by Jo Clayton
Lylunda stepped over a sprawled drunk, ignoring his mumbled comments that she couldn’t understand anyway, waited for a sled to whine out, then moved quickly through the opening into the vast dim interior.
Several men moved to meet her, the leader a tall thin man with a face she almost remembered.
“I think you’re lost, woman. This isn’t Star Street.”
As soon as he spoke, she knew who he was. He had a high whiny voice that hadn’t changed at all. “You forgot me already, Krink? I’ve an appointment with Grinder. Tell him, Luna’s here.”
“Walking with your head up, huh? Amu, go see if the Jun Jiraba wants to see this urd.”
Grinder Jiraba leaned back in his chair and rubbed a broad hand across his chin. He’d lived hard since last she’d last seen him and had lost bits of himself in the process. Two of the fingers were nubs; a scar just missed the tip of his right eye and slashed a ravine across his check. His coarse black hair was still thick, but peppered with white and gray. He wore it clipped almost to his skull, barely a centimeter long all over. His shoulders were meaty and his once slim body had acquired a thin padding of fat that did little to conceal the hard muscles beneath, while the weight gave him a force he hadn’t had when he was thin and beautiful.
“Sony to see you back here,” he said.
“When you have to go to ground, best do it where you know the traps.”
“You think you know them?”
“Better than some. It’s been a while and things change, but not that much from what I’ve seen.”
“You aren’t on any passenger lists.”
“Sure of that? What about a Freeship or a false name?”
“I know everyone who goes in and out of Star Street. It’s my business to know. And my business to know who’s chasing you. Don’t play the fool. I remember you too well for that.”
“I’ve been smuggling this and that since I got my ticket. Smuggled myself down. Didn’t want my name on lists Jaink knows who gets a look at.”
“You didn’t answer the question, Lylunda Elang. Who’s chasing you?”
She hesitated, but she’d been over this before, over and over it till she was sick of it; it was a danger to tell him, but if he picked up someone coming after her, he’d squeeze it out of him anyway. Besides, he was right; it was his business to know what was going on in his patch. “The Kliu Berej. They’ve set a bringalive price on my head. It’ll probably take them a while to track me here, but there are noses around able to follow a grain of salt the length of a star arm.”
“Hm. You snatched some Taalav crystals?”
“I’m a smuggler, not a thief. Say someone did and they want him and they think I can tell them where he is. Easy money for you, Grinder. All you have to do is go over the Wall and walk down Star Street.” She waited for his response, more tense than she’d expected to be, watching his eyes, seeing the heat of crystal fever wake in them. She thought she’d judged Grinder and the circumstances that bound him well enough, but you never really, knew how people would jump when pressure was on them.
She knew the moment he made up his mind. He wouldn’t sell her. Not yet, anyway. Not till he lost hope of squeezing crystals out of her…
“I wouldn’t hand those borts on Star Street a used turd,” he said and pushed his chair back. “We’ll go to my house. Want to show you what you’ve got to deal with.” He stood, came round the desk. “Zaintze said she told you about my Second. Herred, he’s not an easy boy. Other kids called him Bug because of the exo. He picked it up and that’s all he lets anyone call him now. Kids, you can’t beat that sort of kak out of them. Bug’s mad all the time at me because I didn’t try it. He’s too young yet to understand that it’d just get worse if I did. Be-a favor if you got him to see that, but I won’t be holding my breath.”
She put a hand on his arm, stopped him before he opened the door. “Speaking about holding your breath, what about Krink? You trust him?”
“The length of a micron if he’s wearing handcuffs and leg irons. He does work I don’t want to do, myself. Efficiency, Luna. Remember ol’ Efficiency Gidur?”
She chuckled, chanted, “The right tool for the right job.” Sobering, she tapped her fingers on the hard muscies. “Watch out this one doesn’t turn in your hand. He’s ambitious. I could smell it on him.”
