Skeen's Search

by Clayton, Jo;

  It seemed to Ross he had two ways he could go. He could stay a kickee or join the kickers. The longer he thought about it, the more clearly he saw that Lingabans all came to the same end, whatever route they took getting there. Down in the mud with Imperial heels on their necks. Momak hung around him, offering him snippets of wisdom from his own experience of the world beyond Lingaba, looking to ride his shoulders up out of the garbage pile he’d been thrown into. He couldn’t avoid the man but Momak made the inside of his bones itch; he loathed him. The thought of ending up like him made Ross want to lie down in front of a jitt and let it run over him. On the other hand there was nothing on Lingaba for him but the whips of disappointment and scorn in the eyes of his clan and a dull deadly slogging life like his father’s. He turned and twisted, seeking desperately for some third choice, something that would give him a chance at self-respect and surcease from boredom.

  A month before he was due to leave for the school that third way appeared; he didn’t recognize it at first, it seemed only the cousin/uncle no one talked about except in whispers. Kleys soheyl Fahan was much worse than a black sheep, call him a black goat; he was a con man, a thief, a smuggler, a pirate and whatever else he had to do to scratch a living and keep out of Imperial hands. He’d been scratching for somewhere around fifty years and had managed to keep loose, but now and then when things got tight, he slipped back home to let the Cluster cool off. Though they deplored him publicly, the Fahan clan secretly delighted in exaggerated stories about Old Sneak and the coups he pulled off. Imperials came sniffing around Hadda Adda a time or two, but no Fahan ever betrayed him; whatever else he was, he was family and this branch of the Fahan line Bryssal sept had been surviving on Lingaba under Imperial rule of varying degrees of severity for more than thirty generations. Much scarifying and debilitating experience had taught them the value of presenting a bland unbroken face to authority. Uncle Kleys never messed on homeground and the clan never messed with him; he’d spend a month or two telling stories the children weren’t supposed to hear (but always did) then he’d slip away from Lingaba and go back to nipping at Imperial ankles.

  Uncle Kleys sneaked into Hadda Adda and moved in with one of his nieces, a broad-minded and marginally respectable female who earned a living of sorts from cooking and cleaning, supplementing her official earnings with presents from assorted lovers who appeared and disappeared in her life. She had a house full of children, hers and strays she took in, all of them under ten; she kept them fed and washed and more or less clothed, laughed with them, played games with them, organized them into squads that cleaned house, worked in the garden, took care of the littlest ones, scowered the streets for reusable scrap and brought in vast volumes of reusable gossip. Want to know anything about anybody? Ask Veesey. Uncle Kleys settled into that household with scarcely a ripple to indicate his presence. He played with the children, dug in the garden, made love to Veesey, spent whole nights talking and drinking with kin who dropped in to say hello and hear the new stories about the world out-there. Everything seemed to be going along as it always did.

  But Momak was back in Hadda Adda. Not back enough, not really part of the clan again, still wanting, still hoping to climb back among the kickers, refusing to admit he was discarded. Hoping. Brooding. And then he saw Kleys in Veesey’s back yard, mending her iron, a repaired com unit by the box he was sitting on, broken appliances ringed round his feet, his hands working delicately while he joked and laughed with three of the older boys spading the garden. He saw Kleys and thought he saw a way to buy himself back into influence.

  Ross was slouching along these back streets heading circuitously for Veesey’s, taking a last sniff at places he hoped and feared he’d never see again, looking as inconspicuous as he could because his father would skin him if he knew his son was on his way to talk with that seducer of pure youth, old Uncle Kleys, and he would know sooner or later, there was bound to be some snitch about who’d see him and draw instantaneous and regrettably accurate conclusions about what he was doing in that part of town. He saw Momak skulk from the gate in Veesey’s back fence and scoot furtively away; curious, the boy followed the man.

  Momak worked his way to the local platform and got on a jitt going to Degali, the administrative center. Ross slipped on after him, sliding in the back door and slumping into a seat by the fender. Momak’s bobbing gray head turned constantly, his mean little squinted eyes turned here, turned there though never back all the way where Ross was sitting. For a while Ross kept his head down, then he realized however much Momak peered about, he was seeing nothing but his greedy hopes and the fear that someone would snatch his chance from him. Ross told himself he couldn’t be sure what was happening, but that was just words; if one of his teachers set this up as a moral problem, that kind of quibbling would be expected in the discussion that followed, but this was real. Ross knew by the sick knots in his stomach what Momak had seen in the yard and what he was intending to do about it. Otherwise, why would he be on this jitt? But Ross’ guess was not proof and he knew he had to see for sure what Momak was up to if he wanted adults to believe him.

