Lee, Sharon & Miller, Steve - Liaden Books 1-9

by Liaden 1-9 (lit)

  She hesitated, hearing his voice in memory: "It is my intention to tell you the truth…" So many debts, she thought suddenly, all to be paid in kind.

  She licked her lips, and tried to explain.

  "I wanted to make the point – to make sure you understood – that it might be true that you ain't the person you used to be. But I don't think you're the person you think you are, either." She paused, fighting for clarity. "Everybody who does things, sometimes does things they ain't proud of. It's just that you gotta – gotta learn from it and get on with things and try not to make that mistake again." She took a breath and resisted the temptation to close her eyes.

  "And it ain't – right – for you to take the whole blame for the things you did 'cause somebody else forced you. 'Specially not," she concluded in a rush, "when it's clear they've been walking inside your head with combat boots on and screwing around mightily with the wiring!"

  His smile flickered. "Why take the burden of proving this point upon yourself? When, whether you choose to believe it or not, I am dangerous and unpredictable?"

  "I don't – I don't want you to die… Being made over to somebody else's specs – that's dying, ain't it?"

  There was a small pause. "Perhaps. But why do you care?"

  She moved her head, not quite a shake, not quite breaking eye contact. "You said you'd been a Scout – First-In Scout…"

  "Yes."

  She felt herself tensing and tried to ignore it. "You remember what it was like – being a Scout?"

  His brows pulled sharply together. "How could I not?"

  "Just checkin'." She kept her voice matter-of-fact. "Scouts ain't the same as spies."

  "True," he said calmly. "A Scout must complete quite a bit of training in order to become a spy." He paused, then continued gently, "I have completed all of that training. Miri."

  "So you said. But you remember what it was like when you were a Scout and that's more'n I expected – " She cut herself off and began again, on what seemed a tangent.

  "You know about friends – there's Edger – and about partners… okay," she said, apparently now having it sorted to her satisfaction. "I care because you're trying to be my friend. Maybe you don't even know why – that's okay, 'cause I'm your friend and I'm damned if I know why I should be. And we're partners – though it don't look like either one of us is very good at it.

  People," she continued, as one spelling out basic truths, "help their friends. That's what holds it all together. If people didn't help their friends, then everything would fall apart. I'm in favor of holding things together, so I help my friends." She looked at him closely, wondering at the unease she saw in his face. "You understand all that, Tough Guy?"

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head.

  "Do I lose?" she asked after what her stretched nerves insisted was a very long time.

  His shoulders jerked and he looked up. "I hope not," he murmured. He straightened abruptly, smiling into her eyes.

  "It is good to have a friend." Picking up the mug, he drank deeply and offered it to her.

  She paused with her hand half-extended to take it, searching his face. His smile deepened, lighting the depths of his eyes, and he nodded slightly.

  Stomach fluttering, she took the mug and drank what was left, returning his smile.

  He grinned and snapped to his feet, bending to offer her his hand. She slid her hand into his.

  "Do you think dinner is ready by now?" he asked as they went down the garden pathway toward the flower-shrouded doorway.

  "I think dinner's ruined by now," she said. "I never was a very good cook."

  The drive had kicked in half an hour before. Val Con paused as he reached for his mug, his attention captured by a movement behind Miri's shoulder.

  The floor was beginning to ripple, shading from brown toward purple. Sighing, he closed his eyes.

  "Starting up already? Didn't it take closer to an hour last time?"

  His eyes flicked open. "You, too?"

  "Think you're special? Though I'm not getting any – oh-oh, here we go." The wall directly behind his head flared orange. "Ugly. Orange never was one of my favorite colors." She sighed. "Damned silly way to make a space drive, anyway."

  Val Con sipped wine. "It seems I should have paid more attention in school." He gestured with the mug, encompassing the room at her back. "This is an effect of the drive, you think?"

