Crystal Heat tst-3

by Jo Clayton

  Flake 10. Audio. EAR in Tank’s Office.

  Worm stretched,-rubbed his eyes, and considered what he’d seen. “Harmon. What’d I hear about Harmon… gotcha! Arms dealer. Blew his last two sales and is running on debt. Lifting gray freight to keep eating. Looks like Grinder thinks Lylunda was took offworld and has set the spy to figuring out how and who. If she was somewhere in backcountry, he’d have her by now. The Kliu are clueless.” He grinned. “Bad Worm.”

  The lift to his spirits was brief, though, and he went back to brooding. “Those lists. Ship landings. If Harmon’s as bad off as they say, he’d sell his grandmother and keep his mouth shut about it.” He glanced at the screen.

  The Singer was lifting the harpcase. She slipped the strap over her shoulder and went out. ’The table’s clean. The papers are gone. What’s she up to now? If she’s on the move…” He scowled at the screens set up on the table. Most of his gear was packed in the lockboxes of the flikit; he wanted to be ready to jump when the spy did and figured he wouldn’t have much time for packing. “I can always set up again… leave the EARS and the peeps… you’re working Xman time, Worm. So do what he’d do and jump.”

  – He broke down the screens and the flaker, packed them in their case and stowed the case in the flikit. He locked the door and the shed and scurried for Star Street. And almost ran into the spy as he came charging from a sidestreet onto the walkway.

  He slowed to an amble, stopped to look into one of the windows of Kautkas’ Anything Shop when the spy paused to talk to Getto. He didn’t have to strain his ears to hear what she said. Announcing it to the world, he thought. She’s definitely got plans.

  even look at water. Gonna make another song?”

  “Want to. Might. They come when they come, you know.” She fluttered her fingers at him and on her way.

  Hiring a flit? Going out over water? Zoll! She’s got it. Found something in those papers. Harmon. That’s it. She’s figured out he’s the one took Lylunda. Bet anything on that. And she’s heading for her ship, going after him…

  He snapped his fingers as if he’d forgot something and went hurrying back the way he’d come.

  4

  As Worm swung the flikit south, skimming just above the long surges of the ocean waves-to avoid being spotted from Haundi Zurgile and chased by the local authorities, he saw a dark seed flying low over the water near the northern horizon. “Must be the spy’s flier.” He clicked on the screen and focused the pickups north-and blinked at the gyrations of that flier; it was swooping in long arcs, racing low enough to cream the water, lifting and darting about like a waterbug having fits.

  “What’s all that? Has she lost it?”

  The flier turned suddenly and swooped north, vanishing over the horizon. Worm took a chance and sent the flikit higher. He saw the flier swoop toward the first of the island chain, a hump of rock with a tree and some seagrass, dart round it, dive toward the next island. He saw something else, too-another flier hovering over toward the land. “Gotcha. Grinder or the local lice. She knows the watcher is there and she’s holding cover until she can get loose enough to run for the Wild Half.”

  He dropped the flikit again and squeezed all the speed out of it that he could manage when he was flying this low. Too bad he couldn’t go up-and-over, but the locals got mean with any unauthorized flights they happened to spot. He understood that. It was a matter of cash; they wanted their passage fees and their storage fees and their taxes.

  He’d gotten most of what he needed from the woman, a new target. He was going after Harmon, going to get there first and shoot the clot full of babble, pry out of him where he left the woman and go pick her up. No more fussing about, catering to locals. He didn’t have time for that. He wasn’t happy about having to admit to his father that someone had scooped the smuggler out from under him again, but he needed his father’s sources. Fa would know where Harmon was headed next. He kept up on that kind of thing. Funny how he could, since he was stuck in that Sustainer back on Teripang. The drain of keeping him alive was why Worm and Mort and Xman had to do so much work. More coin. All the time more coin, so Fa could pamper his sources. Sasa, this time for once, that pampering might pay off.

