by Andre Norton
That had been five Standard years ago.
The stories were taking on some unsettling similarities, Rael thought as she worked tirelessly to mend diseased or battered sentients from an astonishing variety of backgrounds. Even granted that some were lying, it still added up to a statistically impossible set of coincidences.
She worked without recourse to her chrono, until her back felt like it was on fire and her arms got so tired she could scarcely control her instruments. And finally she ran out of supplies, and got Tooe to promise that they would return again, and she packed up, quietly turning off the recorder she had secreted in her pack.
In silence she and Tooe retreated to the Queen.
In silence she boarded. Jellico was suddenly there, his hard gray eyes searching, but he asked no questions, just pointed to her cabin.
She made it down, and meant to shower, but instead she lay on her bunk to rest her eyes, and finally the tears came. She wept because she was tired, because she couldn’t possibly help them all, because of some terrible, vast injustice whose cost in terms of the innocent might not be solvable. She wept because the universe didn’t seem to care, and when she was empty, she dropped into a deep sleep, and dreamed of a weird chamber, and endless lines of broken, hopeless beings turning to her for succor.
16
Craig Tau stowed his kit aboard the shuttle, and watched as the Starvenger spun out of view, bringing the vast bulk of the habitat across the viewport. Beyond hung a gray hopeless arc of light, the marginal planet below that served merely as a spacetime anchor for the orbiting habitats. Just a hole in space, Craig thought, shaking his head. Microgravity was stressing them all—he sometimes wondered if they shouldn’t adopt Tooe’s disorienting approach, and give up the battle to pretend acceleration. Though he had noted that the four younger men were using their magboots a lot less often than they had on first arriving. The four apprentices seemed to be adjusting the quickest to the stressfully unnatural biorhythms of habitat life and the bewildering amount of strange and new technology surrounding them.
The vast bay of the habitat swallowed the shuttle. Now Craig felt like he was diving up into the maelstrom of ships and lights and machinery and little service vessels, a ceaseless dance of commerce.
But he wasn’t watching the activity outside; it was mere backdrop to his thoughts. He’d spent his two days reviewing his initial observations of what he had begun to call the Esperite Effect, and writing up his recent experiences. This was not an easy chore. He was scrupulously careful to report precisely what he had seen and heard, registering his interpretations and hypotheses on another field. At times his text was cluttered with the tiny icons indicating his own views, which totaled three times the wordage of his lab reports. This was fine. It meant someday he might get a clue to what was going on.
It was also preferable to resisting the impulse to reorganize the Starvenger's lab into a replica of the Solar Queen's. He noted rather sadly that the others had stopped taking little items over with them for their two-day stints and then leaving them; he recorded this too, reflecting on how the Starvenger had begun, incrementally, to metamorphose into their territory—a process which had halted with Ya’s news about the conflicting abandonment dates and the mysterious Ariadne.
When the shuttle reached the Queen, he went directly down to his quarters to copy his notes into his lab computer, and to make a general status check. The cats were fine, and there were no weird illnesses or nasty accidents recorded in the sick bay log. In fact, there were no notes at all for the past eighteen hours—and, he discovered, a mighty dent had been
made in the supplies.
So Rael had made her foray into Spin Axis territory. He wondered how successful she’d been, and went back to check the log for her report. Nothing.
Alarm kindled in him. Had she returned? He crossed the lab toward the up-ladder hatchway just as Rael Cofort emerged from her cabin.
Tau backed inside, frowning at the signs of stress marking her fine skin and expressive eyes. He was about to ask her for a report when she stopped, standing very still, her gaze distracted, and a moment later there was the familiar firm tread of the captain’s boots on the deckplates.
"Are you all right?" Jellico addressed Cofort abruptly.
"Of course," Rael said, turning to face the outer corridor.
"Tooe tells us you are planning to go back up there."
"I have to," Rael said. "There’s a need."
"Would you obey if I forbid it?"
