Squatting down by some decorative fountainry, out of the full heat of the sun, Arran shook his head in mild amazement and confusion. What in the Ceo’s name was going on here? Here he had believed that he was the only murderous criminal at large in this system. This asteroid beneath his feet was nothing but one enormous, glorified farm. Who other than he—requiring food, water, and other supplies for his ship and crew—would wish to raid such a meager larder?
It was astonishing to someone with as much experience at this business as Arran had. People in the streets when they had arrived could not even bother to scream insanely or run about in blind, incontinent panic, leave alone hurl their unarmed bodies at their attackers as he had seen them do upon more than one occasion. Shorthanded as he was at the present—a starship captain was always shorthanded, and Arran more than most, ever since he had thought of confiscating the other fellow’s steam launches, fitting them up as fighters, and letting them escort the Osprey wherever she went—he would have been utterly helpless to prevent it. They had simply sat wherever they happened to find themselves and watched with idiotic, gaping mouths as their enemy broke through.
At least, he thought, he was beginning to get his bearings. According to the enthilled records he had recovered from the last vessel he had taken—a freighter with a regrettably empty hold, bound in this direction to take on cargo—this was one of 2078 “wheat alliances” operated within a jumble of boulders between two Cassini divisions that called itself the Fifteenth Locality. The local authority here was an “Alliance Leader Shoomer Zero Nine” presiding over some unspecified number of Burrow Mayors. Phoebus was down looking for that worthy now, under whatever rock the poor fellow had likely chosen to conceal himself. For his part, Arran had always been more than happy to let somebody else deal with these politicians. As long as it happened to be somebody like Phoebus.
Think of the devil, here he came, a bundle of some variety under one arm, and somebody of some variety, under the other. Arran demanded no explanation of his sturdy first officer. He knew Phoebus would get round to it in his own time. Krumm dropped both burdens at his captain’s feet. “Well, sir, I found yer Alliance Leader Shoomer Zero Nine for ye—this ain’t himself, more’s the pity—an’ I believe yer goin’ t’be a trifle disappointed at what he can tell ye.”
The infamous Baker was cooking up a show. “And what is that, Phoebus?”
“Absolutely nothin’, because he’s dead as dead, an’ maybe a mite deader’n that. Over in his office—y’see that there window? About twenty-four hours, I make it, more or less, thrust through the eye somethin’ horrible-like, an’ smellin’ to the Core. Don’t know what happened in there, but the people hereabouts are mortally afraid t’go in there an’ get his body. The flies’re somethin’ awful, too.”
“It sounds like something I would have done. Which eye was it, right or left?” Phoebus had something definite in mind, and Arran had decided to help him.
“Right eye, sir. Straight through whatever brains he owned an’ into the stucco behind him. But there I go again, fergettin’ the manners: this here’s Praffinman Twenty-nine, Chairthingy of the Council of Burrow Mayors, somethin’ like that. When Shoomer turned up so willfully dead, I brought ye Praffinman, instead!”
Burrow Mayor Praffinman Twenty-nine was one of the homeliest human beings Arran had ever seen, with greasy locks, a comical moustache, and a nose almost the size of Phoebus’s fist, with nostrils they could have docked a steam launch in. Just now the fellow was upon his knees, fingers entwined together, hands uplifted. “Don’t hurt me! Please don’t kill me! I’m harmless! I can assist you! I’ll give you anything! I’ll do anything! We have no money! These others took our crops and our machinery! Do you like our females? Take them! Take them! I’ll help you find where they hid all the pretty ones! I beg you! Please!”
“Do shut up.” Arran took Loreanna’s pistol out of his waistband and shot him in the knee with it. The Burrow Mayor screamed and pitched over backward as the echoes of the deafening pistol shot rang unfamiliar through the plaza’s atmosphere.
“Quiet him down, Phoebus, and stop that bleeding. There are questions I want answered, or I’ll ruin his other knee and go upward from there. Tell him, Phoebus.”
