Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  And we found ourselves facing fifty men with burners pointed at us.

  II

  THE EARTHWORM TURNS

  Thirteen

  I surged forward, about to enter into my fast mode. If I rushed them—and Kit was faster than I—I could get half the guns and he could easily get the other half.

  No. His voice in my head admitted of no dispute.

  Do you want them to take us prisoner? What do you . . .

  No. Let me handle it. My place. My people.

  I didn't answer back, not with coherent words, more with the half-acknowledged hope that he knew what he was doing. What I got back from that was a mental half-laugh. His features showed no expression.

  We stood at the door, side by side, looking out at the men holding guns pointed at us. Men was sort of a courtesy title, because I'd judge the oldest to be about nineteen, and the others much, much younger. I'd swear the one at the corner, looking at me as though he expected me to grow a second head and holding his gun in trembling hands, couldn't be more than thirteen.

  I looked from one end to the other, from blond, closecropped heads to dark, unruly long hair and realized that these boys looked like they'd been sampled from all over the world, though the overwhelming majority were tanned looking Caucasian. There were no truly dark skins and no pale blond hair. Which figured. I didn't know how many people had made it to Eden, but a small population would tend to homogenize. There didn't seem to be a standard hair length or a standard hair color. I saw a young man with wild calico hair, as bright as Kit's and open-wide brown cat eyes. They wore a uniform of sorts, a pale blue jacket and darker blue pants, but each of them seemed to have gone for his very own cut.

  The only uniform thing about the way they all looked was their eyes. They all stared out at us with an expression of frightened decision. The expression someone has who is scared to death of having to shoot.

  Early on, when I was very little, after a failed attempt on his and his family's life, my father had told me the one thing to watch was not the gun nor the hands of the person holding the gun, but the eyes of the person holding it. The eyes would tell you if the person was bluffing. The eyes would tell you if the person was willing to shoot. And the eyes would tell you if the person was scared. That last was the one to fear, because the scared man would shoot as he flinched.

  Kit must have come to the same conclusion because he said, Don't move unless I ask you to.

  I didn't so much agree—I wasn't about to entrust my ability to fight completely to someone else—as send back wordless assent that I would not move for now. This seemed to be enough for him. He stood very still, both hands in full sight.

  From the side, not getting between us and the guns, a man emerged. He was older than all the assembled boys, older than Kit. If these people aged like on Earth, he was probably thirty years old, with a blockish build and a square face topped by receding dark hair. He wore the same colors as the boys and stood at the extreme left edge of my field of vision, closer to Kit, and said, "Cat Christopher Bartolomeu Klaavil?"

  The voice seemed to call for a military response, but Kit looked slowly in his direction and said, "Yes?"

  "You must be searched and debriefed before we can admit you to the common areas."

  "Oh?" Kit said. "And my passenger?"

  The man looked in my direction and he, too, looked like he expected me to have three heads and a complementary set of arms. I was sorry to be disappointing everyone. "We will deal with her afterwards," he said. Then towards Kit again, "First you, Cat Klaavil. Easy and slow. Hands in full view. At the first sign of cat-speed, the hushers have my instructions to shoot."

  Kit gave a quick, dismissive look at the boys with guns and then, hands in full view, climbed down the two steps from the ship to stand two feet in front of the man who seemed to be running the show.

  The man stepped aside, to let Kit pass him, and I realized he was holding a gun pointed at Kit. Right. So the fifty trembling teens could be left to point their guns at me, and to keep me under watch. Too bad.

  Kit walked all the way to where the only furniture in the room—a desk—stood against the wall. There he turned and stood, looking at the official with the quizzical expression I knew so well. He gave me that look when he expected me to do something particularly stupid.

  The officer frowned up at him. Being a good five inches shorter than Kit clearly put him at a disadvantage he did not enjoy. "Strip," he said.

  "Beg your pardon?"

  "Strip. We must check you for bugs. You've been to Earth. Who knows what might have happened there. They might have implanted a bug on you, or a controller of some sort."

  "I was never to Earth. Never came near it," Kit said.

