“Gwillgi!”
“He was searching for Mother and thought I might know something, some small detail. That’s how I knew she’d gone missing and was not simply a long time on her task.”
“All the more reason not to get involved. I’ve met enough of the Ardry’s Hounds to be wishful of meeting no more; Gwillgi least among them.”
“He did seem an… intense little man.”
“He could kill you with a flip of his wrist.”
“You know how thinly the Kennel is spread. There are always more missions than Hounds to take them. They cannot neglect their other missions.” She reached out and seized the scarred man’s wrist. “Fudir, they’ve called off the search”
“And did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Know one small detail.”
The harper thought for a moment, fingering a medallion that hung on a silver chain around her neck. “I… don’t know. Mother had been conducting disaster relief on Thistlewaite. She came home, took a fortnight’s home leave, then she was gone.” The harper’s voice hardened just a little bit at this, and the scarred man gave her a sharp look.
“And she didn’t tell you where she was headed.”
The harper gave him a look. “If she had,” she snapped, “I’d nae be searching! She ne’er told me aforehand. Hound’s business… It was nae for me tae know!”
Irritation washed across the scarred man’s face and he grimaced. “All right,” he said, as if to himself. “I’ll ask.” Then, addressing the harper: “How did she seem to you while she was home?”
“Like… Mother. We had dinner. She attended one of my concerts. She spent a lot of time in her office, reading, writing her reports. She gave me this.” The harper took the medallion from around her neck and held it out to him.
The scarred man reached out and seized it: a simple black ceramic disk with a diamond set in its center. Below the diamond, a sinuous ruby sliver zigzagged to the rim. “It’s broken off at the tip,” he pointed out. “It used to extend beyond the rim. How like her to bestow a defective gift.”
“It’s only a memento from Thistlewaite. She often did that when she came home from a mission. But it’s her whence, not her whither.”
“Except this isn’t thistlework. They don’t shape jewels in quite this way. They prefer the gaudy and elaborate.” He handed it back to her, and the harper tucked it once more between her breasts. “Trade goods,” he said. “You’d get two, maybe two-fifty shekels in the Jehovah market. Less, if you dealt with the Bourse.”
“I showed it to jewelers in Dangchao City. I even took it over to Die Bold herself, to the Mercantile Loop in Port Èlfiuji. No one recognized the style.”
A shrug. “It’s a big Spiral Arm.” He dipped his bread once more into the beans and swirled it around. Then, with a gesture of disgust he threw the bread into the bowl. “Happy? Sad?”
“What?”
“Your mother! Did she act happy, sad, depressed, the week she was home? Afraid? Maybe she was running from something, and that’s why she didn’t tell you where she was going.”
“Mother, afraid? I wouldn’t even know what that looked like. She seemed… excited, I suppose. I asked her what, and she only said that it was something so outrageous and so wonderful that it could not possibly be true. But if it was… If it was, we need no longer fear the Confederation.”
The scarred man looked up sharply. He himself had been, at one time, an agent of the Confederation of Central Worlds, though one insufficiently devout—as the scars on his scalp testified. Her rulers were cold and ruthless—beside them the Hounds were eager puppy dogs—and he knew a moment’s unease. If the daughter had been asking around, the words she had just spoken had been dropping into any number of ears, and it was as certain as death that Those of Name would hear them eventually and take an interest. They did not believe that there should ever be anyone who did not fear Them.
The harper held out a slip of notepaper. “She left nothing but this note.”
The scarred man reacted with genuine anger and snatched the slip of paper from the young woman’s hand. “I’m no harp, girl. I don’t like being played.” He unfolded it, saw it was handwritten, and succeeded in astonishing himself. All these years flown past, and he could still recognize her handwriting.
Out on the edge, it read. Fire from the sky. Back soon.
“Fudir, what does it mean?”
