"Doing what you told him, getting ready to blow the clone," Pels said. "The Grand Sech is birthing fidgets because he can"t get through up here; he sent stingers to see what"s going on. They can"t burn a way in, but unless I remember wrong, more than one of them will have overrides on the lockseals."
"Transfer the trace here." She watched the pinlights creep for a moment, sniffed, then began playing with the pad- "I"ll let them think they are in control till they"re close enough ..." she broke off, concentrated for a moment, "to Tairanna, then all their little popbuggies will peel off and put them down where they"ll have a lot of privacy and time to contemplate their sins." She sat back, yawned again, laced her fingers across her stomach and examined her thumbnails. "I think we ought to let him hear us." She tilted her head back, smiled at Aslan. "Don"t you think we owe him a little sweat?"
"No." Aslan sighed. "It gives him too much time to knife us, it"s safer with him dead."
Adelaar laughed at her. "That"s my little pacifist.""All right, make it the clone dead first."
"Ruin my mood, mmh?" Adelaar straightened. "Fetch my kit over, will you, Lan?
I left it by the door there. I might as well use this time to work on the sun-intercept-and a few other notions I"ve had . . . um-Pels, have the locals finished loading the crew?"
"Just about, why?"
"Tell them I"m going to start launching the pods. The stingers won"t bother them. Then you get hold of the Hanifa and have her order her people back on the tug. When we leave, we don"t want any snags or strays." She looked over her shoulder at Aslan, eyes bluer than blue and guileless. "Keep the customers happy," she murmured. "Dead locals don"t trade rosepearls for security systems."
Aslan wrinkled her nose but said nothing; she wasn"t about to be drawn into that ancient argument. She brought the pack to her mother, then went to stand beside the door, looking out into that absurdly oversized antechamber. Briefly she wondered where Parnalee was and if he suspected he was being out-thought and out-engineered. At least, she hoped he was. The Bridge was empty except for Pels and Adelaar. And her, of course. Elmas and her isyas were carrying their dead to the tug hold and getting them stowed for the trip home. Xalloor was in the tug too, running the wounded through the autodoc, if she"d managed to convince the Hanifa it wasn"t a subtle attempt at a.s.sa.s.sination. Aslan pressed her lips over a giggle. There"s a product for you, Mama, say the doc performs in its usual fashion. Quale was a long time gone. What was happening down there in the armory? If he couldn"t get in, he"d have been back before this. He should have taken Pels with him; Churri was there, but what use was he? Mama used to tell me when I did something dumb with my pc that I was just like my father, clumsy as a tantser calf. Jamber Fausse and his lot are there; they"re no use, except as strong backs if something needs shifting and for standing guard. I hope they are standing guard. He should have taken Pels. Why isn"t he back yet? Maybe they"re all dead. We can"t look round the ship without breaking Mama"s blocks.
Aslan sighed. There was no point standing at the doorway like some stupid chatelaine waiting for her lord to get back from the wars. She grimaced at the image. Oooh-yeha, Lan, you"re worse than a teener reading sublimated s.e.x books. Face it, woman, he"s done everything but come right out and tell you he"s not interested. I wonder why? He"s hetero and I"m not a hag. T"k. She ran fingers through her hair, pushed it off her face. This isn"t getting me anywhere. She walked with quick nervous steps to the station where Pels was working.
Adelaar had turned the launching of the pods over to him while she busied herself doing enigmatic things to the Brain. The dataflow was so quick and so esoteric it gave Aslan a headache. Much more satisfying to watch the pods blow, at least she knew what was happening, the ship"s crew including all its Huvveds were on their way to Ta.s.salga for a bit of involuntary exile.