  When he’d nearly reached the shore of the Wild Half, he heard the scream of a full-power lift and saw the flare of a ship’s drivers burn an arc toward the Break-Point.

  “Zoll! She wasn’t heading here, the bint went and nicked the Elang’s ship.” He grinned. “I like her. She’s got class. She really must have come here on a worldship as part of her cover. Din’t have her own, knew one was handy, so she went out and got it.” Neat solution to the problem of getting away from Grinder without handing him her head.

  The locals started firing at her. He saw the dot seem to jump sideways, the missiles swerved and missed. Then she was gone.

  He tapped the controls, had the flikit berth open and waiting as soon as he reached the canyon. He left the servos to locking the flikit down and raced toward the Bridge. If he could just get into the air fast enough and into the insplit behind her, he could track her. That way he wouldn’t h4ve to bother Fa; he could put off the skin peel he was bound to get when he had to tell him what happened.

  “Spy, sweet spy, I owe you a favor. Now let’s see if I can get off this mudball without a sting up my tail.”

  13. More Detours

  1

  Shadith slid the Dragoi into the berth next to Digby’s ship in the University tie-down, took the shuttle to the surface and a hopper to the main campus at Citystate Rhapsody, an immense complex on the coast of the largest of the three continents. As one who owned Voting Stock, she had a studio apartment in one of the Megarons. She’d kept it even though it was likely she’d not spend much time there, because it meant she’d always have a place to go no matter what happened to the job with Digby.

  It felt good to be back, clicking along in a chainchair, basking in the sunlight of a late spring day and watching the crowds of students and Scholars moving through the streets. She didn’t see any faces she knew, but she’d been on Digby’s payroll nearly three years now and gone most of that time; the populations in all the Citystates of University were fluid as mud geysers, shifting and changing with the phases of the moon as it were-the same types, though, over and over, Cousins and non, curiously alike in their common purpose. It was a good place to be, for a while, at least.

  * * *

  Feeling weightless and free, very much like she felt when she left Pillory and crawled out of the exoskeleton, she touched on the light in her apartment, tossed her bag into a chair, and combed her hands through her hair. “Aaaahhhhhhh…” The sound was concentrated pleasure and ended on a brief happy laugh.

  She clicked on the viewer, ran through the menu, chose a chamber group she knew, then rambled around the apartment moving to the music, touching her books, the small carvings she’d picked up here and there (cat, she thought, renewing my scent marks), pulling off her clothes and kicking them into a pile, going into the kitchen where she snatched packs of tea from the stasis box and started water boiling on the stove.

  She took a long shower, washed her hair, pulled on a robe, settled in a chair with her feet up and the teapot beside her; at first she watched a news summary, then she tuned in a drama by one of the writers she’d worked with when she was taking a course in musical theater.

  Vul ri Pustan-ili was a Sparglan from a world he called Makusij, which he said was so far out of touch it was a good thing the local life spans were numbered in centuries rather than decades. He was fascinated by the ephemeral qualities of Cousin views on life and love and was immersing himself in them in order to understand the joy and tragedy of such a swiftly passing awareness. From what she could see, he was persevering in this, his peculiar humor and odd angle of approach still part of his charms as a writer.

  Twenty minutes into the play, though, she fell asleep.

  2

  She woke nine hours later with a stiff neck and the message chiming
gently in her ears.

  Vul’s squeaky voice: Shadow! Caught your name as a watcher. You back for just a visit, or are you staying a while? I’ve got this new project, want you to look at it, see what you think, I need music, a single instrument I think, subtlety over noise, I really do want to talk even if you can’t stay. Come see me, hm?

  Digby: Why are you on University, Shadow? I’d like a report, if you don’t mind. Have you found the smuggler? Try to keep traveling times as short as possible, this is a race we’re in, remember?

