Star Rigger's Way

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "Legroeder," Carlyle said urgently. "Do you remember anything about Legroeder?"

  "Who?" Jolson said, touching his brow.

  "Legroeder."

  "Legroeder? No, I don't believe I ever met a Legroeder." He smiled politely. "I wish I could help you. But there—you see? I can't. Good night."

  Before Carlyle could think of another word to say, the man disappeared into the shadowy wing of the bar. Carlyle looked at the cynthian. "You all right?" he said softly. Cephean hissed faintly. His eyes were slits, with a sliver of glinting liquid showing in each. Carlyle sighed. "You're drunk. Let's go get a room."

  * * *

  Carlyle checked with assignments and records again the next day but learned nothing. He spent much of the day in the Guild bar; and when he got tired there he went over to the spaceport bar, which was busier, noisier, and a lot more ramshackle. There were few riggers there, however, and he could not manage to initiate a conversation with any of the regular spacers. Eventually he went for dinner, and then returned to the Guild bar. Cephean came with him this time, after recovering from the effects of a hangover.

  Jolson was nowhere to be found. Carlyle went around hesitantly asking people—riggers and riggerguests and staffers—if they knew anything about Jolson (or Legroeder, Janofer, or Skan)—none did. Eventually he found a waiter who conceded that he was familiar with Jolson's habits. "He's probably in the city, sir. I don't know that I should say too much more—I wouldn't want to infringe on his privacy. I hope you understand."

  "Then he's in and out a lot? Are most of his space stories true, usually?"

  The waiter bit his lip.

  A rigger sitting nearby, who looked as old and eccentric as Jolson, spoke up in a tone of friendly derision. "Good friend of mine, Jolson. We've rigged together—he's a fine rigger. He's also crazy as a Zebreedy lunecock. Don't believe a word he says. Say, waiter, could I have a sprite inhaler?"

  Carlyle looked at him with an odd feeling. "How exactly do you mean that—'Don't believe him'? Do you mean he exaggerates a little, or do you mean I really shouldn't believe him?"

  "Thank you, waiter." The man held a small inhaler to his nostrils and sniffed deeply. He smiled. "What's that? Jolson? Well, like I said, he stretches the truth here and there, and a lot of stories he makes up altogether. But then again he knows more than most three riggers put together, so you'd do well to heed him." He sniffed again from the inhaler.

  The odd sensation in Carlyle's gut got worse. What was he supposed to believe? "Listen," he said earnestly, "do you know if Jolson has really been rigging recently out of Charos, or out near the edge of Golen space?"

  "Oh, sure," said the man. His eyes were becoming hard, his pupils contracted to small dots. "Sure, Jolson's been out that way. And most of what he tells you about it is true, too. You can believe that." He glanced around the bar. "I believe I want to see a young fellow over here—good day!" He moved away, mumbling.

  Carlyle grunted and turned to Cephean, who had sat silently through the exchange. "What do you think?" he asked, really meaning it rhetorically. But—perhaps Cephean had gleaned some insight telepathically if he had been following the conversation. "Should I believe what old man Jolson told me?"

  The cynthian blinked. His whiskery eyebrows bunched together as he said, "Fferhaffs, Caharleel."

  "Or did he make it all up when I gave him Skan's name?"

  The eyebrows relaxed. "Fferhaffs." Cephean switched his tail and looped it up behind his head.

  "Cephean, you're an enormous help, do you know that?"

  "Hyiss. Sssanks hyou."

  "I guess we'd better stay here and keep our ears open for more rumors."

  But they did not hear more rumors that day, nor the next. In all, they stayed at the Gladstone Haven for five days without learning anything new; so, when Carlyle was offered a mail cargo for the Ettebes system, of which Charos was one of the planets, he accepted at once. As soon as Cephean was sober, they boarded Spillix and returned to space.

  Chapter 10: Golen Space

  The flight to the Ettebes system took ten days, shiptime. They stayed in the system for a total of four weeks, checking all possible sources and traveling from one planet to another within the system. They delivered mail shipments to Deirdre (Ettebes VI), and then to Centrix (a minor planet between the orbits of Deirdre and Ettebes V), and to one of the moons of Charos, and finally to Charos (Ettebes IV) itself. At each of these stops, Carlyle asked through both official and unofficial channels after his friends. At the first three ports he learned nothing except that the city Charos on planet Charos was considered the best place in the system to look for anyone of the wandering sort, or for any kind of information or rumor where either spacers or riggers were concerned.

  Upon arriving at Charos itself, he learned from Guild sources that Legroeder had been on the planet ten weeks earlier but had left, bound for Deirdre. However, on Deirdre there had been no record of him. Either the records in one place or the other were faulty, or Legroeder had changed destinations en route. Of Janofer and Skan, there was no official word.

