by Jo Clayton
“I’m a cautious man, aici Arash. I won’t bet against a certainty.”
“Then you’d better get ready to blow the Dark Sister the moment I find her. I have a feeling we’re not going to have much time to maneuver.”
14
Adelaar circled round and round that problem, then went at it obliquely, running the numbers of the corporeal essence of the ship, its dimensions and locations, ignoring for the moment the visual map, only the numbers mattered, matching and crossmatching, tagging subtle disparities, replaying the visuals with the disparities corrected, tagging discontinuities that appeared when that was done. Aslan could see that her mother had only the tiniest of threads to pull on, but that seemed to be all she needed; when an hour had crept past, it was obvious she was going to unpick the knot. The farther she got the easier it seemed for her, it was almost as if she were beginning to read the minds of the programmers who’d done the original work. Funny, Mama didn’t get along at all well with Sarmaylen or his friends. My friends, Aslan thought, maybe that’s why. She’s as much an artist as they are, I thought so before, I know it now. That’s not just skill, that’s a leap of… of… I don’t know, whatever artists leap at. She sighed. My father’s a poet, my mother’s a… well, whatever. What the hell happened to me? Ah well, as Xalloor says, deary dai, we do what we can. Missing Xalloor, she strolled to the panels, drew water from a spigot. It’s a good thing Churri took off with Quale, she thought, he made Mama nervous. She sipped at the water. It was lukewarm and tasteless, but her mouth was still dry from the reading stint. First time I saw Mama fluttery like that. Ooh-yeha and forty hells, four months in the insplit going home, that is not going to be fun for anyone, not if she starts after Xalloor. She can be a bitch on wheels when she’s jealous. Aslan wrinkled her nose as her mind flipped back to the time when she was fifteen and the boy she was sneaking out to see and what happened when Mama caught them. Deary dai, indeed.
She gulped the rest of the water and moved over to watch Pels work. His eyes flicked in an unceasing round from screen to screen to screen; the lifepod sector drawn in green lines was on one with an inset showing the Hordar packing the crew into the pods, another had a map of the Palace, the city, the landing field, on the third there was a map of the system with pinpoints of yellow light converging on the whitepoint that was them, or so she assumed. She touched his shoulder. “Are those something we should be worrying about?”
His ears twitched. “Grand Sech has been trying to talk to someone up here the past hour. Those are the stingers heading at us.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Huh?”
“It’ll be at least an hour before they’re close enough to be a bother. Until then there’s no point. Besides, we won’t be able to get outside the skin before Adelaar’s finished over there. She going to be much longer?”
“I don’t know, I don’t operate in those realms.”
“Me either, I used to think I was good, but she’s a witch.”
“She’s never let me watch her work before. I don’t know why.”
“Huh.” He dug his claws into his neck fur, scowled at the pod area. “Almost ready to pop ’em. Igsala poong! That Proggerdi. We can’t sit around sucking our toes or he’ll stick a torp up our collective arse.”
Aslan glanced at her mother, grinned. “Right on cue,” she murmured.
Adelaar flung her arms up, wriggled in the chair, yawned. “Got it,” she said. “Where’s Quale?”
“Doing what you told him, getting ready to blow the clone,” Pels said. “The Grand Sech is birthing fidgets because he can’t get through up here; he sent stingers to see what’s going on. They can’t burn a way in, but unless I remember wrong, more than one of them will have overrides on the lockseals.”
“Transfer the trace here.” She watched the pinlights creep for a moment, sniffed, then began playing with the pad… “I’ll let them think they are in control till they’re close enough…” she broke off, concentrated for a moment, “to Tairanna, then all their little popbuggies will peel off and put them down where they’ll have a lot of privacy and time to contemplate their sins.” She sat back, yawned again, laced her fingers across her stomach and examined her thumbnails. “I think we ought to let him hear us.” She tilted her head back, smiled at Aslan. “Don’t you think we owe him a little sweat?”
“No.” Aslan sighed. “It gives him too much time to knife us, it’s safer with him dead.”
Adelaar laughed at her. “That’s my little pacifist.”
