Donovan tore his gaze from the image. “What?”
“Maybe an entire fleet once set down there. And still rests there. I think the shrogo covered them in soil, and chance has disrobed only the southernmost three. There may be hundreds more of them buried out there.”
But Donovan had no eye for the hills. He brushed a tear and took the imager from her. The Cones floated above the table, as if lifting off. “Ah, will you look at that, then.”
“What? The bird?”
“No, on the bulkhead above the bird’s nest.” He upped the zoom. “Do you see it? That is the Great Burst of the old Commonwealth of Suns. Tsol in the center and the Seven Colonies around it. Of course there were more than seven before the end. There may have been seven hundred. Ah, those were storybook times, indeed, when even their wreckage is magnificent.”
“Magnificent? It’s all burnt and rotted and corroded, but… If the’ Loonies’ ancestors came in those ships, then they are Terrans, too.”
“We all are. But what does ancestry matter if you don’t remember—and persecute those who do?” Donovan’s eyes closed and his lips moved silently. “Hundreds, you think? Well, you can’t be the first to notice the resemblance, but no one is ever going to dig there until the movers and the moosers cut the throat of the last’ Loon. Sometimes, I think ‘Saken had the right idea.”
Méarana expressed surprise. “The ‘Forsaken’ dismantled their landers in the early days and used the material to build their settlements. They paved over First Field two hundred years ago and redeveloped it. Sentiment is not their forté. I thought you said the remembering mattered.”
A certain ferociousness passed across the Fudir’s face. “I’d rather see the past paved over than birds nest in it.”
The harper refrained from extending the sympathetic hand that she knew would be rebuffed. “Sometimes,” she said, “it’s the ancestors who neglect the descendants.”
The Fudir looked at her. “Do they.”
“And what did you find, Donovan, out among the jawharries?”
The scarred man stared at his whiskey. After a time, he heard the silence and his head rose. “Donovan, he no got nothing.”
Méarana’s sigh was long and weary. “So the medallion is a dead end. We must find Mother’s trail some other way. Perhaps the package…”
The Fudir parted his lips as if to speak; but a voice called out, bluff and hearty: “Is this a private party or can anyone join?”
Méarana made the package disappear and the scarred man turned to snarl at the newcomer, but paused in shock and instead cried out, “Hugh!” And it seemed as if the wind had blown away the clouds of ten thousand years and the bright sun of delight shone through his face unfiltered.
It was only for a moment before the face closed in again; and though the smile remained, it was a sorry thing to that which it had come before. Yet the harper was glad to have seen it, if only just this once.
The man pumping hands with the Fudir was solidly built. He had a square jaw and dusty-red hair. His left cheek bore a scar now only faintly visible. “You must be Little Hugh O’Carroll,” she said, extending her hand.
“I must be,” said the Ghost of Ardow, bowing low and kissing the back of her hand, “for no one else wants the fookin job.” He pulled out a seat on the left side of the table. This was the third time luck had had them, depending on how one counted luck. “An’ how do ye fare, Fudir? Still keeping ahead of the law?”
“I’ve retired,” said Donovan. “The law ran out of breath from the chasing of me.”
“Ah, it’s a sad thing, not to be wanted, even by the likes of the Jehovah proctors.”
“Donovan has told me so much about you,” the harper said.
Hugh grinned infectiously. “Nothing too bad, I hope.” He pointed a finger at her. “An’ you, if I had to guess, I’d say you are Little Lucy.”
The harper covered her face. “Oh, no! No one’s called me that for ages.”
“Sure, not too many ages! Fudir,” he said turning, “how can you drink that fuel oil? Let me buy you a porter.” He twisted in his seat and signaled to the waitress with his fingers. “Fudir and I,” he told Méarana, “used to ‘pal’ around in the old days. Did I say that right? ‘Pal?’ He must have told you about it? The last time I saw him, he cold-conked me and left me on the front stoop of a tenement in a Chel’veckistad slum. I haven’t paid him back for that one yet.”
“No charge,” muttered the Fudir.
Hugh laughed. “You haven’t changed.”
