Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Kit nodded. "See, that would never work in Eden. People would rip out the transmitters."

  "Why?"

  "Princess, we're descended from people whose relatives, friends and co-workers were hunted down one by one and killed in brutal fashion. They were hunted down because they had IDs. The government knew where they were, who they were and to what extent they were modified. And once the government knew it, the killer mob could find out. We are not so eager to let everyone know everything about us. Do you understand that?"

  "Don't call me 'princess.' "

  " 'Patrician Athena Hera Sinistra' is a mouthful," he said, as we entered an area with sparser traffic and he sat back, visibly more relaxed. "I must call you something. You seem to object to 'Earthworm.' "

  I had a strong feeling I was being teased. I didn't understand this strange place and this strange man. I would give quite a bit to be reassured the man wasn't a murderer or that I wouldn't be consigned to living the rest of my life amid a people who considered traffic rules anathema. But I remembered all too well that I'd told him to call me my full name, when I'd thought my acquaintance with this man would last no more than a few hours. Hell, even the broomers called me by my nickname. "You may call me Thena," I said. "My broomer lair calls me Mad Thena Lefty. Or most of the time, just Lefty."

  He gave me a quizzical glance. "The left-handed thing?" which he'd found out very early in our practice fights.

  "Yes."

  "Fits. But I'd prefer just Thena, if you don't mind?"

  I didn't mind. Or at least, I didn't think he was any worse a person than half the broomer scum of the Seacities who knew me by that name, and often no other. The scum, of course, being rival lairs to mine, but all the same, everyone knew me as Lefty, and often had no idea whose daughter I was. Thena was no worse.

  We were now flying over a more sparsely traveled area and, as I relaxed, it gave way to almost completely unspoiled area—unspoiled defined as neatly fenced plots, most of them gardens or orchards, with deceptively close "horizons" of blue skies on either side, as well as above.

  "The sky?" I said.

  Kit spared a look up. Here, without the distraction of the traffic, I expected him to be more relaxed, but his features had clouded. He stared ahead. "Oh. Holograms. Humans don't do well with stone tunnels on either side. This is a suburban neighborhood," he said. "Relatively expensive. I couldn't live here, if my family hadn't chosen to live in a compound. As is, with three active cats and two navs in the family . . ." His voice trailed out. "And Mom does runs to Proxima Thule and Ultima Thule, though her eyes are no longer good enough for the powertrees, so she and Dad are retired."

  "Oh. Proxima—"

  "Colonies." He looked as if he had come to some internal conclusion. "Mostly Europa, Jupiter's moon? Water. We have long outstripped the naturally available ice on Eden . . ." He shrugged. "Eventually people will have to emigrate, I suppose."

  I supposed a little potato-shaped asteroid could only—I'm sure—support so many. But as a new arrival, I had no clue about any of this, much less what could be done to make people emigrate or to entice them to do so.

  He flashed me a confused look, as if he'd just realized that he'd asked me a question I could not reasonably answer. "I'm sorry. I suppose emigration will happen when the conditions in the colonies, or even potential colonies, loom more comfortably than in Eden. It's when things usually happen."

  "Or when people are told they must leave."

  He shrugged. "There's no one to tell them so."

  "Patricians?" I asked. "Governors?"

  He grinned. "Nothing of that kind here. After . . . the era of the bio-lords, we . . . we chose not to have any rulers."

  "No . . . rulers? Who decides where one can build? Give permits for marriage? Certify contracts? Make laws?"

  He looked at me, quite blankly. "Laws are common consensus. Sort of. We don't have laws. We have traditions, which either worked or were discarded. We do have services that archive contracts, for a fee. But . . . permits for marriage? It's a contract . . ."

  "But what if someone wanted to marry more than one person?"

  He looked completely confused. "Well, then," he said. "He'd have to get both their consents to the terms . . . or however many. I don't think there are many groups larger than three. You need to find more than two people who are willing to live together in that intimate a relationship. Two people seem to be hard enough."

  I choked. "It's not illegal?"