Permanent exile, if the Huvveds had any sense. The way feeling was running among the Hordar, they could end on the chopping block if they got back to Tairanna. The inset showed that most of the locals had cleared out of the loading area; the few left were clearing up odds and ends and loading these on one of the pallets. She recognized Akkin Siddaki and his protege the boy thief from gul Brindar, Kanlan Gercik and two of her students from the Mines. The rest must be settling down in the tug. It"s almost over. All we have to do is blow the clone. Then we leave. Then we go home. Then I stir up a mess of trouble for those foul and loathsome Oligarchs. She savored her triumph. They sold me into slavery; they"re as guilty as Bolodo. What a lovely thought. I suppose they"ll claim they had a legitimate contract with Bolodo. Let them try it. University can field a team of ethicists and lawyers that"ll wipe their faces in their own muck till they choked on the stink. And the Chancellors will authorize and organize the team without their usual fuss and obfuscation, not for me, for the Unntoualar. They mean it, dump on him who says anything not my species is my prey, dump it deepand stinking. They"ll go after those Oligarchs with everything they can throw at them. It surely will not hurt my tenure standing that they can throw me at them too. Hmmp. Like Quale says, I"m lagniappe. I wish he"d get back.
When the sound from the Bridge cut off, Parnalee stirred drowsily; the brandy was smooth and rather sweet, he"d swallowed more of it than was good for him.
His mind was swimming, he had to concentrate to think. "Busy b.i.t.c.h," he muttered, "You and your treacherous daughter, you"re a set." He slapped at his face, felt his stomach spasm. "Fool!" He got to his feet, forced back a surge of nausea and by an effort of will whipped mind and body into a semblance of order. The sisterBrain was hobbled until he got rid of the mainBrain. "The point is," he told himself, "who"s left out in the corridors? How far have they got in the clearance?"
He lowered himself into the chair and swiveled to face the console. "She shut me out of the Bridge, I doubt she could. . . ." His conversation with himself died away as he concentrated on what he was doing.
The sound-search swept through the ship, collecting a series of squeaks and rattles, mechanical hums, the sough of air. Dead sounds. Empty echoes. In the armory, voices, clinks, the scuff of feet, the complex of sounds remotes made when they were forced to the _ limits of their capacity. Parnalee smiled.
"Dealing in armaments now, hmm, Quale? When I get back Outside and spread word around of your scavenging efforts, you"re going to have a problem or two."
Satisfied that he knew what the man was doing and why, he went on with the search.
Nothing. Nothing. Pod bays, the readings showed them empty. "Busy busy," he murmured. "Good little housekeeper, got your cleaning finished, have you?" He did a more intensive sweep, but there was no evidence of any life forms in the area. Lifter locks. Yes, the tug was in Three. Not much sound in there, the ghosts of voices; he fiddled with the controls, focused on the tug"s lock which seemed to be open, fulminating as he did so against the lack of visuals; he depended very much on his eyes and had trouble imaging from sounds. He began recording the voices; he couldn"t make out the words, they were too broken, but the equipment here was good enough to reconst.i.tute them when he was ready-if he decided he needed to know what was being said, which wasn"t likely, he had other, more important things to do.
The corridors were clean. It was time to move. He thumbed out three stimtabs, tossed them down his throat and followed them with a gulp of stale, lukewarm water from the spigot; he"d have preferred a final swallow of brandy but he had enough alcohol in him. Praise Omphalos it should be mostly absorbed by now. Adding more wouldn"t merely be stupid, it could even be fatal.
He checked the torp to make sure it was strapped firmly down, then went meticulously through one last test of its triggering circuits. The torp was old, not so old as the ship, but old enough to have acquired a degree of fragility inappropriate to a bomb though it was sufficiently intact to perform its function without going off prematurely as long as he treated it gently as an egg about to hatch while he was moving it. He toed on the lift field of the dolly and guided it toward the interface exit. Since he couldn"t go near the tube without alerting that woman, he had to travel the service-ways. It was going to be a long slow trip, but there wasn"t anyone to threaten him now and he didn"t have to go near the Bridge. The mainBrain lived inside a sphere of collapsed matter close to the heart of the ship; theoretically, only the Captain had access to its coordinates; even the techs who serviced it had no idea where they were; they tubed there and back, the tubeflow coordinates set by the Bright Sister when she was commanded to do so by the Captain.
Parnalee smiled with drowsy contentment as he climbed on the dolly and settled himself at the controls. As soon as he"d waked the part of her he could reach through the tap, she"d gone hunting for her sister. Found her, too. And he knew what she knew, once he convinced her to trust him; though most of her slept still, she was awake enough to print a map for him. Awake enough to runa jolt through him so he could share her exaltation as she celebrated the power that would soon be hers. And his.
