Fever Season

by C. J. Cherryh

  "How is he?"

  Denny pointed at the back room and she went with a sense of panic, down the short hall by the stairs, to the open bedroom door where the oil-lamp burned.

  Raj was there, sitting on Mondragon's bedside. He twisted around as she came in. And Mondragon had his head propped up, his eyes open.

  She stopped her hurry. Made a nonchalant stroll into the room, hands in pockets."Well," she said while her heart settled down. "You look some better." "Doing all right," he said. It was hardly his voice. It was weak and it was half a whisper. He needed a shave, bad. His hair was a mess. His eyes being open and full of sense was the prettiest sight she had seen in days.

  "He ate some," Raj said.

  "God, Raj's cooking," Denny sneered from the doorway, and swung past the doorframe to stand in the room.

  "Out," Raj said, waving a hand. "Man's tired, Denny. Lord!"

  Denny dived out again. Jones hardly noticed till the thought of her skip flashed across her mind and she shot out a hand and grabbed a fistful of sweater before Denny quite cleared the door. "Go out an' watch. I got my skip out there. Get aboard and sit. Penny in it f ye."

  "Two."

  "Git!" Raj hissed, and Denny got. Raj turned round again, and got up carefully. "Sorry," he said to Mondragon. "You just rest quiet. I'll let m' brother out."

  Jones stood still, hands in pockets while the room cleared. Then she went over to Mondragon's bedside and stood there. "All right, huh?"

  "Jones," he muttered in that thin voice, and rolled his eyes, looking up at her. "Jones, there was this crazy woman here— Damn woman—"

  "She done ye some good."

  "For God's sake, Jones, she's a damn Janist—"

  "Ain't we pellicular?" She sank down on the edge of the bed.

  "—in my bedroom," he muttered, and his eyes fluttered shut. "No more crazy people here—" "Mondragon."

  But he was asleep, till the door opened and shut in the front room, and his eyes few open again. She patted his arm.

  " 'S all right, that's just Raj letting Denny out."

  "Fed me this damn stuff," he complained. '"Sang songs at me. For God's sake, Jones—"

  He was gone again. But it was just sleep. She felt of his face and it was cool, even if the whole room smelled like fever and sweat.

  She stood there and wiped her nose with her sleeve, and one eye with the back of a knuckle, and shrugged when Raj came in, managing to keep her back to him. "Guess I'll get me somethin' in the kitchen."

  "Sandwich on the table," Raj said.

  There was. It could have been live eel and she would have eaten it. She could not remember when she had eaten. She gulped down beer and hiccupped down huge bites of sandwich, and wiped her eyes and her nose from time to time.

  Which was the change in temperatures from outside. Sure.

  She went back to Mondragon's room where Raj kept watch.

  "Go sleep," she said. "My turn."

  "Yey," Raj said, and went.

  She pulled the chair over near the bed and just sat and looked at him, that was all, looked at him breathing without a rattle and his coughing just occasional, while a meal was steady on her stomach and friends were watching outside and in.

  She had no inclination to move or shut her eyes or do anything but just sit there, to catch every little flicker of his expressions that meant better news than she had expected for a week.

  Finally he drew a large breath, coughed and opened his eyes, confused-like.

  "What're you doing here?" he asked. She could have hit him.

  Instead she said, "Well, you ain't been breathing real good."

  He blinked and lay there staring into space a moment. Then he seemed more there than he had been, just a little twitch of his face, a focusing of the eyes. "Is it Friday?"

  "Friday, damn, it's Tuesday."

  "Still Tuesday?"

  "No, Tuesday. Tuesday week. Ye been out, Mondragon." "Oh, my God." He reached for the edge of the bed, tried to put his foot over. And broke into coughing, which gave her a chance to stop him. Not to push him flat. He was resisting that with a stiff arm. "Raj!" she yelled.

  Raj pelted in at speed, and Mondragon surged to his feet till his legs went out from under him and she pushed him back as Raj got after him from the other side and sat him down. A coughing fit decided it. He fell back into the pillows and Jones threw the blankets over him while Raj got him a cup of water and helped him get the coughing stopped.