  "Uh. I . . . we don't have laws. We have traditions. If it doesn't hurt anyone else . . ." He gave a distant smile that managed to make him look sadder and colder than his frown had managed. "I must tell you the idea of being married to more than one person would seem to be punishment in itself."

  I didn't say anything. I was thinking of the man yelling that Kit had killed his sister.

  "You said these are suburbs," I said, stabbing in the dark at something, anything to change the subject. "I suppose they're waiting to be built on?"

  "What? No. They're quite . . . Oh." He shook his head. "We build mostly underground, you know, with the garden above."

  "Of course," I said, thinking that this was how everywhere in this world seemed to be, then I said, still trying desperately to keep the conversation going. "No rainstorms." Since that was the biggest impediment I could see to building all houses underground. Oh, they existed, and the ones lined with dimatough or ceramite could be reasonably watertight. But it seemed that working against the force of gravity sooner or later became a losing game and those houses sprung leaks.

  This got me a more genuine smile. "When I see holos of Earth with snow or rain it seems unlikely enough I'd think it was a lie if people like Doc Bartolomeu didn't tell me it was true. You know . . . all that water just falling from the sky."

  "We have lots of it in oceans too," I said, piqued.

  He grinned this time. "That I also have heard is true and I've seen in holos, but for the sake of my sanity I prefer to pretend that the holos are merely distorting small man-made lakes."

  If he hadn't talked about his difficulties with spouses before and reminded me that he might be a wife killer, his somewhat embarrassed admission of his incredulity when it came to water would have made me laugh. Instead, I managed a pale smile.

  He nodded, as if understanding my reaction and looked ahead. "Listen, I don't know who will be at home just now. It could be either of my sisters and their husbands, or both of them, or of course neither. My sister Anne is . . . twenty years older than I. She's a nav. Her cat is Bruno. My sister Katherine—she goes by Kath, because our family has a sense of humor—is married to a wonderful nav. No one in Eden is quite sure how or why Eber married her, but they seem to be happy. Between the two couples, they have a varying number of children. I never know which was decanted last."

  "De . . ."

  "Taken out of the womb." He gave me a curious sidewise glance. "Possibly you use a different word."

  "Born." It had dawned on me with a feeling of great weariness that this place was utterly strange, if even their word for being born was different.

  He frowned. "No, the bio-womb."

  "The . . . ?"

  "Artificial womb, you know, so women aren't tied down . . . Ah. I guess you don't have them?"

  I shook my head, trying to imagine that. I wondered what creatures it created, devoid of the stimulus of sharing life with another human being while developing. My host seemed human enough, despite his odd eyes. Well, he might be a murderer, but that was all too human, if one was to believe the oldest legends of mankind. All the same . . . I wondered what deep flaws he hid. And not wanting to think about it, I forged into, "Do all cats marry navs? Is it a . . . tradition?"

  He smiled. "I suppose you could say so. It's just that we tend to train together, from primary grades on. And then, you know, during your useful years, which for cats are till about forty, when your eyes stop being quite acute enough, you spend most of the year traveling, confined in a ship
with someone, it's easier if the person you are going to be confined with is your spouse." A shadow crossed his face, and he visibly forced a smile. "At least so I'm told."

  "Well, brace yourself," he said. "The Denovo compound coming up."

  "Denovo . . . Your name is Klaavil."

  "My late wife's name. Oh. You take your father's name on Earth, don't you? I recall something from a vid. Genetically it makes more sense to take the mother's. Or at least . . ." He smiled. "So they tell me."

  He veered towards one of the fenced-in plots. The fence around this one was the sort of wrought iron—or at least looked like the sort of wrought iron—popular in the ancient Victorian era. Inside the fence itself was a rioting garden of flowers that should not possibly all be blooming at the same time. To be honest, some of them shouldn't be blooming in the open air at all, such as several varieties of orchids, but then I supposed this wasn't the open air.

