by David Drake
She laughed.
"Eh?" said Sand, taking a snuffbox of polished shell from somewhere on her person.
"I was thinking that Tovera was right today," Adele said.
Though the words wouldn't have been an explanation for many people, Sand chuckled in understanding. "The trouble with the Toveras of the world . . ." she replied. "Is that you always know what they're going to say before they open their mouths. And the Kahns too, I'm afraid. It limits the value of their analyses."
She looked sharply at Adele. "I'm not suggesting you can't take care of yourself, mistress," she said. "But there're a lot of them."
"It wouldn't be a comfortable way to live," Adele agreed, "even if it were possible."
For a moment bleak darkness filled her mind. It isn't fair! And then she laughed again, louder than she had in months if ever. Sand glanced at her but this time didn't speak.
"I'm human," Adele said simply. "I'm not an emotionless, logical machine. I know that because of the extremely foolish thoughts that come into my head."
"I never imagined you were emotionless, Mundy," Sand said. She cleared her throat. In a more businesslike tone she continued, "I don't have an operation that requires your particular skills at the moment, but you'd be a valuable asset to the Republic wherever you were. Do you have a particular desire?"
Adele thought through the offer—a quite remarkable offer, given who Mistress Sand was. But the truth was . . .
"The two greatest centers of knowledge are the Celsus Library here in Xenos and the Academic Collections on Blythe," she said, apologetic because what she was really saying was that Sand's generosity was of no value to her. "I'm being driven off Cinnabar, and because of the war I can't go back to Blythe. In all likelihood, I'll never be able to go back to Blythe. I'll never be a civilian again in the mind of Guarantor Porra."
"Nor that of his Fifth Bureau," Sand agreed in a tone of regret. "Because of your association with me."
"Because of the choices I made," Adele said crisply. "You couldn't have forced me to do anything, mistress. No one could have."
"I'm aware of where my responsibility stops, Mundy," Sand said with slightly more of an edge. "I'm also aware of my responsibility."
"Yes," Adele said. She slid the pistol back into her pocket. She didn't notice its weight; rather, its absence was subtly uncomfortable. "Should we turn around now?"
"Not unless you want to," Sand said. "The car will pick us up when I call it, wherever we are."
They continued walking. The range of buildings to the right was an industrial concern of some sort, partially lighted now through grime-clouded windows. Adele heard heavy vehicles grunting and squealing from loading docks on the other side of the factory. She restrained her impulse to take out her data unit and determine what the business actually was.
Smiling at herself Adele said, "What I'd really like to do, since staying here isn't an option, would be to accompany a surveying expedition into regions that haven't been travelled since the Hiatus. There'd be a scientific head, of course, but the vessel itself would require a skilled captain. Lieutenant Leary would be the best choice for that post since his uncle retired twenty years ago."
"I intended to be a lecturer in Pre-Hiatus history, Mundy," Mistress Sand said in a tone of wistful amusement. "As an avocation, of course—heaven forefend that a member of the noble house of Caliwell actually work for a living. I think I could still perform valuable services in that fashion if circumstances allowed. I'm rusty on the details, but I've learned how to collect data and even more important, how to analyze it."
She looked at Adele with a wry smile. "Circumstances don't permit, of course. And in the midst of a full-scale naval war, neither is the Republic going to fit out an expedition for the sole purpose of expanding human knowledge."
"Though that's a little more probable," Adele said, "than that Daniel would go haring off into the back of beyond when there's a war to fight on our doorstep."
She laughed. "He isn't a pugnacious man, I wouldn't want you to think that," she said. "Let alone a bloodthirsty one. But he's quite clear on the fact that the RCN's primary duty is to fight the enemies of the Republic."
Mistress Sand nodded, smiling faintly. "I think we've done what we can here," she said, putting the snuffbox away without having used it. She turned and raised her hand.
Adele couldn't see the aircar far behind them, but the idling purr of its lift fans built quickly to a whine. The driver switched his red and green sidelights on and started toward them, ten feet above the road's broken surface.
