SIXTEEN
Spiral Dance
In Transit
THIS TIME, AT LEAST, there wasn’t any cannon fire to speed them along, though what might be waiting at the next port in terms of surprises was enough to put a pilot off her good temper. Not that there weren’t other things.
Cantra released the shock webbing and spun her chair around.
“Pilot Jela,” she said, mindfully keeping her voice in the stern-but-gentle range.
He looked over, then faced her fully, eyes as readable as ever—which was to say, not at all—lean face pleasant and attentive, mouth soft in a half-smile, arms leaning on the rests, hands nice and relaxed. A portrait of pure innocence.
“Pilot?” he answered. Respectful, too. Everything a pilot could want in a co-pilot, saving a bad habit or twelve.
Cantra sighed.
“I’m interested to note, Pilot, that your damn vegetable was lashed in place in my tower when we brought Dulsey in to the first aid kit. As I distinctly remember you taking it and its pot with you when you left ship at Taliofi, and as I distinctly don’t remember giving you a ship’s key, I’d be interested in hearing how that particular circumstance came to be.”
He closed one eye, then the other, then used both to look at her straight on, face as pleasant as ever. Rint dea’Sord, Cantra thought grudgingly, could do worse than take lessons from Pilot Jela. Too bad he was more likely to commission them both killedshe was getting ahead of herself.
“I’m waiting, Pilot.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, easily, and paused before continuing at a clear tangent. “You’ve got a good brace of guns on this ship.”
“I’m glad they meet your approval.” Stern-but-gentle, with a slight icing of irony. “You want to answer my question?”
“I am,” he said, projecting goodwill. She held up a hand and he tipped his head, questioning.
“Point of information,” she said, stern taking the upper note. “I don’t like being soothed. It annoys me.”
He sighed, the fingers of his right hand twitching assent. “My apologies, Pilot. It’s a habit—and a bad one. I’ll take steps to remember.”
“I’d appreciate it,” she said. “Now—the question.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again. “Your recollection is correct in both particulars—I did take the tree with me when we debarked earlier in the day and you did not give me a ship’s key.” The right hand came up, showing palm beyond half-curled fingers. “I didn’t steal a key or gimmick the comp. But, like I was saying—those guns you’ve got. Military, aren’t they?”
She considered him, much good it did her. “Surplus.”
“Right.” The hand dropped back to arm rest. “Military surplus. Not that old, some military craft still carry those self-same guns. I trained on them, myself.”
Cantra sighed, letting him hear an edge of irritation. “This has a point, doesn’t it, Pilot?”
“It does.” He sat up straight in his chair, eyes sharp, mouth stern. “The point is that you’re not fully aware of the capabilities of your gun brace. Pilot. Where I come from, that’s lapse of duty. Where you come from, I’d imagine it’d be something closer to suicide.”
Well, that was plain—and not entirely undeserved. “They didn’t exactly come with instructions,” she told him, mildly.
“Small mercies,” he retorted. “As I said, I trained on guns like yours and believe me, I know what they can and can’t do.” He leaned back in his chair, deliberate, and kept his eyes on hers. “So, I sweet-talked them into letting me in.”
Cantra closed her eyes. “I’m understanding you to say that you came into this ship through the gun bays.”
“That’s right.”
She wanted to doubt it, but there was the fact of the tree waiting for them, and Dancer reporting no entries between the time she’d sealed the hatch behind them in the early planetary day and the time she opened it again some hours later to admit Jela, Dulsey, and herself.
“That involve any breakage?” she asked. “Or, say—modifications?”
“Pilot,” he said reproachfully. “I’m better than that.” A short pause. “I wasn’t entirely sure that we wouldn’t be needing the guns again on the way out.”
A pragmatist, was Pilot Jela. That being so—
She opened her eyes, saw him sitting calm and easy again in his chair. “I’ll ask you, as co-pilot, to give me training on the guns to the full extent of your knowledge,” she said.
There was a small pause, then a formal nod of the head. “As soon as we raise a likely location, I’m at your service, Pilot.”
Not if I shake you first, she thought at him. Granted, she owed the man—again—but she didn’t have any intention of making Pilot Jela a permanent fixture on Dancer. Still, there wasn’t no sense to putting him on notice. So—
“That’ll do, then,” she said, turning to face her screens—and stopping at the sight of his big hand raised, palm out.
