Or an opportunity to live high on another’s expense. Donovan brushed away the tear of sentiment in the Fudir’s eye. And a close inspection of the disarray revealed some small objects missing.
The harper regarded this with no little amusement. The Fudir’s primary occupation on Jehovah had concerned small objects going missing. Not that she hadn’t been pilfered, too; but nothing of terribly great value had walked away and, “It does make a fair compensation for their effort, doesn’t it?”
“The Brotherhood was to have covered it,” the Fudir grumbled, surveying the remnants of his luggage. “And I was to compensate the Brotherhood from the Kennel’s chit.”
“Perhaps Curling Dawn’s steward did not explain things so clearly to his groundside contacts.”
“Perhaps Curling Dawn’s steward is wearing our second-best set of wrist bangles.”
“He may be. But note: it was the second-best he took.”
A sealed envelope bearing the tail-biting logo of the Ourobouros Circuit was waiting in the room: the reply from Hang Tenbottles to the request she had squirted en route. Méarana picked it up, but Donovan plucked it from her hands and inspected the envelope closely.
“It hasn’t been opened,” the harper said.
“Or it’s been opened by an expert.” He frowned some more over the cover, then handed it back to Méarana. “What does Tenbottles say?”
The harper broke the cover and pulled out the flimsy. “585.15, 575.02!” she read. “1041.07 937.20 +407.11. 870.07 253.09.”
Donovan grunted. “Well, that’s informative.”
“There’s more,” she said, gesturing to the sheet.
Donovan took it from her.
“It’s in code.” she told him.
“Really?”
“Your humor is heavy-handed. Everyone encodes Circuit messages. It saves face-time.”
“All right. What’s the basis for the code?”
“Weren’t you once a spy or something?”
Donovan shrugged. “Why pick a lock if someone will hand you the key?”
I love this, said the Sleuth. I can sink my teeth into this one.
“If you had any teeth,” Donovan told him. “I think the Brute owns those.”
The better to bite you with, said the Brute, showing a rare flash of humor.
Let me see the message, said the Pedant. I never forget anything.
The response was a chorus: “We know.”
Méarana scanned the message into her personal brain. She knew that Donovan was holding another of his internal debates and wished she could hear what the others were saying. Hearing half of a dialogue might enable one to tease out the whole thing; but hearing only two parts of a heptalogue was another matter entirely.
Hang had listed everything that Bridget ban had sent, received, or accessed during her home leave. Books, journals, correspondence, call logs… Some were local, or to and from Die Bold, and Méarana recognized many as dealing with ranch management. There was a Circuit call placed to the College of Scholars on Kàuntusulfalúghy, and a reply from the same source, but the contents had not been entered into the penátès.
“The College of Scholars,” said Donovan. “She was probably checking the bona fides of that Debly Jean Sofwari.”
“Sofwari was on her reading list, too,” Méarana said. “Here’s a story in something called the Kauntling Journal of Accumulated Facts. ‘27th Eve: a genetic reconstruction of the Old Planets.’ What does that mean?”
The scarred man shrugged. “It means Sofwari told your mother something hard to believe and she wanted to find out if he had the chops.”
“Well, yes, I suppose; but I meant what does the title of his story mean?”
“Do I look like a scholar? OK, Pedant, you know all sorts of useless facts. What does… Well, what good are you, then? Of course. The rest of us will try to bear up under your silence. Fudir, what do you think you’re…!”
Méarana looked away in embarrassment at the argument. When she had gone on her search for the scarred man, she had found more than she had bargained for.
“Donovan doesn’t know how to wheedle,” the Fudir told her. “He doesn’t politick enough. Now we’re going to be ignorant for a while until Pedant resurfaces all because Donovan buigh doesn’t know how to kiss his own ass.”
Méarana would not look at him. “Ignorant?” she said.
“Pedant has our long-term memory, or a big chunk of it, anyway. When he sulks, we forget things.”
The harper looked at him, at the ever-mobile eyes. “You should try to get along.”
“Get along? He’s me.”
“All the more reason.”
