by Jo Clayton
Worm went limp as the stiffening he’d summoned drained out of him. It was all to do again,, nerving himself to face his father’s anger and maybe give him another seizure when he had to confess what happened. He got wearily to his feet and went to scrub the galley once again. At least when you cleaned something, you could see what you’d accomplished.
2
“… just a couple a days ’fore I was at go on the snatch, some local piv’r hauls her in to cop shop and she don’t come out, what comes out is some femme fixed up in her clothes. I get on corn to the Kliu and complain they interfering with the op, that I hear they trying it on with the locals to pick the smuggler up and ship her over to Pillory so they can get out of contract they got with us. I din’t ask if they got her, I just said they were messing me up. And-what ol’ Kliu he says makes me some sure they han’t got her. Grinder’s kid, he said it was her Fa who got her, he’s some mucko in the cop shop. The kid thinks mucko got biters up his ezel when Kliu ticket come by him and he whiffed her off somewhere he don’t have to look for her in. Anyway, I see this femme who’s Digby’s agent fijjing around trying to finger the smuggler, so I put the ear on her and I pick up she’s got her hands on ship lists and she figures the mucko passed his daughter off to Harmon, you know him, scurf who sold Snake that stale cpe, so he could dump her in some Never Find. So I figure I get to Harmon first, shoot him to ears with babble, go where he dropped her. Isn’t likely she’ll have the same kind of protection she bought on Hutsarte. So I need to know where Harmon’s going and how long it’s gonna taker to get there.”
When the spate of words was finished, words he hoped didn’t sound too much like whiner’s excuses-Fa hated whining-Worm sat stiffly upright, hands curled tight about the arms of the chair, waiting for the blast he knew was coming.
It didn’t come. His father’s mouth shaped itself into an unconvincing smile and when he spoke, it was in a tone of mild disappointment. No thundering scarification, no skin-peeling scarcasm. “Sasa, I had hoped for better news. You done good, Worm. You done right. Give me a minute, I’ll call up what you want and pulse it through. A father’s Blessings on you, boy.”
The screen blanked and a moment later, the keph tinged to let him know the data blip had arrived.
Worm stirred. He felt sick.
His father was frightened. He’d never seen his father frightened of anything.
“I’m the last of his sons maybe and he’s licking up to me so I won’t go off and leave him. Cousins aren’t the same. He shouldn’t do that, makes me feel… he shouldn’t do that.”
The ship was still well-enough supplied for a couple more months of ’splitting, but the comp on Harmon had him heading for a warzone in the Sakuta System, so Worm had another bite at Kliu credit and topped off at the University Transfer Station. Still uncertain about his father, replaying the call, worrying over every word, watching his father’s every expression, trying to convince himself it wasn’t fear he was seeing but only the result of the purge Fa had just been through, he headed for the Limit and the two-week journey to the Mouse Cluster.
The beacon started pulsing again four hours after his journey had begun and the pulse stayed with him, the locator showing it behind and off to one side.
So that was why University. Someone there had told the Spy where to find Harmon and she was going for him.
3
Worm set the keph to fiddling the exit point until he was above the ecliptic and, he hoped, away from any patrols. He surfaced to realspace and sent Kanti slipping toward the asteroid belt where he could bide unseen and do a manual reactivation of the beacon to trace the Spy and slip up on her when she whipped her net over Harmon.
He watched her come sneaking along and cheered silently as she settled in the shadow of a rock only a few shiplengths from his hidey hole-though he was startled to see two ships, not one, Lylunda’s little darter tucked up against the flank of a bigger one. Just as well the Spy was into umbilicals, meant he could track her some more if this didn’t work out. He wriggled in his seat. On the good side, taking Lylunda’s ship along should mean she was expecting to run across the smuggler sometime soon; on the bad side, this could get real tight real fast. Watch how she works, he thought. Gotta know what I’m going against.
He settled in to brood over what the Spy was planning and to wait for events to unfold.