The first officer whistled slowly and shook his head, stooping over the wounded bureaucrat to help him. The game was over for Phoebus. He had never seen Arran do anything like this before, nor seen his captain altogether this thirsty for revenge. Upon the other hand, he had never seen Arran’s daughter disappear or his wife abandon him for a younger man. Being Krumm, he said as much.
“You are courageous, old friend.” Arran lowered the hammer of the little pistol before jamming it into his waistband. “And with a high regard for the truth.”
Tending the sobbing man’s knee, he nodded cautiously. “That I do, sir.”
“Then be aware of this truth, old friend. Loreanna did not leave me for any younger man. Loreanna did not leave me at all, not of her own free will, nor, I wager, under her own power. I do not believe that now, and I refused to believe it, even before I had the evidence against it. The only revenge I hope for—and I do hope for it, Phoebus, with every fiber of my being—is against the bastard Woulf, only after I know my Loreanna is safe and sound, or dead.”
He looked down at the mayor and laid his hand upon the grip-frame of the pistol. “As I told you that day,” Arran went on, “we quarreled, something we almost never do. For some reason, Woulf concealed himself inside the conrad and attempted to give an appearance that they had been up to no good. But this is Loreanna, Phoebus. No one was ever better loved than her by me—unless it was me by her! Something evil has been done to her, and I mean to find out what!”
Now he drew the pistol out again. Hastily, Phoebus backed away from the mayor. “Look: this is her waltherweapon. If Loreanna had abandoned me of her own volition, she would have taken this with her or left it upon the table or bed with its extra magazine, because I gave it to her. Instead, I found it beneath the settee. This fell from her dress pocket during a struggle of some sort.”
Phoebus broke into a grin and nodded. “I thought better of her meself, I did. We’ll find her, me boy—an’ right as rain. Now what would ye have of me?
Arran pulled the hammer of the waltherweapon back. “Hold this idiot so that I can shoot him in his other knee—unless he begins telling me what I wish to know. Somebody has been here before us, and I will discover who it was!”
CHAPTER XXXIX:
A TOUCH OF THE ULSIC
High upon an upper deck, they heard a bell.
Down here below, all they could hear was their own breathing.
And all they could see was nothing at all.
In some civilizations it had been torturers and executioners. In some it had been those who collected human wastes for a living and disposed of them. In some it had been those who prepared the dead for burial or cremation. In some it had been businessmen. In every civilization it should have been those who accumulated and wielded power—but that had never happened, and likely never would. These were the “untouchables,” whose livelihood was perceived as so invidious that it contaminated anybody who practiced it, unto the seventh generation.
In this civilization—which had no science, and almost no engineering, just technology “borrowed” from a thousand other civilizations over the course of a thousand years—it was the ignoble souls who struggled without thanks, simply to maintain the physical structure upon which everybody depended for survival.
Andboard Twenty-five and his lifemate Yiingboard Twenty-five were a pair of lowly §-field mechanics who, for all they knew about the subject, passed on to them by their families or discovered secretly and illegally by themselves, would have been wealthy and famous in the Monopolity—although they had no means of knowing it—and respectable and prosperous, even in the Coordinated Arm.
At this particular moment, however, it appeared that they were expected to perform as plumbers, or perhaps as el
ectricians. In any case, by official order emanating from the highest authority, they were being transported some five million klommes—manacled and blindfolded—in order to effect repairs upon the various life-support devices of no less a personage than one of the Overmoms.
The air was very stale in the cabin. Small, hard-bodied things with many legs scurried across its floor. From time to time, somebody came to give them water, stuff an emergency ration into their mouths, and leave them again. No thought whatever had been given to their sanitary requirements, and now they wondered whether they would even be given time, at the end of their journey, for the circulation in their hands to restore itself. If not, then they were doomed.
Andboard Twenty-five and Yiingboard Twenty-five were afraid. At the start, they had spoken with one another of their fears—and greatly magnified them in the process. Now they simply suffered together in silence. Their friends Charjack Forty-two and Lenjack Forty-two, the previous technicians assigned such a task—literally their predecessors—had returned to the mechanics’ Alliance that they all called home, had regaled Andboard Twenty-five and Yiingboard Twenty-five with their adventure, and had promptly been arrested and hauled away, never to be seen again. At first, their successors had worried that it was merely because the two had spoken, and they, themselves, had feared being arrested.
