by Jo Clayton
Act II, scene 1 The spy walks down the street, greeting everyone she knows and spreading her story about, hoping she’s, soothing the jitters of the little worm who’s tailing her.
She stopped in at Cara’s cook shop. “Two of your meat pies, hm, Cara my love. Wrap them up tight and throw in a couple of napkins, I’m going for a sail in a flit and the Tinkerman gets snarky about stains.”
The older woman shook her head. “You’ve blown a circuit, Shadow. Anyone who’d go voluntarily out over that stinking soupmix…” She clicked her tongue, then went to work wrapping up the pies.
9
“Act III scene 1,” Shadith chanted to the wind as she took the flit in a sweeping curve across the water. “The spy has fooled them all and says an unfond farewell to Haundi Zurgile the chief city of the colony world Hutsarte”. And Grinder Jiraba can go suck eggs.”
As she tonic the flit low and finished the curve, she saw that she’d celebrated a bit too soon. There was a dark speck over near the horizon, almost out of sight. “Stinking Grinder, doesn’t trust anyone. Let’s see. Might as well open up my pies and have my meal while I’m thinking this over. Hm. Wonder if I can get him so bored watching me play around doing nothing, I can catch him on the hop when I take off.” She chuckled. “Act III scene 2: The spy has her dinner and leads the tail round in circles.”
When she finished eating, she sent the flit skimming across the whitetops, the lift effect churning the water into cream beneath her. It was dangerous and she was riding her luck hard, but it kept the watcher dithering in the distance, especially since she was careful to keep circling back toward the shore so he wouldn’t have to worry that she was stupid enough to try escaping to the Wild Half. And while she played out that scene, she programmed a course into the autopilot, getting ready for the time when she had to ditch the flit.
After half an hour of skittering about like a waterbug with the fidgets, she went up to a safer height, set the auto-p on hover/drift, and let the wind blow her toward the string of islands. She put, her feet up, stretched out and began to sing, fragments, phrases, repeating them over and over with enough changes to suggest she was trying to weave them into a song should the watcher have a sound pickup aimed at her.
When she reached the first island, a rocky dot that barely broke the surface, she sat up and began dancing the flit around and between the islands. Half the time the tail was out of sight completely. To her intense satisfaction he didn’t seem to mind and didn’t try to get closer.
She flew faster, swinging up into sight, dipping low again; she circled the big island, then took the flit skimming low over the place where the metal mass had registered on Digby’s detec. Lylunda had set a camou cloth over her ship and the vegetation had helped her conceal it, a tangle of vines crawling across the porous cloth, the broken trees and withered foliage swallowed in the damp fecundity of these latitudes. Without the evidence from a powerful detec no one would know that anything nested there.
She turned the flit in a tight circle, brought it down and set it on hover/pause, the programmed course to kick in after seven minutes. She lowered the harp and Digby’s Trick Kit, then dropped overside herself. Using the cutting rod from the kit, she sliced through the camou cloth and let herself down beside the shrouded ship, wrapping herself in a mind spray of don’ttouch-me to keep the bugs off while she worked her way along the ship’s side until she reached the area below the lock.
She crouched beside the ship, sheltering under the curve of the hull when she heard the ascending whine as the flit revved up and took off. “Act III scene 3: The spy tries the old decoy trick. Gods, I hope this works. I need time to pry open this can.”
10
“Act IV scene 1,” Shadith chanted as the lock slid open. “Digby does it again. The spy enters the smuggler’s ship. Huh! Enough of that, it’s getting stupid now.” She moved cautiously inside and started for the bridge. “I do hope you were counting on concealment and your folks’ loathing for these waters… and planning for a hot jump if the Kliu were chasing you… after what happened at the Market, were I you, that’s how I’d leave things… mmmm.”
