A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume Two

by Sharon Lee

  “In fact,” Vertu said to that absurdly young and open face, “I do. If traffic is stopped at Vine’s tollbooths, then we may reroute down Fuller Avenue.”

  A startled blink was her answer, followed by a look of concentration.

  “Yanno . . .” The driver paused, possibly checking the map in her head, even as Vertu rechecked her own.

  “Yeah, that’d work. Thanks!”

  She faced front, and gave the vehicle its office, moving inexorably through the snow.

  “Weather update says storm’s about done,” she said over her shoulder. “So, not as bad as we’d braced for, but plenty bad enough. I’m Jemie, by the way. You?”

  There was no need for the driver of a taxi to know the name of a particular fare, except insofar as Unicredit or some other voucher might record it within the payment system. Nonetheless, Vertu answered, choosing to see the question as a pleasantry born, perhaps, of a slow day.

  “My name is Vertu,” she said, giving only one, as Jemie had done.

  “That’s pretty. Liaden, huh?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Pretty good idea ’bout goin’ around. Fuller’s nice and wide—oughta be able to get down there, no problem. You drive?”

  It was Vertu’s turn to blink. “Your pardon?”

  “You drive? Like a cab, or maybe a delivery wagon? Don’t meet many who got the streets laid out in their head. Meet more who think it’s kinda funny that I do.”

  “Once, I had owned a small fleet,” she said, slowly. “Three cabs, and thinking of a fourth.”

  “Yeah?” blue eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “What happened?”

  “There was . . . a war action. At—on Liad, they name it Skyblaze. I—my cab and I—picked up the wrong fare.”

  “Hey, that’s tough.” There was a moment of silence, as the driver maneuvered them around what appeared to be another car, abandoned in the center of the road.

  “Amateurs,” Jemie muttered. “Could at least’ve pulled it to the curb. So!” she said a moment later, the hazard to travel safely behind them, “you lookin’ to set up?”

  Vertu shook her head. “I have . . . limited funds.”

  “Don’t we all? Worse luck, too. What’ve I got but the colonel, hisself, willin’ to stake me a cab, but I gotta find a ’nother driver. With references. ’Nother driver’s bad enough. References—well hell, I’m the first legit cab ever, less you count them little jitneys they’re usin’ to move folk around Port proper.” Another blue glance in the mirror. “You don’t happen t’have references, do ya, Vertu?”

  For a moment, she sat there, thinking of the references she could have produced, before Skyblaze, and the Council’s judgment and her banishment from clan and kin . . .

  “As a driver, locally,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “I fear not.”

  “Well hell,” Jemie said again, making the turn from the Port Road onto Fuller Avenue with commendable caution. “You’re for Mack’s shop, though, right?”

  “I am, yes.”

  “He know you?”

  “No. I am sent to him by the patrol.”

  “Well, maybe we can talk him inta letting you do a—whasit called, when you try somebody out and see if they can do the job? A parole?”

  “Probation?” Vertu suggested, wondering after the connection between the colonel who staked cabs and Andy Mack of Port Repairs.

  “Right.” Jemie sighed, and the cab made a smooth turn out of Fuller Avenue and into the Port Road. Behind them, Vertu could see the blinking red lights of emergency equipment. Ahead of them was the entrance to Surebleak Port.

  “You gonna need a ride back, Vertu?”

  She looked out the window. The snow had dwindled to a stop, and the star was slightly more robust in the graycast sky.

  “I believe that I’ll walk.”

  “I b’lieve that you’ll freeze your tail, you try it,” Jemie said frankly. “Tell you what, I’m gonna stop at the Emerald and eat m’supper. You finish with Mack, come on over—it’s just ’round the corner. I’m still there, we’ll work something out for pay-maybe you can drive f’me one night I need to be elsewhere. That suit?”

  “That—suits, But—”

  “No buts, woman! We’ll work it out. Later. Right now, here y’are. Get on out and let a girl get something ta eat.”

  The door opened at her elbow. Vertu reached into the pocket of her coat, fished out the few coins she found there and put them in the pass-tray.

