And then, one day a ship that sailed no ocean drifted down from the skies. That something so massive could float like a leaf was a wonder in itself, and Teodorq found himself asking, “How do they do that?” It shamed him that the proud men of Varucciyam abased themselves before these overskymen. Had not he, Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Iron-Arm, stood before the squalid wonders of the “encampment” of New Cuffy, knowing that he stood before that which his own people could not build? And yet he had stood before it. He had not knelt or bowed or banged his forehead on the ground. That a man commands steel or fire made a man more dangerous, but it did not make him more of a man. Greed and pride and, yes, love and honor were to be found among all: among the plainsmen and the Varucciyamen, among the Great States and even among the feral tribes of the Ice Mountains.
And so it was with an eye practiced on a score of cultures that he had identified among the strange-garbed men of the sky-ship the “chief of the boat.” This man understood the speech of the Varucciyamen, for this was not the first such visit, and Teodorq approached him and became once again a “landsman” on a new sort of “sailing ship.”
And there he found his understanding blunted at last. The gulf that separated the overskymen from even the Varucciyamen was wider than the gulf of the Grand Crevasse that split the Wondering Mountains of Eastern Bellophor. Yet there were certain tasks that wanted less the How than the simple What. What this button did could be learned. How it did so was better left to the shamans.
Afterward he thought, in a moment of self-awareness, that he had moved so easily with the overskymen because he had not come to them with the same conceit as the Varucciyamen. He had seen, time and again in his wanderings, that none could count themselves the greatest of all. Conceit he had; but it was conceit in himself as a man, and not in his mastery of this tool or that weapon. The proud cities of the southeast, looking far and wide, had found no rival to their greatness. To learn their true place in “the Spiral Arm” had been a crushing blow and made of a once-proud people a race of lackeys.
And so Theodorq listened to the science-wallah aboard the Blankets and Beads with a practiced and a practical ear, if not with an ear tuned to full understanding. He heard the Whats and dismissed the Hows. He suspected there was more of the latter in the explanation than was strictly needed. Sofwari was one of those who enjoyed the mystification of others. It was common among the physically weak to seek their victories on other fields. For any man must feel that he excels at some one thing, and the more he fails in other endeavors, the more he elevates the one in which he does not.
Yet Teodorq detected no malice in the man, and wondered if he chattered on not to show off his kennings but simply because he took such joy in them that he could not conceive that others did not.
Teodorq understood maps, and the holographic projections that Sofwari showed them were only another sort. That the color gradients indicated the spread of certain clans from their points of origin he accepted on faith. In his own land, the migrations of the clans were recorded in the Great Lays and sometimes one came across a mountain or a river or a rock formation remembered from a Lay and would feel one’s heart swell at the thought of ancestors who had once roamed there.
“But what was it that my mother found so interesting in these maps?” Lady Harp asked the wallah.
Sofwari turned the holostage toward her. Everyone could see, except Lady Harp, that the wallah was much taken with her. “It was the anomaly,” he said. “The clan-mother I call ‘Zhaamileey.’ You see, the little thread shapes change over time for reasons that are not entirely clear. The rate differs from world to world, but for my purposes it only mattered that that between-world variation was small and randomly distributed. Then it could be treated as a constant for all practical purposes.”
Teodorq made “get on with it” motions and was none too subtle about it.
“As you see,” he told them in case they could not see, “this is a very old clade. Its most recent common mother—or DCM in Gaelactic—lived seventy-eight hundreds of years before present.”
Lady Harp raised her eyebrows. “Which places her before the Cleansing…”
“Yes, but that is not the anomaly. Zhaamileey is in the wrong part of the sky. Her descendants are mostly on Harpaloon, not in the Old Planets or the Jen-jen. The marker was first seen among scattered creole descendants on Cuddalore and New Shangdong, those with ancestors among the aboriginal’ Loons. That was one reason to visit Harpaloon. The other was that the flow of colonists from all over the Arm makes her a wonderful sampling point.”
“How do you explain the anomaly?” asked the harper.