  We skimmed a massive rose bush, plunged behind a tree loaded with camellias and came to rest on a stretch of flat grass, next to three flyers. One bright red, one a restrained brown, and one blue. "Ah," he said. "Mom and Anne and Bruno are all out. Whether to the store or on runs, I don't know. But that at least means you meet only a few people at a time. Strange, Waldron doesn't have his own flyer yet, unless he's also out, of course. Though he's very young. But he's advanced and almost a fully trained cat." He gave me a look, while I was trying to figure out who the unexpected, unintroduced character might be, and said, "I suppose you find it strange that we all choose to live in one compound."

  "Uh . . . not at all. Wealthy families on Earth often do. For security."

  "Oh. Here it's more . . . you see, my father doesn't travel since he and Mother retired from powertree runs. That's when they chose to have children, and he raised us while she did runs . . ." He shrugged. "Everyone staying in the compound when we got married allowed him to keep a stable home for the children while the rest of us were traveling. Fortunately they could afford cat ELFing for one child."

  I almost reminded him it was for two children, at least if his sister Kath was also ELFed as a cat, which he'd said she was. But the idea that a man had stayed home to raise his children while his wife traveled all over the solar system had taken hold of my mind. How odd. The whole idea of children being gestated away from the mother, and now this. I wondered what kind of strange women were in Eden.

  And met one almost as soon as we left the flyer.

  Seventeen

  She was sunning nude, on her stomach, on a flat expanse of ground just past another bank of flowers I could not identify. Frankly, sunning seemed like a very strange idea, considering that I suspected this was not natural sunlight and also that she was a pale-skinned brunette, of the type that, when sunning, might turn a little less pale, or perhaps acquire a few more freckles.

  "Kath!" Kit said.

  The woman flipped over, revealing she was holding in her hand a gadget of some sort. From a hologram of text quickly vanishing, I assumed that she had been reading. To my relief she was wearing something—triangular silver patches over her breasts and pubic area. How they were held I had no idea. They might very well be antigrav activated.

  I should explain that I don't have it in me to be embarrassed by skin as skin. At least seeing someone my own age naked would have rated no more than a shrug. But I was given to understand this woman was older than Kit and, in fact, had children of her own—not that her flawless figure hinted at this—and for some reason this made me embarrassed.

  "Kath, this is my . . . uh . . . guest Patrician Athena Hera Sinistra. I trust you have—"

  "Had a call from the Center? Yes." Her eyes looked like Kit's but dark, instead of green. She looked over at me, "Patrician? How should I address you? You're the first person from Earth that I've met."

  "Call me Thena," I said, feeling more than ever regretful over my bad humor that had caused me to give Kit all my names. Now he would introduce me this way to everyone.

  "I'm Kath," she said. "Since you already know my brother, you can guess how the family sense of humor goes." She turned to Kit. "Dad was waiting dinner for you."

  "Anne on a run?"

  Kath nodded. She picked up the gadget she'd been using to read and followed us into the house.

  By now I shouldn't have expected the house to look like anything on Earth. We entered by climbing steps down to a landing and then down again into a sort of tunnel surrounded by walls with little holes that served as planters. Someone seemed to have picked herbs for these planters, so it was like walking amid a symphony of scent into . . .

  A place that didn't look all that different from the outside. The carpet on the floor was either green, or there was lawn on the floor. While I'd seen people on Earth go overboard with the concept of house plants, including having flowerbeds with trees right in the house, clearly Edenites believed in a more . . . organic approach to house plants. There weren't flowerbeds as such, but trees, bushes and flowers seemed to grow right where they very well pleased.

  The man who appeared in the middle of all this greenery was fortunately wearing more than antigrav boosted triangles—to wit, loose shirt and shorts. He had dark hair running to grey, seemed to be about sixty years old and looked, I thought, quite unlike his son. But he smiled at us and said, "Hi, Kit. Hi . . ." He paused.

  "Thena," his daughter supplied from behind us.

  "Thena," the man said and smiled pleasantly at me. He stretched a hand. "Jean Denovo." He looked like someone keeping a dozen things in his head at the same time, and trying to coordinate them all. "Dinner is ready, Kit, but I assume . . ."

