by Eric Flint
"Where has the little witch got to this time!" snarled Marshi. "I'm going to kill her when I catch her. See what I mean, Mirkon. She just disappears."
"We need answers out of her. The readouts say that she's right here," said grizzled whiskers.
"Could be up or down, boss," said Mirkon.
"True. It's got an altitude reading." Goth didn't stick around. She climbed and railed along, and then dropped down to the fanderbag section. Fanderbags were loveable and huge. Especially huge. And Ketering, their keeper, even slept in there with his big children. He never left them alone.
He was with the gentle behemoths now, washing and scrubbing them. Goth balanced her way to the top of their sleeping-house. The fanderbags twitched their big noses at her, plainly smelling her. But this was scrubbing time, a treat not to be missed.
Onto the scene burst her two of her three pursuers.
"Oi. What are you doing here? This is off-limits to the public," said Ketering.
"We're from the Nikkeldepain police," said Mebeckey, flashing a card. "Looking for a dangerous fugitive. We believe that you have her hidden in that structure. Now, just bring her out for us and we'll say no more about aiding and abetting criminals. We don't want any trouble, do we?"
"You think someone is in my fanderbag house?" said Ketering. "They have babies in there. No-one is in there. But here, Nellie. Take him and show him the babies. Show babies. Go girl."
The startled Mebeckey was whisked off his feet by the long prehensile tusks and transported over to the fanderbag house. "See?" said Ketering. "Babies. No criminals. Now get out of here, see. They don't like their babies being disturbed. Gowan!"
Goth kept still, watching. Any sign of weapons and there was going to be some serious 'porting-and shooting back. She liked the fanderbags and Ketering.
Mebeckey was plainly not used to being manhandled by a three ton animal-gently manhandled, but it had still demonstrated just how light the fanderbag found him. Mebeckey carried himself with that arrogant assurance of those accustomed to getting their own way. Right now that assurance was badly rattled. "Er… "
The closer fanderbag snorted at him, leaning forward. Goth had seen Ketering's prompting hand, and she'd fed and petted the big animals often enough to know that they were utterly harmless. Mebeckey and the woman didn't know that. Where was the third man, though? "Thank for your co-operation," said Mebeckey meekly and retreated back the way he had come.
"You can come out now," said Ketering, a few moments later. "The fanderbags know that you're there."
Goth slipped down the side of the house and back into visibility.
"Thanks," she said. "They're not cops." Instinctively she was petting and caressing the sensitive, curious noses that snuffled at her, just as he'd showed her how to do, years ahead of now.
He raised his eyebrows. "You know fanderbags." His tone, a little sharp earlier, was now much gentler.
"Adore them. And I'm not leaving before I see the babies. Then I'll be gone. No trouble for you or Himbo, I promise."
A smile spread across his face. "They like you too. Come and have a look."
The two baby behemoths were miniature quarter-ton versions of their parents. Goth thought that it was just as well the Leewit wasn't here. There really wasn't room for a baby fanderbag on the Venture!
Ketering watched her pet them. He sucked his teeth. "Look, kid, you know young Himbo, it seems. You hide on the ship now, and they find you, and we could be in all kinds of trouble. You want to get here about an hour before we lift. I'll give you a pass."
She hugged him, even if he smelled of fanderbag. "Can't," she said gruffly. "Got stuff to do here. But you tell Himbo those are not cops. One of them is a wanted escaped felon."
He bit his lip. "By the way the Fandy's are sniffing, they haven't gone far. You're in some kind of deep water, kid. Do you need help?" He patted a prehensile tusk. "I've got some big friends."
"Who wouldn't hurt a fly," she said, smiling. "I'll be fine. Just tell Himbo he's got some bad guys-three of them, backstage where they shouldn't be. I'll lead them off now. Head for the sideshows. A few roustabouts around there would help."
"You know lattice ships?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yeah. And I know what I'm doing. Take care of those little ones."
