Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I understood Kit's joke—at least vaguely—as a reference to twentieth century laws against gun ownership, and had to agree with Kath that the man read too much. "I suppose," I said, "that over the last few years Kit hasn't had the opportunity for a rousing social life."

  "Oh, he never had a real social life," Anne said, sitting down. "He's a lot like me. He prefers a few friends, but trustworthy."

  And Tania had jumped in, as she sat down and poured herself bug juice, "Oh, not to say that this whole thing hasn't been a nuisance. More than a nuisance, if what Jean tells me about Kit being wounded is true, but don't go imagining that Kit has been some sort of a victim. I'm sure that the general silence around him has annoyed him, but very little more. We used to say the whole world could implode or disappear and Kit would be perfectly happy provided the music center and his violin were left untouched. He'd never even notice we were missing."

  I thought of the gems with children's birthday parties, and of the thoughts of them in his mind, when I'd shared it. I didn't say anything. I was willing to share part of his memories only because it could lift a threat from his head. But it was none of my business to tell his adoptive family how loved and cherished they were. At any rate, I was sure for all their protests, they already knew.

  The judicial center looked like a Greek temple from the outside, with massive columns just outside an outsized door. Over the door was something in Greek, a language I didn't read. Beside the door, Doc Bartolomeu was waiting, dressed all in black, carrying his black case and looking very solemn.

  "There won't be a jury for this," he said, "because the facts are incontrovertible. You got it directly from his mind and—if the hypnotics can prevent you from lying, there is no way the evidence can be vitiated. Everyone knows that you can't lie in mind link, which is why one normally only does it with one's spouse."

  He seemed to know where we were going, and I let him lead me along huge, echoing hallways. At the end of the final hallway there was a double door, which led to a massive amphitheater. Every seat was taken, and most of them seemed to be taken by people wearing cat or nav uniforms. I also recognized quite a few members of my own profession.

  As Doc took me to the platform at the end of the amphitheater, he said, "It took this long to set up because we needed to advertise it. Though the recording will be available, it is more effective if as many people as possible witness this."

  On the platform was a chair—much like an Earth armchair. I sat in it, feeling demure and little-girlish, not least because the thing had been designed for a large person and, at a little over five feet, I must look like a child in it. I was wearing a white silk dress that covered my knees, and for reasons known only to her, Kath had insisted I tie my hair back and wear pearl earrings.

  The Doc stood facing the people and explained he was going to inject me and with which drugs, inviting them to research the effects. And then that he was going to ask about the facts that I'd gotten from Cat Christopher Klaavil's mind.

  And then he touched an injector to my neck.

  Thirty-Two

  Of the various drugs I've tried—those given to me by doctors and psychiatrists, those administered by peacekeepers trying to keep me quiet, and those I've sought out for myself, Eden hypnotics are the worst—just above Morpheus on the list, and only because Morpheus makes me sleep for hours and I don't like being unconscious and at people's mercy.

  What Doctor Bartolomeu called judicial-grade hypnotics didn't make me sleep. After the first moment of blankness, my mind tiptoed in, hesitantly, like a child entering a suspicious house. I could hear and—once my vision did a sort of flip-flop thing, where fog covered the room and my eyes seemed to be trying to blink nictitating eyelids which I didn't have—see. I could feel my hands, clasped on the arms of the chair, my legs, demurely crossed, the silk of the dress against my legs. What I couldn't do was control what came out of my mouth.

  I didn't realize how complete my lack of control was till after the doctor had introduced me, by explaining that I was an Earth native, rescued by Cat Christopher Klaavil in the energy trees. I guessed he was afraid of having to ask me the question of how I'd ended up aboard the Cathouse, because I'd blurt out that Kit had gone all the way to Circum to rescue me. And that would probably get most of Eden furious at him for endangering them. And perhaps rightly.

  You see, I wasn't fully aware of how these hearings were held. I knew the Doc would ask me questions. What I didn't know was that the audience got so much participation.