  The journey took an hour, the jitt clattering and swaying along the rails, stopping, starting, folk getting on, getting off, Ross in his seat at the back of the car watching Momak, Momak sitting up behind the pilot column growing more eager and nervous as the kilometers clicked off under the jitt’s little wheels. At Degali Center Terminal, Momak stumbled off, almost falling in his eagerness. Shaken by the jolt, he ran his hands over his hair, straightened his clothing, arranged his face, then walked on, looking coolly contemptuous of the world around him. Ross followed. Momak strolled to Government Square, looked casually about, then started up the steps of a tall golden building, heading for the great black glass doors set into the austere facade; there wasn’t a window visible anywhere in that glittering metal, vertical folds were the only breaks in the mirror surface. Air rushed down in a continuous gale that hammered the boy breathless. He lingered, making faces at himself in the golden mirror surface, drifting gradually closer until he could hear Momak arguing with the guard who stood before the doors and barred his way, a stun rifle held horizontal between them. Momak was shivering with rage and frustration, but keeping his voice down except for a few squeaky shouts. He made no impression on the guard for all his blustering until he flung a word at him: KLEYS.

  Ross sidled away, driven by an urgency he could hardly control. Over his shoulder he saw the doors opening, the dark mouth swallowing Momak, but he didn’t run until he was round a corner and away from Government Square.

  Back at the terminal he hopped into a jitt heading toward Hadda Adda and sat with his hands fisted on his thighs, his mouth dry, a sick fear churning in his middle. Again and again as the jitt shuddered and jerked along, he wondered if he should have called com and passed word what was happening, but no one used the com for anything private. Everyone knew computers listened for key words and voice tones and scanmen took random samples from all com calls. He couldn’t take the chance; even if he tried to give warning without appearing to do so, the Imperials would have a record of the call and the mere fact it was made would tangle all of his kin in the mess. He jiggled on his seat, willing the jitt to go faster. If Momak got through to someone important, THEY wouldn’t have to use a jitt to get to Hadda Adda. There was just a sliver of hope. Momak was what he was; it would take time for him to convince the Imperials he really had something they could use. Gas collected inside Ross’s gut, he had to break wind, but, oh, God, he couldn’t, that’d get him too much attention, might get him kicked off the jitt, the car was crowded, this was a halfday holiday, lots of men going home from work in the city. He wriggled uncomfortably, got a glare from the man sitting next to him, forced himself still. The very worst part of the trip was when he could finally see the warehouses and tenements this side of Hadda Adda. Where Veesey lived was all the way across the city; the jitt stopped and rattled on, stopped and went, emptying as it moved; the car seemed to v
ibrate in place, getting nowhere, ever and ever nowhere, but that wasn’t really true, it was only his impatience exaggerating things. It finally reached his homestop. He swung off, forced himself to stroll (just a boy heading home on a warm summer day after enjoying the delights of the big city) until the platform was out of sight around several corners, then he plunged into the maze of alleys that led to Veesey’s place, speeding to a skipping trot as if he ran solely for the pleasure of running, waving careless greetings to people he knew, whistling a snatch of song now and then, keeping a grin pasted on his face when he wasn’t whistling.

  He reached Veesey’s backyard and slowed to an amble, stepped over Patcha and Chelly playing in the dust, waved to Erb and went into the kitchen where Veesey was chopping vegetables for the monster stews she made to feed her brood. There was a new tadling walking round and round the long narrow room holding onto cabinet doorpulls, either a visitor or another orphan Veesey had acquired. Two babies slept in a box on one end of the table where Veesey was working.

  Ross fidgeted a moment, looked around; he didn’t want to say anything in front of children old enough to understand. When the little boy reached the far end of the room, Ross sidled closer to Veesey, whispered, “Where’s Uncle Kleys?”

  “Now Rosta, you know better.”