“I’ve got some questions myself, Pilot.”
“Oh, do you?” She sighed, sharply. “Lay ‘em out and let’s see which ones I care to answer, then.”
“I think it’d be best if you answered them all.”
That struck a spark from her temper. She gave her attention to the screens—showing clear, and the countdown to transition in triple digits.
“I think,” she said tightly, “that you’ve got a very limited right to ask questions, Pilot Jela. You gimmicked your way onto this ship at Faldaiza, and engineered an unauthorized entry at Taliofi. Not to mention cutting a deal with a man who needed to die, and ruining my rep into the bargain.”
“If I hadn’t ruined your rep,” he said, voice deliberately placid, but not, at least, projecting calm good feelings. “You’d have been dead, and Dulsey, too.”
“Dulsey, maybe,” she said. “He wanted me alive so’s I could do him a favor.”
“And you were happy to be of service,” he said, irony a little heavy. “At least, that’s not how I read it, listening in.”
She spun her chair back to face him.
“You were listening in on Rint dea’Sord?” She’d tried to crack dea’Sord’s comms—twice, in fact, nor was she unskilled at such things, having received certain training. “How?”
He smiled at her, damn him. “Military secret.” He touched the breast of his ‘skins. “I have a datastrip which I request permission to transmit, via secure channel.”
“No,” she snapped.
He sighed. “Pilot, the information on this ‘strip will guarantee that Ser dea’Sord will be too busy for . . . some number of years . . . keeping one jump ahead of the peacekeepers and bounty hunters to care about your rep or your life.”
“That’s some datastrip,” she said, and held out her hand. “Mind if I scan it?”
“Yes,” he said, which wasn’t anything more than she’d expected he’d say, nor anything less than she’d’ve said herself, had their positions been reversed. Still, the notion of giving Rint dea’Sord enough trouble to keep him occupied and out of the business for years did have its appeal.
“You’re asking a lot on trust,” she told Jela, “and I’m a little short where you’re concerned.”
His face hardened. “Am I supposed to trust a woman who carries a can full of military grade ship-brains into such a port as Taliofi, and has a sheriekas healing unit in her ship?”
She held up a fist, raised the thumb. “You should’ve checked the manifest before you signed on, if you’re as tender-hearted as all that.” Index finger. “You got moral objections to the first-aid kit, you’re free to open the hatch and save Dulsey’s soul for her.”
“It’s her well-being I’m concerned with.” There was more than a little snap there. She supposed he was entitled, there being the likelihood of a personal interest.
“Where did you get that healing unit?” he demanded.
She moved her shoulders and arranged her face into amused lines. “It came with,” she said, and spread her arms to include the entirety of Dancer.
He stared at her. She smiled at him.
“Whoever acquired that thing was trading ‘way over their heads,” he said, still snappish.
She raised her eyebrows, giving him polite attention, in case he wasn’t done.
He shut his mouth and looked stubborn.
“Leaving aside ship’s services,” she said after she’d taken a leisurely scan of her screens and stats and he still hadn’t said anything else. “Is there a description of the cargo just off-loaded on that ‘strip you think you want to transmit?”
“There is.” Right grumpy, that sounded.
“And that’s going to keep my rep clear with the ‘hunters and other interested parties exactly how?”
Silence. A glance aside showed him sitting not so relaxed as previously, his eyes closed. As if he’d felt the weight of her regard, he sat up straight and opened his eyes, meeting hers straight on.
“It happens I’m in need of a pilot who knows the back ways in and out, and maybe something about the Beyond.”
“I’ll be sure to put you down at a port where you might have some luck locating a pilot of that kind,” she said politely, and spun back full to face her board.
“I’d rather hire you,” Jela said, quiet-like. “The people who receive my transmittal, they’ll keep any . . . irregularities . . . to themselves, if it’s known you’re aiding me.”
She let that settle while she made a couple of unnecessary adjustments to her long-scans.
“I thought you weren’t exactly military,” she said, first.
“I’m not,” he answered, and while she didn’t have any reason to believe him, she did anyway.
“What you’re doing here is coercion,” she said, second.
Jela didn’t answer that one—and then he did.
