Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Kit Klaavil stared back at him, and for a moment looked completely blank. "You know," he said, "I have no idea."

  Fifteen

  I repeated Doctor Bartolomeu's question as we left the room, walking past fifty young men who no longer held guns pointed at us—and one or two of whom looked like they'd very much like to have the courage to talk to me. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about what would happen to me before.

  Or at least, I'd thought about it in terms of eventually, when I know how to pilot this ship, I'll take it to Earth. I hadn't thought—or not exactly—of what to do with Kit Klaavil as part of this grand plan. It had been relegated to the something-will-occur-to-me future.

  The truth was that it had started as a fantasy of hitting Kit on the head, or perhaps garrotting him, and then flying the ship to Earth. What became of him after that was truly unimportant. Oh, he'd probably saved my life when he came back for me in Circum, but he couldn't possibly have known he was saving me from anything. He must have come back because he realized that I held important information about them. He realized otherwise I could endanger all of his colony. Considering their paranoid behavior, his realizing his error and going to get me in Circum was actually fairly rational, not to say expected.

  And since he'd captured me, and held my life at his whim, I felt perfectly justified in doing the same to him. Except we were now in his world and not aboard his ship. And that meant . . .

  He gave me a sideways glance. "I have no idea," he said, as he walked fast and purposefully down a corridor and turned, as if very sure where he was going. Because his legs were much longer than mine, this meant I must run to keep up with him, something I was quite sure he knew. "I mean, I suppose you could train for something here on Eden, right? You said you are good with machinery. There's always a need for someone good with machinery."

  "But I want to go to Earth," I said.

  He gave me a puzzled frown. "Don't be ridiculous," he said.

  "I don't see what's ridiculous about wishing to go back," I said. "I have responsibilities. I have a position . . ."

  He sighed. "So do I," he said. "You see . . ." He bit his lip. "It's a bit of a bind. I couldn't let you be killed. I simply couldn't. You think through these things and you think . . ." He shrugged. "But I couldn't let you be killed, and then I had to bring you here. There was nothing else I could do. And once I brought you here . . ." He shrugged again. "You can't go back. If you go back, they will find where we are."

  "But I don't even know."

  "No. But they could get it. From what you say. And I can't let that happen. There are a million and a half people in Eden, not counting the colonies. I can't risk it all for you."

  "But I didn't volunteer to immigrate." Certainly not to a colony filled with Mules and their bioengineered servants. Even if familiarity with Kit had caused me to stop flinching from his odd eyes, I was sure I would meet with further horrors in Eden. And it wasn't right. It simply wasn't.

  "I know," he said, "and I owe you a debt of honor, for taking away your choice in this matter." He sounded solemn. "But you must understand that I didn't have a choice, either."

  I didn't understand any such thing, but neither could I discuss it right then, as we'd entered a busy, people-filled corridor, and I had to run as fast as I could to keep up with Kit. He had stepped up his pace, and I couldn't afford to lose sight of him. Let alone that the people around us were quite odd—attire ranging from uniforms like Kit's to little transparent . . . underwear, to a woman who appeared to be wearing an uncut roll of carpet around her middle. At the same time, Kit sped up, dodging among people, moving faster, faster. I noted that the people in matching uniforms to his gave him a non-look, allowing their gazes to slide across him.

  "You don't have many friends," I said, before I could think.

  He gave me a quick glance. "I told you I don't play well with others," he said, as he stepped around a group of people wearing what looked like pearlescent raincoats.

  Clearly. I caught up with him as he rounded a group of people in blue and red uniforms matching his, just as he stopped short and I realized he had come face to face with a black dimatough desk and a man sitting behind it.

  The man looked about Kit's age, bland and blond and bored. "Christopher Bartolomeu Klaavil," Kit said, coming up short in front of the desk. "The Cathouse. I brought back six ripe pods and . . ."

  He got a pursed-lip expression. "Six pods? A thousand hydras minus the rental price."