  “Of course I do.” He was indignant for a flash, then licked his lips. “It’s important, cousin. Momak’s in Degali selling him to the Imperials. He’s got to get away.”

  Veesey set the knife down and frowned at him. “You wouldn’t joke about this. Tell me.”

  Ross jigged from foot to foot. “Veeseee,” he wailed, “there’s no time.” Pinned by her skeptical patient gaze, he cleared his throat, said rapidly, “I saw Momak outside the fence here acting sly, I followed him, he took the jitt to Degali, I followed him, he went to the Admin Building, the guard wouldn’t let him in, he argued with the guard, I wasn’t close enough to hear much, but I did hear him say Kleys, so I came back, I didn’t call com, you know why, I was careful, Veesey, I played like I wasn’t hurrying, Veesey, they could come any minute.”

  Veesey pulled her apron off. “Ross, scoot out of here, get over to Cesto’s, tell him what you saw, then you get home, make like you know shit-all about what’s happening.” She was shooing him out as she spoke. “Don’t bother your pa, he’s better off doing his job, but tell your mum to get the Larday club over here. Tell her I said it’s important, but don’t you say why. I’ll do the saying. Scoot.”

  When the Imperials arrived, they upended Hadda Adda, but found nothing, just a few unlicensed jars of homebrew. Never was there such an innocent, placid, law-abiding set of folk. The Guard tore Veesey’s house into splinters and dug a five-meter hole in her yard, but there was not a smell of Uncle Kleys. They put Veesey and her brood under question and got sex, squalor and brute stupidity and were satisfied with that because it fit their prejudices so well. They used their probes on houses, huts, businesses and found nothing. Ross’ father was deeply indignant and waved the Imperial scholarship seals in the face of the squadleader when the Imperials came to search his house.

  The Guards left after three days, dumping Momak back on Hadda Adda though he begged them to take him away. He didn’t survive the night. Official records said accident; he fell into a pool in the city park and drowned before anyone found him.

  Kleys came to Ross a little later and they spent the night talking.

  “Two years,” Kleys said. “You can afford the time, Rosta. What’ll you be then, fourteen? See how you like it. Just don’t let them put the warp on your head, don’t believe the line they shovel out. You owe it to your family to give it a try. Maybe serving the Imperials will suit you. Me, I don’t think so, you’re no Momak. Learn everything you can stuff into your head. Not just the technical side, get history and art and economics and martial arts, anything you’re interested in and be interested as wide as you can. Shove it in your head, kid. They’ll send you home for a visit every couple years, unless they’ve changed things since I went that route, I’ll drop by and we’ll talk again. I’m getting old, starting to move slow and think three times where I did once before. Time I had a younger head helping me think. If you want to scramble with me, I’ll teach you the steps. And no, you can’t come now, you’re too damn ignorant.”

  At the end of two years Ross was torn. He hated life at school, but he liked what he was learning. He went home for his breakvisit, talked with Kleys, had a miserable time with his family because he’d lost the art of fitting in, lost the threads of daily life that once had woven so thick and warm about him. It took him most of his vacation to learn how to play the clan game again, pretending what he couldn’t feel, but when he left he was comfortable with his kin and rather smug at how easy it was to fool them.

  The smugness was quickly stripped away when he got back to school. He was starting to stand out from the crowd. The breadth of his studies (far beyond the usual specialization) began to pay off in ways that were not obvious, not startling breakthroughs into new insights, mainly an ease in understanding concepts and a capacity for thinking beyond his current knowledge. All the separate disciplines began locking together in ways he found little short of magical. His teachers talked about him, put pressure on him, showed increasing interest in him. His few friends melted away, most of the students turned hostile. The thing that brought envy, anger and contempt together like a boil was the clearly evident fact that he didn’t care about all this preference; the good opinion others coveted came to him and he wasn’t interested. He was regularly attacked by one group or another during the first year of this two-year session; one of those beatings nearly killed him. Nothing was done about it; he didn’t expect anything would be. Instead, he nosed out a handfight instructor who was willing to work with an enthusiastic and talented student; he was naturally coordinated, came from a 1.2 g world, had unusually quick reaction times and applied the energy and concentration he used with his studies to learning everything the instructor could teach him. He was attacked once during his fourth year. He didn’t quite kill them, but broke several important bones and tore loose a number of ligaments. No body shots, no ruptured testicles or spleens, nothing lethal; instead, a broken collarbone, a shattered elbow, a cracked jaw, broken toes and fingers, all quickly repairable and all painful enough to discourage any further attempts to harass him.