“Maybe it is,” he said, slow, like he was working it out as he went. “What I know is I’ve been fighting my whole life and the war’s going against us. There’s a chance—not much of a chance, but I specialize in those kinds of missions—that I can accomplish something that will turn the war back on the sheriekas. Or least make the odds not—quite—so overwhelming. If you agree to help me, then you have that chance, too.”
“So what?” she asked, harsher than she should have.
“If we don’t stand together,” Jela said, still in that feeling-his-way voice, “then we’ll fall separately. We need to face the enemy now—soldier, smuggler, and shop-keeper.”
The war had been a fact of her entire life. The concept of winning it—or losing it—was alien enough to make her head ache. The notion that she might have a hand in either outcome was—laughable.
When the cards were all dealt out, though, Pilot Jela held the winning hand, in the form of his datastrip. If he could buy her free of Rint dea’Sord and gain her a promise of blind eyes from those who might otherwise be interested in curtailing her liberty—she’d be a fool not to go along with him.
At least for a while.
She sent him a studious glance; gave him a formal nod.
“All right,” she said. “Transmit your data.”
IT APPEARED THAT Pilot Cantra had levels between her levels, Jela thought as he addressed his board and began setting up a series of misdirections. He didn’t expect such precautions to thwart a determined attack, but then he didn’t expect a determined attack, merely a snoop, the same as any pilot who didn’t entirely trust her second might do.
He’d already established that Spiral Dance’s brain was as familiar to him as her guns—one of the earlier of the Emca units; considerably smarter and more flexible than the Remle refits just off-loaded at Taliofi.
Fingers deft and quick, he set the transmission protocol: validate, send, validate, wipe original on close of transmission, no copy to ship’s log.
A glance at the screens—clear all around, scans showing the appropriate levels of busy energies, nothing exotic or overly active, transition still some ship-hours ahead of them—and a look out of the side of his eye at the pilot sitting her board serene, long, elegant fingers dancing on the numbers pad, like as not discussing possible exit points with the navigation brain.
If it had been his to call, he’d have opted to wait and send closer to transition, to minimize the risk of a trace. The choice not being his, the likelihood of a trace being, in his estimation, low, and the pilot possibly with her attention on something other than on him, he checked his protocols a second time and hit “send.”
The query went out, the answer came back, the data flowed away. Query again, answer—and the thing was done, beam closed. Jela tapped a key, accessing the datastrip, which showed empty, just as it ought. Good.
He pulled it out of the slot and crumbled it in his fist. The flexible metal resisted at first, then folded, tiny slivers tickling his palm.
The sense of being watched pulled his eyes up—and he met Pilot Cantra’s interested green gaze. He waited, with the clear sense that he’d just given information out.
But— “Scrap drawer’s on your left,” was all she said, calm and agreeable, and turned her attention back to her calcs.
“Thank you,” he muttered, and thumbed the drawer open, depositing the strip and making sure his palms were free of shred before closing it again and putting his eyes and most of his attention on his own board.
Screens and scans still clear, timer ticking down to translation. Transition to where was apparently not a subject on which the pilot craved his input. He considered introducing it himself, then decided to bide his time, pending consideration of recent discoveries and events.
If Ragil’s people up-line moved fast on Rint dea’Sord’s operation, they might even recover most of Spiral Dance’s recent off-loaded and lamentable cargo. He’d handed the man and the cargo to others better equipped to deal with them—nothing more he could or should do, there. He therefore put both out of his mind.
Pilot Cantra, however . . .
He hadn’t listened long, being more interested in downloading various fascinating data regarding dea’Sord’s business arrangements, but he’d listened plenty long enough to hear the by-play around the need for an aelantaza.
It was apparently Rint dea’Sord’s belief that Pilot Cantra, whose ship called her “yos’Phelium,” was one of those rare and elite scholar-assassins.
Jela admitted to himself that the proposition explained a good many puzzling things about Pilot Cantra. Unfortunately, it also raised a number of other, equally good and valid questions.
Such as, if she were indeed aelantaza, was she presently on contract?
Or, if she were indeed aelantaza and not on contract, who was looking for her and how much of an impediment were they likely to be to his mission?
Or, if she was not aelantaza, as seemed most likely, why had Rint dea’Sord, a man with access to a broad range of information that he shouldn’t have had, thought that she was—and what did that mean in terms of impediments or dangers to Jela’s own mission?
