by Eric Flint
"I wish," said Goth, as they made their way past the sideshows. "But I'm afraid that we've just come in to look for something in the second props room."
Himbo Petey twirled his mustachios. They really had improved since Karres, thought Goth. "So you won't be with us for more than six months then. I keep asking Ethy to let us tidy out that junk-pile. And she keeps telling me that I don't understand what artistes need." He smiled contentedly. "You have heard that we are expecting a new production!"
"Something not by Shakespeare?" asked Pausert, knowing Himbo's tastes.
"No," said Himbo, looking rather self-satisfied. "Something co-produced by the two of us. Although my input was but a small one."
The Leewit got it first. "Not more babies!" she said, in tones of disgust. "I think it's catching, Goth."
Pausert shook Himbo, now quite pink, firmly by the hand. "I'm delighted. As must be the whole of the lattice ship."
"Well, yes," said Himbo Petey. "The show must go on, and without an heir… "
"No precog names?" said Goth.
"Well, no. He'll be Himbo junior, of course."
Goth hugged him. "Somehow the idea of a junior Himbo junior is very cute."
"Are you selling out, Goth?" demanded the Leewit crossly. "Next thing I know you'll be all gooey about babies too."
It suddenly occurred to Goth that although the Leewit might not realize it, her little sister didn't like the idea of not being the baby of the family anymore. "You little dope! You know the terms of the agreement with the circus. You were there. It's a family business and needs a new Petey to go on."
"Oh. Well, congratulations, Himbo," said the Leewit, suddenly munificent." She looked at the ringmaster. "He'll never have as fine a moustache, though."
Himbo laughed. "Nonsense! He'll be born with one. He has a show to run."
"So how is the show going?"asked Pausert.
Himbo laughed again. "Well, you'd think that an imperial cipher and a funding budget would help. But I conclude that the thespians think that just means more fancy stages, costumes and sets. We have a revolving stage now. And what did it do but get stuck the other day. And before that it decided to suddenly start slowly rotating mid-scene in the middle of that 'to be' soliloquy. I always thought that we could cut it to six words, and the stage seemed to agree with me. But our Hamlet didn't notice and disappeared… and the audience found they were watching King Claudius and Ophelia kissing and getting rather involved on a chair in the next set. It gave Hamlet a really plausible reason for murder, if you ask me."
Goth had to suspect vatchy interference.
"But Pampez has been good to us. Mostly locals, of course, hungry for a bit of galactic-class culture," he said proudly, "But today we also seem to have had an influx of off-world wisent buyers."
"How do you know they're wisent buyers?" asked Pausert.
"They don't wear local clothes-they're wearing suits," explained Himbo. "No one wears suits except wisent buyers here-and why else does anyone come to Pampez? Well, unless you're selling or entertaining. And then you don't have spare time to take in even the finest of shows."
They'd made slow progress, as all the show-folk were calling greetings and wanting to talk. They'd drawn level with the fanderbags. Goth had a sudden realization, as the long inquisitive mobile noses sniffed at her, that these were possibly 'her' babies. She sniffed determinedly and went to stroke and pet the sensitive spots on those noses. They remembered her, too, though possibly not from their birth. But you never could tell with fanderbags.
"Mother was right," she said to Pausert. "Messing around with time is not worth the heartaches."
"I thought it was," he said, quietly. "If it wasn't for someone called Vala my own childhood would have been a lot drearier."
She sniffed again. He said just the right things sometimes. "Let's go and look in the props store and then go home," she said gruffly. "We'll come back when it's all sorted for a proper visit, Himbo. Promise."
"Missy Goth. We seem to have picked up a tail," said Ta'zara quietly.
Goth took a quick look up from the fanderbags. There were an unusually large number of men in suits, not the local soft fringed leather outfits, in the sideshow aisle.
Himbo Petey had been running Petey, Byrum and Keep for a good many years and travelled across some of the rougher spots in the galaxy. He pulled his communicator out of his pocket. "Security. We have a condition amber. Get Fetz and Porro up on the gate towers and let me have what you can spare in sideshow three. Be warned. They're packing heat." He turned to Pausert. "Captain, something looks very odd here. Go out through the fanderbag enclosure, and up. I'll deal with this."
