Darkship Thieves-ARC

by Sarah A. Hoyt

After that, the first page was notes, done by hand, in a cramped, small handwriting, very square and neat. I couldn't understand any of it. No, I mean it. I might have got some articles and the occasional conjunction, but most of it might as well have been in a foreign language.

  It wasn't. Fairly standard, if old, Glaish. But for the love of sweet hell, if I understood bio mathematics I wouldn't be running with a broomer lair to relieve boredom. Hell, heaven and abyss, I would be willing to bet no one on Earth now understood these bio mathematics.

  No. Well . . . Maybe someone. Father had kept them for a reason. Maybe he'd trained biologists in it. Maybe . . . I tamped down the thought, hard, and paged down, to find . . . dates and notations in daddy's handwriting.

  Dates and . . . notations on failed experiments on following Jarl's directions for breaking the lock on Mule genome.

  They'd created two before me. A hundred years ago. Sterile. They'd been married off, properly. Male clones had been created to keep Good Man Sinistra alive.

  All of this was very clear from the notes, as was the fact that the females were designed so that Daddy Dearest's brain still could be transplanted into their heads. He'd left instructions she would be the first female to inherit in the era of Good Men. Daddy couldn't imagine giving up power. But he also couldn't trust anyone—even a woman, or perhaps particularly a woman—to do what he wanted her to do without his being actively in control. And of course, what she was supposed to do was be the mother of all Mules. The mother of a new race that would displace the mere humans. The mother of . . .

  Their heads. She. No. My head. Me . . .

  I scrambled out of the compartment, running, as fast as I could. I couldn't remember asking the guard in the hallway the way to the fresher, but I found myself there. It was a really primitive fresher, that anyone in the twenty first century would recognize, and I found myself on my knees, losing beer and sandwiches into the toilet.

  There followed a period of which I remember nothing. I came to—or became aware of myself—curled up on the mattress of my cubicle, my mouth tasting sore, my face wet, though I didn't remember crying, and feeling tired—bone tired, as though I'd run miles and miles, uphill in snow.

  I gathered myself up, feeling about a hundred years old. Right. So I was a Mule. So I'd been created to give Daddy Dearest the ultimate sex change operation. Goody. Did I think that made me special? At least I was walking around, with my brain still in my head, my body still intact. It could be much worse. How much worse?

  Max. And all those other Sinistra clones, born and grown to nineteen or twenty, only to die without ever knowing what hit them. Daddy had been alive . . . what? Three hundred years past his body's usefulness? Earth didn't have the means to rejuvenate bodies, like Eden did. And besides, catch Daddy Dearest being old and wrinkled like Doctor Bartolomeu.

  Beyond all that, of course, it fit the masquerade. Couldn't just stay alive on Earth. Sooner or later, the word Mule would be used. Sooner or later.

  What kind of perverse mind propagated the worst myths about his own kind? The government of the Good Men did. Oh, perhaps they didn't have much chance after the riots and the turmoils, but did they need to actively propagate it?

  They'd got left behind, when the ship went to the stars. They'd got left behind . . .

  I took a deep breath. Right. So Daddy Dearest was scum. I didn't actually feel surprised at this, so much as a little sorry. You see, in the past he'd never tried to kill me—on the contrary—so I had to abstain from killing him. Now the game had changed.

  There were some deaths I must avenge. My . . . I guess my twin brothers, that he'd killed over the years. I could turn that gem reader on and know the exact number, but I remembered from looking at our genealogy that all children were born late—though I was unusually late. So, usually when the Father was around forty. And the son would ascend at nineteen or twenty. Yes, definitely, this was Daddy's anti-wrinkle solution. And in three hundred years, he had killed . . . Let's say eight of them. And he was going to pay. For every one of them. And for what he wanted to do to me.

  But first—more important than revenge—was getting Kit out of Daddy's hands. What Daddy might do to Jarl's clone . . . if he'd realized Kit was Jarl's clone . . . And he had, or he wouldn't be asking Kit to decipher Jarl's writing.

