Side Trip

by Renee Duke

  I nodded. “They probably have people looking for us everywhere. First thing tomorrow we’ll have to find out if Sustra has a Cholarian consulate we can take the ring to after we get it back.”

  “Get it back? Don’t you have it?”

  “Uh, no. Money’s been tight here. We pawned it a few days ago.”

  “You pawned the sacred Ring of Beom?”

  “Well, we didn’t know it was the sacred Ring of Beom then, did we? Don’t worry. We got paid today. Even with shuttle fare back to the pawnshop, we should have enough money to redeem it.”

  “It’s a good thing the Ralgonian wasn’t around when we hocked oor souvenirs,” said Kirsty.

  “How do you know he wasn’t?” asked Simon, alarmed.

  “Och, he’d have hardly followed us here to get a ring he saw us leave somewhere else. We’ll have to watch oot for him tomorrow though. And for Nathan and Leopold too. They might have determined our whereaboots by now.”

  “If they have, let’s just give them the ring and let them take it to whoever it is that wants it so much. Then maybe everyone will forget about us.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “Besides, the ring has to be returned to its rightful owner, High Prince Taziol.”

  “No!” Simon yowled. “Once the High Prince knows about Nathan and Leopold, he’ll have them beheaded or something. And whatever he does to them, he’ll do to me, too. I helped them.”

  “Not knowingly, you didn’t. Taz will understand that.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “We’ll explain everything to him,” I said soothingly. “He’ll listen to us. We know him. We met him aboard the Derridus. We got on really well. If we take the ring to one of his trusted advisors and ask for an audience, they’re sure to let us see him.”

  “Really?” Simon looked impressed. “But wait. You might not be able to trust some of his trusted advisors. I think the people Nathan and Leopold were so afraid of were Cholarians—high-up ones, too.”

  “Ones who want Prince Mardis as Supreme Ruler?” Jip inquired.

  “Yes. AUP wants that as well. The officials on Heltiga pretended to be upset about the ring, but I think they were glad it got stolen. Its disappearance places the throne of Cholar up for grabs—and that suits AUP just fine. Someone from AUP might even have put Nathan and Leopold up to helping whoever’s behind it all.”

  “AUP would never do anything like that,” I said, shocked, and then doubtfully added, “Would it?”

  Kirsty pursed her lips. “I’m starting to wonder. Take some of those security devices at the Imperial Exhibition Hall, for example. They looked effective enough, and probably would have been effective enough if they’d worked the way they were designed to. But what if they weren’t working the way they were designed to? What if they’d had their efficiency cut doon a bit? No laddie Simon’s age should have been able to get through primary security devices surrounding something as valuable as a sacred ring. Secondary ones, aye, maybe, he’s got a nasty wee flair for things like that, but not primary ones. Not unless someone wanted him to.”

  “And if Nathan had access to a patrol schedule, his father probably had something to do with how it was laid out,” Jip put in. “He could have arranged for AUP’s security people to be in another part of the building during Simon’s break-in.”

  It made sense. Even though I didn’t want it to. “You know, if you really think about it, we should never have been able to get onto the Derridus undetected,” I ruminated. “Or escape notice for two whole days after we did. For all Ramsweir’s blustering, security wasn’t too stringent. Assassins could have got Taz anytime.”

  “I dinna think so,” said Kirsty. “Not with his own Royal Guardsmen aboard. But if the plan to steal the ring had failed, someone might well have tried for him. With the auld Supreme Ruler’s chosen successor oot of the way, the throne would probably go to his hereditary successor—the one AUP wants. I’m not saying the Directorate’s ordered anyone to do anything, but AUP officials looking to further their own careers might well be working against Taz in secret. The Directorate wouldn’t be slow in rewarding them if things worked oot to AUP’s advantage later on.”