  “Hey—”

  “For the cab,” she said, overriding Jemie’s protest. “The cab costs, and those costs must be covered.” She pulled her coat around her and exited.

  “Thank you!” she called and closed the door.

  * * *

  The man was Terran and grizzled, and he’d hauled himself out from beneath an obscenely large and smelly piece of something that appeared to be an engine of some sort, the while complaining, “Whoever used this scooter last is gonna have to learn to adjust it proper!”

  Vertu heard the same thing three times and was still not sure if “this scooter” was the item with wheels that he rode flat on his back as he came out feet first or if it was the object he’d been under.

  “I’m Mack,” he said brusquely. “These are rescues, eh? I guess someone thinks that’s important, but it ain’t like I don’t got a hundred dozen other rescues to deal with—”

  He looked at the knotted ’kerchief she held, and let her continue to hold it while he stretched several times, as if being under things was not what he was best at.

  “This thing’s a rescue, too,” he muttered, “and damned if I know why they found it now and not a generation ago when we might still’ve had parts somewhere here or in half the ports nearspace. But no, now they find it, and it’s up to me to get it running.” He shook his head, glared at her and demanded, “Who’d you say sent you?”

  “Scout Lieutenant ter’Volla sends me. These—” she held up the ’kerchief, “are rescues. They are all from the pockets of a crime victim. They are important because they belong to a galan’ranubiet.”

  Andy Mack blinked.

  “I got lotsa vocabulary, young lady, but that’s one I don’t know. And who are you, by the way?”

  “Vertu dea’San,” she said, biting the clan name away.

  He shook his head again. “Everybody’s important, you ever notice that, Ms. Vertu?” He shook his head once more. “’Specially when they want somebody else to do something for them.”

  Vertu inclined her head, the smile coming. “Scout ter’Volla gave me to say that, yes he did know that you were very busy and that you might call upon him for Balance.”

  He snickered, waved one hand toward the ceiling.

  “Ter’Volla, is it? Well then, I can see who’s climbing the gantry next time I need some lights changed!”

  Vertu laughed, which was needful; such sounds had not come willingly to her since her son had dropped her and her scant luggage at Solcintra Port in obedience to the Council’s order.

  “All right, then, since the scout’s willing to pay. Bring what you got over here and I’ll take a look . . .”

  Vertu bowed then, thanks to a master, but if he noticed, or knew, he offered no bow in return because he was already striding toward a roomside table. The place echoed with their steps, and there were other noises in constant background hum—heaters and blowers, perhaps, and maybe a device compressing air, and perhaps the hiss of air leaking from someplace that was not the cold outside but a spherical tank.

  “Ms. Vertu,” he said over his shoulder, “what is a galan’ranubiet, and what’s it doing owning a hand ’kerchief full o’junk what needs repair?”

  She strode with him, impressed that for one who claimed not to know the word he’d managed to both recall it and pronounce it. True, it was not a Solcintran accent he used, but he’d been taught by a native speaker. The clicks and sounds of the place were not sufficient to hide a facility with language.

&nbs
p; “A galan’ranubiet is a person, Andy Mack, a person with an extreme melant’i . . . an earned recognition, that would be. Someone with, let us say, knowledge or skills of importance to a whole community.”

  “Well, hand it over,” he said, “and if that’s the case, I pity the person because no doubt they got more to do and less to do it with than they ever did.”

  Vertu placed the ’kerchief on the desk, and was surprised to see him reach not for it, but for a small pad of paper and a writing stylus.

  In good, round script he wrote, “Received of Vertu dea’San, one bag of community treasures . . .” then he looked up—“Who’re these from?”

  “The man’s call name, what they know him as on the street, it is ‘The Hooper’.”

  Andy Mack’s startlement was clear in the near explosive intake of breath.

  “Crime victim? The Hooper? Is he in health? What happened?”

  There was no playfulness in him now, but full attention.

  “The patrol wrote in the report that he was ‘beat up by punks’.”

