by Andre Norton
"You have to think about the Queen first."
Tooe’s pupils narrowed again. She was still silent.
Dane said awkwardly, "We can talk about it later, all right? Now, what’s this plan? We’re going now?"
Tooe gave a nod. Dane knew the dangers of attributing too-human emotions to someone not human, but she seemed slightly less energetic, and even her voice was a bit lower as she said, "We go now. Quick, search computer. Find last data. Bad place, Flindyk office, many many traps. Maybe Monitors come, maybe other people." She smacked her palms together lightly. "Try to catch us. You bring help?" she ended on a note of
inquiry.
Dane sighed. "May’s well." He turned to Rip, who raised a hand as though to say "Count me in."
"My first thought would be Kosti—"
"Mine too," Rip said. "No one gets past him whom he doesn’t want passing. There’s Mura, who is an expert in martial arts. He hasn’t left the ship yet—I don’t know why—but he might be willing now."
Dane snapped his fingers, then caught at the ladder so he wouldn’t bounce. "Go ask him. I’ve got someone else to ask," he said.
"Let’s each grab a sleeprod, and meet at the outer lock in—two minutes."
Tooe gave a chirp of anticipation, and rocketed up the ladder.
Rip followed more slowly.
Dane dove at the down-ladder and hand-over-handed himself down to the engine level. As he expected, he found Johan Stotz at his console, deep in a multidimensional flowchart of the power flow in the Queen, from engines out. To Dane it looked like a multicolored sea urchin with a blue-white star at its heart, radiating out crooked, angular spines of light that shaded through the rainbow to red as they tapered out to nothingness. For Stotz, he realized, it was like reading a simple map.
Johan Stotz was a tall, thin, taciturn fellow only a few years older than Dane, though sometimes Dane felt that Johan was closer to Van Ryke’s age. He was by nature quiet, and he seemed completely absorbed in engineering; more than once, when Jellico had set down on some pleasant world and gave the crew leave for R and R, it turned out later Stotz’s idea of relaxation and enjoyment was to travel halfway across a continent to attend a seminar on "The Macronucleic Interface to Ship’s Power: Friend or Foe?"
He never talked about his past—none of them did, really. But Dane remembered very well that first day when they found Tooe. He knew it must have taken some formidably trained knowledge of microgee movement to lay hold of that quick little Rigelian.
"You know null-grav sports?" Dane asked.
Stotz blinked once, his brows rising in mild surprise. "I was pretty good at school," he conceded.
"How good?" Dane asked.
Stotz grinned faintly. "Paid my way through by playing Nuller Rugby."
Dane whistled. That meant he wasn’t just good, he was lethal. "That’s just what I need," he said, and he briefly outlined what Tooe had proposed. "We’re going now, taking a sleeprod. Are you in?"
He half expected Stotz to bow out. He just never got involved in rowdy stuff, at least while Dane had been on board.
But now his slight grin stretched, and with a quick gesture he saved his work and shut down his console.
"Lead on," he said.
They stopped to get a pair of sleeprods, then started up to the outer lock.
There he found not just the captain waiting, but a good part of the crew. Another surprise awaited Dane: Rip, Tooe, and Frank Mura stood on the dock. Mura’s face was utterly impassive, and he carried no sleeprod, but Dane noted a short, thin object just outlined in Frank’s tunic pocket. Dane guessed it had to be the weird little ultrasonic instrument Frank called a feedle pipe.
The crew watched them go in silence; to all intents and purposes anyone else on the dock would see a group setting out for one of the concourses for some entertainment.
But anyone spying, Dane thought seconds later, would be puzzled by their disappearance. They dropped rapidly through a one-person access hatch that Tooe had shown him earlier, and started along a hidden route.
At a juncture, Dane encountered his third surprise. In the midst of Tooe’s klinti members, as though protected by them, Dane recognized the long, fragile form belonging to Nunku.
17
Rip snickered to himself as he followed Dane Thorson through a barren service adit, the odd beings in Tooe’s klinti methodically zooming ahead, checking in all directions, then waving them on to the next segment of the service transit, just like space pirates in some holovid.