  For a while, no one said anything. Kirsty and I had liked Taz. It was hard for us to believe the hierarchy of Association of United Planets could really be, if not actually involved in, then at least in approval of, a plot to deprive him of his rightful inheritance. Or maybe even kill him. Throughout its history, the Association had never invaded any of the planets in its vast membership, never openly coerced them into joining. But I wondered how many other Cholars it had acquired since the united planets in Earth’s own star system began venturing out into other regions of space. Had other planets whose leaders disagreed with AUP’s way of doing things suddenly found themselves with a new set of leaders who favoured it? It was an unpleasant thought.

  Being a native of a conditional AUP-member planet, Jip didn’t share our feelings of shock and betrayal. She said Vorla’s leaders had chosen that form of membership because they felt uncomfortable with some of AUP’s ideas. They hadn’t wanted to commit their people to anything but mutual trade and defence agreements. They still controlled all of Vorla’s resources, and reserved the right to withdraw from the Association if they ever came to disapprove of the actions of the Directorate, or even of a fellow AUP member. Having never been taught to regard the Association as highly as we had, Jip was now inclined to mistrust it completely. Fearing AUP bribery, she didn’t even want to risk going to the Cholarian Consulate.

  “We must take the Ring of Beom to Taz ourselves,” she declared.

  The rest of us agreed. That settled, we buzzed the night watchman for a put-up cot for Simon and went back to bed.

  Chapter Twelve

  An air shuttle took us back to the city in which we had pawned our souvenirs. Unfortunately, the owner of the pawnshop had gone on vacation and left a most unhelpful young helper in charge of the place. When we entered the shop, this individual was standing behind the front counter vigorously polishing a vase.

  I described the items we had come for and told him we wanted to reclaim them.

  “Your redemption time has expired,” he said, glancing at the token I showed him.

  “Only by a day. You can extend the time by that much, can’t you?”

  The youth shook his head and resumed polishing. “I don’t have the authority. I’m just keeping an eye on the shop.”

  “You don’t have to let us redeem everything,” I said coaxingly. “We’ll settle for one item. A ring. It has sentimental value for us and we’d really like to get it back.”

  “Well, you can’t. Not unless you’re prepared to buy it back at the owner’s selling price.”

  “Oh? Well, I guess we could. How much does he want for it?”

  “Who knows? Your things have just become eligible for sale. The owner won’t price them until he gets back.”

  “When’s that?”

  “In about three weeks.”

  “Three weeks? We canna wait that long,” said Kirsty.

  The temporary pawnbroker set down his vase and gave a quick shrug. “You’ll have to. Pricing is the owner’s job. I can’t do it. I’m only allowed to sell what’s already been priced.”

  “The owner’ll not mind you selling one little ring.”

  “Out of the question.” He threw down his polishing cloth and dashed off to serve some people who had come in to browse and now looked as though they wanted to buy something. Frustrated and furious, we stamped out of the shop exchanging vitriolic comments about the obstructive youth’s low intellect and lack of common decency.

  There seemed only one way around this unforeseen setback. Lowering my voice so I could not be heard by any of the Sustrans scurrying past us, I said, “The Succession Tribunal is coming up soon. Taz’s claim could be put aside if he doesn’t have the ring by then. We have to get it. And since that imbecile in there won’t let us redeem it, we’ll have to come back here tonight
and take it.”

  Not surprisingly, Jip objected. “That is stealing.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s just getting our own property back. If it’s going to bother you, we can leave payment on the counter. The same sum we were originally paid for all the souvenirs we pawned at this shop. That would be fair.”

  Kirsty looked amused. “And you think I have wild ideas. But we canna leave it where it is, so you can count me in.”

  “And me,” said Simon.

  “We have to take it, Jip,” I persisted. “I know burglary goes against your Vorlan Code of Honour, but there really is no other way. We can’t wait around for the owner to come back and price the ring. Even if we could afford the time, we don’t want him, or anyone else, touching it. He just glanced at our stuff before. If he gets a good look at the Ring of Beom, he might realize its value and price it out of our range. He might even recognize it as the real ring and hand it over to the authorities. Or keep it, and sell it to the highest bidder. We can’t chance that. We’ve got to get it back. Now. Tonight.”

