Darkship Thieves

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  "I will."

  "This is nonsense," I snapped. "I'm the one who should be indentured for the remaining," I said. "I am the one who tried to steal a ship. Not him."

  Now the functionary turned to me, and his features managed to reflect even more disdain than Kit had bent on him. Kit, meanwhile, was not even looking at me, but straight ahead, his features steely.

  "Did Cat Klaavil not sign a contract of responsibility for you, as his legal ward?"

  "Yes," I said, but then because this made no sense. "But it doesn't matter. I am of age, I have a job. If there is a bill to pay, I should be the one paying it." I made fifty hydras a month. Kit made a thousand or so per trip. His trips took . . . three to six months? Everyone tried for the times when the Earth was closer, but if you wanted to keep bringing in pods, you had to work year-around. How many could he take a year? I know they had downtime between the trips. I tried to calculate it. As I was in the middle of trying to figure out how many zeros to carry on my way to realizing I'd just signed Kit's life earnings away, I heard Kit say, "It's irrelevant. She is my ward. I will pay. You may call me at home. If I am not there, you may leave a message either directly or with my father."

  "Kit."

  This is not the time, Thena.

  But you can't. You didn't do anything. This will take your entire life earnings.

  Not. The. Time.

  I stared at him, but he just looked ahead. "Feel free to call me with the total," he said. "I shall discuss the means of settling it, then." And with that haughty, looking-above-it-all expression he strode out of the ship. Come, Thena.

  I wouldn't have obeyed. After all, what I really felt like doing was testing my theory of the vulnerable points of the human male on the bureaucratic twit who was facing Kit. But if I killed him—and I might very well, if I got going—then I would stick Kit with the price for the blood geld. So I ran after Kit as he marched from the ship and down the steps the twit bureaucrat had, at least, had the decency to provide.

  I caught up with him by his flyer, which was parked just steps from the ship, which meant that he had somehow managed to fly into an area that was technically closed to traffic. I wondered if he'd flown through the building. I was sure that this was impossible, that some of the doors were too small.

  However, I was about to get a lesson in how wrong I could be, when he got in, sat down and barked at me: "Buckle."

  For the next two minutes we flew—sometimes upside down or sideways through the doors and across the halls of the Energy Board Center, until we exited the main door. We flew over flyers being repaired and sideways between the desks of the processing office, while I held my breath. Instead of heading to the garage, the way we had when we arrived, he took the way up as I did when I met him in front of the building.

  As soon as we were through the front door, Kit landed in a parking space, pulled on the communicator pin he was wearing on his sleeve, and said, "Doctor Bartolomeu."

  By the time the doctor answered, his voice sounding tinny through the pin, "Christopher?" Kit had opened the door and was throwing up, noisily, onto the pavement. I wanted to hold his head, or smack him for being an idiot, but I couldn't do either. Instead, I spoke into the pin.

  "We're outside the Energy Board Center," I said. "I think Kit tore open the seam on his wound."

  Twenty-Four

  "Drink," the doctor said. He held a cup to Kit's mouth. For a moment—considering the way Kit had behaved for the last hour—I expected Kit to press his lips together, or turn his head away. Instead, he took the cup in his left hand and drank, while the doctor worked on his right side.

  We were in the doctor's flyer, a large one—probably originally designed as a carrier van. In contrast with his house, the place—he called it his surgery, like doctors in the ancient British Commonwealth, referring to their offices—was modern and immaculate. All glimmering surfaces and smooth dimatough.

  Kit was hooked up to at least three machines and the doctor was doing something to his shoulder that involved glasses and something that looked like tweezers but wasn't. It looked like he was gluing the two halves of the wound together, but he'd snapped at me when I'd asked. "No. I'm seaming them properly together with new-healed growth. Deep seaming this time, unlike last, when I thought I could trust Christopher not to tear his shoulder apart again."

