Star's End

by Glen Cook

  “You’ll just get yourselves killed.”

  “Either way, then. But we’ll handle Stars’ End. Honest. The fish really do know how to open the way. They found the key while we were there before.”

  “Huh?” He had not caught a hint from Chub. “The Sangaree, or Confederation…”

  “They’d better come toting their guns if they want to steal it from us, Moyshe. Because they’ll have a hell of a fight on their hands. There’s a lot of us, honey. And we’re looking for a fight. People have been pushing us ever since I can remember. We’re tired of it. Once we get those weapons…”

  “And sharks, darling. Don’t forget the sharks. Oh, it’s bound to be a gay party. How do I get transferred to a ground job?”

  “You don’t.” She laughed. “I just heard a couple hours ago. You’re going to be transferred to Security for the auction project.”

  She did not tell him that the auction project would be a pilot for a more ambitious program. If he and Storm performed well and faithfully they would be given joint chieftainship of their own espionage outfit. She did not think her own boss, Jarl Kindervoort, knew yet. The Ship’s Commander seemed reluctant to discuss it with the man.

  “Auction? That’s Mouse’s special haunt. How’d he get stuck with it, anyway?”

  “It’s going to be yours, too. Our new mindtechs will start coming aboard in a couple of days. And you’ll move over to the project.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you know The Broken Wings.”

  “Yeah. And I want to forget it.” His previous mission, as a Bureau agent, had taken him to The Broken Wings. It had been a nasty affair.

  “That’s where the auction’s going to be held. They already sent the permission request. It’s just form from here on.”

  “Form? What you want to bet the place is crawling with Confies and Sangaree? You people stirred up some bad feelings…”

  “She hit you pretty hard, eh?”

  “What?”

  “The woman. The Sangaree woman. That Marya Strehltsweiter.”

  “What? How did you?… Mouse. Shooting off his mouth.”

  “He didn’t exactly volunteer it. And he told Jarl, not me. I found out when I was looking through the files for something else.”

  “All right.” His heart hammered for no reason he could justify to himself. So he had gotten involved with the woman. He had not known she was Sangaree then. “It’s over.”

  “I know. I knew that a long time ago. Mouse wrote that report after you shot her. I guess he thought it was important for Jarl to understand what you were going through.”

  That did not sound like Mouse. “She would’ve killed all of us. Sooner or later. I had to do it. I never shot anybody before.”

  “Especially somebody you still halfway cared about, eh?”

  “Yeah. Can we drop it?”

  “Did Mouse really do that? Inject her children with stardust?”

  “Yes. Mouse plays for keeps. He doesn’t have trouble with his conscience. Not the way I do.”

  “You really think the Sangaree will be at the auction?”

  “They’ll be there. They hold a grudge the way Mouse does. Amy, I don’t want to get involved in that. I’m happy where I’m at. I like linking. Chub is a good friend. I was just scared there at first. I’ve been getting to know the other members of the herd… Hell, sometimes I go in just to bullshit with Chub.”

  BenRabi could relax with the starfish as he could with no human. He did not feel naked when he let the starfish see what he really felt and thought. Chub made no value judgments. His values were not human. He had, in fact, helped Moyshe make some small peace within himself.

  Parts of his mind remained inaccessible to the starfish. Whole sections were hidden behind rigid walls. Moyshe could not guess what might lie there. He could sense nothing missing from his past.

  Seiner life was changing Mouse, too, he reflected. Storm was becoming even more sure of himself, more bigger-than-life than he had always been. BenRabi could not pin it down. One or two nights a week playing chess together was not the same as sharing a minute to minute life under fire.

  Mouse was an operative born. He had changed allegiance, but not professions. He had become part of Jarl Kindervoort’s staff.

  Flying easy. That was what benRabi had been doing since his release from the hospital. The only pressure he faced was Amy’s near-militance in hinting about their getting married. Under Chub’s ministrations his neuroses were scaling away. He had come to the Seiners with a great many.