  He was quiet then. Just lying there on his side, breathing hard. Raj melted out of the room, with remarkable good sense. And Jones sighed and sat down on the bed and folded over him, just held onto him and tangled her fingers in his dirty hair.

  "Jones," he said. "You have to get me uptown."

  "Sure. You want t' try for the Moon whiles we're going? Never poled there before."

  He shook his head slowly. Caught a large breath. "Jones. Kalugin—"

  Worse and worse. Her heart picked up its beat. "Yey? What about Kalugin?"

  "Told him—Monday, that's all. Already a day late. Oh, God, I can't remember—what I told him."

  "Damn! why couldn't you have told me?"

  Long silence. She answered her own question, inside, and shook her head. " 'cause ye think I'm a damn fool," she said sorrowfully.

  "Don't want you in this. Don't want you near it." Cough. "Get me to Boregy."

  "The hell!" She sat up. "I'm going to turn you over to those sherks? No chance, no chance."

  "They'll take care of me."

  That flat knocked the breath out of her. She sat back in outrage. "I ain't got no doubt they will, right to harbor bottom they'll take care of ye! Lord and my Ancestors! Who ye think your friends are, ye damn lunatic?"

  He lay there on his belly a moment, staring off the edge of the bed. "Jones, this is serious."

  "Thanks. I could'a missed that."

  He rolled over. Stared at her with that stubborn, jaw-set look of his. But there was a lot of the desperate about it. "Jones, —"

  "Yey?"

  "There's this man—" Another coughing fit, and he had to turn. She offered him the water again, and he leaned back into the pillows with tears of pain running down his face. "Jones, all you have to do—" The voice was fading away in strain. "—Just get me downstairs, take me over to the Trade offices, over on the Spur—"

  "Yey?"

  "That's all you need to do."

  "Need to know where you're going. That ain't no address. You want my help, you got to let me figure this."

  "Dammit, Jones. You aren't going to get into this. It's already gone sour. I don't even want to use your boat ..."

  '"At's all right. I got no worry. What's the office? I'll just tell 'em you took sick. Fever ain't no news in town."

  "These aren't people who take excuses!"

  "Fine. You write 'em a note, all the same, you tell me where, and I'll get whatever you got to do."

  "You can't, dammit, Jones. He won't cooperate for you. He's a scared man—"

  "Fine." She grinned her widest and meanest. "We'll all do right fine. You just tell me the whole game."

  He was quiet for a long time, staring at something else. Then he reached after her hand and squeezed it, hard. "Jones, you're a fool."

  "Mama said. What's the thing I got to do?"

  The stairs down from Petrescu loomed like a fall to infinity, for a sick man. Or a raggedy old canal-rat on her way down to her skip at dawn. Mondragon clutched the rail, kept his back turned to the rattle of foot traffic on the walkway, a lone passer-by at this hour, and coughed in the chill, limping his way step by slow step down toward the skip waiting blow. Denny had his elbow, Raj walked just in front of him.

  Jones waited down below, steadying the skip, pulling the tie-rope tight through the rings as the boys helped his bulky person down into the well and toward the half-deck.

  Damn tall old woman, he thought, trying to slouch. The rags stank, and his head spun as the skip moved. He hunched over, head down, elbo
ws in his lap, trying to get his breath; and finally he slid down and sat in the well where he was out of Jones' walk-path on the deck.

  "Yoss," was Jones' cheerful comment. "Hey-hass, ne."

  They owed old Mintaka for this one. If they lived through

  it.

  His fault, dammit. He had dragged Jones into it. He had dragged the boys in after. And they had to hope a whole bottle of Jones' whiskey had old Min so happy she would not get her story straight; all she had to do was take the bottle of whiskey and take one of Mondragon's pots over to the tinsmith over by Knowles, and wait around till it was fixed; for which favor Jones was so grateful she wanted to trade Min a good three blankets for Min's spare clothes and one of Min's knit hats.

  Powder on the hair then. A lot of padding. Furniture polish on the skin. Keep the head down. Slouch.

  He had suffered worse damage to his pride. But he had never felt more the fool. Keeping his head down took no urging at all, as Jones poled steadily along the canal, meeting traffic, hailing folk she knew.

  "Somethin' took wrong wi' Min?" someone yelled across.

  "Ney, she's fine," Jones yelled back cheerfully. "Drank as any sailor!"