  Kit had tried to protest, "But she was going to get herself killed. She was—"

  "Shut up," the doctor had ordered. "You don't have the strength to talk and I'd like to keep you alive, heaven knows why."

  Kit had lost consciousness before the doctor arrived and despite the fact that he'd been given an injector that was supposed to help him produce more blood, despite the fact that he was hooked up to an intravenous drip that was replenishing his blood, and despite his having another three machines doing who knew what to him, he still looked half dead. The eyelids he shared with the rest of the human race were half lowered. From beneath it, his nictitating eyelids kept trying to close and protect his eyes. He looked . . . miserable, like a child caught playing in the rain and scolded.

  The doctor worked steadily, mending his shoulder. "I didn't do this before," he said, "because it takes a very long time. And Christopher doesn't like to stay still or in a position of weakness for very long. Do you?"

  "I—"

  "No, don't talk. I told you you haven't the strength." The doctor glanced up at me before returning to work on Kit, and said, "As for you—"

  I braced, afraid of what he might ask me to do. I was very much afraid he would order me to dance while standing still. It seemed to be the sort of thing he was doing to Kit.

  Instead he said, "I don't understand how, but you must be related to Alexander."

  This didn't seem to be anything I could answer. I caught a desperate glimmer from Kit's eyes that read like a warning, but I had no idea what the warning could be. What the doctor said seemed just disappointed scolding, as he added, "What did you think you were doing?"

  I clenched my hands. I stood near Kit, watching him sip whatever the concoction was in the cup, and there were things I was not about to tell the doctor, particularly not in front of Kit. Like the fact that I'd realized I needed to run away from Kit because I was afraid he would tie us together forever out of some misguided sense of obligation.

  Instead I said, "I needed to go to Earth. I have reason to believe my father is dead. I owe my domains on Earth a duty that—"

  Kit glared at me and looked like he would open his mouth to speak, and I decided to stop him before he could. "I was not going to betray Eden. I beg you to believe that I have more sense than that. Most people here never did anything to deserve being betrayed." Was that a shadow crossing Kit's veiled gaze? "And I don't want a world's destruction on my conscience, anyway. I was going to fly to Earth and ditch in one of the areas of Old Europe that are depopulated. Then I was going to find the nearest station and call for help. After I destroyed the ship."

  Doc Bartolomeu was quiet for a while. When he spoke, it was to make a deep, vibrating noise that sounded somewhere between um and a groan. "Have you no sense?"

  "She's nineteen!" Kit put in, in the tone of defending me.

  "And you're three years older," the doctor said. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "That her life hasn't been like ours," Kit said, his voice acerbic.

  "You're talking. I told you not to speak. You have no strength to speak."

  Kit used whatever strength he did have to say a very nasty word in ancient German before sipping his medicine again. The doctor countered by pretending not to hear.

  "I don't see where I'm failing in sense," I said. "It is my duty to go back to Earth. I understand it is not in the best interests of the people here on Eden, but it is still my duty, and I thought this way I could fulfill it with minimal damage. I can't see how this was so irresponsible."

  "Christopher would have been indentured beyond his productive life. Just the repairs on the ship, as is—"


  "I don't see why he should be punished for my actions!" I said, mostly to avoid the deep, abiding feeling that I would, in fact, have been paying back Kit's kindness with a horrible injury. I hadn't asked him to save me. Twice. I told myself that, but it didn't seem to help.

  "My dear girl, have you no respect for contracts, obligations and one's word of honor?"

  I didn't. I'd never given anyone my word of honor and never entered a contract, so I had no idea why I should respect what other people did on my behalf. Kit was not my father, nor my guardian in fact. The notion seemed nonsensical.

  "He brought you to Eden and he freely assumed responsibility over you."

  It was on my tongue to say I didn't ask him to, but I met Kit's gaze at that moment, serious, concerned, as he stared at me. "That's not why I went after her," he said. His voice sounded distant, dreamy. I wondered what was in the beverage the doctor had him sip. "I went after you," he said, looking at me now, "because otherwise they would have shot you out of the sky. You see, I should have told you, should have explained long ago that if you try to leave Eden without being cleared, you will get killed, and the ship destroyed with you."

