“This is an eating-room, I think,” Roan said. “We’re getting closer.”
“Closer to what?” a voice grumbled.
“We’ll take the next ramp up. The crew quarters will be somewhere near the mess.”
“Hey—what’s that?” A shortnecked, round-backed crewman pointed a blunt finger. Roan walked over to look. What looked like handfuls of fish bones were scattered in a mound seven feet long, inches wide, half-buried in dust. The crewman dug a toe in, uncovered a dull metal object like a strap buckle. He kicked again, and a curious double-bladed knife with a knobby grip at the center skidded across die floor. The finder exclaimed, jumped after it, picked it up.
“Neat!” he stated. He gripped the weapon, one stubby blade protruding on either side of his rock-like fist. “Ya get ’em goin’ and comin’ !”
“Cripes,” another grunted, eyeing the heaped dust and the fish bones. “That’s one of ’em—what’s left of a Niss!”
Roan looked around the broad room, saw other mounds.
“Let’s get moving,” he said. “I want to see what’s up above.”
They were in a long, narrow, high-ceilinged room lined with saddles before racks and dusty screens interspersed with panels of tiny glass-like buttons. One screen glowed faintly, showing a greenish image of stars against space, and a tiny oblong that drifted, turning on its short axis. Above the screen, scattered beads of light glowed.
On the floor below the panel lay two of the long dust heaps that had been Niss. The crewmen were busy picking ornate metal objects from among the fish-bones.
“This guy must of been a big shot,” Noag rasped. “Look at this knick-knack!” He held up a star-burst done in untarnished yellow metal with a giant jewel at its center.
“Chief, this must be the command deck, right?” Askor muttered. He was a hulking hybrid of mixed Minid and Zorgian blood, with the stiff, tufted hair of the latter scattered incongruously across the typical broad Minid skull.
“I think so,” Roan said. “And that’s Warlock on the screen there.”
“I don’t get it.” Askor looked around the long room. “Where are they? What are they waiting for?” Roan stood with folded arms, staring at the screen. As he watched, the blip that had been Henry Dread’s ship expanded suddenly into a vivid sphere that swelled, spreading out in ragged streamers, fading . . .
“She blew,” Askor stated. “It’s kind of a funny feeling. I lived aboard her for thirty years. . . .”
“In reply to your question,” Roan said in a harsh voice, tearing his eyes from the screen, “they’re all around us. We’ve seen forty or fifty of them in the past three hours.”
“Yeah, but them was just bones! I’m talkin’ about—”
“You’re talking about the Niss—the crew of this vessel,” Roan cut in. He pointed to the scattered remains on the floor. “There they are. Meet the captain and the mate.” Askor furrowed his heavy brow. “Somebody fired that broadside that knocked out Warlock,” he growled sharply.
Roan jerked a thumb at the glowing lights. “The automatics took care of that,” he said. “They were set to blast anything that came in range. I’d guess the power piles are nearly drained. That’s why her bombardment didn’t annihilate us completely.”
“You mean—they’re all dead?” Askor looked down at the dust and fine bones. His face spread into a broad grin. He chuckled, then put his wide hands to his chest and laughed, a booming guffaw.
“That’s rich, hey, chief? Us pussyfooting around like that and there’s not a living soul aboard!”
“Chee,” a bystander commented. “Think a’ that! How long’s this tub been floating around like this?” Roan kicked the bones aside, hoisted himself into the saddle before the command panel, began punching keys at random.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think it’s a fair guess she’s been cruising for the best part of five thousand years, with a full complement of corpses aboard.”
In a cramped, metal-walled chamber lost far aft of the immense engines, Askor looked sideways at Roan.
“Looks like the Niss had a few captives aboard, eh, Cap’n?”
Roan looked down at the scattered bones of men, and the smaller bones of women, and in the far corner, two small skeletons of children. Human bones. Terry bones, mouldering among chains.
“Gather up the identity disks,” he said emotionlessly. There was a clump of feet in the corridor. The horned head of Gungle appeared in the doorway, his eyes wide with excitement.