  "A thousand?" Kit said, sounding dismayed.

  The conversation became a bargaining session, with the blond man insisting they currently had a surplus of pods and Kit countering that he could not possibly pay that much—around three hundred hydras, give or take, though it seemed to fluctuate through the discussion—for rental of the Cathouse and listing everything that was wrong with it.

  They settled on twelve hundred for the pods and two hundred and fifty for rental of the Cathouse, with Kit insisting it be given a once-over before he took it out again.

  Forms came out for the imprinting of his thumb and we were about to leave, when the blond man cleared his throat. "Before you leave, Cat Klaavil . . ."

  Kit turned. I felt my heart sink anticipating another round of discussions I couldn't understand. I needn't have worried. Because as I turned back, at the same time Kit did, to face the man behind the desk, the man slid another form—on the sort of paper that was sensitive to the genes of those touching it—across the desk at him. "The incoming officer advised us not to let you leave without signing the agreement of responsibility for your ward."

  "My . . . ward?" Kit asked. It was sort of like someone had just said he must be responsible for his third arm or his extra eyebrow. I confess I was no more enlightened than he was.

  "The young lady from Earth," the man said, giving me the barest of glances. "Will you sign an agreement of responsibility for her as your ward?"

  Kit touched the paper with just the tips of his fingers, clearly avoiding any field that might be marked with "if you put your thumb imprint here, you agree that—" He looked up from scanning it, "And if I don't agree to this?"

  "Well . . ." the man demurred. "It will have to go before the boards what to do with her," he said. "And until then we will have to keep her confined in some way. You understand, to release her into Eden without anyone who could claim blood geld for her death, without anyone who would have an interest . . ."

  "Yes," Kit said, but his lips snapped shut as though he'd said "No." He scanned the paper again. "She is nineteen. An adult."

  "But not conscious of our customs and not integrated in our society. She doesn't know the laws here, even if inclined to obey them and—"

  Kit frowned. "Fine," he said. He pressed his fingers in a deliberate way, in what had to be pre-marked places. Then glanced at me. "Come on."

  I followed again. He was clearly in a worse mood—and I was not sure exactly why, since I was the one who had just been made his effective prisoner. You'd never guess it, as he stomped and marched his way through an even thicker crowd of people, down a new hallway. And here, perhaps responding to the glower on his face, people gave him a wide berth. Even those wearing matching uniforms to his dispensed with the acknowledgment nod they'd been giving him before and went straight to jumping across the corridor as far away as they could from him, a look of horror on their faces.

  It made me wonder what they knew about my friend the Kitty-Cat that I didn't. Doubts and suspicions that I thought well submerged since after all he'd failed to kill me, rape me or do anything unpleasant to me—except for lecturing me about politics and history—while he had me at his mercy, now came back. What did the people in the place he'd grown up, in the very corps in which he worked, know about him that I didn't?

  I followed him, watching the looks on others' faces. What had he done to upset what seemed to be an entire world—even if a small one? People looked at him with a mixture of confusion, horror and fear. Even I hadn't managed tha
t kind of reaction, not even after I'd laid waste to some institution. Oh, people looked at me with fear often, and sometimes with the kind of horror that comes from fear. But it didn't come close to the look of horror mingled with disdain and flinching repulsion that they directed at the man walking just ahead of me.

  He walked as if he were completely unaware of them. As if he were completely unaware of me too, for that matter, and of the fact that my legs were considerably shorter than his.

  While I ran to keep up with him, I became aware that some people were glancing at me, too. Quick, distracted looks, as if afraid . . . for me. It was a novel look. I wondered if they knew what I was, if news had spread yet that I was one of those dangerous Earthworms, or if they just saw my efforts to keep up with Cat Klaavil and assumed that he . . . What? What was my charming companion in the habit of doing to women? From the look in people's eyes, nothing good.

  We fell down two grav wells in succession, Kit Klaavil landing with the sort of soft tip-of-toes fall that would have earned him high marks in my ballet classes, and surging into striding speed without faltering.

