to the play list. Terran ballads mixed with Liaden chorales mixed with bawdy spacing songs mixed with other things the like of which she’d never heard mixed with scraps of see-sawing notes that sounded like the melodies of children’s rhyming games.
On and on and on and on it went: Val Con playing every shard of music he’d ever heard. In some ways, it was worse than the drive effects.
The music broke and came back together, jagged-toothed and snarling, reminding her of the language he’d cursed in. She struck out for the edge of the pool as he added a new element to the sounds he was making—a high-pitched, whispery keening, twisting and twining through the hateful main line, sometimes louder, sometimes not, resembling, it seemed to her as she levered herself onto the lawn, one of the Liaden songs he’d played earlier.
And then it changed, shifting louder, intensifying until the breath caught in her throat: a wail that rattled the heart in her chest and the thoughts in her head.
She reached her piled belongings and crumpled them to her chest. Slowly, bent as if against the stormwinds of Surebleak’s winter, Miri sought refuge in the bookroom.
THE SHIP HAD been at rest for perhaps fifteen minutes when she entered the control room, her hair still loose and damp from her bath.
“I give you good greeting, Star Captain,” she told Val Con’s back in what she hoped was much improved High Liaden.
“Entranzia volecta, cha’trez,” he murmured absently, his attention divided between board and tank.
Miri wandered over to the map table. Avoiding the silent ‘chora and the guitar, she set down the cheese.
“How,” she wondered, pulling out her knife, “am I gonna learn High Liaden if you keep answering in Low?”
“Do I? I must be having trouble with the accent.”
Her brows rose. “You got the makings of a nasty temper there, friend.”
He leaned back, hands busy on the board and eyes on the tank. “I am usually considered patient,” he said softly. “Of course, I’ve never been tested under such severe conditions before.”
She laughed and sliced herself a sliver of cheese. “Very nasty temper. Sarcastic, too. It ain’t my fault you don’t remember your milk tongue.”
He made two more adjustments to the board and stood, then came over to the table. She whacked off a slab of cheese and offered it to him on knife point. He took it and sat down on the bench near the ‘chora, one foot braced on the seat.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” She sliced a piece for herself and sat astride the second bench. “What did you say, just then?”
One eyebrow lifted. “Are the roots so different?”
“Oh, I got ‘good greetings’ okay, but there was another word—sha . . . ”
“Cha’trez,” he murmured, nibbling cheese.
“Right. What’s that?”
He closed his eyes, frowning slightly. When he finally opened his eyes, he sighed a little. “Heartsong?” He shook his head briefly. “Not quite, though it has the right flavor.”
She blinked and changed the subject. “How many languages you speak?”
He finished his cheese and dusted off his hands. “At the level at which I speak Terran—five. I know enough of nine more to ask for meat and bed. And Liaden. And Trade.”
“All that?” She shook her head. “And you speak Terran better’n most born to it. Little weird, though, you not having an accent.”
He shifted, reaching to take up the guitar and fidgeting with the knobs projecting from the top. “I had one once,” he murmured, turning a knob and plucking a string, “but when I was put on—detached duty—it was not considered politic for me to speak Terran with a Liaden accent.”
“Oh.” She took a breath. “My friend, you ought to chuck that job.”
“I am considering it.”
“What’s to consider?”
“How it might be done.” He plucked another string. Twong!
She stared at him. ‘Tell ‘em you’re all done now, detached duty is over and you’d like to go back and be a Scout, please.”
Plonk! He shook his head, listening to the vibration of the string.
“It is not possible they would agree to that. I’ve lived too long, learned too much, guessed a great deal . . . .” Bong.
“They’ll kill you?” Plainly, she did not believe it, and he cherished the effort she made to keep her voice matter-of-fact.
He ran his fingers in a sweep across the strings near the bridge and winced at the ensuing discord. Numbers were running behind his eyes: He should not be having this conversation; he should not have helped Miri in the first place; he should not have gone back for her—that was what the numbers seemed determined to say. And now his life was forfeit. He tried to ignore the numbers. CMS was at .08.
“Val Con.”
He looked up, holding the guitar across his lap by its fragile neck. The numbers were running faster, switching from one Loop to the other, almost too rapidly for him to scan.
Death and danger. Disgrace and death. Dishonor and destruction. . . .
His muscles were tightening, his breathing quickened—and still the numbers raced.
“Val Con.” Rising concern was evident in her voice.
He shook his head, struggling for words. “It is most likely that they will kill me,” he managed, fascinated, watching the numbers flash, reverse themselves, and flash again as they counted the reduced chances of his living out the month, the week. . . . “Though it is true that my Clan is a powerful one, which reduces somewhat—” It was hard to breathe; he seemed to hear himself out there somewhere, while back here, where the truth was, where he was, he felt heat and a need to hide. “—the chance that they would kill me outright.” His mouth was too dry; the rushing in his ears amplified the sound of his heart pounding against nearly empty lungs.
He tightened his grip on the guitar and sought out Miri’s eyes.
“They would not want trouble . . . trouble with Korval. So it is—possible—that they would only . . . ” He was sweating, but his hands were cold.
“Only?” Her question was barely a whisper.
“Only wipe me . . . and let my body go home.”
The air was too hot and too thin, but it wasn’t happening to Miri; he needed to run from her to get out get out—look at the numbers!
CRR-RACK! The guitar’s neck snapped in his grip and he jumped back, dropping it and gasping, looking for a way out. His shirt was choking him and the numbers were glaring behind his eyes: dead, dead, zero percent chance of survival. He grabbed a wall and held fast.
