by Jo Clayton
“Thanks.” She shut the door, looked around. There was a sleek black flickit on the pad, a ship’s flit beside it. She frowned, walked over to the flit, nodded. That girl, Shadith. Tick’s Blood, was that a setup? She shivered, feeling trapped and loathing it, banged her fist against the side of the flit, shivered again, with rage this time. Impatient with herself, she shoved away her apprehension and went striding off along the metaled pathway. There was no time for this nonsense; she was here, she’d know what she needed to do once she met the man. Everything else was unimportant. Aslan, ayyy, three years gone, she could be dead, no! I won’t think that, she’s a survivor, she let herself be trapped, but killed? No!
2
She followed a small floating serviteur along a hallway; past several closed doors. The wood of the walls and ceiling had a deep shimmering glow, the grain was a subtle calligraphy flowing like music under the buttery shine of lightberries on golden bronze stalks. She narrowed her eyes at the serviteur, eased closer to the leftside wall, drew her fingers along the wood. After a few steps she dropped her hand and walked faster.
The serviteur led her into a room full of light, gray light from the gathering storm, spidery with distant lightning, a room without corners, irregularly shaped with a bite out of one side where the tower was. Huge windows ran from floor to ceiling, a ceiling more than ten meters high with cathedral beams a distant richness of texture and line; polarizing glass in them, pale now, the windows looked out across the valley or up toward the mountain’s peak. Chairs were clustered about these windows, comfortable, leather covered, ancient design. Trays on the floor, remnants of today’s noon meal congealing on plates and bowls. Books and papers piled haphazardly about, drifts of them next to the chairs. Set into the wall opposite the door there was a huge fireplace meant to take logs, not limbs or splits, a table in front of it littered with several pieces of wood and some gouges, chips and curls of wood scattered about, a glass with a sticky residue coating the sides and hardening in the bottom, a bowl of fruit with a half-eaten apple turning brown, a tea tray with a plain pot and drinking bowls.
Tea set, windows, walls, chairs, the nubbly dark green rug on the floor, stone and wood sculptures scattered about, tapestries, paintings-from the moment she came through the outer door, she’d been bombarded with texture and color; that said something about the man, she wasn’t quite sure what.
Also clutter. She looked around and silently sneered at the debris of living in what might have been an elegant room. He had serviteurs, he wouldn’t have to lift a finger to clean up after himself once he’d properly programmed them, that he didn’t could mean he was comfortable with this mess, maybe even preferred it to order. Cluttery mind. Cutesy mind. Quale’s Nest. She began to feel a little sick.
He came into the room followed by the young girl who may or may not have rescued her.
A tall man. Thick black hair, a streak of white running through it, extending the line of a scar which touched his eyebrow with a dot of white, skimmed past his eye and swung down to the corner of his mouth. Pale gray-green eyes, droopy eyelids, nose like a predator’s beak, mustache, beard, both clipped short. Broad shoulders, long arms, a loose, easy body. Easy body, easy man, if you left him alone, at least that was her first response to him. He wore scuffed old sandals with bronze buckles, heavy tan trousers, cut off above the knees, a shirt made from the same cloth, sleeves ripped out. Faded, softer than velvet after many washings, wrinkle on wrinkle, frayed at the seams and edges. Unimpressive, she told herself. Unprofessional. She didn’t believe it. He moved like a man comfortable in his body, not an athlete or a dancer, nothing so self-conscious, just one who expected it to do whatever he required of it without fuss or lagging.
He crossed to the bulge of the tower, looked over his shoulder at her. “Come,” he said and palmed open the entrance to a lift tube. “My office is the tower’s top floor.”
3
At least the office was neat. He gestured to a tupple chair hanging soft and shapeless beside a tall window, waited until she was seated before rounding the desk and settling himself. “A moment,” he said, “there’s some business I have to finish.”