  After the introduction and stating that he thought I might have some facts that would weigh on the death of Navigator Jane Klaavil, the doctor turned to me, but before he could ask any questions, someone in the audience—a sharp, shrill voice—asked how I could know that, since I wasn't even there at the time, was I?

  The doctor phrased it more coherently as, "Please, state for the citizens of Eden how you came to know the circumstances of Jane Klaavil's death."

  I had the time of a hesitation, but it was only a moment, and then I heard words pour out of my mouth. I heard myself telling of the attack on Kit in the half-g gardens, of my violent response to it, of more or less dragging the fast-bleeding Kit to the flyer, of needing mind contact to be able to get him help.

  Oh, there were gasps. Plenty of them. Just as I said that I would have liked to kill Joseph but Kit told me not to, I realized that in the part of the amphitheater facing me, on the second row of seats at my eye level, sat Joseph Klaavil, between a man and a woman who, by their look, were his mother and father. The woman looked like an aged version of the little blonde in the holos. But my voice ground on, with neither compunction nor pain, even as my brain registered recognition.

  I explained the mind communication, or at least said I had it with Kit, and what it felt like, and then stopped. That was the question they'd asked. How I'd come to have knowledge of the circumstances of her death, and not what those circumstances had been.

  "Yeah, but—" a voice said, from the audience.

  "Please, Nav, not now," Doc Bartolomeu's voice said, smoothly. "You may ask questions later. For now, will Patrician Sinistra please describe Jane Klaavil's death as experienced through Cat Christopher Kaavil's mind?"

  I did. I started with her going out for what she said was a routine repair. Once outside, she'd removed her helmet, and then very quickly stripped off her suit.

  She was mind-linked with Kit the whole time and as soon as he realized what she was doing, he had searched frantically for his suit. My mind and my voice felt all this as if it had happened to me, as though I had seen a much beloved spouse commit suicide, as if I'd felt her death in my mind.

  Her suit had clung to the ship, due to the nonmagnetic attraction to the ceramite. Her body—grotesque, desiccated, unrecognizable, had floated away in the vastness of space. She'd hidden Kit's suit. Kit had not found it till much later, and then he'd brought hers inside—the only thing left after her self-destruction.

  When I finished speaking, I was wracked with sobs and my face was soaked with the echo of the tears he'd cried then. I heard something much like a gasp from my right, and would have turned to look in that direction, only my body wasn't so much out of my control as such an unimportant thing that it was beyond me to figure out how to move it. Still, I was aware of someone moving in my far-right periphery vision and even at that distance, that blurrily, I noted calico hair and unruly calico beard.

  Someone from the audience asked about the reason for the quarrel. Before Doc could either ask me the question or say I didn't know, Kit's voice cut in, clear, familiar, at once immensely welcome—because if he was talking it meant he was here, and if he was here, he hadn't died in the powertrees—and terrifying, because I wasn't sure what he'd think of my meddling in his private life. I wasn't sure what he'd think of this at all. All I knew for certain was his voice, politely crispy, "Please," he said. "You've already heard more than I would have liked to share. May I have some privacy, please?"

  Mor
e than he would have liked already. I felt my fingers clench tight on the leather upholstery of the armchair and I missed whatever the person in the audience said.

  Kit made one of those sounds he made—half snort, half sigh—when someone exasperated him. "The general reason for it, I think, was the fact that our marriage had proven sterile and of a form of sterility not likely to be solved in a laboratory. Jane . . ." He paused and drew a deep breath, like people will do when a sore spot is touched. "My wife wanted children." A pause. "Does that satisfy your curiosity or do you wish to give me hypnotics too?"

  I listened and was glad my expression couldn't change, because my heart clenched in my chest at the thought that the stupid idiot in the audience would take Kit up on that offer. And then they would find out what Kit was. But the grumbled mutter from the nosy spectator clearly meant that no more explanation was needed.