Under the circumstances, the huge sign in three languages and three symbols was more funny than menacing:
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
More than that prompted the bubbling humor, fast and unstoppable as a springtide stream: Ali’s lengthy, colorful, and fluent reaction to his being forced to stay behind. The captain had been adamant. Until they knew for certain that the Monitors of Harmony were in league with the enemy, they would keep their promise, and Kosti and Kamil were not permitted to go anywhere but between the two ships.
Another cause for laughter was picturing what Kosti would say when he returned and found out what he’d missed.
But foremost was the surreal sense that Rip got when he watched the free-fall circus evolving around them. Now he saw Nunku’s beauty, an eldritch sort based on economy of line and motion: an eel-maiden moving in a sea of micro-gravity that was slowly drowning him, the earthbound one. Not only did he feel like he was in a holovid, now he was living a fairy tale.
Rip fought back a snort-spasm of hilarity. He knew that he should stop laughing, that he was probably closer to hysteria than he realized, but he just couldn’t. Luckily none of the others paid him the slightest attention; Dane was concentrating on the whispered reports in some other language that the klinti made from time to time, and Mura just ignored him. Stotz gave Rip a faint smile once, then he too ignored him, instead moving with a speed and control of effort that inspired instant admiration in Rip. He’d been amazed when Dane showed up with Johan, of all people, but now Rip could see why he was along—though how Dane had known to ask was still a mystery.
They traversed a good portion of the dock area before stopping behind
an adit at one of the maglevs that stayed in null grav. His antic mood was wearing off, eroded by the occasional disorientation of free fall and the strangeness of the Spinner. Now that Nunku was just a weird girl with spidery-thin arms and legs protruding from a ragged robe, some of his humor dissipated. But the obvious respect the others treated her with made it apparent she wasn’t just a mutant who hadn’t a decent change of clothes, or access to enough water to launder what she had. It was hard to look at her— and harder to imagine what her life must be like.
A closer glance at that pale, mottled skin sticking out of the tattered, old-fashioned djellaba made Rip wish suddenly for wide spaces, fresh air, and gravity.
The fresh air and wide spaces, at least, they got. After the scouts had watched for several long minutes, finally they signaled the all-clear, and the assault circus (as Rip privately termed this odd combination of beings) hastily emerged from the adit.
In quiet, law-abiding form they boarded the maglev.
Beings, mostly Kanddoyds, crowded on and off the maglev for the few stops they needed to make. Just before Rip and his party debarked, a group of Traders came on, several of them saluting the Queen's men before one of them scrutinized Dane and nudged one of his partners. A quick whisper, and the other Traders moved with more haste than necessary to the other side of the pod, studiously avoiding looking in their direction.
Though Dane didn’t react, this effectively killed the remainder of Rip’s sense of humor, his conviction that what he was doing wasn’t real, and filled him with an anger-laced sense of purpose.
After waiting a few seconds he, Stotz, Mura, and Dane followed Tooe’s group off, so it wasn’t immediately obvious they were all together, and they drifted down the concourse, looking off at the winking chains of lights along t
he Kanddoyd buildings.
By a circuitous route they approached a fine building with a fern garden carefully tended round it. One by one they followed one another behind a sheltering screen of ferns, and ducked into another service adit.
This one was narrow, with pipes and conduits lining all the walls. An
aggressive antiseptic smell didn’t quite cover the dank odor of waste on its way to the recycler.
Rip’s sense of purpose got an adrenaline boost when one of the scouts stopped, listening to a wrist com, and chattered to the others.
"Fast!" Tooe squeaked. "Fast! Fast! Monitors changing shift—"
They bounded from wall to wall, zooming up the narrow accessways.
Rip was immediately completely lost, for the accesses bent and twisted at odd angles. Someone knew where they were going, though.