Some little while later, Andboard Twenty-five and Yiingboard Twenty-five had heard, from illegal but reliable sources, that Overmom Elnerose—whose life-support contrivances Charjack Fortysix and Lenjack Forty-six had labored upon—had died, following their attempted repairs, at the age of 104. Now Andboard Twenty-five and Yiingboard Twenty-five wondered what sort of task, for what sort of “client” awaited them, and with what “reward” for their toils, afterward.
Something tiny, hanging from the bulkhead upon a silken thread, brushed the face of Yiingboard Twenty-five. She jumped, startling Andboard Twenty-five. Of a sudden, they felt the starship give a tremendous lurch, and heard an explosion, then shouting, then sounds of running feet, and thrustibles being used.
For an instant the ship skewed wildly, then settled, apparently taken aback.
The door to their cabin—scarcely more than a locker—burst open, showering them with splinters, and they were handled roughly, but only for a moment, as someone pulled them into the companionway where they lay upon the decking.
A young girl’s voice said, “Yes, Hanebuth, these are indeed the ones we were told about. Get those things off them, please. I would have a word with them. After I find them someplace to wash up, I will meet you again upon the quarterdeck.”
Arran leaned into the man’s face and folded his hands together before his own.
“Now let us confirm that I have understood you, good Praffinman: a young human female, bearing some variety of silent, deadly, technologically advanced weapon nobody recognized, riding a nightmare monster straight into an active §-field, leading thousands of ugly aliens, similarly mounted and similarly armed.”
“This is that what you claim raided your little world,” Phoebus added, “killed your leader, and stole everything you had not the foresight to nail down?”
Praffinman nodded, very eager to please, encouraged by his fear, by the medicine (a shroom tincture, harvested upon Skye) he had been given for the pain in his knee, as well as an understandable desire to keep his other knee intact. “Indeed, Captain Islay, you are entirely correct. Er, you, too, Mr. Krumm.”
Not wishing to be delayed upon this asteroid any longer, and unwilling to give away the secret of his fighters just yet—even to an unperceptive moron such as this—Arran had called for the new lubberlift to be lowered from the Osprey. He, Phoebus, and their “guest” were presently using it to return to Arran’s warship. It was an elaborate, old-fashioned model, once intended for the comfort of wealthy passengers, although the sparser level they occupied now had apparently been reserved for common starsailors. Through decoratively beveled panes, Arran watched the remainder of his forces withdraw from the asteroid.
Praffinman Twenty-nine, Chairperson of the Burrow Mayors’ Council, bobbed his ugly head up and down enthusiastically. “I tell you, Captain, they were everywhere, slaughtering simple farmers whose only offense was to attempt to defend themselves with their tilling implements, stripping our Oplyte soldiers of their weapons with which to arm themselves illegally, taking whatever they desired without so much as a by-your-leave. The assistance Alliance Leader Shoomer Zero Nine begged for from the Fifteenth Locality has even still not arrived!”
Arran shook his head. There was a pattern, here.
“Is this here negligence a usual sort of occurrence?” Phoebus asked him, interested. He lounged back upon the same circular sailor’s bench they all shared, filling the atmosphere within the lubberlift with smoke from a reeking pipe.
“No,” the Burrow Mayor responded, “it was not usual.”
This was far from the first intimation they had had that something out of the ordinary was happening in this system. Judging from the number of ships they had seen leaving it—Arran no longer believed it was coincidence or good management that he had run across eleven warships upon the straightest line from here to the imperia-conglomerate—how few they had encountered since, and various signs he had seen upon this asteroid and others, the entire civil structure of the civilization was in the process of being plundered by its own leaders to provide troops and other resources for some reason he could not yet fathom.
He was not altogether certain that he wanted to.
