Pawn

by Timothy Zahn

  “Unless he’s found a way past the arena, like you did,” Jeff said darkly. “Don’t forget how much time he spent looking around while he was supposed to be working. I don’t know how tall the ship is, but it’s possible he found a passage that goes over the arena. Or under it.”

  “Or through it,” Nicole said, grimacing. “He could have been able to catch the code I put in on our second trip. No, wait, that doesn’t work,” she corrected herself. “The Masters changed that one. If he’d gotten in with it he couldn’t have gotten out again.”

  “Unless he got out before the code was changed.”

  “In which case, he can’t get back in now,” Nicole said. “So if he did go through, any hiding places he found on the other side are now useless.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Jeff said. “Because wherever his hiding place is, it apparently comes stocked with weapons. The thought of him with an arsenal isn’t a happy one.”

  “I think that stick was just a section of the halberd he stole,” Nicole pointed out.

  “I was talking about the knife.”

  “Which I think was just the halberd’s tip,” Nicole said. “Either he managed to break it, or else it’s designed to come apart.”

  “Actually, that makes sense,” Jeff said reluctantly. “Easier to put on a new tip or axe head when it breaks than to replace the whole weapon. But don’t forget he said he’d found other good stuff. He may be just blowing smoke, like you said, but it’s better to assume the worst.”

  “If he’d found other weapons, he probably would have brought one with him,” Nicole pointed out.

  “Unless it’s heavy or bulky,” Jeff said. “Remember, he wasn’t expecting to find anyone here tonight.”

  Nicole winced. Or if the other weapons weren’t as easily concealed as the halberd-tip knife. Men like Bungie liked being able to hide their trump card.

  “Let’s just hope that if he found something it doesn’t work anymore.” He peered at the napkin in his hand. “Okay, I think it’s stopped bleeding. Time to start cleaning up.”

  “Yeah,” Nicole said, standing up. “I’ll get some more napkins.”

  Jeff’s assessment of his injury turned out to be correct. Once all the blood had been cleared away, the actual wound was little more than a long, reasonably shallow cut. “See?” he said, touching it gingerly. “No problem.”

  “Right—no problem,” Nicole said, wincing. “You’re just lucky he missed your eyes.”

  “I was thinking that, too,” Jeff said, his tone going a little brittle. “I imagine next time he’ll try to aim better.”

  Nicole shivered. “We need to stop him, Jeff.”

  “If you recall, I was trying to do just that when you interfered.”

  “You’d have gotten yourself killed.” She forced a smile. “Not to mention getting into trouble with Plato over his no-fighting rule. Speaking of which, what are we going to tell him about that?” She pointed to his forehead.

  “No idea,” Jeff said. “But we’ve got until morning to figure it out.”

  “Yeah.” Nicole watched in silence as he collected the bloody napkins from the table and piled them on the tray she’d thrown at Bungie earlier. “What did Bungie mean about having the guts to tell me something?”

  “Nothing,” Jeff said. “Maybe I can sneak into the med center and get some of the docs’ healing goo. I’d hate for this thing to scar.”

  “Jeff—”

  “In the old days I could have passed it off as a dueling scar,” he continued, getting to his feet. “Though why people thought it looked cool to show off a fight they’d obviously lost—”

  “Jeff, stop,” Nicole said, grabbing his sleeve. “Please. Just tell me.”

  For a long moment he gazed at her, a dozen emotions flickering across his face. Then, with a sigh, he sat down again. “It’s the inhalers,” he said quietly. “The stuff that lets Sibyls be Sibyls. They…” His lips compressed, his gaze dropping to his lap. “It’s going to kill you.”

  Nicole stared at him, feeling the blood draining from her face. “What?” she asked carefully.

  “Not right away,” he added hastily, looking up at her again. “Not for months—maybe longer. I heard that the green crew had a Sibyl once who lived over a year.”

  “A year,” Nicole said, the word coming out hard and cold and flat. “A whole freaking year.”

  Jeff winced, his gaze dropping again. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Nicole swallowed hard. So that was what Carp had meant about it never happening this soon, back when she’d faked her dizzy spell. He’d thought it was the inhaler killing her faster than usual. It was also why Jeff had told her that knowing there’d been hundreds of Sibyls aboard wouldn’t help her figure out how long the kidnappings had been going on. “So what’s the average?” she asked.

  Jeff shook his head. “I don’t know. I could ask.”

  Nicole blinked away sudden moisture. “Why bother?”

  “I suppose.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Nicole. I wish it was different. I really do. Especially—” He gestured almost shyly. “With you.”

  Surreptitiously, Nicole touched the empty pocket where she’d had the inhaler earlier. Maybe Fievj had done her a favor by taking it.

  Not that it mattered. Sam and Allyce had a whole cabinet full of the damn things. “Well, life in Philadelphia was risky, too,” she said, striving to put a little lightness in her tone. Not for herself, but for Jeff. “Come on—Bungie should be long gone by now. Let’s dump the evidence and get out of here.”