  The colonel’s expression got even more serious, but if he was going to speak his words were swept away by the deep voice of a large man who was suddenly, otherwise silently, beside them.

  “Beat up by punks? Guess that’s a report waiting for me!”

  * * *

  The jacket was battered and totally incongruous for the weather; the face somehow familiar. That she’d reached for her gun as a first reaction wasn’t lost on the man who owned the face; his hand twitched but he suppressed it instantly.

  Her hand had been slower to stop and closer to acting; perhaps in a public place, it wouldn’t have been noted.

  She blushed even before Andy Mack started chuckling—

  “’Swat you get from sneaking in a back door like a galoot ’stead of coming in like folk!”

  Recognition stirred on the galoot’s face as he dragged a handy stool from beneath the workbench, the gunhand going to forehead in a salute to all present. Snow fell from creases in his jacket; in other spots, it was already going to patient waterdrops that held on as if frozen by a root. He sat fluidly, his size having nothing to do with his grace.

  “Andy, you give me a key and leave to use the door, I’m gonna. Save my ears and brain from freezing, using the back way—”

  “Too late on that save?” Andy Mack’s mischievous grin got the best of him, and turned into a chuckle.

  “It ain’t froze yet. If it was we’d both’ve drawn. And pardon me, Driver, for giving you a start. I’m McFarland.”

  “Pilot McFarland, yes, it is good to see you again.”

  “And you, Driver. Got some bunch of lightyears ’tween you and . . . Solcintra, I think it was.”

  “I am Vertu dea’San, Pilot—”

  Andy Mack interrupted, holding a hand toward each of them.

  “Damn if you didn’t make me forget my manners, Cheever. But looks like you met before—”

  “Briefly,” Vertu managed. “It would have been a taxi ride from the small private-ship side of Solcintra Port to some place unexpected—I think Korval’s valley, to yos’Galan’s house. We have not met in a social way, Andy Mack.”

  The mechanic stood then, shaking the foot he’d had tangled around the chair as if it had been asleep.

  “We have here,” he announced formally, “Vertu dea’San, deputized by ter’Volla on patrol to bring items of interest to us all to me in order to make something wrong as right as it can be. I’m pleased to be receiving such visitors, I am.”

  He nodded, then turned with a flourish. “This here—this is Cheever McFarland, Master Pilot, come as Boss Conrad’s Right Hand, if I have that proper.”

  Cheever McFarland nodded, and Vertu answered with a seated bow, each murmuring appropriately.

  “Good, so let me see what we got here, if you can be patient, Cheever, and then you can get to whatever brought you out in the snow.”

  * * *

  The plastim of tea was better than she’d expected, and it was even recognizably a Vertuna blend, as promised—the tea her namesake, due to a prior Wylan’s whim. Empty now, she moved it aside as the pilots told over the contents of the ’kerchief. Drawing her more and more into conversation like comrades rather than strangers, they’d made as sure as they might that The Hooper’s physical injuries were minor.

  “So they roughed him up because they could, was that it? Thing is that if he said what he did, The Hooper, in front of trusty witnesses, them boys have got themselves a mess of trouble anywhere there’s someone for the block. Took the casket bottle? Stupid—”

  “But what happened next? Patrol show up?” That was McFarland.

  “Not until I had pulled my gun, and Granita fired hers. Harley was struck with—the Patrolwoman said ‘bird shot’—instead of a charge from this.”

  She showed the gun in explanation, and there was a whistle, and an, “Ah.”

  “I see we should talk,” Andy Mack said. “You tell me your campaigns and I’ll tell you mine!”

  Cheever it was who understood her quick questioning look—

  “Not been on campaign? That’s a heavy-duty merc weapon for a civilian taxi driver then. Can I see it?”

  She checked it for safety, and handed it over to the Hand of the Boss, who held it appreciatively.

  “Real one, Colonel—not one of those cheap look-likes they sell down the Low Ports.”

  McFarland made a gesture, which she interpreted as asking permission to hand the weapon to the other man, and she nodded.