  I groaned. Of course he did. He would. It wasn't just the look. He'd have known Jarl at the same age. The same gait, the same figure, the same voice. I remembered the tone in which he'd answered Kit's hailing from the Cathouse. To hear a voice as if from the dead would do that to someone. And maybe he'd recognized Kit even before that, in Circum Terra.

  And I wasn't such child that I didn't think daddy would still hold a grudge for being left on Earth. I wondered why they'd left him, and I meant to find out, but not now. First, I was going to get Kit. And after my throwing up and my crying, I thought I had an idea. And damn it, I was to implement it. Even if it required the help of someone even less stable than I was.

  I ran out in the hallway and couldn't find Nat. Please, don't let him have come to his own conclusions already and have left to take his own revenge.

  Forty Three

  Nat hadn't left. The bewildered guard pointed me at his compartment, and I hurried to it, ignoring the guard's rather tentative motion, as if to inform me that Nat didn't beat mattresses that way. Hell, perhaps that he didn't do it any way, now that Max was gone. And if he did, I might be set to embarrass him mortally. Too bad.

  His compartment was one of those which were perfectly private, an oriental rug covering the front opening so that not even light escaped from inside. If he'd left the light on.

  I called "Nat?" then louder. "Nat."

  At least there were no moans coming from inside. And no cigarette smoke. Right.

  I took a deep breath. Right. I poked my head to the side of the rug. "Nat?"

  It was pitch dark in there, and Nat was lying on his mattress, dressed and immobile. It only needed his hands crossed on his chest to make this look like a viewing.

  I reached for the lamp on a small table near the entrance and flicked it on. For a moment, I was speechless. This cubicle was furnished like no other cubicle in the lair. There were tables and a desk and a vast, dark wood trunk. It looked like a real room in a real house. There was even a drawing on the wall. It was Max. I was sure of that. It was mother-naked Max done in charcoals.

  I was staring, rather confused by the mix of artistry and nudity—not unusual but odd when it comes to one's friends—when I heard the slide of a burner being drawn, and looked into Nat's less than sane eyes.

  "Ah," he said. "It's you." He set the burner aside, though he didn't slide the safety back on, and fumbled on his bedside table for a cigarette box, a shiny aluminum affair. He pulled a cigarette out, lit it, took a deep pull on it. "What do you need?"

  I took a deep breath, despite the smoke. "I need you to come to my room. I need to show you something."

  He gave me an odd, lopsided smile, that somehow signaled he was making a joke—it was as though finding Max might truly be gone instead of having abandoned him, had led him rediscover a sense of humor. "I've seen one of those before," he said. "And I'm not that desperate."

  "Not that," I said. "Documents. Gems. I got them from my father's secret office."

  "Ah," he said, getting up. "The gem reader."

  "Exactly," I said. "The gem reader."

  I didn't know when I had decided to show the whole thing to Nat. It would imply his realizing we were Mules. It was all the more dangerous, since he was not the son of a Good Man but the son of one of the servants. A professional, well paid servant, but still a servant. So, he wouldn't be a Mule. Wouldn't he react even more violently to the idea than the rest of them?

  The only thing I knew for sure is that Nat was not in an emotional state where I could tell him a story and have him believe it. Not without showing him some proof, even if the proof was my own supposed Father's handwriting over the centuries.

  He
grabbed his cigarette case, and caught me looking at the portrait again. "I drew it," he said. "Years ago."

  "You . . . really?" I was the last person in the world who would ask him about the improbable endowment. Truly. Though perhaps not all that improbable. My husband . . . I didn't want to think about scientists all those centuries back creating Mules with something extra. Perhaps they thought it would keep them free of envy issues?

  "Yeah, I thought of going into the arts, but I'm the oldest, and Father said that good man Keeve—" He stopped short and took a deep, noisy drag on his cigarette.

  I took him back to my compartment, and he sat down on the edge of the mattress, as he turned the gem reader on.

  His first noise was annoyance, but before he could complain of not understanding anything, I told him to page forward. He did. He read Daddy's notes in silence, as his face became more and more angular. By the end of it, he looked like a woodcut. A very angry woodcut.