  “Not much more to see,” Amy told him. The rearmost cameras were inside the asteroid. The tugs were guiding the cork back toward the entrance.

  “What? Oh. I’d better go say good-bye to Chub.”

  He reached Contact almost as quickly as he had the day of the last battle. “Clara. Where’s Hans?”

  “He’s off. We don’t have anything going.”

  “I want to go in. They’re telling me I’m going to be transferred.”

  “You can’t. We’re closed down, Moyshe. They’ll be cutting power in a minute. Heck, the herd should be out of range by now.”

  “Clara, I probably won’t ever get another chance.”

  “Ah, Moyshe. It’s silly. But all right. Get on the couch.” She prepared his scalp and the hairnet device in seconds. The helmet devoured his head almost before he could catch his breath.

  He shifted to TSD, then onward.

  The colors of the nebula were incredible. It was a dreary place to the eye, completely dark unless illuminated artificially. In this internal universe Moyshe could reach out and touch all the specks of it, the clouds of luminescent dust, the glowing asteroids majestically circling the nebula’s center in their million-year orbits. He could even sense the protostar down in the nebula’s heart, lying patiently in its time-womb, gathering the sustenance it would need to blaze for eons.

  “Chub!” his mind shouted into the color storm. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  For a time he thought there would be no answer. The herd lay far off the bounds of the nebula, beyond the pain threshold of its diminutive gravitation.

  Then, “Moyshe man-friend? What is happening?”

  The link was tenuous. He could barely discern the starfish’s thoughts. He could not locate the creature with his inner sight.

  “I came to say good-bye, Chub. They say I’m not going to be a mindtech anymore. You were right. They want me to go back to being what I was.”

  “Ah. I am saddened, Moyshe man-friend. I am saddened because you are sad. We have been good friends. I am pleased that you thought it important to let me know. So many linkers just disappear. Perhaps this last time we can break through those barriers, Moyshe man-friend.”

  But those corners of benRabi’s mind would not yield.

  “Moyshe.” Clara’s voice seemed to come from kilometers away. “They’re going to shut the power off. You’ve got to come out.”

  “Farewell, Moyshe man-friend.” BenRabi could feel the sadness in the starfish.

  “Go softly, golden dragon,” he whispered. “My heart flies with you down the long dark journey.”

  Chub’s sadness welled up. Moyshe could not stand it. He pounded the switch beneath his left hand.

  There was very little pain. He had not been under long. “I don’t need it, Clara.” He pushed the needle away.

  “Moyshe. You’re crying.”

  “No.”

  “But…”

  “No. Just leave me alone.”

  “All right.”

  He heard the hurt in her voice. He struggled off of the couch, pulled her to him. “I’m sorry. Clara, I haven’t known you very long. But you’ve been a good friend. I’ll miss you. And Hans, too. Tell him to behave.”

  “I see that he does. He’s my grandson.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.” What had he heard about Hans’s sister? Or was it mother? She had been lost wi
th Jariel. Clara had never let on.

  “There’re a lot of things you don’t know, Moyshe benRabi. About people. Because you never get around to asking.”

  “Clara… Clara, come visit. Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise? Amy would love to meet you.”

  “I promise. Now get out of here before somebody calls the boss and wants to know what the hell’s going on up here.”

  “Thanks, Clara. Thanks a lot. For everything.”

  His return trip was less precipitous. He was not eager to get home. Amy was bound to be waiting with some unimaginative new approach to the subject of marriage.

  Seven: 3049 AD

  The Main Sequence

  “What’s the occasion?” benRabi asked. He had come home to find Amy clad only in a negligee. She had been playing body games all week. He supposed she was holding out in hopes lust would make him propose. She was going to be disappointed. He was not seventeen.

  The tactic did not bode well for their relationship. There was no future in any relationship where one party practiced extortion upon the other. No one endured that for long. And benRabi had had his fill of it from Alyce, way back when.