And there was, after all, the matter of the name. Cantra yos’Phelium. Certainly, a name. Certainly, every bit as good a name as M. Jela Granthor’s Guard. Exactly as good a name, as it happened. “yos” was the Inworlds prefix denoting a courier or delivery person, and “Phelium” bore an interesting likeness to the Rim-cant word for “pilot.”
Cantra Courier Pilot, Jela thought. Not precisely the name he’d have expected to find on an aelantaza—contracted or free. On the other hand, what did he know? Aelantaza were known for their subtlety, which didn’t happen to be a trait he’d’ve assigned to Pilot Cantra. But, if the Dark Trader persona was a cover for something else—
Not that he was over-thinking it or anything.
He sighed to himself and sent a glance to the tree—receiving an impression of watchful well-being. That would be the tree’s reaction to the sheriekas device in which Dulsey presently slumbered—and he owned that the fact of the thing tied into this ship disturbed him, too. All very well and good for Pilot Cantra to say it had “come with,” thereby loosing another whole range of questions to tangle around the aelantaza/not aelantaza question, and—
Stop, he told himself.
Deliberately, he invoked one of the templated exercises. This one restored mental acuity and sharpened problem-solving. There was a moment of tightness inside his skull, and a brief feeling of warmth.
He’d need to construct a logic-box, assign everything he knew about Pilot Cantra and—
“Pilot.” Her voice was low and agreeable, the Rim accent edgy against his ear. More of an accent than she had previously displayed, he thought, and put that aside for the logic box, as he turned his head to meet her eyes.
“Pilot?” he answered, respectful.
“I’d welcome your thoughts regarding a destination,” she said.
Just what he’d been wanting, Jela thought, and then wondered if she was playing for info—which found him back on the edge of the aelantaza question, tottering on his mental boot heels. He sighed, letting her hear it, and gave a half-shrug.
“I thought you might have a port in mind,” he said. “It’d be best not to disrupt your usual routes and habits. At least, not until I’ve seen a chart.”
“Usual routes and habits,” she repeated, a corner of her mouth going up in a half-smile. “Pilot, I don’t think you’re a fool. I think you know we lifted out of Taliofi empty of anything valuable—excepting yourself and Dulsey, neither of which I gather are up for trade . . . and even if you were, I ain’t in the business of warm goods. One can’s carrying generic Light-goods for the entertainment of any port cops we happen to fall across. That means we can go wherever your fancy takes us, with the notable exception of any of my usual stop-overs. It might be that the two of us’re cozy kin now, but I see no reason to introduce you and your troubles to my usuals.”
Reasonable, Jela thought, and prudent. Especially prudent if Pilot Cantra expected to dump him and retreat to safety, which had to be in her mind, despite her apparent surrender. He was beginning to form the opinion that the pilot’s order of priority was her ship and herself, all else expendable. It was a survivor’s order of priority, and he couldn’t fault her for holding it, though duty required him to subvert it. Not the greatest thing duty had required of him, over a lifetime of more or less obeying orders.
Yet, he couldn’t help thinking that it would have been better for all—the mission, the pilot, the soldier if it mattered, and the Batcher—if Pilot Muran had made his rendezvous.
In point of fact, it would’ve been better for all if the sheriekas had blown themselves up with their home world. While he was wishing after alternate histories.
He looked to Pilot Cantra, sitting unaccountably patient, and showed her his empty palms.
“We have a shared problem in need of solving, first,” he said, which was true, and bought him time to consider how best to follow up a rumor and a whisper, lacking the info Muran had been bringing to him.
The pilot’s pretty eyebrows lifted. “Do we, now. And that would be?”
“Dulsey,” he said, and the eyebrows came together in a frown.
“I’m thinking Dulsey’s your problem, Pilot—or no problem. She’s likely to go along with whatever you say.”
“I don’t see it that way,” he said. “She couldn’t leave me fast enough at Taliofi. You remember she said that she had business, and might not make it back in time for lift? She was so intent on that business she missed the fact that her further services as crew were being declined.”
A short pause while the pilot looked over her board, and twiddled a scan knob that didn’t need it.
