"We'll get your message off and then maybe you'll trust this heavyworlder. Come!"
He took her hand and led her through the narrow corridors of the scout vessel to the command deck. A centimeter less on each side and the ceiling, Lunzie thought, and he wouldn't fit. Then he handed her into a small communications booth, slid the panel shut and went on into the bridge. She sat down dazed while he spoke briefly to the heavyworlder woman on duty. She instantly swung around with a grin to Lunzie and made rapid passes over her comboard.
"This is a secure channel," she said, her voice coming through a speaker in the wall. "Just insert the brick in the appropriate slot in front of you. They're usually constructed to set the coding frequency. I'm shutting down in here." She pulled off her earpiece and held up both hands. For a heavyworlder, she had a very friendly grin.
Lunzie fumbled with the brick but finally got it into the slot which closed over it like some weird alien ingesting sustenance. There was no indication that anything was happening. Abruptly the slot opened, spitting the little brick out. As she watched, the thing dissolved. It didn't steam or smolder or melt. It just dissolved and she was looking at a small pile of black dust.
She sent the communications officer the finger-thumb O of completion and sagged back with a deep sigh of relief. Zebara rose from his seat next to the com-tech and came around the doorway into the tiny chamber where Lunzie was seated.
"Mission completed in the usual pile of dust, I see," he said and swept it off onto the floor. Then he took a handful of mineral tablets from his pocket and popped a couple into his mouth.
Lunzie looked up at him limply. "I thank Muhlah!"
"And now we're going to do something about you." He sounded ominous.
Lunzie tensed in a moment of sheer panic which had no basis whatsoever except that Zebara was pounding on the quartz window with one massive palm.
"Flor, tell Bringan to get up here on the double. You look like hell, Lunzie Mespil. Sit tight for the medic."
Lunzie forced herself to relax when she noticed Zebara regarding her with some amusement.
"So what do we do about you?" he asked rhetorically. "Even on a ship as huge as the ARCT-10, you can't really be safely hidden. You escaped once but you are unquestionably in jeopardy." She wished he would sit down instead of looming over her. "Did you get a look at your assailants?"
"A Ryxi female named Birra and a human male she called Knoradel." She rattled off physical descriptions. "The Ryxi has a crushed rib cage. I left a few marks on the man."
"They shouldn't be too hard to apprehend," Zebara said and depressed a toggle on the board. She heard him giving the descriptions to the Ship Provost. "You won't object to remaining here until they have been detained? No? Sensible of you." He regarded her for a long moment and then grinned, looking more like a predatory fish than an amused human. "In fact, it would be even more sensible if you didn't go back to the ARCT-10 at all"
"In deep space there aren't many alternatives," Lunzie remarked, feeling the weakness of post-Discipline seeping through her.
"I can think of one." He looked at her expectantly and, when she didn't respond, gave a disappointed sigh. "You can come back to Ambrosia with us."
"Ambrosia?" Lunzie wasn't certain that the planet appealed to her at all.
"An excellent solution since you're already involved up to your lightweight neck in Ambrosian affairs. Highly appropriate. Assassins won't get another chance at terminating your life on any ship I command. I'll clear your reappointment with the ARCT-10 authorities."
Lunzie was really surprised. Somehow, she had not expected such positive cooperation and solici-tousness from this heavyworlder. "Why?"
"You're in considerable danger. Partly because you gave unstinting assistance to another heavyworlder. I was well acquainted with Orlig. My people are beneficiaries of your risk as much as yours are. Do you have any objections?"
"No," Lunzie decided. "It'll be a great relief to be able to sleep safely again." She was beginning to feel weightless, a sure sign that adrenaline exhaustion was taking hold.
Zebara grinned his shark's-tooth smile again, and crunched another tablet. "If Orlig's murder and the attempt on your life are an indication, and I believe they are, then Ambrosia may be in even more danger than I thought it was. Orlig was keeping his ears open for me on the ARCT, which was receiving and transmitting my reports. So we'd already had an indication that this plum would fell into the wrong paws. You confirm that. I came back to ask for military support to meet us there to stave off a possible pirate takeover until a colony can be legitimately installed with the appropriate fanfare. Relax, Lunzie Mespil."