  Was this why he was so reluctant? Because Amy came on like a spoiled child?

  Why did he resist it? If he was to make a life here he had to surrender to the culture. This one had scant tolerance for prolonged bachelorhoods.

  Older singles tended to get shoved beyond the social fringes. He was out there now. And Mouse, for all the charm he exuded, was slipping too. The ladies were not buzzing round so much anymore. He had made it too clear that he was available for good times only, not for long times and old-style fidelity.

  If Amy was the best available, why not?

  Part of it was habit. He had been a loner for too long, caught up in a profession where responsibilities to anyone else made a deadly liability. That was why, through mission after mission, he had fought his growing friendship for Mouse.

  He had failed at that, and Mouse had too. They saw so little of one another nowadays… That was a pity. Just when they had given in to it, life had taken a twist and spun them along separate paths.

  That would end with his transfer to Security, wouldn’t it?

  “There’s a bright side to everything, I guess,” he murmured.

  Thinking about Mouse, he remembered their last evening together. He could have sworn Mouse had been hinting that he should do something about Amy. It was a damned conspiracy!

  Why the hell would Mouse want him married? Mouse did not believe in the institution.

  He should take the plunge. But not too soon. He could not let Amy get the idea that she could manipulate him.

  He sat with his head in his hands, scurrying around the slot-tracks of an uncertain mind. The tracks did not always follow sane routes. There were moments when he did not know who or where he was. Sometimes he did not understand what was happening, or why. Sometimes he woke up thinking he was back on The Broken Wings, or in Luna Command. There had been a night when he had called Amy Max while they were making love… And a time when he had thought she was Greta… Frightening though they were, those had been isolated incidents. So far.

  He and Amy made love fiercely, desperately.

  She started getting dressed immediately afterward. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “You forgot? We’re supposed to have supper with the Sheik and his harem.”

  “One thing I’m going to tell you right now, woman. And you better understand it. That man’s my friend. Learn to fly with it.” He had forgotten the dinner. Completely. There wasn’t a ghost of memory to be found anywhere in his head.

  They joined Mouse and his shrinking clutch of dollies an hour later. BenRabi found his eye roving. Mouse had several honeys he would not mind topping himself. He dared not let Amy notice him looking. Any woman who got that jealous of a male friend…

  This affair is headed for trouble, he thought.

  Kindervoort appeared suddenly.

  Jarl Kindervoort was a tall, lean man who reminded benRabi of Don Quixote, or the Pale Imperator in Czyzewski’s novel, His Banners Bright and Golden. Like Amy, and most Danion Seiners, he was pale, blond, and blue-eyed. BenRabi liked him as a person and found him physically repulsive. It was a combination he did not comprehend.

  He did not quite understand Kindervoort’s position in the Danion scheme either. Kindervoort was, apparently, Amy’s immediate superior. Amy was only a Lieutenant, a low-grade officer, yet her boss seemed to speak for Danion’s whole Security force. The ship had a population matching that of a fair-sized city. Could the police force be that small?

  Kindervoort had high cheekbones and a lantern jaw. They gave him a death’s head look. His pale eyes were seldom happy. He could have given Mouse lessons in cold stares. Yet he was a genuinely warm and caring person. He asked, “May I join you?”

  “Sure, Jarl,” Mouse said. “Glad to have you.” Amy and benRabi nodded. Kindervoort settled down, plunged into his meal tray. He did not join the table banter. Neither did benRabi, though Amy brightened for a while and kept up with Mouse in a thrust and parry duel of the risqué and outré.

  During his dessert Kindervoort asked, “You told him yet?”

  “What? Oh. I forgot,” Amy replied.

  “Told me what?” benRabi asked.

  “We’re moving you to Security. Starting tomorrow. For the auction project.”

  “Oh. That. I know.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I’m not stupid, Jarl. I may act it, but I’m a trained professional. I can see the signs and add the numbers.”