He beckoned Shadith to him, tipped up a sensor plate, touched a sound barrier between Adelaar and them. He looked up at the girl, raised a brow, said something, his mouth blurring so Adelaar couldn’t read it. Shadith smiled, made a quick curving gesture with one hand, spoke rapidly, leaned on his shoulder as he worked the sensor plate. Adelaar watched his hands. They moved with the controlled clumsiness of a craftsman, no flash to them, easy, slow, sure. Long scarred fingers, tapering to spatulate tips, nails cut short, clean but scratched, he didn’t take care of his hands. Too bad. They were the best part of him as far she was concerned. She sighed and looked away. The storm had broken outside, rain streaked the window glass. The valley was green swept with silver, the river cloud-black and rain-silver. Soundless rain, the office was too insulated from the outside to let the patter through. Too bad. Still, the storm gave the room a cozy feel, especially when she looked around again and saw the girl was gone, ambiguous uncertain figure that reminded Adelaar how little real control she had over events.
Quale leaned forward, forearms on the desktop (another of Telffer’s jewel woods), hands clasped, watching her, waiting for her to tell him what she wanted from him.
She touched the controls and brought the tupple chair humming closer to the desk, slipped the diCarx from her belt, laid it in front of him. “Adelaar aici Arash. Droom. In the Hegger Combine.”
He collected the diCarx and fed it into the Evaluator, glanced at the plate. “Ah. Adelaris Security Systems. He looked up, his eyes laughing. “I’ve heard about you, never could afford you.”
She lifted a hand, let it fall. “I have a daughter,” she said. “Tenured Associate. University. Xenoethnologist. Awarded a Grant, permission to study the Unntoualar on Kavelda Styernna. Framed. Torture of a subject. Perversion. Sentenced, death. Sentence commuted to thirty years Contract Labor. Bolodo Neyuregg Ltd. the Contractor. I want her out of that. What’s it going to cost me?”
“Depends on where she is. Do you know that?”
“No. I know how to find out. It took me more than three years to get that far.”
“Those men Shadith stunned, the Directory placed them. Looks like you annoyed Bolodo sometime during those three years and they managed to ID you. Shame, that.” He drew his thumb along his bearded jawline, ruffling the short black hair. “They’re not too worried yet, or they’d ’ve sent pros instead of depending on local talent.” The ends of his mustache lifted, subsided, a shadowed smile. “Assuming there’s something they’re twitchy about that involves your daughter. Otherwise they’d ignore you. It doesn’t cost them anything if you peel her loose, they’ve got their fee. Looks to me like Bolodo’s up to something that’d give them big trouble if it came out. Give us trouble if they think we’re getting close. Hmm.” He sat back, his eyes fixed on her face. “You know what it is. No? You’ve got some idea?”
“Yes.”
He lifted a brow. “Terse.”
“So?”
“Hmm.” His eyelids drooped until his eyes were slits, he brushed the tip of his forefinger slowly back and forth across his mustache as he thought that over. After a moment he leaned forward, tapped in a code that brought a large viewplate unfolding from a slot in the desk top. “Kink,” he said, “Kumari, Pels, Conference.” He looked up. “Bring your chair round here,” he told Adelaar, “but keep your mouth shut, if you don’t mind, unless you’re asked something.”
The plate split into three cells. Furry cuddly type with twitchy ears set high on its head. She didn’t know the species. Milkglass maiden, pale hair thick and silky, pale skin, pale gray eyes cool and intelligent. Hadn’t come across that kind either, interesting. Ropy coils, clusters of succulent black eyes, colored pulse patches, hairy exoskeleton, Sikkul Paems, them she knew. Adult with a yearling bud crouching by ves head. Quale’s Crew?
“
Bolodo Neyuregg,” Quale said. “You heard. We start this thing, we’d better be prepared to dodge a lot.”
What’s this? Adelaar thought, Tick’s Blood, do I have to sell all of them? Multiple maledictions on my miserable luck, I hadn’t planned on letting any of this out. Not until after we closed the deal anyway. Why did that girl have to be tied up with him?
The milkglass maiden opened her pale pink mouth (what species? not one of the cousin races, must be some backwater bunch that never made space). “Snatching.” She had a husky purring voice, more life in that than in her face. “Slaving undisguised. What else. Considering what Jaszaca ti Vnok told us.” Her voice was cool, her cool eyes distant. “Spotchals has to suspect something chancy is going on, but they won’t press it as long as no one rubs Spotchallix noses in the mess. I’d say the trade is small but enormously profitable, otherwise Bolodo wouldn’t risk it. They’ve got a strong base in Spotchals, but they’ve got to be careful; they own some pols and some career functionaries; even so, they’ve got potential for problems, remember?”