“Cap’n, we found something! A slick thousand-tonner, a Navy job, banged up a little but spaceworthy! She’s slung in the boat deck!”
Roan followed the man along dark ways littered with discards from the looting parties ransacking the ancient vessel, now and again passing the scattered remains of a long-dead crewman.
“Wonder what killed ’em all, Cap’n?” Askor kicked a mound, sent foul dust flying.
“Disease, starvation, suicide. What does it matter? Dead’s dead.” Askor cast a quick glance at his grim-faced captain, said nothing.
On the boat deck, Roan studied the businesslike lines of the sleek vessel poised in a makeshift cradle between malformed Niss scout-boats, the numerals printed across her bows, the ITN crest.
“Looks like she took a hit aft.” Noag pointed out areas of fused metal beside flaring discharge nozzles. “But they made repairs. Musta been getting her ready for some kind of sneak job.”
Roan mounted the access ladder, shouldered through the narrow port. There was an odor of mildew and dust. He flicked on lights, went forward, climbed a companionway to the surprisingly spacious command deck, stood looking around at the familiar Terran screens, instruments, fittings. He threw open a wall locker, choked at the dust that flew, hauled out a ship-suit. He thumbed the tarnished TER. IMP. affixed above the pocket, read the name stencilled below.
ENDOR.
“Hey,” Askor said from behind him. “That’s the same as it says on one o’ them ID’s we took off them bones.” He sorted through the bright-metal disks, handed one over.
“I didn’t know you could read Terran.” Roan eyed the halfbreed.
“I can’t exactly read, Cap’n—but I’m good at rememberin’. They look like the same marks to me.”
“So the captain died in chains.” Roan tossed the disk back. “I think his suit will fit me.”
“How about it, Cap’n?” Noag called from the entry. “How’s she look?”
“Check her out,” Roan said. “If everything works, load her up and figure out how to get those hull doors open.”
Askor rubbed calloused palms together with a sound like a rasp on rough wood.
“She’s a sweet tub, Cap’n. Not as big as Warlock, but we never needed all that tonnage anyways. I’ll bet she’s fast. We can hit and get out before the dirt-diggers know what hit ’em.”
“We’re through raiding for a while,” Roan said. “There’s more loot aboard this hulk than we can haul—enough to make every man aboard rich.”
“Not gonna raid?” Askor scratched at his bristled scalp. “Where we goin’ then, Cap’n?”
“Set your course for a world called Tambool. It’ll be listed in the manual.” Roan indicated the glowing face of the index set in the navigator’s panel.
“Tambool? What’s there?”
“My past—may be,” Roan said, and turned away to pore over the ancient star maps on the chart table.
XXIV
Askor sat beside Roan, staring into the wide, curved panoramic screen that filled the wardroom wall. He sipped his Terran coffee—a drink that it had taken many months to develop a habit for—then cleared his throat self-consciously.
“It’s been a long cruise, Cap’n,” he said.
Roan didn’t answer.
“A few more hours,” Askor went on. “We’ll be touching down at Tambool. Not much of a place, but there’ll be a few kicks.”
“I’ll distribute a few kicks myself if you don’t shut up,” Roan said.<
br />
Across the table, a crewman named Poion laid down his everpresent stylus, closed his pad. He flickered his translucent eyelids down over his bulging eyes, fingering a wine glass delicately.
“Gee, Chief,” Askor tried again. “It’s been nine months now since the fight with the Niss ship and all. You been snappish as a gracyl in moulting season ever since you took over as Captain. You didn’t used to be this way, back when you was Cap’n Dread’s Number Two.”
“I’m not anybody’s Number Two now,” Roan said. “I’m Number One, and don’t ever forget it.” He drained his glass, refilled it.
“What do you seek on the minor world, Tambool, Captain?” Poion asked in his soft, breathy voice. “Henry Dread’s mission was not there.”
Roan looked at the Beloian curiously. Poion seldom started conversations and never personal ones. “I thought you could read minds.”