  And then the questioner who'd spoken first, asking me how I'd come to have mind contact with Cat Klaavil, asked, "Yeah, but how come she ended up in the powertrees? And how come people started disappearing afterwards? And the Earthworms started hunting us?"

  "I hardly think this is any—" Kit said.

  "It is a pertinent, if confused question," the doctor said. Turning to me he asked, "How did you come to find yourself in the powertrees and at the mercy of Cat Klaavil?"

  I wasn't sure what would come out of my mouth till it came, and then was relieved to hear the succinct answer: "There was a revolt aboard my father's space cruiser. His guards or former guards were chasing me. They told lies about me to Circum, so I couldn't go there. So I fled to the powertrees, where I crashed into Cat Klaavil's ship."

  "And he offered you asylum?" Doctor Bartolomeu asked.

  "No. He tied me up," I said. I heard laughter from the audience. "And told me to stay out of his way till he was done collecting." The laughter redoubled. Kit had come all the way down and into my field of vision, on the right. He stood in front of the front row of the amphitheater, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He'd let his beard grow and it hid the lower half of his face. Above it, his eyes were half lidded.

  "And in response?" the Doctor asked.

  "I tried to garrotte him and scare him so he would take me to Earth."

  This time the laughter was so loud and lasted so long that even though Kit turned to Doctor Bartolomeu and asked something, I only caught the tail end of it, "—unwarranted invasion of privacy."

  Doctor Bartolomeu shrugged. "So? Challenge me to a duel when this is over?" And after Kit's noise of derision, he turned back to me. "To your knowledge, did you somehow bring persecution on Eden's power collectors?"

  "No."

  "Is there some way in which you might have?"

  "Not that I can imagine, and I've tried to figure out the logistics of how this would happen."

  This time there was no laughter, but just a continuous murmur of discussion in the background. The Klaavils, I noted, got up and left, wending quietly between amphitheater rows.

  "So," Doctor Bartolomeu said, "you are not in communication with anyone on Earth?"

  "No," I said. "I am not."

  "And you have no intention of being?"

  This one was confusing and my drug-befuddled mind had trouble unwinding it. "Not unless I somehow find myself back on Earth and have a need to talk to someone. It would be very strange to not communicate with anyone in the world if I were there."

  The laughter returned, and I thought even Kit's shoulders shook, though his arms remained crossed at his chest.

  But the doctor said, "Somehow find yourself on Earth—does that mean you have no intention of returning now? Do you prefer Eden?"

  "I do not prefer Eden, but I also have no intention of returning to Earth."

  "Why not, if you do not prefer Eden?"

  I moaned because I knew what was going to happen the moment I figured out what he was going to ask. Kit was there, staring at me with those half-lidded, unreadable eyes and I couldn't see his mouth through the wild calico beard.

  To my horror, I heard the words coming out through my lips and could neither stop them nor call them back. "If I returned to Earth, I would endanger Eden. To achieve it, I would probably have to endanger Kit. And then I would never see Kit again and that," I heard my voice say, uncaring of the fact that I wanted to make a hole on the ground and hide, "would be unbearable."

  Kit's expression didn't alter but a strong, dark red blush climbed from beneath his beard and up to his forehead.

  This brought absolute silence, the sort of horrified silence that falls on a party or a social occasion when someone says one of those things that never should be said in public. I swear there were shuffles from the upper rows as people left.

  Kit turned to glare at Doctor Bartolomeu. But the doctor, after centuries of life, was perhaps tired of it and had a death wish. As he entered my field of vision carrying a delicate, pink injector, he gave Kit a big smile. "Would you help me help Patrician Sinistra to the recovery room, Cat Klaavil?"

  I'm fairly sure that Kit said yes, but perhaps it was the effect of the injector touching my wrist, because I would also swear that yes meant just wait till we're alone. Even as my body became more controllable—not normal, but closer to me, like it had been a balloon unsteadily tethered a long way off and had now come closer and therefore easier to push and pull—I wondered just how furious Kit was going to be. One thing I knew about Kit was that he despised having his affairs aired publicly—or at all.