The fuzzy one lifted a black lip, exposed a yellowed tearing tooth four centimeters long (carnivore, she thought, deceptive little thing). “Yeah, I was in this bar the night before we left. Couple of Bolodo security come in. Hunh. One minute you wouldn’t ’ve noticed a grenade go off in your lap, next you could hear your hair grow. Spotchallix, they like the taxes Bolodo pays, but they hold their noses when they hear the name. If it came out Bolodo was slaving, I’d give them a year at most before they were gone.
Quale brushed at his mustache, nodded. (Why doesn’t he just ask? Is this meant to impress me? Pompous idiot. Oh god, how long do I have to sit here keeping my face straight?) “Kinok,” he said, “you know them the hard way, what do you think?”
The bud Kahat skittered along a heavy tentacle, perched on the voice box; ves umbilical pulsed, ves hairfine digits manipulated the minute sensorboard.
“They are very careful.” The synthesized voice was a sweetly musical tenor, quietly absurd (a Paem playing gentle jokes on vesself, the heavens should open). “They hold records on the meat back to creation or as close as they can get. Keep it legal, keep the record trail clean, if there’s anything gray, wash it white or bury it deep. Ve-who-speaks was sold and sold again without diminishing ves debt one ounce gold, they charge for air, they charge for transport, food, sewage removal, soilage, anything they can imagine and their imaginations are vast. Ve-who-speaks must agree with Kumari; the profit is beyond conjecture great to tempt Bolodo across the line. Ve-who-speaks also believes very few, an inner circle of execs, know of this operation and this circle will not allow information about it to escape their hands; even their nervousness they will clutch tight to their bosoms; for beings who suspect trouble such urgency would be damning. Ve-who-speaks thinks that is why aici Arash has escaped serious difficulty till now. This is speculation, Swar, errors are likely. Say it is this way, in her search for her daughter, aici Arash leaves traces behind that are used to ID her after she is gone; if such happened before she went, she would be dead. So the circle knows her name, connects her with her daughter, realizes her daughter is involved with the secret thing. They do not know precisely what she has discovered, but they must fear she had enough to go looking and that is dangerous. They send word to their stringers to locate and remove her as a matter of swatting a nuisance, no great urgency in it, only a chance for an ambitious outerling to earn company points. They woo Luck but will not trust Her. Ve-who-speaks believes they are now organizing something more serious. Ve-who-speaks says deal with aici Arash, it is no longer possible to stand aside.” The bud Kahat went still, Kinok turned his eye clusters from the screen, turned them back, jolted Kahat into renewed activity. “Shadow comes. Byol tok, Swar. Consider.”
The cell went dark.
Kumari nodded. “I agree. Active or passive, we’re in it. I prefer to be paid for working.”
Pels said nothing, showed his teeth in a feral grin that unfortunately made him look like a naughty cub.
Quale tapped off the screen, sent it folding into the desk, turned to face Adelaar. “You pay fuel and reasonable expenses. That is not negotiable. My base fee is fifty thousand Helvetian gelders. You being Adelaris, I have a proposition. Ten thousand only, escrowed, the rest I’ll take in trade, Adelaris systems for my house and my ship, supposing we come out of this with skins intact and brain in working order.”
“Generous, I don’t think. Two thousand, house or ship, not both.”
“Mmmh, think of it as a professional discount. The ship gets a complete workover, the house an appraisal with suggestions for improvement, I do the actual work. Five thousand gelders.”
“Three thousand.”
“Done. You like storms?”
“What?”
“Storms.” He waved a hand at the window where the rain was sheeting across the glass.
She looked from him to the shifting silvery streaks. “I suppose I do. As long as it’s not raining down my neck.”