  "Have it on the best authority," she assured him. "Space Drives for Dummies says that the Electron Substitution Drive works on a principle that involves the ability of an electron to arrive in a new orbit before it leaves the old one. So the ship and everything in it – that includes us – must be in two places at once all during the time we're in drive." She took a drink and ignored the fact that the table was beginning to pulse and shimmer.

  Val Con was staring, a look of stark disbelief on his face. "Correct me if I'm in error. That means that every electron in the ship and everything in it – including, as I am reminded, us – is firing twice for each individual firing in normal space?"

  "Sounds right to me, but I'm a soldier, not a physicist."

  He looked over her shoulder at the control room. The floor was flashing wildly now, torn by dark lightnings, while the board oozed violet and magenta vapors, and the pilot's bench glowed blue with serpentine streaks.

  Taking a deep breath, he expelled it and said something softly in a language that sounded like glass breaking around a steel maul.

  "Come again?" Miri asked, interested. "Never mind. It is not fitting that the youngest of Edger's siblings hear his brother speak of him so."

  "I was thinking about that," she said, finishing off her wine and setting the mug on the shimmering table with care. "How different is Edger from us in how he – thinks about – things? Maybe all this stuff happens too fast for him to notice. Or maybe he can't see it at all." She frowned slightly. "Do we see it?"

  He moved his shoulders. "If the mind processes something as experience, then it is experience. Reality is perhaps more difficult to define than truth…"

  "The visuals ain't so tough," Miri offered after a minute. "Best thing seems to be to concentrate on something else and let 'em fade into the background. Or we could sleep for the next three weeks – maybe not. Had some real weird dreams last sleep. How 'bout you?"

  He was contemplating the navigation tank, which seemed at this moment to be filled with busy multicolored fish of varied sizes. "I don't dream," he murmured absently, then shook his head slightly and returned his gaze to her face. "It is my feeling that – delicious though it is – mushroom souffle will become just a bit boring in three weeks. Would you care to help me concentrate on a tour of the ship? Perhaps we can find a storeroom containing different kinds of human food."

  Her eyes lit. "Coffee!"

  He grinned and stood, stretching. "Stranger things have happened."

  Yxtrang Commander Khalüz considered the scan-tech's data: A single ship, poorly shielded, with three life-forms showing. No doubt Terran, and normally not worthy of the hunt, but booty had been scarce thus far, and the crew was hungry.

  "Enter normal space."

  The quarry was abruptly before them: a private yacht, with speed alone to its credit. The Commander had seen two of these in the past; both had been personal spacecraft, owned by individuals rather than a Troop. They'd had no weapons and only pitiful shields.

  "Scan contact," the Adjutant announced as the low gong sounded. A moment later, he added, "Intruder scan. We are seen."

  In the screen the vessel was turning and beginning to accelerate.

  "Local radio," the Adjutant reported. "It seems they are calling for aid!"

  "Signals responding?" Khalüz asked.

  "None." The Adjutant's voice was filled with the joyful anticipation of battle.

  Khalüz found an answering joy within himself. "Pursue."

  Edger himself answered the comm and inclined his head in recognition of the caller. "Xavier Ponstella Ing. A pleasan
t day to you."

  "And to you, sir," Ing replied, bowing his head deeply. "I have the information you requested concerning Herbert Alan Costello."

  "You are kind. Is there further news, also, of this person's physical state?"

  "The fingers have been replaced and the nerves are disposed to grow and the bones to knit. Another few days will tell the whole tale, of course, but the physician is most optimistic."

  "This is welcome information. I shall inform my kinsman, who will rejoice."

  Ing doubted it, but neglected to say so; it wouldn't do to offend the old gentleman. "In terms of the other things you wished to know: Herbert Alan Costello is employed by a man named Justin Hostro, who is a private businessperson in Econsey. I am sorry that I have been unable to ascertain from Mr. Hostro's assistant the precise amount of Herbert Alan Costello's wages – "

  "This person Hostro is known to me," Edger said, cutting him off in a most un-Clutchlike manner. "We have done business together. I shall myself treat with him on this matter. Yes, I believe that will be best." He inclined his head once more to the man in the screen. "Xavier Ponstella Ing, you have been most helpful and courteous. I thank you for your care of my kinsman and for your willingness to allow us our customs. My Clan will not forget."

