“Then, we’re…”
“Hugh’s talent, on the other hand, is concealment. Give him a shadow, and he’s in it.”
“But… If they bugged our suite, they’ll think we’re still in it, talking about astrogation.”
“We hope so. But we’d be a fool to depend on it.”
They emerged onto Beachfront Highway. Normally busy, traffic had faded at this time of night into a few solitary autos and some trucks coming in from the townships with food for tomorrow’s markets. There was no grid on such a raw frontier world, so the vehicles were all manually piloted.
Why do they call them ‘autos,’ the Pedant wondered, if they are manually controlled?
Wardalbahr Park stretched along the coast of the Encircled Sea. It encompassed a long beach called Inch Strand, several groves of trees, and a wildlife sanctuary on a rocky hook of land farther to the south. They crossed the pedestrian walkway over the highway and walked to the beach, where tired waves lapped against the land.
Harpaloon had a moon, but it was on the smallish side; so while the Encircled Sea had tides and breakers, they were modest and unassuming. Méarana watched them roll in for a while. It was rare to find terrestrial worlds with giant moons. Terra itself was said to have a companion more than a quarter of her own size, the result of a cosmic freak accident, and it was this freak gravitational ball mill that had churned its oceans into tidal estuaries and provided self-organizing organic matter with an escalator onto the land. Harpaloon had been less fortunate. Some primordial collision had glanced across its face, creating the great divot of the Encircled Sea and tossing the clot of land aloft to become Gummar-Gyalack. A large moon, but not quite large enough.
Only a little bigger, some Harpalooners had claimed, and “Old G-G” might have stirred the seas to life here as the Great Moon of Terra had done. Only a little bigger… There was a harp tune there, a goltraí perhaps. A lament for life that never was. But that was a lament so well-worn that tears were no longer in it. No one assumed that a planet would hold anything more than pseudo-living matter—archaea, or bacteria, or protists—as likely to exchange genes laterally as vertically. Dough, but never kneaded, the great Alabaster poet, Shishaq sunna Pyoder, had once written.
“Do you really think Greystroke is listening?” she asked him. “Or is that only your paranoia? Inner Child, you called him.”
Donovan stood by her side facing seaward. His glance was a question.
She pointed at the sea and its waves. “I understand. You brought us here so the surf could mask our whispers—in case he has microphones aimed at us, right?”
Donovan shrugged. “It’s what I would do. He almost surely installed listeners in our hotel room. He may have followed us around—he knew we were canvassing jewelers, but he doesn’t know why. By tomorrow, he will. I just wish I knew how long we’ve been under his surveillance. Damn him.”
“You don’t think he’s standing right behind us, do you?”
Donovan started and turned. (She thought that was Inner Child again.) He scowled at her. “Hey, you no tease old Terry, right? Whoever bukkin, face ocean. Whoever harin watch beach. Here…” He pulled the package out of his pocket. “You open this.”
She popped open the flaps and found beneath the wrappings a gift box from the Chinwemma jewelry store. Inside the box was a pocket brain of the standard sort. And a note.
“Read it,” said Donovan, possibly the single most needless instruction he had ever given her.
Lady Hound [it read]. It appears to the author that he has reached Harpaloon before you. The difficulties of coordinating travel along the roads. But a delightful half-doozy days in the Great Hall were spent and samples from all over the Spiral Arm were gathered and collated. A trove richer even than Jehovah. The range of the sampling domain was extended considerably and this updated dibby has been left for your pickup. Preliminary analysis indicates a most peculiar pattern, somewhat at odds with prior results. Further data are required to clarify the issue, possibly from Boldly Go, since the markers sought pass from mother to daughter. Your assistance will be necessary to access their information, as previously discussed.
It is still unclear to the author how that silly old tale of the Treasure Fleet fits into this. Fire from the sky, indeed!
Méarana folded the message, then unfolded it and read it again. Fire from the sky. There was that phrase again. What did it mean? More than she had assumed at first. She handed the slip of paper to Donovan, who barely glanced at it and did not take his eyes from the shadows that surrounded them.