"The driver and guard have been vetted, of course," Sand said. "But—"
"Yes, of course," said Adele, mildly irritated that the older woman had said something so unnecessary. They'd gotten out and walked, hadn't they, instead of having their discussion in front of Sand's underlings?
"We'll put you down at a tram stop east of your townhouse," Sand said, as though she hadn't heard the implicit rebuke. "That'll keep you clear of the trouble downtown."
"All right," said Adele, facing the oncoming vehicle as she mulled the distant past. Were these riots the beginning of what would end in another round of Proscriptions? Because if they were, she'd leave Cinnabar and never return. . . .
"Mundy?" Sand said, raising her voice to be heard over the approaching drive fans. "I need to make some inquiries, but I'll meet with you again tomorrow. I'm not forgetting you."
"I appreciate that," Adele said. Silently as the aircar landed, her mind added, But sometimes I wish I could forget myself—the thing I am, and what made me such a thing.
* * *
"My sister she works in a laundry . . ." sang Daniel Leary. He'd had a drink or two at home, but liquor was properly a matter for fellowship, not solitude. On a whim he'd decided to visit the Strip outside Harbor Three. "My father, he fiddles for gin."
The dozen civilians sharing the tram watched him and Hogg with nervous smiles. Their expressions seemed out of place to Daniel. He had money in his pocket and ahead of him the best sort of friends there were: the ones he hadn't met yet.
And he had a few drinks inside. Only a few, and a few nips from Hogg's flask as they clicked and rattled westward.
"My mother, she takes in washing . . ." Daniel warbled, winding up for the big finish.
He'd attended one gathering or another almost every night since the Princess Cecile landed. His host for dinner tonight, a wealthy ship chandler, had cancelled unexpectedly. Daniel didn't worry about being on his own. He'd always been able to find a party in the past.
The tram crunched to a shrieking halt: the emergency brakes had reversed polarity in the levitators, sucking them hard against the support railing. The civilians flew forward with no more control than if they'd been dropped from a cliff, but Hogg was holding a stanchion and Daniel stuck his right leg out straight to brace himself against the forward bulkhead.
He moved without thinking about it. Spacers who thought before acting disappeared into bubble universes in which they were the only life form after their ship moved on to the next bubble of the Matrix.
Daniel's reflexes didn't prevent an elderly woman and a much younger, much heavier man from slamming into his back. He grunted but didn't fall; that sort of thing happened on starships, too. Just about every sort of unpleasant surprise happened on a starship, one time or another.
Civilians shouted frightened curses. Daniel turned. The old woman moaned on the tram's floor as the heavy-set man knelt on her.
"Watch that, my man!" Daniel said. He grabbed the back of the man's collar and jerked some of the weight off the poor woman.
The fellow swung at Daniel. Hogg clocked him behind the ear with the liquor flask, stainless steel and sturdy enough for a countryman's use. It was certainly sturdy enough to roll the heavy man's eyes up as his body went limp. Daniel slung the burden to the floor beside the woman, then looked out of the car for the first time to see what was going on.
They were in a plaza, a junction for several
monorail lines. They'd halted behind a private tramcar painted pink and violet. Daniel didn't recognize the livery nor the crest, some sort of four-winged bird.
The three-story buildings around the plaza housed laborers from Harbor Three. Their ground floors were given over to shops serving spacers: restaurants, clothing stores, and a better class of pawn brokers and bars than you'd find sharing the Strip with the brothels a few blocks to the east.
An angry mob filled the plaza. Men—with a few women, and not whores either—were swinging the private car to either side, trying to rock it off the support rail. In all likelihood they'd succeed very shortly.
The private car had opera windows, small ovals, to provide privacy for those within. Daniel saw the terrified face of a servant in pink and violet livery looking out the back; then the crowd shouted and flung the car almost sideways. A blond, wide-eyed woman peered from the thrashing chaos within.
"We'll be getting off here, Hogg," Daniel said, stepping toward the door. He had to push past civilians transfixed by what was going on outside.
"Right," muttered Hogg. "Just the sort of bloody fool thing I figured we'd be doing."