She was reluctant to leave, Goth discovered. She had never thought that she'd appreciate a champion. That was not the kind of thing Karres witches found necessary too often. Mind you, they'd let Pausert be one. It had seemed right. But the lattice ship would leave Nikkeldepain soon, and she still had the better part of six months to spend here.
She clambered up the beam like a monkey, and was not that surprised to see the third member of the chase-pack waiting up there in the high shadows. And he'd seen her, too. Well, he was probably their cat-burglar. She should have realized that they'd have hired one for the break-ins. She'd just have to hope that she could climb quicker, and that he wasn't going to start shooting.
The light up in the beams and rafters of the lattice-ship was not that good. It made moving fast risky. Goth just hoped it made shooting riskier. He was climbing about as fast as she was. She was tempted to 'port a small bird perched on a nearby rafter into the folds of her pursuer's coveralls, to distract and delay him. But she knew she didn't have much klatha energy left and figured she'd be smarter to save it for later.
She swung down to the aisle behind the sideshow stalls where she and the Leewit had had their act. It was quicker to run than it was to climb, so, no surprise, Mebeckey and Marshi were very close. She dropped into the gap next to Timblay the folding man's stall-he was bad-tempered at the best of times-and slipped out of the narrow passage that led to his boxes and paraphernalia as quickly as possible. Within seconds, she was back onto the main aisle.
They'd seen her drop into the gap and ran there.
So did several other people, some of them of considerable size and bulk. Goth had to dodge sideways to avoid being flattened.
"What are you doing here?" demanded one of the large men who had now cornered the two perps in the narrow passage.
Once more, Mebeckey attempted to use his false identification. "Special Investigations, Nikkeldepain Police. We believe you're harboring a fugitive," he said, flashing the card.
"Yeah? Let's see that card again."
"You're obstructing police investigation. We're in hot pursuit-"
"Let's see the card again, mister," said the big roustabout, his arms folded.
"I will warn you just once more. You're obstructing the course of justice!" Mebeckey reached into his jacket. It was going to be a gun that came out this time, Goth suspected, and readied herself to act.
A shriek, a crash and the tearing of synthasilk turned heads. It was the third member of the group, who'd apparently tried to climb faster than he could really handle. He fell right through a sideshow awning, which probably saved his life. But landing in the same environment as Merisco and his dancing jungle-cats nearly lost it for him again. He did, however, cause enough of a distraction for Mebeckey and Marshi to flee.
Goth stood quietly in the shadows and watched as the cat-burglar was very ungently evicted from the premises of the circus. The images of Mebeckey and Marshi had also been captured, even if they hadn't. They had been chased. The ticket office was informed, and given pictures of the three. Goth wished that they'd caught them and turned them over to the local police, but that wasn't the circus way, unless the crime involved was something like murder or kidnapping. It wasn't worth getting bogged down with local law enforcement.
Goth couldn't be too sure they wouldn't be back. She couldn't spend too long in the circus, either. The security systems were on full alert now, and there were some fairly sophisticated gadgets and some very-far-from-stupid people here. They were plainly still looking for her, or anything odd. She figured it would be best to get out while the getting was good. The map could wait for a day or two until she could collect it.
So Goth left, quietly
, into an open field on the far side of the lattice ship. Walking along toward the monorail she spotted the red people-carrier bumping its way towards her. She was getting powerfully tired of them by now! At least the vehicle had the advantage of being very recognizable.
Reluctantly, she decided she had no choice but to use some more klatha. The limit on her 'porting was a few pounds and had slowly increased with age. There were a few rocks of the right size in the field. She 'ported one into the motor of the red vehicle. She had the satisfaction of seeing it come to an abrupt halt, and the three climb out and open the hood. They'd not fix that in a hurry!
For good measure she also 'ported Mebeckey's wallet-she'd seen it twice and that was enough-into her hand. That would cut, temporarily, his access to cash for things like replacement vehicles, although the others would probably have at least mono-rail fares. A pity, but she couldn't see any easy way of dealing with that. So she left them trying to fix the vehicle and boarded the monorail car.