She settled herself in the pilot’s chair and inspected the controls. “Well, you’re old, but she keeps you up well. New kephalos, I see. Out of the Hegger Combine, looks like. Ah, yes. I know your kind. Let’s see what the sequencer gives us.” She whistled breathily through her teeth as she peeled the interface and clicked home the jacks. “You’re a clever child, Lylunda, but rather conventional, I think. This shouldn’t take long. Meantime, I’m going to have a look through your ship. Don’t expect you’ll be leaving notes to yourself in your writing desk like that idiot jock-pilot Autumn Rose told me about, but maybe there’s something you forgot.”
It was a compact little ship, swelling around the belly like a proper smuggler should, plenty of hold space with cells for handling tricky items and a mazy confusion of interior walls which was probably meant to conceal abditories used for really hot cargo. Nothing there that she could see, only the ghosts of old scents.
The single cabin was tidy and tucked up, clothing stowed in a narrow closet and a few shallow drawers, the foldaway cot made up with clean sheets. The only extravagance was a flake player with hundreds of selections ready to go at a touch. When she glanced through the index, Shadith was astonished and flattered to find her own recording there, something she’d made as the final exam for one of her courses. It’d gone into University’s library collection and had brought her a few small but much appreciated royalty payments. “Well, now, if I needed an incentive…” She laughed. “Anyone with such excellent taste should never be thrown to the execrable Kliu.” Still chuckling, she went back to the bridge to find that the sequencer had done its job, brought the controls alive, and gotten the kephalos ready for work.
She buttoned up the interface and settled into the pilot’s chair. “Read new ID code.” She watched the string flash across the screen. Smooth. Coming through clear and intact. “Read status of code.” Good. Show me control configurations.” And, here’s where it starts to be work. I’ve got to know your jigs and jags before I dare take you ’splitting… which reminds me, I don’t know your name yet. Well, that little frill comes later. Focus, Shadow, focus. You need to know this stuff…
11
The sea was, buzzing with flits when she took Lylunda’s Dragoi up through the camou cloth and went running for the line where the atmosphere officially ended, the point where dirt law supposedly ceased to rule. Of course, all that generally meant was that whoever was chasing you was free to nail you without going through the time-wasting formality of a trial.
Someone in the flits had acquired launchers and the missiles that fed them, but one of Dragoi’s neater tricks was an ability to shield herself while projecting an image off to one side, so the shooter blew a hole in the air but did the ship no damage at all, and by the time he discovered this, Shadith was long gone.
11. Bound on Bol Mutair
1
Lylunda blinked. The sudden brightness made her eyes wafer. She closed them again-and grew aware of the nearly intangible vibration humming through her bones. Cabin. Ship. In the insplit going who knew where. For a moment she didn’t question this; then the oddity of it struck her and she jerked upright on the cot, swiveling around as she came up, her legs sliding over the edge.
She knew it was a mistake before her feet hit the floor. She lunged across the narrow cabin, slapped blindly at the sensor node, and got her head into the fresher just in time to heave up a bitter yellow liquid, which was all she had in her stomach.
After wiping her face with a damp towelette, she stumbled back to the cot and sat with her eyes closed, trying to think around the knives that ground into her temples.
She hadn’t expected her father to use a stunner on her. She’d thought vaguely about confinement; maybe he’d send her off to one of his arranxes in the back country.
And it wasn’t just a stun. I’ve been out too long. Dea
r, dear Daddy. I wonder what he used on me?
She tried to convince herself that her father had meant it when he said that he wanted to take care of her, keep her safe, but she had a sick feeling that he was just flushing a problem down the drain. That she was a scandal he couldn’t afford when the Ezkop Garap was hunting sinners to fine and chastise and even the Duk would have to face symbolic whip cuts for the edification of the lesser Behilarr.