  Aslan’s contralto (Shadith blinked with surprise; she’d thought. Aslan was still on Bйluchad): Shadow, Vul told me you’re back. If you have the time, it’s Mirik’s birthday, near as she can figure it, so we’re having a party in The Eager Seagull, the usual lot, you know. Love to have you come if you can. Tonight, supposed to start around seven, but you, know how these things go.

  Shadith checked the timer. Tonight was indeed this coming night. She smiled. “Digby, you can go on hold. I’ve just finished a month of agonizing boredom and I want to play. Hm. On second thought, I’d probably better give him a call. Grmp. He’s going to want more than I want to tell. Do we mention Lylunda’s ship? For sure, we do not. Would that keep him off it? I doubt it. Too many records, all of them transparent to him. Which means, when I leave, I take Dragoi in tow.

  Gods! What happens when your life gets so convoluted you forget which is back and which is front. Well, we do the best we can with what we’ve got. I hate this, I’m taking his money, supposed to be doing the job he hired me for. Makes me feel lower than… hm I should make sure he gets his full fee. I owe him that even if I’ve already quit. Looks like the only person I can work for is me. Have to figure out something… but not now. Time for that later.”

  3

  Away from his main nest Digby was a ghost of himself, a painted translucent specter, hip-hitched on the corner of a desk in the satellite office he kept here on University, scowling at her as he listened to the carefully edited account of her activities on Hutsarte.

  She ended her tale with the delivery of the readouts. “I brought them with me,” she said. “I’ll scan them for you and give you my reasoning after that. Then we’ll see if we agree, hm?” This was the tricky point. If she could get him interested in the data, perhaps she could slide over how she got from Hutsarte to University. She took the pages from the folder, smoothed them out, then fed them one. by one into the slot on the scanner.

  After a moment’s pose as the contemplative thinker, the ghost lifted his head, raised a brow. “Not much difficulty there. So, tell me.”

  “Harmon,” she said. “With the Jilitera a distant second. The other ship, the shuttles, the transfer station, all of them out of it.” She explained, waited.

  “I find no flaws in your reasoning. Why University?”

  “The Regents try to keep track of arms dealers and people like that. I was going to give them what I know about Harmon’s activities and run that name through to see if they have a new loc on him. And I thought I’d pull what they have on the Jilitera. Might be unlikely, but they were there.” She shrugged. “You said use your ingenuity and your resources. Just doing the job, Digby.”

  The ghost contemplated her, a skeptical look on his. sketch of a face. “Your discretion thus far has been admirable, so I won’t pry into the gaps in that report. At the moment at least. I’ll expect your final report to be considerably more detailed.” He seemed to relax, then grinned at her. “The Kliu are agitated and are trying to wring what information they can out of me. I suspect they lost track completely of the Elang when she vanished from Haundi Zurgile. They’ve certainly lost their smug. You’ve won some time, Shadow, but probably not a lot. I’ll give my resources a shake and see what falls out. Let me know what University comes up with, hrn?”

  “Will do. Um… just in case, if you’ve got lines to the Jilitera, it might be a good thing to get them ready to pull. Never hurts to have a backup no matter how convincing the logic.”

  4

  Pleasantly tired, Shadith eased her way through the crowd to the bar in the corner of the room. The party had migrated to Aslan’s apartment after dinner at The Eager Seagull and was still going strong though the noise level had begun to abate a bit. She searched through the empty bottles, boxes, and more esoteric containers, found a bottle with an inch of Carta Blue in it and refilled her glass.

  “Any of the gartienta left?” Aslan caught her by the shoulder; leaned rather heavily against her, breathing a sweetish fog of alcohol past her ear. “Whoo! I’m going to hate myself tomorrow, but it feels good now.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Dumpy black jug thing. Smells like apricots.”

  “This?”

  “Mm bin.”

  Shadith shook it gently. “Something left. Hold your glass out.”

  They moved around the edge of the room, found a futon rolled up and pushed against the wall, and eased themselves down on it. “I was wondering…” Shadith said after a moment.

  “Why I’m not still on Beluchad? Funding dried up. Yaraka thought we were teaching the locals a bit too much instead of studying how to manage them.”

