On Assignment to the Planet of the Exalted

by Helena Puumala

Her eyes came to rest on Jock who was packing away his rhyele, and Kati saw something in them that surprised her. The girl was keen on the Carmaks scion, but was trying to hide her interest!

  Uh, oh, Kati thought while she packed up her guitar.

  “I wouldn’t want to muck up Jock’s chances for a nice dalliance, or a promising match,” she subvocalized to the Granda. “Someone’s going gossip to her, sooner or later, I fear.”

  “Just doing your job,” The Monk subvocalized back. “Besides you haven’t actually done anything more than played a role.”

  “Of course not,” Kati snapped back. “I like what I have waiting for me!”

  “Have you thought of learning to play an instrument yourself?” Lank was asking the girl. “It’s not that hard to get your hands on them; in Port City the off-worlders are always leaving behind things that they can’t take with them. The shops buy them cheaply, and resell them for what they can get. You could get together with a bunch of like-minded friends and start a group of your own. On my home-world, people were always doing that, and here there’s not much competition.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” the girl protested. “There are things you aren’t allowed to do when you belong to The Four Hundred. Making music is only for the Ordinary Citizens, not the Exalted.”

  “But not that many of the regular folk play instruments, either,” Lank objected in genuine puzzlement. “Seems to me like there’s lots of room for more musicians here. And Jock is a Carmaks, and an excellent musician; he’s a great addition to our Troupe.”

  “But the Carmaks are weird,” the girl said with a nervous laugh. “They don’t respect class divisions. They do what they please instead of what they’re supposed to do.”

  “And lead much the most interesting lives of any of the Exalted that I’ve seen so far,” threw in Joaley as she finished tying the laces of her instrument bag. “You really should think about breaking out of your narrow life, and taking a risk or two.”

  “I’ve got my Family to consider,” the Vultairian girl answered, looking around, somewhat anxiously.

  “Well, Lili Laggos—it is Lili, isn’t it?” Jock broke in, “if you change your mind sometime after we get back from the South, look me up and I’ll give you lessons on the rhyele. I know a rhyele-maker in Ithcar who builds beautiful-sounding instruments.”

  “How’d you know my name?” Lili Laggos asked, slightly taken aback.

  Jock grinned at her.

  “Easy,” he said. “You’ve been here for every show. Remember, I, too am an Exalted, and have excellent hearing. So I’ve overheard your name.”

  “Oh yeah.” Lili reddened. She toyed with the money bag, then abruptly shoved it into a pocket of her colourful cape.

  “Well, I’ll keep your offer in mind, Jock Carmaks,” she said quickly, and turned away, striding out of the nearly empty bar.

  “That one’s going to take you up on it, Jock,” Rakil said as they all watched Lili Laggos leave the building. “I, too, have noticed her at all the shows. The only one of the Exalted to have been here every night. And she’s been eyeing you up, Jock.”

  Jock twisted his face into a crooked grin.

  “I’ve a mind to scandalize the Laggos clan by sweeping her off her feet and turning her into a musician and a democrat,” he laughed. “She’s a little on the young side; I must be about ten years older than she is, but she seems pretty bright, even if stuffed full of Oligarchic nonsense. Hector’s been telling me for years that I should snag myself a wife from one of the well-established Families; he and Marina claim that it’s the best way to make inroads into the calcified thinking processes. Marina should know; she was a Malais from Sealand before she married Hector. The Malais Family came close to disowning her when she insisted on marrying him. Luckily for them, Marina’s mother decided that there was no way that she would give up her only daughter, and hung in there, forcing the immediate family to do the same.”

  Jock straightened up from picking up his rhyele case, and chuckled again.

  “And now, thanks to all the good ideas that Marina and Hector have infected Sealand with, it’s the most prosperous of the Coastal Provinces. The Families on its borders are starting to ask questions, and the Malais have had to admit that Marina’s marriage into the crazy Carmaks clan of Ithcar has made all the difference.”

  “Marina seemed like a very smart woman,” Kati interjected.