  “With a quick stop first at the med center,” Jeff said, standing up. He, too, was clearly trying to put away the dark tone. Probably not for himself, but for her. “Then I’ll walk you back to your room.”

  thirteen

  It was just as well, Nicole reflected as she stared into the nothingness of her darkened room, that she’d gotten plenty of sleep that afternoon. Because it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t going to get much tonight.

  She was going to die. Sometime in the next few weeks or months, she was going to die.

  In a way, it was almost funny. Back home in Philadelphia, she’d thought about death a lot. Maybe it was the sort of neighborhoods she lived in that had kept that dark reality continually at the edge of her mind. More likely it was the fact that she was hooked up with Trake’s group, where everyone lived life on the most insanely ridiculous part of the edge.

  The bitter irony was that she’d grown to actually feel safe here on the Fyrantha. In fact, it was the safest and the most secure that she’d ever felt in her entire life. On top of that, she was doing useful work, she was treated mostly with respect, and the people in her crew trusted her.

  She’d become so comfortable, in fact, that she’d even been toying lately with the idea of opening up to a couple of them—Jeff, probably, maybe Kahkitah—and trying to see if she could make them into friends. Not assets she could exploit and manipulate, or protectors she could hide behind in a crisis, but real, genuine friends. The sort of friend she hadn’t had since second grade.

  No point in that now. No point wasting any time and energy when she was just going to die.

  And for what? So she could hear the Fyrantha tell her where it hurt, so that Carp and the others could fix it? Why? None of the work they did ever seemed to make a scrap of difference to how the ship functioned. There was always plenty of food and water, the lights and heat never went off, and the clothing and dishware always got cleaned, or disintegrated and reassembled, or however the ship handled that particular chore. As far as she could tell, everything was running just fine without any of them being here.

  So why were they here? Why was she here?

  Why was she dying? For what reason? For what purpose?

  There were no answers. She hated that.

  But there were two things she was sure of. First, there was no way in hell she was just going to sit back and take this. She’d come too far, and had too much to lose, to just roll over and die
on some make-work project for the Shipmasters’ benefit. She would find a way to stop this, or at least postpone it as long as she could.

  And second, if dying was inevitable, she was going to die doing something important.

  The usual schedule for her crew was to get up around six thirty in the morning, gather together at seven for breakfast, then head out to the equipment closets about seven thirty and be at work by eight. Never in all her time aboard had Nicole seen anyone in the dining room before six thirty. Just to be on the safe side, though, she made sure she was there by six.

  And so, naturally, this was the one single morning that someone got there ahead of her.

  “Good morning, Nicole,” Sam said, waving at her from his table near the serving counter. “You’re up early.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Nicole said, fighting back a scowl. Of all the mornings, and of all the people. “Thought I’d get a jump on the day.”

  “You’re probably starving, too,” he said. “You missed dinner, didn’t you?”

  “No, I came in after everyone else was finished,” she said. Jeff might have talked, or someone might have heard the commotion, and either way she didn’t want to draw attention to herself with unnecessary lies. “But I didn’t have very much.”

  “Well, there’s always more for the taking,” Sam said, gesturing toward the counter. “Help yourself.” He lowered his voice. “And as it happens, I’ve even got the perfect way for you to start the day. Come over here.”

  “What is it?” Nicole asked, frowning as she walked to his table. Sam was usually barely even polite to her, and was prickly with everyone else even at the best of times. Seeing him cheerful, even friendly, was setting off quiet warning bells in the back of her brain. “You figure out how to reprogram the food system for cornflakes or something?”

  “Better,” Sam said. He reached down to the floor beside his chair and brought up a strange-looking bottle. “I got it to make whiskey.”

  Nicole felt her breath catch in her throat, old thoughts and feelings and reflexes pouring suddenly back from places in her brain she didn’t even know were still there. Memories of the familiar scent, the rich dark flavor, the numbing of pain and anger, the welcome oblivion.

  And in that single heartbeat, all the weeks of being clean and sober were gone. She wanted a drink. She wanted to drink, to get drunk, and to forget.

  To forget that she was dying. And that nobody cared.

  There was a glass already on the table in front of her. Odd that she hadn’t noticed it there before. Sam tipped the bottle, and the clear amber liquid rolled smoothly out into the glass. One finger … two fingers …

  “More?” Sam asked.

  With an effort, Nicole found her voice. “No,” she heard herself say. “That’s fine.”

  “Okay.” He straightened the bottle and pushed the glass another couple of inches toward her. “Enjoy.”

  Nicole stared at the glass, noting how the little ripples glistened in the room’s indirect lighting. The aroma filled her nostrils and her mind, triggering a hundred more memories, good and bad and hazy. She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she’d missed this glorious, glorious escape.

  Only she couldn’t escape. Not from the Fyrantha. Not from her ultimate doom. She was stuck here for the rest of her now shortened life.

  So were all the others. Sam and Plato might live longer than she did, but their only way out would still come in the form of death. The only way out for any of them.

  Including Mispacch and her children.

  For another moment she continued to stare at the whiskey, struggling between the two sides of her as they pulled in opposite directions. But she’d made her decision. She was going into the arena, and she was going to try one last time to get Mispacch and the others a steady supply of food. If it worked, or even if it didn’t, she would be done with it.