“I read emotions. I compose with emotions. It is the art of my people. I am now scoring a composition for ten minds and a dozen experimental animals—”
“Let’s hear you read my emotions,” Roan cut him off abruptly.
Poion shook his head as though to dislodge a troublesome thought. “I cannot. That’s why I asked you the question. I haven’t the talent for Terran emotions. They’re not like the others. They’re in a different mode. More powerful, more brutal, more . . . primitive.”
Roan snorted. “So you can’t tell anything from my mind?”
“Oh, a little,” Poion said. “You are engaged in a noston, a return home. But your nostalgia is not the nostalgia of any other creature in the Universe.” He sipped his wine, watching Roan. “Because you have no home.”
On the screen Tambool rose on the left and the ship turned on its gyros and an arrow swung. Roan gripped his glass, watching the world swell on the screen.
The vibrations of landing stopped, and Roan rose and walked back through the crew compartments. He found Askor by the exit port, rattling a gun nervously against his belt.
“I told you this wasn’t like other ports,” Roan said sharply. “You’ll keep the men under control. They’re to pay for what they take. And no shooting.”
Askor muttered but Roan ignored him. The port cycled open; Askor ducked his head and peered out at the puddled field, the drab row of sheds, the dismal town straggling up the hillside.
“Cripes, Chief, what’s the crummy dump got that’s so hot?”
“Not much. But such as it is, I don’t want anybody bleeding all over it.” The other men had crowded around now, decked out in their shore-going clothes, guns and knives in belts, anticipatory grins in place.
“My business won’t take but a few hours,” Roan said. “While we’re here, forget looting. There’s not much you’d want anyway.”
The men muttered and shuffled their feet, but no one said anything loud enough to take exception to. “No reception party,” Sidis commented as the men followed Roan down the ramp. “At least not in sight.” He licked his lips and watched the windows of the sheds and peered at every shelter that might house an ambush.
“Anybody that wants to land here can land,” Roan said. “Nobody cares, and you shift for yourself. It’s not rich enough to loot and it’s useless as a base. It’s a place for outcasts to come and lose themselves.”
Poion glanced sideways at Roan. Roan saw the glance. He was talking too much—more than the men expected of their tactiturn captain. It was a sign of nervousness, and it made the men nervous too.
He walked on in silence, heading for the jumble of shacks behind the port. Had it been this derelict—this dirty and depressing when he’d left it as a child?
It didn’t matter. He was returning as a man, and he’d come for a purpose. And let anyone who got in his way look out.
Roan marched the men past the tented Soetti quarter, under the walls and towers of the Veed section, into the Gracyl slums. He almost marched past his old house without recognizing it. Everything seemed smaller, dirtier than he remembered.
A group of unwashed gracyl infants dug morosely in their instinctive way in the dust of the yard, and Roan thought fleetingly how strangely each Gracyl reenacted his race’s evolution from a primitive burrowing rodent. The flower garden was gone and no one had whitewashed the house for years. A suspicious Gracyl mare peered from the window where Bella had once flapped a towel to call Roan to meals.
He swallowed a nostalgia that he hadn’t expected to have and marched the men on, past the garbage dump, now bigger than ever. No one knew, or asked, why he took that route. He walked confidently, his head up, his guns strapped to his hips, his boots kicking up decisive splatters of mud as though he knew where he was going.
He had no friends to look for, no hint as to how to find Bella. But Uncle T’hoy hoy had had a favorite haunt—a tumbledown bar where he had been wont to huddle with other hardbitten slaves, sipping at vile Yill drinks and muttering unknowable Yill secrets. It would be a starting place.
Roan turned a corner, and the men behind him murmured. He could picture the grins spreading. This looked more like it, the pirate’s part of his mind noted automatically. Ahead a carefully trimmed wine vine made an enclosure, and beyond could be seen the spangled tops of rich houses. A small party of Veed petty nobles was coming through the gate; some had iridion clasps on their pleated skirts and one had a diamond class-badge attached to his neck. The only weapons they carried were daggers and whetted talons, and their slithering gait had the native insolence of those who think daggers are enough. Roan felt the men slow behind him, watching the Veed. He turned and gave them the look of ferocity that came so easily now.