Sofwari flipped a hand. “Two possibilities. Harpaloon is where Zhaamileey’s descendants first appeared; or it is where they last appear. As for the first, Those of Name scattered our ancestors far and wide. Harpaloon may have been scattered a little bit farther. But the second is the more likely explanation. The clan of Zhaamileey was once more widespread, but died out across most of the Periphery, so that the’ Loons are a remnant, not an origin.”
“Interesting…But there is a third possibility.”
“So your mother said.” Sofwari smiled in a kindly-meant manner and placed his hand over hers. Teodorq noted how the harper allowed it for a moment before slipping out. “One means no offense, of course, but your mother was not a science-wallah. Like many women, she was prone to romantic notions. She thought the anomalous pattern had to do with an old Commonwealth fable.”
“The Treasure Fleet,” said Lady Harp.
Sofwari bobbed his head side to side. “Yes. I had never heard of it; but she told me it was a well-known children’s tale when she had been ‘in barracks.’ But archeology must be based on facts, not romances. One may as well believe in Babylonia or California or the Snowdrift Ride of Christopher Chu.”
“California…,” Méarana suggested.
“A fabled land of eternal youth, of gods and goddesses, where the streets were paved with stars.” Sofwari chuckled and leaned toward the harper, as if to impart a confidence. “But the truth of it is that it is only a nebula off on the edge of Old Commonwealth space.”
“Is there a bright, hot, blue star nearby?” the harper asked. “Like the one at Sapphire Point?”
Sofwari wagged his hands ulta-pulta. “I don’t know. Other science-wallahs specialize in cataloging stars. Besides, it’s over in the Confederation.”
The harper sang softly a capella,
“Away, away on the Rigel Run,
And off through California.”
Sofwari sighed. “A science-wallah does not leap ahead of the facts, let alone for the sake of a song.”
Teodorq chuckled and the other three turned to him. “Well enough, Sofwari,” he said. “If our Bridget ban leaped ahead of the facts, yet here we are, tiptoeing after.”
JHALA (DRUT)
In all her years knocking about the Periphery, Captain Maggie Barnes of the trade ship Blankets and Beads had encountered a great many irritations and not a few outrages. Experience had taught her that most could be dealt with by patience. To invest much worry was pointless, because the return on that investment was usually more worries. Other problems were like fungus. If you didn’t sanitize right away, they just grew worse. Or “wusser ‘n’ wusser,” as they used to say when she had been growing up on Megranome.
But what to make of this which Pepper had dumped into her now, alas, more ample lap?
She had been in her dayroom reviewing manifests with her First Officer when Mart Pepper brought in a bit of supercargo who claimed the authority to commandeer her ship. She studied the passenger’s bona fides, and turned to First Officer ad-Din. “It seems to be a legitimate Kennel chit, D.Z.”
The First Officer’s full name was Dalapathi Zitharthan ad-Din, but to the joy of his shipmates, he would answer to his initials. He tugged at his beard. “Bumboat drops back to the Gat in a half-hora,” he said thoughtfully. “Plenty of empty space on it for unwanted passengers. Otherwise�
��Our first stop is Ākramaņapīchē. Folks marooned there don’t usually find their way back to the League.”
Barnes studied the chit more thoroughly. Its glow had died, of course, when she had taken it in hand; but it had been glowing. She had never heard of a Kennel chit being successfully counterfeited, but that did not mean it could not be done.
“This only means yuh have an unlimited expense account,” she told her guest. “It means yuh can afford my ship. Don’t mean yuh can have it.” She handed the chit back and noted how it resumed its glow. Tag-alongs glowed when you were in the corridors that activated them. There was no way for them to recognize who held them. That bit of Kennel craft was closely guarded indeed.
Reluctantly, she concluded that this Donovan was exactly what he pretended to be: a “special agent” of the Kennel. The next question was what real authority a “special agent” might possess. “We’ll gladly afford yuh passage to Enjrun. We was plannin’ to stop there, anyways.”
“We know,” Donovan replied. “We checked with your owners at Chandler House before the bumboat rose.”
