by Timothy Zahn
Except that it wasn’t strictly unoccupied, and for a brief, time-stretched second I tried to think of how to turn that to our advantage. If Tera, Shawn, and I could walk casually past the Icarus as if we weren’t connected with it at all; and if I could get Ixil on the phone—
We hadn’t gotten two steps before any such decisions were taken out of my hands. “There,” Chort called out, pointing to me. “There is the captain. You may address your questions to him.”
I sighed. “You two stay back,” I murmured to Tera and Shawn. There was a rustle as Tera took Shawn’s left arm, pulling him subtly to a halt as I continued on toward the ramp. The Najik in the center of the group took a step toward me in response, and now that he was facing me I could see the insignia of a gokra—the equivalent of a senior lieutenant—on his collar. Apparently, Customs HQ was taking this very seriously.
“Good day, Gokra,” I greeted him as we sloshed through the puddles to within a few steps of each other. “Is there a problem?”
“You are the captain of the Sleeping Beauty?” he asked. His tone was decidedly neutral.
“I am,” I said, wondering fleetingly if Chort might have slipped up and given them my real name, realized immediately that he hadn’t. If he had—if the Najik knew beyond a doubt what they had here—they wouldn’t be bothering with a few measly customs officers. They’d have an army battalion here, plus the local Patth ambassador and his staff, plus probably a military marching band thrown in for color. “Is there a problem?”
“You will unseal the hatch,” he said, waving back toward the Icarus. “You will tell your crewer to move aside, and you will allow us to go in.”
“Of course,” I said, not moving. “May I ask what the problem is?”
For a moment he seemed disinclined to tell me, but apparently decided there was no harm in playing by the proper Mercantile Code rules. “We have received a report that this ship is engaged in illegal smuggling activities,” he said.
The rest of me was soaking wet. My mouth, however, was suddenly dry. “Smuggling activities?” I managed, hoping I sounded more bewildered than guilty.
“Yes,” the gokra said. “Specifically, that you have unregistered gemstones hidden aboard.”
I stared at him, not needing to feign any bewilderment this time. “Gemstones?” I echoed. “That’s crazy. We’re not carrying any gemstones.”
“You will please tell your Craea to stand aside,” the Najik said, not even bothering to acknowledge my protest. I couldn’t blame him; he’d probably heard variants of it twice a day throughout his entire career. “Then you will unseal the hatch and allow us inside. I will need to see your personal identification, as well.”
“Of course,” I said, brushing some of the water out of my eyes and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The gemstone story was utter nonsense, of course—you could fill fifty ships the size of the Icarus from deck to ceiling with Dritar opals without so much as lifting a Patth eyebrow. But if they suspected the ship in front of us might be the Icarus, why bother with this subterfuge?
Answer: they wouldn’t. Which meant that they didn’t know it was the Icarus.
Which further meant the Patth weren’t involved in this; that it was a purely Najiki affair, with the whole gemstone thing being either a ridiculous bureaucratic error or else a horrifying coincidence. I’d chosen the name Sleeping Beauty for our current ship’s ID on the assumption that few people in the Spiral were going to name their ships after obscure nineteenth-century Russian ballets. It would be the height of irony if I’d not only guessed wrong, but had managed to pick the name of a bona fide smuggling ship in the bargain.
Unfortunately, in about five minutes the how and why of it weren’t going to matter anymore. There were a dozen different numbers etched on engines and consoles all over the ship, numbers that were on various lists all across the Spiral. If Cameron had done a proper job of creating a history for his phantom freighter, those numbers would be in a Mercantile file labeled Icarus, and the minute the Najik started checking them we would be finished. If Cameron hadn’t filed the numbers, it would simply take a little longer for the soap bubble to burst.
The Najik were still waiting. “Of course,” I said again, turning back and stepping to where Tera was still clinging to Shawn’s left arm. There was one very tenuous hope here, a hope based on Brother John’s offhanded comment earlier about the Najik, and my own hopefully not-too-cynical interpretation of it. “Let me get the hatch unlocked first and get us in out of the rain. Especially Geoff here—he’s not well.”
