He turned and looked me up and down with his eye. Then he scratched a three-day-old beard and shook his head. “You see Ya Ya, you better no lie to him.”
I smiled. “So I’ve been warned. Don’t worry. My mother raised me to tell the truth.”
When you thought about it, Cohon was a damn shrewd crook. When the nerds devised our cover legends they always tried to bring in planetary locals so we got the details right. This little guy had offworlded on his own somehow, or Cohon had upsmuggled him. Either way, this dwarf’s perspective made him worth his weight in gold to a businessman whose cash cow was Yavet and its billions of junked-up little people.
A guru in the Cold War I Soviet Union said that religion was the opiate of the masses. On Cold War II Yavet, opiates were the opiate of the masses.
And this guy was worth his weight in gold when sniffing out competing opium smugglers trying to milk his boss’ cash cow.
Hair rose on my neck.
This guy didn’t just happen to be dusting. Cohon had assigned his resident Yavi to interrogate me, because Syrene would have let Cohon know where I wanted to go.
I pointed at the painting. “That’s superb. It hardly looks like a copy.”
“No copy. When comes gambling Ya Ya go first class, always.” He narrowed his eye. “You know Trueborn old masters. You Trueborn big. No peep. How you growing up downlevels?”
“My parents were Trueborns, passing through, so no permit, and I arrived early. My midwife raised me.”
“Is possible. Many midwife soft spot in head.” The little butler nodded his own great head. “Good boy go home visit little mother?”
I nodded back. “She,” I took a breath. “She’s dying.”
“Oh. What her name?”
“Huh?”
The dwarf squinted his eye. “Good boy not know little mother’s name?”
The Iwo Jima, if that turned out to be the ride I needed, upshipped in three hours. Between then and now I still had to get scrubbed. But if Rumplestiltskin here hadn’t even finished playing his name game, price negotiations with Cohon remained a distant hope.
I rolled my eyes. “Orion Parker. The midwife who raised me was named Orion Parker.”
My little interrogator stepped to the desk, waved his stubby fingers above the universal while he kept his eye on me.
“Accounting. This is Bobbi.” The voice was disembodied, female, and yawned.
“Bobbi, we do business ever with Orion Parker, midwife of Yaven?”
Syrene always said that a successful businesswoman knew her customer base. But Cohon’s organization served more little people on Yavet than McDonalds of Earth served hamburgers. At any given moment the practicing midwives in Yaven alone may have numbered in the tens of thousands.
Pause.
I slumped into the faux leather and stared at the clacking clock while the dubiously original dogs played poker.
Bobbi the yawner said, “Well . . . I don’t see—”
I came up out of my wing chair. “Seriously? This is the stupidest—”
“Here we go! She just hasn’t ordered in awhile. Last: Mid-cavity forceps, two boxes of sponges. Frequency: Customer twenty-seven years. Pays: Never late.”
The dwarf smiled. “You in very early, Bobbi. Or stay very late night?”
“Both. End of quarter closing.”
The dwarf grunted. “Give yourself raise three percent.”
“Why, thank you, Mr. Cohon.”
I plopped back into the faux leather so hard that it made a human noise that sounded embarrassingly un-faux.
Ya Ya Cohon waved his stubby fingers over his universal and hung up, then flicked his hand at the door. “This one no lie, Peter. You go now. Take cart, too, and pack up.”
I leaned out of the chair and looked back toward the office’s door. One of the two goons who had delivered me here to Ya Ya pointed at the cleaning cart that had been alongside the door, nodded.
I hadn’t even realized he was standing there, which now appeared to have been the idea.
Before he departed, he used his left hand to unscrew the suppressor from the barrel of the gunpowder pistol that he held in his right.
I suppressed my own shiver.
Syrene had warned me about Ya Ya Cohon’s testing program. Apparently he really was a tough grader.
“You owe life to little mother. But you think little person just fit come in early, clean office.”
I shook my head. “Orion always said good things come in small packages. I’m a big but my heart’s peep.”
Ya Ya Cohon smiled, nodded. “Okay. I make for boy of Orion most first class passage to Yavet.”