The harper had again used one of his names—or he thought she had. He chose to believe that she had not called him something else. Go ahead, “Fudir,” a part of him jibed, tell her what it means.
“What do you think it means?” he asked her.
“I don’t know.’ Out on the edge.’ Perhaps she went into the Rift, or out to the Rim, or perhaps to the edge of settled space, past Krinth or Gatmander, or to the unsettled worlds of the Galactic East.”
The Fudir grunted. “Which pretty much brackets the Periphery.” He gave her back the note, and it, too, vanished into her clothing. “But it might not mean that sort of edge. It might have meant the challenge would drive her to the edge of her talents.” He waved his hand to get the Bartender’s attention and pointed to his table. The Bartender, a Jehovan who went by the office name of Praisegod Barebones, understood. Like cock’s crow, the scarred man’s first drink heralded the new day. He brought a bowl of uiscebaugh to the table and set it before him.
“I don’t know that she has an edge to her abilities,” the harper said, “or that any challenge could push her to them.”
“The more fool, she.”
“Otherwise, why write ‘back soon’? She thought this would be a simple task. But months became years. And then Gwillgi came. His visit frightened me.”
“A visit from Gwillgi would frighten anyone.”
“No. I mean, it is a big Spiral Arm, like everyone says, and it’s often weeks and weeks between stars. But she’s been gone too long now, and no one knows where, or why, or what happened to her. I thought…” And the hesitation in the harper’s voice drew his attention from the uisce bowl.
“What?”
“I thought that you would help me find her. You’re clever. You can see things.”
The scarred man stared into the bowl, from the amber reflection of whose contents he stared back. “I’m too old to travel,” he said. “Too old for adventure.” He ran a hand across the table. “But she hasn’t gone into the Rift. That far, I can conjure her meaning. If she had gone there, she would have said ‘in,’ not ‘out.’ Any Leaguesman would. It’s the Confederates who say ‘out to the Rift.’ And now I will tell you, being as how I am so very clever, why you should not chase after her, and should leave the search to the Hounds.”
The harper leaned across the table, and the scarred man knew that whatever reason he would give this young woman would serve only to whet, not to weaken her resolve. Yet he could not let her go without a warning. “A Hound keeps in touch with the Kennel,” he said. “Always. Message drones. Swift-boats and packets. Now the Ourobouros Circuit, on those worlds with a station. Even if she’d had to entrust a message to some tramp captain streaming toward High Tara, there’s been more than enough time for that message to reach the Kennel—even from Gatmander or Krinth. And that can only mean that she can’t send a message; and that can only mean that she’s…”
“No, she isn’t. I would know it if she were.”
The scarred man said nothing for a moment. “At the very least,” he suggested, “it means she’s in an exceptionally dangerous situation. Gwillgi might go in with some chance of coming out. Not you.”
“That’s why I need you with me,” the harper insisted. “You’re a Terran. You’ve got the… the…”
“Stritsmats,” said the scarred man. “An old Terran word.”
“And you’re an old Terran. I could… I could pay you.”
“If I wouldn’t do it for love, why would you think I’d do it for money?”
The harper pushed away from the table and
stood. “You’re right. I don’t. I thought you loved her. I thought you owed her for walking out the way you did…”
“You think too much,” the scarred man told her.
The harper made no answer, but only looked at him. She was a young woman, but those were an old woman’s eyes.
“There was a matter…” the scarred man said. “I failed the Secret Name. We were punished. A new style of paraperception.”
“Paraperception can be useful. To see independently with each eye; hear with each ear…”
“No! You don’t understand. The operation was botched. Or maybe it was deliberate. They tried to give him complete personalities. Each of us was to be a specialist—an entire team in one mind. But we’re not. It’s all turmoil up here.” He tapped his head with their finger. “Half the time we’re not even sure who I am. You need someone single-minded to help you; and the one thing we are not is single-minded.”
“They’ diced and sliced’ your mind, you told me,” the harper said slowly. “Fudir and Donovan and… how many others?”