  My reasoning failed to comfort her.

  We checked into the closest hotel to await the cover of darkness. To pass the time, we seated ourselves around a news viewer and brought up all the recent news items concerning Cholar. We knew from other clips that Taz and his entourage had returned home, but we wanted to ascertain his exact whereabouts.

  Apparently, a lot of other people did as well. We were shaken to learn of yet another disaster for Cholar: High Prince Taziol had disappeared. Accounts varied, but it seemed Taz and Supreme Chancellor Verim had been set upon while returning to the royal palace one night. During the course of the attack, two Royal Guardsmen were killed, and Verim severely injured. By the time Guardsmen inside the palace heard the commotion and came to help, the assailants had fled, taking Taz with them. Upset, his consort had gone into early labour, but once the baby had been safely delivered, the High Princess rallied quickly and was now doing everything she could to find and rescue her husband. Though the High Prince’s fate was unknown, she, and a good number of his subjects, seemed to think he was still alive and just being held prisoner somewhere until after the Succession Tribunal.

  “What would be the point in that?” Simon asked me.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it strengthens the claim of Obruk’s hereditary successor. The Ring of Beom is Taz’s symbol of authority. Without it, his right to succeed to the throne can be, and has been, challenged. If he doesn’t attend the Succession Tribunal, the tribunal members could take it as proof he’s unfit to rule. We’ve got to get that ring to Cholar as soon as possible and get someone to present it to the tribunal on Taz’s behalf.”

  “Who?”

  I frowned. “That’s a good question. It sounded as though Supreme Chancellor Verim wasn’t expected to live, and if he doesn’t, I don’t really know who else we could trust the ring to.”

  “Och, we’ll just have to figure that oot when we get there,” said Kirsty. “At the moment, we dinna even have the thing.”

  The area around the pawnshop had a lot of casinos, amusement arcades, and other entertainment establishments. We had to delay our illegal entry until well after midnight, when most of the people going to such places were safely inside and unlikely to come out for an hour or two. Jip could have saved us the trouble of waiting if she’d been willing to use her dimension travel abilities to get the ring, but of course she wasn’t. If she had to be a burglar, she intended to be a proper one.

  The pawnshop had standard locks, and its alarm system was so basic, Simon disconnected it in less than a minute. With Jip and Kirsty acting as lookouts, my brother and I slipped in the back door and moved quietly through the shop, half-afraid of finding the pawnbroker’s officious assistant somewhere within. Thankfully, we didn’t meet anything more threatening than an automatic cleaner. On Sustra, these are large metal contraptions that clang, whirl, and rumble. It’s quite an experience to meet up with one in the back of a pawnshop late at night. Simon jumped, and I nearly fainted.

  Leaving the cleaner to go about its business, Simon and I crept around to the front of the shop. I remembered seeing the pawnbroker put our things in one of the drawers of a storage cabinet there, but could not recall exactly which drawer held them. Simon had to open three before we came to the one we wanted.

  Our souvenirs had been dropped into a corner compartment. There, nestled among them, was the sacred Ring of Beom. Beautiful though it was, it seemed a very small, insignificant, object to have flung a whole planet into turmoil. Transferring it to one of the side chambers on my belt, I put some money on the counter and waited for Simon to refasten the drawers he had opened. Then we tiptoed back to the door.

  We had left Kirsty and Jip in a little alley behind the pawnshop, but when we stepped back into it, they weren’t there.

  “Some lookouts they are,” Simon commented as he reset the shop’s alarm.

  We walked up and down the alley calling their names. There was no response. “Something must have happened to them,” I said, worried.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. We’d better get back to the hotel. We can’t chance being caught out in the open now we’ve got the ring.”

  “What about Kirsty and Jip?”

  “If they come back here and find the shop’s alarm reset, they’ll know we’ve finished and join us at the hotel.”