  On advice of several Guildsmen, Carlyle looked further in the city. The most popular rigger bar in this port was not the Guild bar, as was customary in most places, but a place downtown called the Rogues, Thieves & Spacemen's Tavern. There Carlyle spoke with a shuttle spacer introduced to him by a peculiarly gregarious rigger. The spacer claimed to have met and known Janofer on the second moon of Deirdre. She had talked of leaving the system soon, but that had been many weeks ago. He didn't know where she'd planned to go, but he had a hunch that she might have had the Andros system in mind. Carlyle was skeptical of the story (Why no record of her with the Guild? Were there no accurate records kept in this star system?), but he had nothing else to go on. And: Andros. That rang a bell; hadn't Jolson back at Gladstone said something about Andros? But that was Skan he'd been talking about.

  They stayed in Charos a few extra days. It was a colorful and brawling city—and Cephean liked the Rogues, Thieves & Spacemen's Tavern, probably for the large number of interesting aliens who frequented the bar. The cynthian seemed to enjoy watching the aliens and listening, while he himself showed off his riffmar and ignored various people's attempts to converse with him. Finally, though, Carlyle learned that there was carryage available to Andros II, and he committed them for departure.

  The flight to Andros was rather long in lightyears but fast in terms of shipdays through the Flux. There was mainly barren space between the two systems—and long, steady currents in the Flux. They were in the Flux for only seven days, shiptime. While they flew, Carlyle conferred with Janofer and Skan, hoping for encouragement. They talked over the difficulties he was having, and the two suggested that perhaps it would be better if he abandoned his search. I'd love to see you again, Gev, you know that—but you have to think to your own life, said Janofer.

  I couldn't consider it, Carlyle said adamantly. You're too important to me, and I want to fly with you—and that's all there is to it.

  Well, Skan admitted, I do have similar feelings myself, and even though I think you're crazy, I'm glad you're doing this. And Janofer looked secretly delighted by both of them, despite her own remark.

  But before he could ask them the most important question—where they were—they waved and departed from the net. And so it always went, in their conversations.

  * * *

  When Spillix arrived at Andros II, Carlyle found it an unspectacular planet in a spectacular parcel of space. Andros II was a dry world, rocky and sparsely vegetated. The spaceport sat on a huge bluff overlooking one of the small seas of the southern hemisphere, and the plain that bordered the sea was practically the planet's only developed arable land.

  But the night sky was the world's main attraction, at least during the summer season. The night after their landing, Carlyle stood outside with Cephean and gazed up. The sky was dominated by the Wall of the Barrier Nebula—a broad, luminous plane that angled upward from the horizon and s
eemed to curve outward like a ribbon, away from the zenith. It was a gaseous-emission nebula, actually just one end of a nebula which reached far out into unexplored space. It glimmered with a pale cyan and red sheen, hovering like a ghostly stage curtain before the mysteries of the far regions of the galaxy. The dark track of a dust lane meandered across its face, obscuring a part of its glow; the dust lane extended beyond the far end of the Wall, smudging the view of stars there—in Golen space.

  Golen space. They were virtually at the edge of it now, standing on a bluff on Andros II, looking up into a part of the night where the stars . . . well, they looked the same to the naked eye as stars in any other space, but they didn't feel the same to look at—and to Carlyle, to any rigger, it was the feeling which counted. He wondered how much of his uneasiness at the sight was due to years of rumor, and how much to a real intuitive sense of strangeness nearby. Beside him, Cephean was silent (but radiated disquiet). Was that Cephean's reflection of Carlyle's fear, or was it Cephean's own rigger-intuition?

  If Golen space is where we're going, Carlyle thought, we could slip right up alongside the Wall, straight as an arrow, and off. Off the Wall and straight into . . . the heart of madness.

  Why would they have gone in there? For what conceivable reason?

  He shook his head. He needed to imagine, yes—but he had to control it.

  Gev, have you found where you're heading yet?

  Stupid question—even coming from Janofer, who ought to know better. Of course he didn't know where he was going; he didn't know where they were. But he had a terrible feeling.

  You'll be careful, won't you—if you go out there?

  He stared into space and shivered suddenly. "Let's go," he said to Cephean. As they turned he heard Janofer calling, asking him to tell her please that he'd be careful. Later, he thought angrily. Talk to me later.

  Never, in all the years he had known her, had he cut off Janofer like that—and he hated himself for it.

  They went inside the spaceport Haven, and Carlyle went asking for information, as usual. His initial inquiries yielded nothing, however, and he decided to wait until morning to do anything further. He was weary—not of the day's activities but of the search itself, or of the seeming futility of it. And when he said good night to Cephean and closed the sliding door between their quarters, he wondered if he really had the right to drag Cephean on an endless, fruitless chase.

  But his weariness vanished early the next morning when he was awakened by his phone. The caller was a rigger, but seemed afraid to give his name. "I overheard you asking around last night—and I don't mean you to think I was eavesdropping, but if I can help you I thought it would be better for me to call than just to keep quiet. So you don't mind, do you? If—"

  "Please," Carlyle interrupted, shaking himself awake. "Do you know something?"

  "Well, I heard you mention the name of a rigger you were trying to find, and since you said you'd been all over trying to locate her—"

  Her!