She soon realized that she'd underestimated Mebeckey and his cohorts. The woman, still panting, boarded the monorail just before it left the station. She looked around and sat down, making no attempt to get closer to Goth. But she had her wrist-communicator. Goth wondered why the desperate need to keep her in sight. They could track her anyway.
Then it occurred to her. The map-box! They were worried she might stash it or pass it on to someone. Ha. A lightshift image of a carrier bag was not a hard task, even as klatha-depleted as she was.
So, just as the monorail was about to leave the next station, she jumped up, raced to a door, and appeared to throw a carrier bag onto the dock. Then, made as if she was going to follow the bag onto the dock.
That last little subterfuge probably wasn't necessary, though. Marshi wasn't even looking her way any more. The woman was frantically pushing back the closing door in her part of the car. She managed to leap onto the dock just as the monorail took off again.
Goth kept the image of the carrier bag intact until the very moment when Marshi, with a triumphant little yell, bent over to snatch it up. The look on the woman's face when the bag just vanished was priceless.
The monorail was much too far away by now for Marshi to continue her pursuit. Goth leaned back in her seat and considered her situation. First and foremost, it was by now obvious that she had to lose the spy lock and put these three out of commission for a long time. That was easier said than done, of course. It was at times like this that she would have appreciated getting back onto the Venture and getting as far away as the ship could take her-and Pausert-away from here. Or even, as awful as it was, the Egger route. But there were things that had to be sorted out here. And she knew that she would be here for another six months.
The monorail took her back to the center of Nikkeldepain city, with the car getting fuller and fuller. Goth was grateful now for the tour that Pausert had given her. The Central Museum of Historical Nikkeldepain seemed like a place that would upset the locals sufficiently.
Chapter 11
Vezzarn shook his head. "They're not using normal space-drives to chase us, Captain."
Pausert looked at the instruments. "They're not normal space-craft, Vezzarn. I've been searching the records and I've yet to find any known ship that looks quite like them in the galactic ship-registry. I was hoping for some kind of clue on how to deal with them. I haven't found anything quite like them." That was disturbing in itself. The registry went all the way back to fabled Yarth, and had almost every ship ever to pass through human space recorded in it. Names changed. But basic ship configurations stayed the same. These ones were just not there.
Hello, big dream thing, said the tinkling vatch-voice in his head. This is a strange place this.
Little silver-eyes was back. As if his life wasn't complicated enough already. Still, he'd wondered quite where the vatchlets had got to. "Been busy?" he asked conversationally. "I haven't seen you for a while."
While? Oh yes. The linear time thing. I don't really understand that, big dream thing. Why are you here? This is a very funny place in space-time. Full of cracks. And things.
"What sort of things, Little-bit?" he asked.
Half not here-things, half other things and half dreamthings.
"That's a half too many," said Pausert.
Not here it isn't.
On that mysterious statement, the little whirling bit of blackness vanished. Seconds later the intercom chirped. "Little-bit's back, Captain."
The Leewit actually sounded very pleased. It occurred to Pausert that the littlest witch might have been a bit lonely without a partner in mischief or even a sister as a companion. Well, the Venture had survived Vatch-visitations before. Maybe he could get Little-bit to lure a big one down on them, then he could get his vatch-handler hooks into it, and get it to take them away from a bit of space that was 'full of cracks. And things.'
Pausert knew Vatches well enough to know that if the silver-eyed vatch hadn't told him more than "things," then his vocabulary didn't have the words to comprehend what it was talking about. It was a young one, and as far as he could establish, still learning. Anyway, as far as Vatches were concerned this was an odd illusionary dream-universe anyway. Their universe was bigger and more complicated. Pausert was glad he merely had to cope with his own universe. He just wished he knew exactly how to do so.
He went back to his instruments, to study the records of their encounters with the Phantom ships. There had to be clue somewhere. A way out of this situation.