  “Not more’n two Standards old, by the serial number. They don’t usually sell a Nordley on Liad though—and I know you can’t often pluck one up out on the dock here!”

  He returned the weapon, respectfully.

  “It was a gift,” she explained carefully. “On the day of Skyblaze, a solider gave it to me, in thanks for the ride. His mates insisted I should have it—”

  Neither of the men said anything, and she felt like there was something more she needed to tell them.

  “The soldier, he’d been wounded already when I picked them up. Then, we got back to near port and a man came at us; there was shooting, and he pointed—umm, they called it anti-armor, at us! I could do one thing to protect my fares—I ran the car at them and he shot wild.”

  They waited, and she wished there was tea in the cup.

  “This Tommee, this boy, he was wounded and trying to shoot, too, and then he said, ‘Thank you much for the ride ma’am’ . . . and gave this to me, since I might need it, and it was all that he had.”

  The colonel pressed his hands, then slowly spread them with tips touching its opposite twin, staring into the cavity as if some truth existed there, and nodded slowly.

  “He made a good call, the boy,” he said after a moment. “His mates were with him to sing him home?”

  She closed her eyes, hearing the question fully, shaking her head with the Terran not-so.

  “They said they could get him to medics, that he had some time off coming, and a vacation—”

  Her voice drifted off, remembering Tommee’s wounds, the still, bloodied form of the man who had targeted her cab, and, later, standing before the Council, hearing their judgment come down. So much lost, that day, by so many . . .

  “It was for my part in the rebellion—carrying enemy soldiers who were in league with those ships that fired upon the homeworld—that is why I am here. On Surebleak.” She took a breath and met Cheever McFarland’s eyes. “If I was to aid Korval in their madness, then I might go to them in their banishment.”

  He frowned. “That was your sentence? The Council sent you to Surebleak?”

  “My daughter, who is now delm in my place by the Council’s order, sent me to Surebleak. The Council wanted my life.”

  There was a long pause, then Andy Mack said carefully.

  “You go to Korval, once you hit planet?”

  She laughed. “To what end? I did not fight for Korval. I fought to protect my cabs, my daught
er, my life. Before that, I negotiated in good faith to ferry a group-client from the port to a city park, and return them, at need.”

  “When my daughter—my delm—sued for my life, the Council offered this, as leniency: that I might not show my face in Solcintra for twelve years Liaden, nor to be seen anywhere on planet in control of a vehicle until such time as the Council of Clans credited that I had been cured of my errors and was no longer a rash and conspicuous danger to the populace and institutions of Liad. I would be disallowed from forming alliances, making contracts, or adult decisions without the written consent of my delm, or the nadelm if appropriate. That was to be revisited at the end of the dozen years, if the Council of Clans pleased.”

  There was silence—for a moment. Then Andy Mack sighed a heavy sigh for her, putting aside the minute metal piece he’d been studying, moving his hands as if he now rubbed his wrists against unseen shackles.

  “House arrest for a dozen years? No time off for good behavior? That’s hardly a civilized way to be—”

  “Happens,” said Cheever sharply, “and we’ve both talked to a man on-world who had his delm do the same.” He looked to her.

  “What about your cab—could you bring that?”

  She shook her head, Terranstyle.

  “My cab,” she said, “my cab that carried you to Dragon’s Valley—that was destroyed on the spot where Tommee exited; we took pieces of sharpness—” here she paused, not knowing the exactly correct word . . .

  “Shrapnel,” Andy Mack said. “That could hurt a civilian vehicle pretty bad.”

  “Thank you. The Commander Higdon, an excellent man for all that he was banished forever from Liad on pain of death, he offered to replace my cab, but that replacement vehicle was—” here she sighed out loud against her own wishes—“That vehicle was dedicated. It is to be used for carrying the Council Speaker only, and to be manned by drivers furnished around the clock by Wylan.”

  There was a loud snap then as McFarland stretched both hands, interlocked, to the ends of his arm with quite some energy.

  “So they stole your cab, took your Ring, and took your name. Then they tossed you randomly off-world?”