“And I heard her say to Scientist Hsiss that she would like to take Ciela home with her, which was a mistake on her part. He nearly bit her head off, and told Gorsh to keep his woman under control, and what the heck was the matter with her, what made her think that she could just take someone with her, out of his lab? I saw Gorsh buttonhole her; he must have told her to stop talking nonsense because she kept her mouth mostly shut after that. Good thing Ciela didn’t overhear her talk that time; she would have been livid if she had. Apparently she did hear a bit later on, when Gorsh’s men came to trash the lab and kidnap the scientist; one of the goons had said that Madame Gorsh had told him to take the laboratory worker girl, too, something about wanting her for the Estate. But Gorsh had overruled her instructions, because he wasn’t into little girls, no matter that Milla wanted one for a sister-wife. He liked his women grown up, and he still had hopes that he could snag the one he had his eye on.”
“Jayzees!” Mikal found the favourite oath of the Star Federation Space Station escaping his lips.
Thank goodness Kati was not a part of the bait package! Now, that he would not have been able to handle: Gorsh enslaving Kati to be his second wife! That had been his plan for her on the slave ship, and she had been keen to escape before the Slaver could take her home to display to Milla, and to bed her with hopes of begetting healthy, bright children with her! So he had not given up on that notion; ruefully Mikal recognized that he understood the man’s single-minded desire to have Kati, and no-one else. He shared that desire, if nothing else, with the Slaver, and he was determined that the man should not get her.
Ciela confirmed the story about the men who had trashed the lab.
“Yeah,” she responded when Mikal asked her about it, later in the interviews. “I didn’t mention it earlier because I didn’t see how it was relevant. It just seemed like a stupid notion of a miserable nag of a woman who wants to run her husband’s life to the extent that she wants to be the one to pick out the breeder to bear him the children she can’t provide. I guess I didn’t take it seriously; maybe I should have. Though she’s lucky her man didn’t want me; I’d have made her life a misery if he had.”
“Whoa, Ciela, slow down,” Mikal said. “Count yourself fortunate that Gorsh didn’t want you. These people are slavers, Milla as much as her spouse. From what I’ve heard, her idea of a second wife is one condemned to be barefoot and pregnant, and digging tubers on their Estate when not birthing babies.”
“Yuck,” said Ciela. “That’s definitely not the life for me. Think I wouldn’t attack that Milla with the tuber-digging hoe?”
“And end up with chains around your ankles, or drugged silly when not needed for duty in your master’s bed, or the birthing chamber.” Mikal shook his head. “I better mention again to Gorine that she and her fellow planetary politicians have to hurry up and get some protection for Tarangayans from marauders. Sounds to me like the women of this world would not fare too well in slavery.”
The interviews over, Mikal shared his thoughts with Xoraya and Llon over a late lunch in a little cafe off the Square that contained the Principality’s Offices. They had the written descriptions of the criminals who had been plaguing the area at the time of Xanthus Hsiss’s capture, and were poring over them, Mikal or Llon reading them aloud to Xoraya who could not yet handle the Tarangayan script, although she was quite good with the spoken language, thanks to all the coaching Lank had given her, and her natural facility with languages. Mikal had also received a couple of nodal reports—both from Principality’s Councillors, though neither of them was Gorine—into the Shelonian gadget which the Peace Officers in the Federation used for storing such information. The little machine was the one which he planned to leave for Kati and Lank to pore over.
“I gather that Gorsh, himself, came to Scientist Hsiss’ laboratory only twice while the Scientist was conducting his studies, although he sent men here on other occasions. Xanthus himself brought in the eight outside workers/test subjects, but we’re supposing that Gorsh, or someone associated with him, obtained the workers for him. They seemed to come from an assortment of Fringe Worlds—at least the ones I interviewed on Vultaire claimed four different planets as their places of origin, and that was among six fellows. The trips by Gorsh’s men were ostensibly to deliver new ingredients for the Scientist to test, but, I suspect, also to check on his progress. To find out if he had yet come up with a drug that Gorsh would consider useful.