  “She is,” Jock agreed. “If anything, she’s brighter than Hector—and that’s saying a lot. My Grandfather Carmaks used to say that there was nothing wrong with the brains of the Four Hundred Families—the trouble was that most of them had just gotten out of the habit of using them.”

  “And she’s a supporter of change,” added Joaley. “I would never have guessed that she came from a straight-laced Oligarchic Family.”

  “Oh, give a woman from one of those families a chance to think for herself, and just watch her blossom,” Jock said gaily. “The only problem with the scheme involving the rebel Exalted marrying into the rest of the Families is that changing things that way takes forever. I very much doubt that the Ordinary Citizens can wait that long for their lot to improve.”

  “Well, there’s change in the air,” Kati commented cheerfully, shouldering her guitar case. “I can feel it.”

  The bar employee who was stacking up chairs around them, gave her a searching look. She grinned at him.

  “Sometimes my hunches are good,” she told him.

  “Just ask Morgon and Dani Desote,” Jock commented as he headed for the exit. “She was picking winning runnerbeasts for them the other night.”

  Kati shook her head at his back.

  “Like I know anything about runnerbeast racing,” she said to the worker who grinned at her amiably. “But it was useful to pretend that I did. But Jock can’t keep his mouth shut, can he now?”

  “Jock is Jock,” the employee responded pleasantly. “We all know him, and we’re glad he’s back in town. There isn’t a better Exalted in Capital City, unless it’s Uncle Kelt Carmaks who tries to help anyone who needs it—only mostly the other Government members tie his hands. I overheard the stuff about Lili Laggos; it explains why Jock never married any of the Ordinary Citizen women who were throwing themselves at him. Some of them were pretty smart, nice and good-looking, and most of us figured that he didn’t care much about class differences. But if the idea is to worm his way into another Exalted clan—well, that explains it. The Laggos Family are bastards, but not the worst of the bastards; and Lili is young and malleable.”

  He laughed as Kati wished him good night; he seemed as delighted by the idea of Jock insinuating himself into the Laggos clan as if he had come up with the notion himself.

  *****

  Kati woke up with the sun the next morning even though it had been well past midnight when she had finally crawled into bed. To her surprise, when she returned from the washroom, Joaley was up, pulling on the comfortable casual wear that the tailor in Carmakville had fashioned for her.

  “If you get dressed while I’m in the bathroom,” she told Kati, “I’ll come with you to the park. Don’t leave without me.”

  She scurried into the loo before Kati had a chance to object. As Kati pulled out her comfortable pants and shirt, she laughed at herself for the immediate reaction of “I don’t need any help” that she had had to Joaley’s offer. It made sense to have someone watching her back while she was communing with The Forest Spirit and Master Healer Vorlund. She would be in a trance-like state, and the Granda node would be helping with the communication, so he might not be able to keep track of things in the park.

  “Someone could, conceivably, stick a knife in my back while I was merrily chatting—if you can call it that—with the Master Healer,” she subvocalized to The Monk. “It’s hardly likely, but I have made an unfriend or two since landing on this planet. Berd Warrion, for example, might want to try something stupid—although I very much doubt that he’d be up this early.”

&n
bsp; “The Forest Spirit is perfectly able to watch your back,” The Monk replied. “However, it speaks well for your Team that they insist on looking after one another, including you. It’s even possible that we’ll all come out intact from whatever hornet’s nest is on that piece of rock that the Margolis Family calls their Estate.”

  “A hornet’s nest?” Kati asked. “Sounds like you know more about what’s going on than you’ve been letting on?”

  “In my last existence I came across the information that the Vultairians had some surprising connections to the lawless factions of the Fringe Worlds.” If a mental speech could be a growl, the Monk was growling. “I suppose that peddling their Klenser Services brought them into contact with all kinds of people.”

  “And you never thought to mention this to me until now?” Kati inquired acidly.

  The Monk image shrugged.

  “You didn’t ask. And half the time you’re in a snit about one thing or another that I’ve done, and which you disapprove. Besides, you and the Lamanian arm of the Federation were heading here, anyway, without any help from me. But now that you’ve concocted this plan to retrieve the Xeonsaur woman from the Margolis property, I think that you ought to know that the name Margolis did come up in a peculiar conversation when my last host was trying to insinuate himself into the drug-running business which seemed to be a bit chaotic at the time.”