  "—I thought since I did know something about her—well, at first I wasn't going to say anything, since it's none of my business—but then I figured—"

  "What do you know about her? Do you mean Janofer?"

  "What?"

  Carlyle shouted, "Janofer! Is her name Janofer?"

  "Well, yes, of course. That's who you were asking about, wasn't it?" The man sounded hurt.

  "Yes. Please—what do you know about her?" Carlyle was about to explode, talking to this little pictureless phone in his room.

  "Well, I can't actually tell you anything about her myself." Carlyle's heart dropped. But the man added, "What you need to do is go downtown to a technics wholesale place, name of Gabriel Merck. M-e-r-c-k. Just ask for Merck's. They'll be able to tell you."

  "What?" Carlyle asked anxiously. "Why?"

  "They'll know. You just ask for Merck's. And then you go see Gabe himself. I've got to go now—"

  "Wait! Can you tell me anything—?" But he was talking to a dead phone. He slammed the desktop and paced the room. He stopped pacing and put his hands on his hips and stared at a hole in the wall near the door where the composition panel was flaking apart. The hole had a crumbly edge, with partition space showing inside. Carlyle longed to grab the edge of that hole and rip out another chunk of paneling, and to rip and keep ripping until he had torn a hole large enough to climb through. He could feel the sensation in his fingertips: the strain of pulling against the compressed, grainy material—the sudden give, and the handful of dust and chunks of crumbled material spilling to the floor.

  Instead of doing that, he went and got Cephean. Then he called the Guild service desk. "How do I get to Merck's?" he asked. "Gabriel Merck's—a technics place?" Three minutes later, he had his directions. He told Cephean to wait for him, and he went out looking for a cab.

  The cab ride took thirty minutes. It was a human-operated aircar, and the driver had some difficulty in finding certain key streets in the wholesale district; but eventually he stopped at the correct address. "Please wait," Carlyle asked. As he stepped toward the building at Merck's address—there was no name sign—the cab pulled away with a swoosh.

  Carlyle held his breath angrily, then exhaled and went into the building. He cautiously stepped around a seemingly built-in obstacle in the doorway, a tall mechanical device of uncertain function. A light on the device glowed as he passed. The dimly lit shop was crowded in front and seemed to extend for a considerable distance to the rear. Carlyle saw a movement among the vertical warehouse racks. He hesitated and then called out, "Mr. Merck? Gabe Merck?" There was no answer, but he saw a movement again in the rear, something shadowy moving back and forth across a darker shadow. "Mr. Merck!" he called.

  His eyes were beginning to adapt to the gloom. The place barely had a storefront; crated and uncrated technics products were stacked high on both sides. The counter was unusually low, and open in the middle. A glow from one corner far to the rear suggested a work area. "Mr. Merck!" he called anxiously. He wondered if his "tip" had been a practical joke.

  The storefront lights suddenly came up halfway. There was a hum and several clicks from the rear, and something came forward down one of the aisles. Carlyle stepped to the counter, feeling uneasy. The storekeeper emerged into the light. It, or he, was a cyborg. Riding in a hovering life-support system which boasted several manipulator arms was a Thangol, a humanoid with high, bony features and a mop of reddish brown hair around the back of its neck and over the back half of its skull. Or rather, it was the head and upper abdomen of a Thangol; the rest of his body was missing. He still possessed his right arm but only had a stump for his left.

  "Gabriel Merck?" Carlyle asked.

  "Yes," the Thangol answered in a gravelly whisper. Carlyle wondered if the whisper was a normal Thangoli tone. "Just one moment, if you please," said Merck. His cyborg body carried him humming around the end of an aisle.

  Carlyle realized suddenly that Merck's voice had come from the mechanical unit, not from his lips.

  Merck stopped near the end of a rack of shelves. He tilted his head back to look up, and his eyes searched the upper shelf. A leg suddenly telescoped from the bottom of his lower unit; Merck rose into the air on his hover unit, apparently balanced rather than supported by the leg. When he was at the level of the top shelf, he extended a mechanical arm and took a package in its grip. Then he descended, his leg retracting under him with a long sigh, and he hummed back around to where Carlyle was waiting. "Now then, may I help you?" he whispered. His mechanical arm held the package snugly against a shelf built into the front of his lower unit.

  "Well, yes," said Carlyle. He hesitated. This was ridiculous. What would Janofer have had to do with a place like this? Unless . . . she had been injured somehow and—

  Just because the shopkeeper's a cyborg doesn't mean his customers are!

  "Yes," he said, trying to push the train of thought back into motion. "Have—you had a customer in here recently who was a rigger? A female huma
n? Her name was Janofer Lief."

  "A customer?" whispered the Thangol. "No, I do not recall a rigger being one of my customers."

  Carlyle cleared his throat. "Well, perhaps not a customer, but here for some other reason."

  The Thangol looked at him oddly.

  "Perhaps you used the services of a rigger? Perhaps you own or lease a ship and arranged for riggers to fly it? Perhaps one or more of them visited here? Does any of this approach truth?" He was very tense, very nervous. Was he imagining a rise in hostility from the Thangol/cyborg?