There were apparently no more questions that anyone wanted answers to. "That"s settled, then," I said into the chilly silence. "Revs, call and get someone out here to fuel up the ship-hopefully, we can get the tanks properly topped off this time. Don"t forget that we"re the Sleeping Beauty now. Everett, keep an eye on Shawn. Keep him quiet until I get back."
Everett"s lips compressed again. "I"ll do what I can."
"What about Mechanic Ixil?" Chort asked. "Is he all right?"
"He"s resting in his cabin," I told them, deliberately bending the truth a bit.
If our saboteur didn"t already know about Kalixiri healing comas, I had no intention of enlightening him. "Don"t worry, he"ll come out when he"s ready.
I"ll be back in two hours."
They were still standing together in the wraparound as I headed down the ramp, looking for all the world like hapless waifs watching the last bus leaving for the orphanage. I hoped they wouldn"t still be standing there like that when the fuelers came by to start filling the tanks. It would look a little odd.
The slideways here were similar to the ones on Dorscind"s World, only better maintained, as well as being equipped with transparent half-cylinder shields overhead to ward off the elements. At the moment the protection wasn"t necessary, but judging by the dark clouds beginning to gather on the horizon it likely would be soon.
The port itself was neat, efficient, and as clean as a port could be, not a great surprise with the Patth directly running three-quarters of it and having a strong say in the operation of the rest. The civilian area just outside theport, though, wasn"t under even their nominal control and was likely to be just as dark, sinister, and vice-ridden as any other s.p.a.ceport environs in the Spiral. There I would find the dealers in happyjam and other forms of misery, at least one of whom-I hoped-would have borandis in stock.
The problem, of course, was finding the right needle in the correct haystack.
Under normal circ.u.mstances that would take a great deal of time, time neither Shawn nor I nor the Icarus had to spare at the moment. I had to cut through the danger and tedium of the search process and go straight to the source.
Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I had the source"s phone number.
The screen lit up to show the same broken-nosed thug who had answered Brother John"s line the last time I"d called. "Yeah?"
"It"s Jordan McKell," I said. "I need some information."
The scowl lines around his eyes deepened as he frowned at me. "McKell?"
"Yes; McKell," I said, striving mightily for patience. I"d already lost twenty minutes of my promised two hours, ten in getting to the StarrComm building and ten more waiting for a free booth, and I wasn"t interested in playing Greek chorus to one of Brother John"s housethugs. "I"m disguised, all right? I need some information-"
"Hang on," he interrupted me. "Just hang on."
The screen went black. I glared at my watch, suddenly very tired of Brother John and his vicious yet stupid people. The next one on the line would probably be that moon-faced thug in the butler"s outfit, who by now had probably figured out what badinage was and would waste more of my time trying to come up with some.
The screen cleared; but to my surprise it wasn"t the butler. "h.e.l.lo, Jordan,"
Brother John said. The voice was as smooth as ever, but the usual cherubic smile was nowhere to be seen. "Do you have any idea what kind of stir you"ve been creating out at that end of the Spiral?"
"Have I, sir?" I asked.
The chill visibly surrounding him abruptly dropped into the subzero range.
"Don"t play innocent with me, McKell," he snarled, his veneer of civility cracking like a cheap packing crate. "A ship from Meima, they"re all saying-a rogue freighter the Patth are panting like sick dogs to get their calloused little hands on. Are you going to sit there and tell me that"s not you?"
"Yes, sir, it"s me," I said hastily. It was impossible to grovel properly in a StarrComm booth, but insofar as vocal groveling was possible I was groveling for all I was worth. "I"m sorry, I didn"t mean it that way. I just didn"t realize how much of a stir we were actually causing."
The temperature stayed where it was. "I don"t like commotions, McKell," he warned. "I don"t like them at all. Commotions draw attention, and I don"t like attention. You don"t like attention, either."
"I know, sir," I agreed humbly. "Believe me, I"m trying as hard as I can to get out of the spotlight."
"Trying how?" he demanded. "It"s not your ship or your problem-just walk away from it. Where are you? I"ll have you picked up."
He had a point, all right. Half of one, anyway. It wasn"t my ship; but it was my problem. "I can"t do that, sir," I said, bracing myself for another burst of his anger. "I accepted a contract to fly the ship out. A poor but honestindependent shipper can"t just break contracts that way. Not and continue to look like a poor but honest shipper."
"Who would know?" he countered. His voice was still hard and cold, but at least he hadn"t started screaming at me. Maybe I"d gotten him to start thinking it through.
"Too many people," I told him. "A lot of people-some of them s.p.a.ceport officials-have seen my ID in connection with it. People who might start wondering how an independent shipper could afford to break a contract that way.
People who might start wondering if that independent shipper had another source of operating funds." I shrugged, a brief twitching of my shoulders. "And if they did, I wouldn"t be very effective as an employee anymore."
For a long minute he just stared at me, breathing heavily, his face unreadable.