  At the end of the fourth year he was recommended for advanced political training and offered eventual work in the Heart of the Empire. He accepted with suitable humility and went home for his scheduled breakvisit.

  He told his mother about the offers. He was sixteen now and somehow grown much closer to her after the long absence, just as he’d grown impossibly far from his father. They couldn’t even talk to each other any more, his father talked and Ross listened and inside he said no no no.

  Two weeks before he was due to leave for school he took a jitt to the coast, rented a day sailer and didn’t come back. Four days later the boat drifted onshore, belly up. They didn’t bother looking for the body. The Imperials didn’t try because of the heptopods infesting that part of the ocean, huge, carnivorous, faster than most jetboats. The Fahan didn’t try because most of them knew quite well (though it was never spoken of) that Rosta had gone off with Uncle Kleys.

  For the next three years Kleys and Ross did this and that (giving the Imperials a bad case of heartburn), visited Hadda Adda when they wanted a taste of home, generated a whole new set of fabulous stories for the clan to whisper when they were elsewhere. Ross was well on his way to joining the list of disreputable heroes the Fahan threw up every generation or so.

  But Kleys for sure was getting old; he made a mistake. Ross pulled him out with luck, energy and quick thinking, but the Imperials got close and stayed there; flutter how they would, Ross and Kleys couldn’t break loose; then the Imperials started driving them toward what had to be a trap. In his struggle to shake them, Ross too made a mistake and Kleys got spattered across a cloud of comets alon
g with half the force herding them; in the confusion that followed, Ross managed to take over a cruiser which had some minor damage that knocked out most of the crew; with the help of ship remotes he dumped the crew into lifeboats, shot them out and took off. On the way out of the Cluster he was chased into the Veil and went to ground on a world called Rallen where he traded Imperial hardware for help altering his ship and acquired by stealth and accident his first Rooner’s load of artifacts.

  INTERVAL OVER. PICTURE THE LANDER NUZZLING UP TO PICAREFY, BEING SUCKED INTO THE LANDER LOCK. ROSTICO BURN LEG-IRONED TO A SMALL REMOTE THAT ANNOUNCED HIS PRESENCE TO THE SHIP’S BRAIN. TIMKA WANDERING OFF TO SOAK A WHILE IN A HOT BATH WHILE SHE THINKS OVER EVENTS ON PILLORY AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO HER AND ABOUT HER. SKEEN THINKING ABOUT THE AUTODOC AND HER BRUISES, HEADING FOR THE BRIDGE TO GET PICAREFY STARTED FOR RESURRECTION.

  Skeen strolled onto Picarefy’s bridge. “Where’s Tibo?”

  “Sleeping. Want me to wake him?” Like the Lander, Picarefy’s voice was androgynous, deep, musical, in the chasm between tenor and alto. A remarkably flexible voice, filled with nuance, with character. She tended to be acerbic, independent and ofttimes irritating; she was as close to being an independent entity as any ship in existence and Skeen cultivated that, no matter how annoying it was to have to talk Picarefy into doing things instead of just pushing a button and seeing it done. But Skeen didn’t need slaves and the benefits of Picarefy’s independence were enormous. She could bounce plans off Picarefy’s brain and get ruthlessly honest evaluations, then sometimes reluctant, sometimes exuberantly enthusiastic cooperation. Skeen added to Picarefy’s capacity every time she had extra credit and by this time Picarefy had grown like a fungus into every crack and cranny of the ship. Skeen bought her books and tapes and thousands of the smallest, most efficient spy eyes available so she could watch life even if she couldn’t get out and experience it; she even established a line of credit for Picarefy on every Pit Stop she patronized so Picarefy could order whatever she thought she needed (within the limits of fiscal prudence which anyway Picarefy was far better at keeping track of than Skeen). If she went overboard now and then on something esoteric and enormously expensive, well, Skeen always paid off. A lot of dealers had become familiar with Picarefy’s taste and saved things for her, sending out news of finds through the low ways, the unofficial but efficient grapevine that connected the Pits.