"Don't stick your neck out," said Pausert. "It's Karres business. We didn't expect problems, but… "
"Karres problems are my problems now too," said Himbo Petey, looking a lot less like a dumpy, jovial, mustachioed ringmaster, and more like someone you wouldn't want to argue with. "Now go."
They scrambled through the fence. And immediately trouble started to happen.
Firstly, the suits came running up to follow. Himbo stood four-square in their way. "You can't go through there."
"Get out of the way, you fat fool," Goth heard behind them. Then she saw the flare of a blaster.
She couldn't help but turn. They couldn't shoot Himbo! Not Himbo Petey!
One of them had-or tried, rather. But he also misjudged his target speed and his target's response. Himbo Petey always carried a whip tucked into his belt, and it was not just a macho ornament. He might have had one arm singed, but he was still standing-which was more than you could say for the shooter. He'd learned a lesson about whips, for sure.
He'd also learned a lesson about being a town-bred thug and using a gun in a place like this. The wisent herders of Pampez used their weapons every day as the tools of their trade, and not just occasionally to intimidate or murder. The locals didn't use expensive blasters, but old-fashioned slug-throwers. The thug been shot six times, at least two of those shots coming after Himbo Petey's lash had disarmed him.
Himbo looked up at the Karres witches. Goth could see other suits, whose hands had been suspiciously inside their jackets, now hastily withdrawing those hands. Himbo waved. "Go," he ordered.
They could hardly do otherwise. He was Himbo Petey, the ringmaster, and this was his circus. He gave orders here! So they made their way along the upper walkway toward the hulk that was the second props store.
"There's more of them," said the Leewit.
Marshi's thugs had found them, and she seemed to be directing them telepathically. If they'd been "seeded" like Mebeckey, they were all a part of her.
They all had blasters. "Give them a whistle, Leewit," said Goth.
The littlest witch did, and the damage was going to cost Himbo Petey and Karres a fair amount to replace. Electronic equipment shattered. So did all the piezo-electric crystals at the heart of the modern blaster. At a guess, from this height, the Leewit must have shattered half the piezo-electric crystals in equipment across the lattice ship.
That didn't stop the orchestrated chase. They met a group of ten "professional enforcers" running in from a side stage. They were probably quite good with guns, and maybe with things like knuckle-dusters, knives or coshes. Ta'zara, however wasn't just quite good at fighting. And when you added a shrill whistle which doubled them up in pain before the Na'kalauf man and the captain had even got started, it was a fairly one-sided conflict. However, Goth realized that while it was one-sided, the enemy was committing a lot of resources to it. Marshi must have several hundred of them here, inside the lattice ship. The sounds of fighting were widespread, now. And the plant-woman could co-ordinate her forces.
"Time for no-shape," said Goth. "Leewit, you hold onto Ta'zara. Keep him calm."
One moment they were there, the next, gone. Goth could hear her sister explaining. "It's like when we were disguised as Megair Cannibals. Only now we're disguised as nothing at all. Don't worry. You can still feel my
hand."
Invisible, but holding hands, they made their way onwards. It was apparent that circus security, aided by the local wisent-herders, were engaged in battle royal with Marshi's thugs. Without functioning blasters, the thugs were finding this was not a happy place to be, since the Leewit's whistle hadn't done any harm at all to the wisent-herders' simple slug-throwers. But there were a lot of them.
Goth led them down and away from the props store a little so that the Leewit to do some whistling-and then she had to reluctantly lead them away from the sight of Dame Ethy leading a contingent of actors armed with broken bleacher-backs into the fray. Looking at her, hearing her battle-cry-straight from one of those ancient operas that Himbo had simply refused to contemplate them putting on-Goth felt sorry for the attackers if Himbo Petey had more than a flesh wound. And moreover, she relled vatches. She could imagine that they'd be less than happy about having their portable supply of fascinating dreams hurt or damaged!