“Ba da, he’s already tried it and got kicked in the butt for being an idiot. Better the flaws you know. He’s a little worm, thinks little, and couldn’t plan his way out of a paper bag. He doesn’t know it, though, and that’s one of the things that makes him dangerous.” He opened the door, stood aside to let her pass. “Luna, arguing life with you is one of the things I missed most after you took off.”
As they walked down the stairs together, she murmured, “I never understood why you stayed. You were smart enough to get out.”
He didn’t answer till they reached the main floor. “This is my place. I wouldn’t feel right anywhere else. I’m not like you. You cut your ties so easy. You were gone even before you left.”
“I never had ties, Grinder. Not then. Not now.”
7
Lylunda stood on the balcony outside Grinder’s company parlor. His house was on the high side of the Izar, tall enough to catch breezes over the Wall, breezes not tainted by ship exhaust and slaughterhouses. It was a big place, built in a square about a large central court with a fountain and trees and flower beds. And children everywhere.
“Kak! Grinder. They all yours?”
He grinned. “That’s what their mothers tell me. Actually, no. Couple of the youngest are my grandkids. Would you believe it, Luna? Me, a grandpa.”
She watched him beaming down on the busy scene and felt a coldness start to gather under her ribs. There was something so… proprietorial and… oh… lethal about him. This is my place, he said. My place. My house. My children. My women. If he starts thinking about me like that… “You’d best let me have a look at Lerdo’s documentation. I have to know what I’m talking about when I meet your son.”
6. Worming into Haundi Zurgile
1
Worm slipped the Kinu Kanti into Hutsartes atmosphere above the major continent of the Wild Half, the hemisphere the Behilarr hadn’t bothered to settle yet. He went warily at first, then relaxed as the readouts told him that what he’d picked up about the place was true, not enough security to keep out a tesh fly.
When he was at a level to go on visual screens, he looked at the tangle of unsavory vegetation sliding beneath him and decided the Behilarr didn’t have to worry about anyone coveting this place. He shifted direction, went circumpolar, and began a metal scan of the coastline that belonged to the settled continent, keeping the visuals on to give him a look at what was being probed. Low and slow ate power, but he was operating on the Kliu’s credit chip, so he’d topped up at the transfer station and was feeling comfortably prodigal at the moment.
He slowed further when he began picking up a signal as a string of islands came into the screen. Metallic smear, size uncertain, shape uncertain-he was nearly on top of it before he could nail which island it was on.
There was a hollow in the vegetation with withered edges, enough to suggest a ship had put down here and the very faint traces he was picking up had to mean it was a smuggler’s ship, equipped to escape most detection.
He chortled as he changed direction again and started back across the ocean. “Lylunda Elang. Gotcha.”
He set the Kinu Kanti down in a small stony canyon in the coast range of a continent in the Wild Half and started cycling through the shutdown/conceal procedures, brooding all the while over the last thing his father had told him. Keep those scivs sweet, Worm. They’ve got your brothers. Two of them now because you din’t bother using that useless lump a gristle atop your neck You shouldda known we couldda fetched Xman out of contract easy enough. I tell you to your face, we gotta get Mort loose, he’s the only one of the lot of you who’s got the guts to run this place. Snake over ’t next Rift, h
e been shooting eyes this way. So you keep ’em happy till we get that girl and make the trade.
Worm shivered when he thought of his older brother and some of the things that Mort had done to give him the rep that kept Snake and Herbie and the other Riftmen backed off. If Mort hadn’t been his brother and blood was sacred after all, he’d have been just as happy to leave him scrabbling about Pillory scurfing off other gits as murderous as him.
Time to do the sweetening, to let the Kliu know he was on the job and making time. He worked over the message for several minutes, then played it back. Am down on Hutsarte, Behilarr Colony. Have got suggestive though inconclusive evidence the smuggler is here. Will be going undercover for close-up observation. Will keep under advisement the listed possible agents of Excavations Ltd. and report if any such are spotted. Clandestine conditions of investigation require limiting exposure to detection, so contact will be sporadic for the next few weeks.