He was right about one thing, though. Him being who he was, it wouldn’t have been safe for her to go back to the warren. Grinder’d play with me a while, then dump me in the Jotun to poison the fish. I shouldn’t have gone back to Hutsarte. Home? What was I thinking of? I could wait to get away the first time, and I’m never going near the place again…
Her eyes burned, wet oozed from under her eyelids. She tried to swallow, but a lump closed up her throat. “I won’t,” she said aloud. She didn’t care who heard her. “I won’t…” The word ended on a sob and she was crying as she had not cried when her mother’s body trundled into the crematorium.
Before, there was the chance that her father would be proud of her and claim her. Not much of a chance, but not impossible.
Before, there was home as a refuge she could always return to if things go too complicated in the larger world she lived in now.
And before, there was always the dream of making it so big she could go home in a sun-class yacht, dressed in diamonds, with a train of servants so long the line would wrap round the outside of the Izar Wall. And the High would court her, even the Duk and the Dukana. And she would snub them and hand out largess to folk like Halfman Ike and Melia the Standup Whore.
A silly child’s dreams, but she’d never quite let go of them. She tasted the salt of her tears as they slid past her smile into her mouth-and with that, the crying fit was over.
She coughed to clear her throat, wiped her eyes. “I stink,” she said to the ambient air.
“Then drop those rags you’re wearing into the disposal and take a bath. If you’ll check the stowage, you’ll find we’ve put more suitable clothing in there for you.”
The voice came from the announcer grill, an inconspicuous circle of roughness above the door, a woman’s voice, speaking interlingue with an odd swing to the words Lylunda couldn’t place.
“And when you’re ready,” the voice continued, “come to the Bridge. The door’s not locked. You’re free to move about as you want.”
2
The ship was larger than hers and newer. I forgot about my ship, she thought. Looks like 1 will be going back after all. She smiled at a sudden picture in her mind, swooping low over the Dukeri House and the High City and giving the bons there the scare of their stinking lives. Grow up, woman, she told herself, but she was still grinning as she stepped onto the Bridge.
A man sat in the pilot’s seat, not a woman. Age hung like an aura about him and looked out of eyes like winter ice, though his ananiles were still holding, so there was little gray in the thick braid that came over his shoulder and was long enough to brush at his belt. The lines in his face were shallow and fine, as if someone had pasted a spider’s web across it. Two young women sat in the other chairs, his daughters or granddaughters if appearance meant anything.
“So,” she said. “I been sold to Contract?”
When he spoke his voice was rough, but not unpleasant, and there was that same swing to his interlingue that she’d heard in the woman’s voice. “We would not consider such a thing, Lylunda Elang. It is a simpler task we have and a pleasurable pile of gelders from the doing. You will be tucked away safely in a calm and quiet place, and when I say tucked away it means that however cleverly you scheme, there you will be until the patron comes to take you home again. And fetch you home he will, he sends to you his sworn word on this.” He put stress on the last words, but his eyes slipped away from hers.
“Kak!”
“Ah yes, you will be knowing him better than we. Our ship is yours to wander as you will, but lest you harbor wishful thoughts of taking it from us, you should know we are Jilitera. All things on board shut down after a time unless we whisper to them in the Secret Tongue which is more than words. Consider what it means to drift in darkness for eternity.”
“I have heard that,” she said. “Tell me the name of my prison.”
“Bol Mutiar. Only the Jilitera trade there these days because it is death to outsiders who do not understand its ways. We will tell you how to go and we will put our Blessing on you. Unless you are irredeemably moronic, you will have a pleasant life ahead of you.”
3
You will eat some tung akar every, day, she read and sighed as she looked at the knobby, dark yellow tuber with its beard of fine white rootlets. “You look about as appetizing as a dog turd. Maybe if I think it’s like taking vitamin supplements…”
You will bless and treat with courtesy the children of tung akar “Sounds reasonable. Bless? Hope they give me the local version of that. I’ve run into a few occasions when my idea of a friendly greeting nearly got me handed my head.”
The blessing is Smarada Diam. Love and Peace. It works best if you evoke some shadow of these things within yourself. This is for formal occasions, when meeting and greeting folk you have not met before. A simple Diam is sufficient with those you have met more than once. Do not concern yourself overmuch with pronunciation; exactitude is not required.