Someone in the group gave a deep-bass rumble, the Najiki equivalent of a guffaw, as I took Shawn’s right upper arm. Not an unreasonable response, given that Shawn looked more drunk than he did sick, and I took it as a good sign. Customs HQ might be taking this seriously, but apparently not all the officers themselves were. Together Tera and I led Shawn through the Najiki cordon to the near end of the ramp. I keyed in the combination on the pad and, behind Chort, the hatch swung open. Without waiting for permission from the Najik, I moved us forward onto the ramp.
“Keep going,” I murmured to Tera, letting go my grip on Shawn’s arm and sliding my left arm through his, freeing up that hand while still giving the appearance that I was holding on to him. Extending my reach as much as I could, I dipped into my side jacket pocket for the folded city map I’d stuffed in there earlier. My other hand had already slipped inside my jacket for my pen; and as we passed out of the rain into the shelter of the wraparound I scribbled briefly on the front of the map.
“An interesting ship design,” the gokra commented from right behind me. He might be courteous enough to let me precede him into my own ship, but that didn’t mean he was going to let me get too much of a lead on him. “Ylpea-built, I presume?”
“I really don’t know,” I said. Now that he mentioned it, I could see an echo of the Ylpean love of French curves in the Icarus’s double-sphere shape. Had that been what Cameron had been going for? Regardless, something worth remembering. “I’m just the pilot, not the owner. I don’t know anything about its history.”
“Ah.”
We had moved along the wraparound, and were now coming up on the main sphere. Behind the gokra the rest of the Najik had filed in, with a silent Chort bringing up the rear. “But you’re not here for a history lesson anyway,” I added, pulling my ID folder from inside my jacket and surreptitiously sliding the map inside it. “Here’s my ID.”
I handed it to him, mentally crossing my fingers. If I’d guessed wrong, it wasn’t even going to take until the Najik started calling in console numbers for me to be in big trouble.
He took the folder and opened it. The multiple eyes twitched in unison as he saw the map nestled inside; twitched again as he spotted the note I’d written on it. For a long minute he just stared at it. Once again I was suddenly conscious of the weight of my plasmic against my ribs, knowing full well that opening fire in such a confined space against ten armed opponents would be a quick way of committing suicide. Beside me, Shawn seemed to have stopped breathing, and I could sense a similar tension in Tera on his other side.
Then, almost delicately, the gokra closed the folder without even looking behind the map at my actual ID and handed it back to me. “Thank you,” he said, almost primly. “We won’t be long.”
And they weren’t. They wandered up and down the various corridors, glanced around the engine room and bridge, casually examined the curving metal of the cargo compartment and confirmed there was no entry hatch, and made a copy of Cameron’s fake Gamm sealed-cargo license to take for their files. Nicabar returned while they were poking around; I told him to get dried off and then get the thrusters ready to go. At one point, almost as an afterthought, the gokra also presented me with the bill for our fueling, explaining that he’d taken it from the ground crew when he arrived and found them waiting for my return. He didn’t seem surprised that I paid the bill in cash, or that there were five extra hundred-commark bills in the st
ack I gave him.
And that was it. Ten minutes after they’d come in out of the rain, they were out in it again, striding briskly toward the slideways and headed home.
“All right, I give up,” Tera murmured from my side as she and I stood in the wraparound and watched them go. “Who is Mr. Antoniewicz, and why won’t he be happy if they find anything?”
I grimaced. I hadn’t thought she would be able to read the note from her angle as I’d scribbled it on the map. “He’s just someone I know,” I said evasively. “He has a certain amount of influence around the Spiral.”
“I’d say he has a great deal of influence,” she said, eyeing me in a way I didn’t much care for. “You know him personally or professionally?”