  Jones set great store by the truth, in her dealings with the Trade.

  Toward noon, and Jones walked up the stone steps of the Justiciary itself—barefoot as any canaler, right into the hall of justice: up the steps, turn right, down the hall ... not the main steps, be sure. The only steps any canaler ever wanted to use, the ones that led off toward Licensing and Trade.

  And the office of one Constancy Rosenblum, who had gambling debts. "Tell 'im it's his Monday appointment," she said to the secretary. "He'll remember."

  The secretary sniffed and left his desk, not without a backward glance to see if Jones was going to snatch something, Jones reckoned.

  The secretary came back sober and thin-nosed with disapproval. "M'ser will see you."

  "Thank ye." Jones lifted her battered hat and re-set it. And did a little bow as she walked on into the fancy wooden-walled office.

  The man inside, an ordinary office-sort, looked up in stark alarm.

  "You m'ser Constancy Rosenblum?" Jones asked. "I'm the Monday business." "Who in hell are you?"

  "Friend." Jones walked up to the desk as Rosenblum got up. "You got them papers ready?"

  "I don't know anything about—"

  She slipped the hook from belt to hand. "He said you'd be nervous. You want to turn 'em to him, you and me got to take a little walk, all right, just to Borg and Kass. Broad daylight. Ain't no harm going to come to you. I got this—" She pulled out a lock of blond hair from her pocket. "Right?"

  Constancy Rosenblum's eyes followed all the little movements while his hands stayed poised on his desk like he was going to shove off straight for the window behind him.

  But he looked a small bit relieved when he saw the lock of hair, looked at it, and her, and the hook, and at her again. "The note—"

  "Ain't no trouble. My friend's got it. You got the papers?"

  "Yes." Rosenblum moved suddenly, reaching for the drawer. Jones brought the hook down by his fingers. "Careful." She gave him a big smile. And drew the knife with the other hand. "You and I don't want to startle each other."

  "I wouldn't think of it." Carefully, very carefully, Rosenblum opened the drawer, lifted a set of papers out. And backed up. "You know your chances of getting out of here with these."

  "That's why you're carrying 'em, ain't it? Come on, broad daylight, right in public, ye're safe as in services, ain't ye? An' you don't got the chance t' snatch my friend, like if he walked in here, do ye? 'Cause your note's out there."

  "Shut up." Rosenblum shifted his eyes nervously toward the door.

  "Right." Wide grin. "You got to walk along with me." She hung the hook back at her belt, slipped the knife into sheath, and flipped it out again. "Hell, I'm fast with this thing, ain't I? Have to be sometimes. I c'n throw it fast, too."

  Rosenblum nodded. She motioned to the door. And let him walk her to the outer office.

  "Appointment," he said to his secretary.

  Out the other door then, down the hall, man in silk and corduroy and leather shoes; a canaler in knee-britches and bare feet, friendly as could be, down to the landing and up the steps to the bridge over to Borg.

  The skip was waiting here, Raj and Denny minding things and an old woman dozing in the well.

  Rosenblum balked. "I don't see him," he said.

  "C'mon." She drew the knife and encouraged him with a prick in the ribs. "Just like I said. You got the right papers, you ain't got a problem in the world."

  "The deal—"

  "No problem. Hey."

  As Mondragon lifted his face and smiled cheerfully at Rosenblum, who balked again. "Lord."

  "Papers," Mondragon said. "My note," Rosenblum said.

  Mondragon held up a slip of paper, that fluttered perilously in his fingers, with the water not far away. "We trade. You're worried about these people. Let me tell you—cheating mine is worse. The papers had better be real."

  "They're real," Rosenblum choked. He dragged them from his pocket. Leaned and made the simultaneous trade.

  "Ware!" Raj gasped of a sudden, and the whole skip jerked, Rosenblum staggered back and forth on the rim as men came running down from Borg's walk.

  Jones kicked the official from behind, right into the canal, jumped for the boat and started for the boathook, while Mondragon scrambled after the bow-tie and Denny for the side.

  She fended off the bank with the hook, leaving the pursuers in midjump toward a boat that was suddenly moving away.

