Crystal Heat tst-3

by Jo Clayton

  “I expect you will. If you’re finished with me?” She stood. “I’d like a Courier to escort me back to my apartment. I have things there that I’ll need.”

  “We’ll deal with that in a moment. Walk to the clan shield on the side wall, then back to your chair.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll have you whipped if you don’t. Walk.” – He kept her walking about the room for several minutes: About midpoint in her peregrinations, while her back was turned to the door, a woman came in.

  “You can sit now, Lylunda. Answer Eketari’s questions.”

  “What is your name?” The woman’s voice was soft, barely audible.

  Lylunda looked at her father. His face was unreadable, not a muscle twitching. She drew in a breath, let it out as she turned to face the woman. “Lylunda Elang.”

  “Lylunda Elang. Say again.”

  “Lylunda Elang.”

  “Tell me what your friends call you.”

  “Greet me, Luna. As you would a friend.”

  “Kex zu, Eka. That what you want?”

  “Say again.”

  “Kex zu, Eka.”

  “Kex zu, Luna.”

  The woman’s voice was changing, becoming more and more like Lylunda’s; it had happened so gradually, she hadn’t thought about what it meant, but understanding came like a slap in the face. She swung round to confront her father. “She’s supposed to take my place, isn’t she. To fool Grinder into thinking I’m tucked in and waiting for him. Well?”

  “It pleases me that you’re intelligent, Lylunda, though you do talk too much. I brought you here because I wanted to see you, that’s the truth. And because it became clear to me that you’ll probably get ground up and thrown away if you stay here. And because I don’t wish to face the choices you’re forcing on me. Ekateri-mun, do you have sufficient material?”

  “I think so, Anaitar-jaz.”.

  “Excellent. Jaink bless you, daughter. May you fare well.”

  Lylunda saw the stunrod, started to protest. Before she got any words out, her father shot her.

  9. Worm at Work

  1

  Worm leaned closer to the mirror, drew his fingers along his face; his skin was getting the orange peel texture it always did when the beard-inhibitor was nearing the weak end of its life span. Sama sama, the cloud cover and makeup should do the trick They say rainy season’s about due. Wish it would rain, clear some of this crap out of the air. He worked over his face until he had the look he wanted, an ivory white mask with a small curvy mouth painted pink, a pink flower stenciled onto his right cheek, another above his left eye. He eased the pewter wig onto his head and combed it out until it flowed in deep waves about his face and down his back.

  He took the dark blue robe with the silver embroidery from its wall hook, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and stood for a moment simply enjoying the cool sensuous feel as the draft from the window blew the heavy silk against him. His father and his brothers didn’t understand how it made him feel and he’d never dare tell them, but they were happy enough to use his talent for impersonation in their schemes.

  He sighed, finished dressing, and went out.

  * * *

  The apartment’s front door and the one that led into the weedy untended back yard were both plasteel with a thin veneer of local wood, the wood cracking and shrinking away from the hard gray core. Despite their appearance they were solid and sturdy, as were the frames into which they fitted. And the locks were better than the usual junk that builders put on rentals. They wouldn’t keep Worm out for more than a minute or two, but once he’d worked them over, they’d do. The furniture sagged, the carpet was a dust trap and had long ago lost any pattern it might have started out with, the facilities in the fresher and the kitchen were hardly adequate, but there was a storage shed in the yard that he could rent along with Me rooms; it was large enough to house the flikit and sturdy enough to discourage idle curiosity. And the back end of the yard was the Izar Wall, so he was close to where he needed to be. The place would do.

  He counted out the first month’s rent,for the rooms and the shed, his hands in dainty white leather gloves that the landlord eyed with a covetous leer. Then:he added two more plaques. “I am not to be disturbed,” he murmured in the high, light voice he affected when in this role. “I desire peace and solitude for my meditations.”

  “Of course.” The landlord’s voice was so carefully free of innuendo that he might as well have shouted his thoughts.

  “I will be bringing my possessions tomorrow in the evening. Late, I think.”

  “Would you be wanting a serviteur?’I have a couple I rent now and then. Or I could point you to the tot shop doWn the street.”

  “There is no need. Possessions bind the soul, so I travel with few.”

  “Right, then. I’ll leave you to it. The keypacs are on the table there. Anything you need, you know where I live, give a bang on my door.”

  “I thank you for your courtesy.”

  On the next night, Worm opened locks for Grinder, then hurried home, packed his surveillance equipment, and transferred it to the newly hired rooms. He rode a jit out to the landing field, tramped across the wasteland to the place where he’d left the flikit, brought it to the yard, and maneuvered it into the shed. After he set the, new lock on the shed’s door, he dragged himself over to his official residence and collapsed on the bed as the sun came up red and furious, half lost in barren clouds.

  2

  Worm sat naked in a chair he’d covered with a sheet because he didn’t want to think of the diseases that might live in its cracks and crannies. The EYEscreen hummed subliminally on the table before him. The room was hot and steamy because he needed an open window, so he couldn’t run the conditioner. He wiped his hand on a towel, slipped it into the control glove and began moving the EYE in small back-forth, up-down movements to bring back the skill that lay dormant in his nerve paths.