I bowed my head, not just for show. “Thank you, Mr. Cohon.”
“How long she kick?”
“Uh. She may have less than six months, sir.” I swallowed.
He stroked the whiskers on his cheek, narrowed one eye. “My people get you quick scrub, then we go Iwo Jima today together.”
I stiffened.
A couple introspective, luxurious months of most first-class passage aboard a starship? Great. Road trip with a sociopathic, one-eyed dwarf? Less great.
I waved my hand, palm out. “You’ve already been so kind, Mr. Cohon. That’s hardly necessary.”
Ya Ya waved his hand over the universal again, and Peter poked his head through the door.
My heart thumped.
Maybe Ya Ya had made me an offer I shouldn’t have refused.
Ya Ya waved Peter in, and it turned out that he was the mob equivalent of a utility infielder. Behind himself Peter now towed the formerly-empty cart I mistook for a cleaning cart. The cart now squealed beneath the weight of more matched luggage than a Trueborn trophy wife needed for a roundtrip to Pluto.
Ya Ya smiled, patted my arm as he rocked past me toward the door. “Ya Ya already booked on Iwo today anyway.”
“Oh.”
Ya Ya smiled up at me while he circled his arms horizontally and swayed side to side. “Downlevels peeps bust it together. Will rock?”
I was not a little person, but I may well have been the first downlevels-raised person Ya Ya Cohon had made the acquaintance of off Yavet since he had left home. And it was probably tough to upgrade acquaintances to pals when you kept blowing their brains out. And I really, really needed this ride.
I nodded. “Will rock.”
Peter delivered perfectly-scrubbed me, Ya Ya, and the trophy wife luggage into Iwo’s inprocess lounge with ten minutes to spare.
I cleared the retinal as smoothly as I ever had with a scrub job from Howard’s finest nerds. In the time it took to walk twenty feet, Captain Jazen Parker disappeared from the official universe. That alone justified Ya Ya’s price to me, which had turned out to be less peep-to-peep friendly than his dwarf boogie had implied. In fact, if it had been any less friendly, I would have been broke.
“Most first-class passage” also implied better than steerage, which was what my berthing turned out to be. Not that I’m complaining. Quad-bunk compartments and shared lavatory facilities beat the Legion’s platoon bays and gang showers. Steerage passage also included meals, but not alcohol. Ya Ya, who berthed in a suite up in actual first class, got all of both of those that he cared to stuff himself with.
One thing that was included with steerage class but not with first class was a full body cavity search at boarding. Again, I’ve endured far worse indignities in my life, but it was a stuffing I didn’t care for.
Ya Ya and I agreed to meet after Iwo Jima got underway, in her electronic gaming facility, a repurposed elongate bay that in the days when cruisers transported infantry had served as a pistol practice range. On all cruisers it was called the “Slot Slot,” a phrase the Trueborns liked so well that they trademarked it.
We agreed on the Slot Slot because it was a common facility open to all classes. Also because it turned out that when Ya Ya vacationed from running dope and guns, and bankrupting suckers desperate for identity scrubs, he recycled his obscene profits by gambling.
/> Ya Ya actually wound up spending most of our underway time in the casino forward, which was first class only. I didn’t feel deprived, either of his company, or of the experience.
When Kit and I traveled, we visited starship casinos when our “Mr. & Mrs.” legend of the moment was posh, and when you’ve seen one gilded pleasure drome, you’ve seen ’em all. First-class casinos offered high-stakes games with names like chemin de fer, roulette, and trente et quarante. Kit translated all of them for me from the original Trueborn French as “lose your entire ass here.” When Kit tried them, she usually won. When I did, they lived up to their names.
I squirmed through the Slot Slot’s crowds, and between rows of honking, ringing machines, until I found Ya Ya.
It wasn’t hard. He had changed into a shiny green silk suit with matching eyepatch. His legs dangled from the high stool atop which he sat, and he played an entire row of machines like it was a pipe organ, while a waitress pair shuttled him drinks.