“You’re right,” she said finally, her eyes staying with the scans. “Dulsey was plotting her own course soon’s she heard we was down at Taliofi. Rint dea’Sord intercepted her before she made her contact, I’m guessing.” She moved her shoulders.
“Not like him to plan so shallow,” she said slowly. “That favor he wanted—he wanted it from me. Thinking on it, damn if it don’t look like the whole deal was rigged. Easy enough for a man with his connections to learn where my last-but-one was taking me. Dulsey—that must’ve been a vary, cheaper than whatever else he had planned on. Gave him a reserve.” She got quiet then, the picture of a pilot attending her board.
Jela took a breath, and by the time he’d exhaled had decided on his plan of attack.
“He thought you were aelantaza,” he said. “Any truth to that?”
That got him a look, green eyes a trifle too wide.
“No,” she said, and spun her chair to face him square. “I don’t think I heard what Dulsey has to do with your choice of a next port o’call. She’s a deader wherever she goes, unless she can lose the tats, which you know and I know she can’t.”
“She can regrow, if she gets to the right people.”
“She can, but they’re looking for that dodge now. One arm younger than the rest of you—that’s rehab, all legit. Two arms—you’re a Batcher gone rogue, and better off dead.”
That was, Jela thought, probably true.
“What else, then?” he asked her. “Not all runaway Batchers get caught.”
“Well.” She wrinkled her nose. “If they’re willing to limit themselves to the RingStars, or the Rim, or the Grey Worlds, all they need is to hang paper, work up some convincing files, and maybe a dummy control disk. Expensive. No guarantees.”
“But it can be done,” Jela said, watching her face.
The green eyes narrowed. “Anything can be done,” she said the Rim accent hard, “if you got money enough to buy it.”
“Do you—” he began and stopped as a chime sounded from the rear of the chamber.
Pilot Cantra jerked her head toward the alcove where the first-aid kit sat.
“Hatch’ll be coming up soon. You might want to be standing by, in case there’s a problem. I’ll take the scans.”
She spun back to her board.
Jela got up and walked, not without trepidation, back to the first-aid kit.
THE HATCH WAS UP, the greenish light giving Dulsey’s pale hair and pale face an unsettling and alien cast. Her eyes were closed and he could see her breathing, deep and slow, like she was asleep.
She lay like he had put her, flat on her back, arms at her sides, legs straight, the bloodstained coverall—
The blood was gone, and much of the grime. The green-cast face was evenly toned, showing neither bruises nor swelling; the nose, last seen bent to the left, was straight. Her hair was clean.
Her eyes opened.
“Pilot Jela?”
“Right here,” he said. “You’re in what Pilot Cantra styles a first-aid kit. You’re looking better than you did when you went in. You’ll have to tell me how you feel.”
She frowned and closed her eyes. He waited, his own eyes slitted in protest of the unnatural light, until she moved her head against the pallet.
“I feel—remarkably well,” she said slowly. She raised a hand and touched her face lightly, ran a finger down her nose. Took a deliberately deep breath. Another.
“I believe I am mended, Pilot. May I be permitted to stand up and test the theory more fully?”
He realized with a start that he’d been hanging over the device, blocking her exit. Hastily, he stepped back.
“Might as well try it.”
She sat up slowly, from the intent expression on her face, paying attention to each muscle and bone. Carefully, she got her legs over the edge and her feet on the floor, put her palms flat against the pallet, pushed—and stood.
“Ace?” he asked.
She took a step forward. “Ace,” she answered.
Behind her, the hatch began to descend, hissing lightly as it did. She turned to look at it.
“A remarkable device,” she commented. “Am I correct in believing that it was constructed by the Enemy?”
“I think so,” Jela said. “Pilot Cantra doesn’t deny it.”
“Remarkable,” she said again. She turned to face him and held up her left hand, palm out.
“Pilot, you have, I believe, very fine eyesight. Do you see the scar across my palm?”
Her palm was broad and lined. There were no scars.
“No,” he said. “Was it an old scar? They fade, over time.”
“They do,” Dulsey said. “But it was a recent scar, still noticeable. Will you look again? It was rather obvious—from the base of the thumb very nearly to the base of the little finger, somewhat jagged, and—”
“Dulsey,” he interrupted. “There’s no scar.”
She took a long, hard breath. Her face, he saw, was tight, her eyes sparkling.
