Starrigger

by John Dechancie

  “Corey, sometimes I have trouble understanding how you could be the same person who founded TATOO with me.”

  “We all change, friend.”

  “It’s all unraveling, Corey.”

  “Not just yet,” Wilkes said tightly, and shut the key off. “Tell Twrrrll to release the girl,” he told Jimmy. “And the other one, too.”

  “Is it true, Corey?”

  Wilkes turned to face Vance. “Is what true?”

  “That you’ll sell the map to the highest bidder?”

  “No.” Wilkes sat in the armchair. “Not to the highest bidder. I’d be a fool to sell it to nonhumans. What do you think homo sap’s chances would be in a galaxy dominated by some alien race that got hold of the Roadbuilders’ technology? What if, for instance, they”—he pointed toward the adjoining stateroom—“got hold of it? No, I’ll give it to the Authority.”

  “I think your Rikki friends got the idea of going after the map a long time ago,” I said.

  “No doubt they did,” Wilkes conceded.

  Vance was struggling to understand. “But … you realize that to return with the map you’ll have to travel through twelve thousand kilometers of Reticulan maze?”

  “I’m not going back that way.”

  Vance was baffled. “How?”

  “I’ll go back by Ryxx starship.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, they’ve got the time dilation down to three years, ship time. A long haul, but they have cold-sleep technology. Surprised? Didn’t you know that the Ryxx don’t mind taking human passengers? It’s expensive, and they don’t get many takers, but…”

  “Yes, I knew. But the Ryxx want the map too!”

  “Yes, but they don’t know I have it—or will have it. They’re after Jake, not me. They don’t know me from Human One. And as far as I can tell, they don’t know about Winnie either. How could they, if what Darla says is true?”

  “What makes you think you can sell anything to the Authority?” Vance asked, disbelieving. “The Authority takes, it doesn’t buy.”

  “It’ll buy from me. You must know that yours isn’t the only friendship I’ve cultivated in high places. Some of them are your friends, or were before you became an unperson. The transaction has already been arranged. And part of the price will be immunity from prosecution.”

  Vance paled. “What?”

  Wilkes spoke to me. “You may remember that I mentioned something about your queering deals I had set up. I got word that our drug operation had been compromised. I really don’t know who was responsible. As Sam said, things tend to unravel. Van, you didn’t get wind of it for obvious reasons. But the deal was null and void long before any of this.”

  “So the Authority does know about the Roadmap,” I said. “Of course they do, and they’ve given up trying to get it from the dissidents—or rather, they’re having a hard time. I told them I could get it for them.”

  “But you’ll be gone for twelve years!” Vance said. “More!”

  “Think again. Most people never consider the backward time displacement you undergo when you shoot a portal. But when you go back through normal space, you eat all that time back up. I should get back to T-Maze almost exactly at the same time I left. No Paradox, and it all works out very neatly.” Wilkes licked his lips, his eyes focused somewhere in the air. “Or…” he went on abstractedly, “…or I just might try to find that backtime route. You did, Jake—or will, or shall … damn it, these verb tenses give me a headache! Anyway, if you can, I can, once I have the map.”

  “What about the Reticulans?” I asked.

  Wilkes’ face split into a gray-toothed grin. “We’ll part company in Seahome, where I’ll rent a long-distance vehicle and floor it for the planet where the Ryxx launch their ships. You can be sure I’ll scour the buggy for mrrrllowharrr. I’ll fumigate the punking thing.”

  Silence.

  Vance was deeply depressed. Finally, he said, “Pendergast is going to be very interested in hearing this.”

  “But you won’t be telling him, Van.” Wilkes took out Darla’s gun from under his jerkin. “Sorry, but until your last dose wears off, this will be necessary. Darla? You’d better come over here and sit with your dad.”

  Darla got up and began to walk over, but stopped when a knock came on the hatch.

  “Get it,” Wilkes told her.

  Just then Jimmy came through the connecting hatch, shoving a sleepwalking Lori before him. He pushed her onto the bed, where she sprawled, naked and still out cold.

  Darla threw the door open. It was John.