I gazed back, visually groveling now, wondering uneasily if I"d pushed my hand too far with that last one. Cutting me loose from our agreement would lose him most of the five hundred thousand in debt I still owed him, but the Antoniewicz organization probably blew that much a month just on paper clips. If, on the other hand, he decided that I had become too much of a liability to be trusted on my own, I would be summarily snuffed out like an atmosphere-test candle.
And it would be the height of irony if it turned out I was the one who had talked him into doing it.
"You keep trying to force these decisions on me, Jordan," he said at last. His voice was still cold, but I thought I could detect a slight thawing of the chill factor. "These faits accomplis. There are to be no more of them."
"Yes, sir," I said. "I"m really not trying to do that. It"s just that things keep happening too fast, and I keep having to improvise."
"No more of them, Jordan," he repeated in the same tone. "I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir," I said. "Perfectly."
"Good. Now, why did you call?"
I took a careful breath. "I need to find a dealer, sir."
He blinked at that, the blink turning into an even deeper frown. "A dealer?"
he repeated, the chill factor diving into arctic territory again. For all the misery he caused with his happyjam, Brother John was almost puritanical when it came to his own people using the stuff.
"One who carries borandis," I said hastily. "One of my crew is ill with Cole"s disease, and borandis is the treatment for it. It"s also called jackalspit."
"Yes, I know." For a few more seconds those soulless eyes gazed into mine, his face still unreadable but almost certainly wondering if I was telling the truth or simply spinning a line. I held my breath, trying to look as simple and honest as I possibly could.
And then, to my relief, he shrugged. "Why not? Where are you?"
I got my lungs working again. "Potosi," I said. "Kacclint s.p.a.ceport."
He grunted. "A Najiki world. Decent enough bug-eaters."
"Yes, sir," I agreed, mildly surprised that a xenophobe like Brother John wouldbe even that complimentary toward a nonhuman race. Either he genuinely had some grudging respect for the Najik, or else he had business interests in the Archipelago and the Najik were doing a good job of making money for him. If I had to guess, I"d pick the latter. "I need to know if the organization has a dealer here who can help us. And if so, how to find him."
"Yes." Brother John"s eyes flicked to his right. "Just a moment."
The screen blanked. I took another deep breath, suddenly aware of the weight of my plasmic against my side under my jacket. So far, it was all looking hopeful.
But I knew better than to risk relaxing, even for a moment. Brother John"s moods were notoriously mercurial, and with his already stated displeasure at my being aboard the Icarus he might suddenly decide that letting a sick crew member die would be all to the good, either as an object lesson to me or as an extra push to get me to walk away from the whole situation. If he looked like he was going that direction I would have to remind him that Shawn"s death would only serve to raise the Icarus"s profile that much higher.
He was gone a long time. Long enough that I began to wonder if perhaps he"d decided that this had become more trouble than it was worth, that both Shawn and I were expendable, and he was off making the appropriate arrangements. I was just thinking about pulling out my phone and seeing if Ixil had come out of his coma when the screen abruptly cleared.
"All right," he said briskly. "He"s a Drilie named Emendo Torsk, and he runs his business from a street music stand at Gystr"n Corner. I presume your sick crewman can pay?"
"We should have enough, yes," I a.s.sured him. "Thank you, sir."
"Don"t call here again, Jordan," he said quietly. "Not until this is all over.
Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir, perfectly clear," I said. If the Icarus was going to go down, and if I was going to be stupid enough to go down with it, he had no intention of being tied in with either of us. "Thank you, sir."
"I"ll talk to you when this is all over." He reached to the side, and the connection was broken.
I swallowed, noticing only then how dry my mouth had become. Dealing with Brother John was becoming increasingly hard on me, both because of him personally and because of what he represented. To say I"d ever been genuinely happy about our arrangement would have been far too generous a statement; but lately my quiet distaste seemed to have fermented into a galloping revulsion.
And that was dangerous. Not only because of what it was doing to my own heart and soul, not to mention my stomach, but because men like Brother John have a finely honed sense of people, particularly the people closest to them. I was hardly close to him, just one small employee among thousands, but the Antoniewicz organization hadn"t gotten where it was by letting even small employees become disaffected to the point where they dribbled away money or merchandise or secrets. Especially secrets.
Brother John was presumably under no illusions about what it was that kept me working for him; I"d already seen how adept he was at making sure thathalf-million-commark debt would be hanging over my head for a long time to come.
But if he was ever able to penetrate my mask and see the emotion swirling beneath it, he might very well decide I was a walking time bomb that needed to be dealt with.
But there was nothing for it now but to continue on. I"d made my bed, as the saying went, and now all I could do was make myself as comfortable in it as I could.
Unfortunately, for the moment comfort of any sort was out of the question. I"d suffered through yet another conversation with Brother John; and now I had to do what I"d been postponing for at least three worlds now.
It was time for a nice long chat with Uncle Arthur.
The call screener on Uncle Arthur"s vid was female, cheerful, and if not actually beautiful, definitely edging in that direction. Following on the heels of Brother John"s surly male screener with the plastic-surgeon-baiting face, it was a contrast that seemed all the vaster for the comparison.