It seemed adequate, saying as little as possible while giving the impression he was being forthcoming. As good as anything Xman could write. Xman was the talker of the family, the tongue that was quicker even than Mort’s knifes. Worm sighed, missing his brother a lot as he coded and compressed the message, squirted it on its way. “Choke on that, stinking scivs.”
He waited a while longer, watching the readouts to be sure the squirt hadn’t pinned him, then he extracted the ship’s flikit and once again started across the ocean.
2
After he hid the flikit, Worm spent the rest of the night trudging across prickly wasteland. He detested walking, he hated all this ugly nothing full of dust and stinks and malevolent thorns doing their best to rip his flesh; but he wanted to be sure the flikit would be where he put it when he needed it again, so.it-had to be in a place no sane man would bother looking at.
He reached the Landing Field in the gray dawn light, brushed himself off, and caught a jit heading for Haundi Zurgile’s Star Street.
He found what he was looking for at the end of a narrow side alley, a hole-in-the-wall called The Rainy Season. The name didn’t matter, it was the smell he recognized. Xman said it was cheap drink, cheaper brainrot, mixed with the stink of maybes never gonna happen and the lowgrade fever of hate/fear. Sure enough, whenever he smelled it, Worm knew he was in a place he understood and with people he knew even if he’d never seen them before.
He dumped his gearsac on the floor between the stool and the bar, then slid ’onto the stool so the sac lay between his feet.
The barscort was an old, sad Lommertoerkan, his facial folds so deep and packed so tightly together, he looked like someone had shoved his skin through a pleater. “Ya?”
“Any cohanq?”
“Five minims a shot.” The Lommertoerkan’s voice was high and sweet; if Worm closed his eyes, it could have been a woman talking. “See the coin before I pour.”
Worm set a brass gelder on the wood. “Local exchange will do me, gonna be here a while.”
He sipped at the cohanq, expecting the hard bite of barrel squeeze and was surprised to find it sliding down without ripping the lining off his throat. “Good stuff,” he said and could’ve kicked himself when he heard the surprise in the words.
The pleats on the Lommertoerkan’s face spread slightly around what could have been a smile, then he said in his soft, sweet voice, “Trade’s brisk. Should you pick up something good, I can find it a home.”
“Luck up and bit me in the ass or I’d do a deal.” He drained the last drops of the cohanq and inspected the pile of local gelt, turning each plaque over, scowling at the holoed face and the enigmatic inscriptions. They were all alike. Fifteen of them. Twenty to a brass unless the Toerk was cheating him. He pushed five of them back. “Again.”
When the barscort slid his glass back to him, Worm took another swallow and felt a warm buzz forming in his head. He enjoyed it for a moment, then blinked at the Toerk. “Be here a while.”
“So you said.”
Worm moved the plaques with his finger. “All outgo ’n no in don’t play.”
“Labor exchange over by the Tinkerman’s lot. Ask anyone, they’ll point you right.”
“Could do, uh-huh. Could drop by here again, maybe you’d know someone could use a good lock man.”
“Drop a name. References as it were.”
“Texugarra. Gran Jalla Pit.”
“Ah. Sweet lady that she is.”
Worm snorted. “Texugarra would drop his beard should he hear that.”
“And what a beard it is, heh?”
“Every hair white as Menaviddan monofil and twice as tough.”
“Let us say you come along here round midafternoon tomorrow. You’ve found a place to stay?”
“Just got off the jit.”
The Lommertoerkan found a stylo and a bit of paper, scrawled a few words on it. “Empling has a room or two, I put down where to find him. If you don’t take to that place, look round there. Plenty of others.” He dropped the paper in front of Worm, swept the rest of the plaques into a side pocket of his tunic, and went to serve another patron.