  I landed a little heavier, which resulted in my falling yet further behind him, as he walked down a busy corridor with grey ceramite walls, which gave the impression of having been poured in a hurry and never smoothed over.

  Though it was full of people, the crowd behaved more informally—large groups going by, laughing and elbowing each other—as if they were not quite in public. The feel it gave me was of a utility corridor not part of the main building. Even here, though, the large groups became subdued when they saw my companion. And his expression—a mix of stone-faced pride and subdued fury—didn't change. He pushed elbow-first through a door membrane at the end, and I followed him into the cooler, cavernous recesses of . . . a garage. It took me only seconds to deduce this from the fact that there were vehicles parked in every spot—ovoid-shaped, though each varied slightly, and each seemed to have a different color—clearly flyers, private-size.

  Klaavil walked among them, turned sharply twice, then walked up to a violent red flyer which managed to shimmer with a gold sheen. It was so reminiscent of his taste in clothes—requiring the squinting of eyes not to hurt the retina—that I was not at all surprised when he unlocked it. He held the door open and said, "If you'd go in."

  And he jumped. I had no idea what prompted him to jump. Much less what prompted him to land on me before I could run away. Slammed against the not-so-clean grey ceramite floor of the garage, under his weight, I said, "What the hell?" and tried to squirm up, but he held me down and then, before I could gather up my knee to hit him on what he claimed was my idée fixe, a burner ray flew over us, burning a hole on the flyer door, and Kit jumped again.

  Dazed, I looked in the direction of the jump and was only mildly surprised to find him—in far less time than should have taken him to traverse that distance—holding onto the wrist of a smaller man. Details registered one by one, as my mind adapted to the circumstances. The smaller man, dark-haired and wearing what looked like wrinkled pajamas, was holding a burner. Kit held the wrist of that hand, just as he held the other hand behind the man's back, effectively immobilizing him.

  "Come on, Joseph," Kit spoke in a remarkably soft, almost apologetic voice, considering the man had just shot at him. "You don't want to kill me."

  The man muttered a string of largely unintelligible syllables that sounded like insults and I took to mean that yes, he very much wanted to kill Kit.

  "You do not," he said, very calmly. "How would you pay the blood geld? You'd be indentured the rest of your life." As he spoke he wrenched the burner from the man's hands, and pocketed it. "Go home, Joseph." He patted the man down, efficiently frisking him with what seemed like practiced ease. "Go home."

  "I challenge you," the man said. "To a duel."

  "I can't duel you," Kit said. "It is not legal for a cat to duel a non-cat." He let go of the man, turning his back and walking towards the flyer.

  I'd gotten up from the floor, though I didn't remember doing it. He barked at me, "Get in." I got in, as he climbed in the other side and strapped down. I could see, through the front visor of the flyer as the man slouched—like a puppet whose strings were cut, but before I closed my door, I heard him shout, "Then how can I have justice on my sister's murderer?"

  Kit didn't say anything or acknowledge the comment. Instead he slammed his door. A muscle worked on the side of his face. He started the flyer, just a few inches off the ground, but veered to avoid the man as he stepped in our path.

  "Who—?" I said.

  He didn't look at me. His eyelids were halfway down, as though veiling some kind of inner turmoil. "My late wife's brother."

  I felt my hands clench onto the seat as if of their own accord. His late wife's brother? Was that Blondie in the pictures? And if so, had Kit Klaavil murdered her? Surely her brother believed so.

  Sixteen

  "Look out, look out, look out." My hands were clenched tight on the seat, since the seat belts crisscrossing my chest prevented me from physically ducking under the dashboard.

  We'd exited from the garage through a vertical shaft and emerged into . . . bedlam. What we entered must have been a tunnel, since Eden was colonized inside, not on the surface. But at first glance it looked exactly like a busy city street on Earth. Buildings hemmed it in on either side and above something shone, vaguely blue, which might have been the sky.