Until, that is, you looked closely into her eyes. For all her attractiveness, for all her easy smile and aura of friendliness, there was something cool and measuring and even ruthless that could be seen in those eyes. Given the proper circ.u.mstances, I had long suspected, she would be able to kill as quickly and efficiently as any of the ice-hearted thugs in Brother John"s household.
But then, that was to be expected. She did, after all, work for Uncle Arthur.
"It"s Jordan, Shannon," I greeted her, pushing such thoughts out of my mind as best I could. I had to prepare to talk to Uncle Arthur; and anyway, despite the eyes, she was really quite good-looking. "Is he available?"
"h.e.l.lo, Jordan," she said, her smile tightening just a bit. Unlike Brother John"s screener, she took my altered face in stride without blinking an eye.
"I"ll see."
A superfluous comment, of course; she would have signaled Uncle Arthur as soon as she recognized me. And if the tightening smile was any indication, I suspected Uncle Arthur was either sufficiently interested or sufficiently annoyed with me to take the call immediately.
I was right. Even as she turned toward her control board her face abruptly vanished from the screen and was replaced by one considerably less photogenic.
An age-lined face, framed by a thatch of elegant gray hair and an equally elegant gray goatee with an unexpected streak of black down the middle, and topped off with a pair of pale blue eyes peering unwinkingly at me across the top of a set of reading gla.s.ses.
It was Uncle Arthur.
Judging from past experience, I fully expected him to get in the first word. I wasn"t disappointed. "I presume, Jordan," he said in a rumbling voice that somehow went perfectly with the beard and gla.s.ses, "that you have some good explanation for all this."
"I have an explanation, sir," I said. "I don"t know whether you"ll think it good or not."
For a moment he glared at me, and I could see his face tilting fractionally back and forth. The gla.s.ses, I"d long since decided, were about two-thirds necessity for an inoperable eye condition and one-third affectation, with the added benefit of giving him something he could use to subtly throw distracting flickers of light into people"s eyes while he was talking to them. That waswhat he was doing now, though through a vid screen it was a complete waste of his time. Probably pure subconscious habit.
He finished his glaring and leaned back a bit in his chair. "I"m listening,"
he invited.
"I ran into Arno Cameron in a taverno on Meima," I told him. He would be wanting details-Uncle Arthur always wanted details-but there was no time for me to go into them now. "He was in a jam, with a ship to fly to Earth and no crew. He asked if I would pilot it, and I agreed."
"You just happened to run into him, did you?" Uncle Arthur rumbled ominously.
"Did I somehow forget to mention that you weren"t supposed to do anything but watch him?"
"He was the one who accosted me, not the other way around," I said. "I didn"t think challenging him to a duel for such an impertinence would be a proper response."
He turned the shrivel power of his glare up a couple of notches, but I"d just faced down Brother John, and Uncle Arthur"s glares didn"t seem nearly as potent in comparison. "We"ll leave that aside for the moment," he said. "Have you any idea of the furor you and that ship are causing at the moment?"
Almost the same question, and in very nearly the same tone, that Brother John had asked. "Not really," I said. "All I know for sure is that there are agents of the Patth spreading hundred-commark bills through the Spiral"s sewers, with an extra five thousand for the one who fingers me for them."
"Five thousand commarks, did you say?" Uncle Arthur asked, c.o.c.king an eyebrow.
"That"s what I was told a few hours ago on Dorscind"s World," I said carefully.
Uncle Arthur had a latent dramatic streak in him, which generally surfaced at the worst times. The fact that he had now slipped into that mode was a bad sign.
"Have they upped the ante since then?"
"Considerably." He picked up a sheet of paper, holding it up to the camera as if to prove he wasn"t just making it all up. "The Patth Director General has personally been in contact with at least fifteen different governments along your projected route in the past twelve hours," he read from it in the precise, clipped tone he always used when delivering bad news. "They have been informed that a ship called the Icarus, with a human male named Jordan McKell in command, is to be detained immediately upon identification. It is then to be held until a representative of the Director General arrives, at which point it is to be turned over to him."
I felt a shiver run up my back. "Or else?"
"Or else," he added, in that same clipped tone, "the Patth will impose mercantile sanctions on the offending governments, the severity of the sanctions to be determined by the offending government"s perceived complicity in the Icarus"s escape. Up to and including a complete embargo against that species"
cargoes."
He laid the paper back down again. "As you say, the ante has been upped," he said quietly. "What in G.o.d"s name did Cameron"s people dig up out there, Jordan?"
"I don"t know, sir," I said, just as quietly. "But whatever it is, it"ssitting in the Icarus"s cargo hold."
Dramatically, it was the moment for a long, heavy silence. But Uncle Arthur"s dramatic impulses didn"t extend to wasting time. "Then you"d best find a way to learn what it is, hadn"t you?" he said.
"Actually, I think I already have," I said. "Found a way, that is. Can you get hold of a personnel list from that archaeological dig?"
"I have it right here," he said. "Why?"
"Because I suspect one of them is aboard the Icarus," I told him.