Daniel was wearing a 2nd Class uniform, gray with black piping. It satisfied the regulation requiring RCN officers to wear civilian clothes or a dress uniform whenever they were off-duty in public—but it was his third-best set of Grays, which made the word "best" something of a joke. The elbows and trouser seat were worn, the right sleeve had been sewn back when it started to part from the shirt-front, and you'd notice the oil stain on the tunic if you saw it in good light.
It was the sort of uniform you wore to go bar-hopping on the Strip. It would do equally well for Daniel's present purpose, though part of him regretted not also having stuck a length of high-pressure tubing through his belt. Still, if it came to a straight fight, matters weren't going to work out well anyway.
He reached for the door's manual latch. A middle-aged woman shrieked as she saw what he was doing. "Please," she said in a choking voice. "Please, please. Don't let them in."
Daniel looked around his fellow passengers. They were all ordinary folk, coming home from work or perhaps heading for dinner in a restaurant. They stared at him. Daniel thought of rabbits in the hutch at Bantry, about to be slaughtered for dinner.
"You'll be all right," he said, raising his voice so everyone in the car could hear over the growl of the mob. "They're not interested in the likes of you."
"And you won't be all right if you keep in our way," Hogg snarled. "I'm in a bloody poor mood already."
The woman half-stepped, half-staggered, to the side. She was weeping uncontrollably.
Daniel opened the door just as the mob managed to swing the private car off the support rail. It hit on its left side with a crash that buckled panels and popped out the rear window. The mob growled deafeningly, drowning the screams of those on whom the car had fallen.
The crowd'd surged back as the car dropped. Daniel used the disruption to push and elbow his way through the ruck to what had been the underside of the tramcar. He heard the door above him rattle open.
"Get me a little room, Hogg," Daniel said. He grabbed the car's dismounting step, now seven feet in the air—the width of the car. Hogg growled something lost in the crowd noise. Daniel swung himself onto tram's upturned right side with a hunch of his shoulders. The sleeves of his tunic ripped loose.
Daniel's rounded features would look soft to a stranger's first glance, but the captain of an RCN starship under way spends much of his time on deck with his riggers. The best way to judge energy gradients was to stand on a masthead and eye the rippling shimmers of Casimir radiation that surrounded the vessel. Daniel had the upper body strength of a professional gymnast.
He balanced on the quarter panel, looking into the vehicle. Inside were four footmen and the blond girl. She was quite pretty despite the blank, overwhelming fear that forced her eyes open and let her jaw drop. . . .
The servants were stripping off their tunics, hoping to be safer in their underwear than they would wearing livery. They looked up and saw Daniel's RCN uniform; their expressions changed from terror to unexpected hope.
"Help me!" a footman screamed, elbowing his mistress aside. He stepped onto an armrest and raised his hand. His three fellows trampled the girl in their haste to join him.
Daniel wondered if the servants would've been able to organize themselves well enough to lift and pull one another out if he hadn't been here. But he was. . . .
He bent, gripped the footman by the wrist instead of the hand, and jerked him up by flexing his knees. The motion wasn't very different from the way Daniel would've landed a heavy fish in the sea off Bantry.
Instead of helping the footman balance on the tram, Daniel deliberately flicked him off the side. The fellow pitched into the crowd with a despairing wail. Daniel bent, grasped the next footman, and repeated the process.
He didn't feel any particular anger against the servants. They weren't covering themselves with glory, but they'd have probably said they weren't paid to die for their mistress; Daniel more or less agreed with them.
On the other hand, an RCN officer quickly learned that no solution to a crisis was going to be perfect: you saved what you could. Daniel figured that a petite blond woman needed his help more than four able-bodied men did.
As Daniel half-pushed, half-threw, the third servant over the side, he noticed that two men from the crowd were trying to pull themselves up by the steps the way he'd done. They were getting in each other's way, so he ignored them.
The last footman was badly overweight and blind with tears. He waved his arms wildly, but not close enough to grab. Daniel knelt to bring himself a little farther down than he'd been while squatting, then took the chance of grabbing with both hands instead of keeping one braced on the door jamb; he got the fellow by wrist and elbow. He straightened at once, using the footman to counterbalance him. At the top of his lift, Daniel pivoted and dropped his burden after the others.