  We had no time to look up because the moment we emerged from parking, a large flyer with a semi-open back, loaded with what appeared to be crates of live chickens, headed for us at full speed.

  The scream had barely finished tearing through my throat, when I realized both we and the chicken transport had veered at the last minute, managing to miss each other in the echo of my scream and the loud squawks of chickens, audible even through the hermetically closed windows of the flyer. Which got on a collision path with a large flyer in whose shadowy depths I could barely discern a large family with anxiously hopping children. And we veered onto the path of an antigrav wand just like the brooms I rode on Earth, only this broom was loaded with a man, a woman, a toddler and an infant in arms, all of them making for our windshield.

  I screamed and closed my eyes. Through the dark behind my eyelids two facts slowly penetrated. The first, that we hadn't been hit. Or at least I hadn't heard the splat of a small family shattering against our windshield. The second, that Klaavil was chuckling.

  I opened one eye and looked at him. He was leaning back in the driver's seat, perfectly at his ease, his fingers dancing on the keyboard.

  "Don't puncture holes in my upholstery," he said, in an amused voice. "It's bio upholstery but it takes awhile to heal."

  What? The seat was alive? I looked down, and it looked like suede, but I eased my grip on it somewhat. Maybe that was why it felt warm. A glance at the window showed that we were still being aimed for and flown at full force by a varying mob of flyers in all sizes and shapes. We were also missing them all, but not by much more than inches. "Have you people never heard of traffic rules?" I asked.

  "No, what are they?" I'd have thought he was joking, only he turned to look at me, and his surprise and curiosity were too obviously real.

  "Look at the damn traffic," I screamed, as we missed a family flyer with yet fewer inches than normal to spare.

  "I am looking," he said. "What are these traffic rules? Are they programmed into flyers or something?"

  I demurred. There had been a brief experiment with just that: making the flyers fully safe—incapable of obeying drivers' commands to break traffic laws. The problem was that sometimes—apparently—obeying the rules to the letter would lead to accidents. At least, I wasn't very clear on the details, but the whole plan had been scrapped some time before I'd been born. "No . . . no. But there are lights that control when people go and when they let traffic in the other direction go. And there are laws about which altitude various flyers can fly at and when, and there are traffic con
trol towers, which issue orders, based on the traffic of the day and your size and all." I glanced out the windshield and shrieked, "Look out, look out!" and then, as we missed the flyer with the dimatough extruder on its back by what must have been millimeters, and as Kit Klaavil gave vent to a full-throated low laugh which in other circumstances I might have considered pleasant, I said, "It's not funny."

  "It's hilarious," he said, controlling his chuckling. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh at you, but I don't understand your reaction. Do you think these people are trying to hit us?"

  "Well, it looks like it," I said gruffly.

  He grinned, looking fully at me, while playing the keyboard and ducking under and around several other flyers. "You understand it would hurt them as much as us, if not more? Or do you think there is a vast class of suicide drivers in Eden, who get up in the morning with the express intention of going out and hurling themselves at other drivers?"

  "No," I said, and waved my hands impotently. "I think that it's . . . I think that since you have almost no rules relating to traffic, it is inevitable that sooner or later people will hit other people. I don't understand how you can drive in this chaos."

  "You drove through the powertrees in a lifepod."

  "The powerpods weren't flying at me with malice and intent."

  "Granted. But other flyers won't explode when touched. Unless you hit them entirely wrong." He seemed to mull this for a moment. "At any rate, the powerpods also weren't trying to actively avoid you, which other flyers are."

  "But . . ."

  "We have very few accidents," he said. "Now, this might not compare to no accidents, as you might have under a system with traffic rules and all, but . . . you said something about towers giving instructions?"

  I seized onto this, instead of trying to explain that there were still accidents under systems with rules. "Yes. Your car sends signals of position and, you know, ID, so they know your size and all, and the tower sends back instructions."