We?
“The owners would have been asleep at that hour,” D.Z. pointed out.
“We woke them.”
“That why the bumboat was late?” Barnes was impressed with the throw-weight this indicated, but she did not let it show in her face. It might only show that people wakened in the middle of the night could be buffaloed more easily.
Donovan handed over a hard document and a brain. “It is also why we have a charter.”
The paper declared “to all and sundry” that Gospender and Recket Trading Company of Gaznogav-Gatmander, had accepted charter of their trade ship, Blankets and Beads, to the Kennel of the High King, to be used as directed by Donovan buigh, their agent, or by Lucia Thompson, d.b.a., Méarana of Dangchao.
Barnes handed the brain to D.Z., who ran it throught the sanitizer before inserting it in the reader. She held the hard up to the light. That was the G&R watermark, all right, and she recognized Kimmy Gospender’s chop. She doubted that the brain would prove a forgery, either because it was not a forgery, or because it was a very good one. She handed the hard over to her First. “Verify this with Kimmy—voice-and-vision—before we hit the roads.”
“Damn it, Barnsey, I’ve got a bundle tied up in trade goods for Ākramaņapīchē and for Zhenghou Shuai, too! All on hire-purchase.”
“Argue with the owners, D.Z. Seems they done sold us out.” She folded her hands into a ball on her desktop. “And yuh ought to be aware, Donovan, that all my officers got money at risk on this here voyage. Legally, yuh can do what yuh want; but I thought yuh’d like to know.”
Meaning that, illegally, who knew what could happen? Donovan smiled engagingly, and Barnes thought for a moment that there was something very familiar about that smile. “We appreciate that, Captain; and were this not of the greatest importance to the League, we would have delayed the charter until we found a ship free. But we can sweeten the pot two ways. The first is that after you drop us on Enjrun you can finish your deals at Ōram and Zhenghou Shuai, and then come back and pick us up. Our business should be done by then. If not, we’ll dicker a little more. The Kennel can afford bonuses. Then you can do the rest of your trades—Kaņţu, Ākramaņapīchē, and the rest—on the trip back. So all you lose is a little time backtracking to Enjrun.”
“How d’ye know we won’t maroon you on Enjrun?” asked D.Z. “She isn’t the most pleasant world to be stuck on.” Barnes shot him an irritated look. She did not want to aggravate the situation.
“Oh, that’s simple enough,” Donovan said. “I took out an insurance policy. Copies of the charter went to Greystroke-Hound and his Pup, and to Zorba de la Susa on High Tara. All three of them have a very deep personal interest in this assignment.”
Barnes had started to say that she had never heard of this Greystroke, but stopped herself. De la Susa, she had heard of. “I thought Old Hound was retired.”
“He’ll come out of retirement just for this. It involves his goddaughter. We guarantee that Greystroke and Rinty will be waiting on Gatmander when Blankets and Beads returns and while they might not weep if we’re not aboard, they will very much want to know where Méarana of Dangchao is. Captain Barnes, we are not your enemy. A Confederate agent is on the same trail, and no one will be happy if he reaches the end of it before we do.”
“What’s the second sweetener?” Barnes asked. “I hope it’s sweeter than the threats.”
Donovan spread his hands. “We can hook you up with a consortium on Dancing Vrouw that’s interested in some of the goods you buy on Enjrun.”
Barnes cocked an eyebrow. A handshake with a Hansard Trading House was worth a great deal indeed. “What’s the arrangement?”
“We have one end of a 60:40 for all the parking stone jewelry you can get. You help us, we give you half of our end.”
Barnes pursed her lips and locked eyes with her Number One, who tipped his head ever so slightly to the right. “Half of the forty?” she asked.
“Half of the sixty.”
Both she and D.Z. relaxed. Assuming Donovan spoke sooth, anyone who could wangle the long side of a Hanseatic deal was a man of considerable wangle indeed, and one worth dealing with.
But she could not shake the notion that she had once known this man, and that the knowing had not been a happy occasion.