"Thank you," Lunzie called faintly after him, the weight of her own indecision and insecurity sliding off her sagging shoulders now that someone believed her. She let her head roll back against the cushioned chair.
Soon, she became aware that someone was in the tiny cubicle with her.
"Ah, you're awake. Don't move too quickly. I'm setting your arm." A thickset man with red-blond hair cut short knelt at her side. "I'm Doctor Bringan. Normally I'm just the xenobiologist but I'm not averse to using my talents on known species. I run the checkups and bandage scratches for the crew. Understand you're signing on as medical officer." Very gently, he pulled her wrist and forearm in opposite directions. The curled fingers slowly straightened out. "That'll be a relief," he added with a welcoming smile. "I might just put the wrong bits together and that could prove awkward for someone."
"Um, yes," Lunzie agreed, watching him carefully. Mercifully the arm was numb. He must have given her a nerve block. "Wait, I didn't hear the bones mesh yet."
"I'm just testing to see if any of the ligatures were torn. No. All's well." Bringan waved a small diagnostic unit over her arm. "You were lucky you were wearing a tight sleeve. The swelling would have been much worse left unchecked."
"So I see," Lunzie said, eyeing the reddish wash along the skin of her arm which marked subcutaneous bleeding. It would soon surface as a fading rainbow of colors as the blood dispersed. She poked at the flesh with an experimental finger and, with curious detachment, felt it give.
Bringan put the DU in his belt pouch and gave a deft twist to her arm. Lunzie heard the ulna and radius grate slightly as they settled into place.
"I'm going to put you in a non-confining brace to hold your bones steady. Won't interfere with movement and you can wash the arm, cautiously. Everything will be tender once the nerve block wears off." He flexed her fingers back and forth. "You should have normal range of motion in a few hours." Then he gave a snort of a chuckle and eyed her. "I should be telling you!"
She managed a weak, but grateful smile. "Bringan, are we going to Ambrosia?"
The doctor raised surprised blond brows at her. "Oh, yes indeed we are. Myself, I can't wait to get back. Why, I intend to put in to settle here when I retire. I've never seen such a perfect planet."
"I mean, are we going soon?" She stressed the last word.
"That's what I meant." He gave her a searching look. "Zebara has told me nothing about you, or why you arrive looking like the survivor of a corridor war, but he logged you on FTL. So I can enjoy a few shrewd guesses, most of which include planet pirates." He winked at her. "Which gives the most excellent of reasons for burning tubes back there. The FSP needs witnesses on hand. Or maybe that's your role on our roster."
"I'll witness, believe you me, I'll witness," Lunzie said with all the fervor left in her depleted body.
Bringan chuckled as he gathered up his gear. "If we're delayed in any way, by any agency, I think Zebara would probably tank himself up and swim back shipless. He's allergic to the mention of pirates. And bloody piracy's turning epidemic. It seems to me that every time a real plum turns up in the last century, the pirates are there to wrest it away from the legitimate finders. With a sophisticated violence that makes alien creatures seem like housecats."
"Bringan," Lunzie asked again, tentatively, "what's Zebara like?"
"Do you mean, is he your usual prototype heavy-worlder chauvinist? No. He's a good leader, and good friend. I've known him for thirty years. You'll appreciate his fair treatment, but watch out for the grin. That means trouble."
Lunzie cocked an eyebrow at Bringan. "You mean the shark-face he puts on? I've already seen it."
"Ho, ho! I hope it wasn't meant for you!" The doctor bunched himself onto his feet. "There, you're in good shape. Come with me, and we'll see about a bunk for you. You need to rest and let those injuries start to heal."
"When do we cast off the ARCT-10?" Lunzie asked. She followed Bringan, not too wobbly on her strength-less legs. Had the Ryxi received help before her lungs collapsed?
"As soon as Zebara is back on board."