  "Bath first," Kit said and, with that personal neatness I'd come to know in the Cathouse, started shedding clothes as he walked, taking off for parts unknown and dropping first his jacket, then his undertunic and then his pants.

  Confused, wondering what I was supposed to do, I thought that at least I could always follow the trail of clothes, find him and make him tell me what I was supposed to do next. But his father called after him, "Kit? Will your friend be bathing with you?"

  And, as I felt a flood of red climb my face, Kit turned around, framed by greenery, wearing nothing but his underwear. "Uh . . . I'd . . . Um . . . Do you mind terribly," he said, "if she has her own bath? I'll pay for the water."

  His father looked startled and that, combined with Kit's offer to pay for the water gelled it for me, not as an assumption that we were involved with each other but as a matter of water price and water saving. Which meant Kit's objection to bathing with me was not modesty—which frankly his culture seemed to be strangers to—but probably squeamishness in bathing with an Earthworm.

  I barely heard his father say, "Nonsense. Water from the common fund, of course," but I had composed myself by the time he turned to me and said, "If you'd follow me, Thena?"

  He led me through a corridor that looked much like the stairs we'd come down, then into a room—which like everything here seemed to lack a door and be entered through a narrower tunnel. Inside it was a pleasant-looking room and almost Earth-normal. A holo-window, revealed as such only because I knew the view from it was impossible, displayed a panorama of mountains and sky. The bed in the middle of the floor lacked even the strangeness of being round like the one in the Cathouse. Instead it looked like an absolutely standard dimatough bed frame with mattresses and a yellow cover.

  Kit's father showed me how to open the doors to the built-in closet, though I was at a loss for what he expected me to put in it, then led me through another tunnel at the left to a tiled bathroom that echoed of Rome. He started the water flowing into an inset bathtub of generous proportions, then smiled at me, as though interpreting my expression as shock, "We can afford it because we filter and recycle much of the bath water. Don't worry that you're giving us extraordinary expense."

  I wasn't even vaguely worried, but rather craving immersing myself in that much water with an almost physical need. Back home I was used to swimming every day as well as to
full-immersion baths whenever the mood struck, and having to make do in the ship, for months, with a few sprinkles of water and air jets had left me feeling as though I were filthy. Yes, yes, I know, jets of air are supposed to make you just as clean, and perhaps it is all psychological, but to me it didn't add up to a bath unless I could have water.

  Though I did wait till my host left, it was not more than a few seconds later that I climbed into the tub and let the water cover me. I'd just located the shampoo, next to the tub, and was lazily washing my mop of hair, when I realized there was someone staring at me.

  Frankly I half expected it to be Kit—not that he'd ever shown any tendency to break in on me while I was bathing in the Cathouse, but because I'd got to know him and that peculiar single-mindness of his, I imagined he'd come up with something to tell me, and had come into the bathroom before remembering social niceties.

  But when I looked to the side, Kath was standing there. She had put on what looked like a white silk robe and she was frowning at me, with an expression not all that different from Kit's when he considered something. As I looked up at her, she smiled, a polite social smile. "I brought you some clothes," she said. "They're on the bed. I vibroed them to what I think is your size."

  "Thank you," I said, and meant it, because I'd been contemplating climbing back into the badly-vibroed dirty suit I'd been wearing.

  "You're welcome," she said, but said it with the expression of someone who is thinking about something completely different. She frowned at me again, not a look of disapproval but more a look of trying to consider something. She put her hand up to her head and pulled back her hair, in one of those gestures people do while immersed in thought. "Has Kit . . . uh . . ." She paused and took a deep breath. "How . . . how do you get along with Kit?"

  There was so much trepidation in her voice that it brought back the I don't play well with others. But I really didn't have any complaints, so I spoke truthfully, "He saved my life," which he had, even if he had also, arguably, kidnapped me. "And he has been a good host, though he has a tendency to lecture, but then every male does."