“Thank you, Pilot.” Her voice was breathless. She raised her other hand, fumbled a moment with the wrist fastening, then peeled the sleeve of the coverall back, exposing pale flesh, smooth, hairless, unscarred.
“It’s gone,” Dulsey breathed. Fingers shaking, she unsealed the other wrist, pushed the sleeve high.
“And it.” She looked up at him. “Pilot—”
“They’re both gone,” he said, keeping his tone matter-of-fact, despite the fact that his neck hairs wanted to stand up on their own. He raised a hand.
“Use your brain, Dulsey. You know those tats are cellular. Just because they’ve been erased on the dermis doesn’t mean they’re gone.”
“True,” she said, but her eyes were still sparkling.
“Dulsey—” he began . . .
“Transition coming up,” Pilot Cantra called from the wider room. “Pilot Jela, you’re wanted at your station. Dulsey, strap in.”
THEY TRANSITIONED with the guns primed, and the passage was just as bad as it could be.
As a reward, they reentered calm, empty space, not a ship, nor a star, nor a rock within a couple dozen light years in any direction.
“Well,” said Cantra and looked over to her co-pilot, sitting his board as calm and unflapped as if he hadn’t been bumped and jangled ‘til his brain rang inside his skull.
“Lock her down, Pilot,” she said when he turned his head. “We’ll sit here a bit and us three can have that talk about where we’re going, now that we’re nowhere in particular.”
“Right,” he said, briefly, fingers moving across his board.
Cantra turned to look at Dulsey, who was already on her feet by the jump seat. The coverall’s sleeves were rolled up, showing pale, unmarked forearms. Cantra didn’t sigh, and met the Batcher’s sparkling eyes.
“Trouble with that first-aid kit,” she said, conversationally, “is it don’t think like you an’ me. There’s no deep reader on this ship, Dulsey, and you dasn’t believe that what you got there is more than a simple wipe. Keep your sense hard by.”
“The pilot is prudent,” Dulsey said. “Shall I make tea?”
“Tea’d be good,” Cantra answered, and added the polite. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Pilot. I will return.” She went, her steps seeming somewhat lighter than usual.
Cantra spun back to her board, letting the sigh have its freedom, and began to lock down the main board.
“We got eyes,” she said to Jela, “we got ears, we got teeth. We’re giving out as little as possible, and while we aren’t exactly in a high traffic zone, I want to be gone inside of six hours.”
Finished with the board, she spun her chair, coming to her feet in one smooth motion. She moved a step, caught herself on the edge of her usual calisthenics, and instead twisted into a series of quick-stretches, easing tight back and leg muscles.
Behind her, she heard the co-pilot’s chair move, and turned in time to see Pilot Jela finishing up a mundane arm-and-leg stretch. He rolled his broad shoulders and smiled.
“It’s good to work the kinks out,” he said, companionably.
“It is,” she returned, and was saved saying anything else by the arrival of Dulsey, bearing mugs.
THEY’D EACH SIPPED some tea, and all decided that standing was preferable to sitting. So, they stood in a loose triangle, Cantra at the apex, Jela to her left and ahead, Dulsey to his left.
“This is an official meeting of captain and crew,” Cantra said, holding her mug cradled between her hands and considering the two of them in turn. “Input wanted on where and how we next set down, free discussion in force until the captain calls time. Final decision rests with the captain, no appeal. Dulsey.”
“Pilot?”
“Some changes while you were getting patched up. Me and Pilot Jela have consolidated. He’s got some places he feels a need to visit, except he wants to see you settled as best you might be, first.” She glanced aside, meeting his bright black eyes. “I have that right, Pilot?”
“Aye, Captain,” he answered easily. “Permission to speak?”
“Free discussion,” she said, lifting one hand away from the mug and waggling her fingers. “Have at it.”
“Right.” He turned to face the Batcher. “Dulsey, Pilot Cantra here tells me that there’s a way to establish you—”
“If the pilot pleases,” Dulsey interrupted. “I will ask to be set down on Panet.”
Jela frowned and sent Cantra a glance. “Pilot? I’m not familiar with this port.”
“I am.” Unfortunately. She fixed Dulsey with a hard look, and was agreeably surprised to see her give it back, no flinching, no meeching.