  I don't know what I expected him to say. Perhaps eek, Mules! Or the like. Instead, he looked up at me. "Athena. Born of Zeus head. The girl without a mother. The bastard has a sense of humor." He lit another cigarette.

  "Athena Hera Sinistra," I said. "Hera."

  "The mother goddess. Woman, the bastard is a laugh a minute."

  "Isn't he?"

  He smoked in silence. "So, why did you want me to see this? Are you going to show Ettiene?"

  "I don't know . . ." I said. "I suppose I should?"

  "I don't know. You know him better than I do, but I think you'll at least need to go slow. Or . . . allow me to do it."

  Oh, sure, turn to the mad man for tact. "What do you mean allow you to do it?"

  He shrugged. "I can tell him I saw the notes. He'll believe me. I don't need to tell him about the . . . you know, the little genetic difference. He's not at risk. No one is going to replace him. his father is the living dead. But if he knows—"

  "He can prevent others from being—"

  "Oh, no," Nat said, and smiled a sweet, angelic smile, that made him look beautiful and years younger. "No, sweetie. I intend to do that. I intend to kill each and every one of the bastards before he gets a chance to do that." The smile vanished, and he looked like himself again. "I've been wondering what to do with the rest of my life." Another grin, this one humorless. Oh, good. I'd created an angel of death. "I'll let you do your own bastard, though."

  "But I'll still tell Ettiene before you know . . . because . . . in case I get stopped," he said. "Or killed before I'm done. But I'm going to tell him that these go on, but not, going to tell him what he is. I don't think he could take it?"

  It seemed to be a question, and I wasn't sure how to answer it. I didn't think he could take it, either, but who was I to know? "I thought you were going to be shocked and disgusted by the Mule thing. Maybe want to kill me and . . . and the others, too."

  He looked up, all shock, his eyes wide open. "You did? Why on Earth?"

  "Well, we're . . . you know?"

  "Mules?" He shrugged. "But if you are, then so was Max and I loved Max. And Max was just . . . Max." A wry twist of the mouth. "Of course, I didn't have much interest in his genes."

  He stomped out the rest of his cigarette and folded his hands in his lap. "So, what do you want me to do? Why did you wake me? Was it because you didn't think you could kill them all? Because I've seen you in action and you—"

  "No. I mean . . . no. I probably could kill them all, given time, but this is more important. I must get my husband out of Earth and quickly." I explained. Not just the fact that Daddy Dearest had to be furious at Kit, for marrying me, for taking me away in first place, but that I thought that Daddy and Jarl had been friends, and that Jarl had left daddy behind when he took off for the stars, and that Daddy—I thought—still held a grudge. "He will hurt Kit."

  "Bastard like that?" he said. "You bet your tits. So . . . why do you think I can help you?"

  "I know he's in some secret prison, or some secret facility of some sort. I have to find out where. I have to."

  He said, "yes" unblinking.

  "I . . . if it's Max's dad, in Max's body . . . if . . ."

  "You're thinking the bastards probably know all this stuff together? A good bet. Yeah. Lending each other ships with medical facilities and such. Sure they do. Probably the only reason they haven't put your squeeze down yet, is that they figure they can make him study this Jarl's crap and decipher it for them."

  I groaned.

  "Yeah. So . . . you want to squeeze old Keeve's balls till he tells you where he keeps your husband?"

  "I wasn't thinking . . . I mean if that's what it takes . . ."

  Nat gestured, with long fingers holding a lighted cigarette. "Metaphorically speaking. And you need me, because? I mean, I know the balls in question, but I think the psychological triggers are somewhat different now."

  "I thought," I said, taking a deep breath, because, heaven help me, I truly was asking the help of someone crazier than I. "I thought you might have some secret way of getting into the house. I mean, if I remember, your family doesn't live there and if I remember . . ." How could I say these things without seeming to have been paying a prurient attention to him and Max. Which I hadn't been. It's just they'd been around so long, and they were—heaven help us—among the sanest broomers, or at least the smarter ones. "If I remember, you spent most nights together, so either you went to him, or . . ."

  "Or he came to me?" He shrugged. "A bit of both. But yeah, I had a secret way into the house. It took Max about a year and a lot of bribes to get it made. And no, I don't think that old Keeve has figured it out."