  "Who knows if that is true? Would you tell us? Would you tell us if she"—he pointed back at me—"had put a controller on you that could kill you or hurt you if you said the wrong word? How do we know there's not a bracelet or a clinger on you somewhere, controlling you? Strip."

  Kit looked at the officer, then back at the boys with guns, then at me. I swear there was something akin to amusement in his gaze, though the primary look was of bewilderment. He pulled on the front of his jacket, unfastening it. It looked like it was buttoned, but clearly the buttons were decorative, and the two halves held together with stickfast. He tossed the jacket at his feet in what was also all too familiar. Not that I'd seen him undress before, but I'd seen his clothes piled just outside or just within the virtus and around the vibro, with complete disregard for housekeeping or the clothes.

  Under the jacket he wore a simple tunic, so thin that it must have been designed as an undergarment. Through it his muscles—which I had only felt but never seen—were visible, delineating a powerful torso and a flat stomach that disappeared into the closure of the pants. He looked at the officer. The officer barked back. "I said strip."

  Kit sighed again and pulled off his undertunic showing me first a back where the shoulder muscles stood out in relief, a testimony to the many hours he'd spent in the exercise room before and after I joined the Cathouse. I'd seen male backs before, of course—I mean casually, not just those of my bed partners—the members of my broomer lair for one. Male backs were prone to pimples and other such excrescences, but his had clear, even skin. As he turned around, at the officer's command, his front revealed more clear skin, more muscles, a dusting of reddish-gold hair and a nice belly button.

  "Strip," the officer said again.

  Kit reached for the fastening to his pants, and pulled it, and let those fall, appearing in underwear of the sort I'd found in his drawers when I'd searched—male variety, designed for the sort of male who preferred his under things well girded and held firmly in place. Which, of course, meant it was also rather revealing. I looked away. More the pity, despite the fascinating show, the young men with guns were still looking fixedly at me.

  "Strip," the officer repeated.

  Kit glared. "Further than this I present you with a fee scale," he said.

  It took a moment for the official to absorb what Kit had said. When he did, he looked like he would like to spit, or perhaps slap Kit. He did neither. Instead, he stepped back and said, "Strip, or I order you shot. We must make sure you are not controlled by Earth, that they don't have a bug on you. The fate of Eden—"

  "The fate of Eden is horrible, if you are an example of its protectors," Kit said, raising his voice just enough that though he was neither shouting nor sounding angry, he sounded intent and purposeful. It managed to stop the official long enough for Kit to add, "What do you intend to do after I strip? Cavity search? And when that fails? If I had gone to Earth—which I didn't—or if Patrician Sinistra were a spy, which she almost certainly isn't, why would they be so stupid as to implant a bug on my skin or in my clothes? Why not inject it into me or—"

  The official jumped back and pointed a trembling gun at Kit. "You're telling me they injected a bug—"

  "No," Kit said. His calm was all the more admirable in t
hat the way the official was waving that gun around there was a good chance he'd fire it by accident. Of course the way it was trembling, shaking and moving, the chances of the ray actually hitting Kit were minimal. "I'm saying if they'd implanted anything in me they would probably have done it in a way your strip search would not discover. So unless you are interested in seeing me naked—in which case I should see what the going fee is—there is no reason for me to undress further."

  The official looked like he was about to have an apoplexy, and he did what bureaucrats do in such situations. He turned to the pimply boys with guns and waved and said, "Fire."

  Which was the most confusing command he could give boys who already looked none too steady. They glanced at him, and Kit, probably realizing that if they turned to burn Kit, they would burn the official too, in the process. Then they looked back at me. I was ready.

  I had to be ready because one couldn't discount that they might simply decide to shoot me. So in the time they looked away, I pulled my shirt off. There were fifty wide eyes staring at me.

  One of them said, "Who? Shoot who?"

  "Them. Both," the official said, and frowned at me. "She's an Earth agent."

  "She is no such thing," Kit said. "And while as a noncitizen she doesn't have any local relatives who can charge you blood geld, I can, since she came here under my protection. And my family will charge you for me, and they will make sure you pay for all my potential lost wages. Do you know how much a cat makes, in the prime of his working years? And how many years I have left?"