  “Darla! Are you all right? You vanished… oh, dear.” He saw Lori and stood there gawking.

  “Come in!” Wilkes called brightly.

  John averted his eyes from Lori, then smiled nervously. “Mr. Wilkes, I presume. I’ve heard a great deal—”

  Jimmy reached out, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him into the room. He checked the corridor and closed the hatch.

  “And you are …?”

  “John Sukuma-Tayler. A friend of Jake’s.”

  Wilkes rose. “John, it’s a pleasure, but you caught us at a bad time. Won’t you join your friends there on the bed? Jimmy, check him over.”

  Jimmy patted him down and pushed him toward the bed, made sure his boss was covering everybody, then went back into the Rikkis’ stateroom. A moment later he returned, herding another zombie. It was the Chevy kid. Jimmy sat him down, and the kid keeled over onto a pillow.

  “Couldn’t you have dressed her?” Wilkes scolded his bodyguard.

  “Ever try dressing a corpse?” Jimmy retorted.

  “Check out the hall one more time, then go get her clothes, for God’s sake.”

  “Right.”

  The pills Darla had dissolved in the coffeepot were taking full effect, but I couldn’t be sure if I was free of the wand completely. Nevertheless, I was ready to make my move when Jimmy left—but a split second after Jimmy cracked the hatch, Vance stood up suddenly, pointing the revolver shakily at Wilkes’ back.

  “Drop the gun, Corey.”

  “Van, sit down,” Wilkes said irritably over his shoulder. “You’ll hurt yourself with that old… Van!”

  Wilkes’ jaw dropped as Vance’s finger jerked against the trigger. Vance clenched his teeth, finding it harder than he had thought to bring the hammer back without cocking it first. His left hand came up to help.

  Surprised, Wilkes was slow to bring his pistol around, but Jimmy was quick. His shot sent a bolt scorching through Vance’s skull, the mass of white hair exploding into flame. But the hammer came down. A thunderous explosion shook the room, and a weird dance of bodies began. Wilkes was spun around and yanked up and back like a puppet on strings, went lurching back toward the table. Vance’s body marched backward like a ghost with a fiery head, hit the wall and rebounded, then teetered over. I was on the floor going for the dropped .44, trying to get furniture between me and Jimmy, but by the time I got to the gun he and Roland—who had come bursting through the hatch—were waltzing arm-in-arm into the room, each holding the other’s gun arm, until Darla cut in with a chop to the back of Jimmy’s neck, sending him down. Wilkes hit the table and the top part of it flipped up from the base, sending cups and silverware catapulting across the room to crash and ricochet off the walls. I was on my feet, rushing toward him. The gun was still in his hand, but I reached him just as he brought it up, and kicked it away. The fight was over. I picked up Darla’s pistol and stood over him. Darla tore the blanket off the bed, sending Lori flopping to the floor, and rushed to Vance. Wilkes looked up at me, his face blank and stunned, a red flower blooming on his pretty white blouse.

  “Roland!” I called. “Close the hatch!”

  “Wait.” He went to it and peeked out, then beckoned to someone. Susan poked her head in, and Roland pulled her through, then shut the hatch. Susan saw that John and everyone she knew was all right, then burst into tears and flung her arms around Roland.

  John was picking hims
elf off the floor. I went to the connecting hatch and turned the mechanical lock, then took John’s arm and slapped the grip of Darla’s pistol into his hand. “Keep an eye on that hatch,” I told him. “If you so much as hear something, shoot.” He nodded.

  I went for the wand, picked it up off the floor. It throbbed faintly in my hand, and I rotated the silver band until it stopped. Lori began screaming, rising to her feet with her arms flailing at phantoms. I ripped the sheet off the bed and covered her, wrapping her in my arms. “It was all a dream, honey, all a dream,” I whispered in her ear as I walked her over to the overturned coffee table. I scooped up the key and called Sam. “Sam, it’s Jake.”

  “Jesus Christ! What’s going on up there?”

  “Everyone’s okay. How’s your situation?”

  “What the hell’s all that caterwauling?”