“What’s to want on Panet, Dulsey?”
The Batcher lifted her chin. “People. Contacts who can aid me.”
“Ah.” Cantra sipped her tea, consideringly. “Any kin to the contacts you didn’t make on Taliofi?”
Dulsey bit her lip. “On Taliofi, the—I had the incorrect word, perhaps. Or perhaps that cell no longer exists. On Panet, however, I am certain—”
Cantra held up her hand.
“Dulsey, you won’t last half a local day on Panet, even with the tats smoothed over. Your best course is to tell us what your final goal is, if you know it. It might be we can help you. Pilot Jela don’t want all his trouble going to waste by seeing you taken up by bounty hunters six steps from ship’s ramp, and I don’t want to have to answer personal questions about did I know you was Batch-grown and what kind of hard labor I’d prefer.”
Dulsey bit her lip, every muscle screaming tension, indecision. She raised her mug and drank, buying thinking time. Cantra sipped her own tea, waiting.
“I—” Breathless, that, and the muscles were still tight, but her face was firm, and her eyes were steady. Dulsey had made her decision, whatever it was. And now, Cantra thought, we’ll see how good a liar she is.
“It is,” the Batcher began again, “perhaps true that the pilot will know of the port I seek. I . . . had not considered that it might be possible to simply go rather than—” A hard breath, chin rising. “It is my intention to go to the Uncle.”
The truth, curse her for an innocent. Cantra closed her eyes.
“Uncle?” Jela’s voice was plainly puzzled. “Which uncle, Dulsey?”
“The Uncle,” she answered him. “The one who has made a tribe—a world—populated by Batchers. Where we are valued for ourselves, as persons of worth and skill; where—”
“There ain’t,” Cantra said, loudly, “any Uncle.”
“The pilot,” Dulsey countered reproachfully, “knows better.”
Cantra opened her eyes and fixed her in the best glare she had on call.
“I do, do I? You want to explain that, Dulsey?”
“Certainly. The pilot survived a line edit, I believe?”
Cantra fetched up a sigh. “You was awake enough to hear Rint dea’Sord theorize, was you? He was out, Dulsey. Do I look aelantaza to you?”
Dulsey bowed. “The pilot is surely aware that the aelantaza do not share a single physical type. It is much more important that the pheromones which induce trust and affection in those who are not aelantaza are developed to a high degree.”
“That a fact?”
“Pilot, it is. It is also a fact that an aelantaza could not survive a line edit without outside intervention. Much the same sort of intervention—” She raised her unmarked arms— “necessary to wipe the Batch numbers not only from my skin, but from my muscles, bones, and cells.” She lowered her arms and addressed Jela.
“There is an Uncle, and Pilot Cantra knows where to find him. If you would see me safe, see me to him.”
“Pilot Cantra?” Jela said quietly.
Pain, in her head, in her joints, in the marrow of her bones. Garen’s voice, grief-soaked, weaving through the red mists of shutdown, “Hang on, baby, hang on, I’ll get you help, don’t die, damn you baby . . .”
“Pilot Cantra?” Louder this time. The man who held her ship ransom to his have-tos. And wouldn’t the Uncle just be pleased as could be to welcome a genuine soldier, not-exactly-military or—
“Pilot.” Back to quiet. Not good.
She sighed and gave him a wry look.
“There was an Uncle, years back. He was old then, and near to failing. Told us so, in fact. He’s died by now for certain, but the story won’t do the same. If I was a Batcher, I’d sure as stars want to believe there was a benevolent Uncle leading a community of free and equal Batch-grown. But it just ain’t so—anymore, if it ever truly was.”
“The pilot surely does not believe that the Uncle would have died without arranging a succession.” Dulsey again.
Cantra sipped tea, deliberately saying nothing.
“Do you know where the Uncle’s base is?” Jela asked, still on the wrong side of quiet.
She lifted a shoulder. “I know where it was. Understand me, Pilot, this was back a double-hand of Common Years. Uncle’s dead, and if he did arrange for a transfer of authority, the way Dulsey’s liking it, anybody with a brain would have moved base six times since.”