  I opened my mouth. He'd saved my life yet again. And I still hadn't asked him to. I felt vaguely angry at his interference and mad at myself for being angry. "I didn't ask—"

  "No," he said, very softly. "I didn't want you dead. That's all. Screw the payment. It's just hydras. I can always make more. But I didn't want you dead."

  "Oh." If I had a way out of here without stealing his flyer—which right now seemed a way of adding insult to injury—I would have taken it. I didn't want to think about the fact that he didn't want me dead—or that he was the first person ever to express that opinion. "My father would be disappointed in you."

  I meant it as a joke, but he didn't laugh. Instead, he turned to the doctor, "Is this going to take much longer?"

  "Yes. Be quiet. The more you talk the longer it will take. Considering how little you like talking, I wonder at the sudden garrulousness. What possessed you," he said, and did something with his tool that caused Kit to yelp, before he caught himself, "to go climbing while your shoulder had only the thinnest seam of skin over a healing wound? And you had taken only one dose of blood replenisher?"

  "I don't know. I was bored. There was nothing good on the sensi. Why do you think I went climbing with an ill-healed wound?" It was the first time I'd heard Kit snap at the doctor.

  "Uh. See, you're not well enough to speak. This irritability is one of the symptoms of near shock. As is nausea." He looked at one of the machines. "And you're still tachycardic."

  For a moment, as Kit pulled the cup away from his lips, I thought he was going to throw it across the flyer, probably breaking something expensive and irreplaceable. He gave every impression of counting backward from a hundred, then forward to a hundred again. "You," he said at last, "could make a dead man tachycardic through sheer annoyance."

  To my surprise, as I expected them to escalate the fight, the doctor laughed. Or rather he cackled, a delighted cackle that went with his gnomic appearance. "You are so like your father."

  "So I'm told," Kit said. And then, before the tone of his voice—flat, unemotional—could draw comment, he said, "I climbed the side of the ship because Thena wasn't opening the door and lowering the stairs." He took a sip from his cup, then added, "I melted shallow depressions with my burner and climbed."

  "And it didn't occur to you this might kill you?" the doctor asked.

  Kit tried to shrug and got an almost-growl from the doctor, which caused him to say, "All right, all right. Yes, it occurred to me, but damn it, if I didn't do it, she was going to die."

  "Your mouth out of order?" the doctor asked. "You couldn't tell her they would shoot her out of the sky?"

  "I wouldn't have believed him," I said, thinking I had to defend Kit. If he really was too ill to speak, and heaven knows he looked it, I didn't want to cause him to die. Besides, it was true. "I would have thought he was lying to me to get me to open the door."

  The doctor looked up at me, snorted. "You make a fine pair."

  He returned to work on Kit's shoulder. "And what are you going to do now, Christopher?"

  Kit made a sound at the back of his throat. "I was thinking of taking up stripping for additional money."

  This was probably the effect of whatever the mixture he'd been drinking was, because the doctor looked at him as if he were stupid. Kit sighed. "The official who met us on arrival wanted me to strip."

  The doctor snorted again, this time impatiently. He looked at me. "Miss Sinistra . . . Would you try to do this again, if Christopher went on one of his runs and left you behind?"

  I shook my head. I wouldn't. I wouldn't because I hated the idea of being indebted to anyone. And I hated the idea of getting Kit into yet more debt than he was.

  "And why should we trust you?" the doctor asked. "If you have no respect for contracts?"

  I didn't know. In fact, all of my history argued for not trusting me. I looked at him and was silent.