From just such shadows, his own hauntings told him, the ninjas of Jenlùshy emerged.
Bring’ em on.
The scarred man shuddered and his eyes began to wander as all of him struggled for their possession.
“Who do you expect to leap from the shadows here?” the Fudir asked himself. “Hugh? Greystroke?”
Hugh would not attack us!
Would he not, then? asked the Sleuth.
“Men change,” the Fudir whispered. “I knew him then; I don’t know him now. And he was a very good assassin.”
Méarana pulled the message from his fingers. She refolded it and returned it to the box along with the dibby. “What data?” she said to the whispering ocean waves.
“And who left it? said Donovan. “I see the quid, but where’s the quo?” The sand beneath him seemed suddenly of the quicker sort and a sound that would have been laughter rippled through his mind. Inner Child started and the Brute clenched Donovan’s fists.
Méarana touched his arm lightly. “Come, old man. We can’t read the dibby here on the beach.”
A moment longer the scarred man lingered. He turned his back on the shadows and stared out across the sluggish waters of the Encircled Sea. The curls hissed as they broke and rolled across the sands. An ochre moon hovered over the far horizon. Larger than Jehovah’s Ashterath, larger than Old ‘Saken’s Jubilee Moon, far larger than “the moonlet fleet” of Peacock Junction; but smaller than the Moon he had never seen, the Moon toward which his blood was drawn like the ocean’s tides. He sighed. He didn’t know whether Hugh had turned against him. And the sorrow of it was not the turning, but that he didn’t know.
The scarred man offered his arm to the harper. “787.09,” he said, “161.26 228.15!”
Re-crossing the highway, Méarana noticed a knot of people congregated at the three-way intersection between them and the hotel. They numbered perhaps twenty and she recognized in their garb and goatees the demeanor of Young’ Loons. She pointed them out to Donovan and mentioned again her encounter at Côndefer Park. “The Young’ Loons,” she said, “don’t believe in the accommodationist tactics of their elders.”
The scarred man looked on them with distaste. “I haven’t found their elders all that accommodating.”
“They want change.”
“Changing things is never a problem. Changing them for the better is.”
They had reached the stairs leading back down to street level. Méarana hesitated on the third step and turned around. “Do you think they’ll bother us? I mean, we’re just touristas, not movers or…”
“Or moosers? I’m afraid, missy, that I am.”
“But you don’t…” She hesitated again.
“I don’t look like a Terran? I don’t think it matters in the end. They detest all coffers and gulls, not just movers, not just Terrans. They even hate the remnants of the old Cuddle-Dong aristocracy, and how long have they lived here?”
“But, I’m a harper!”
“Perhaps they will pause and ask about that before they rough us up.”
Méarana took a breath, let it out. “They may be only a gang of idle young men hanging out on the street corner.”
“As harmless as that sounds… We could be judging them unfairly. But idle young men on a street corner in the small hours of the night do not inspire cozy feelings.” He nudged her in the small of the back. “At the bottom of the stairs, turn
right, then go down the next street to the left. The streets here are a tangle, but I’ve got good bearings and we can circle around them. Go. Before they notice us.”
The harper and the scarred man hurried down the rest of the staircase and turned toward the next street, away from the phundaugh. Just before they reached it—Tchilbebber Lane, the sign announced—there was a shriek from the direction of the three-points, followed by the patter of rapid feet, followed by the drumming of many feet. Donovan looked back. There was a man in a billowing dust-coat sprinting up Beachfront Highway toward them. The Young’ Loons were pelting after him. He touched Méarana. “They’re not after us,” he said.
But they ducked around the corner anyway. Mobs, even small mobs, had a way of expanding their horizons on encountering targets of opportunity.
“That poor man!” said Méarana.
“He’ll go up Beachfront. We’ll wait a little ways up this lane until they pass by, then we’ll make our way to the hotel.”
“Shouldn’t we try to help him?”
“Two of us against twenty? Three if that poor fool turns and stands. More likely, he’d keep running while we divert the crowd. That’s what I would do.”