On the way to that bunk, Lunzie got the briefest of introductions to the rest of the scout crew. Besides Flor, the Ship-born communications tech who doubled as historian, and Bringan, the xeobiologist, there were seven more. Dondara and Pollili, a mated pair, were heavyworlders from Diplo. Pollili was the telemetry officer, and Dondara was a geologist. Unlike most of their number who served for a few missions and then retired to their cold, bleak homeworlds, Pollili and Dondara had served with Zebara's Explorers Team for eight years, and had every intention of continuing in that posting. They spent one to two months a year in intensive exercise in the heavyworld environment aboard the ARCT-10 to maintain their muscle tone. The other five EX Team members were human. Scarran, tan-skinned and nearsighted, was a systems technologist. Vir, offshoot of a golden-complected breed with heavily lidded eyes, was an environmental specialist who shared security duties with Dondara. Elessa, charming but not strictly pretty, held the double duties of synthesizer tech and botanist. Timmins was a chemist. Wendell, the pilot, had gone over to the ARCT-10 with Zebara.
Everyone's specialties overlapped somewhat so the necessarily small crew of the scout had a measure of redundancy of talent in case of emergency. The little ship was compactly built but amazingly not cramped in its design. Hydroponic racks of edible plants were arrayed anywhere there was space, and the extra light made the rooms seem more cheerful and inviting. Bringan explained the ship was capable of running on its own power indefinitely in sublight, or making a single warp jump between short sprints before recharging.
Ambrosia was a long jump out toward the edge of explored space. The scout could never be certain of finding edible food on any planet it explored and its crew needed to be able to provide their own carbohydrates for the synthesizers.
Lunzie's bunk was in the same alcove as Elessa's. She lay on the padding with her arm strapped across her chest, staring at the bunkshelf above her. Bringan had ordered her to rest but she couldn't close her eyes. She was grateful to be safe but somehow it rankled her that her rescuer should prove to be a heavyworlder. Zebara seemed all right. She couldn't repress the suspicion that he might just be waiting until they got into deep space to toss her out the airlock. That didn't compute—not with a mixed-species crew all of whom were impressively loyal to him.
Abruptly the last adrenaline that had been buttressing her drained away. "Well, I ought to be truly grateful," she chided herself. "And he's got a very good press from his crew. That Quinada! I was getting used to heavyworlders when I had to run into someone like her! I suppose there's a bad chip in every board."
Still vaguely uneasy, Lunzie let herself drift off to sleep.
She awoke with a start to see Zebara staring down at her. It took her a moment to remember where she was.
"We're under way," he announced without preamble. "I've had you made an official member of my crew. No one else tried to pressure the little bosses to get on this cruise, so either your attackers have given up the job or . . . there are nasty plans for all of us."
"You're so comforting," Lunzie remarked drolly, determined to modify her attitude, at least toward a heavyworlder named Zebara. "How long have I been asleep?"
The heavyworld captain turned his palms upward. "How'd I know? We've been under way about five hours. Bringan told me to let you rest and I have, but now I need to talk to you. Do you feel strong enough?"
Lunzie tested her muscles and drew herself into a sitting position. Her arm was sore but she could move her fingers now. Bringan's cast held it immobile without putting pressure on the bruised muscles of her forearm. The rest of her body felt battered, but she already felt better for having had some rest.
"Talk? Yes, I'm up to talking."
"Come to my quarters. We can speak privately there."
"I was half expecting to be approached on the ARCT-10," Zebara said, pouring two glasses of Sverulan brandy. His quarters were close to spacious; that is to say, the room was eight paces wide by ten, instead of four. Zebara had a computer desk equipped with a device Lunzie recognized as a private memory storage. His records would not be accessible to anyone else on the ship or on the ship's communication network. "The exact location of Ambrosia is known only to myself and my crew and, regrettably, the administrators aboard the ARCT." He showed his teeth. "I trust my crew. I suspect there's an unpluggable leak aboard the ARCT."
"A leak leading right to the EEC Administration?" Lunzie was beginning to see the pieces of the minor puzzle which involved her coming together. The whole was part of a much larger puzzle.
"That's a gamble I have to take. If the pirates beat us back to Ambrosia, that means the information on Ambrosia's exact location is being transmitted to them right now. I want Fleet protection, yes, but I'm also interested in luring the pirates out into the open. They might just catch the spy within the Administration chambers this time." Zebara wrinkled his nose.