There was. Just how they could use it was another matter. The Phantom ships had become something which had mass for a brief instant, as they'd fired those torpedoes, the instruments showed. So: if he could anticipate the launch of the torpedoes, there was a fraction of a second in which they could be hit. And the Phantom ships kept well clear of the gravity wells of stars and planets. In extremis the Venture could land on one and wait them out. Of course that assumed that any planet in the Chaladoor was itself a safe refuge. It was probable that-in these parts-they weren't.
Pausert began to strategize. He wished, for the many-th time, that Goth would come back from this mysterious mission of hers. He was beginning to toy with the possibilities of the Egger route. But he couldn't do that on his own, let alone take the ship down the mysterious spaces between continua. And of course the Leewit would resist the very idea. She hated the Egger route, and probably couldn't manage it, not taking the ship along as well.
The Egger Route was traumatic, but Pausert was sure it didn't have to be. There had to be a pattern change in using the klatha force that would make it better. After last time, however, he was reluctant to experiment while there were others around. His talents were still quite unpredictable.
On the other hand, he was usually a lucky gambler. So he took a gamble on a new course. Something-it felt like a prickle at the back of his scalp-made him go the hold and take out the map-boxes from the ship's old exploring days. She'd probably never been near the Chaladoor. But Pausert set the new recognizer-unit they'd bought the imperial Capital to work on the stack of maps, comparing them to the stars visible outside. The Venture had been in space a long time-several hundred years, and you never knew.
The machine found a map of the area of space just to the celestial north. But it wasn't from that long ago, a mere thirty years back. That was odd. The captain didn't know that the Venture had been in this part of space. But Threbus had used her for a number of his earlier expeditions.
Pausert set the Venture on a vector to intersect that previously surveyed track. The Chaladoor was not a safe, constant piece of space. Everyone knew that. Things moved. The bulk of it was uncharted, and even charts were not too reliable. But it was also a lot safer to follow some sort of previously charted course. That was what they had been doing earlier before being forced astray.
Chapter 12
The Central Museum of Historical Nikkeldepain housed a collection of artifacts from the first settlers. The room Goth chose had their Charter of
Rights displayed, signed by the first councilors on display. And for good measure the Mayoral Chain of Nikkeldepain City too, a relic of old Yarthe itself, if the label was to be believed. It looked like a trumpery bit of stuff to Goth. She'd seen more real-looking fakes in Wansing the Jeweler's shop. But it had an impressive high security glass case.
Goth slipped into no-shape and waited until the troop of bored schoolchildren were escorted out of that particular display room. Sure enough, she didn't have long to wait. Mebeckey and his two confederates appeared. They'd apparently been watching the entrance. That particular display room had only one way in or out.
"She's not here, Mirkon," said Marshi. "Must have slipped out with the kids. That teacher looked a bit odd." She moved toward the exit, drawing out a blaster.
Given what she'd seen of Marshi's murderous temperament, Goth was afraid the woman would attack the children and their teacher. So she allowed herself to become briefly visible, huddling behind the display case of the charter.
"There she is!" Mebeckey snapped. "Don't let her get away! We need that map."
All of them had drawn weapons, now, even here in the museum. The one that could cause problems was a tangle-gun-which fired a spreading stream of thin, glutinous fibers. Goth supposed that she could get out of it, but a Goth-shaped tangle would give them a target.
Goth used one of the light-shift tricks she'd learned from the little vatch. It could create multiple images of itself, and she did the same. Suddenly there were four of her, one in each of the far corners of the big room.
Marshi immediately took a shot at one. Fortunately it was an illusory one, but Goth decided right then and there that Marshi was the first candidate for a shot from the transdermal syringe she'd taken from the glove compartment of Marshi's vehicle. In no-shape she came up behind her and injected her broad behind. Then she darted away as the woman turned.
As he was armed with the tangler, Goth dealt with the cat-burglar Mirkon next, then with Mebeckey himself. It was all ludicrously easy.