“We’re not entirely certain. Six. Maybe seven.”
“Good,” said the harper. “Then there will be more of us.”
II A MAN OF PARTS
The scarred man’s breakfast had gone as cold as his heart, but he mopped up the last of the beans, chewed down the last strip of fatty bacon, and washed it all down with an acrid gulp of uiscebeatha. He had sent the harper off with his refusal in her ears, and yet, quantum-like, it entangled also on his tongue, so that he could taste nothing of his meal. Praisegod always served the worst whiskies first, in the hope that it would drive clients off the creature, but this morning the fire lit the scarred man’s throat and belly almost as an afterthought.
“That was a terrible thing to do,” he said.
A Gladiola ark-master passing by the niche turned startled eyes toward him. The voice had seemed to come disembodied out of the shadows. Perhaps he wondered what terrible thing it was that he had done, and who it was who had caught him out at last.
“What did she expect us to do?” Donovan answered. “Drop everything and run off on a goose chase across the whole Spiral Arm?”
“Drop everything?” the Fudir answered in a slightly different voice, and gestured around the table, as if to encompass the “everything” that they would have to drop.
The goose is of high value, a part of him said. There are those who would be grateful for the finding of her.
And the puzzle is a pretty one, the Sleuth commented.
“The answer is ‘out on the edge,’” Donovan said. “We’re safe here in the center.”
There is such a thing as honor. Honor has some value.
“Great value,” said the Fudir, “it being rare.” The Fudir seldom heard that silky, seductive voice. He wondered how many others were lurking. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was a rustling, as of dried leaves in the winds of autumn.
I’m bored. Do one thing or the other; but decide.
That voice, he did recognize. He and Donovan called him the Brute. In their artful carvings of Donovan’s psyche, Those of Name had thought physical prowess would be as useful as cleverness and reason and seduction.
“Go back to sleep,” Donovan told the Brute. “Later, we’ll go out and cruise the Corner.”
I liked her. She was taking action.
Foolish action.
And so?
You owe it to her.
“We owe no one,” said Donovan. “It’s the rest of them that owe us everything.”
Praisegod had come by with a fresh bowl of uiscebeatha. “You owe me” he said offhandedly, “and that’s for certain. You run a tab.”
The Fudir laughed. “They all think we’re crazy.”
“Are they wrong?” said Praisegod. He gathered up the empty bowls and left, chuckling to himself.
“I don’t know why we’re even discussing this,” Donovan said. “Think about it. You, too, Brute, if you can. In all the Spiral Arm, who has the nuts to make a Hound disappear?”
That entrained an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the gentle hissing of an unheard wind. The Fudir shivered, as if the moon had passed behind a leafless tree.
And so what if it is Those? the Brute demanded, though with less bravado.
“If anyone beside the Confederacy has the skill to take on a Hound,” Donovan insisted, “I’ll be glad to hear.” He waited a few beats, but his inner voices were silent. “Do you want to risk Those laying hands on us again?”
What more could they do to us? asked the Sleuth, attempting insouciance.
“Do you want to find out?”
The Brute laughed.
You all know why we should help her.
The Fudir turned a little in the niche so that he could stare at the wall and not at the milling crowd in the Barroom. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”
You loved her mother once.
“Once was enough. And, besides, that was nearly twenty years ago.”
Yes. Exactly.
“That was you who slept with her,” Donovan said. “I missed the whole thing.”
“Don’t complain. It was less a lark than it sounds.”
“Why not complain? I’ve had an obligation laid on me without the pleasure of incurring it.”
It would be, allowed the Sleuth, something of a coup to rescue a Hound. Gratitude can loosen purses.
Or loosen belts. Then you could have the pleasure you missed out on before.
The Fudir knew a sudden stab of jealousy. He could not have her again. There would be too many watching, too many participating.