The props store was locked, but she still knew the combination, and soon they were inside the old hulk, insulated from the battle that raged outside. And not knowing exactly where to start. Sorting through it all could take several touring seasons, and they didn't have that kind of time. Heaven knew what numbers Marshi had available to commit to the task, but it seemed she wasn't shy to use them all. The Agander's pirate fleet had numbered at least ten thousand pirates strong. This, Hulik had said, was a more powerful force still. Goth simply had to find the box and get out, and then Sheewash away from of Marshi's grasp.
She closed her eyes and felt for it with her mind… and then it occurred to her. The box didn't weigh more than a couple of pounds, and she knew exactly what it looked like.
She 'ported it into her hands-and then dropped it. She'd forgotten how unpleasant it felt.
"Got it. I just need a bag for it," said Goth, looking around.
Pausert bent down and picked it up. "I could just carry it." Plainly, the box did not affect him in the same way!
"I guess you could," said Goth, unsettled by her contact with the alien device. "Let's go."
They left the shelter of the hulk that was the second props store, and Manicholo and Goth's favorite hideout. Out in the lattice-tent. it was plain that between the locals, the circus-folk and the vatches, the criminals from the inner cities of the Empire that Marshi had shipped in were losing. Goth saw Himbo Petey and Ketering mounted on fanderbags, chasing several of them down.
The temptation was to join in. Common sense, however, said to get the alien box out of there and onto the Venture. Reluctantly Goth decided that was the better course to choose.
So, still invisible, they left the synthasilk of Petey, Byrum and Keep and headed toward the Venture- suffering, of course, from the inevitable problems of invisibility in a crowded environment.
After a few yards in the shopping thoroughfare, Goth couldn't take it any more and led them into an emporium selling saddles for wisents. There, she changed them from no-shape into the appearance of local wisent herders. The disappointed shop-keeper watched them all troop out, and continue to walk towards the Venture. Goth looked forward to the sanctuary of her hull.
Chapter 29
The open airlock and ramp were barely fifty yards ahead when the dart hit Pausert. His first and instinctive reaction, as the peculiar numbness spread through his limbs and made him fall like a puppet whose strings have suddenly been severed, was to englobe Goth and then the Leewit in a protective cocoon. He was dimly aware of a fight and being manhandled. Wanting to resist but being slack-muscled and helpless. And then… oblivion.
***
Goth saw Captain Pausert stagger, and felt the familiar surge of klatha energy as she stepped towards him to help… and found herself in the egg-like shield-cocoon of impenetrable klatha energy. The side effect of this was to have her fall like a skittle. So had Pausert-but without any transparent cocoon of force to keep him from the ground. She saw that the Leewit too had tumbled-also in a klatha-shield-cocoon. But her little sister was plainly not conscious, because she lay still, her eyes rolled back.
Running towards them from where they had obviously been hiding were a substantial number of men whose city pallor and clothing identified them as Marshi's men. As they arrived, Ta'zara exploded up from next to the Leewit. The first man found himself airborne, flung back into his companions. Goth began her own fight back too. Hampered yet protected inside the shield cocoon, she could still 'port objects. And sow chaos. The air itself seemed to become as thick as soup, almost impossible to see through. Objects came pelting down on the attackers as fast as she could 'port them. Ta'zara, merely one spiral-tattooed man, became four and then sixteen.
That might even have stopped them, if they'd been a force of men and not just part of the mother-plant. As it was, it merely slowed them down.
Still, that was enough to call the Pampez citizenry into the act, and there were even more of them than Marshi had been able to deploy. The herders had to deal with wisent buyers. That certainly didn't mean that they liked them. Men in city-people clothes attacking people dressed like fellow herders? They had no doubt whose side they were on.
The ground shook with a close proximity launch. The Venture climbed skyward, and Goth realized as the dust and smoke cleared, and left them lying in the field of combat, that Marshi had gotten all she cared about. The box. The thing she called the Illtraming map. And she had something Goth cared much more about too.