  Either way, Sam and his bottle would still be waiting. And she would either celebrate her victory or obliterate the bitterness of her failure.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Maybe later.”

  For a moment there was nothing but the sight and aroma of the whiskey. Then, Sam’s hand appeared into her focused view, pulling the glass back a few inches. She followed the movement with her eyes, noting that the drink was still within her reach. Maybe just a sip or two, just to get the taste …

  “You sure?” Sam asked. “It can help you through rough times.”

  With an effort, Nicole raised her eyes from the glass and focused on Sam’s face. He was gazing back at her, a strangely intense expression in his eyes. “I know,” she said. “Like I said, maybe later.”

  His expression seemed to harden. “You’re going in again, aren’t you.”

  Nicole grimaced. “You’ve been talking to Jeff.”

  “Jeff?” Sam shook his head. “No. What does he have to do with this?”

  “Nothing,” Nicole said. “He had some thoughts on the subject.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” Sam said. “So did Plato. You do realize it’s useless, don’t you?”

  Nicole snorted. So that was why Sam was suddenly all friendly and pushing booze on her. He and Plato figured that if they got her good and drunk, she wouldn’t be in any shape to go into the arena. Not until it was too late. “What, feeding hungry people is useless now?”

  “‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day,’” Sam quoted. “‘Teach a man to fish—’”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it,” Nicole cut him off. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that there’s no way to teach the people in the arena to fish,” Sam said.

  “Sure there is,” Nicole said. “You changed the dispenser controls. Why can’t they?”

  “Because the Shipmasters control the whole situation,” Sam said bluntly. “I got away with tweaking the dispensers because they let me, or because they haven’t noticed yet. But they’re not going to let that happen in the arena. No matter what you do in there, they can always undercut you or simply undo whatever small victory you achieve. You’ll have wasted your time and risked your life for nothing.”

  “Nice speech,” Nicole said sourly. “You come up with that all by yourself? Or did Plato write it for you?”

  “That was mostly Plato,” Sam said without embarrassment. “But he’s right. No matter how you look at it, what’s happening in the arena is a no-win situation. The best thing you can do is take a deep breath and forget everything you saw in there.”

  “You didn’t see Mispacch’s kids. I did.”

  For a moment he just gazed at her. “Okay, then,” he said. “Your decision. Your consequences. You going to get something to eat before you go?”

  Nicole looked over at the serving counter. That had indeed been her plan. But with Sam sitting here watching … “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll grab a couple of food bars and some water from one of the supply closets along the way.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. He hesitated, then dug into one of his jumpsuit pockets. “Oh, and you might need this.”

  Nicole felt her stomach tighten. Resting on his palm was a fresh Sibyl inhaler.

  She looked hard into his face. Did he know what the inhaler was doing? That the drug inside it was slowly but surely killing her?

  If he did, she couldn’t see it in his face. Certainly not on top of all the frustration and disapproval already there.

  Besides, even if he did, it didn’t matter. Her lifestyle and decisions back home had been driving her just as surely toward an early death. Did it matter whether she died young on the streets or in the Fyrantha arena?

  Not really. Except that here she might be able to do something meaningful first.

  Unless Sam was right. Unless there was nothing meaningful she could do.

  He was still holding out the inhaler. Gingerly, she took it, knowing it would look suspicious if she didn’t. If Plato found out Jeff had given away their little secret, there would probably be hell to pay.

  Besides, as long
as she didn’t use the damn thing, it couldn’t hurt her more than it already had. Probably.

  “Thanks,” she said, sticking the inhaler into her pocket. “See you later.”

  “I hope so,” Sam said gravely. “Good luck.”

  * * *

  Nicole’s plan had been to get her food bars from the supply closet closest to the arena door, on the theory that there was no point lugging a heavy vest any farther than she had to. But as she left the dining room she was already having second thoughts. If Sam was already up and moving, some of the others might be up as well. If so, it would be better to avoid any other encounters by taking a more roundabout route to the arena.

  The last thing she wanted was to get to that distant closet and find Carp and Kahkitah waiting for her. The better approach, she realized, would be to instead hit the closet closest to the hive, since no one was so eager to get to work that they got their tool vests there.

  No one, apparently, except Jeff.

  “Morning,” he said, straightening up from the closet door where he’d been leaning and giving her a tentative smile. “I figured you’d come here.”

  “Really,” Nicole said, frowning as she looked him over. His forehead cut was still pretty visible, but it was already starting to heal. He probably used some of the special cream from the med center. To her mild annoyance, he also looked better rested than she was. “I thought everyone would figure just the opposite.”

  Jeff shook his head. “This is the closet farthest from where we’ve been working lately. Any food and tools you take from here won’t be missed as soon.”

  “Oh,” Nicole said a bit lamely. That part hadn’t occurred to her. “Well, congratulations—you win a free breakfast.”

  “That’s all?” he said with feigned disappointment. “I was hoping for an all-expense-paid trip to the famous Fyrantha arena.”

  Nicole felt her eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re going into the arena to help that woman and her children,” Jeff said. “And I’m going with you.”

  “No,” Nicole said firmly.

  “Why not? You don’t think you could use an extra hand?”