“Nothing in the past nine months has been usual!” Praffmman complained bitterly. “I don’t know why the Fifteenth Locality or the Aggregate won’t help us! There have been rumors about their needing troops and vessels for the war.”
“Against the ‘Coordinated Arm,’ whatever it proves to be,” Arran nodded. “We began hearing about that with the first place like yours that we raided, and I discover that I grow more curious about it with every day that passes. One always hopes that the enemy of one’s enemy will prove to be one’s friend. We shall return to that. But just now, tell me, what kinds of things did they take?”
“The bandits, you mean?” Praffmman blinked. “Food, weapons, anything at all technological. Anything to do with light structural materials or Deep-going life support. Above all, anything with a touch of the ulsic about it.”
“A touch of the ulsic, you say?” He turned to Krumm. “A touch of the ulsic.”
Over the fifteen years that they had been together, Arran had been taught many useful things by Loreanna, a perceptive historian, anthropologist, and social observer who might have had a remarkable career in academia, had that been her desire.
One of those things was that the word ulsic, applied to such everyday artifacts as spreighformers, a flagon that kept drinks at whatever temperature they had been when poured in, rooms that turned lights out whenever everybody left them, had been an acronym, hundreds of years ago, for “ultra large scale integrated circuitry.” Those, in the human civilizations he knew, who could manipulate or repair such things were rare; those who could create them were almost nonexistent. In this day and age, the word might as well have been “magic.”
How many mindlessly murderous looters, Arran pondered, would refuse the offer of women he was certain Praffinman’s predecessor must have made with the same alacrity that Praffinman had himself—provided that whoever killed him had allowed him the time—while searching for the highest bits of technology available?
I might have, Arran thought to himself, but who else?
Just then, the new lubberlift arrived at the stern of the Osprey with a bump! and was immediately drawn into her new liftdeck. The clash of closing hatches afterward, and the accompanying hiss of freshly admitted atmosphere were welcome sounds to both the captain and his first officer. They and their good crewbeings had worked hard, and for a long time, just to be able to hear them now.
Mr. Tompkins, looking freshly scrubbed and fit after such a discouraging martial
exercise, was waiting to speak with Arran as he stepped out of the lubberlift.
“Welcome back aboard, sir. Mr. Krumm. Compliments of Mr. Suprynowicz, as well, who would have you informed that several of the long-range scouts you dispatched when this objective was secured have returned earlier than awaited, with news of a heavily laden transport vessel inbound, for a change, half a day’s sail from this place. We believe, Mr. Suprynowicz and I, that there’s more than a chance that this ship may take us closer to enemy headquarters, sir.”
Arran nodded. “Whatever else may be going on, the bosses still have to eat?”
“Something like that, sir.” Mr. Tompkins gave his captain a young man’s grin, incongruously through his snow-white beard, and his blue eyes twinkled merrily.
”I agree. Mr. Krumm and I shall be on deck directly. Meanwhile, if it pleases you, kindly take this gentlebeing and lock him up somewhere that the killer-moss will not get him immediately. Get him something to eat and ship’s clothes to wear. Look to his wound. If he lives, we’ll have him refinishing shipmesh.”
”Aye aye, sir!’ And Tompkins and Praffinman were gone.
He turned to his first officer.”Phoebus, I would have you gather up the rest of the auxiliaries, then bid the sailing master take our Osprey at her best speed gently to intercept that inbound transport! Emphasize, to all hands, that there will be no visible battle damage done, for I have a use for her!
“Aye aye, sir!” And Phoebus disappeared, as well.
Arran, for his part, retired to his lonely quarters to clean Loreanna’s pistol.
The slaver transport captain was in his cabin when Arran discovered him, weeping copiously into his beard. “I shall be held responsible,” he sobbed, “even though it is not my fault! The regular patrol was suspended months ago! I had no escort! All of our military ships and our Oplyte soldiers with them, are being sent out of the system for some reason. And now, because there will be no one else to take the blame, I will be court-martialed and executed, and my male relatives converted into Oplytes, and all my female relatives sold into prostitution!”
Coordinated Arm 02: Bretta Martyn Page 42