He was playing holo poker machines, which were a way for us regular folks to gamble while losing less than our entire asses, and to do so in English. Holo poker is like poko, but the physical version of poker, from which holo poker is adapted, uses just fifty-two flat cards.
Ya Ya waved me over, grinning as if he had just been elected king of the leprechauns. “How room?” He shouted to be heard over the bells and sirens.
“Terrific. You winning?”
He shrugged. “Stakes here too low. But odds not so bad.” He scooted over so I could squeeze one cheek onto his stool. “You try.”
I shook my head. “I prefer higher stakes, too.” And pigs flew.
He leaned toward me, winked his eye. “You wait then. You gonna love this trip.”
TWENTY-TWO
When Mort felt the two humans approach, he was reclining on his side on the deck plates of his space within the Gateway nest, plucking with a foreclaw at the clean-picked ribcage of a once-frozen yearling woog. Most of the rest of the woog he hadn’t even skinned. Mort’s appetite lagged, and his principal purpose in plucking the ribs was to amuse himself by producing sounds of varied pitch.
Gateway remained at rest within the larger nest Mousetrap, even as other nests like Gateway came and went, and Mort’s eagerness to continue toward home grew with each departure and dull meal. He understood that the delay was in part an accommodation to him, because the modifications made to the Gateway forced changes in the travel patterns of the many moving nests. Regardless of the cause of his impatience, the prospect of physical visitors uncharacteristically stimulated him.
The pair entered through the bulkhead hatch, and he recognized Kit and felt her excited demeanor well before he saw the visual cue of her distinctive pale forelock.
The other human moved forward upon a half shell that floated like a leaf upon pond water.
Such constructions preserved mobility for lame or old humans, and this human’s forelock had grayed with age.
“Kit! Howard?”
“Mort,” In the presence of another human, Kit spoke to Mort aloud, but her tone in his mind at this moment reminded him of his mother’s tone when she had caught him playing with his food. Worse, Kit’s forelimbs were crossed over her mammaries, and her eyes had closed down to slits, gestures which in combination indicated disapproval. He glanced at the bare, bloody ribs. How had Kit known?
Kit spoke again. “Do you know where Jazen is?”
“I do not.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me!”
He sat back to display affront. “I do not lie! You did not ask whether Jazen had recently visited with me here. Or whether he received word while we were together that his life mother lies ill and near death on Yavet. Or whether he asked my advice whether he should go to her. Or whether I advised that he should go, which I did. Or whether he then left this place, agitated, which he did. However, if you do ask, those will be my responses.”
Kit raised both foreclaws to her head, then turned away, shaking it. “Sonuvabitch! Damn, damn, damn, damn!” She faced him again. “You call yourselves an intelligent species. But you were stupid enough to let him go, just like that?”
“I considered intervention. But Jazen is determined once he has reached a decision. And a loving son should go to his mother when she is in need. Jazen is a very loyal and loving human.
Kit paused, inhaled. “Yeah. I’ve never met a more stubborn dickhead. I’ve also never met a more loyal and loving human being.” Kit nodded. “Okay. Can you find him?”
“Will you reconsider mating with Jazen again if I do? The initial purpose of his visit was for consolation. He was emotionally devastated that he had lost you forever. Kit, the love Jazen feels for you is beyond even that which he feels for his mother.”
“Oh.” Kit straightened, then she shook her head. “This isn’t about . . . that.”
Howard’s leaf glided forward. “Mort, you know that Jazen’s and Kit’s and my job goes beyond our relationship with you.”
“Of course. Both the Trueborn Earthmen and the Yavi expend a disproportionate percentage of their respective Gross Planetary Products on what you euphemistically call defense. Of many unendearing human behaviors, I find killing one another not for food least endearing.”
Kit stepped forward. “Mort, you’re smart enough to understand Gross Planetary Product. So you’re smart enough to know that Trueborns make mistakes, but we’re different from the Yavi.”
He knew that Kit’s job had included killing other humans not for food. So did Jazen’s. Mort also knew that each of them did that job because each believed more humans would live than would die because it was done.
