The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  "Bloody hell, sir, come look at this!" Woetjans shouted as she gazed over the front of the building. Daniel stepped to her side, grimacing at the damage to his dress uniform. Still, it'd gotten him into the card room without alerting the mob of Alliance spacers below.

  He followed Woetjans' gesture. Up Straight Street—it wasn't particularly straight, except by comparison with most streets in San Juan—from the direction of the harbor came a line of vehicles. Most were armored after a fashion, and all were armed. They flew streamers and flags of many varieties—house colors, Daniel assumed—but every single one of them wore the red-on-gold—

  "Great God, our help!" shouted Portus. "That's the Cinnabar sandal! They're not the cops, they're Cinnabars come to save us!"

  A pair of large aircars, laboring to stay airborne, roared around the side of the tall building behind the Anyo Nuevo. They flared to land, their skids sparkling on the roof's covering of asphaltic concrete. One had a cloth-of-gold canopy, the other red silk which had torn to tatters on the flight just ended.

  Most of those aboard the two vehicles were heavily-armed locals, but the men in the middle, the seat of honor, were Cinnabar natives dressed in local pomp. Daniel recognized both of them.

  He stepped to the gold-covered car and saluted. His right arm caught him in mid-motion—he'd strained his triceps somehow—but he carried through anyway.

  "Sir!" he said to Admiral O'Quinn. "Lieutenant Daniel Leary, RCN, reporting!"

  He coughed. "Ah," he added. "That is, RCN Reserve, sir. And we're very glad to see you!"

  O'Quinn got out of his vehicle with the hesitation of a man more hindered by ill health than old age, but who was old as well. "If you're on half pay, Leary," he said, "then you're more RCN than I am by a long ways."

  He peered over the front of the building. "I think the boys are sorting out the Alliance well enough," he went on. "It's our household guards mostly doing the heavy work, but I see some of the old crew are showing they're not too old to swing a wrench."

  "Sir," said Daniel, nodding to Commander Purvis as he joined them from the other aircar. The mob flying the Cinnabar flag was weighing into the Goldenfels' crew all right. There were hundreds of the newcomers, and more were arriving from several directions in addition to the initial batch from the harbor. "Ah, I'm very grateful, as I said; but how is it that you came here like this?"

  O'Quinn looked at him in surprise. "Came here?" he repeated. "Why, Mistress Mundy sent a warning through the alert network we Cinnabars set up in case, well, things changed in our relationship with the Governor. Our private network."

  "I don't see how she got the codes to do that," Commander Purvis said with a sudden frown. "I certainly didn't give them to her. I don't know how she even realized the network existed!"

  "We'd have done the same if it was your father, Leary," said Admiral O'Quinn. "Of course I might've hanged him afterwards, but I wouldn't have left him to the Alliance."

  Daniel nodded crisply. "Yes sir," he said. "I appreciate the distinction. So would he."

  Count Klimov, looking very little the worse for wear, strolled over to them. "So, Captain Leary," he said. "These men are friends of yours?"

  Daniel quirked a smile at his employer. "Yes, your excellency," he said, "they're my colleagues and most certainly my friends."

  He took a deep breath and went on, "And if you don't mind my appearing to give an order, your excellency, I strongly recommend that the Princess Cecile lift from here as soon as we and the rest of the crew are back aboard!"

  CHAPTER 14

  It'd been a wryly pleasant surprise to Adele when she learned that most spacers didn't like weightlessness any better than she did. A properly-functioning starship was almost always accelerating at 1 g, providing the illusion of weight.

  The exception was during the time a ship was in orbit, preparing to land. Tegeli now rotated below the Princess Cecile, a haze of greenish seas and the varicolored smears of low-lying islands and the life-encrusted shallows around them. It wasn't particularly inviting, but at least when the officials from the picket boat cleared the Sissie to land, there'd be gravity again.

  Adele smiled at her display. The secret to contentment appeared to involve finding pleasure in small things. Though gravity didn't seem a small thing when you were without it.