They'd taken Captain Pausert. And here Goth was, trapped in the cocoon shield Pausert had created to protect her, with no way out. Only the captain could extricate them.
The Leewit was either dead or unconscious. Ta'zara was wounded but alive. and trying to stand. Goth swore furiously, angry, frustrated, desperate tears pricking at her eyelids. Had they killed the captain?
Then the hard-headed Goth, a far more dangerous person than the half-panicked Goth, reasserted herself. They'd hardly bother to take his body. She remembered now that several of the miscreants had even tried to pick her up.
Pushing his way through the fast-forming crowd of wisent-herders came Himbo Petey. He had the right tool for pushing. He was still riding a fanderbag. And up beside him was none other than Olimy. They were clearing people out of the way, and a few moments later Himbo was attending to Ta'zara.
Olimy was signing to her. "Are you all right?" at a guess. And then a floater from the lattice ship arrived, and, with difficulty they loaded her and Leewit onto it and took them back to the big synthasilk and beam structure, to Himbo's office. Here Goth 'ported a piece of paper and pen into herself, and then back to the Karres witch.
Marshi taken has the captain, and the llltraming box-map.
How do we get you out of there? wrote Olimy.
The captain has to do it, wrote Goth. Subradio. Tell Sedmons and Karres what happened.
Olimy nodded. Venture will be hunted, he wrote.
That was a start. But Goth wanted to hunt it herself. And when she caught up with Marshi, she was going to deliver a generous dose of weedkiller.
Can you tell me how the Leewit is? she wrote.
We can see no injuries. She's breathing. There is what appears to be a tranq dart in there with her. We assume she, and Pausert, were shot with those.
Goth could almost not breathe with relief. She felt quite faint.
We have a surgeon with Ta'zara, Olimy added.
Goth forced herself to be calm and to think. What was Olimy doing here? Either he'd been with the circus-he knew what had been going on with the vatchlets, or had been sent to watch it, when she handed information on to him. Let it be a lesson to her, she thought savagely. If they'd sneaked in disguised or even in some other ship, and then slipped into the circus, they'd not have been tracked…
And then it occurred to her. Marshi's operatives had been here before they got here. Either waiting or already searching. The information must have come from that long-eared, treacherous Mebeckey. She'd probably mentioned the circus-and it would on
ly take the resources of a big criminal outfit a short time to track down Petey, Byrum and Keep as the circus that had been on Nikkeldepain when Marshi had been captured.
She needed to get out of this cocoon! It had kept her from getting hurt or captured, she appreciated. But right now she was anything but grateful to the captain for it.
Neither, when they trundled her in on a barrel, awake but definitely confused and angry, was the Leewit.
Actually, by the looks of it, when the Leewit was this angry and plainly trying out her whistles, maybe the best place for her to be was inside one of the captain's cocoon-shields.
***
The Leewit, once she had got over her initial fright and confusion, and the subsequent rage, which had made her head hurt something fierce with her own whistling, was very relieved to get a piece of paper and pencil 'ported in to her
Let me out! she demanded.
Can't, wrote Goth. They got the captain.
The Leewit, who privately considered her older sister to be tougher than hull metal, was surprised to see that there was a small tear in the corner of her eye.
She went quite cold with shock. Not… dead? Not the captain dead?
She was relieved to see, through blurry eyes, that Goth had written: Chump. Not dead.
Trust Goth to have guessed. Sisters did have some upsides. Now to get out of here.
What a strange thing. It was a little vatch. Even smaller than Little-bit, just a vortex of dark energy. Some dream things are so odd. It didn't appear to be examining her at all. Why are you wrapped in vatch-egg-stuff?
"To keep me safe. But I need to get out now," the Leewit informed it.
But you are long hatched. Why are you in it anyway?
Being patient and able to reason with a vatch was not something the Leewit was given to. But she had some experience with Little-bit.
"To show you what fun you can have letting me out," said the Leewit airily. "Of course if you were really strong and clever you could open both this one and that one. But you can't. I know I've stopped you."