4
When he saw the Spy’s sled come slipping through the shield round the ships, Worm left the chair and hurried to get himself dressed to follow her.
By the time he was out the lock and riding a hand impellor toward Harmon’s ship, she was already at the maintenance inlet and working on the latch. That was a datapoint of sorts; she knew what he knew-that it was the least regarded area on any ship, forgotten or ignored until it was needed. He blinked as he realized suddenly that he was as bad as everyone else at protecting Kanti’s flank. He’d never thought about being boarded, so he’d never done anything about alarming or trapping that hatch. He made a note to do it during the next trip to wherever.
When he reached Harmon’s ship, the Spy had been inside for several minutes. He was happy about that; he didn’t want to be treading too close upon her heels.
He followed the slight sounds she made and the marks in the grime on the walkway, hesitated outside the hatch to the aux com. If she was inside, she’d pick up what was happening and be waiting for him. He edged back until he reached the first of the locks he’d passed up, cycled through, and found himself in crew quarters, a sixer once but little more than a stinking hole these days, with the remnants of a crate in one corner, a busted dolly beside it, stains and scratches on the floor. He eased the door open and stood listening by the crack.
Voices came up from the hold, briefly, as if a hatch had opened. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was a certain urgency about it that told him the buyers had finished loading and wanted to get away from here like ten minutes ago.
He slid out and began making his way to Bridge level.
5
“What femme’s this and how come you want to know?”
“The Kliu bounty, fool. Ten thousand gelders alive, zip dead…”
Worm knelt in the shadows of the corridor outside the lighted arch that led onto the Bridge. Though he could hear well enough, he couldn’t see either Harmon or, the Spy. Kliu bounty? Truth isn’t in the femme. At least 1 don’t… no… not the Kliu… not when they’re using me to get out of paying Digby, trying to get out of paying me even with Mort and Xman. Too mean to put down good coin for what they could get free. Another datapoint. She was good at laying down false tracks, voice distorter, too. Hm. Didn’t want Harmon. to know she was female. Interesting. Meant she was squeamish. Planning to leave him alive or she wouldn’t bother. He blinked as he heard her buying the truth of Harmon’s denial. Why? It didn’t make sense.
“Ee! Don’t leave me tied like this.”
“Time keyed, Harmon. So contemplate your sins and…”
Worm got to his feet and hurried as silently as he could to the galley accessway, ducking into it as he heard the sound of running feet.
Harmon was tugging at the ties and cursing with a deplorable lack of imagination as Worm walked in. He stopped, scowled at Worm. “What you doing here?”
“Got the same question you been hearing. Where’s the woman?”
“I told him and I’ll tell you. I don’t know shays about no femme.”
“That’s what you said, yeh. Maybe she believed you. Me, I don’t. So we’re gonna find out the hard way.”
“She?”
“Uh-huh. Delicate little femme, barely old enough to vote like they say. Whipped you good.” Worm stepped close, pushed the shotgun against Harmon’s neck, and triggered it.
When the babble had him, Worm leaned close, spoke slowly and carefully. “A woman was brought aboard your ship.”
“No woman. No.”
“You were told to take her somewhere.”
“No told. Told nothing.”
“Where did you take her.”
“No woman. Nowhere.”
“Where did you go when you left Hutsart6?”
“The Accord.”
“Why?”
“The pay for cargo transfer on Hutsartd. With what I got laid aside, it was enough.to buy loan and stock. Make contract with Yobany Fitz. Get back in business.”
“Zolll She was right. And she’ll be hitting, her other leads now. I’d better…” He shoved the shotgun into his belt sac, scowled at Harmon. “You know me and you’re worse’n Mort for holding a grudge till it squalls. Sorry ’bout this, Harm, but I gotta protect myself. I’m all Fa’s got till I can ransom Mort and Xman.” He took hold of Harmon’s hair and used his cutter to slice neatly through the dealer’s throat. Then he collected the satchel of coin that the Spy hadn’t bothered to take and went running for the nearest lock.