The two of them fell silent then. A certain sort of propriety had been breached. The scarred man usually tried to keep his internal chaos from breaking surface; the harper usually refrained from mentioning it. Méarana took the decoded list and pretended to read it once more.
After a while, the Fudir said, “The Pedant doesn’t know everything. He can only know what we’ve seen or heard or read. He never forgets, is all. But our memory is holographic; so it’s not like the rest of us know nothing when he’s… in his tent. Genetics is an ancient dogma. It has something to do with Predestination. We should try to get a copy of the story. The witch went out of her way to read it, so it may mean something. What else did she read during home leave?”
Méarana cleared her throat and continued to look down at the list in her hands. “Uh, gazetteers of the Spiral Arm. Communications with hotels. Maybe reserving rooms planet-side. She read a book by Mani Latapoori called Commonwealth Days: The Rise and Fall of Old Terra. You ought to like that one, Fudir. A novel by Ngozi dan Witkin titled The Greening of Hope. I remember dan Witkin from school. We had to read ancient literature, but what we read was…”
“Abandonment,” said the Fudir. “Everyone has to read that in forming school. It’s the classic novel of the Diaspora, a memoir of her grandparents. I didn’t even know she had written other books. Anything else?”
“Rimward Ho! The History of Lafrontera. And—these seem more scholarly—Compendium of Charters of the Gladiola Terraforming Institute. Monstrous Regiment: The Constitution of Boldly Go. Here’s one we ought to find locally: Customs of the’ Loon Tribes of Cliff na Mac Rebbe.”
“Ay-yi. How long was your mother at home?”
“She’s a fast reader; and if she already knew what she was looking for, she could have search-functioned these texts and been done in a blink.” Méarana unplugged her pocket memory. The Fudir nodded at the small box.
“The key to your code is in there?”
“Sure, but you’ll never find it.” She tossed it to him and he caught it one-handed. “So tell me that this has helped us find my mother.”
“The clues are somewhere in those texts.”
“You mean somewhere in the tens of thousands of screens that she read during her home leave. Yet, surely some of this—” She waved the hardcopy. “—maybe even all of this—was leisure reading. She did relax from time to time.”
“Did she? We’re not so certain of that. I don’t believe she ever did anything without purpose. She was the most intentional person I ever knew.” The scarred man consulted the clock. “Better lie down and get some rest. We’re space-lagged. Ship-time noon was four hours earlier than Preeshdad noon. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go on the prowl.”
“To find the jeweler who sold the medallion.”
“To go through the motions of finding him. The jewelist on Thistlewaite said only that the man who pawned it came from Harpaloon.”
“You make it sound hopeless.”
The scarred man grunted. “Good. I meant to.”
__________
Harpaloon jewelers, called jawharries, were scattered throughout the town. So Méarana and Donovan compiled a list of shops courtesy of the municipal office, the Kennel chit, and a bit of buckshish under the table; and splitting the list between them, spent several days going from one to ano
ther. Not that they expected to find the’ harry who had sold the trinket; but someone might remember that Bridget ban had come asking, and someone might recognize the style or workmanship. It was worth the shot, though Donovan rather hoped that the shot would miss and Méarana would give up her hopeless hunt before it led them to where he feared it would.
They quickly learned that Bridget ban had indeed been asking after the pendant’s provenance. A few jawharries even mistook Méarana for her mother returned, remembering only the red hair and green eyes and the catlike grace in her step, and being greatly deceived on the number of years that underlay them. But they learned, too, only what she had learned then, which was nothing.
Until, as luck would have it, luck had them. Twice.
Or three times, depending on how one defined luck.