  "It is mine to serve," Ing assured him, "and I rejoice to have served well."

  "Joy to you, then, Xavier Ponstella Ing, and a good, long life."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  This, Val Con told himself sternly, must stop. There was no indication, however, that it would do so in the near future.

  The visuals, as Miri had said, were easily ignored. One simply concentrated on the next order of business and refused to be turned from one's chosen course by fuzzy doors, edges, or ceilings, or by flaring colors. Such things could not be happening. Thus, one walked through them.

  The physical effects were more difficult.

  His shirt caressed chest and arms with every move as he delightedly slid his palms down leathered thighs. When he put up an exasperated hand to push the hair away from his eyes, the feel of the thick, silky stuff slipping through his fingers nearly had him weeping in pleasure. Irritably, he put his hand to the flickering wall and dragged it along for several paces before admitting defeat there, as well.

  Everything felt so nice!

  There was worse. At the moment, Miri was waking ahead, allowing him a fine view of her strong, slender shape and the tantalizing hint of sway to her hips. It was a sight that gave him delight, which was not of itself surprising. He had been aware for some time of taking a certain satisfaction in contemplating Miri's physical self; he had, indeed, noted a tendency to allow his eyes to rest upon her more and more frequently. It had not seemed particularly worrisome.

  Now, with the beat of the drive calling forth multiple songs of sensuality from body and mind, it was very worrisome, indeed.

  There was an inward flicker, and hanging before his mind's eye was the equation showing him how he might take her to his own – though not their mutual – pleasure. CMS wavered between .985 and .993.

  Go away! he snarled silently, and it faded, leaving a taste of metal in his mouth.

  A position of less jeopardy was required. Stretching his legs, he came alongside her, which put them both in greater safety – he hoped. She looked up at him, grinning, allowing a glance of the sweet curve of her throat down to what lay hidden by the lacing of the snowy shirt.

  He slammed to a halt, eyes closed and teeth gritting. Wrong again, he thought. This is getting to be a habit.

  Her hand was warm on his arm, and he snapped his eyes open to find her standing closer than he liked, yet not close enough, looking up at him. Sympathy seemed at war with laughter in her face.

  "Little bit of lust never hurt anybody."

  He shook his head, as if the motion would clear his brain. "It's been a long time."

  "With a face like that? Don't lie to your grandmother." Laughter triumphed over sympathy. "Bet the galaxy's full of green-eyed kids."

  "Countless numbers," he agreed. "None of them mine."

  "Real waste," she murmured, slipping closer until her hip touched his. Slowly, seeming to take as much pleasure in the sensation as he did, she slid her hands up his arms to his shoulders. "It'll give us something to concentrate on."

  His hands of themselves had settled around her waist, holding lightly; he noted that he was trembling. Yes, he thought suddenly, with the surety of a well-played hunch, with no taint of drive-effect attached. Yes and yes and –

  No.

  Easing back a fraction, he searched her face and found what he sought in the soft curve of her mouth and deep in her eyes. It had been there for a while, he realized with startling clarity, yet she had no notion. For all her life, Miri had played single's odds, and if she could deny what she was feeling before it was conscious, dismiss it as drive-induced pleasure…

  He pulled back another inch. "Wait."

  She stiffened, mouth tightening. "Guess I'm as bad as Polesta, huh?" Hurt showed on her face – but also relief.

  "Oh, Miri…" He dropped his face to her warm, bright hair, rubbing cheek and forehead in its wonderful softness, rumpling her bangs and half unmooring her braid. His retreat was timed to a millisecond; and taking his hands from around her waist required more disciplined timing than the throw that had not broken Polesta's back.

  "Well – " Her mouth twisted, and she half-turned away.

  He caught one small hand and waited until she turned again to look at him. "When the drive goes off," he said.