  "You can't . . ." the official said, glaring at him. "If you are a threat to Eden, I can have you killed. I do not have to pay blood geld."

  "No. But what if you can't prove either my guest or myself were threats to Eden? My family will demand proof." He spoke almost kindly. "My father and my mother and . . . did I mention my oldest sister is Katherine Denovo? No?"

  I had no idea why, but, at the name, the official visibly blenched. He backed and told the fifty, "Don't shoot," then looked at Kit. "But what can we do with the two of you, short of putting you indefinitely in containment? What if you are carrying a bug and cause all of Eden—"

  "Call a doctor. My doctor. I'll even pay for it. Doctor Bartolomeu Dias," he said. "Fourth enclosure. Tell him it's for me, he'll come as quickly as he can. I'll cover the fee. He'll do a scan and he can tell you whether I or my guest are a danger to Eden."

  The official didn't say anything for a while. I suspect it was because he was still hoping he could find a reason to have Kit shot. It had to gall him that Kit had stood there, flaunting all his orders and countering his authority with logic. And Kit hadn't exactly been subtle about driving his point home. But whatever the threat of the unknown Katherine might be, it clearly held terror for the official. He frowned, glared up at Kit, then at me, then frowned again. At last, and in the tone of a man making a threat, he said, "Very well." He gestured at the armed boys. "You may go out, but wait in the next room, ready to shoot anyone who leaves without my express permission." As they filed out, he glared at Kit. "Right. Don't think you can get out until you've been thoroughly examined. I shall call Doctor Bartolomeu Dias. You will not leave without his say-so."

  And then he stalked out after the hushers. And closed the door behind himself, leaving me alone with Kit, who stooped to pick up his undertunic and slipped it on. He looked up at me, and the corner of his lip quirked upward. "Not that I mind the show, Patrician, but . . . perhaps the tunic would be better on you?"

  I blushed. I had been afraid to put the tunic on while the guns were pointed at me. With boys that nervous, any gesture, any movement can be viewed as a threat, and I did not want to get accidentally burned. I put the tunic on.

  "This doctor . . ." I said.

  "He's okay. He decanted me."

  Fourteen

  "So, Christopher, you bring us Earthworms now?" Doctor Bartolomeu Dias said. He was an old man, smaller than anyone else I'd ever seen and so wrinkled that it looked as though someone had taken double the skin needed for the man and let the extra hang out in folds and strange excesses. He looked like nothing so much as the old gnomes of legend, tiny and wrinkled and wearing what looked like ancient clothes—dark brown pants and tailored brown jacket.

  He had shot Kit the barest of glances upon coming in, then given me a slower, appreciative look and a smile. Kit greeted him with the most natural smile I'd yet seen from him, and the answer that, "She came into the Cathouse. What else was I to do?"

  Doc Bartolomeu—which was what everyone seemed to call him—gave me another, more attentive look, where something like a smile melted into a worried frown. "I wouldn't have done anything different, Kit," he said, his voice echoing with amusement but also reassurance, as if he meant it but also found the situation interesting.

  I did not know what was so amusing, other than the fact that I was a woman and that Kit Klaavil clearly—judging by his various looks at me—appreciated women, and that he traveled alone.

  "Lie down," Doctor Bartolomeu said, gesturing towards the desk.

  Kit Klaavil did.

  "So the idea," Doctor Bartolomeu said, "is that Earth put some sort of bug on you." He cocked a curious eyebrow. "They say you went to Earth. Did you go to Earth?"

  Kit shook his head. "No. She was fleeing through the powertrees. In a lifepod. It hit the Cathouse. I took her in."

  "Through the powertrees in a lifepod," Doctor Bartolomeu said. He looked over at me. "And you come from Earth?" He rooted in the capacious black bag he carried as he spoke.