He glanced at what was happening in the street for the first time since he'd climbed onto the tram. Two of the servants were crawling away, stark naked and moaning. The crowd was still in the process of stripping off the third man's tights, jeering and punching him. Daniel figured that level of punishment was a cheap price for your life; and probably a lot cheaper than their mistress was going to pay if the mob had its way.
One of the men who'd been trying to climb had made a stirrup of his hands for the other. Daniel kicked the higher man in the face; he toppled backward with a squawk, falling on the lower man whom Hogg had just punched in the kidneys. Hogg hadn't gotten involved until he needed to. He knew as well as Daniel did that they couldn't fight the whole mob themselves.
Daniel leaned toward the girl. She was in a sitting position on the now-floor, staring up at him. He wasn't sure her eyes were focusing. The car began to rock. Daniel reached down with both arms and shouted, "Quick! They're going to roll it over again! We've got to get out first!"
His only chance was to act immediately. If the rioters tipped it onto its roof so that a dozen of them could reach the girl, it was all over.
She got up, closed her eyes, and jumped. Daniel grabbed her wrists. She weighed almost nothing compared to the footmen, and his system still blazed with adrenaline. He'd pay for this tomorrow; though he had to survive the next few minutes for that to matter.
Daniel wrapped his arms around the girl and lifted her, as if they were in a particularly passionate embrace. "Now, milady," he said. "I want you to hold on very tightly no matter what happens, and I apologize in advance for the inconvenience."
The tramcar Daniel had arrived on was hissing forward again, now that the private car was no longer blocking the support rail. The rioters shifted out of the way, uninterested as Daniel had expected in people more or less like them.
Daniel jumped down into the space cleared by the accelerating car, taking the shock on his flexed knees. The girl gave a despairing eep! but her ar
ms tightened around Daniel's neck; she even wrapped her legs around his waist. So far, so good.
There hadn't been time to plan, but you could never plan for all the things that might happen. Daniel'd half thought of climbing onto the mounting step of the tram as it moved off, but there were too many rioters in the way already.
Across one of the streets entering the plaza near the overturned car was a bar; six spacers wearing the beribboned, heavily embroidered utility uniforms of RCN warrant officers on leave stood in front of the entrance. Daniel started toward them.
Five were men, the sixth a woman built like a fireplug. In all likelihood most of the bar's patrons had left as the mob gathered, but these senior warrant officers stuck around. They watched the mob with live and let-live expressions, but from the way they held themselves and the batons of one sort and another in their hands they were ready to defend what was probably a favorite drinking spot.
"Hey!" shouted a man close behind Daniel. "Here's the uhh—"
Hogg's rabbit punch was too late, and besides he wouldn't be able to silence everybody as Daniel bumped his way through the crowd. "There she goes!" a woman squealed. "There she goes!"
"RCN!" Daniel bellowed, breaking into a trot. He took the shocks with his shoulders when he could, but mostly he was using the girl as a battering ram. She grunted each time they knocked a civilian out of the way, but she didn't complain or lose her double grip. "RCN to me!"
"Bloody officers can find their own holes!" shouted a tall warrant officer with the butt end of a pool cue. A scar led up his forehead into a white streak across his scalp. "Calahan was a bosun, same as me!"
One of the mutineers Slidell'd put out the airlock of the Bainbridge had been the bosun, Daniel recalled. The bloody fool!
Somebody grabbed him from behind by the sleeve. He kicked back hard, but the section of the mob still between him and the building was turning to see what was coming their way. Slidell wasn't the only fool, that was clear, but Daniel hadn't argued with Hogg's assessment right at the start of this.
"I'm Lieutenant Daniel Leary!" he said. A man was braced squarely in front of him. Daniel kicked the fellow in the crotch. The man to the right of the one doubling up grabbed the girl's shoulders and pulled; the man to the left cocked back his fist with a brick to ram into Daniel's face. "By God my Sissie never shipped a spacer afraid of a fight! RCN!"