Cofort smiled, just slightly, but her voice was cool. "I’d have to," she said. "You’re the captain, I’m new crew, and not so high in the hierarchy. But before this conversation goes any further, answer me this: would you forbid Craig to go?"
Tau heard a short intake of breath, followed by a long pause. The medic realized first that the captain did not know he was there, and second, though there was nothing personal in the words he heard, the conversation was private.
He was about to retreat back to his lab when Rael Cofort broke it off by turning away from the captain, who was still not in view, and coming inside. After a moment the captain followed, his face impassive except for a tightening along his jaw.
Tau bent to pick up Omega, who instantly began to purr. He straightened up slowly, aware of the magboots imprisoning his feet against the deck. It sometimes took an effort of will not to imagine oneself hanging from the ceiling—there was no sense of one’s feet pressing against the deck.
"I’ll make my report," Cofort said to Tau, "while you get your update."
Tau turned to the captain, who gave him a terse rundown on the latest news in their mystery. Tau listened to the talk of computer ferrets and lists, but he didn’t pay much attention. There were other crew members better qualified to interpret that data. Instead he sifted the captain’s words for how the news was taking its toll on the crew.
At the end, he offered no comment, nor did Jellico ask for any. He thanked the captain for the report, then said, "So how is Tooe adjusting? Or should I say, how is everyone adjusting to her?"
Jellico’s grim face eased as he gave a slight smile. "She’s divided her time between these runs to the Spinner and sitting in the cargo bay with Thorson cramming data on Trade lingo, and customs, trade, and cargo stowage."
"Could she possibly be a cargo wrangler?" Tau asked doubtfully, thinking of the sinewy Thorson and Jan Van Ryke, whose comfortable-looking bulk hid a very powerful musculature.
"Van and Thorson both insist she knows more about the intricacies of null-grav cargo moving than both of them together. We’re used to planetside dealings, and gravity, where size can make a difference. If we’re going to push further afield, then we need to adjust to the exigencies of null-grav trade," Jellico said.
Tau, sifting the words, nodded in agreement. "We’ve access to loading machines if it comes to that. But what I’m hearing here is that they both seem to be in favor of hiring her on."
"At least on a trial basis," Jellico said. "Van put it to me just today. He doesn’t want anything said to Tooe yet, though—there’s no use in it until we settle our problems with Trade."
Tau sighed. "Right. For a nice moment I’d forgotten that."
Jellico gave a short laugh. "You won’t for long. Dane and Ali and Rip will see to that."
Rip Shannon heard a rap on his cabin door.
He opened it, saw Dane standing in the doorway of his cabin across the narrow corridor. Thorson was strapping a sleeprod to his belt. "Ready to go?" he asked.
"You really think we’ll need those?" Rip asked as Dane reached into his cabin and pulled out another sleeprod to hand over.
Thorson shrugged. "Nunku and Tang both said that it’s inevitable that the ferret is going to trigger alarms, in which case they’ll figure out where the data is going. One of these times we’re going to find a welcome party waiting for us down there."
"Do these things even work on Shver?" Rip asked as he hastily strapped his to his belt so he’d have both h
ands free. "With our luck a zap from this will hit them like Dirjwartian Joy Juice and they’ll be stampeding after us for more."
"Either that or it just makes them really, really mad," Dane said with a grin. "Anyway, I asked Tau about that. He says these things are a broad-band neural disruptor. They’ll deck pretty much any being we’ve come across—though not for long if they mass a lot, like Shver."
"Long enough for us to show them our heels suits me fine," Rip said. "All right, let’s get this over with."
Dane grinned again, leading the way. They left the Queen and pulled themselves down the dock. Rip looked around, breathing in the featureless habitat air. If you ignored the weird visual proportions this was like any spaceport: lit at all hours, and busy at all hours. As they moved toward the maglev, Rip wondered if the dock workers lost all sense of the passage of time, or if they had their ways of reestablishing diurnal/nocturnal physiological ryhthms.