He swept the woog carcass aside, to remove any barrier between himself and the two humans. The gesture was designed to signal impending frank communication. “Kit, never worry about that. I do understand the difference.”
Howard slid into the vacated space.
He had always been puny, even among humans. But now his downcast posture reflected an inner weakening palpable to Mort. In her last months, his mother had displayed similar weakening.
“Mort, I may have recently made one of those mistakes Kit mentioned.”
“Humans make frequent mistakes, Howard.”
Howard shook his head. “No, I may have really screwed the pooch this time.”
Kit raised her foreclaw. “Ignore the metaphor. Howard’s saying he’s afraid that he made an error in judgment in his job that could lose the Cold War. And he needs your help to unscrew the pooch.”
Mort eyed Howard. “I have helped humans assure that Bartram Cutler was foiled and punished. I have helped humans learn about me. I will not help humans kill one another not for food.” Mort turned to the woog carcass, licked a bone.
Kit spoke not aloud, but he heard, “Mort, principle’s a great soapbox to stand on. But Howard’s backed into a corner here. Don’t make him turn this car around.”
The human habit of punctuating vital thoughts with obscure metaphors exasperated him. But he felt both in Kit’s and Howard’s minds the warning she meant to give him.
Mort turned toward the two humans and planted all six limbs firmly on the deck plates. Then he lowered his head so that all three of his eyes stared into theirs. He bared his teeth, then snarled.
It was a posture he assumed at home only on those rare occasions when a lesser predator, or a scavenging scrounger, challenged him over a kill, and it always got results.
Howard did not disappoint him. Mort’s roar shook the frail old human’s leaf, and Howard retreated, small eyes wide. Kit stepped back a pace, but then held her ground.
Mort thought, “Howard, you can prevent me from returning home in time to fulfill my life obligation. Even if you do, we will survive and flourish, as we have for thirty million years. Your own species’ flawed tribalism has barely survived for thirty thousand years. So I will not entangle us in your mistakes. Is that clear?”
Kit stepped forward again. “Mort, Jazen’s blundering into a trap that c
ould get him killed. Whether you help or you don’t, and whether Howard likes it or not, I’m going to do something about that or die trying. I understand you don’t care about human politics. Hell, most humans don’t. But I thought you cared about Jazen and me. We care about you.”
Mort looked away, as though he would find an answer to his dilemma in the blank alien walls that confined him. Despite his bold threat display to Howard and Kit, he didn’t know what he should do, really.
Unlike Mort and his cousins, humans were opaque to one another. But because humans were individually puny, they depended on one another to survive. So humans were forced to trust or mistrust one another blindly, at worst, or based on imperfect knowledge, at best. Human relations therefore were largely a painful series of mistakes, misunderstandings, lies, and sometimes treachery. Humans trusted and cared for each other not because they were perfect, but because they had no other choice.
Now that he had become part of Jazen’s and Kit’s lives, and they of his, he had no choice either.
“Very well. How may I help?”
Kit paused, then stepped forward.
Mort grimaced in anticipation of what the humans referred to as a hug, but when Kit’s forelimbs wrapped round his paw and he felt her face in his fur, the tactile sensation of contact with another individual not food seemed almost pleasant. Perhaps physical maturity was nearer than he had thought.
Kit stepped back. “Mort, if you don’t know where he is, can you find him?”
“I will try.”
Howard said, “How did he find out about this?”
“He read a leaf.”
Kit and Howard looked at one another, and she said aloud, “He said he was gonna check his P-mail.”
Kit looked back at Mort. “You’re sure the ill person was his life mother?”
“He spoke ‘Orion.’”
Kit turned to Howard, tilted her head to convey puzzlement. “But you said the problem was his birth mother and father. Not the midwife who raised him.”
Howard puckered his lips. “The source reported receipt by the subjects of a secure communication at a drop point maintained—”
Kit rolled her small eyes, which indicated exasperation. “Source? Drop point? Howard, Jazen and I have taken bullets for you more than once, remember? Cut the need-to-know crap. Speak English. And speak fast. Time’s not slowing down while we’re sitting here on our asses.”
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