A number of emotions chased themselves across Donovan’s features. After a handful of beats and behind a faint smile, he said, “You’ve aged well. Run any guerillas lately?”
“Two. No, three.” Hugh laughed at their reaction and, reaching inside his tunic, pulled out a badge. “All in a good cause,” he said. “I’m a Hound’s Pup now, and there are two tyrants and a pirate king who won’t be breaking the Ardry’s Peace now.”
Donovan took the badge from him and the golden glow faded as it passed from Hugh’s hands. He handed it to Méarana. “I left you in bad company. You’ve been corrupted.”
“Oh,’ t isn’t so bad as all that. I was a little older starting than the Kennel liked; but my Oriel training in planetary management gave me a leg up on the admin skills, and the civil war on New Eireann gave me a leg up on, well, the operational skills. Beside which, I was motivated.”
“How?”
“They promised me my first assignment would be to hunt you down.”
The Fudir grunted. “If you find me, let me know.”
At the jest, Méarana did lay a hand on his shoulder, but only briefly. “But you didn’t,” she said, passing the badge along. “You went on an adventure with my mother.”
Hugh nodded and fell silent, fingering the scar on his cheek. “Aye, so I did. Into the Rift… By then, the betrayal no longer hurt as much. No, don’t tell me it was all for the best, old friend. From what I hear, it was. But that doesn’t really matter, now does it? Sometimes… I think about those days. Amir Naith’s Gully, sliding with January and his crew—whatever happened to them, I wonder—or the Restoration of New Eireann, or…’ On to the Hadramoo!”’ He pumped his fist. “Remember that?” He sighed. “Ah, but it can never be that way again, can it?” And there was something in his eyes that was sad and distant.
“I know,” the Fudir said quietly. After a time, with something of his old spirit, he added, “And as long as you’re not hunting for me, I wish you good luck. What’s your office name? Not Little Hugh. You don’t work for Clan na Oriel any more, so you can’t use one of their names.”
“I’ll still be Hugh where you and I are concerned. But for Kennel work, I’m ‘Rinty’”
“Rinty. Who’s your doggy?”
The waitress came by and set four mugs on the table. Hugh paid her. “Greystroke,” he said.
“Greystroke!” The Fudir laughed and slapped the table. “There never was a man as good as he was at blending in. Where is he now?”
“Right here,” said Greystroke, who sat at the table’s fourth side. He handed the badge back to Hugh, picked up one of the mugs, and smiled at Donovan.
The scarred man shook his head. “I wish I knew how you did that.” He took a drink of his own. “Did I not tell you, harper? He is so ordinary that no one notices him.”
“Only when he wants it so,” said Hugh. “Otherwise, he can be as obtrusive as… Well, as you.”
“You make a good pair,” admitted the Fudir. “The Ghost of Ardow was hard to find, too.”
“It comes in handy,” admitted Hugh.
“Speaking of which,” said Greystroke, “Rinty and I have just finished a case on Khlabash and being in the neighborhood, thought we’d stop here and sift for information on Bridget ban.” He looked from Donovan to Méarana and back, and smiled. “Imagine finding you two here! If I had to guess, you must be doing the same.’
Evening had come on and they ordered dinner from the café. T
he waitresses brought special pillows for them to sit on and plates of beaten copper and small cups of turgid coffee. They ordered McLoob—boiled chicken and fried vegetables all cooked together with rice. It was sometimes called the “planetary dish” of Harpaloon, though it was popular only in the Cliff na Murph and neighboring countries.
The craic ran high. Inevitably, there were reminisces of the Dancer affair, and the Fudir had the opportunity to set straight what had happened in the endgame and his close brush with Ravn Olafsdottr. “Still on the loose, I hear,” said Greystroke. “Hope she’s not still hunting for you. There are signs that many of their agents have gone back. Some sort of trouble in the Confederation.” The Hound and Hugh recounted some cases they had worked on, “as much as we can tell you.” And Méarana talked of her music and promised to play for them the next day. When the Fudir told them, with almost proprietary pride, of her song cycle around the Dancer, Hugh said lightly, “Be sure to play the part where the Fudir knocked me cold.”