"The spy might be too high up in the echelons to find, impossible to trace—above suspicion." As the Seti of Fomalhaut would assuredly be. Hastily Lunzie took a sip of her drink and felt the warmth of the liquor in her belly. Zebara had splendid taste in intoxicants. She said slowly, "In the past the heavy-worlders appear to have been the chief beneficiaries of this sort of piracy. Is it at all possible that the FSP will believe that YOU let them know where to find the planet?" Now the feral grin was aimed at her. Lunzie felt a chill trace the line of her spine. "Mind you," she added hastily, "I'm acting devil's advocate but if I can suspect collusion, others might certainly do so, if only to divert suspicion."
"A possible interpretation, I grant you. Let me say in my own defense I dislike the idea that my people are beholden in any way to mass murderers." He drained his glass and poured each of them a second tot deep enough to bathe in, Lunzie thought. He must have a truly spectacular tolerance. Nevertheless she took a deep draught of the brandy, to thaw her spine, of course.
"I feel obliged to explain that I thought for quite a few years that I had lost my daughter to pirates during the Phoenix incident," she said. "The first thing anyone knew, the legitimate colony was gone and heavyworlders had moved in. I harbored a very deep resentment that they were living on that bright and shiny new planet while I grieved for my daughter. It's affected my good judgment somewhat ever since." Lunzie swallowed. "I apologize for indulging myself with such a shockingly biased generalization. It's the pirates I should hate, and I do."
Zebara smiled wryly. "I appreciate your candor and your explanation. Biased generalizations are not confined to your subgroup. I resent lightweights as a group for constantly putting my people in subordinate and inferior positions, where we're assigned the worst of the picking, or have to work under lightweights in a mixed group. In my view, there has been no true equality in the distribution of colonizable planets. Many of us, especially groups from Diplo, felt that Phoenix should have been assigned to us in the first place. One of our unassailable skills is mine engineering and production. The gen in my community was that the heavy people who landed on Phoenix had paid significant bribes to a merchant broker who assured them that the planet was virgin and vacant. They were cheated," Zebara added heatedly. "They were promised transuranics, but the planet had been stripped before they got there. It was no more than a place to live
, with little a struggling colony could use as barter in the galactic community."
"Then somebody made double profits out of Phoenix. Triple, if you count the goods and machinery that the original settlers brought with them." The brandy had relaxed Lunzie sufficiently so that she had no compunction about refilling her glass. "Do you know the Parchandri?"
Zebara waved a dismissive hand. "Profiteers, every last blinking one of them, and they've a wide family. Weaklings, most of the Parchandri, even by lightweight standards, but they're far too spineless to kill with the ferocity the pirates exhibit."
The Seti could be ruthless but Lunzie couldn't quite cast them in the role which, unfortunately, did fit heavyworlders. "Then who are they? Human renegades? Captain Aelock felt that they were based out of Alpha Centauri."
"Aelock's a canny man but I'd be surprised if the Centauris were actively involved. They've acquired too much veneer, too civilized, too cautious by half." An opinion with which Lunzie privately concurred. "Centauris think only of profit. Every person, every machine, is a cog in the credit machine."
Lunzie took a sip of the warm brown liquor and stared at her reflection in the depths of the glass. "A point well taken. My daughter's descendants all live on that world. I have never met such a pitiful load of stick-in-the-mud, bigoted, shortsighted mules in my life, I was appalled because my daughter herself had plenty of motivation. She's a real achiever. Not afraid to take chances . . ."
"Like her mother," Zebara added. Lunzie looked up at the heavyworld captain in surprise. He was looking at her kindly, without a trace of sarcasm or condescension.
"Why, thank you, Captain. Only I fret that none of her children, bar one, are unhappy living in a technological slum, polluted and hemmed in by mediocrity and duplication."
"Complacency and ignorance," Zebara suggested, pouring more brandy. "A very good way to keep a large population so tractable the society lacks rebellion."
The Death of Sleep Page 27