“No, call the policers!”
“Méarana, this is Harpaloon. The policers come out in the morning and count the bodies… Quiet, here they come… Well, damn the gods!”
The deities he cursed had neglected their duties—for the fleeing man turned and came pelting up Tchilbebber Lane with the’ Loonie mob on his heels.
“Let’s get out of here,” Donovan started to say, but the man reached him and threw himself upon him.
“Pliz, pliz, you-fella. You help poor Terry-man! Budmash fella-they chase him no reason! Aiee!” And he ducked and crouched trembling behind Donovan.
His pursuers staggered to a halt when they saw the harper and the scarred man and their quarry hiding behind them.
“Just like a mooser,” one of them said. “Hide behind a shawner and a clean’s skirts.”
“Out of our way, coffers,” said another. “Shoran, we maun teach this Terry trash his manners.”
“You hear that, ye walad?” said a third. And he was chorused by the laughter of his companions.
Donovan spoke up. “This lady is a harper—an ollamh. Air hwuig shé? You will not touch her.”
The first speaker, whom Donovan took for the leader, said, “Shoran, we don’t care about coffer bints, shawnfir. Just you be stepping aside so we can teach this dog to step aside for us like a good little mooser.”
Donovan turned to Méarana. “You had better take yourself to the hotel.”
“Donovan…?” She spoke with uncertainty, but in her heart there was none. She knew what he meant to do. “I’m sorry.” She shrugged her shoulder and felt the knife drop into her hand, keeping it concealed from the mob. She emptied her mind of all but her mother’s training. It seemed she would learn how well the instruction had taken. But, twenty?
“Step aside!”
“No, no, pliz,” cried the Terran behind them. “Big dhik! You-man save me!”
Donovan turned and took him by the collar of his tunic, raising him to his feet. “I’ll not save a man on his knees,” he growled.
The leader of the gang grinned and stepped forward. “Hazza moontaz! We’ll take it from here.”
Donovan turned to him and bowed lightly over his folded hands. “Ah, no sahb. This-man no let dacoit takee. Hutt, hutt, you changars! You chumars!”
The gang leader’s face froze in surprise. Then it broke into an even broader grin than before as he did the arithmetic. “Hey, boyos, shoran we have us a twofer! And you, shawnfir, you’re two brassers short of a whorehouse.”
“I do not normally use a pick to play,” said the harper, bending slightly forward and balancing on the balls of her feet. She held her knife underfisted, ready to slash or stab. “But I can pluck at your heart strings either way.”
The scarred man’s lips had been moving. Then Donovan sighed and pulled a teaser from his pocket. “Fudir, are we agreed?” “No other choice.” “Take over, Brute.”
Debate was not the Brute’s forte. He struck without warning, teasing the leader so that he dropped twitching to the paving stones. Simultaneously, he drove the bunched fingers of his left hand into the brisket of the man’s companion, doubling him over. Méarana, in a catlike crouch, swiped her knife at the man before her, causing him to leap backward for the sake of his intestines. The other Terran wimpered.
Two down, thought the Brute, only eighteen to go. Méarana might be able to knife two of them if she would not hold herself back. But they would not prevail, even if the other Terran, quaking beside him, helped. He saw bats hefted in the crowd and caught the glint of at least one pellet gun. Well, it was fun for a while. He teased a second youth, but the field only numbed the yngling’s left side.
A shot rang out.
The Brute started, felt no pain, and turned in panic toward Méarana. No! Not her!
But the harper, too, was unhurt. The’ Loonie mob had frozen at the gunshot. Habituated the Preeshdad’ Loons might be to violence, but few there were who embraced it from the sharp end.
A voice boomed from the darkened alleyway on the left. “Throw down your weapons! You are surrounded!” And he was seconded by a voice from the right: “All men in place, Captain!”