  "We're carrying no cargo whatever, Commander Mendez," Daniel said to the pasty-looking official who'd come aboard on a line from the picket boat. For all the fellow's impressive rank, his vessel was a bucket with neither antennas nor High Drive; the crew establishment was five, but according to her log she'd been operating with four these past two months. "Only stores for our own use, and those are rather sparse at the moment. Because of riots in San Juan, we left Todos Santos before we'd completed loading."

  Adele, examining Tegeli's starship landing records, pursed her lips. Although technically Daniel wasn't lying . . . and under the circumstances a flat lie would probably have been a better choice than telling the Commander that the Princess Cecile had fled San Juan after her crew fought a street battle with Alliance spacers, eventually drawing in large numbers of the local military.

  Not that it had been the Sissies' fault, of course, but that was the sort of detail that local officials might find less than reassuring.

  Mendez sniffed. "Politics!" he said. "We don't go in for that sort of nonsense on Tegeli. People mind their own affairs."

  Such as they are, Adele thought as she reviewed the records she'd just copied from the planetary database. Tegeli had logged only thirty-eight landings in the past quarter; Todos Santos saw that many in a day or two. Fishing and marine products were the planet's main exports; imports were a limited quantity of luxury goods, supporting the Sailing Directions' description of Tegeli as having a highly-stratified society.

  Stratified but languid, which is another way of putting Commander Mendez' comment about people minding their own affairs. The planet had almost no volcanic activity. There was no moon, and because Tegeli was 108 million miles from its sun the solar tides were mild. The human inhabitants appeared to live in a pattern that mimicked the placid nature of their environment.

  "Now, I see that you're not the owner of this vessel," said Mendez, consulting the uppermost of the sheaf of flimsies in his gloved right hand. He wore a skin-tight vacuum suit whose patches made Adele's lips wrinkle sourly just to look at, though she supposed the holes weren't life-threatening. A split in the fabric would just mean minor hemorrhaging, a few more spider veins in the Commander's skin. Prolonged weightlessness—because the picket boat didn't carry sufficient reaction mass to keep a weigh on—had done more serious damage to his body. "The owner is Count Klimov?"

  "We are the owners, Georgi and I," said Valentina, standing with her husband at the front of their annex. "Is there a problem?"

  The Klimovs hadn't mastered weightlessness, but they were able to hold themselves vertical in one place instead of drifting about the way Adele would've done if she hadn't been strapped in. She was, of course, strapped in.

  "Not at all," said Mendez, turning to face the Klimovs. "Not at all! But I note that you haven't listed guest-friendships with anyone on Tegeli. Is that the case?"

  "No," the Count said. "I regret to admit that we'd never heard of your planet until just before we took off from Todos Santos. Our arrival here was whim."

  The truth was a little more complex than that, though Count Klimov might not understand clearly the reason Daniel had shaped their course to this backwater. Tegeli was an unlikely landfall for any vessel but one deliberately setting out for it. While the Princess Cecile wasn't short of food, air, or reaction mass, she couldn't afford to spend an indefinite additional period in space without replenishing those stores. Tegeli could supply their needs without a likelihood of the Goldenfels arriving before the corvette had finished loading.

  "Well, a fortunate whim for us, then," said Mendez. "Particularly for the Pansuelas of Lusa City."

  He consulted a second sheet of t
he flimsies he held. "Yes, that's right," he said. "Since they were the next on the rota, they were alerted as soon as your vessel announced its arrival. They'll be very pleased."

  Mendez glanced around the bridge, then focused his attention on Daniel. "I wonder, Count Klimov," he said. "Are any of your ship's company of the landowning class as well?"

  Instead of waiting for the Count to speak, Adele said from her console, "Lieutenant Leary, our captain, is the son of Speaker Leary. I myself am a Mundy of Chatsworth."

  She waited for Mendez to turn before giving him a cold smile. "I'm the Mundy of Chatsworth, as a matter of fact. If it matters to you, we're members of what're called the Best Families of the Republic of Cinnabar."

  Daniel looked surprised at Adele's forwardness; she hadn't had a way to warn him before she spoke. According to the information she was pulling together, there wasn't a private inn anywhere on the planet that was better than a hog wallow.