“The first visit by the big boss himself was probably to establish Xanthus Hsiss’ bona fides—amusing that, to think that Gorsh was checking out somebody else’s trustworthiness, but then, there has to be honour among thieves, after all. The second visit came after the Scientist had sent word to him that he had come up with a concoction that he and his people might find interesting, and it was during that visit that Gorsh was accompanied by his wife Milla, whether at her instigation or not, we don’t know.
“During this visit, Xanthus Hsiss demonstrated the use of the mind-tangler, and explained its properties to Gorsh and his wife. According to the Tarangayan employees, he even attempted to explain to them how the drug could be used to erode the barriers that almost all humans have to extra-sensory perception. I should imagine that it was Gorsh’s misunderstanding of this explanation that had him thinking that he could use the mind-tangler to erode my resistance to spilling Star Federation secrets; he confused the natural barriers of a person with the mental barriers set up by a Shelonian ESP technician inside a willing mind.”
“A man like that hears the word ‘barrier’ and he assumes that it’s the barrier he’s most interested in,” Llon commented with a shrug. “Happens all the time.”
“In any case, Xanthus kept his promise, and gave Gorsh a sample of the drug, and its recipe. He told Gorsh that all of the workers that the Slaver had supplied were capable of producing the stuff, given a basic laboratory, and the proper ingredients. He even let Gorsh take two of the workers back, to set up a lab to produce it.
“Then the Scientist returned to his work with his Tarangayan employees and the six other test subjects, thinking, no doubt, that he had dealt with an annoyance, and now had a clear situation, including an assured pipeline of various ingredients with which to make changes to his medications.”
“Oh dear,” muttered Xoraya. “Yes, that is precisely how his thinking would have gone. He had fulfilled his part of the bargain, and the other side would be honour-bound to keep theirs.”
“Only, of course, that’s not how it went,” Mikal said with a sigh. “In about a week’s time the brutes—Gorsh’s brutes—arrived, took Xanthus captive, and packed up the six off-world workers, after drugging the Tarangayan employees with the very mind-tangler that they had helped to develop. Besides, they trashed the laboratory before absconding with all of the equipment which they considered worthwhile, meaning the ship, its flyer, and the flit.
“The employees were stuck on Laboratory Island until their families raised a ruckus because they had not come home that night, and someone came to the island to find out what was wrong.”
“Such easy pickings for the criminals,” Xoraya said. “No wonder they, or their ilk, have been plaguing Tarangay ever since. They must think that the people here are stupid and helpless, and whatever they have is free for the biggest bullies to take.”
“The one piece of luck for the Tarangayans is that they really don’t have much to steal,” Llon said, grinning crookedly. “Songs can hardly be stolen, and music is about the only thing that these people have in abundance. Oh there’s a little bit of this and that, but hardly enough for a seasoned space criminal to profit from. And the women are strong and feisty, more trouble than they’re worth. Something like your Kati, Mikal.”
His grin grew even more crooked during the last words.
“Yeah, well, it sounds like Gorsh has developed a fondness for strong and feisty—so long as it’s adult and fertile as well,” Mikal said, looking not happy. “He apparently still wants her
for his second wife, at least I think that she’s the one ‘he has his eye on’.”
“Oh dear,” Xoraya said. “It’s a good thing we ruled her out as bait. Although, I can’t say I blame the man, if he has fallen for her. She’s worth falling for.”
“I agree with you about her worth,” Mikal replied. “But there is no way he gets her. The woman is mine, although I’m sure she’d tell me to watch my choice of words if she heard me say that!”
*****
The woman under discussion was, at that moment, standing beside a damp patch of ground which sported a sizable boulder, and a scraggly willow bush. To the rock there was attached a small metal plate on which were engraved the name of the deceased, and two dates, those of her birth and death. Other than patchy, struggling grass, there was nothing else on Tiffy’s grave. It was surrounded by rows of similar plots, most of them adorned with the large, variously-shaped stones, and some also having bushes of some sort, struggling to stay alive. The sight was not one to delight the soul, but at least the island location meant that the salty smell of the ocean wafted over all, freshening the atmosphere.