He stopped the dolly, got down so he could crank open the first of the twelve hatches ahead of him, coughed as his feet stirred fine gray dust that had lain undisturbed for millennia. He sprayed oil he"d found in the interface stores over the mix of sheddings, exuda and other muck age-bonded to the gears, slammed his fist cautiously against the handle, hit it again without budging it. He poured clear liquid handcleaner over the slowly softening glue to thin it out yet more, then leaned on the handle. The crank groaned and resisted; sweat popping out on his forehead, he put more pressure on it, half-afraid he was going to break the thing. It shrieked and moved a hair; he sprayed more oil, doused on more cleaner, worked the crank back and forth until the seal gave way and it began to turn, slowly at first then more smoothly. The hatch squealed open, slid into the wall. One down. Eleven to go. He wiped his hands on his tunic sides, rubbing vigorously to get rid of both oil and cleaner, especially the cleaner which had a strong, oversweet smell and a soapy, slimy feel. The stims were doing the job, his head was clearing, he felt as charged as the Dark Sister. He thought of Adelaar"s face when the pads died under her fingers. He smiled.
I watched the last load leave with Churri riding herd on it; I wasn"t planning to sell any of this bit of salvage; I don"t approve of arms dealing and anyway it"s a lot too dangerous for the payoff, but given some of the places I take Slancy into, it"s comforting to have that kind of firepower available and it"s not the sort of thing you can buy whenever you take a notion. And there was Bolodo. If Bolodo execs had any scruples about anything, I hadn"t come across them yet. And I hadn"t a sliver of a doubt there was a destroyer or two stashed somewhere handy where the execs on Helvetia could set them up to take us when we showed. I"d done what I could to pull some cover around us, but cover has a way of springing leaks when you need it most.
Jamber Fausse was squatting by the door with a couple of his men. He got to his feet and came sauntering over to me. "Time?"
"Time. One of you has to go to the Bridge to let Adelaar yaba.s.s know we"re ready; she"s still sealed off, I can"t reach her."
"Tube?"
"Right. The way we got here."
"Vehim Feda, go." The younger of the two men got to his feet and went trotting out. "What will you do if Adelaar yaba.s.s has not discovered the Dark Sister?"
"Sit here and wait. Nothing else I can do." I went over to the implosion torp on its dolly. There was a lot of crud still on it, but the batteries were charging steadily, no sign of trouble there, no breakdowns in the timerprogram if the probe wasn"t looping on me. I toured the testmeters and their readings were all good, no glitches. I climbed onto the dolly"s front bench, put my feet up on the console.
"Ah." Jamber Fausse dropped te a squat beside the door. "Something I know about, sitting and waiting."
I didn"t expect to do much waiting; Adelaar didn"t waste time or energy when she was working and Vehim wouldn"t be more than a few seconds tubing up to her. I arranged myself so I could see the screen; it was over the door. I counted seconds and got to fifty before it lit up and Adelaar was looking at us.
"Quale," she said. "I see you"re ready." She didn"t seem to expect a response so I didn"t give her one. "The auxBrain is scattered through more than a dozen nodes, there"s no way you"ll be able to get them all."
"s.h.i.t! What. ..."
"Relax. You don"t need to. Do a thorough job on the interface and you"ve neutered our Dark Sister. There"s a weakness in the design. The nodes are connected through that interface. They don"t operate independently unless most of the ship is dead. Not enough power. They"ll probably kick on when she hitsthe sun, but that"s a bit late to do any good. Implosion torp?"
"Yeh."
"I thought I recognized the configuration. Under all those meters." She laughed, a nice sound; she was feeling pleased with herself. "It"s viable?"
"Yeh."
"That"ll do it. We"d better be outside the skin when it blows."
"Yeh." I wasn"t going to argue with that; the Warmaster was big and tough enough to absorb a lot more punishment than one little torp, but she was older than time and there was rot in her hide. "Tube-flow?"