Finally they came to a halt, and again the scouts used a tiny peek-through to ascertain when the hallway just beyond their hatch was empty. This was in null-gravity territory, which meant people came and went at all hours, which summed up Kanddoyd life. The Shver followed simulated sun cycles when they could, but the Kanddoyds had bred the diurnal rhythms out of their life cycles uncounted generations ago.
When the corridor the scouts had chosen was empty, two of the klinti came forward. Rip saw that they had donned the plain gray coveralls of maintenance personnel. As they slipped out the hole, a third carefully handed them a canister. Puzzled, Rip pushed himself forward; then alarm thumped in his chest when he recognized the glowing hooked orange trigram indicating biohazardous contents.
Tooe closed the hatch almost all the way. From the darkness beyond, the rest of the group crowded around to watch. The two workers stood waiting quietly, one with his clawed fingers on the latch of the biohazard container.
Noises sounded; a group of chattering Kanddoyds appeared around a corner. Rip, peering down at an awkward angle, just barely glimpsed them before one of the workers pushed against the other, let out a yell, and next thing they knew the canister was open and zillions of tiny shapes swarmed out, spiraling into the corridor.
The Kanddoyds screeched like overtuned strings, clacking and whistling in supersonic ranges that brought up goose bumps on Rip’s neck.
One of the workers hooted something in High Kanddoyd, to which the beings responded with total panic.
Soon shrieks echoed back, one of them human: "EVACUATE! APYUI VAMPIRE FLIES!"
Apyui vampire flies? Rip backed away in horror lest any of the black shapes still darting about in the hallway slip through the service hatch still cracked open. Everyone knew about Apyui vampire flies, an insect harmless to the Fifftocs but deadly to every other race. Every space farer knew the terrible story of the Plague of Athero. Just a couple of the flies had gotten aboard a Trader that stopped in Fifftoc space and were inadvertently carried to a human system, where they rapidly bred by feeding through soft human skin. They didn’t just suck blood, they paralyzed their victims first with a potent chemical that spread through the nervous system, making the victim think he was dying by fire. Most victims died by suicide in their efforts to stop the pain; the few who lived were paralyzed for life.
"We’d better—" Rip started nervously.
Tooe’s webbed fingers grabbed his shoulder in a surprisingly strong grip. "Move not! Not Apyui flies. Ekko-tree mites. No harm."
Rip realized what had happened, and drew a shaky breath. "That’s brilliant," he muttered.
"Sneaky, but brilliant," Johan said wryly.
Dane grinned, then tabbed the hatch open and motioned them out. "Building has to be empty by now. Let’s get to it."
"Won’t they seal and gas the place?" Rip asked as they bounded down a hall passing doors above, below, to the sides, always squarely in the middle of walls.
"Gas won’t harm anyone but Jharzhakiu there," Dane said, pointing to a being with two sets of arms, one that ended in claws and the other in tentacles. The claw arms were busy pulling a breathing apparatus over a very weird face. "All we’ll smell is cinnamon," Dane added.
"Here," Tooe said. "Move back."
As she opened the hatch she tossed through it an automated doll with something strapped to its back. Dane sensed a flicker of response. Moving with feral grace, a boneless tentacle of gleaming metal lashed down from above the door and transfixed the doll as it scuttled frantically into the room, adhesive glands holding it firmly to the deck. As Rip watched, there was a bluish electric flash, and he saw a pulse zap back up the tentacle. A moment later a weird hum he hadn’t previously been aware of ceased.
Moving with practiced efficiency, several klinti moved in, teasing out the other traps and stings.
Dane said, "How would Flindyk have time to activate that stuff? The entire building must have been evacuated in half a minute."
"Remote activation," Rip said. "Easy enough to rig, if you’ve plenty of money and power."
At last the klinti indicated it was safe to move. Inside they found the mute evidence of hasty evacuation. Flimsies lay everywhere, chips had been dropped; here and three were floating bubbles from drink tubes that had gotten smashed somehow in the general exodus. There were four live consoles, each with projects suspended. Rip watched Nunku float from each to each, studying the keypads as though there were something to be read there.