“It’s a poor graveyard,” sighed Conny, looking around him. “But I suppose the inhabitants don’t mind too much, being dead. The well-to-do of Crescent City have their own cemetery among the hills further inland, but the dead there are just as dead as these ones, even though their stones are nicely shaped and their trees prettier. I like this one better actually, since I know the families whose members lie here, and I expect that my carcass will end up here too, under a natural rock, in another few decades.”
“This is where my Mum is buried, and that makes it special to me,” Lank said, wiping a tear from the corner of one eye. “She wasn’t much of a mother, I guess, but she was all the mother I had.”
“She loved you, boy, though she wasn’t much good at life,” Conny said. “I told her once that you were an uncommonly bright youngster—you were only a tiny lad then—and her eyes just lit up with pride. It didn’t last; she was looking for her next hit of dream-dust before long, but she did know that her boy was a treasure. Thing is, she had taken a wrong turn sometime in her life, gone down the wrong path too far to pull herself back, even for her child. I don’t know what had happened to her to break her spirit, but I know that she was hoping that her son’s spirit would never break like hers had. Once she said that she hoped to stay alive long enough to make sure that you had a chance at a better life, but that beyond that she didn’t care what happened. And I guess she succeeded in at least that small ambition, which, for her, I think, was an enormous hill to climb.”
“You never told me any of that until now,” Lank said, with wonder in his voice. “Why?”
“When I sent you off-planet you were still teetering between falling apart and getting your act together,” Conny explained. “I didn’t want to lay any trips on you; I just wanted you to get away somewhere where you could make a fresh start. To deal with your grief, and to discover something of who you truly are. I knew that you could make your way in the large universe, but you didn’t need sad memories dragging you down.
“Now it looks to me like you’ve found what I was hoping that you would: friends, purpose, your own inner strengths. You won’t fall apart anymore; you have a future.”
“That is very true,” Kati said, unwrapping the three candles and handing them to Lank to place on the grave. “Lank will have a marvellous future. There’s not much he can’t do; he’s proven that. Tiffy must have had depths to her that no-one knew, to have borne a child like Lank. Unfortunately, I guess we’ll never know what sent her down that wrong path that she was on; I shudder to think what it must have been.”
“You and me both,” agreed Conny. “Maybe it’s best that none of us knows. Maybe that’s why she never talked about it; she wanted it to be a burden that she, alone, had to carry.”
Kati watched Lank make a triangle around the rock with the candles. Then she handed the box of matches to him, and watched him light the candles, which began to flicker in the breeze.
“Can you and I sing the Fiddler’s Green song for her?” he asked her shyly when the candles were all burning, and he had returned the matchbox to her.
“It’s appropriate,” she replied, “although we don’t have music, since our instruments are in the flit. But I bet your mother wouldn’t mind the omission.”
“Maybe she’s listening there, on the Fiddler’s Green,” Lank said.
They sang the song while Conny listened, and then the three of them left the grave, the candles still blazing. There was not much to catch fire in that graveyard, so Kati did not worry about leaving lighted candles unattended. If the wind did not snuff them out, they would burn to the ground without doing anything other than puffing some smoke into the atmosphere above the plot. And for a short while they would tell anyone who might pass by that Tiffy had been loved, and was still remembered by her loved one.
*****
Conny did invite them to join him and his fellow musicians in entertaining the patrons at the Quayside Bar that evening. Lank was hesitant about accepting at first, but Kati decided that this was not the time to be timid. It was Lank’s only chance to hang out with his old friends, and she did not want to deny him the opportunity, just because some of Gorsh’s brutes had decided to loom around threateningly. Mikal, Xoraya, and Llon were in the area where they were likely to create trouble; she and Lank, being in Crescent City, Oreborne Island, were likely far enough away to be off their radar, for the time being. But Mikal, Llon and Xoraya were all adults, capable adults at that; they ought to be able to take care of themselves, even if Kati and Lank were late getting back to Maldosa, and the Lodge where the group had booked another night’s stay.