“I’d do it that way, myself,” he agreed, and his voice was edging back toward easy. “But, as you say, the info’s still out there, and it’s not impossible that somebody might strike straight for the base instead of risking an intermediate stop where they might be noticed. Even if this Uncle or his second has shifted core ops, they’ll have to have left something—or someone—at the old base, to send people on—or to be sure that they don’t go any further.”
That made sense. Unfortunately. It was looking like a trip to the Deeps in her very near future. Pilot Jela was going to be no end expensive, unless she could persuade whoever might be at the Uncle’s old place of business that he was an unacceptable risk, while keeping her own good name intact. That was possible, though not certain. Still . . .
“Where is it?” Jela asked.
Cantra sighed. “Where would you put it, Pilot?”
His eyelashes didn’t even flicker.
“In the Beyond.”
“Ace,” she said, and drank off the rest of her tea.
“I’d like a look at the chart,” he said then, and she laughed.
“You’re welcome to look at any chart you want, Pilot. You find the Uncle’s hidey hole, you let me know.”
“I hoped you’d be kind enough to point it out to me,” he said, in a tone that said he wasn’t finding her particularly amusing.
“I’d do that,” she said, pitching her voice serious and comradely, “but it’s not fixed. Or, say, it is fixed, though built on random factors.”
“The rock field,” Dulsey breathed, and Cantra regarded her once more.
“There’s a lot of detail in that story, Dulsey.”
“It is not one story, Pilot, but legion.”
“Is that so? Stories change as they migrate—you know that, don’t you? They get bigger, broader, shinier, happier. Might be, if—and in my mind it’s a big ‘if’—the Uncle I met did manage to pass his project on to another administrator, and if—another big one—they managed to be clever and stay off the scans of all who wish rogue Batchers ill, it might still be that the community of free and equal Batch-grown ain’t as equal or as free as the stories say.”
Dulsey bowed. “This humble person thanks the pilot for her concern for one who is beneath notice,” she said, irony edging the colorless voice. “Indeed, this humble person has been a slave and a chattel and resides now under a sentence of death.”
Meaning that the Uncle’s outfit would have to be plenty bad before it came even with what she’d been bred to and lived her whole life as, Cantra thought, and lifted a shoulder.
“I take your point,” she said, and looked at Jela.
“My business is nearer the Rim than Inside,” he said, which she might’ve known he would. “First, we’ll take Dulsey out to the old base and see if the Uncle’s left a forwarding address.”
“All the same to me,” Cantra said, doing the math quick-and-dirty and not liking the sum. They couldn’t run empty all the way to the Far Edge. She had padding, but a Rim-run would eat Rint dea’Sord’s eight hundred flan, and the ship’s fund, too, like a whore snacking through a packet of dreamies. There was cargo—legit, or, all right, Pale Gray—that could be profitably hauled to the Rim. It would mean buying at markets where she wasn’t known—and where her info was thinner than she liked. But it was that or run empty, and she’d rather not find herself broke at the end of Pilot Jela.
“Need goods,” she said, giving both of them the eye—Dulsey first; then a stern lingering glare for Jela. “Eight hundred flan is all very nice, but the ship needs to sustain itself.”
He inclined his head. “I agree that the ship should continue to trade and to behave, as much as is possible, as it always does.” One eyebrow quirked. “I said that earlier, if you’ll recall, Pilot.”
“I recall. And you’ll recall that I’m not taking you to my usuals. That means some bit of extra care, though I’m intending to carry legits rather than high risks. There’s profit to be made on the Rim, in small pieces. Coming out of the Rim, that’s something else.”
“First, we go in,” Jela said.
“That looks to be the case,” she agreed. “If there’s nothing else to discuss, then the captain declares this meeting at an end. Pilot Jela, I’ll be spending some time with the charts, if you’ll attend me. I’ll need what info you might have on some possible destinations.”
“I’m at your service, Pilot,” he said, and gave her a smile. It was an attractive smile, as she’d noticed before. Which was too bad, really.
“If the pilots have no duties for me,” Dulsey piped up. “I will prepare a meal.”
The words were on the tip of Cantra’s tongue—Don’t bother; ration sticks’ll be fine. Second thoughts dissolved them, though, and she inclined her head a fraction.
“A meal would be welcome,” she said formally. “Thank you, Dulsey.”
“You are welcome, Pilot Cantra,” the Batcher said softly. “I am pleased to be of service.”