  It wasn't of great concern to Adele if she lived aboard the Princess Cecile while they were on Tegeli. She wanted to use what written archives were available, though, and she knew Daniel liked the opportunity to socialize whenever they touched ground. That required they be received by the Patrons, the landowners of the planet.

  "Oh, but that's wonderful!" Mendez said. He glanced at his first flimsy again. "I'll be able to accommodate two more of the Patrons! That will be—"

  "No," said Daniel, drawing eyes back to him. "Commander Mendez, it won't be practical to divide our group while on Tegeli. If the Pansuelas can't receive so many as four of us, then I'm afraid Mistress Mundy and I will have to remain aboard our vessel."

  "That isn't the difficulty," said Mendez. "You see, we have so few visitors of proper quality that the regulations allotting them among our Patrons are very strict. Still, if you insist . . . ?"

  Shuffling the printouts he'd boarded with had caused him to rise slightly. He raised an arm absently, tapped the ceiling with his finger, and reversed his slow progress. While not a prepossessing man, the time the official spent on picket duty had obviously made him a past master of maneuvering in weightlessness without overcorrecting.

  "I do," said Daniel formally. "I must."

  "Then I must perforce agree," Mendez said with equal formality. "I will inform the Pansuelas that they have the honor to receive four visitors of the very highest rank."

  He shook his head in wonderment. "They'll be the talk of all Tegeli, they will," he added. "They always had a reputation for being a lucky house, but now, goodness!"

  Mendez turned, angling his body so he could push off for the airlock by which he'd boarded.

  "Excuse me, Commander?" Daniel called to the official's back. "Are we cleared to land, then?"

  Mendez continued his rotation, bringing himself fully around. "What?" he said. "Why yes, of course—at Lusa City, as I told you. Welcome to Tegeli, patrons!"

  "Welcome indeed," Daniel agreed, giving Adele a broad smile of anticipation.

  * * *

  "We'll let you lead," Count Klimov said. In response to his gesture, Daniel strode whistling across the boarding bridge ahead of his employers. The vehicle waiting on the wooden quay beyond looked like a boat with fat tires.

  The Sissie'd cooked the basin's mud bottom while setting down. Though warm brackish water had immediately flowed back around the vessel, the stench of burned organic material formed a haze in the muggy air. It was nothing to spacers used to working high in the yards of a starship in the Matrix, but landsmen like the Klimovs might reasonably find it daunting.

  Insectoids flew about the harbor, visible mostly as glitters in the air or dimples on the surface of the black water. One hovered momentarily before Daniel's eyes, a body as small and round as a pea supported on transparent shimmers; before he could decide whether to brush it away or just duck, it zipped off on business of its own.

  Daniel's duties as captain of a ship which'd taken off hastily had kept him too busy to give more than cursory attention to Tegeli's natural history. The planet's seas included impressive specimens of marine life, but he should have studied the fauna of the tidal basins with greater care. That was what he'd be in contact with.

  Daniel grinned. It was no different in the RCN: people ooh-ed and ah-ed over the battleships, but fleet actions were rare even during periods of full-scale warfare. The commanding officer of the corvette Princess Cecile had seen more action than some full admirals. . . .

  The tangled forest surrounding the Lusa City harbor might have been a single plant. Individual stems/trunks/branches were rarely more than four inches in diameter, and the treetops were only sixty or so feet high. From above as the Sissie descended, the forest looked like a dark green pillow; viewed from sea level, the woody substructure was rigidly black against softer shadows, with air plants and parasites scattering a myriad of bright splashes.

  Daniel stepped aside to allow the other three to reach firm—well, slightly muddy—ground. The Klimovs strode on toward the vehicle, but Daniel gestured Adele close and murmured, "Is there a customs official or the like on his way? I don't want to miss some necessary formality because we left before the Port Commandant finished his siesta."