"I"ve reset the tubeflow from your gate, it"ll take you straight in to the clone interface. I"ve given you two minutes to get to the interface, starting when we finish this, five to get set up, plus three for holdups. The three will kick on only if you haven"t gone through the gate there before then. The flow switches outbound automatically, endpoint the lander lock area. Where we"ll be sitting, waiting for you."
"Bridge?"
"I"ve programmed the mainBrain to clamsh.e.l.l after we"re out."
"Any sign of the Proggerdi?"
"I haven"t bothered looking."
I gave a yell for the teddybear. His ears were up fluttering, his lips curled back to show his tearing teeth. He didn"t need telling to watch out for ambushes, but I told him anyway. "That fruitcake could be anywhere," I said.
"Get hold of the tug before you start and have a bodyguard waiting at the tubegate.
Adelaar, no arguments. I don"t get paid if I don"t get you back to Helvetia and I intend to collect. You hear?"
She laughed again. Almost hysteria, coming from her. "I hear," she said. "Time is, Quale. Get yourself in gear or miss the boat." The screen went dark.
"Right," I said. "Hop on, Jamo, you and your friend, it"s time to roll."
The curved wall of the ma.s.sive sphere was a gray-black chimera behind the container shield, there and not there, ominous though not quite tangible, the ma.s.s of a small star prisoned in gossamer. Parnalee brought the dolly to a gentle stop before it, lifted the link from the seat beside him. "Open," he murmured, then waited for the Dark Sister to coax an opening for him.
The surface shimmered, a black pinhole appeared, dilated swiftly until it was wide enough to admit the dolly then pulsed like a wet black mouth, a mouth that could close on him if it chose; he eyed it with distaste, but the bulk of the Bright Sister was in there and there was no other access. He edged the dolly toward the opening, took it through.
Thinking he was a repair tech, the Bright Sister brought up the lights so he could see what he was doing.
He eased the dolly and its burden as deep into her heart as the narrowing serviceways between the Brain"s components would let him go. Then he cycled down the power of the liftfield, let the dolly sink to the floor, gently, gently, don"t crack the egg, not yet. Not. Yet. Off. Yes. He slid the link into his belt pouch, climbed over the bench back and squatted on the bed beside the torp. He activated it, set its timer for an hour on; he needed an interval to get back to the interface where he"d be in touch with and protected from the fury of the Dark Sister. Before he touched the triggering sensor and started the timer humming, he set his hand on the casing of the torp and savored the triumph that was going to be his. One hour. He patted the bomb. Gently.
Very gently. "Yes." He set his forefinger on the sensor and felt the hum in his bones. "Yes." He slid off the dolly and trotted for the mouth.
As soon as he was outside, he touched on the link. "Close," he said.
The hole in the sphere grew smaller, smaller, swiftly smaller, was a pin p.r.i.c.k of darkness again, was gone. He put the link away and began the long run to the interface, bouyed by the knowledge that nothing could go wrong now, nothing could stop the explosion that killed the Bright Sister. All he had todo was sit and wait.
I looked round the interface. "Yeh," I said. "This is it. He was here."
Jamber Fausse nodded. Store cabinets were open, some of their contents spilled onto the floor, evidence of a hasty search, there was a bottle of brandy on the console with about an inch of liquid left in it, a bubble gla.s.s beside it with a brown smear drying in the bell; the stink of the brandy was thick in there, along with a stale smell that clung despite the labors of the fans in the ducts. "Where is he now?"
"Who knows?" It"s a tug ship. Keep an eye on the door, will you, the two of you? I"d better get to work. We don"t have that much time."
I let the bed down, started arming the torp. Didn"t take long. When I finished, I thought a minute, then I opened up the dolly"s motor casing and removed a few vital parts. If-when-Parnalee got back, I didn"t want him driving off with our little surprise. There wasn"t much else I could do. Even if the three of us could muscle the torp off the bed without fatally herniating ourselves, there was no place in here where we could hide the thing.
The young raider left, but Jamber Fausse stopped me at the door. "What if he comes back before it blows? What if he disarms it?"