The first time was on the fourth day, when Donovan entered a small shop on Algebra Street. This tight-fit lane had been in Preeshdad’s earliest days its central street. Addresses still pegged east and west from it, although the main business district had long since wandered off to the newer parts of town and Algebra Street now sported slapdash boarding houses and brothels, saloons and small shops. The district was called alternately “The Kasper” or “The Liberties.” Donovan thought that in the dark of night the street might appear ominous, but in the bright afternoon it was merely shabby, and teeming with aimless humanity—ragged’ Loons, soi-disant Cuddle-Dong aristos, rough-trousered settlers in from the Boonlands, a sprinkling of more brightly-garbed touristas lured from the city center—all of them seeking bargains or thrills or forbidden pleasures, and hailed from all sides by the hawkers of each of them. The Kasper was strung out and tangled in a warren of streets: Aonsharad and Dhasharad to the east; Trickawall and Trickathanny to the west; but it seemed more crowded because the streets were tight and never straight for very long.
BOO SADD MAC SORLI, the sign announced in Gaelactic, pine jewelry, pawn, and pre-owned. Above this ran a line of gracefully curling symbols that might be a decorative border. Behind the shatterproof window sat displays of all the small, dispensable possessions of men and women who had found the need to dispense with them. Donovan wondered how many, driven to pawn such property, ever rebounded enough to redeem them.
“Donovan,” said the Fudir, “let me bukh with this dukandar.”
A local, pushing by in the throng, gave him a startled look and hurried on.
The scarred man shrugged. “Have at him. I’m tired of all the chaffering. This is the fourteenth shop on our list. I don’t think she’ll ever give up.”
We could simply tell her we’d gone to these places, the Sleuth pointed out. Why waste our time just because she wastes hers?
That would not be honorable.
You are in the wrong business for honor, Silky.
“We’re not in that business anymore,” Donovan reminded himselves.
Boo Sadd, summoned by the door chimes, proved to be a’ Loon: large nose, red hair, hazel eyes, and a dusky complexion against which freckles barely showed. If the approach of a possible customer pleased him, he concealed his joy admirably well. “Shoran, you wouldn’t be off your orbit, coffer, now would you?”
The Fudir smiled and chose to use a Valencian accent. “Ain’t no mover, me. Just a tourista. Got a question bout some jewelry, an’ mebbe you kin help me widdit.” He held out a hologram of Méarana’s medallion. “Guy sold it to me on Thistlewaite, said it come from here, an’…”
The jeweler’s eyes barely flicked to the image. “Ah, no, fendy,” he said, making a fluttery wave of his hand. “As lush, flowing streams on the parched plains of the Jazz, are Thistles in my poor dook. No Harpaloon hand made this. I grieve that I cannot help you.” His face revealed the depth of his grief.
The Fudir leaned on the edge of the counter. “You got a long mem’ry, friend, for such a quick answer. This woulda been a coupla years ago. If it ain’t Harpy work, mebbe you know where it come from. Not too much to ask, innit?”
Valency had famously been ruled by a line of tyrants of notable brutality and, consequently, most people felt an urge to cooperate when a Valencian asked politely in just that tone of voice.
The jawharry took the image in his hand and studied it. “Hard to tell, o best one, from such a poor reproduction. Do I know if the colors are true? No. May I proof the hardness? I cannot. I have seen work—kluzni, they call it—from the Cliff of Anne de Louis, far across the Jazz which… But… No. This is not Louisian work.”
“But you seen stuff like it? Import ware?”
“I recall now a coffer woman half a handful of years past who asked after something much like this. I will share with you what I am after telling her. My dook does not handle coffer work. Such things are harm. But at times it comes into the hands of assdikkas and they bring it to me so as not to pollute their fingers. Allow me to check…” He whispered into a microphone, studied the result, and whispered a few more parameters. After a moment, he swiveled the viewing stage so the Fudir could see the resulting holo. “These pieces, I am thinking, are like in craftsmanship to yours.”
Above the stage floated two rings and a man’s bracelet. Each was inlaid with the same sort of pastel-colored stones, cleverly cut and fitted into impressionistic and abstract patterns.
“Pedant?” whispered the Fudir.
The jawharry misunderstood. “No, fendy. No pendants, only these rings and bracelet.”
What? said the Pedant. Oh. Yes. These pieces definitely arose from the same artistic tradition.
Donovan’s heart fell. The search, it appeared, would go on.
“Where’d dis stuff come from?” the Fudir asked.