  When he was ready, he sent the EYE zipping out the window, over the Izar Wall, then took it through the,streets, gliding along in the shadow of the eaves where its faint shimmer was no longer visible. His father would skin him by inches if he let anything happen to that EYE. It was a bit of spoil from one of Mort’s first jobs, and his father was sentimental about it. Besides, military EYEs with wide-spectrum viewers and built-in ice needlers whose poison was capable of dropping a Kirrgen giant were expensive and not all that available even at the darkest end of the Gray Market.

  He spent almost an hour crossing and recrossing the Izar, making sure the preacher types had really cleared out. He was sick of listening to complaints about them. Got so it was all Keyket would talk about. Besides, having them about meant that the woman bedded down at-the Warehouse and there was no possibility of getting at her while she stayed holed up like that.

  He stopped the EYE under a window ledge of the building across from the Warehouse and waited for Lylunda Elang to emerge. The sun was oozing through banks of heat clouds, half of it already behind the horizon, and the light over the Izar was the bloody red of burner elements. The street was nearly empty; even the whores had gone inside to eat and talk and wait for dark when it would be cool enough to bring the customers back.

  When Lylunda stepped into the street, Worm sent the EYE after her-and quickly discovered that he wasn’t the only watcher. One of Krink’s thugs, a local called Baliagerr, strolled along beside her, making no attempt to hide what he was doing although he kept far enough away so that she didn’t see him.

  When she stopped in the entry of a rooming house to key herself in, Worm debated sending the EYE in with her. By the time she got the door open, he’d decided that was a bad idea and set it hovering beside a dormer window on the house across the street. A short time later he saw her standing in a window, watching the sunset. Her room was third floor, corner.

  “Right. Now let’s have a” look at the neighborhood.” He sent the EYE exploring the area around the rooming house, paying close attention t
o possible places of concealment and the foot traffic, flaking the data transmitted so he could study it later. When his eyes blurred from fatigue and his glove hand started to shake, he pulled the EYE back to base and went home to see if Grinder’s Exec had left him a call.

  3

  As rain roared down outside, Worm ambled through the basement of the Warehouse. It was the first night this week he hadn’t had a job for Grinder and he was wondering if he should set a sono-pickup somewhere in here so he could keep better track of Lylunda as she-went in and out of the keph vault. The more data he had about her movements, the easier it would be to plan the kind of snatch that would spring him clear with the woman without getting him killed.

  He’d been watching her every night for a week now. So far she’d left the Warehouse at the same time, taken exactly the same route until she reached her home area; sometimes she bought supplies for the fresher or the kitchen, sometimes she stopped to talk to people along the street; mostly, though, she just went into her room and stayed there.

  Whenever she left the Warehouse, she had a guard. There were four of them, rotating the assignment between them. Baliagerr, Arkel, Rodzin the Shrink, and Vlees. Grinder’s men, all of them. Could be she’s hired her some protection after the miss at Marrat’s. Could be Grinder’s putting his mark on her. Maybe both. Grah! 1 hope not. That would mess things up so bad.… It was maybe a good thing Xman wasn’t here; he got impatient sometimes and rushed the job. Like he rushed it at the Market…

  Feeling disloyal, Worm stopped thinking that way.

  He heard a scrape on the stairs, and looked up. “Atcha, Bug. What’s doing?”

  Bug negotiated the last stair before he looked up, his exo humming and clicking, his face intent as he watched where he planted his feet. “Hoy, Worm. Nothing on tonight?”

  “What they say. Too much rain. You use a hand there?”

  “Yoh, if you’ll just hold the door back till I’m through.” He palmed the lock, then moved aside to let Worm pull the heavy plug door out of its hole. “You a lock man, do you know about kephs?”

  “This’n that. Hadn’t had formal schooling at it, but I ’prenticed to someone who knew ’m better’n most. How come?”

  “You ever play Tac games?”

  “Some. When I could get away to a Pit. My Fa, he put my brothers and me to working soon’s we could walk almost.”

  “Gets boring, playing the keph all the time. If I don’t dumb him down, he whacks me. If I do, what’s the good of that? It’s not like I was really beating him. Whyn’t you come on down, we have a game or two? Daddo says things are going to be quiet a while now, so you got time.”

  “Bug, don’t know if Grinder’d like that, me being new and an outsider and all.”

  “No big deal, man. We’d be using the dedicated terminals he got me, and keph keeps the record of what you do in that room so Daddo can see it’s all right.” He managed a shrug, expression wiped from his face. “If you don’t wanna, though…”

  “Hey, I just don’t wanna look up and see Krink and his crew coming round to stomp me.” He pulled a clown face, then looked fearfully over his shoulder.

  Bug giggled. “Come on. Daddo got me a new ’un. It was in that box that you’n Keyket fiddled last night. So you and me, we can start off same level. Huh?”

  “Why not.”