  His manner, his oddness, made me suddenly shy. It was like when I was very little and Father and all the other Good Men gathered for a meeting, and he called me in to . . . show me off, I suppose. They looked so different from my nannies and my play friends and the world of the nursery that I was speechless. Or nearly so.

  I heard my voice come out, in that stilted polite little girl tone, "I come from Syracuse Seacity. My name is Athena Hera Sinistra."

  His head snapped up, for just a moment. It was the thing of an instant, and it might have meant nothing. But I noted it, even as he pulled an instrument from his bag. "I used to know someone," he said. "Alexander Milton Sinistra. I don't suppose he'd still be alive?"

  As he spoke he stood over Kit holding something that looked like an oversized dimatough magnifying glass with a clear interior. He held the handle in a way that suggested he was pressing buttons, while he looked through it.

  And of course he wasn't alive. At least Alexander Milton Sinistra was my ancestor who had become the first Good Man of Syracuse Seacity after the turmoils and then others, up to my grandfather. But that had been . . . My grandfather had died more than sixty years ago. "It can't be the same person," I said. "The first lived three hundred years ago. And the last about sixty or eighty or so. And even if you're that old," I said, as it occurred to me, "you can't have gone back to Earth at that time, and anyway, no, he's not alive."

  "Uh. Oh?" Doctor Bartolomeu said.

  "The first Good Man of my line. My ancestor. And then about every other one up to my grandfather."

  He looked away from the nonmagnifying glass and at me. "Your ancestor. No. It couldn't have been the same person. Coincidence." He looked back at Kit. "I don't see any bugs, Christopher," he said. "But your stomach has been troubling you again, hasn't it?"

  Kit shrugged, sitting up.

  "I could—"

  "No," Kit said. "No tampering with my mind. You know that."

  Doctor Bartolomeu sighed. "Very well. Have it your own way. You tend to." He looked over at me. "I suppose I should have a look at the young lady. If you would lie down . . ."

  I obeyed him, lying along the old desk, while Kit stood aside. I didn't look in his direction, as I had the odd impression that he was watching me.

  Doctor Bartolomeu looked through the loop at the end of the handle at me. Seen from this end, I could see a white-light pulse in the center of it. I supposed it told him something. "Very healthy," h
e said. "And no spy bugs." He frowned at me, as if trying to solve a puzzle. "What possessed you to take a lifepod through the powertrees? I suppose it wasn't truly outfitted for maneuvering."

  Klaavil snorted and, upon Doctor Bartolomeu looking at him, said, "Like a barge with a pole. I'd have had to use all my skill to make it through in that. She must have a hell of a lot of luck."

  "Indeed," the doctor said. "But why?"

  The why had bothered me all three months, and I couldn't say that I was any closer to knowing for sure than I'd been when it all started. There had been Father . . . Had it been Father in Circum?

  Half the times I thought about it, I was sure it must have been. The other half . . . the other half I was just as sure it couldn't have been. A hologram. A hologram with a very well-programed voice. And I'd fallen for it, and they'd jumped me. "There was a mutiny aboard my father's space cruiser," I said. I frowned. "I think my father was killed. I escaped, and they pursued, in lifepods. I had to go where they wouldn't dare follow." I didn't mention my excursion into Circum, and Kit's coming to get me. I thought that if Kit hadn't mentioned it, there must be a reason. Besides, if all these people were so worried at the idea of my having come along with him, how would they feel about his having had actual contact with the dreaded Earthworms.

  As though he'd read my mind, Doctor Bartolomeu looked up at me, "We're a small world," he said. "The remnant of a persecuted people, the vast majority of which died centuries ago. Don't think ill of us for our defenses. The hushers are volunteers. For years our young men have volunteered to keep us safe."

  I understood all that. Or I tried to. But with all that, it still seemed to me like too much caution to be this scared of me. Oh, many people had been this scared of me in the past, but these people had no reason to. Kit Klaavil hadn't even let me try anything against the boys with guns. They had no reason at all to be scared of me.

  Doctor Bartolomeu motioned for me to get up, as he slipped his lens back into his case. "I'll tell them you're clear and to admit you, but Christopher . . . What do you intend to do with her?"