“All right, make it the clone dead first.”
“Ruin my mood, mmh?” Adelaar straightened. “Fetch my kit over, will you, Lan? I left it by the door there. I might as well use this time to work on the sun-intercept-and a few other notions I’ve had… um-Pels, have the locals finished loading the crew?”
“Just about, why?”
“Tell them I’m going to start launching the pods. The stingers won’t bother them. Then you get hold of the Hanifa and have her order her people back on the tug. When we leave, we don’t want any snags or strays.” She looked over her shoulder at Aslan, eyes bluer than blue and guileless. “Keep the customers happy,” she murmured. “Dead locals don’t trade rosepearls for security systems.”
Aslan wrinkled her nose but said nothing; she wasn’t about to be drawn into that ancient argument. She brought the pack to her mother, then went to stand beside the door, looking out into that absurdly oversized antechamber. Briefly she wondered where Parnalee was and if he suspected he was being out-thought and out-engineered. At least, she hoped he was. The Bridge was empty except for Pels and Adelaar. And her, of course. Elmas and her isyas were carrying their dead to the tug hold and getting them stowed for the trip home. Xalloor was in the tug too, running the wounded through the autodoc, if she’d managed to convince the Hanifa it wasn’t a subtle attempt at assassination. Aslan pressed her lips over a giggle. There’s a product for you, Mama, say the doc performs in its usual fashion. Quale was a long time gone. What was happening down there in the armory? If he couldn’t get in, he’d have been back before this. He should have taken Pels with him; Churri was there, but what use was he? Mama used to tell me when I did something dumb with my pc that I was just like my father, clumsy as a tantser calf. Jamber Fausse and his lot are there; they’re no use, except as strong backs if something needs shifting and for standing guard. I hope they are standing guard. He should have taken Pels. Why isn’t he back yet? Maybe they’re all dead. We can’t look round the ship without breaking Mama’s blocks. Aslan sighed. There was no point standing at the doorway like some stupid chatelaine waiting for her lord to get back from the wars. She grimaced at the image. Oooh-yeha, Lan, you’re worse than a teener reading sublimated sex books. Face it, woman, he’s done everything but come right out and tell you he’s not interested. I wonder why? He’s hetero and I’m not a hag. T’k. She ran fingers through her hair, pushed it off her face. This isn’t getting me anywhere. She walked with quick nervous steps to the station where Pels was working.
Adelaar had turned the launching of the pods over to him while she busied herself doing enigmatic things to the Brain. The dataflow was so quick and so esoteric it gave Aslan a headache. Much more satisfying to watch the pods blow, at least she knew what was happening, the ship’s crew including all its Huvveds were on their way to Tassalga for a bit of involuntary exile. Permanent exile, if the Huvveds had any sense. The way feeling was running among the Hordar, they could end on the chopping block if they got back to Tairanna. The inset showed that most of the locals had cleared out of the loading area; the few left were clearing up odds and ends and loading these on one of the pallets. She recognized Akkin Siddaki and his protйgй the boy thief from gul Brindar, Kanlan Gercik and two of her students from the Mines. The rest must be settling down in the tug. It’s almost over. All we have to do is blow the clone. Then we leave. Then we go home. Then I stir up a mess of trouble for those foul and loathsome
Oligarchs. She savored her triumph. They sold me into slavery; they’re as guilty as Bolodo. What a lovely thought. I suppose they’ll claim they had a legitimate contract with Bolodo. Let them try it. University can field a team of ethicists and lawyers that’ll wipe their faces in their own muck till they choked on the stink. And the Chancellors will authorize and organize the team without their usual fuss and obfuscation, not for me, for the Unntoualar. They mean it, dump on him who says anything not my species is my prey, dump it deep and stinking. They’ll go after those Oligarchs with everything they can throw at them. It surely will not hurt my tenure standing that they can throw me at them too. Hmmp. Like Quale says, I’m lagniappe. I wish he’d get back.