__________
Billy Chins was quite satisfied with how matters had fallen out. The mind-crippled Donovan had been discarded, leaving only the dimwitted Wild-man. Now he need only follow the harper, and glory and renown would be his—and perhaps power, as well, if he understood properly the hints thrown his way. It was not quite clear what the harper and the scarred man thought they had found, perhaps not even to them. Whatever it was, it had killed a Hound and that was something very puissant indeed. Fire from the sky could mean a great many things, and none of them sounded harmless.
But for now he remained a servant and “Spud” deViis, the ship’s steward, wanted to see him. It was not so bad to wait upon the harper, whom he had grown rather to like, but atangku could be an irritation. He followed his tag-along down corridors and through apses and bubbles and along a tube into Dome Five until he found the door placarded victualling and pressed the hoígh plate. The door slid open and…
…he stepped inside to find a bare room. He hesitated just the barest fraction. Had he come to the wrong place somehow? And in that fraction the door slid shut behind him.
Trapped! By whom? It was too subtle for the oaf Teodorq; too treacherous for the harper. He backed into a corner, drew his stiletto and waited, ready.
A door opened on the far side of the room, and through it stepped Donovan.
Billy flung his knife, but Donovan stepped aside and snatched it handle-first out of the air. He looked at it and smiled at Billy, and Billy did not like the smile. “You ought to be more careful, boy,” he said.
Billy fell to his knees. “Oh, sahb! Sahb! Billy fear such-much! Door close, and I think budmash trap for Billy. I think: does agent who follow behind us—catch up now long time? But master only make surprise poor Billy. Such joy to see sahb! O such-much sorrow, if knife find heart of master!”
Donovan shook his head. “I didn’t mean careful with the knife. I meant careful with your syntax.”
“Syntax, sahb?”
“In the hotel on Dancing Vrouw. You said ‘out to the Rift,’ and no Leaguesman would ever say that. We say ‘into the Rift.’ Only a Confederate thinks ‘out’ when he thinks of the Rift. For a long time, we couldn’t put the pieces together; but…Was drugging us your idea? We have you to thank, then.”
Billy began to sweat. This was a Donovan he had never seen before. “No, sahb! You wrong him, Billy. Billy Chins your khitmutgar!”
“Yes, that was slick, the way you arranged that. We don’t know if we would have seen through it even if we had been whole at the time.”
“No see-through! You protect Billy from’ Lo
onies! You ask me come with!”
“Clever, like I said. But I think that mob was bought and the whole thing staged. Art thou evenso a Terry?”
The last he had asked in the Tongue. Billy sighed and gave it up. “As thou sayest.”
Donovan grunted. “So. Many of the Folk wear the collar of our oppressor. The next question is: what are we to do with you? Did you kill that woman on Harpaloon?” He turned the knife casually in his hand.
“No. That was my shadow.”
“Ah.”
“Thou knowest the shadows. The Names send us out in pairs, with the second to act if the first fails. The second agent hath always the higher loyalty quotient.”
“Trust is not among Their many qualities,” Donovan said. “Yes, we know the system. We once had dealings with a second.”
“Ravn Olafsdottr.”
“Yes. Knowest thou her?”
“By reputation only. May I rise, O best one?”
Donovan gestured with the knife, and Billy struggled to his feet, in the course of which Donovan produced a dazer in place of the knife. “Now, explain thyself, worthless one. Much dependeth upon thine answers.”
Billy bowed slightly. “I was sent to question the woman at the park. She was what we call a myan zhan shibang—a sleep-agent…”
“We know Confederal Manjrin,” Donovan interrupted in that language before reverting to the Tongue. “Speak more quickly, that thy life be thereby prolonged.”
Billy bowed again. “I found her much alarmed over the harper’s visit. She desired instruction. I allayed her fears, and set out to learn what the visit portended. Easily did I find the Hound’s daughter and, Lo! She led me unto thee. I thought that thou hadst…overcome thine infirmity. But my shadow took offense that the jawharry had held a Hound’s package without reporting.”
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