And the Fudir shivered in fear unadulterated, in terror unfiltered. The niche he sat in was suddenly a trap. There was no escape. The doors were far away.
Donovan sighed. “Holy Saint Freud, who woke Inner Child?”
Boo! said the Brute and laughed at the frisson of fear on the backwash.
Go to sleep, Child.
“I suppose,” said Donovan, “that she’s out in the Spaceport looking to charter a ship.”
The logical course, said the Sleuth, is to go to High Tara first. The Kennel must know from where she last reported. And they might know why she had gone out. Knowing why is the first clue to knowing where.
Gwillgi said nothing.
Would he have, if he knew? He was collecting information, not disbursing it.
The Fudir dropped his empty bowl to the table. “Big dhik, sahbs, but it’s no use. Can you think of anyone else we could trust to help her?”
“I can’t think of anyone,” said Donovan, “let alone an’ else.’ Whatever Bridget ban encountered, it would not likely be something from which the likes of us could save her.”
Then how much less so her daughter alone? Would you send the harper out to deal with Confederate agents?
“The chances of two snowballs in hell are not appreciably greater than those of one.”
“You can’t hide here from the CCW forever,” the Fudir reminded him.
“I’m not hiding. I’m bunkered up. Jehovah is the first place Those would look.”
Donovan said nothing. Those of Name had forgotten many things, but he was certain they had not forgotten him. They had hobbled his mind for a reason. The Fudir nodded agreement. Years before, he had believed himself forgotten. But Those had summoned him at last. There had been an agent of theirs, a tall slim woman who had used the name Ravn Olafsdottr. She had come as back-up to awaken Donovan if the prime agent failed. The scarred man recalled as if in faded and colorless holograms old days spent with Greystroke and Little Hugh… and Bridget ban. Those had been…” interesting times.”
More interesting than drinking all day, and running scrambles in the Corner at night.
Somewhere in his mind: a rumble of laughter like the onset of a distant storm.
He had met Olafsdottr only that o
ne time, when they had both been enslaved by January’s Dancer and the only escape lay in awakening the unaffected Donovan persona. Your dooty then is yoor dooty now, she had said in her hooting Alabaster accent. And Donovan had emerged and taken over and the Fudir had spent a long time afterward in the dark.
“Tough,” said Donovan. “Think how many years I spent bundled away. I’m the prime, the original. The rest of you are only the pencil shavings of my mind.”
“So you say,” the Fudir told him. But the rejoinder sounded weak, even to himself.
The uisce’s gone, the Brute pointed out. What do we do, order more, or…?
“We’ll go with her as far as High Tara,” said the Fudir. “What risk in that?”
To all appearances the scarred man had frozen in place and muttered to himself for a few minutes. Those who knew him paid him no mind, and this had reassured those who did not. Now he pushed his bowl aside and rose from the table.
Praisegod looked his way and his eyebrows rose. “In the daylight?”
The scarred man wended his way through the milling throng. He had a way of moving—supple and balanced—that enabled him to slip through crowds with a minimum of delay and at a modest profit. When he reached the bar, he slapped someone’s ten-shekel note down. “I’ll need your prayers, friend Praisegod. I’m going aloft among the heathens.”
“I’ll pray for them. A decent heathen is hard to find.”
The Fudir smiled through the scarred man’s eyes and bowed Terran-style over his folded hands. “Nandri, sahb. I go jildy now. You sell less-less whiskey me gone.”
“You always leave,” said the Bartender, “but you always come back.” He touched his fingers to his temple with his palm facing out. “Sah!”
As the Fudir reached the door, Praisegod picked up the ten-shekel note and stuffed it in a shirt pocket, and he said softly, “And perhaps a prayer for you, as well.” But the Fudir pretended not to hear him.
Outside, the harper waited, leaning against the building with her arms folded.
The Fudir grunted as she fell in step with him. “Don’t look so smug.”
AN AISTEAR
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