Besides, Mikal had been good enough to encourage her to linger in Crescent City if Lank found being back there congenial.
“You two don’t have to rush back, love,” he had told her that morning, while hugging her, and burying his face in her hair. “Let the boy enjoy his reunions if all goes well there. You’re really not needed here, today. There’s not enough work here for five people, and as for the four threatening louts, if they come looking for us, it’ll likely be on the Laboratory Island, and Councillor Gorine has the Principality’s beefiest men guarding it. We’ll head back into space when Xanthus Hsiss’ old ship takes off with the goons, and then we’ll follow it.”
Kati had thought that there were some problems with his reasoning, but it had seemed not the best time to raise an argument. That could wait, she had decided; in the meantime she would make Lank’s trip down the memory lane as good as possible.
Thus, she and Lank picked up their musical instruments from the flit, just before supper time, and Lank pinged a message to the other flit, saying that they would return to Maldosa late that evening, and no-one was to worry about them. They were going to be playing music and singing with Conny’s group at the Quayside Bar.
Communications were a bit trickier on Tarangay than they would have been on Lamania. Since few Tarangayans had nodes, there was no planet-wide communications network incorporating those, and the Tarangayans had not invested in satellites either, so transmission of messages tended to be old-fashioned and spotty. The rented flits, fortunately, were off-world manufacture, and could communicate with one another. The first thing Lank and Llon had done, after renting the two, was to set their built-in coms to speak to one another. It was also possible to alert the flit remotes which functioned as keys, to tell their holders when messages were received by the flit coms, but to access such a message a person had to be inside the flit. This was awkward by Lamanian and Shelonian standards, but life as it was lived, on a Fringe planet which was not a member of the Star Federation. Just one of those things that SFPO Agents dealt with in the course of their duties, and hardly anything to upset either Kati or Lank.
Various people who had known and liked the youth during his early years had showed up at the Quayside to say hello to him during his short vis
it. They had interfered with his playing, but that had hardly mattered; he was not there to earn a living making music, and Conny’s group could carry the show without any help from Lank or Kati. Kati was just pleased to be around to see and hear how the Tarangayan professionals conducted a sing-along; she was not too proud to pick up pointers when the opportunity arose. She was happy to follow the lead that Conny’s band mates provided, and strummed her guitar and sang with them the songs that she had learned from the Federation musical archives when she and Joaley, the red-head, had rooted in it, via the Customs com on Vultaire.
It was a delightful evening until three well-dressed, middle-aged men entered the establishment, parking themselves near the stage to drink beer and take in the show. There had been a lull in the entertainment as the men settled at a small empty table; Conny and the band leader had been having a whispered discussion as to which songs to play next, and Kati had been following it with her node-enhanced hearing, when suddenly Lank, who stood next to her, had grabbed her arm.
“One of those three guys who just came in and sat down,” he whispered urgently to her, “is the bastard who murdered my mother.”
Oh dear. Kati looked around to see where she had left her guitar case. It was by the stage, Lank’s flute sack on top of it.
“Which one?” she asked Lank, more to gain time than because she wanted to know.
“The one on the left,” Lank replied.
He was shaking. He had let go of Kati’s arm and she reached for his hand and grabbed it into hers. It was cold and sweaty.
“Conny and Marty,” she said to Lank’s friend, and to the band leader. “I think it’s time that Lank and I left.”
Conny looked up, saw the group of arrivals, and Lank’s face. He nodded at Kati, murmured something which Kati failed to catch, to Marty, and stepped over to where Kati and Lank were reaching for their instrument covers. Marty and the rest of the band began to play a rousing sea shanty, with Marty breaking into song.
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 13