He knew he was supposed to be backup muscle in case they were discovered, but he was a navigator by trade, which meant among other things learning computer tech, and he couldn’t take his attention away from her.
Signing to Dane, who was gently guiding wobbling fluid spheres out of their way, he said, "Yell if you need me. I want to watch."
Dane nodded and returned to his chore.
Stotz took up position by the main door, stationing himself just inside at an angle where he could see out but not be immediately seen. Mura made his way to another door and waited there, watching with blank face as the klinti moved about the room picking up chips and flimsies.
No one touched the consoles.
Nunku gestured toward a door cleverly hidden in a fabulous mosaic, and two of the klinti sprang to it. This time they tossed a diaphanous veil
of teased-out Rackney silk, triggering an apparently solid image from its fluorescent fibers with a juiced-up toy holobeamer. The response was more subtle: Dane saw a flicker of motion and the image sheered sideways and disappeared as something snatched the silk from the air. Different klinti moved in; this time clearing it took longer.
Inside was the garden room, just as Rael had described to the crew. Rip gave an appreciative glance at the wealth that had gone into the office’s design. Could a Trade official earn enough to afford this stuff—even a fellow saving for a hundred years?
He shook his head and turned to watch Nunku.
Meanwhile, she had been moving cautiously behind her boobytrap scouts toward a touch console inset into a desk. There were very few keytabs but those were extremely costly porcelain, gold-painted.
Nunku cast a quick glance at Rip, gave him a surprisingly shy smile.
She altered her posture so he could see better as she removed a chip from her tattered clothing and dropped it into a slot. The screen lit up, but only swirled in a fractal chaos that parodied the beauty spinning overhead.
"Mine chip hath released a nofratu," she said in a soft, sibilant voice. "Very dangerous, quite forbidden. There are no inherent constraints on its reproduction."
That voice, the odd accent, like his grandmother’s almost, and her childish moon face above the long stick body made him feel curiously adrift, as if reality had turned inside out and left him stranded in a dreamscape. "There is very little it cannot dissolve," she said as the movement of the patterns onscreen accelerated.
He realized she was happy to explain, that this odd, pitiful person was a born teacher.
Abruptly, the screen cleared to a maze of symbols and glyphs.
"What is that?" he asked, his finger drawn to a particularly complex ideograph.
She grabbed his wrist in a surprisingly strong grasp; he noticed for the first time how large her knuckles and wrist were in proportion to her
fingers and arms. "It is something the varlet Flindyk would most straitly desire thee to touch," she said without heat.
She released him as he pulled his hand back. With an attenuated finger, she touched the screen gently. The pattern folded in on itself, swallowing ranks of data. Rip had the sense of something focusing and wondered how Nunku saw it.
"A twisted web indeed he spinneth," she said. "But I shall pluck out the treasure at its heart." She touched the screen again, this time with a complex pattern of several fingers. Again the evolution, the sense of something evolving from blur to image. Nunku was once more the eel-maiden, this time swimming in a sea of data, with its own predators and beauties.
The unreality of the scene was intensified when Rip heard someone sneeze a few times in the outer chamber, and moments later he smelled a sharp odor rather like cinnamon and burned straw. The maintenance people were flushing the supposed vampire flies—they’d be in soon.
Nunku had to realize it too, but her face was merely absorbed as with delicate touch she tried various patterns of pressure and rhythm, watching the screen ripple through simpler and simpler patterns of symbols.
Finally the screen flickered and Rip saw data ranked in the Kanddoyd language. Moving swiftly now, Nunku pressed a keytab and at once the status light for a download shone a steady green.
"It returneth, its appetites sated, and with it our data."
It took only a few seconds, then Nunku pulled the chip out and the screen flickered to the fractal display they’d first seen.
"It should have erased my tracks," she said, "at least on the surface. A direct probe would reveal what we have done, but I do make no doubt I left nary a trace to raise the suspicions of yon miscreants."
"Then we’d better go," Rip said.
Until now she’d moved slowly; now she placed one of those impossibly thin feet on a surface and shot through the door to the outer room.