  Worm slouched in the chair as he watched the boy loading the game into the machine; he was nervous about the keph picking up on some of the dainties he had scattered about his person, but only a little because he could always explain them as being part of his tools he’d brought along in case a job turned up after all. He had no intention of trying to plant anything in here. That would be just plain stupid.

  He was tired from working nights for Grinder and days on his own business, snatching at sleep when he could find an hour or two free, sleep that often wouldn’t come because of the heat and the nearly intolerable humidity. Maybe with the rains it’d be better, but the season was too new for him to judge. This room was cool, the air clean with the comforting, familiar metallic smells that reminded him of his ship. For a moment he wanted desperately for the snatch to be done, wanted to be off this stinking, miserable mud heap and back in the clean clarity of the insplit. He winced away from the thdught of his Kinu Kanti and the filth she’d be collecting in that canyon where he left her.

  The terminal pinged and he sat up, gathering himself so he could get through the game without turning Bug off him. The boy had access to his father’s plans and some of his thoughts and he’d be a good source if he-were handled right.

  4

  “Lylunda.”

  Down on the floor of the Warehouse, Worm glanced up from the game of hezur-hairi he was playing with three of Krink’s men.

  Grinder was leaning on the landing rail outside his office.

  Worm saw Lylunda’s shoulders tighten. She palmed the latch, locking the plug door, then she turned slowly, a smile pasted onto her face. “Yes, Grinder?”

  “Labaki needs to see you about the Nameday feast. Come to dinner tonight, you can talk to her afterward.”

  “All right. I have to go home first, get cleaned up, and clear away some stuff that needs doing. Dinner around eight?”

  He scowled at her, but it’d been his choice to make this public, and her response had been clever enough to maintain the distance between them. “Eight,” he said and went back inside.

  As Worm gathered in the hairu, he thought, I was right. He going to put the move on her any day now and she knows it. Doesn’t like it much either. Any bets she isn’t thinking of blowing off this whole business and hitting for the ’split? Which reminds me. Something I shouldda done a while ago. Got to get outta here.

  He shook the hairu, cast them into the kaxa, and swore as the numbers cleaned four of his five stakes off the board. “My luck’s took a walk. Maq, any reason I got to hang round here letting you lot walk off with my coin?”

  5

  Cursing the horde of sticky, crawling insects and the corrosive sap of the vines that oozed out at the lightest touch, ate at his wholesuit and etched the clear plastic of the goggles, Worm wriggled through the fecund growth on the island and managed to crawl beneath the camoucloth without touching it.

  The darkness meant he had to use the helmet light to find his way to the ship, which brought more hordes of fliers crashing into him. The wholesuit was sealed and he couldn’t smell the stench he knew had to be out there, but the thought of it was enough to start his stoniach churning.

  He forced himself not to hurry, but it seemed forever before he found the markings on the maintenance hatch. He took the rod of memory plas from his pouch, twisted it, and waited until it finished extending to its full length and extruding rungs like thorns from the sides.

  The hatchlock was simple, but once he had it solved, he didn’t try opening the slide until he’d sprayed the area to clear it of spores and other contaminants and temp-bonded the sticktight to the hull. He spread a sheet of waldoplas over the clean spot, sealed it in place, then pushed the door back. Working through the plas, he broke the temp-bond, stripped the shrinkwrap off the sticktight, reached inside, and pressed the flat patch against the wall until he felt the brief heat as it glued itself in place and took on the coloring of its surroundings. It wouldn’t activate its beacon until the ship had dropped into the insplit; until then it was just a bump on the wall and as near undetectable as anything he’d worked with-and it would go back to being a lump the moment the ship surfaced into real-space.

  Getting out was faster than getting in.

  An hour later the flikit was back in the shed, he’d shucked the wholesuit and run at through the sterilizer, and was in the fresher of the safehouse, playing the hand-held needle spray over his body, washing away even the memory of all that creeping, crawling life.

  6

  Bug glanced slyly at Worm, who was froWning over the situation his players were in and trying to decide how to extract them. “What you getting D
addo for his Nameday feast?”

  Worm blinked. “Huh? I’m supposed to get him something?”

  “You don’t hafta, but he likes it if you do.”

  “Ha! Fa’s like that, too, but he’s never satisfied whatever you get. What would your Daddo think was the right kind of present?”

  “Time’s up. My turn. Doesn’t have to be anything special, just show you took time to think about him. He likes knives. If you could find one that looked a little bit different…”

  Worm contemplated developments on the screen. “You are seriously evil, Bug. How am I going to get my men out of that bind? He going to be expecting everyone over to his house that day?”

  “In and out. Some stay for dinner, some just come in and give the gift.” Bug frowned at the screen. With Worm’s hands hidden behind the workshield around the sensorboard, he couldn’t watch the setup; he had to catch the small changes as they showed up on the mosaic so he could get ready to counter Worm’s move.

  7

  Late at night in the safehouse, Worm bent over the board, trying out the steps of his plan, running it over and over so he could locate possible trip spots.