  "They appear to take a relaxed attitude toward that sort of thing," Adele said. She too spoke quietly, though there probably wasn't any need for it. Across the tree-fringed harbor a barge was unloading containers into a warehouse; that and the waiting vehicle were the only signs of life. "I couldn't find any customs records. Ships pay a landing fee irrespective of their cargo or even their size—though that may be because none of the ships landing on Tegeli are very big."

  "Daniel, come!" Valentina said, waving. "The boy is waiting to take us to Pansuela House."

  Daniel nodded assent and walked the rest of the way up the path to the car. At his side Adele murmured tartly, "The 'boy' is forty if he's a day. Based on what I've found regarding Tegelan society, the Klimovs should find themselves right at home here."

  The driver—who was indeed forty or more, a swarthy, muscular man with flaring mustachios, held the rear door open for them. Daniel suspected the car's thick sides were floatation chambers. The wheels and their balloon tires were wider than they were high; instead of normal treads they were scooped into a series of curved paddles. Though the vehicle had very low clearance, its muddy underside was obviously intended to skid through muck as the wheels splashed forward.

  For all the vehicle's external size, space within was at a premium. The Klimovs had taken the central pair of bucket seats. There were two more seats in back and an uncushioned bench in front.

  As the driver handed Adele into a back seat, Hogg and Tovera conferred under their breath. Tovera stepped in after Adele, seating herself on the rear deck with her legs between the bucket seats; the attaché case was in her lap. Hogg got into the front while the driver stared in puzzlement at Tovera.

  "That's quite all right," said Daniel as he got in. "We prefer having a servant with us in the back."

  It wasn't worth arguing about. If Hogg and Tovera had decided it between them, that was most likely the way it was going to be.

  "Just drive us to the Pansuelas," he continued aloud as he pulled the low door out of the driver's hand and closed it. "How far is it, anyway?"

  "Not far, patron," the driver said, bowing again. He walked around to his door.

  "It's one point seven miles," said Adele quietly. She started to get out her data unit. "I can show you—"

  "No need for that," Daniel said, smiling. "Though when we have some leisure, if you have a natural history database—"

  "Of course," said Adele, in much the same tone as if he'd asked if she'd remembered to bring a change of clothes. Come to think, it was much more likely that she'd have failed to pack clothes than that she'd neglect information she knew was of interest to Daniel.

  "Excellent," Daniel said as the driver clutched in the diesel engine and turned the car tightly. "This appears to be one of those worlds where nature comes to us."

&
nbsp; They moved off at gathering speed. The road was a dirt causeway, built a few feet up from sea level by mats of plastic sheet-stock anchored by pilings cut from the interlacing trunks of the forest itself. So far as Daniel could tell the region was a tidal flat with no features except for the homogenous forest, but for some reason the road curved back and forth like a snake's track.

  The tires rolled smoothly over the soggy ground, though their thrum was loud enough to prevent normal speech. Sheets of mud and muddy water sprayed out to either side as the car negotiated particularly soft places, but the splashes didn't soak the passengers as Daniel had expected they would.

  He leaned close to Adele's ear and said, "I see why they were bringing processed fish to the warehouse by barge. Ground transport of bulky goods would be next to impossible, even between points on the same island."

  Adele looked at him and nodded, indicating she'd heard him and understood. Then she went back to whatever she was doing on her data unit, regardless of the car's motion—indicating that she didn't care about the difficulties of bulk transport on Tegeli.

  Daniel grinned. Unless she'd found the information during one of her data searches, of course; as she probably had. He supposed this was another case where his interests and Adele's complemented one another.

  Given the amount of noise the wheels made, Daniel didn't expect to see much in the way of wildlife. As they came out of the forest onto a road with high curbs and houses to either side, however, a blister swelled suddenly from the trunk of a tree and launched itself outward with an undulating motion. While flying the creature had a glistening translucence, but it vanished completely as soon as it landed on the weathered slats of a house a hundred yards away.

  The wooden buildings on the road from the harbor had been raised four or five feet above the ground on pilings. Chickens scavenged around the houses and in the street, sometimes scattering noisily as children playing ball rushed too close. Women sat on the steps, sewing and cutting vegetables against their thumbs as they chatted in high, musical voices.