Starliner

by David Drake

  Wanda reached up and squeezed Ran's hand against the epaulet of her uniform.

  "And he said," Ran continued in the same wondering tone, "'No I didn't, boy.' And he told me to leave him alone, like he usually did. And he got even drunker that night than usual. And I didn't understand."

  They were walking toward the south entrance to the square. The buildings to either side of the street had concrete walls on the ground floor but plastic for the upper three stories.

  A bank had the corner location in one of the buildings. An outside staircase beside the bank served the upper floors. At its foot, six men in blue uniforms stood around a prostitute wearing a backless lime-green dress with fishnet stockings of the same hue. The color and pattern made her look like a reptile, an impression which her narrow face reinforced.

  "They aren't wearing caps or nametags," Wanda said, recognizing trouble by the fact the group of men were prepared for it with anonymity.

  "Look, not all of you," the whore said. "Two at a time, for another five over—"

  "They're ours," Ran said, jolted back to the present and glad to return. "They're from the Cold Crew."

  "Let's not have any trouble, gents," said the pimp walking up behind the group. He was tall and snake-thin. He kept his hands ostentatiously in his pockets. "Little Mary's going to give you—"

  Two of the sailors spun as though they'd rehearsed the maneuver a hundred times—and maybe they had, in the docks and dives of that many planets. They grabbed the pimp by the elbows, bent his arms back, and hurled him against the window marked SECURITY FINANCE.

  The protective grating saved the glass. The pimp bounced back. His hands flopped loose. There hadn't been time to use whatever weapon he carried. The whore screamed. A sailor grabbed her from behind, with one calloused hand across her mouth and the other gripping her throat.

  Wanda reached under the front of her tunic. Ran caught her hand. "Mine," he said.

  A proctor with a tall red hat and a brassard dangling on his chest turned toward the commotion. He carried a shock rod and a pair of stun-gas projectors.

  A sailor pointed his index finger at the proctor. "You want some?" he cried. "There's plenty for you!"

  Spectators spun as though the finger repelled them. The proctor stared up at the top floor of the building, then pivoted slowly and sauntered in the other direction.

  The two men with the pimp hurled him again. This time they missed the window. The victim walloped soddenly against the concrete wall.

  The prostitute wasn't struggling. Her eyes were alert but resigned.

  Ran approached the group with his hands at his sides, fingers spread and empty One of the Cold Crewmen grunted a warning to the others.

  "Want to join him, buddy?" a sailor snarled.

  "Not me," said Ran. "Kephalonians, aren't you?"

  It wasn't what the Cold Crewmen expected to hear from an officer of the Empress of Earth. Orders in a tone of false comradeship; wheedling perhaps; threats if the fellow was a fool, and he was fool enough to get involved, that was clear from the start.

  "You got a problem with that?" the same sailor responded.

  "Nope," Ran said. "Niko Mazurkas was from Kephalonia. I saw him dim three engines himself on the Askenazy for nine hours, till we made Manfred's Reach."

  "Bullshit!" a sailor said. "You're a fucking officer!"

  "You bet I am," Ran said. "Now. But I worked one engine and Niko worked three, nine hours and no relief. I was just a kid and it almost killed me, but we did it."

  "God himself couldn't keep three engines trimmed smooth," said the man holding the whore.

  "Smooth?" Ran crowed. "It was rough as a cob! But we got the bitch there, and we got five more men to replace the six gone blind from the rotgut they bought on Wanslea."

  "Bullshit!" a sailor repeated.

  "No, he's telling the truth," said the apparent leader. "Look at his rucking eyes."

  The man holding the whore let her go, then gave her a little push to convince her that it was really happening.

  "Ever since then," Ran said in a flat voice, staring a million klicks through the lichen-scaled concrete of the building, "I like to buy drinks for Kephalonians. Can I buy you men a drink?"

  The Cold Crewmen looked at one another. "Naw, that's okay," the leader said. "Last thing I want is to have pay in my pocket when I go back aboard."

  He took his soft cap out of his pocket and settled it on his head, then adjusted it by feel so that the legend embroidered on the tally, Empress of Earth, could be read by anyone looking at him.