“I’ve done some business with his people,” I said. A movement outside caught my eye: Everett, our last crewman still unaccounted for, had appeared around the bow of one of the nearby ships and was plodding our way, his big feet kicking up impressive splashes with each step. He looked tired; he must have worn himself out looking for Shawn. Not surprising, really, given that he probably considered it his fault the kid had gotten away in the first place. “Here comes Everett,” I added to Tera, hoping to forestall any further questions, as I dug out the fake cassette. “Tell him to check Shawn and see if he needs another dose yet—here’s the borandis. As soon as he’s aboard, seal the hatch and get to the computer room.”
I left her there and headed to the bridge, feeling both cautiously relieved and cautiously pleased with myself. I’d been right: Brother John’s grudging admiration for the Najik had indeed been based on the fact that the Antoniewicz organization was able to do business with them. Clearly, our customs gokra was in on the deal, and dropping Antoniewicz’s name had been enough to wave him off us. I still didn’t know why the Icarus had been fingered for a search, but as soon as we were out of Potosi space that wouldn’t matter.
Assuming we did get out of Potosi space, of course. If the gokra had merely taken the extra cash in order to add attempted bribery to the charges against me, he should be rounding the corner any minute with that army battalion I’d been expecting earlier.
But for once, my pessimism proved unfounded. We got clearance to lift, the port’s grav beams lifted us smoothly out and up, and within a few minutes we were once again in space. I had cut us into hyperspace and was doing a quick check of the systems when the door opened and Everett came in. “We safely away?” he asked.
“Unless the hull decides to collapse, we are,” I told him.
He made a face. “Considering the way things have been going, that’s not very funny.”
“I suppose not,” I conceded. “Sorry. How’s Shawn doing?”
“Seems to be recovering,” he said. “Fortunately, the reversible Cole’s disease symptoms begin long before the irreversible damage kicks in. And the borandis dependence itself is more or less reversible at any point. Rather like scurvy in that respect.”
“That’s handy,” I said. “How much of his current trouble is related to the dependence and how much to the disease?”
He shook his head, peering at the displays. “I don’t know. The two problems intermix so tightly it takes a specialist to disentangle them. We’re going to Morsh Pon next?”
“Yes,” I said. “After that little run-in back there, I thought it might be nice to refuel someplace where they don’t bother at all with customs formalities.”
“If you live to get back out,” he said dubiously. “I’ve heard stories about that world—bands of pirates and smugglers roaming the streets looking for trouble.”
“We’ll be all right,” I told him with a confidence I didn’t much feel myself. “I’ll make you a small wager that it won’t be as bad as you think.”
“Um,” Everett said noncommittally, still looking doubtful. “Still, you’re the captain; power of life and death over your crew, and all that. Speaking of which—the crew, I mean—I haven’t seen Ixil since before we landed on Potosi.”
“Neither have I,” I said. “But I’m sure he’s all right.”
“Yes,” he said hesitantly. “The reason I asked, you see, was that I tried checking on him and his cabin door wouldn’t open.”
“That’s okay—I set it that way to make sure he had some privacy,” I assured him. “I just hope it didn’t slam on your fingers.”
“What do you mean?” Everett asked, looking puzzled. “It didn’t slam. It didn’t open at all.”
I stared at him, a sudden chill running through me. “It didn’t open a few centimeters and then shut again?”
“I told you: it didn’t even budge,” he insisted. “I thought maybe it had gotten jammed—”
I didn’t wait to hear any more, jumping out of my seat and dodging past him to the ladder out in the corridor. I slid down it without touching any of the rungs, my heart pounding suddenly in my throat. I reached Ixil’s door and tried the release pad.
Everett was right. It didn’t budge at all.
I had my multitool out and was unfastening the pad’s cover by the time Everett caught up. “You think something’s wrong?” he puffed as he came up beside me.
“There’s something wrong with the door, anyway,” I said, fighting hard to speak calmly, to keep my fear and rage out of my voice. If the saboteur had been here while Ixil was lying helpless … but maybe the control chip had simply burned out. With my fingers fumbling slightly in their hurry, I got the cover off.