Lylunda settled back in her chair and watched the figures moving through assorted greeting scenarios. She didn’t understand the words yet, hadn’t gone under the crown to get the Pandai poured into her head, but it seemed a simple and mellifluous langue, one that rolled easily off the tongue. She examined the figures of the locals with considerably more interest than she took in the greetings.
They were a smooth brown people, built low to the ground, broad in shoulder and hip. “Eee! I’ll fit right in.” She wriggled in the chair, sighed. “Except for the hair. If that sample isn’t skewed, it’s mostly light brown with a redhead in the mix now and again.”
The figures marched off and a new maxim slid onto the screen. Never take a plant or another living thing for your food or for any other purpose without asking its permission and thanking it afterward. Like the greeting, this is a part of necessary courtesy. Ignoring these strictures will not get you slapped, it will get you dead.
Lylunda made a face at the images that followed, bloated, rot-blackened corpses. This was the third time they’d run the lesson flake for her and those corpses appeared after every four maxims, along with the stats now scrolling down half the screen, telling her who the dead had been and how they’d gotten that way. It was meant to impress on the viewer how seriously she should take those maxims, but even a litany of the horribly dead could get boring if you heard it too often.
When the lesson reached its end this time, the screen went black and Beradea’s voice broke into the silence. “Come to the comroom, Lylunda ’njai. It’s time you learned the Pandai langue.”
4
The Jilitera locked Lylunda in her cabin before they left the insplit and left her there until the ship was in a stable orbit.
The journey to Bol Mutiar had been shorter than she’d expected; though she’d been unconscious for part of it, it couldn’t have been much more than eight days ’splitting. Which meant they were still within the Pseudo Cluster, just a hop from Hutsarte and perhaps even closer to the nameless heavy world where she’d landed Prangarris and his stolen arrays. Which was a rather unfunny joke on her when she thought about it.
There was another word that haunted her. Why? So many whys.
Why were the Jilitera treating her so well? Why were they teaching her all this?
She knew free traders and how fiercely they protected their markets; she’d heard stories about the Jilitera, who were the most secretive of them all. What she was learning was inside information, something traders never sold or told. Daddy dear, she thought. No doubt he paid them well, he’s not stupid, but he has to have some hold
on them, he has to know something so bad they’ll do anything rather than let it come out. Jaink! It’s only a guess, but what else explains this!
“Lylunda ’njai, will you come to the Bridge, please. It is time that we blessed you.”
The smoke that hung thick and greasy in the unmoving air caught her in the throat, and she coughed as she stepped through the door. There was a wide shallow brdzier in the center of the floor, wood reduced to coals filling it, the red of the coals muted under gray ash. A layer of resin crystals was spread over them; these were subliming into the air, spreading a heavy sweet perfume. Beradea and Merekea knelt beside the brazier, stripped to the skin, their bodies covered with lines and whorls of thick paint, black and white mostly but with dots of crimson and amber.
Ordonai the Pilot/Owner stood on the far side of the brazier, stripped also, painted white from hairline to heels, with fmgerdrawn designs laid on the white in a glistening wet black that kept its sheen after it dried. He beckoned her forward, then flicked his hand up, palm out to stop her when she’d come far enough. “Eschewat ched doo ayal,” he chanted. “Desu telab. Desu telab.”
She stood erect and very still, fascinated because she knew she was hearing the secret tongue of the Jilitera, at least that part which she could perceive. And ’frightened because she shouldn’t be seeing this or hearing that, not that she could understand a word of what was being said.
“Dabuxoo devoo,” he chanted and held out a hand. Beredea put a shallow bowl in it, a bowl filled with a viscid golden fluid.
Lylunda’s eyes blurred and she started getting dizzy. She concentrated on keeping her eyes open and her body still; disrupting this ceremony didn’t seem like a very good idea.