"You want to stay and argue with him, be my guest," I said. I wasn"t all that happy with that antique timer; I was sure it"d trigger the torp sometime, I just wasn"t sure when. And I didn"t want to be anywhere around when it turned over. "Look," I said. "It"s a randomized circuit and not all that easy to counterprogram. Not like pulling a few wires on hope and a prayer. I"ve set the thing to blow in half an hour. If he gets here in a minute or two, maybe he can do something; if he"s later than that, no way. We take our chances, that"s all we can do."
He didn"t like it, but he was no more into suicide than I was, so he nodded and we took off for the tubegate.
I dropped the tug into orbit a quadrant away from the Warmaster and waited there.
Adelaar glanced at her chron. "Two minutes," she said.
The ship hung motionless in the center of the screen. The Hanifa was standing behind me again, I could feel her hot breath on my neck. When I looked around, I was almost nose to nose with her, but she wasn"t noticing anything but the Warmaster. The rest of them were pretty much the same. Hungry.
The Warmaster trembled. A shine spread over her, then localized at the drivers. She moved. Slowly at first. Ponderously. She began picking up speed, angling away from Tairanna. As soon as she got wound up, it was like she vanished, collapsing to a pinpoint and then to nothing. "Well," I said. "She"s on her way. Horgul in two hours. Good-bye, battleship."
"What about the torp? How do we know if it blew?"
That was Jamber Fausse; he was a man to keep his teeth in an idea until it squealed. "We don"t," I said. "Unless she turns up again. Then we know it didn"t. Back off, everyone. Show"s over. We"re going down."
2.
Parnalee had slowed to a fast walk by the time he pa.s.sed through the next to last hatch. He felt the sudden liveliness in the ship as she began to move. He stopped, flattened his hand hard against the wall. He could not have described the difference he felt in her, but he knew what was happening, she was on her way to the sun. He smiled. So they thought. Let them think it, fools. He started moving again, an unhurried trot. He pa.s.sed through the last hatch, glanced at his chron, smiled again. He"d made better time than he"d expected.
Only half an hour. He sighed with pleasure as he thought about stripping down and letting the fresher scrub him clean again, about stretching out on the fur, a hot meal on the console beside him and another bottle of brandy while he waited for the Dark Sister to come alive and take over the ship. He saw thedoor, open like he"d left it, hurried toward it.
He stopped just inside, his way barred by the dolly and the torp; for a crazy moment he thought he was hallucinating, then that the Bright Sister had somehow developed a mechanical TP facility and flipped his torp back to him, then he knew that the woman had done it, the b.i.t.c.h had found his hiding place, she"d found the Dark Sister, no matter that it was impossible for her to find the Dark Sister, and she"d left this joke to greet him. Furious and afraid he took a step toward it; disarm it, he thought, I"ve got to disarm it.
It blew in his face. He knew an instant of intolerable brightness, of intolerable frustration and rage. Then nothing.
Time-span: 11 Days (local) after the meeting on Gerbek Island to the evening of the day called Lift-Off.
At the Mines.
When Karrel Goza left Zaraiz Memeli at the Mines, the boy was on fire with excitement, but it didn"t take him long to discover he"d been dumped there to keep him out of trouble while the adults did whatever it was they were going to do. He was furious and hurting, betrayed again by someone who claimed his trust. He poked about, sticking his nose into anything that showed the slightest promise of breaking the tedium. In the middle of his second week there, early one morning before the sun was all the way up, he pulled a rotten board off a window at the back of the convict barracks, wriggled through the narrow s.p.a.ce and dropped onto the floor of a holding cell.
The silver sphere came bounding at him, squawling its warning, attacking when that warning was ignored.
He was startled but not frightened. He jumped, swerved, dived, played with it, laughed as he whipped about, elastic as an eel, too fast for the sphere to catch him.
N"Ceegh heard him laughing, took a look.
The sphere stopped chasing Zaraiz and began chatting with him, then it brought him into the workshop.