  “We’re all okay, never mind. What’s happening at your end?”

  “Everybody left. Went topside, I guess. Something’s going on up there.”

  Just then I heard shouting come from out in the hail. “Yeah, the ship’s being attacked. Exactly by what, I don’t know. Can you get free down there like you said you could?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then do it and wait for us. We have to find Winnie, and—”

  “Winnie’s here.”

  “What! How in hell did she …? Never mind, never mind. Good. Okay, listen.” I thought fast. “We’ll try to make it down there somehow. Be ready to roll.”

  “Fine. Where to?”

  “We’re going to find a place to hide until we can negotiate our way off this tuna hotpak dinner.”

  “But where?”

  “Pack plenty of antacid.”

  Chapter 23

  THE KID WAS awake now, looking around at everyone and blinking. “Good morning,” he said. He got up from the bed. I handed him the still-howling Lori and told him to try and calm her down. I went to Darla. She was on her knees, curled into a ball over the unmoving, blanket-shrouded form of her father. The stench of burning flesh and hair filled the room.

  “Van,” she was moaning. “Oh, Van.”

  I gripped her shoulders. “Darla, we have to go. The Rikkis.” She began to weep, great violent sobs shaking her body, but there was no sound.

  “Darla. We have to leave.” I let her go on for a while, then took her arms and gently pulled her away. Her body became rigid, then slowly relaxed. I pulled her to her feet and turned her around. Her face was a contorted mask of pain. I escorted her to the other side of the room and helped her on with her backpack, which I had found near the table. I told Roland to check the corridor. Susan calmed down and he moved her aside.

  “It’s okay,” he said, peering out. Far down the corridor came the sound of screaming and general commotion.

  “All right,” I announced, “everyone move out!”

  Lori was hyperventilating. I helped John sling her over his shoulder and held her while he balanced her precariously. I picked up Jimmy’s gun and handed it to the kid, then gave Darla her pistol back. It took a while to get everyone ready, but finally I had them filing out into the hall and to the right, hugging the walls, with Roland taking point. Everyone was armed but John and Susan. I was the last one out. I stood at the door and looked at Wilkes. His eyes pleaded with me.

  I was about to say something when a low, rumbling sound shook the floor and the connecting hatch suddenly flew to splinters. A Reticulan came striding through, bearing a strange silver weapon of curving surfaces and a bell-shaped business end. I ducked behind the bulkhead and brought the .44 around and fired. The alien’s head exploded into puffs of pink mist, shards of chitin clattering against the walls and floor. The body kept walking toward me. I backed away, turned, and ran down the hall, whirling and backpedaling every few steps until I made it to a corner. I stopped for one last look and saw the headless body topple into the hall, its legs still working. No one else came out. The others were looking back at me. I barked at them to keep going.

  A little further ahead, the Teelies stopped to pick up their backpacks, which they had left in the hallway. I grabbed John’s and struggled into it while we ran. I rushed to the head of the line and told Roland to bring up the rear.

  There was smoke in the corridor, and shouting and crashing sounds came from somewhere up ahead. As we neared the source of the disturbance, the smoke got steadily thicker, until we had a choice of turning back or asphyxiating. I did not want to face the Reticulans, and as far as I knew there was no stairway to the lower decks in that direction, which is what we needed. But there was a side corridor nearby that looked like it led to a way out on deck. I ducked down it and made sure everyone followed me before I went to the head of the line again. I cracked the hatch and found that it opened onto the starboard deck, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go out there.

  Beyond the railing and out to sea, a blood-red moon squatted on the horizon. Silhouetted against it was the outline of what I took to be another megaleviathan, minus the ship-structure, slowly closing off the Laputa’s starboard beam. Above, the air was filled with flying motes of fire. Giant shapes crossed the glowing disk of the moon, batlike, nightmare shapes, and from all around came the sound of great leathery wings flapping. Dots of flame circled the Laputa like swarms of fireflies, some suddenly deorbiting to come arcing down on the ship. I heard a thump and looked to my right. One had hit the deck not far away. It bounced against the bulkhead and came to rest against a stack of deckchairs. It was a melon-size flaming ball of something, a pitchlike substance probably, trailing a length of fireproofed braided lanyard. The fabric-and-wood-frame deckchairs ignited immediately. I craned my head out to get a better view. Spot fires flared everywhere along the upper deck, and fire details rushed everywhere, shouting, trailing firehoses like white wriggling snakes. I didn’t want to go out there, but there was no choice. I looked for the nearest stairs for B Deck, saw none, but decided it was best to head aft.