“Then we’ll have tea in the garden.” He came out of his chair with that loose ease that continued to stir things in her she didn’t want stirred; she didn’t like him, he was too chaotic and cluttered for her taste, too wild, undisciplined, a weed, too young. She kept thinking of negatives, but as she gave him her hand and he lifted her from the clinging tupple chair, they kept fading on her. “A serviteur will take you there,” he said, “if you don’t mind. I’ll start shutting the house down, be with you shortly. Pels and Kumari are there, ask them anything you want. We’ll be leaving soon as the rain quits.” He walked with her to the tube, opened it for her, twitched his mustache at her as she stepped silently into the tube. Damn the man, he had to know the effect he had on women. That creature Kumari, his leman?
The serviteur was waiting for her in the living room; the debris from the meal was gone, but the rest of the clutter was untouched, was likely to stay untouched for however long it took to find Aslan. Shaking her head, she followed the small bot as it hummed away, gliding a meter off the floor.
4
Pels and Kumari sat at a table in an open structure of stressed wood molded into a round of arches with a circular roof of roughcut shakes. Its floor was raised shoulder high off the grass and looked out over scattered beds of brilliantly colored flowers and convoluted, variously textured banks of fern. The deflector field shunted aside the rain as the clouds boiled black and wild overhead and lightning walked along the valley floor some distance below the house. Adelaar smiled with pleasure as she heard the hoom of the wind, the steady hiss of the rain, the crack of thunder and lightning, Quale said the storms were spectacular; that was rather an understatement. She climbed the steps, gave Pels and Kumari a nod, a stiff impersonal smile, and settled into the chair Kumari pulled out for her. “Quale said something about closing down the house.”
Up close Kumari looked less human; her skin was white and translucent as milkglass (milkglass maiden) and delicately scaled, no eyebrows, her nose was a low knife blade slightly turned up at the tip with narrow nostrils, small mouth a pale pale bluish pink, narrow jaw, pointed chin; she was narrow and angular as a primitive sculpture, her hands were extravagantly long and thin; there was a faint drag on her flesh that suggested she’d been born and reared on a lighter world than this. “He means we’ll probably get away clean, but Bolodo is apt to slag the place out of sheer snittishness. He’s setting the automatics. May work, may not, depends on what they send.”
“Planetaries won’t keep them out?”
“What planetaries?”
“Oh.” Adelaar looked round. “Then why…”
“Don’t worry about it.” Kumari made an odd little sound, a rattling hiss that Adelaar eventually interpreted as laughter. “He spent half a dozen years building the place, he was worse than a wounded auglauk when he had to admit it was finished. He’s been walking around muttering to himself about redoing this or that, but he can’t convince himself he could do better; if Bolodo levels
it, he’ll have the fun of rebuilding. Right, Pels?”
The furry person produced a rumbling chuckle. “Improve his temper no end.”
Adelaar watched the storm a while; she was intensely curious about these two, but couldn’t in courtesy ask for their life histories; courtesy aside, they were not likely to bare their souls for her, a stranger and a mere client. “You’re Quale’s Crew?”
Pels answered her. “Two thirds…”
Kumari broke in, “One half. You’re forgetting Kahat.”
“Shoosh, Kri, Kahat? That’s the third Kahat ves had since ve came.” He dug into his face fur with short black claws that looked as formidable as his tearing teeth, explained to Adelaar what he meant. “Kinok eats the current Kahat every two years when the bud’s about to complete separation. Sacrifice to the drives, ve says. You know Sikkul Paems?”
“I know.”
“Me, I’m com off and Kumari, she’s Ship’s Mom; she knows everything about everything.”
“Fool!” Kumari patted him on the cheek. “Cuteness has warped your pea brain.”
He growled at her, fell silent as a pair of serviteurs came humming up with large trays. Spice tea, crisp wafers, small glass bowls with sections of local fruit, glass skewers to eat them with. The tea service was native clay, rough glazed, a warm dark brown with hints of rust and a deep blue shadow where the glaze was smooth, the drinking bowls generous with a restrained elegance of form.
Adelaar lifted one of the bowls, cupped it in her hand, enjoying its weight and texture. “Local?”
“One of my neighbors downstream, she’s got a patch of kaolin she’s been working for the past thirty years.” Quale came through an arch and dropped into the fourth chair. “Do anything for thirty years and you tend to get good at it. Pour for us, Kumari.”