Worm finished the drink, sipping slowly, savoring. the sweet fire of the cohanq. In a little while he’d have to go to work again, but for the moment he was just Worm and nothing more, no worries to twist his gut and give him nightmares where he relived things he hated having seen the first time.
3
The night was hot and sticky, a cloud layer blocking moon and starlight and pressing on the air until it was so thick it was more like breathing water. Worm ignored the, sweat rolling down his back and inside his barrier gloves and huddled in the deepest shadow he could find while Keyket went through the ID dance with the guard inside. The man had taken the bribe all right, but he was making sure he opened to the right thieves. Worm didn’t blame him, knowing how pissed a type like Grinder got when someone swooped in and snatched his prize; he just wished the git would hurry and make up his mind.
And he wished it would rain and wash the crud from the air. He was working up a real hate for this stinking world. The sooner he got off it, the better he’d like it, but it was going to be tougher than he thought glomming that femme. She was here all right; he’d seen her ambulating around with Grinder’s crippled kid. Hadn’t figured she’d have that kind of connections. Meant he had to be jodaddin sure he had it right, ’cause he wouldn’t get a second chance.
A siss from Keyket brought him out of shadow. The door opened, and they hurried inside.
“Bug has the sec sys tamed.” The guard was whispering, the sweat on Ins face from more than the heat. “Says you got a clear hour before the bypass starts to strain.”
Keyket nodded. “Gotcha. Where?”
“I better show you. This setup’s so messed only the keph can keep straight what’s where. Bug’s got dollies already there.”
* * *
The first lock took the longest time, almost twenty minutes of their hour. It was a tricky bit of ’tronics with layered freeze triggers and a mutating key, but he’d done tougher and he knew better than to lose hold on his patience.
He’d just got the lock to signal open when a brief waggle on the readout warned him there was another trick in the shipper’s bag. He swore under his breath and-ran the palmscanner around the crack where the lid fitted onto the base. Just a pressure spot. Simple but wicked if you missed it. He pressed his thumb onto the spot, the lock hummed, and the lid to the container cracked open.
He left the loading to Keyket and the guard, and moved on to the next container. The pattern was the same, so he went through that one fast as kobber beer through a gut By the time he finished the third, they’d lifted the packets they wanted from the first and transferred them to Grinder’s box. He shifted over there, closed the lid, reset the count and the pressure spot, engaged the lock, then stood waiting while Keyket finished pulling what he wanted from the second container.
Twenty minutes more and they were out of there, the warehouse sealed up again, no evidence anything had ha
ppened-except for some stuff gone missing off invoice and who could say where that went down. It hadn’t surprised Worm that Grinder knew exactly what was in each of those boices or that he wasn’t simply cleaning them out. He’d worked for smart and he’d worked for dumb and from what he’d seen here, Grinder was on the high side of smart. Reminded him a lot of Mort. Which made him shiver when he thought of what would happen if he missed the snatch and blew his cover.
A few steps before they hit the main street, Keyket gave his shoulder a friendly punch. “Never seen slicker, Worm. Grinder likes gits who know how to do the job. You better go shuck y’ tools. I’ll meet you at The Tank for the payout.”
4
Worm followed Keyket into the small back office and stood by the door, his shoulders hunched, his eyes fixed on the legs of the blocky desk, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Once they knew what he could do with locks, low-level managers like Tank got real nervous if they thought he was looking around too much. They never realized it wasn’t what he saw that mattered so much, but whether he was carrying. And he was carrying; getting into Tank’s office wasn’t a chance he could pass by.
The sensacube in his pocket turned warm against his thumb, giving him a clear to start the tabs and tictacs sewn onto the jacket pulling in images and tracing energy flow.
Tank counted out the plaques into two piles, one larger than the other; his hands were quick and accurate, small hands for such a block of a man. Worm watched them and thought gambler. Whatever he is now, he got his stake gambling.