  “Put me down, God damn it!”

  It was Lori, screaming at John. I closed the hatch and walked back. John was setting her down and apologizing profusely. She took a swing at him, missed, and when I took her arm she sent a haymaker toward me. I caught her wrist.

  “Lori, settle down! It’s me, Jake! Remember?”

  Her eyes focused on me and the hysterical hatred drained from her face. She blinked and looked again. “Who? Oh, yeah. Yeah.” She looked around, bewildered. “What happened? Where are we?” Then she noticed the sheet and her lack of clothes. “What the punkin’ hell …?”

  “A pirate mega is attacking the ship,” I told her, thinking it better to concentrate on the present problem than on past traumas which she may or may not remember. “We have to get belowdecks.”

  That brought her around. “Are they firebombing?”

  “Yes, and it looks like they’re pulling alongside to board.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Top deck, starboard, near the bow.”

  “This way—and hurry!”

  We went out on deck and made our way aft, keeping a lookout for falling fireballs. The bombardment continued, but most of the orbiting lights had fallen. It seemed like a coordinated attack, with the bombardment probably scheduled to cease just prior to the boarding attempt. I saw now that the fireballs were making circular epicycles as they orbited, and when two searchlight beams from the ship converged in the air above us and to our right, I saw what bore them. These weren’t merely sailing fish, but giant airborne animals that looked like mythical sea serpents, with long tapering bodies and mighty pinions beating the night air. On their backs rode smaller animals, Arfies, from what I could make out. One Arfie in each flight crew, the bombardier, twirled a fireball around his head before letting it go. The ship’s exciter batteries were taking their toll. The beast in the searchlight beams blossomed into an orange ball of fire, momentum carrying flaming remnants into a descending arc ahead. But there were too many of them, and apparently only two operating batteries.


  “Look out!”

  It was Roland, and I looked back. Something was swooping toward us, coming directly from behind. We all hit the deck, and I felt air swoosh over me as the animal passed. It smacked into the deck further ahead and went crashing into a canopied dining terrace, then stopped. We got up and looked, backing away prudently, but before anyone could make the intelligent decision to turn and run, big shapes flopped toward us from out of the darkness—Arfies, four of them, armed with crude axes and other, stranger implements. I shot at one of them but apparently missed, or it may have been that the animal was very hard to bring down. Roland and Darla started firing. Darla’s first shot seared off a forward flipper of one of them, but he kept coming too, barking insanely, picking up his dropped weapon with the other flipper and charging. Roland used half a charge to flame another of them in its tracks, then turned the beam on the one I had missed, with the same result. But the two remaining were fast—and big. Up until then I had only seen Arfies at a distance. They were massive beasts, with blubbery rolls of fat padding their undersides and powerful muscles along the flanks to work the flippers. They looked almost nothing like seals or walruses now-more like amphibian versions of a Brahma bull. We backed as we fired. I got off two more shots with little effect, but Darla finally got her target cut to pieces and it slumped over unmoving. Roland was digging in his pockets for another charge, and Darla was now out. I fired my last round at the remaining Arfie, then threw the gun at it. He kept coming and we all ran, scattering, but the thing chose to follow me. I was wondering what happened to the kid. He was off to my right, hitting his gun with his fist as he ran.

  “Won’t work!” he yelled.

  I yelled for him to throw it over and he did. It was an odd make with a tricky safety catch, which I knew about from having owned one. I thumbed off the safety, turned, and emptied the powerpak in one steady beam right at the creature’s head. It was dead by the time it hit me, but it hit like a runaway rig.