After a terse welcome, N"Ceegh went back to making the operant parts of one of the stunners he was a.s.sembling for the hit on the Warmaster. Zaraiz sat on the stool next to him and watched him work, fascinated by the delicacy and precision of his fingers, by the magnifier he was wearing, the microscopic points on most of his tools. Despite his involvement in the Green Slimes and his ability to dominate the other middlers, he was a solitary boy; he knew the pleasures and value of silence. He asked nothing, volunteered nothing, spoke only to answer the Pa"ao"s questions and kept his mouth shut at other times, not wanting to distract N"Ceegh at a crucial moment. After a while N"Ceegh let him polish and fit together cases for the stunners.
The boy immersed himself in what he was doing, glowing with pride each time the Pa"ao looked a part over and set it down without comment, showing that he thought it was finished, that he saw nothing there that needed fixing. With the resilience of the child he still was, Zaraiz gave his trust again, this time to the Pa"ao, gave it because N"Ceegh was a master craftsman and he wanted very much to be like him, because N"Ceegh was wholly alien, was physically and spiritually Other. He gave his trust and a tentative affection.
N"Ceegh recognized this in his silent way and gave back what he was given.
When they took the Pa"ao, Bolodo"s minions were clumsy and let themselves be seen. To cover themselves they ashed the village where they found him, killing all his kin, blood to the third degree, killing his mates and his children, most of all killing the boychild who was his craft-heir. His species was monogamous for life, patrilocal and powerfully bonded to the family and the family Place. He lived after that only to trade death for death; he escaped from the Palace to find a way of laying his bloodghosts, to feed them blood from the men who did the killing, blood from the men who ordered it. Zaraiz gave him hope of another kind, hope of pa.s.sing on his craft, of hands to lay his own ghost when it was tired of him and wanted to shed the weary weight of his body.By the end of the week Zaraiz Memeli divorced his family and swore loyalty to N"Ceegh, taking the name Zaraiz Pa"ao. N"Ceegh adopted him as his son, his craft-heir. And he began teaching Zaraiz Pa"ao the Torveynee, the way of the Pa"ao and the way of honor, the way of vengeance.
Ten days before Lift-Off they watched Elmas Ofka and her isyas leave for the Chel, carrying with her the stunners they"d built for her. They watched the fighters from the Mines being ferried out to her, one night, two nights, three, until the chosen were all gone.
They spent the day named Lift-Off in the shop, working on the housing of a hunting rifle, one that killed with exploding darts no larger than a mosquito.
N"Ceegh set delicate scrolls of inlay into the dark fine wood of the stock, then pa.s.sed it over to Zaraiz for polishing while he etched shadow patterns into the metal parts. They worked all day, talked about nothing but the work.
Around sundown they went to the Smelter and sat in a corner eating fries and fish and drinking tea, listening to the music, watching the youngsters and the middlers dance.
Thirty minutes later Belirmen Indiz came in, banged his fist on the bar, then scrambled onto it, his age and stoutness forgotten. "The Warmaster is taken,"
he bellowed into a sudden silence. "She is taken and gone, sent into the sun.
Do you hear me? The Warmaster is gone."
Noise and confusion, shouted questions, Belirmen"s booming voice as he tried to answer them, shoving elbows, stomping feet, triumphant flourishes, trills and squeals from the musicians, crying men, women, youn-gers. Rebels crowding closer to the bar to hear more, rebels forcing their way against the tide to get out and spread the news. Everywhere movement and emotion, a heady yeasty mix. A time when dreams no one quite believed in were suddenly made real.
N"Ceegh looked at Zaraiz, nodded at the door. Zaraiz got to his feet and followed him out.
Riding souped-up yizzies protected by miniature cuuxtwoks, N"Ceegh and Zaraiz Pa"ao left the Mines an hour before dawn. They circled wide through the mountains and went clacking and whirring across a stretch of barren Chel, not far from where the raiders had camped. By nightfall they were on the lower boundary of the Eastern Duzzulka, where tendrils of gra.s.sland reached into the scrub. They landed, tethered their yizzies, ate, slept a few hours, climbed into the saddle again.
I put Chicklet into a dive, flicked her around so the gunport Pels had improvised in her repair lock faced a melter station; I balanced her on her tail while he got off a missile that a second later blew out the station and a hunk of tower under it. We went swing, balance, boom around the circ.u.mference until the wall looked like beavers had been at it.