  “Well, well, well. And now, I suppose, you’re going to add that your host ended up with a knife in his back before you could discover anything more useful than that.”

  “Unfortunately that’s pretty close to how it went.” The Monk image looked gloomy. “Not a knife, though. A blaster, and by the gods, a blaster is a nasty shock to a node. All my nerve connections torn apart in seconds—the amazing thing is that I managed to roll as much back into myself as I did. But a lot of that life is lost to me; I have better memories of the one before it.”

  “But you do remember the name Margolis? And that the person or persons referred to were Vultairians? What else? Like what was the topic of the peculiar conversation you mentioned?”

  The Monk image took a deep breath.

  “It had to do with the new drug that everyone was excited about. We’re talking that stuff that Gorsh so loved, the mind-tangler. The Margolis clan is mixed up in it—it’s production, or maybe just the ferrying of it from the manufacturer, whoever that might be, to the buyers.”

  “So. No wonder Milla Gorsh was so friendly with the Margolis couple.”

  Kati realized that she was muttering aloud, and was glad that there was no-one to hear her.

  “Just be careful,” The Monk advised her. “Remember the blaster shot that ended my last life.”

  Kati shuddered, glad suddenly that Joaley was coming with her to the park. She was going to have to warn her Team before they headed for the Margolis’ Island. Not that there was much chance of anyone deciding to back out at the last minute, but they should have the opportunity to do so, considering this new, disturbing information.

  When she brought the subject up to Joaley on their walk through the empty streets to the treed park, Joaley’s reaction was predictable.

  “The Margolis clan is into illegal drugs, are they, now?” she sniffed, eyebrows up. “Who would have guessed? That Family was right up there, along with the Morhinghys, and a handful of others who also were attached to the Vultairian Diplomatic Office, who drove us City Peace Officers crazy every time they came down to The Second City. I swear that they must have studied the City regulations, and then walked a fine line between respecting the letter of the law and flouting the rules. They took advantage of The Comforters and treated them like paid prostitutes, and then shrugged their shoulders and said that our sex providers were too sensitive, when we were called in to enforce the law. They created chaos in bars, restaurants, and elsewhere; picking arguments and fights with other patrons, and then blaming all on some convenient newcomer into The Second City who didn’t understand how much Lamanians dislike their peace disturbed. We knew that they were behaving like assholes but we weren’t allowed to act, what with Vultaire being one of the old, founding planets of the Federation. I thought that the official Lamania was in denial about Vultaire; they didn’t want to admit that it was possible for an old comrade, so to speak, to go rogue. That’s why I found Maryse r’ma Darien a breath of fresh air, and desperately wanted to join her organization; she could see what was going on, and wasn’t blinded by assumptions.”

  “The thing that you and the others will have to consider, however,” Kati said, bringing Joaley back to the present, “is that these people can be very dangerous. They have no qualms about killing; the Granda’s last host died in blaster fire while trying to get into the drug trade that the Margolises are involved in. Plus, don’t forget that they’re mixed up with Gorsh, my and Mikal’s nemesis.”

  Joaley grabbed at Kati’s hand.

  “You think that I don’t realize that we’ll be facing danger?” she asked, grinning crookedly. “Danger is nothing new to me, dear Team Leader. Of course, you don’t know the details of my trip from home to The Second City, and this is not the time to tell you. But believe me, what we’ll face is no worse than the crap I dealt with before I made it to Lamania.”

  Kati gave the red-head’s hand a squeeze.

  “All right, Joaley. I’ll take your word for it. To be honest I didn’t think that you would bail out on me. But I had to warn you. It’s only fair.

  “And I’ll have to warn the others,” she added.

  “I agree,” Joaley said. “But they won’t bail. Not even Jock. We’ve all got too much invested in this business. We’ll face the risks involved.

  “You’ll have to try and let your friend Mikal know about that, though.”