They spoke, too, of Méarana’s mother, praising her skills. But the Silky Voice saw in the cast of the harper’s face the thought that one only eulogizes the departed.
“She was a woman easy to love,” said Greystroke, “but at the same time, difficult.”
“Aye,” said Little Hugh. “Easy for her to be loved, less easy for her to love.”
“She used her affections as a weapon,” Greystroke said. He lifted his coffee toward his lips, but it never arrived, and after a while he returned the cup to its saucer. “It blunts them,” he finished, “to use them so. She grew coarse, numb. She could not feel the caress of others.”
The third person. The past tense.
“Translation,” the Fudir said. “You wanted her to love you, and she would not.”
“Or she could not,” the Hound countered.
“All three of us wanted that,” said Hugh. “Didn’t we? We wanted her to love us; but she only wanted us to love her. I didn’t mind that. I wasn’t looking to be loved. Not then.”
“No,” said the Fudir. “She wanted control, not love. A bond becomes a leash when it fastens on only one end.”
“Ah, bile yer haids,” said Méarana with some heat. “Ye’re haverin’ because ye got the fling from her. What else could she have done—as a Hound? To love someone, ye maun gi’e yourself awa’. And she could nae afford that. The tightest leash? She kept that on herself. At home, wi’ me,’ twas different.” At that, she turned away a little from the table and fell into silence.
The Fudir exchanged glances with the others. “The strange thing,” he said finally in the quiet that had followed Méarana’s outburst, “is what I remember most clearly about her.”
“And what’s that?” said Greystroke.
“You would think it would be the… the weapons she used on me,” the Fudir said. “But what remains with me most clearly is the flair with which she did everything. The audacity. She was not always happy; but she was always full of cheer. With her, you always felt that things were possible.” Méarana turned and half looked at him over her shoulder. Her left eye, the one he could see, glimmered and a tear trickled down her cheek.
“Ah, it was different with me,” said Hugh. “It was more like exercise. She laid a trap for my heart, but I saw the trap and stepped into it willingly. So you might say we trapped each other.”
“Then perhaps,” said Greystroke, “she did love each of us, in a way, and if only a little.”
The Fudir pursed his lips. “With Hugh, she may have enjoyed the sheer recreation. With me, she may have liked battling wits. But only the gods know what she saw in you, Greystroke. No offense, but she had flair and she had drama; and among your many fine qualities those are not to be numbered.”
The Hound smiled. “Haven’t you heard? Opposites attract.”
The jibe irritated the Fudir almost as much as the chuckles he heard from the other voices in his head. “I, at least, was not snared,” he told the others. “In the end, I walked out on her.”
“She wasn’t the only one you walked out on,” said Hugh. “But, tell me: did you walk, or did you run?”
The Fudir flushed; and he shifted, suddenly uncomfortable, on his pillow.
“She was quite angry with you afterward,” the Pup added, “and for a long time.”
“And what greater anger,” the Fudir said with a smile toward Grey-stroke, “than that of love spurned? She wasn’t used to rejection.”
Hugh grinned. “Greystroke was madder than any of us. Does that mean he loved you even more?”
The question caught the Fudir short and he saw in a momentary slip that it caught Greystroke, too. Then he blew the Hound a kiss and said, “Gray One! I didn’t know you cared.” They laughed more heartily than the joke had warranted, and Méarana rejoined the banter dry-eyed once more.
Dessert had come by then and, when they were enjoying the mango sherbets and the McMoul cookies, Greystroke said, “So, how goes the search? Zorba told us over the Circuit that we should cooperate if we happened to cross paths. Retired agents have no authority to issue orders, but you know how that goes…” He wagged his hand ulta-pulta. “Though the Friendly Ones alone know how you hope to succeed where we have failed.”
The harper closed her eyes briefly. “I thought, being her daughter, I would notice something that you and your colleagues overlooked. No offense.”
Greystroke pursed his lips. “None taken. What have you found?”
“Very little,” Donovan said before the harper could speak. “They told me in the Corner that she met with some Terran and’ Loon leaders. Oh. And she was traveling as Francine Thompson—but that, you already knew.”