“All right, you hull-scrapings, I’ve warned you. The first man that gets out of line gets a bullet in the guts.”
“Those Geeks friends of yours?” Noag inquired loudly, watching the Veed move past. Noag was a Gook, and he had no use for Geeks.
“I have no friends,” Roan said. “If you think I’m kidding try me.”
The Veed had paused. Now two of them swaggered over.
“Get you gone from the places of the noble Veed,” one said in flat, badly accented Interlingua.
“And take these mud-swine of half-caste Terries with you,” the other added. They stood with their hands resting on their knives. They looked as though they hoped someone would give them some slight cause to draw them.
“Okay if I kill these two?” Sidis asked hopefully. He was grinning, and his polished teeth shone like silver.
“No killing,” Roan said. The other men moved up and began to ring in the two Veed. They moved together, suddenly nervous, realizing that these were not local outcasts.
“Begone,” Roan said in the faultless Yill that Bella had taught him. “My slaves scent easy blood.”
The two Veed took their hands from their knives and made inscrutable Veed faces. “Take your vile scent with you,” one said, but he moved back.
“Before you go,” Roan said, “give me news of T’hoy hoy, the Yill bard and teller of tales.” He put his hands on his guns to show that it was no idle inquiry.
“It is said the one you name can be found over his cups in any pothouse so undiscerning as to accept his custom,” the Veed snapped the answer.
Roan grunted and turned on toward the gate. He remembered that once the Veed quarters had been sacred and taboo, and that he hadn’t been good enough to be allowed there except when he ran messages or delivered merchant’s goods. But now he was Roan, the Man, and he went where he liked.
He strode through the gate. Veed faces turned, ready to hiss their anger, but a silence fell over them as the small party tramped past. There were a few half-hearted cat-calls but no one moved to intercept them. The Veed had seen the byplay at the gate with the two daggermen, and understood that it was a time for discretion.
XXV
On the far side of the Veed quarter, in the swarming section of the city, Roan halted the men at a tavern under the battered red, green and purple symbol of an all-blood establishment.
There was a Yill inside. He wasn’t Uncle T’hoy hoy but he was of the Twix caste, one of those inconspicuous ones who were always to be found in public places sitting unobtrusively in a corner to pick up information, compose their strange Yill poems and be available in case there were messages to be sent.
Roan slid into the cracked seat across from the Yill, ordered Bacchus wine for himself and Fauve for the old Yill, then took out an oblong coin and put it on the table.
The Yill winked his eyes at Roan and let the coin lie there. There were many things a Yill would do for money and other things nothing could make him do. The Yill was waiting to find out which kind of thing Roan had in mind.
“First,” Roan said, coming directly to business in the Yill fashion, “I want to find my mother, Bella Cornay. Then I want to find T’hoy hoy, my foster uncle.”
The Yill took the coin with pointed fingers from which the fighting talons had fallen long ago. He deposited it under his tongue and watched while the clumsy, frizzlehaired waiter brought the wine. He smelled the Fauve, looked keenly at Roan and said:
“I am L’pu the Chanter of Verses. I know you. The flame-colored Terr an boy who filled the empty life of the faded beauty, Bella. You were a small, wild flame of a youngling, and you have lived to become a fire of a man. Your mother’s heart would have leapt for your beauty, which is that of all great beasts of prey.”
“Mother is . . . dead?” Roan felt a slow sadness. He had never loved his mother enough, and it had not been fair. All he’d ever thought about was Raff.
“She is no longer alive,” the Yill said. He was being precise about something. Roan waited to see if he would say more, but he didn’t and it was no use to ask.
“Uncle T’hoy hoy?”
“At this moment, T’hoy hoy listens at the house of the autocrat of the noisome Soetti. Would you have me fetch him?” Roan nodded and the Yill drank off his wine and slipped away.
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