  Even with his family, who doubtless knew most of what there was to know, he spoke in half sentences and veiled references. I wasn't sure if the reason he hadn't told me what he was had been not so much fear of my reaction as a genuine, gut-felt reaction to having to tell anyone something he considered private. Kit Klaavil hoarded secrets like a miser hoarded coin. And I'd just aired his secrets for all the world to hear. More the pity, I'd also aired mine.

  I felt his arm come around me, just under my arms, warm and strong, lifting me. "Up you come," he said. I fully expected him to say and down you go, and fling me from the stage. But even as Doc Bartolomeu approached to help me on the other side, Kit's other arm came down under my knees and lifted me up. My face came to rest on his chest just short of his shoulder, against the red stuff of the uniform, just beside the emblem with the apple and the serpent and the words Je reviens. Still half in a dream, afraid of how furious he was going to be, savoring his warmth and strength, I said, "Je reviens. I'm glad you did come back."

  Something that might have been laughter rumbled through his chest. "So am I," he said. "It's ever so much better than the alternative." As he spoke he was carrying me to the one side of the stage not surrounded by seats, and through a small door there.

  On the other side was a narrow corridor, and Kit carried me after the doctor, down the hallway and through a door to the left, into a very small room empty save for a single white bed, a white armchair, and an array of medical equipment.

  I expected Kit to drop me, or at least to set me on my feet, but he didn't. He carried me all the way to the bed and laid me down upon it. He patted my shoulder—half absently, as if I were a child in need of reassurance—and then crossed his arms on his chest and turned to the doctor. "Of all the despicable—"

  "Can it."

  "You had no business—"

  "No. But something I have learned, Christopher. When the people who do have business don't take care of it, it falls to those who don't to resolve it." The doctor's back was turned, as he poured something from a bottle, but the way Kit was glaring at the spot between the Doc's shoulders, I fully expected the doctor's shabby dark suit to start smoldering and smoking.

  However, when he turned around he looked completely unconcerned, and Kit's next foray was "I could not do this. Not without giving away secrets that aren't—"

  "So we took care of it," he said, as he approached me and brought a cup of clear liquid to my lips. "Drink now, Thena."

  "But you had no right!" Kit sa
id, looking very much like he would have liked to say much stronger words.

  "You're very welcome, Christopher."

  Kit turned towards the wall nearest him, and punched it—hard. The sound echoed through the room. The doctor looked at him, a smile forming on his wrinkled face. "Oh, come," he said. "You know if you break your fingers I'll charge you top money to fix them. And you'll want me to fix them, so they're in shape for piloting."

  Kit turned around, his other hand holding the one that he'd punched with. "You're the most infuriating, the most meddling, the most exasperating old man I've ever had the misfortune to run into."

  The doctor smiled. He took the glass away from my nerveless fingers. "I said you were very welcome."

  Kit let out a long, exasperated breath. "Thena," he said, "let's go home."

  Thirty-Three

  It wasn't that easy or that quick. My legs felt exactly as if they were balloons full of water and my eyes kept insisting on crossing. It was the worst—or the best—drunk I'd had since Simon and Fuse and I had highjacked that liquor transport in Olympus Seacity.

  However, Kit observed a dignified silence the rest of the time we were in the room, as though by pretending he was no longer there, he could act as though he were on his way home, and therefore didn't really have to acknowledge the presence of Doc Bartolomeu. The doctor either respected this or decided to go along with it, because he too was silent, though a smile kept touching his lips now and then.

  He gave me another glass of white stuff that tasted like sugared water, then a glass of green stuff that tasted both hot and vile, like the distilled sins of humanity, and finally a glass of violet-colored stuff that tasted like burnt sugar.

  By this time my eyes had uncrossed enough that I could see clearly and was starting to believe I might be able to stand up without falling. Even then, as I started to stand up, Kit put his arm around me to prevent my falling. He led me out of the room and through a long maze of corridors.