  "C'mon, you bastards," he added in gruff embarrassment. "Let's find a proper cathouse."

  As the sailors strode off, arms akimbo and kicking their toes out with each step, one of those who had grabbed the pimp turned. "Hey, Lieutenant?" he called. "See you round!"

  The prostitute half knelt, half squatted beside her pimp. Her clothes, though brief, were constraining.

  The pimp groaned softly, which meant his head was harder than anybody would've expected. Ran nodded toward the whore and started to walk away.

  She moved fast and with birdlike grace, putting herself in his way. Wanda stepped forward but paused.

  The whore looked tiny up close. What Ran had thought was a skullcap was her own hair. It was dyed in streaks of black and a color close to that of her garments, then lacquered down. The marks of the sailor's fingers were red against her pale throat.

  "I suppose you expect a freebie for what you did, huh?" the whore demanded in a shrill voice.

  "I don't expect anything," Ran said. He tried to step around her.

  She blocked his way again. She wasn't as young as he'd first thought. "I guess you think you're too good for me!" she said. "Is that it?"

  He looked at her and she glared back. Whatever she saw in Ran Colville's eyes didn't bother her the way it did others when he wasn't careful; when he forgot or remembered, however you wanted to say it.

  "I'm not too good for anybody," he said aloud. "Quite the contrary."

  "Then come on up," the whore said crisply as she took him by the hand. "It's just up on the third."

  Ran looked over his shoulder at Wanda Holly. "I'll be a little while," he said without inflection.

  She raised an eyebrow. "Take a long time," she said. "Take twenty minutes. I'll have another beer."

  She turned and stepped toward a drink kiosk—a different one—before Ran could reply.

  If he intended to.

  CALICHEMAN

  Ran Colville drew in a breath whose cool humidity felt good in his lungs. On Calicheman Trident Starlines docked at Longleat, a broad canal served along both sides by railways. Starship landings generated huge quantities of steam, most of which recondensed into droplets before the gangplanks lowered.

  From the Empress's pilotry data, society on Calicheman was similar to that of Ohio in the 1820s. It was a less uniform culture than many. Not surprisingly, its worst—and most extreme—aspects were concentrated in the district surrounding the starport.

  A train, aided by scores of cabs and hire cars, had carried off those of the Empress's passengers who disembarked—for good or just to stretch their legs. Calicheman's main export, beef from the feral cattle which roamed all three of the main continents, was coming aboard by the carload from the broad—2-meter—gauge trains drawn up alongside the dock.

  The beef would fill what had been the Third Class spaces, now refrigerated. The cargoes were comparable from a commercial viewpoint; on a bad day, Ran might have said that the connection was closer than that.

  But this was a very good day, as sunny as Ran's disposition, and so far as he could tell, he was off duty now. He'd already freed Mohacks and Babanguida. Now he touched his transceiver to the lower end of the First Class gangplank and said, "Colville to Holly. Want to see what's happening on Calicheman, Wanda? Over."

  "A lot of cows are turning grass into methane, unless the place has changed in the past three weeks," replied Wanda's voice, thinned by the trans
mission channel. She didn't need to cue Bridge, because the AI routed the response by default to the initial caller. "I'd take you around, but I've got deck watch. Sorry. Over."

  A train energized its bearings and clanked upward from the rails. It chuffed forward the length of one car. Then it settled with a similar clang and resumed offloading its pallets.

  "This is the Commander's watch," Ran said in puzzlement "Over."

  "He's got something hush-hush at the embassy," Wanda explained. After a pause, she added, "The Brasil didn't touch down here either, you know. It looks as though she, well . . . But go enjoy yourself. Calicheman's not a bad place, so long as you mind your own business. The locals get pretty touchy about individual rights, though. Over."

  "I've got no problem with that," Ran said. "Well, maybe you can look me up when you get free. Colville out."

  Wanda snorted. "I'm not into threesomes," she said. "Holly out."

  Ran didn't have problems with much of anything, not since Hobilo. The shadow of his father's past had been lifted—burned away as though by the metal-charged flame of Chick Colville's weapon. Seeing the actual place didn't make the events less horrible, but it proved they were over . . . as they had never been over for Ran's father, or for Ran until that moment of catharsis.