  “You don’t sound unhappy about being kicked offworld.”

  Aslan grinned. “I’m not. Left a lot of local students behind and University sprung for a couple splitcoms; the Meruu of Medon Vale are enthusiastic scholars and they like the idea of setting down their history. The Yaraka are going to find that the Keteng and the Fior are rather more than a match for them, I think. Do I ask about you? Got a letter full of restrained enthusiasm from Mum. Well, you know her.”

  “I’m in the middle of something. Can’t talk about it now.” The milling groups of talkers split a moment and she saw Mirik melting against Sarmaylen, his battered fingers moving absently along the elegant bones of her shoulder, a sculptor’s appreciation in the delicate touch. “Mirik and Sarmaylen. She understand what she’s getting into?”

  “Does anybody ever?” Alsan sipped at the gartienta. After a minute, she sighed. “He doesn’t mean to act like a merd, you know. He just gets so interested in what he’s working on he forgets you’re there, and you can get pissed at him and leave and he doesn’t even notice for months maybe. And there’s always another sighing femme waiting in the wings. She’ll enjoy these first weeks, Shadow. He can play symphonies on a woman’s body.” She smiled fondly at memories that Shadith couldn’t see, but she certainly could feel them through the reactions of Alsan’s body.

  Aslan got to her feet and ambled off, heading toward a tall, lean man with a gleaming bald head and a gray-streaked brown beard that reached halfway down his chest. Shadith watched her smooth her fingers along the line of his jaw, saw him smile down at her.

  Abruptly she didn’t feel like partying any longer; she looked down at her glass, sighed, and set it by the end of the futon roll where it wasn’t likely someone would kick it over, got unsteadily to her feet,-and edged along the wall till she reached the door.

  The air outside was crisp and cold. She took a deep breath and the wine hit her, turning her knees to rubber and churning in her stomach… She dropped onto the edge of a granite planter, lowered her head to her knees, and fought the urge to upchuck everything she’d eaten. What a stupid thing… less sense than Mirik showed when she loped off with that scamjack… gods, I’m horny and hopeless… I want… I want more than I’ve got… why can’t I just pick something and stick with it… sleepy… I’d better get home before I end spending the night on the steps here…, call a jit… I’m in no shape to chain it or to walk…

  Cautiously she sat up. She was still a bit dizzy and wine tears blurred her eyes, but at least she could navigate now without embarrassing herself. She hunted till she found the jit pole, then thumbed back the slide and touched the sensor. She leaned on the pole and waited for her transport to arrive, weeping with loneliness and too much wine.

  * * *

  The messager woke her again.

 
Notice from University to come pick up her printouts, message from Digby informing her that Harmon was on his way to Sauva Kutets, a world in the Sakuta System, one of several newly settled planets in a miniature cluster close to the Saber Arm. “Mouse, it’s called,” he said. “Because of its size and a tail of dust curling off one side.”

  Sauva Kutets was a colony in the throes of a savage revolt against the mother world, a planet called Agregossa in a system way out at the tip of the Saber Arm.

  … because the Agregossans haven’t fought a war in a long time, depending upon coercion and indoctrination to keep the peace rather than crude and visible force, they’re not very adept at it though they have been learning rapidly. The most recent reports have the Agregossans making an attempt at an embargo of the system, most inept and futile unless you’re unlucky enough to surface in front of their outer patrols. Most of the hostile attention is focused on Sauva’s surface, so keep away from there if you can. Otherwise you shouldn’t have much trouble getting in and out again. Oblique attacks and ingenuity, Shadow. Shouldn’t be hard for you to manage.

  5

  When Shadith reached the breakout point at the Matta System, the alarm signaled ships too close. She hovered at breakout until the clear-light blinked green at her, then emerged to find she’d just missed a line of three sting ships prowling inside the Limit-Agregossa guards on what was essentially an attempt at embargo on the cheap.