  “What if they can’t? What if they were arrested? Or got jumped by Nathan and Leopold or someone?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Can you picture Kirsty been taken without a struggle? We’d have heard something.”

  “Someone could have crept up on them.”

  “Yes, and they could creep up on us, too. Come on. We’re going back to the hotel. If they don’t turn up in an hour or so, we’ll hide the ring and go looking for them.”

  It seemed to take forever to get to our hotel. There was hardly anyone about but, to me, every person we did meet appeared ominous, every ground car travelling at a, for Sustra, unnaturally slow rate, sinister.

  When we finally got to our room, I breathed a sigh of relief. A few minutes later the door buzzer sounded, causing a fresh panic.

  “Who is it?” I called sharply.

  “Och, who do you think? Let us in.”

  I deactivated the lock and jerked the door open for our missing companions.

  “What happened? Where were you? Lookouts aren’t supposed to wander off in the middle of a heist,” I babbled, pulling them into the room.

  Kirsty relocked the door before replying. “We’d no choice. You’d not been in yon pawnshop but a minute when the Ralgonian turned up. Since we didn’t want him to know you were in there, we scuttled doon the street trying to look as though we were after doing something important. He followed us and we led him up and doon, and all around, until we saw a couple of hefty looking gents standing in front of one of them fancy entertainment parlours we’re not of an age to go into.”

  “That was when Kirsty pointed an accusing finger at the unfortunate Ralgonian, and shouted, ‘Stop that man. Stop that man,’” said Jip.

  Kirsty grinned. “The way he shot off, they probably thought he was guilty of something.”

  “Did they take after him?” Simon asked in delight.

  “They did,” said Jip. “We did not stop to see what happened to him. We wanted to get back to you.”

  “And now that you have, we’d better get to bed,” I said. “We’ll head out to the starport first thing in the morning.”

  “How are we to get there?” asked Kirsty. “The shuttle and hotel room took almost all oor money.”

  “I have some money yet,” said Simon. “It’ll get us as far as the starport. After that, we’ll have to stow away on a freighter or something.”

  I shook my head. “Freighters are slow, and time is of the essence now. Even so, I don’t exactly relish the idea of stowing away on another passenger ship.”

  “Perhaps we could work our passage on such a ship,”
said Jip.

  “Aye,” said Kirsty. “Neil and his friends worked their passage a couple of times. If they could do it, so can we. We’ll ask aboot it at the starport.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Starliners usually make the trip from Sustra to Cholar in three days. The Delveckian ship we signed aboard was scheduled to make a stop at Klavor too, which added another two days to the journey. Due to an administrative mix-up, it was going out short-staffed, which worked out well for us. There were plenty of service positions available, and the personnel director was pleased to take us on as cabin attendants. We were told the job mostly entailed tidying up certain cabins and answering service buzzers from those cabins and, sometimes, the lounge.

  “But that might not be all,” she added. “We’re still low on crew, and if things get too hectic, you’ll be asked to help out in other areas too.”

  We were issued ID badges and taken up to the ship in a small crew shuttle. We stowed our luggage in the half-occupied crew dormitories on one of the lower decks and changed into the uniforms we’d been handed. To safeguard the ring, I kept my own belt on in place of the one that came with the uniform. Kirsty told our supervisor it held religious significance for me.

  Before long, we were hard at work assisting the passengers the starport was transporting up with typical Sustran speed. Even with the help of people who worked in other sections of the ship, we were hard pressed to settle so many passengers in their quarters. Especially the stroppy ones, who expected a high level of service and made no allowances for staff shortages. I passed an indignant Kirsty a few moments after a middle-aged matron accused her of taking fifteen minutes to answer her buzzer because she’d been flirting with handsome young male cabin attendants.

  “Huh, chance’d be a fine thing,” she retorted. “Any I’ve seen have been too busy seeing to the likes of her to pay any attention to me.”

  A few other temporary crew replacements arrived before we got underway. This relieved our workload a little, but it was still several hours before the ship’s lights were dimmed for the night and we got a few hours of sleep.