  And poled with the long hook-pole, smooth and steady, around the corner of Kass by Bent, headed for Spellbridge. No hurry, no good thinking whether the bullylads had a gun, whose they were, whether there was ambush set.

  "We scatter," Denny panted, crouching low in the well, while Jones looked back. Not all of the pursuit had fallen in. Some of them were headed down the walk and up onto the bridges. "Gimme the papers. They ain't knowing who's got what."

  "Jones!" Mondragon breathed, and coughed, leaning on the well. "Jones, use the damn engine—"

  "I can't pole and start 'er! Lord!" She leaped past her passengers and fended off a wall, trick turn, around Spellbridge leftward. "Lead 'em off! Meet ye later!"

  Denny took his measure and jumped for Kass. She laid the pole down and pulled the pin on the tiller-bar, to set it to use, while they lost Raj, where, she did not see.

  She cranked the engine over. Once. Twice.

  "Damn this thing!"

  It caught, as the bow scraped the side of Spellbridge.

  She made the Spellbridge corner and headed into Archangel under power, around by the Spur, then south again by North, through the tight ways—dodged a poleboat whose owner and fare screamed curses after her for the shakeup of the wake.

  "We've lost them," Mondragon said in a faint smile. "Circle back, see if we can pick up the boys."

  She thought about it. Hard. And kept going as she was, by Yesudian headed for West.

  "Jones, —Raj's got the damn papers."

  "Lord and my Ancestors! Mondragon!"

  "I didn't want the damn papers caught on your boat!"

  She pulled out onto West, pulled the circle around a barge and in at Ciro, and came back again, by Bent and French and Cantry. Made the run slow now, the engine popping and sputtering.

  "Damn, cut that thing!" another poleboater yelled as she came up into traffic by Wex's side.

  "Sorry," she yelled, and kept going.

  No sight of them. No sight, on the most direct course that might lead to Moghi's, over on Ventani.

  "Ain't no way they can find the boys," she said finally. "Ain't no way we can. We're going."

  "Damn," Mondragon said, and leaned on the deck-rim and coughed. "Not a good week, Jones. Not a good week."

  Home, she reckoned, home by way of Moghi's, where they could wait for the boys to report in. If they could.
r />   NIGHT RIDE

  Nancy Asire

  When Justice entered Hilda's tavern on the back side of Kass, it was to the hum of voices. The usual folk had gathered around noon for lunch: students, mostly, who sat clustered at the tables, some expounding on lectures they had attended (midterm exams being only days away); other men and women sat closer to the doorway—shopkeepers and the like.

  The interior of the tavern was only a bit less damp than the air outside and a good deal cooler. Justice saw his table standing empty save for the ubiquitous golden-furred Sunny who lay sprawled in feline ease on one of the chairs. Nodding to Hilda, who moved her considerable bulk lightly back and forth between the kitchen and the common room, Justice passed the bar and threaded his way among the tables to his place.

  "Ah, Justus! Back from playing the great artist, I see."

  Justice cringed and turned slightly toward the voice. Krishna Malenkov (youngest son of The Malenkovs of Rimmon Isle) sat at a table to the immediate right, two of his hightowner friends seated with him. Lately, Krishna had taken every opportunity to bait Justice, belittling his chosen study of art, calling to mind Justice's less than noble heritage… anything that might anger, him. Justice was usually able to ignore Krishna's cutting remarks, but today had not been one of the best, and Justice had no desire to spend his lunch sitting next to his tormentor.

  Today did not appear to be one of Krishna's better, either. The stocky hightowner's eyes were red, as was the tip of his nose. But if Krishna was"feeling unwell, that fact had certainly not slowed down his tongue.

  "Nice to see you, Krishna," Justice said and looked away, feigning total disinterest.

  "You been back to see your aunt and uncle?" Krishna asked. He coughed—a raspy sound—and wiped his nose. "Can't see why you'd want to, what with that tiny place of theirs. Huhn. So tiny you can barely turn around, eh Justus?"

  Krishna's two companions sniggered quietly, and Justice struggled to ignore them. Ever since he had placed Krishna in karmic debt to him, Justice had found his fellow student sour of mood and quick of temper. Krishna Malenkov was obviously not taking well to the fact he owed money and all the attendant karmic obligations to someone he considered his inferior.