15
When the sound from the Bridge cut off, Parnalee stirred drowsily; the brandy was smooth and rather sweet, he’d swallowed more of it than was good for him. His mind was swimming, he had to concentrate to think. “Busy bitch,” he muttered, “You and your treacherous daughter, you’re a set.” He slapped at his face, felt his stomach spasm. “Fool!” He got to his feet, forced back a surge of nausea and by an effort of will whipped mind and body into a semblance of order. The sisterBrain was hobbled until he got rid of the mainBrain. “The point is,” he told himself, “who’s left out in the corridors? How far have they got in the clearance?”
He lowered himself into the chair and swiveled to face the console. “She shut me out of the Bridge, I doubt she could…” His conversation with himself died away as he concentrated on what he was doing.
The sound-search swept through the ship, collecting a series of squeaks and rattles, mechanical hums, the sough of air. Dead sounds. Empty echoes. In the armory, voices, clinks, the scuff of feet, the complex of sounds remotes made when they were forced to the limits of their capacity. Parnalee smiled. “Dealing in armaments now, hmm, Quale? When I get back Outside and spread word around of your scavenging efforts, you’re going to have a problem or two.” Satisfied that he knew what the man was doing and why, he went on with the search.
Nothing. Nothing. Pod bays, the readings showed them empty. “Busy busy,” he murmured. “Good little housekeeper, got your cleaning finished, have you?” He did a more intensive sweep, but there was no evidence of any life forms in the area. Lifter locks. Yes, the tug was in Three. Not much sound in there, the ghosts of voices; he fiddled with the controls, focused on the tug’s lock which seemed to be open, fulminating as he did so against the lack of visuals; he depended very much on his eyes and had trouble imaging from sounds. He began recording the voices; he couldn’t make out the words, they were too broken, but the equipment here was good enough to reconstitute them when he was ready-if he decided he needed to know what was being said, which wasn’t likely, he had other, more important things to do.
The corridors were clean. It was time to move. He thumbed out three stimtabs, tossed them down his throat and followed them with a gulp of stale, lukewarm water from the spigot; he’d have preferred a final swallow of brandy but he had enough alcohol in him. Praise Omphalos it should be mostly absorbed by now. Adding more wouldn’t merely be stupid, it could even be fatal.
He checked the torp to make sure it was strapped firmly down, then went meticulously through one last test of its triggering circuits. The torp was old, not so old as the ship, but old enough to have acquired a degree of fragility inappropriate to a bomb, though it was sufficiently intact to perform its function without going off prematurely as long as he treated it gently as an egg about to hatch while he was moving it. He toed on the lift field of the dolly and guided it toward the interface exit. Since he couldn’t go near the tube without alerting that woman, he had to travel the service-ways. It was going to be a long slow trip, but there wasn’t anyone to threaten him now and he didn’t have to go near the Bridge. The mainBrain lived inside a sphere of collapsed matter close to the heart of the ship; theoretically, only the Captain had access to its coordinates; even the techs who serviced it had no idea where they were; they tubed there and back, the tubeflow coordinates set by the Bright Sister when she was commanded to do so by the Captain.
Parnalee smiled with drowsy contentment as he climbed on the dolly and settled himself at the controls. As soon as he’d waked the part of her he could reach through the tap, she’d gone hunting for her sister. Found her, too. And he knew what she knew, once he convinced her to trust him; though most of her slept still, she was awake enough to print a map for him. Awake enough to run a jolt through him so he could share her exaltation as she celebrated the power that would soon be hers. And his.
He stopped the dolly, got down so he could crank open the first of the twelve hatches ahead of him, coughed as his feet stirred fine gray dust that had lain undisturbed for millennia. He sprayed oil he’d found in the interface stores over the mix of sheddings, exuda and other muck age-bonded to the gears, slammed his fist cautiously against the handle, hit it again without budging it. He poured clear liquid handcleaner over the slowly softening glue to thin it out yet more, then leaned on the handle. The crank groaned and resisted; sweat popping out on his forehead, he put more pressure on it, half-afraid he was going to break the thing. It shrieked and moved a hair; he sprayed more oil, doused on more cleaner, worked the crank back and forth until the seal gave way and it began to turn, slowly at first then more smoothly. The hatch squealed open, slid into the wall. One down. Eleven to go. He wiped his hands on his tunic sides, rubbing vigorously to get rid of both oil and cleaner, especially the cleaner which had a strong, oversweet smell and a soapy, slimy feel. The stims were doing the job, his head was clearing, he felt as charged as the Dark Sister. He thought of Adelaar’s face when the pads died under her fingers. He smiled.