“No! No! Not here! Dammit, not here!” I won’t die here! I’ll get out . . . .
“Val Con!”
The scream penetrated his panic, piercing the terror for an instant. It seemed so sure a name—Val Con. In fact: 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—and from somewhere her voice added, “Tough Guy!”
He sobbed and held on, then found himself gasping against the strong stone wall. Several feet away, hand outstretched and terror in her eyes, was Miri. He brought his breathing down slowly and calmed himself, feeling the air cool him as his hands began to warm.
The numbers were clear: zero and zero. No chance of surviving the mission. The mission itself a failure. Accordingly, he was dead.
He took another breath, leaned back against the wall, and accepted the slow slide to the floor as natural, even comforting; the sound he made verged on laughter.
“Val Con? You there?”
He nodded. “Here,” he said raggedly.
She approached cautiously and knelt by his side, gray eyes intent on his face.
“Miri?”
“Yo.”
His breath was still slowing; his lungs ached from the hyperbreathing he’d done, but he was calm. He knew his name and with that he knew he was safe. “Miri, I think I died just then.”
Her brows twitched upward and she reached out to lay cool fingers on the pulse at the base of his throat. Shaking her head, she removed them.
“Sergeant Robertson regrets to report a glitch in the system, sir.”
He laughed, a jagged stone of sound, then lifted both hands and ran them through sweat-soaked hair.
“Dead,” he said. “The Loop showed me dead at the moment I told you I would be wiped.” His breath was nearly back, and he felt at ease, though drained in a way he’d never been drained before. “I think I believed it—panicked or—something. I believed them . . . .”
“The Loop,” Miri asked, hoping. “It’s gone? Or busted?”
“No . . . . Still there. Not, I think, broken. But it may have been programmed to lie to me—do you understand?” he asked her suddenly. “They took so much—so I would survive, they said. Surely it’s important to survive? My music, my dreams—so much—and all to give life to a thing that lies . . . .” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t understand . . . .”
Miri laid a wary hand on his arm; his eyes were on her face instantly, noting uncertainty and strain.
“Yes.”
She bit her lip. “What’s—wiped—please?” Her voice was small and tentative, most un-Mirilike.
He shifted slightly, bumping a leg against the fallen guitar. Awkwardly, he retrieved it and cradled the splintered neck. “Ah, poor thing . . . .”
Looking up, he half-smiled. “Wiped is . . . ” He shook his head, keeping a wary eye out for phantom equations. “A machine was made in answer to the thought that it would be—convenient—if, instead of impersonating someone, an agent could become that person. It was thought that this could be accomplished by—smoothing out the agent’s own personality and overlaying a second.” He saw nothing. The screen behind his eyes was blank. “When the mission was done, the second personality would be removed and the agent allowed to reemerge.”
He paused for breath. Miri was watching his eyes closely, the line of a frown showing between her brows.
“It didn’t work out very well. The only thing the machine did was eradicate, totally, the prime personality. No other personality could be grafted on to what remained. Nor could more conventional learning take place. The person was gone, irretrievably, though the body might live on to a very respectable old age.”
A shudder shook her violently and she bent her head, swallowing hard and screwing her eyes shut against the sudden tide of sickness.
“Miri.” Warm fingers brushed down her cheek, then slid under her chin, gently insisting that she raise her face. She gave in, eyes still shut, and after a moment felt him brushing away the tears.
“Miri, please look at me.”
In a moment she opened her eyes, though she couldn’t manage a smile.
His own smile was a better effort than the last; he shook his head. “It would be wisest not to mourn me until they bring the body before you.”
“They bring me a zombie, I’ll shoot it dead!”
“I would appreciate it,” he told her gravely.
She dredged up a lopsided grin, looking closely into his tired eyes and grim face and hoping that this last little scene was the final drama his unnamed bosses had engineered. It had been ugly enough—and, potentially, deadly enough. What if he’d been in a shoot-out or one of the other tight spots he seemed prone to when that damned—panic—had hit?
Murder by extrapolation? She shook the thought away. “How are you now?” she ventured, aware that he had dropped his hand and twined his fingers lightly around hers.
He smiled. “Tired. It is not every day that one dies and lives to tell the tale.”
She grinned and squeezed his hand. “Wanna get up? Or should I get you a blanket?”
“Up, I think.” But that was easier said than done. Somehow, they both managed to rise; they stood close, leaning against each other.
Val Con moved, surprising them both as he hugged Miri to him and dropped his face to her hair, murmuring something that did not sound like Terran or Trade. Holding her away, he looked seriously into her cautious face.
“There are many things for us to talk about—but there are many things I must first say to myself, to hear what the answers may now be. I require time—perhaps a day, perhaps two—by myself. I will take food, find another room to be in . . . .”
She stiffened. “Ain’t no reason to run away from me—”
He laid light fingers over her lips, cutting her off. “Not away from you. But think: Twice in two days I have frightened us both—badly. I must take time—while there is so much time—to find the man I am, now that there are two I am not.” He unsealed her lips and touched her cheek. “It is something we both should know, I think.”
Not trusting her voice, she nodded.
“Miri Robertson.” There was a glimmer of ritual in his voice. “Consider please if you wish to become my partner—to remain my partner. We will speak in a few days.”
Quickly, he bent and kissed her forehead, then released her and turned to gather food for his time away. The broken guitar he left on the map table. One day, he vowed, he would repair it.