The’ Loons looked to the blank rows of shuttered shops and tenements flanking them on either side of the lane. Did they see shadows moving into place? “The coffer riot cops?” “Damn mover regime…” “Where’d they come from?” Then someone in the middle of the mob hollered, “Let’s get out of here!” And with that cry, they broke and scattered down Tchilbebber Lane to the Beachfront Highway.
The Terran fell to his knees and began to kiss Donovan’s fingers and the hem of his tunic, calling him his savior and summoning blessings from the gods. The Brute nearly kicked him, but Donovan and the Fudir stopped him. Yeah, the Brute said bitterly, it’s “Brute, save us,” when you have it to do; but it’s “Brute, fall behind” when the drums stop rolling. He surrendered control before either Donovan or the Fudir had taken it back and the scarred man staggered. Méarana and the other Terran kept him upright, grabbing an arm apiece.
“That was close,” said Greystroke, dusting his hands and throwing down the bat he had taken from one of the gang members.
“They’re gone, Cu,” said O’Carroll, who stepped from the shadows on the right. “I followed them to the corner and they kept running. Are ye feelin’ none too well, Fudir?”
Greystroke stepped close to Donovan. “That was a fool play, Donovan. You could have gotten Méarana hurt! What possessed you to face down a lynch mob?”
The other Terran handed Donovan back his teaser and began to brush at and straighten Donovan’s clothing. The scarred man batted his hands away. “Call it a dislike of lynching,” he told the Hound. “Especially of Terrans.”
“This-man much arul,” the Terran said to Greystroke. “Save poor Billy Chins from akamiyam. From impiety and wickedness. He the shower of blessing, the gracious one. Me atangku him. Always his khitmugar.”
Donovan groaned. “Atangku? Is that the way it’s to be? Always a mooser, you?”
Greystroke had frowned in puzzlement before turning to Méarana. “It might be best if you take passage with us off planet.”
“We’d be glad to have you,” said Hugh.
“You’re following Bridget ban’s route,” the Hound said. “From here she went to…” He flipped open his pocket brain. “…to Dancing Vrouw. You are in luck.”
“I usually am,” said Donovan, “but the question is whether it’s good luck or bad.”
Hugh chuckled, and Greystroke spread his hands. “We can take you there. Rinty and I have business on Yubeq, and Dancing Vrouw is along the way.”
Donovan did not miss a beat. “Are you still looking to
arrest me?”
Greystroke shook his head. “No.”
“Then, I guess you’re not the officious little prig you used to be.”
Greystroke smiled. “And you aren’t the wheedling, lying little scrambler you once were.”
“Good. Then we can both drink to the men we’ve become.” He and the Hound locked gazes.
Hugh sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, looking into the depths of the darkened lane. “I rather liked the lying little scrambler, myself.”
AN AISTEAR
There is a Terran custom called atangku. The term means something like “obey, be submissive,” with overtones of “be contained in another.” It means, in short, “to moose.” The practical form it takes is that saving another’s life is much like taking it, for the savior takes ownership of the life and the one saved devotes himself thereafter to paying rent. It is thus that Donovan has acquired, in the person of Billy Chins, his very own servant.
The scarred man is not pleased with this turn of events. What need has he of the burdens of ownership? Yet, when he attempts to dismiss Billy, the man falls to his knees on the bricks of Tchilbebber Lane. If the Beloved of Heaven will not have him, his life is worthless and his only recourse is to destroy it!
This strikes Little Hugh as a bit excessive; but Donovan gauges the promise meant, and a part of his mind entertains dismissal for no better reason than to exercise such power. To hold another man’s life in one’s hand is an intoxicating thing; and the temptation is correspondingly strong to take a good stiff drink. Donovan studies the soft pendulous lips, the basset eyes. A man of little use in a fight; but perhaps other talents lie buried.
“Lady Harp be go offworld,” he warns the man. “No kambak Harpaloon.”
“No like kambak here.” And Billy takes the sandals from his feet and claps the dust from their soles. “I go with thee, hutt, hutt. I serve the Child of Wonder. I cook. I wash your clothes. I unfasten your sandal straps. You never unplis of Billy Chins. You see.”
Up Jim River Page 14