16
I watched the last load leave with Churri riding herd on it; I wasn’t planning to sell any of this bit of salvage; I don’t approve of arms dealing and anyway it’s a lot too dangerous for the payoff, but given some of the places I take Slancy into, it’s comforting to have that kind of firepower available and it’s not the sort of thing you can buy whenever you take a notion. And there was Bolodo. If Bolodo execs had any scruples about anything, I hadn’t come across them yet. And I hadn’t a sliver of a doubt there was a destroyer or two stashed somewhere handy where the execs on Helvetia could set them up to take us when we showed. I’d done what I could to pull some cover around us, but cover has a way of springing leaks when you need it most.
Jamber Fausse was squatting by the door with a couple of his men. He got to his feet and came sauntering over to me. “Time?”
“Time. One of you has to go to the Bridge to let Adelaar yabass know we’re ready; she’s still sealed off, I can’t reach her.”
“Tube?”
“Right. The way we got here.”
“Vehim Feda, go.” The younger of the two men got to his feet and went trotting out. “What will you do if Adelaar yabass has not discovered the Dark Sister?”
“Sit here and wait. Nothing else I can do.” I went over to the implosion torp on its dolly. There was a lot of crud still on it, but the batteries were charging steadily, no sign of trouble there, no breakdowns in the timerprogram if the probe wasn’t looping on me. I toured the testmeters and their readings were all good, no glitches. I climbed onto the dolly’s front bench, put my feet up on the console.
“Ah.” Jamber Fausse dropped to a squat beside the door. “Something I know about, sitting and waiting.”
I didn’t expect to do much waiting; Adelaar didn’t waste time or energy when she was working and Vehim wouldn’t be more than a few seconds tubing up to her. I arranged myself so I could see the screen; it was over the door. I counted seconds and got to fifty before it lit up and Adelaar was looking at us.
“Quale,” she said. “I see you’re ready.” She didn’t seem to expect a response so I didn’t give her one. “The auxBrain is scattered through more than a dozen nodes, there’s no way you’ll be able to get them all.”
“Shit! What…”
“Re
lax. You don’t need to. Do a thorough job on the interface and you’ve neutered our Dark Sister. There’s a weakness in the design. The nodes are connected through that interface. They don’t operate independently unless most of the ship is dead. Not enough power. They’ll probably kick on when she hits the sun, but that’s a bit late to do any good. Implosion torp?”
“Yeh.”
“I thought I recognized the configuration. Under all those meters.” She laughed, a nice sound; she was feeling pleased with herself. “It’s viable?”
“Yeh.”
“That’ll do it. We’d better be outside the skin when it blows.”
“Yeh.” I wasn’t going to argue with that; the Warmaster was big and tough enough to absorb a lot more punishment than one little torp, but she was older than time and there was rot in her hide. “Tubeflow?”
“I’ve reset the tubeflow from your gate, it’ll take you straight in to the clone interface. I’ve given you two minutes to get to the interface, starting when we finish this, five to get set up, plus three for holdups. The three will kick on only if you haven’t gone through the gate there before then. The flow switches outbound automatically, endpoint the lander lock area. Where we’ll be sitting, waiting for you.”
“Bridge?”
“I’ve programmed the mainBrain to clamshell after we’re out.”
“Any sign of the Proggerdi?”
“I haven’t bothered looking.”
I gave a yell for the teddybear. His ears were up fluttering, his lips curled back to show his tearing teeth. He didn’t need telling to watch out for ambushes, but I told him anyway. “That fruitcake could be anywhere,” I said. “Get hold of the tug before you start and have a bodyguard waiting at the tubegate. Adelaar, no arguments. I don’t get paid if I don’t get you back to Helvetia and I intend to collect. You hear?”