  The taxi rank was empty, but a cab returning from Tidal had turned into the approach road. The noise of machinery chuckling as it shifted beef aboard the Empress of Earth seemed thin in the breeze and open spaces, but it completely covered the sound of two late-leaving passengers until they fell into step with Ran.

  He turned in startlement. "Good morning, Lieutenant Colville," said Franz Streseman. The young Grantholmer held two overnight cases in his left hand. "May I present my friend Miss Tranh van Oanh? Or have you met?"

  "Formally only," Ran said, "and barely that. Very glad to make your acquaintance, ma'am."

  He bowed to Oanh. The girl looked like a lute string tuned a key above normal, but the problem wasn't between her and Franz. They'd been holding hands until Ran turned.

  "Would you care to share a cab into Tidal, sir?" Franz offered.

  "If you'll call me 'Ran' instead of 'sir,'" Ran said, and he opened the taxi's door for the young couple.

  * * *

  The prairies of Calicheman were covered with grasses close enough to those of Earth that some botanists claimed to have cross-bred the strains. These claims were disputed by others. Now that panspermia was no longer a hypothesis but simple observation, nobody familiar with the vast adaptability of plant species denied that it was theoretically possible.

  The road from Longleat to Tidal, the largest of the nearby towns, was undermaintained, and quite a lot of the planetary traffic was off-road entirely. Local vehicles were designed for the prevailing conditions.

  This cab, driven by a dour woman who carried her pistol in a cross-draw holster, rode high over large wheels. The vehicle gave the three passengers in back a good look at the rolling terrain of grasses, flowering shrubs, and small trees—not stunted, but saplings whose lifespan was limited by frequent prairie fires. From a non-specialist's standpoint, the landscape could have been the next panel from the hologram of the North American Midwest in Ran's cabin. Only the profusion of animal life provided an obvious difference.

  Tidal was five kilometers away from the port. The trip was a panorama of brindled cattle, mixed in approximately equal numbers with a score of native herbivores.

  Halfway along the jolting, swaying journey, Oanh leaned forward to look past Franz toward the Trident officer. "Are there proper docking facilities on Szgrane, sir?" she asked.

  "They haven't docked anything our size," Ran said, stifling a wince at being called "sir" as if he was the girl's grandfather. "But then, neither had Grantholm until the Empress touched down on her maiden voyage."

  He mentally reviewed the pilotry data. "They've got four modern tugs," he went on. "That's enough if they don't mind us digging a bit of a hole with our own motors at three-quarters power, which Trident will pay to repair."

  "A backwater," Franz said, "but the port averages three landings a day. I've been there."

  "No doubt a very suitable place from which to ferry all the soldiers returning to Grantholm to kill my compatriots," Oanh said. Her tone was noticeably cooler by the end of the comment than it had been at the beginning.

  "Szgrane has an established trade with Grantholm," Ran said carefully, staring out the window so that he wouldn't have to notice the expressions on the faces of the young couple beside him. "But there's absolutely no possibility that the authorities on Szgrane would permit any insult to our Nevasan passengers. They're very—punctilious about their honor, the Szgranians."

  The highway, such as it was, paralleled the railroad tracks. A twelve-car train howled by in the opposite direction, carrying more beef toward the Empress at 150 kph. Ran's teeth grated, and portions of the taxi moaned.

  Railways on Calicheman used ultrasonics to clear the way ahead of them. The speed at which the trains sailed over their tracks on magnetic runners meant that the pulses had to be of high enough amplitude to ring harmonics from any object in the same county.

  On many planets there would be laws to prevent the railways from such an obvious hazard to public health. On Calicheman—at least near the starport—a cowboy being hammered by ultrasonics was likely to take a shot at the train—but then, the train driver might well shoot back. Other lands, other customs.

  Franz leaned forward and said to the driver, "Ah, can you drop us at the best hotel in Tidal, please?"

  Til drop you in the square," the driver replied, "and you can walk to any damn hotel you please."