Greystroke sighed. “There is so much else to learn,” he ruminated. “What of her taste in jewelry, for example?”
Inner Child twitched and the scarred man’s hand knocked over his coffee cup. Everyone pushed back from the table and the waiters swooped in to clean things up.
The scarred man apologized to everyone for the spill. He found Little Hugh staring at him with grave concern. “Are you all right, Fudir?”
“Me-fella thik hai. You no worry, sahb.” If Greystroke noticed that the jewelry topic had been skipped, he was not so boorish as to point it out.
In the lift to their suite on the fifth floor, Méarana said, “I liked what you said about her.”
The Fudir looked wary. “What I said? What was that?” “You said, ‘She was not always happy; but she was always full of cheer.’ And that, old man, is the essence of hope.”
When they had reached their suite, the scarred man intimated to the harper by portents and signs that she should remain silent and change her clothing.
Méarana started to ask why, but he mimed silence again, and so, puzzled, she did as he wanted. While she changed, he chattered from the other room about past adventures with Hugh and Greystroke on Jehovah and New Eireann, and how pleased he had been to run into them like that. “Of all the cafés in all the worlds of the Spiral Arm,” he said, “they walk into ours.” Then he laughed, as if at some secret joke.
When she rejoined him in the common room he was dressed up in a shawkéad fáwsuc, what on Dangchao Waypoint was called a “bush jacket.” Into one of its capacious pockets he slipped the package she had gotten at Chinwemma. “It must have been nice,” she said as she watched him, “to see your old friends again.”
“It was enlightening,” he said. “That’s always nice.” He produced an audio player and set it on the table. “Did I ever tell you about my experience as an instrument tech on January’s ship? Let me explain about astrogation.” With that he activated the player, and Méarana heard a recording of a conversation they had had weeks before on Dragomir Pennymac. It picked up seamlessly from Donovan’s question and while it chattered on about roads and the currents of space and holes in space, he led her quietly to the door.
Their caephyas hung on hooks by the door, but he waved her off. The door slid open soundlessly and they stepped into the hall. M�
�arana started to ask him what he was doing but Donovan covered her mouth briefly with his hand. His lips moved. No talking yet.
He took her to the far end of the hall and down the stairs to a side exit, where they stepped out into the bitter nighttime wind. It tore at her hair and filled her nose with grit. She coughed and brushed at her hair. “I’ll be a week washing this clean! Why did you make me leave my chabb behind?”
He leaned close to her ear. “Do you know what aimshifars are?”
“Microscopic jeepyeses. Shippers put them in packages to track their locations by satellite… Oh.”
“Yes. ‘Oh.’ Of all the cafés in all the Spiral Arm? I don’t believe in coincidences. ‘Imagine finding you two here!’ Come on. Not the hotel shops.”
They crossed the darkened parking lot to a haberdashery on the other side of Comfort Street. Inside, they found a variety of headgear and bought themselves new hoods and dust goggles. “Greystroke is what we Terrans call a ‘prick,’” Donovan explained. “But he isn’t a stupid prick. That whole encounter in the café was carefully choreographed. He wanted to find out what we knew about your mother. If he had half a brain—and if he doesn’t, Little Hugh has the other half—he would have sprinkled some aimshifars onto our clothing sometime during that amiable dinner we had.”
The dukandar returned with the caephyas, and Méarana noted that they were styled very differently from the ones they had worn earlier. “Lost yours, hey?” the woman said. She had a Megranomic accent—a mover or the daughter of movers. “That happens a lot if’n yuh don’t tie’ em down proper. Wind shifts and—hey!—off’n she goes liken a kite. That’ll be fifteen punts, eight dinners.
As they left the shop, Donovan said, “I feel like a walk in the park.”
“At night? What’s there to see at night?”
The scarred man cackled. “You’d be surprised. At least—I hope you’d be. But me, night is my natural habitat.”
They passed through a darkened neighborhood, where the only sound was the brush-like hiss of sand against the stones and, once, angry but unintelligible voices from behind one of the shaded windows. The Fudir paused and studied their backtrail. “Greystroke’s talent is blending in,” he said. “For that, he needs other people around. Open areas can defeat him.”
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