  “I’ll mention it to The Master Healer,” Kati concurred. “Assuming that Mikal and Malin haven’t left the ship yet, or that Vorlund has a way of contacting them in a fashion undetectable by the planetary elites, they’ll get the word. Mind you, they may have the information already; Mikal obviously knows from Xoraya’s state, that tangle-juice is involved in this kidnapping. And connections to Gorsh.”

  “And Mikal has a reputation for being cautious in his own way,” Joaley added thoughtfully.

  Kati gave her a searching glance. Joaley would know about Mikal, by reputation, at least, from the days before Kati, herself, had known him, when he had already been a hot-shot Agent with the Federation Peace Officer Corps, and Joaley had aspired to join them, but had had to settle for a position with the City Peace Officers. Perhaps, someday, the red-head would tell why the SFPO had rejected her. It was true that Mikal had shown caution during the escape across Makros III, often more caution than Kati had exhibited. Some of the more outrageous stunts that they had pulled off had been at her instigation. She had been the one to concoct the plots, while Mikal had been asking her to slow down.

  “He and Malin will have to handle their end,” she said now. “We’ll be busy trying to save the Vultairian elite bastards from themselves. As well as the rest of the planet from their idiocy.”

  Joaley laughed.

  “Hey, isn’t it my role to exaggerate the frustrations?” she asked. “And you’re the one who speaks sweet reason while I rant?”

  “Trouble is, I don’t think that I’m ranting,” Kati sighed. “I’m really glad that the Forest Spirit is with us on this. We’ll need it on that rocky island. I hope that there’s a way to access it there.”

  “Ask it,” Joaley suggested. “Perhaps it’s connected to the ocean. The island will be surrounded by the sea.”

  *****

  “They left shortly before dawn,” Master Healer Vorlund told Kati. “Someone in the Port Control Centre arranged to have surveillance fail for about an hour. They also got word to us that Mikal and Malin were to meet with a fellow with the name Marston, who would be able to take them where they needed to go in the City. This Marston is supposed to be a reliable member of the Resistance.”

 
“A fine fellow,” Kati agreed. “I did him a bit of a favour a while back, so if they mentioned my name, they were sure to have his total cooperation. Not that they wouldn’t have it anyway, if he figured that they were good for the Underground’s cause.”

  “Xoraya was in touch with me, too, a short while ago,” the Master Healer added. “She said that the conspirators’ flyer finally arrived, and asked me to let you know that they were on their way to their destination. She said that she didn’t want to stray too far from her and Canna’s bodies during the flight because the flyer was much smaller than the one Aris Margolis had requested, and the men had stuffed the women’s bodies in the back pretty unceremoniously. She’s trying to use a trick or two that she picked up from me to keep them somewhat limber, so they’ll be able to move after they come out from under that infernal drug.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Kati agreed. She recalled her own experience with a massive dose of the tangle-juice, and how disoriented, sick and dry-mouthed she had felt when she had finally surfaced from what had felt like her mind having been cocooned in some sticky black fluff. “I’ll try to get help from the Forest Spirit in locating her on the Margolis Island. I get the feeling that the Spirit rather likes her, and will be willing to help us.”

  “And I rather like this Forest Spirit myself,” the Master Healer said. “You do realize that you’ve tuned into the very soul of the planet, do you?”

  “I supposed that it was something like that. I was hoping so, as a matter-of-fact. I’m hoping that I can reach it through the ocean, once we’re on the island. Apparently the island is somewhat lacking in vegetation, thanks to the mishandling of its ecosystem by the Margolises.”

  “A bunch of idiots who have fouled their nest.” Vorlund’s thought was savage. “And then they decided to foul more of the universe to keep themselves in luxuries which they could no longer afford otherwise. Ah, why are there people like that on our worlds?”

  *****

  After cutting the contact with Vorlund, for a few minutes Kati simply stayed within the mental embrace of the Forest Spirit, enjoying the simple pleasure it gave her. She had the feeling that such moments of ease were going to be rare in the coming days, and she wanted to brace herself for the rigors to come. The Master Healer’s frustrated query resonated in her mind and she struggled to set it aside, since neither she nor the Spirit surrounding her had an answer to it. Finally, when the calm aura about her had helped to restore her own tranquillity, she composed her thoughts enough to direct a question to the Spirit: