“Your boyfriend would tell you to make a note of all that data,” The Monk had subvocalized tartly to her, as she had regretted the music she was missing while the woman nattered on. “It might come in handy at a later time.”
“Well, note it well, then,” she had snapped back at the inner annoyance, running a brush through her hair while looking at the other woman in the bathroom mirror.
She was older than Kati, and somewhat worn-looking. Noticing the air of tiredness, Kati made a determined effort to control her irritation; after all, what did she know about this person’s life? She may well not have been a chronic complainer, but someone who had enough troubles to suck the joy out of her life. And for all Kati knew, her words may have triggered some unpleasant memories from the woman’s past.
In fact, she suspected this last to be the case. The notion was confirmed when the woman said that she had lived in Crescent City, but had been fortunate enough to marry a Maldos Chain man who had been looking for work on Oreborne Island. The jobs he had found had not been well-paying, nor satisfying, and when his mother had requested that he return home to help his father with his fishing boat, the lady had encouraged her husband to accept.
“Ours is not an easy life here either,” she had said to Kati, “but Bif and his Dad get fair value for their catch when they sell it. And his mother and I garden, and pick thornberries, and since I know some people in Crescent City, we actually manage to sell some of the juice for a little bit of extra coin. So the kids eat, and we adults do, too, though Bif and I don’t get to have a night out, like this, very often.”
“Sounds like you and yours are actually quite lucky,” Kati had said as they left the washroom. “You have a family that gets along while working together, and you’re making ends meet. There are a lot of those in the universe who would envy you, believe me. And you live in a beautiful place, and have left the corruption behind you.”
The woman had actually smiled at Kati, and she had a lovely smile.
“I think you might be right,” she had said. “I do appreciate my husband and the in-laws.”
“Well, aren’t we into adding our little bit into the galaxy’s store of good feelings,” the Granda had snarled as Kati had headed towards her own group. “A regular Pollyanna, you are.”
Kati had ignored the outburst, refusing to even comment on The Monk’s mining of her memories for pithy phrases.
*****
“So this is your hometown,” she commented to Lank, once they had paid a handful of small coins for the privilege of leaving the flit in a guarded lot.
Apparently there was no free parking in Crescent City.
“Of course that’s so,” Lank had snapped when Kati had noted aloud that Maldosa seemed to be much more civilized about that sort of thing than Crescent City was.
“Crescent City is less pleasant than Maldosa or Plenty. Maldosa may be a poor, small town in comparison, and Maldos Chain is not noted for its natural riches. But it was obvious when we were there that the inhabitants help one another, and everyone is treated fairly. The same is true in Plenty, even though there’s a quite a bit of wealth there. In Crescent City, just like in the whole of the Oreborne Principality, the rich people run the show, and they run it for their own benefit. That means that everyone has to pay for anything and everything that they may want or need; nothing’s free for the taking. That’s okay for the rich, but it creates hardship for those who have little, and have trouble finding or keeping work.”
Kati sighed. Lank was reciting an old story.
“When will we ever learn?” she muttered.
Lank turned to grin at her.
“The Lamanians have learned,” he said. “If they could do it, I’m sure that the rest of humanity eventually will, too.”
They were strolling along a narrow street which was taking them downhill towards the waterfront. It was lined with shops on both sides; there was a broad space on either side for pedestrians, and a narrow roadway in the centre, along which bicycles and scooters zipped. There were nothing resembling automobiles, and not enough room for such to pass without taking up much of the pedestrian walks.
“How do these stores get their merchandize?” Kati asked.
They had to, somehow, at some time. There were plenty of things to buy, most of the shops appeared to be chock-full of stuff, whatever the variety that the individual one happened to be selling. There were clothing, various food items, toiletries, footwear, art and art supplies, flowers, musical instruments, cleaning supplies; and this was only a partial list that Kati made quickly as they walked along.
“The delivery trucks come by in the early morning hours,” Lank replied with a shrug. “At that time there are no shoppers blocking their way, and they’re long gone by the time the shops open up again.”
“So someone has to be in the shops at that time to receive the deliveries?”
“Sure.” Lank shrugged again. “But not every shop gets a delivery every morning—unless you’re talking a green grocery, a restaurant, or something along those lines. In those businesses people work long hours, or else they hire someone especially to come in for the deliveries and then to stock the shelves before the shop opens.”
Kati supposed that Lank knew what he was talking about. His mother had apparently let him run around pretty freely from an early age, since she had not been what Kati would have considered a responsible parent. The wonder was that Lank had turned into the fine young man that he was.
“I suppose that we’re not heading in the direction of the grave?” Kati asked. “Unless the cemetery is on an island?”
“I thought that we’d check out Quayside Bar first. Find out when Conny’s going to be there. The graveyard’s not far from there; it’s a poor people’s burial ground, and probably gets flooded every so often. Even at that, the Quayside staff and the streetwalking girls in this area helped to pay for the grave and the burial; I couldn’t have done it on my own.” Lank stared into the distance as he spoke.
“That’s one thing about people who aren’t rich. They help their fellow human beings whenever they can, if they can,” Kati said gently. “Do you think that we ought to take flowers to the grave, or do you Tarangayans show your respect for your dead in some other fashion?”
“Flowers? I’ve never heard of doing that,” Lank responded. “Some people take a little bit of the person’s favourite food, and bury it in the soil of the grave. With my Mum, I spent my last coins on a teaspoonful of dream-dust, and I mixed it into the soil. One of the women who waitressed at the Quayside promised to plant a bush there later—not a thornberry, the ground’s too soggy for them.”
“We’ve walked by a few candle shops,” Kati said. “We could buy a candle or two, and light them to honour your mother’s memory. My ex-in-laws used to do that during holidays. My mother-in-law used to take me to my parents’ grave at Christmas—I’ll explain Christmas to you sometime—and we’d set candles there in the snow, and light them, and leave them to burn all night if they would.”
“I like the idea of candles,” Lank said, his eyes lighting up. “Although there’s never any snow on Oreborne Island.”
“Snow is optional, when it comes to candles in cemeteries,” Kati said. “We’ll get the candles after we’ve seen about your friend Conny.”
*****
“We’ll have to stage this thing as happening on the Laboratory Island,” Mikal said to Xoraya and Llon after he had seen Kati and Lank off in one of the flits. “I expect that the brutes that Gorsh sent on this mission would assume that we’d check it out sooner or later.”
“If keeping Kati and Lank out of this wasn’t essential,” Xoraya added, “We could just hang around there every day, waiting for Gorsh’s men to show up. However, since we have to get them to strike while those two are gone, we’ll have to use the transmitter crystal to ping Xanthus’ ship, and alert them that way as to our location.”
“Do you think that they’ll come for you with the ship?” Llon asked.<
br />
“They might,” Mikal replied. “Although it’s perfectly possible that they’ll use a rented flyer.”
“Or the flit from the ship,” Xoraya mused. “I’d prefer that they come with the flit, because then we could attempt to get away from them, and force them to chase us, making our capture look really authentic.”
“Just so long as it doesn’t get so authentic as to get us killed,” Mikal muttered. “Well, we better get the interviews done, and collect the descriptions of our foes. I’ll download my nodal records of the interviews into one of the Shelonian gadgets that Maryse gave me for the purpose, uh, a long time ago; that way they’ll be easily available for Kati and Lank, later on.”
*****
“My goodness, Lank, you’ve certainly grown!”
Conny grabbed the younger man into a hug as soon as he had burst in through the Quayside Bar door. He had not been present when Kati and Lank arrived, but the fellow behind the bar had sent an errand boy to fetch him the moment he discovered who the unexpected visitor was. Lank had recognized the waitress on duty, and she, delighted to see the youth looking so well, had enlightened the barkeep who was a new hiree.
“Hey, I used to run errands here when I was your age!” Lank had told the grinning boy as he left to do the barkeep’s bidding.
“Yeah, they’re still talking about you!” the boy had shouted enigmatically, but with a broad grin and a wink, as he went through the door.
Lank had introduced Kati as “my boss” to Liez, the waitress, and the bartender. Kati had scoffed at the designation.
“We’re both working under Mikal now,” she had protested. “I’ve lost my Team Leader position.”
“Still, you’re the second in command,” Lank had said, adding for the others’ benefit: “Kati ran the Entertainment Troupe we were a part of on the planet Vultaire. She was great to work with.”
“So are you here on Tarangay to entertain?” Liez asked. “If so, I’m sure that Conny’s group could fit you in somewhere, or somewhen, right here, in this bar.”
Kati shook her head.
“We’ve only got this day to look into Lank’s past,” she said. “Then it’s back to work.”
“What’s work?” Liez asked.
“Chasing bad guys,” Kati answered with a laugh. “Some of them are here on Tarangay right now, but I believe that we’re going to be chasing them into space.”
“Oooh, sounds exciting!” Liez cried.
“Dangerous is more like it,” Kati contradicted, and then Conny arrived, sweeping Lank into a hug.
“Have you two been to visit Tiffy’s grave yet?” he asked after he had been introduced to Kati.
“No,” Lank said hesitantly, “I wanted to come here first.”
He drew a deep breath.
“Kati had the idea of buying a few candles and taking them to the grave, and lighting them, in my Mum’s honour,” he continued. “Some people on the world she comes from, apparently do that for their dead.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Conny agreed immediately. “There are a lot of candles in this town; funny we haven’t thought of doing that with them. Liez here planted a dwarf willow bush on the grave, dwarf willows grow well in that kind of damp ground, but there’s lots of room left over on that plot. You could fit dozens of candles on it.”
“I don’t think we’ll do dozens,” Kati chuckled. “One for each of us who goes to the grave, I think, is about right. When we did it for my parents it was just a single candle per dead.”
Conny gave her a sharp glance, and Kati had the feeling that he was readjusting his impression of her. It seemed that he had simply registered her as Lank’s companion, at first—she could have been anyone. Now he was seeing more, and recognizing that there was a lot more to be discovered.
“You don’t necessarily come on strong at first glance, not being a flashy beauty,” The Monk subvocalized. “But smart people eventually see your worth, and your brains. And this Conny of Lank’s is a sharp operator, and doesn’t undervalue women and youth the way many in this Principality do.”
“And what would you know about this Principality?” Kati queried silently.
“You’d be surprised,” the Granda retorted, slinking back into the recesses of her mind, apparently unwilling to be questioned further.
Liez had to stay on the job, but Conny accompanied Lank and Kati to the graveyard. They stopped at a small shop which was filled with candles of all kinds, and Kati bought three, allowing Lank to pick what he favoured. She also picked up a small box of ornate matches to light them with, wondering as she paid for them why anyone would decorate little bits of wood and sulphur that were going to be burnt even as they were used.
*****
“The head honcho of the guys who had agreed to provide Scientist Hsiss with ingredients with which to modify his creations, as well as willing subjects to test them on, came by a couple of times to the lab,” Davo said in answer to Mikal’s question.
They were conducting the interview in the lounge of the Municipal Building. Gorine had invited Mikal, Xoraya and Llon to use it for the purpose. The young people who had worked for Xanthus Hsiss had arrived there in response to the First Councillor’s request, and Xoraya and Llon were chatting with the four who were not being interviewed by Mikal at the moment. The three of them had agreed that Mikal, as the noded individual, and the official Peace Officer Corps operative, was the one to conduct the one-on-one interviews. His node could make the necessary, unfalsifiable records, and unload them into the mechanism that would be available for study by Kati and Lank, and later could be used as evidence against Gorsh and his minions—assuming that the Team succeeded in bringing them to face justice. Ciela had told Mikal pretty much all she knew in the flit, the day before, so he was now concentrating on the male members of the group.
“He was called Gorsh. The people with him called him Captain Gorsh; I assumed that it meant that he was in charge of the ship they travelled in, although he certainly was in charge of everything else about them, too. All the rest of them were full of ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ that kind of stuff when he talked with them. Nothing democratic there; you’d have thought they had been living in the Oreborne Principality. But he acted pretty sweet towards Scientist Hsiss, and made sure that his underlings did, too. I couldn’t figure him out.
“We had no idea that he was a crook, then. We didn’t know where or how Scientist Hsiss had found him; it was on one of his trips off-world, after all of us employees, except for Wil and Ciela, refused to take part in the medicine trials. Ciela had him figured out before the rest of us did; she talked to Councillor Gorine about her suspicions, but there was really nothing either of them could do, since the Scientist wasn’t prepared to take Ciela’s worries seriously.”
So Gorsh had been in on the mind-tangler business right from the beginning. Mikal tried to fit this information in with the rest of what he knew. When he and Kati had escaped from Gorsh’s slave ship, the Slaver and some chosen of his crew had met another ship on Makros III to obtain more of the drug. Kati had thought that Gorsh and Dr. Guzi were buying it from a source, and that might have been true, but it seemed now that Gorsh had been much more familiar with the source than Kati had realized. It was certainly possible that Gorsh had handed the mind-tangler trade to another criminal on the shady side of the Space Trade Lanes when he had realized that he could use Xanthus Hsiss as a captive navigational system with a range much broader than any other which he might have used. Had he recruited the Vultairian family Margolis for the manufacture, or had that been done by someone else, meaning that there was an intermediary between the Slaver and the Margolises?
Such intricacies of the situation would presumably become clear to him as he and his fellows continued with their quest. The important thing was to leave as much information with Kati and Lank as was possible, before staging the capture of Xoraya and himself. Mikal was somewhat surprised with himself that he had actually agreed to the plan. He was displaying
a more than accustomed amount of faith in someone he had met only recently; that was Llon. However, Xoraya seemed to trust Llon implicitly, and perhaps he, Mikal, was as subject to believing in the Xeonsaurs’ presumed wisdom as any other human being. Plus there were the things Kati had noticed, such as the travelling bag that had simply appeared. And there were Lank’s reed pipes which he had forgotten at the Fiddler’s Green Inn, and which the Green Robe had returned to him. Mikal just hoped that the enigmatic man was right, and he would be able to function mentally under the next dose of tangle-juice that he was going to be subjected to; he had no desire to be out of the picture while everyone else did the work necessary for capturing Gorsh, and scuttling his operations. He had been doing the mental exercises that Llon had prescribed; perhaps they were working—at least he felt that he was more aware of the moods around him than he had ever been before.
“The second time this Gorsh fellow came around, he brought a woman with him; his wife, we assumed,” Davo was saying. “She was piece of work, I’m telling you.”
“What did she look like?” Mikal asked.
“Lot smaller than he was,” Davo replied. “Short, a bit on the stocky side, about his age, same skin colour as his, and very dark hair. Ordinary looking, but not ordinary in character. A harpy, that’s what she was, and I couldn’t quite figure out what she was doing there, other than annoying everybody.
“She couldn’t understand anything about the lab, not even as much as the worker/test subjects that Gorsh had provided Scientist Hsiss with. But she did take an inordinate interest in Ciela; she spent some time watching Ciela work, and seemed to marvel at the fact that she was doing the same things that we fellows were. As if, where she came from, women were stupider than the men; here on Tarangay we know that that’s nonsense, even though there are men who wish it was true.
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