The maglev was crowded. Rip hadn’t bothered to bring a chrono, since the lack of recognizable (planet-dictated) work-and-sleep cycles rendered time measure meaningless for humans. At least in the Kanddoyd parts of Exchange, it seemed that life went on pretty much round the clock. Though he wondered if they’d inadvertently set out at some generally acknowledged shift-change time, for there were Kanddoyd workers in all of the pods, their fiddle-voices chattering away with the eternal
accompaniment of hums, chirps, whistles, taps, and clicks. None of them sat still, but moved about as they communicated.
Rip found that watching them as the pod accelerated was a mistake, especially after the pod emerged from the interior of the habitat’s end cap and the interior burst into light around them. The odd horizon out the window and the movement of the pod amid the strangely angled, tube-shaped Kanddoyd domiciles did not accord well with the immediate prospect of Kanddoyds swarming about in zigzag patterns. Dizziness made him clutch at his seat.
He closed his eyes and tried to let the sound pass over him like an audio tide. After a time he had to admit that, so long as he didn’t watch the Kanddoyds, their noises were more pleasing than not.
At any rate they did not stay on the pod long; as they started the descent toward the surface and gradually heavier gravity, the Kanddoyds disappeared from the pod, a few at each stop.
For a short time they were alone, then Shver started boarding. Each time Dane eyed the newcomers, his hand straying near his belt. None of the Shver molested them in any way; few of them even looked at the Terran Traders.
Presently Rip’s inner ear gave him that steadying sense that one grav affords humans. He stretched out and breathed deeply. All too soon he felt his limbs gain weight, as if his own mass fought against him. He flexed his muscles in some stationary isometrics, figuring he’d turn the experience into a workout.
Presently they started the curve that meant they’d reached the surface, and Rip was relieved. He felt his lungs laboring to breathe; if he tried to breathe too fast, he felt the faintest burning sensation.
He turned to Dane, saw a look that reminded him of Captain Jellico. Dane’s bony face was set hard, his jaw grim. But when the pod slid to a halt at their stop, the big cargo apprentice got up with no diminution in his usual speed.
"Walk," Dane said a moment later. "This way."
His voice was quiet. Rip felt his heart rate increase, which was almost
painful. He forced his body to move at Dane’s pace, being careful to keep his knees slightly bent and to place each foot carefully. He did not want to fall down in this grav—broken or shattered bones were much too likely a result.
"Where’s the problem?" Rip asked softly when they were well away from the nearest Shver. He saw the huge, elephantine beings moving about, but none seemed to be particularly menacing.
"Other side of the pod," Dane said, tipping his head back the other way. "A couple of Khelv and a Zhem, all of Clan Golm. I’ve been learning the clan skin markings as much as I can."
"Where’d you get the data?"
"Here." Dane indicated his eyes. "They won’t permit anything written down. But I know what Golm clan looks like now." His deep voice took on a steely edge. "These three were prowling along looking in the pods."
"Then they’re onto us?" Rip asked. "Shouldn’t we go back?"
"I don’t think they are, or they’d be waiting at the mail drop," Dane said. "I’ll bet they heard about a Terran Trader being here, which is probably rare enough to put whoever is watching out for that kind of news on his guard. So they’re nosing about."
"Khelv. Zhem," Rip repeated. "Aren’t those levels in the noncitizen rank?"
"Kind of," Dane replied. "It’s technically a rank for single beings. A Khelv has only contributed one ’gift’ to his or her clan, and they tend to be the hungriest for some kind of score. A Zhem has only one more to make the sacred five; a Jheel has three more. When they reach five, they can find a mate and reproduce, and once they do that, then they get citizenship within the clan, which means speaking rights at clan meetings. They can also be assigned a task in order to advance in rank again."
"Assigned?" Rip asked as they entered the building.
Dane glanced around, as did Rip. To Rip’s eyes the Shver seemed peaceable enough; at least they were thoroughly ignoring the Terrans. Dane apparently didn’t see the Golm, because he said as he led the way to
the communications chamber, "That’s right. The group can assign them a task. If they don’t like it, or don’t complete it, that’s it for career advancement. If they refuse out of what the clan terms cowardice, they’re cast out."