  Ran sighed. He was as interested in personal freedom as the next fellow, but he couldn't understand people who felt that it was demeaning to do what somebody else paid you to do. That attitude got in the way of doing the best job possible . . . and Ran Colville didn't have any use for people who did less than the best job possible.

  It was possible that the taxi driver was some sort of aberration. More likely, she was a foretaste of the hotel staff, waiters, clerks, and everydamnbody else he'd have to deal with in Tidal.

  It was still a beautiful day.

  Tidal wasn't on any body of water, which was a pity. Even a lake would have been useful to flush the effluvium of the slaughterhouses at the edge of town. Earthmoving equipment dug trenches to replace those already filled with stinking blood and offal. Flies and the native equivalents formed clouds that looked thick enough to walk on. Layers of quicklime, and the dirt bulldozed onto the trenches when evaporation had shrunk and congealed their contents, did little to discourage the insects.

  "This is—hideous!" Oanh said.

  "Amazing," Franz echoed in scarcely less pejorative tones.

  "This is certainly the home of the rugged individual," Ran said mildly. "Nobody's asking us to live here, of course."

  Though Calicheman was a beautiful place in its own stark fashion. Only the human colonists gave Ran pause. Not the first time he'd thought that about one planet or another.

  Tidal was built in a melange of styles, most of them garish. High walls concealed and protected the homes of the wealthy, and virtually everyone Ran noticed on the streets was armed. There were no sidewalks, though paved plazas fronted some businesses.

  The taxi pulled up hard enough to make the chassis sway on its springs. "Forty-two dollars," the driver said, tapping the sign on her reader.

  "I'll get it," Franz said, extending a credit chip.

  "Double if it's drawn on an off-planet bank," the driver added. She'd unholstered her long-barreled pistol. It lay on her lap, not pointed anywhere in particular but a blunt warning.

  "I'll get it," Ran said mildly. "My credit's through the local Trident office."

  He fed his chip into the reader, his face without expression. Oanh got down from the car's high body. Franz tugged their overnight cases from under the seat.

  Oanh screamed. Two big men wearing bright garments ben
eath rough-out leather vests and chaps had the girl by the elbows. They tossed her into the back of a dosed car and leaped in behind her.

  Ran grabbed the taxi driver's pistol. "Hey!" she bellowed as she caught the barrel before he could aim. The kidnap vehicle accelerated away with all four wheels squealing.

  "I'll buy the damned thing!" Ran shouted.

  "Like hell!" the driver shouted back. She tried to bite his hand.

  Ran let go of the gun. It was too late for that. The other vehicle had vanished into the sparse traffic. He wasn't sure he'd have fired anyway. He'd never been much use with handguns, and Oanh has likely to be injured in the crash even if he'd managed to shoot out a tire.

  Franz Streseman was shouting for the police. Ran didn't bother. The Empress's pilotry information had made it clearthat self-help was the only help there was on Calicheman. Locals were watching the event with various levels of amusement.

  A public telephone, armored like a tank, stood a few meters away. Ran retrieved his credit chip from the taximeter, ran to the phone, and punched TRIDENT on the keypad. The response was strikingly fast.

  "Bridge," announced the Empress's AI through the flat-plate speaker.

  "Emergency," Ran said. "Deck officer. Over."

  The speaker rattled. "Holly, over," it said tensely.

  "Wanda, a Trident passenger has got a problem," Ran explained, "and we're going to solve it."

  Ran made a series of curt statements and requests. One thing he didn't say, because he didn't want it on record, and because he didn't know how Franz Streseman, distraught at his elbow now, would react.

  Ran hadn't recognized the actual kidnappers. But he was quite certain that the face glaring from the back of the kidnap vehicle was that of Gerd von Pohlitz.

  * * *

  Wanda Holly was alone in the rental car. Ran waved her over to the front of Tidal's Municipal Building, a one-story structure with rammed-earth walls and a littered areaway. Twilight and neon from nearby establishments helped disguise the building's aura of filth.

  "You got to understand," said the Town Marshal, a woman named Platt with gray hair in unattractive curls, "that just because a couple outsiders say there's a crime, that don't make it a crime."