  Twenty-Five

  "You can trust me, Kit, truly," I said, and I was almost sure I meant it. We were back at the music center, and I was wearing the red dress because, for reasons unknown to me, it seemed to be Kit's favorite. Which was odd, as it was a lot more staid than most things people wore in Eden. Kit was wearing what was for him a frankly subdued suit tailored much like his uniform—meaning it looked like what a renaissance doublet and hose would look like after death if they had been a particularly good suit of clothes and deserving of heaven. It outlined his shoulders, highlighted his waist and did things to his leg muscles that would make a sculptor cry in despair at not being able to capture that sort of beauty.

  All of it was enough to make me forget that the cloth shone in clashing flashes of silver and gold whenever he moved, and that he was very silent, even for Kit.

  We'd sat through the entire program in silence, of course. Even I wasn't rude enough to talk while others were playing well-rehearsed pieces. Music as a rule doesn't do much for me. Oh, it takes my head to a blank space, if that makes sense. I can appreciate the music on a sensory level and I'd sat through enough holo lectures on music and the history of music that I could have talked for hours about this technique and that innovation.

  Wasn't about to. Not unless someone made me. It wasn't true, any of it, as far as I was concerned. It was just like all the other stuff you learned so you could make polite conversation, but which meant nothing much. I didn't want to do that to Kit and besides, Kit understood music. Music was somehow wired into his mind in a way that it was like a language. Even while he sat, listening to the program, I could see his hand moving, his eyes narrowing. I didn't know and wasn't about to ask if it was just that he'd detected some minor error in the performance or if it was something else—like it had just occurred to him why that movement worked. I'd had enough of Kit's lectures on music in the Cathouse and it all worked out to one thing—I didn't understand it and he did. Having him go on about it wouldn't make me any more enlightened on the matter than having an expert explain to me the syntax of a language I didn't speak. Ancient Norse, perhaps.

  Instead, I'd waited for intermission and started trying to talk to him then. Little things, you know. Should we go get something to drink? And Isn't it a lovely night? If we'd been on Earth I'd have been talking about the weather, only of course, the weather, like law and order, was not something that had ever visited Eden.

  Kit smiled a little at a couple of my questions, but didn't answer. He took me to a table on the side of the broad terrace that sprawled in front of the music building, punched in codes and got me a fizzy blue drink with a little umbrella, just like in old-time holos. It didn't taste alcoholic, but nothing in Eden tasted alcoholic. I sipped it. He got himself something clear, which could be water or bug juice or perhaps some high-octane alcoholic concoction. He sipped it in silence. I tried to ask polite questions, but he just smiled. His eyes were as un
readable to me as when I'd first met him and his expression was bland and good-humored, but it didn't seem right.

  I got tired of the sound of my own voice and shut up. We went back inside and listened to the rest of the program. And then we came out again. Kit started down the steps to the flyer he'd left parked on the street, but I grabbed his hand. "No."

  It was the first time I touched him without his expecting it—at least outside my attempting to kill him—the first time I touched him at all outside our practice fights.

  I half expected him to somehow grab my foot and leave me sprawling on the dimatough that someone had striated to look like pink-veined white marble. Alternately, I expected him to pull his hand away and continue down the steps to his flyer. I would have followed, of course. What else could I do? I had no other way home. Oh, perhaps a cab, but I didn't want that sort of anger between us the day before he left to go out in the Cathouse again. Which he was doing and which, of course, was what this was all about.

  But he didn't even pull his hand away from mine. Instead, he looked down at our hands. His hand felt warm. I had grabbed hold of his thumb and index finger, awkwardly. "No?" he said.

  "No. We must talk," I said. "I don't want you to leave like this."

  He frowned and smiled at the same time, his forehead wrinkling, his eyebrows arching, his mouth tilting upwards a little. "Have to, Thena. Have a debt to pay."

  I wanted to stomp my foot and scream at him that I knew damn well. But I would not, because he was leaving tomorrow and I didn't want that between us. "A million hydras," I said.

  "Nah." His smile got more mischievous. "The idiot was grossly exaggerating. Barely five hundred thousand. If I were doing a normal collection, I could pay it off in five years, no problem."

  "Normal . . . ?"