  "Good. So . . . would you . . . I mean?"

  "Take you there?" He grinned. "My pleasure, but it's morning now. I think we want to wait till night time, and no offense, but you look like living shit. You take something to sleep. I'll talk to Ettiene."

  And looking almost like his old self—was it the sense of mission? Should I think about the particular mission?—he left my room.

  Forty Four

  We'd flown to Olympus Seacity, the seat of the Keeves, and landed on an inconspicuous little beach.

  Olympus was more sprawling than Syracuse, and it had never got built up. Probably because most of its wealth came from growing patented hydroponics and under- water crops. Not exactly algae, but stuff that had never grown on Earth—or under water—before. I understood it had some under-water habitats, too, but I'd never been very interested. Now I was getting a crash course in how the other Seacity lived.

  We'd gone into a natural cave on the shore, where Nat had gone through at least as complex a dance as daddy did to get into his secret office. Only here, there was no faun whose knob to twirl. It was more this ledge, and that indentation on the wall. After about ten of these, a door opened on the rock at the end, a door that was solid rock on this side and dimatough on the other side.

  The corridor we entered was also rock and dimatough. Rock to the sides and above, poured dimatough underneath, polished and smooth. Nat touched the wall, and lights came on, glowing softly. He walked ahead of us, and we behind. We, because Ettiene had insisted on coming. I hoped he didn't hear anything that might give him the idea who we were. But he had insisted, and we couldn't, plausibly, stop him. Not without telling him, which would defeat the whole point.

  He padded beside me, his hands in the pocket of his leathers, where he had a burner too.

  Nat had a burner in one hand and a tranquilizer gun on one hand. His idea had been to hold the gun to the Good Man's head and make him tell us what we wanted to know, and then blow the Good Man's brains out. But I'd convinced him that if Good Man Keeve was even vaguely as paranoid as my father, then he would have ways to give the alarm. Better to tranquilize him as fast as possible, and then take him away somewhere else, where we could interrogate him quietly.

  And then a weird gleam had come to Nat's eyes and he'd said something about just burning him being too good for him anyway and something about being able to ma
ke it last days. I truly, truly, truly didn't want to know, and the mere mention of it had made Ettiene turn a shade of green.

  Nat walked as if he knew the way too well to give it much thought. After a while, I realized that the rock had given way to pure dimatough. And that I could hear the waves breaking over us.

  I don't know how long we walked. It was all oddly silent and oddly quiet, and it gave a sense of unreality to the whole thing. We took two antigrav wells up. I wondered how we were going to carry and unconscious man back. We had tried to talk to Nat about carrying an unconscious man on a broom, but Nat had only shrugged and said he and Max had doubled up lots, and that it was all in how you tied the unconscious man up.

  Just as we came to a door that looked like the end of the line, I wondered what if Max—well, the new Max—had changed his room? What if—

  But Nat was opening the door and stepping out into the thick carpet of the room. Nat must have been part cat, because he stepped out in utter soundlessness, and had sent a dart off from the dart gun before my eyes had adjusted. Someone—a slim blond woman—sat up at the odd sigh that escaped the sleeping man when the dart hit him. She looked into the darkness with wide open eyes and opened her mouth.

  The tranquilizer dart hit her before she could scream. She fell, immediately, like a bag filled with sawdust.

  The men worked silently. They had brought ropes and stick fast tape, and before you knew it, they had the Good Man trussed up, rolled in a blanket, and convenient handles improvised out of stickfast tape.

  I won't say it was easy taking him back. Of course it wasn't. The anti-grav wells were the pits. I had to help them balance the man, who, but for being warm, looked like a corpse. As we got to the cave and Nat went about, matter-of-factly binding himself to our victim so they could both ride one broom, I said, "Are you sure you didn't give him the wrong dosage of tranq."

  "Oh he should be so lucky."

  Right. There definitely were things I didn't need to know.

  By the time we got back to the lair the Good Man was starting to stir, but by the time he woke up, we had him properly tied and firmly attached to a rather large and solid dimatough chair in the innermost room—the same room where I'd repaired the brooms.