6
The soft squeal of the locator was the only thing that kept him sane in the next month he spent following the Spy.
First there was The Tricky Deacon Pit which he didn’t understand at all until after she took off from there. Information, that’s what it was, she was looking for something and she found out where it was.
Hope rising, he followed the beacon’s intermittent squeal until she surfaced at an out of the way world in the Callidara Pseudo Cluster. Bol Mutiar his Chart told him and the keph said, “Restricted world. Rated purple 9 on the danger scale. Further information interdicted.”
Which raised his brows up to his hairline. He hid in the shadow of a moon and watched the paired ships come round beneath him.
The smuggler’s ship jerked, then began to move away. “Tractor shove. And the umbilical’s cut. Zoll’s Teeth. That has to mean that the smuggler’s here. I’ve got to get down there, no more waiting. I’ve got to drop a loop on both of them before the Spy cuts out on me again.”
He chewed on his lip as he watched a lander emerge from the side of the Spy’s ship, wondering if he should drop a sticktight inside before he went. Maybe she wasn’t like him, maybe she had the maintenance hatch trapped. She thought of things. But if she got away from him this time… no, if she got away this time, it was over. She’d head straight back for Digby, Digby would call the Kliu and collect his fee, and Mort would be dead two heartbeats afterward.
As soon as the shields flared as the lander hit atmosphere, Worm went arcing away. He hit atmosphere twenty minutes later, landed Kanti on a barren islet just big enough to hold her, bonded the EYE to its zipper sled and sent it racing toward the place where the lander touched down.
As he watched her walk toward the children playing on the beach, he thought about activating one of the EYE’s darts and killing her then, but she hadn’t found the smuggler yet and a world is a big place to search and she was a better searcher than he was and she knew things he didn’t.
He watched her face change as she seemed to absorb the langue the children were speaking, though he couldn’t make any sense of it. In less than a heartbeat she was talking back to them and being understood. “Talent. Word is Digby likes Talent, buys it wherever he can. I bet she can truthtell, too, and that’s why she believed or Harmon without worrying about babbling him. No wonder it’s her Digby sent. Spins lies quicker’n a Menaviddan spins web and looks through your lies like you’re made out of glass.”
When she went back to the lander alone, he started the EYE home and chewed on his lip until Kanti’s screen showed her taking the lander up and hovering in the clouds. “She’s looking for something. Those kids told her something. Not enough, I think, but something.”
7
Through the EYE which was hovering in the fronds of a tree, he watched the local messing with some sand while the Spy crouched beside him. After a while he understood what the man was doing. He was making an island. A particular island. Once again Worm thought about darting the woman, but he still wasn’t sure. It was better to wait until he was actually looking at Lylunda. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, so that island map could mean anything, and he’d already made too many wrong choices.
The Spy bowed and walked back to the lander. The local looked at the map, his face troubled, then he smeared it out with his foot and went the other way along the beach.
Uneasy, Worm called the EYE back, hoping he had time to reclaim it.
As he watched the lander shoot for the horizon, Worm swore and pushed the flikit after it. The flikit was a lot slower than a lander, so he didn’t dare go back to his ship or wait for the EYE to come home or even stop to scoop it up as he passed over it. In the time ’any of that would take, she could drop the loop on Lylunda and be on her way off planet.
There was enough fuel left in the zipper sled to take it around the world and back, so he set the call and concentrated in getting the most speed he could out of the flikit while keeping a wary eye on the screen, watching for any sign of the lander.
The chase seemed to go on forever across the mostly empty sea, though he overtook and left behind several large sailboats. Since the Spy had ignored them, he did also. He passed over several islands, most of them with locals doing this and that on the beaches and in the villages, ignored these.