  “Ah. Exactly. That’s why we want you on the auction thing. You’re a professional. And you know The Broken Wings. Payne’s Fleet has gotten the shove into the barrel this time. Payne thinks Danion should provide the protection for our auction crew. Off the record, I’d guess we get the auction because Gruber doesn’t want any Payne people with him at Stars’ End.”

  “What? Stars’ End? Christ! I’m starting to hope a rogue singularity comes romping around and gobbles up that goddamned gun-runner’s pyramid like a big fat chocolate cherry.”

  “Moyshe! What in the name of…”

  “Jarl, you people are crazy. Every last one of you. I won’t stand around on the steps of the Senate screaming ‘Beware the Ides of March!’ but only because none of you whackos have got the sense to listen. It’s going to kill you. Can’t you get that through your thick heads? But what do I care? You’re only taking me down with you. All right. What do you want me on The Broken Wings for?”

  “Security shift leader down in Angel City. Night shift. I picked your men already. I want you to start drilling them tomorrow. The feedback we get says it might get hairy.”

  “What’d I tell you?” benRabi told Amy. To Kindervoort, “At the risk of sounding inane, why me?”

  “You and Mouse both. Because you know the city.”

  “Yeah. And he gets stuck with the other shift? Twelve hours at a crack. Wait. It’s only nine on The Broken Wings, but that’s bad enough, watch and watch with some guy around every corner waiting to burn you. You know what you’re asking us to walk into?”

  “What?” Kindervoort would not meet his eye. He knew.

  “Mouse killed her kids. I shot her here. And you let her get away. She’ll be there if she has to walk halfway across the galaxy. When she hears our fleet is going to handle it… It won’t matter if she can get her people’s okay. She’ll come, Kindervoort. With every goddamned thing she can lay hands on. Come to think of it, the Heads will probably back her even if they don’t like it. They’re going to be damned hot about what happened to the raidfleet at Stars’ End.”

  “Anything else bothering you, Moyshe?”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to hear all your objections now. So we can get them out of the way ahead of time.”

  “All right. Why trust me? I’m the
man you caught leading Navy ships to your herd, remember?”

  “Three points. One, you’re a convert. I saw your test results. Two, the Ship’s Commander recommended you. And the third I’d rather keep to myself.”

  BenRabi tried to remember all the tests he had taken, both before and after deciding to remain with the Starfishers. They had seemed standard, but he might have missed something. “Typical security-type job? Three hours’ sleep and ten minutes for personals every day? Need them or not?”

  “Probably.” Kindervoort smiled.

  His smile did not have the desired effect on benRabi. Moyshe saw it as grim, not friendly.

  “Then I’d better settle my affairs. Because I don’t expect to get through this one alive. I was going to put this off a few days. Mouse, want to be best man? Jarl, you can stand witness. Everybody’s invited. I’ll put on a party in my room afterwards. If we can come up with anything drinkable.”

  Nobody said anything for several seconds. Mouse stared blankly. Kindervoort managed to appear both surprised and amused. Mouse’s girls just looked puzzled.

  Amy showed a half dozen quick reactions. Lack of comprehension. Stunned disbelief. Shock. Distress that threatened to become anger. “It isn’t fair,” she murmured. She wanted a pompous, ostentatious Archaicist affair with all the splendor of old-time royal weddings. “You’re making fun of me.” Their friends knew how badly she wanted him to propose.

  He had to reassure her quickly.

  “Jarl, can we get it done now?”

  “We could start in ten minutes if you’re serious.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Moyshe, that isn’t fair!” Amy cried. “You never even asked me! And I’m not dressed for it and I haven’t got anything to wear and…” She had a whole list of ands and buts. BenRabi and Kindervoort waited till she got them out of her system.

  “Do I call or not, Amy?” Kindervoort asked.

  “Oh!” She hit the table with her fists. “Yes! Yes, dammit! Call him. Moyshe benRabi, you are the meanest, connivingest man I’ve ever known. How can you do this to me?”