Rip shook his head slightly, then stopped, feeling his neck twinge.
Both men were silent as Dane tapped his code into the waiting automat. Rip turned his back to Dane and watched the room for any sign of menace.
No one came in. Dane pulled something from the machine and tucked it into his pouch, then said, "Let’s move." He was breathing with rapid, shallow breaths, probably from talking so long. Rip could tell that he wasn’t put out. In fact there was an instinctive sense, though Rip had no idea where it came from since the big Viking was about as expressive as a sack of coal, that Dane was flattered to have his knowledge sought.
Still, Rip forbore asking any more questions until they were safely back on the maglev. Dane sat tensely, his hand on his sleeprod, until the pod started to move.
Then he relaxed just a little. "There they are," he said, pointing out the window as the pod began to accelerate.
Rip felt the acceleration as added weight, and was disinclined to move far enough to catch a glimpse of the Golm trio. All he saw were three Shver stalking along a grassy path at an oblique angle to the maglev concourse.
"I’m staggering the times of the visits," Dane said. "I wonder how long they’ve been there?"
Rip had no idea, and did not speak.
Instead, he gazed out the window at the squat, thick-trunked trees that crisscrossed the land in lines, or grew in dark clumps hither and yon. Some of the lines of trees had ditches at one side or another, and Rip remembered someone saying that the Shver were really like the elephants they reminded humans of in that they wouldn’t jump. A ditch was as effective as a wall for deterring Shver. At the very idea of having to jump even an inch in the punishing gravity, Rip winced; though the Shver were
adapted to their heavy gravity, still, it was a serious business to lift so much mass into the air.
He looked farther, but all he saw was green, and trees, and a few roads. No dwellings were visible, of course, only business-related buildings.
Presently the pod swooped up, pressing them back against their seats, and soon the grav began to ease. The sensation of climbing gave way gradually to forward movement as the pressure on his body dissipated.
Suddenly Dane took a deep breath, and he rubbed his neck. "Whew," he said. "Takes it out of you, doesn’t it?"
Rip nodded, gesturing toward his pouch. "What’s the word?"
Dane had already slid his hand into the bel
t pouch, from which he extracted a folded printout. As the pod raced along, Dane read silently.
Rip waited, his curiosity increasing as Dane continued to say nothing, just frowned down at the paper.
Finally he handed the printout to Rip. "You tell me," he said. "You’re the comtech, and I don’t know if what I’m reading is what I’m supposed to understand."
Rip took the printout, and said, "All this stuff at the top is the number and types of fire walls the ferret had to break through, and these are the routes the ferret took to isolate the information."
"Understood." Dane gave a curt nod. "Go on."
"The search field here was the Ariadne, as you already know, and—"
Rip broke off, scanning the data as the meaning reached him. Names of ships resonated through his skull like a rung bell. Finally he looked up at Dane. "This is a list of all the ships coming through Mykosian space that were insured through Trade, and the insurance codes indicating what the cargo was, in priority order."
"So I got that right." Dane’s mouth was a thin angry line. "Did you look at the date that the Ariadne was due to arrive?"
"Hell and blast," Rip muttered. "Ten weeks ago!"
"And look whose computer it came from—"
"Our old buddy Prime Facilitator Koytatik. Whatever’s going on, she’s in it right up to her mandibles." Rip looked up, and whistled softly. "If I’m right—"
"If we’re both right," Dane said sourly. "You hit the same rad dump I did—"
Rip nodded. "What we’re looking at is hijacking on the biggest level I’ve ever heard of."
Dane flexed his big fists, as though he was about to go find the perpetrator and effect his own kind of justice.
Just then the pod slid to a stop, and a swarm of Kanddoyds entered.
"Stash this," Rip murmured, handing him the printout.
Dane quickly stowed the paper in his belt pouch, and for the remainder of the journey they both sat in a tense silence, glaring at every passenger who came aboard, their hands never far from their sleeprods.