The control chip hadn’t simply burned out. The control chip wasn’t there at all. What was there looked like it had been attacked by a gorilla with a small sledgehammer.
Beside me, Everett gasped. “What in hell’s name—?”
“Our friend who wrecks cutting torches does doors, too,” I snarled, dropping the cover on the deck and hurrying to the door to my own cabin. One glance was all I’d needed to know Ixil’s release pad was going to need some major work, and I could replace it with the one from my door in a fraction of the time. “Go to the computer room and tell Tera to take the bridge,” I called back over my shoulder as I set to work on the fasteners.
I had my release pad off and was starting on Ixil’s when Everett returned, a first-aid kit clutched in his hand. “I thought we might need this,” he said grimly, setting it down out of my way. “What can I do?”
“Hold this,” I said, thrusting the damaged pad into his hands. A first-aid kit wasn’t going to do a damned bit of good. Not now. Our saboteur had had plenty of time to make this one a leisurely killing. “What exactly happened after Shawn got loose?”
“He ran out of the ship,” Everett said, rubbing at the side of his neck. “I’m afraid he got past me—”
“What about the others?” I cut him off. “Where were they when all this was happening?”
“Well …” He fumbled slightly. “I’m not exactly sure. The intercom still isn’t working, so I had to go find them one by one. Chort was in his cabin, Nicabar was in the engine room, and I found Tera in the mechanics shop.”
“And then?”
“We went outside to see if he was still in the area of the ship. He wasn’t, or if he was we didn’t see him, so we split up and went looking for him.”
“You all left together?”
“Except Nicabar,” he said. “The fuelers had arrived, and he stayed behind for a few minutes to get them started.”
One of the door’s control wires was too tangled to connect properly. I cut off the end, stripped it, and started wrapping it around its contact. “Whose brilliant idea was it not to tell me?”
“Mine, I’m afraid,” he said, his voice wincing. “I thought it would just distract you, and you had enough to do at the time already.”
I grunted. “Did you see any of the others while you were out hunting?”
“Of course not—we all went off in different directions,” he said. “We kept in touch by phone, of course.”
Which meant that any of them could easily have doubled back to the Icarus with murder on hi
s mind and no one would have been the wiser for it. He wouldn’t even have had to dodge the fuelers, who would have been busy on the opposite side of the ship.
The last contact dropped into place, and I heard the faint transient hum as the system integrated. I touched the pad, and the door slid open.
The room was dark. Bracing myself for the worst, I reached inside and turned on the light.
Ixil was lying on the bunk just as I’d left him, Pix and Pax rousing themselves sleepily from beside him in response to the light. Cautiously, I moved forward, studying Ixil as I approached. There were no marks of violence on him, at least none that I could see from my angle.
And then, without warning, he inhaled sharply, like a sigh going in reverse, and his eyes fluttered open. “Hello,” he said, blinking up at me.
I stopped short. “You’re not dead,” I said stupidly.
Ixil’s face registered mild surprise. “Were you expecting me to be?” he asked. His eyes flicked around the room, paused briefly on Everett standing in the doorway behind me, then shifted down toward the deck. “What are those?” he added, extending a finger.
I followed the direction he was pointing. Sitting on the deck just inside the edge of the door were three objects. One was the missing control chip from the door release pad; the other two were small glass bottles the size and shape of those in the Icarus’s limited pharmacopoeia.
I stepped over and picked them up. One of the bottles held a brown liquid, I noted, the other a fine whitish powder. Both bottles had safety-seal lids; both lids were still securely fastened. “What are they?” I asked Everett, handing them to him.
He frowned at the labels. “Well, this one is prindeclorian,” he said, lifting the brown liquid. “It’s a broad-spectrum viral inhibitor. The other one’s qohumet, a parasite-control dust for feathered or scaled beings like our friend Chort. What they’re doing here together I can’t imagine.”
“I can,” Ixil said, his voice suddenly very thoughtful as he rose from the bunk and crossed over to Everett. “If you mix the two of them together and then set fire to the resulting mixture, you get something quite interesting.”