  She frowned. "What?"

  "When we are again in normal space, let us speak of this." He tipped his head, half-smiling. "Don't be angry with me, Miri."

  The ghost of a laugh eased the tightness of her face as she pulled her hand away and moved on. "You're a mental case, my friend."

  "Belcher."

  "Yes, T'carais?"

  "Extend to our kinsman Selector my regret for any inconvenience I may cause him by requiring you to accompany me to the place where Justin Hostro conducts business."

  "Yes, T'carais."

  "Say also to our kinsman that, should he have heard nothing from us – either by comm or by our return to this place – within three Standard hours, he must inform my brother the T'caraisiana'ab of this event, instructing him in my voice that he is to act as he knows is proper in the case, always keeping in his thoughts that Justin Hostro has been adjudged by our failure to return guilty of capturing the knives of four of our Clan."

  "Kinsman?"

  "Such may overstate the case," Edger said more gently. "But when one deals with the Clans of Men it is well to be prepared for ill-thought action. Do as I have asked. We depart in fifteen of these things named minutes."

  The meat had been easy, the pillage of no great worth. But the kill had put fresh heart into the crew, and Commander Khalüz, satisfied that the luck of the hunt had changed, gave the order to take the ship into the underside of space.

  "Which way now?" Miri asked at the branching of the corridors.

  Val Con considered it with his new sense of clarity and gestured to the right. "There."

  "You're the boss." She followed him down the indicated hall, grimly looking at the tricksy walls, which was not a good idea. Her eyes slid to Val Con, ahead of her. In some ways, that was not much better an idea, though it offered a more pleasing aspect than the walls. Vividly, she recalled the warmth and the slim strength of him and his hands curved with promise around her waist – and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as she strove to keep her walk even, though she was shaking with desire.

  He'd stopped and was bent close to the wall, seeming to study something. Though how anybody could study anything in the present sense-storm was more than Miri could fathom. She leaned against the opposite wall and waited.

  Val Con had put his hands against the wall and seemed to be trying to square something off. After a few minutes of effort, he shook his head and straightened.

  "
What's up?" she asked.

  "This is the storeroom we want," he said, not turning to look at her. "But it's locked, and I can't see the keyplate properly – it keeps running and shifting."

  This was absurd! There was food and drink and music on the other side of the door – he knew it! To be thwarted now by something so minor as an inability of physical eyes to perceive –

  The answer formed just behind his eyes, in the space reserved for Loop phenomena, and hung there, glowing, its aura strongly reminiscent of hunch. The keyplate configuration was clear. He thought of the pattern he saw, and the door slid open, untouched.

  He stood staring.

  "I didn't know you could do that," Miri commented from across the hall.

  "I can't," he said and stepped forward. The open door to the storeroom was not an illusion. He walked through.

  A moment later, Miri pushed away from the support of the wall and went after him.

  That proved to be a mistake. The moment she crossed the threshold, odors of every kind assailed her: spices, wood-shavings, wool, mint, musk. Added to the visuals and the textual and the need, it was too much. Much too much.

  She sat down hard on the first thing that looked like it might be real. Arms wrapped in a tight hug around her own chest, she hunched over, eyes closed, shaking like a kid in a fever.

  She would never make it. Eight hours? Impossible!

  "Miri. Miri!"

  "What?" The word was a hoarse gasp.

  "Put out a hand and take this. Miri. Put out a hand and take this. Do it now."

  Obviously, she was not going to have any peace until she did what he said. She managed to get one arm unwrapped and, after a hard struggle, opened her eyes.

  Val Con sat on the shifting floor at her feet, holding out an open bottle of wine. She took it from him, blinking.

  "Now what?"

  "Drink."

  "Drink? Out of the bottle?" Her laughter sounded shrill in her own ears, but any joke was better than none.

  "It was difficult enough finding wine without wasting time looking for glasses," he said repressively. "Drink."

  She shook her head. "Always telling me what to do. No reasons, just – "