Then he saw an island he recognized. The one the local had sculpted-and a good job it was, too. He’d got the coast just right, that spine of mountains like bony teeth, the thick jungle round the base of those teeth, the wide apron ’of pale yellow sand.
And belly down on that sand, the lander.
And a short distance off, two women talking.
He clicked the mufflers on, dipped to tree level, using the fronds as a sketch of a screen, cranked up the visuals, and focused on the women. Lylunda all right, looking angry, upset, sitting with a drum held between her hands, staring out at the sea as the Spy talked to her. He ground his teeth. If only he hadn’t deployed the EYE the last time, if he’d just kept it with him, he could listen to what they were saying. He could kill the Spy, stun Lylunda, and get off this stinking mudball. On the other hand, they could be talking local jabber. Be just his luck…
Cutter in one hand, Worm began easing closer, keeping as low as possible, the fronds of the treetops brushing against the side of the flikit as he crept past them. He had to be careful; he didn’t want the Spy sheltering herself behind Lylunda. The closer he could get before she noticed him, the less chance she’d have to think up something nasty.
The Spy turned and began trotting toward the lander. She was inside before Worm had time to react; she fired up the lifters and took off.
She was leaving. She had the woman and she let her go and now she was gone. All he could think of was that Lylunda had given her the information the Kliu wanted, so the Spy didn’t have to take the trouble to carry her off.
Sick with anger, Worm brought the flikit down on the sand, piled out of it, and ran to Lylunda. He jerked her to her feet, started shaking her. “What did you tell her? What? Tell me what you told her.” He coughed, saw flecks of red splatter her face, but that didn’t matter. He shook her some more, not giving her a chance to answer him, shouting the same questions over and and over.
She broke his hold with an ease that surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to be that strong.
“Worm. Sit down. Just sit down.” Her voice was soothing and it only increased his rage. He reached for her again, but she stepped between his arms, slapped her open hands against his shoulders and a moment later he was flat on his back staring up at the sky, wondering what had happened.
She knelt beside him, a sadness in her eyes that he hadn’t expected. “That you’re here tells me why you’re here,” she said.
It took him a while to sort out the sense of that. She waited for him to understand, then she went on, “If you keep being angry at me and trying to hurt me, I can’t help you.”
“What?” His throat was raw and trying to talk made his head dizzy. “Help me?”
“Didn’t your keph warn you?” She helped him sit up. He couldn’t bel
ieve how weak he was, how suddenly that weakness had flooded through him. “This is a deadly world if you don’t know how to cope with it.”
“Help me on my feet. I have to get back to my ship. There’s an ottodoc in it…”
“That won’t work, you know. You should let me take you into the village.”
“No! The flikit. I got to get back to my ship.”
“All right. If that’s what you want. Take my hand.” She pulled him up, set his arm about her shoulders and helped him stagger over to the flikit.
When they reached it, he grabbed onto her wrist and with remnants of his strength, fueled by desperation, he tried to pull her into the flikit.
She wrenched her arm free, slapped at his hand when he reached for her again. “If you managed to get me in there, we’d both be dead before we left the ground.”
“What? What are you talking about?” He barely got the words out before a fit off coughing seized him and nearly turned him inside out. “What… what what’s happening…
“Be quiet. It’s the only chance. Be qui…”
The darkness closed round him, cutting off her words.
8
He woke inside a room somewhere, stretched out on a hard, lumpy bed. His face was a sticky mess and there was a foul taste in his mouth. Lylunda was sitting in a chair beside him, a bowl in her hands.
“You’ll live,” she said, “but I don’t know if I’ve done you any favor feeding you the tung akar. Did you need money that much, Worm? That you’d come here to earn it?”
“Not money,” he said. Speaking hurt his throat, but he wanted her to understand. “I need you to trade for my brothers. That’s the price the Kliu put on your head. Mort and Xman. They’ve got them. They’re going, to hang Mort if I don’t bring you back. Or bring back what you know. You told the Spy, why can’t you tell me?”