The’ harry checked his records. “A man of the sook, who is called Boo Zed O’Culinane. He had them off a Wildman who was less than prudent of his purse.” ’Ah. We learn by our mistakes.”
“Then thanks to Boo Zed he departed Harpaloon a far wiser man.”
The Fudir laughed. “If ya can’t know the truth, ya better know yer errors. Which Wild-world did dis guy come from?”
“O best one! Who may number the grains of sand on the beach of Inch? So many are the worlds of the Wild. But few Wildmen come so far as Harpaloon, and so they are more clearly noted than other coffers…” The jawharry bowed slightly and struck his breast. “Begging your honor’s pardon. I heard that he came from a world within the Burnt-Over District. The name of it was something like Ōram or Eḥku or Enjrun, but who can keep straight such heathen names?”
The back of the scarred man’s scalp prickled. Enjrun, he did not know, but the other two sounded eerily of the old Tantamiž. Without thinking, he bowed over his folded hands, “Nandri, dukandar. You have been…”
But the jawharry’s eyes narrowed. “Am I looking like a moose to you, you farking coffer?” And he mimed spitting on the floor.
Inner Child started in fright and the Fudir said, “Dint mean no fence. Whassa moose?” He knew of two kinds of animals that were called by that name. One was a sort of giant elk on Bracka; another was a variety of rodent that had spread across several worlds in the Jen-jen Cluster.
“A Terry,” said the jawharry, and this time the spitting was not mimed.
“Is there something wrong with…,” the Fudir began, but Donovan seized control. “Hey, no fence,” he said, reasserting the Valencian accent.
“But ya used a coupla words I heard from Terrans. Die Bold Terrans call their leader ‘Fendy.’ On Jehovah, dey call a shop a dukan; and you call yours a dook.”
The ‘harry touched his breast, lips, and forehead, and then each shoulder. “Shoran, they steal everything, even our tongues. They are worse than movers, seventy times seven. The Terries abandoned us after we had risked everything for them.”
The man’s voice has risen as he spoke and now took on a pitch close to cracking. But he suddenly stopped and visibly subsided into a dull rage. “I think you had better leave. You never call a’ Loon a moose. Shoran, that’s a deadly insult. Darkness falls on Algebra Stree
t, and I cannot answer for your safety once the light is fled. Go and, indila, you find your way whole to your Phundaugh.”
The second piece of luck befell Méarana a little later that same day at Jawharry Chinwemma. Since this stood at Côndefer Park on the prairie east of Preeshdad, she took the air bus from Shdad-Center. The tourista rush was over, but a family of movers from Gladiola was aboard and their children shrieked most admirably when the bus left the launch rail and hit free fall. A trio of’ Loons twisted their faces at this, but aside from a muttered comment about coffers and spawning, they said nothing. The two young men wore their caephyas at a rakish angle and sported goatees. Their companion wore a gauze mask across her nose and mouth and her hair was caught up in a tammershanner. It was the garb of the “Young’ Loons,” a youth movement gaining in popularity.
Below, the grasslands rolled sere and uninterrupted to the horizon. Just as the bus lost its ballistic lift, the rotors kicked in and they settled into powered flight. The children flocked to the windows and pointed and chattered as the cluster of steep hills came into view. Méarana had one quick glimpse before the bus descended toward the receiving platform, where it hooked onto the brake-rail with a minimum of jostling and squealing.
Jawharry Chinwemma proved to be a gift shop attached to the park. The harper saw immediately that it was a jawharry in name only. True, it sold jewelry, mostly of an inexpensive sort designed to advertise Côndefer Park, but that it might harbor a genuine jeweler seemed beyond chance. The sign above the entrance announced the establishment’s name and asserted, curiously, that “God owns everything beautiful.” Like most other signs on Harpaloon, it bore a row of decorative squiggles underneath.
Behind the counter a pale, flat-nosed woman smiled at the late afternoon traffic. She was thin and of middling height, a few metric years older than Méarana herself.
“Excuse me,” Méarana said. “Are you Chinwemma? The jeweler… I mean, jawharry?”
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