by Sharon Lee
“With you, we must—we must pilot blind, trusting our training and an honest regard for yourself to win us through to safe landing.” She sighed and picked up her teacup to sip. Ren Zel, curiously breathless, did the same.
“So,” Lina continued. “I will tell you that the trance did produce more information. Not,” she said wryly, “as much as I would have desired. Yet more than I will give to you. My training—and my sincere regard for yourself—tells me that it would be best to allow you to proceed . . . unencumbered by preconception. The cat may never come to you again—or it may reappear often, at the times it chooses. Cats are like that, after all.”
“So they are.” He picked up the sampling tube and slid it into a pocket, rose and bowed, respect to a master. “My thanks, Healer.”
She smiled, wistfully, and inclined her head. “Pilot. Good lift.”
“Safe landing,” he answered, that being the well-wish pilots exchanged before a journey.
He walked back to his quarters slowly, wondering what sort of journey Lina supposed him to be on.
DAY 309
Standard Year 1392
Blair Road
Surebleak
NATESA HAD PERHAPS been correct to protest his choice of hour for this meeting, Pat Rin thought, as he followed Jonni on a tour of the rooftop garden. The air was frigid, and the light breeze soon had him a-shiver and longing for the temperate climate he had been born to.
Well, he would have a cup of tea soon enough, and in the meanwhile he was in a fair way to learning the sign-names for rather a number of vegetables.
It appeared that Jonni’s purpose in the tour was to elicit Pat Rin’s advice on the crops to be planted this season. The unraveling of this would doubtless have proven tedious, if not impossible, as the beds had lain fallow over the winter beneath tarpaulin shrouds, long since stripped of their visual aids to communication. But here Jonni revealed unexpected resources.
Showing Natesa empty hands with fingers spread wide, he opened a plastic tool chest and pulled out an object inexpertly wrapped in oilcloth. A few moments later, Pat Rin was holding a spine-shot paper book entitled How to Grow Food in Small Spaces, and trying to simultaneously read the descriptions appended to the pictures Jonni pointed out and attend the boy’s hand-talk and pantomime.
So, in the end the planning was only laborious, leaving Pat Rin feeling that he had personally turned every bed and hand-set every seed.
“That is good then,” he told Jonni, closing the book. “With care, we will be comfortably supplied through next winter. I depend upon you to do well for us.”
The boy smiled and nodded, and reached rather anxiously for the book Pat Rin cradled in his arm.
“A moment.” He held up a hand, and the boy stopped, smile vanished and eyes anxious.
Pat Rin sighed. “Only a question, child. Can you read?”
The pert nose wrinkled, and the right hand wobbled in a sign which was most perfectly plain: So-so.
“Ah.” He glanced to Natesa. “I suppose it is too much to hope that there is a school in this territory?” He asked, foreknowing the answer.
But she surprised him. “Gwince tells me she learned to read at Ms. Audrey’s house. I do not believe that she was ever employed as a Scarlet Beauty, so it seems at least possible that Audrey sponsors a school.” Her mouth twitched in a faint smile. “For some definition of school.”
“Well, since I will be seeing Ms. Audrey today, I will make inquiries.” He held the book out. Jonni pounced on it with visible relief and went over to stow it in the tool chest, first re-wrapping it in its sheet of waterproofing.
A blade of wind sliced across the rooftop; Pat Rin gasped, shivering renewed, and turned toward the rather fearsome metal staircase which ascended from the attic to the garden.
“Come,” he said to Natesa. “There will be tea in the kitchen.”
***
“BEAUTIFUL,” Audrey breathed, some hours later, gazing raptly at the Sinner’s Carpet.
It did look well, Pat Rin thought, standing at survey by her side. He had been at pains to impress upon the extras hired to carry and lay it that it did indeed matter how the carpet was oriented in the room, that the edges be straight, and that there be no unsightly wrinkles. In fact, it had taken rather longer than he had estimated to finish the thing properly. But the result was well worth the labor.
“I got it all planned out,” Audrey was saying, with what sounded to be genuine happiness. “Real special deal, only for the, you know—connoisseur.”
“I hope that it brings you profit,” he murmured politely and she chuckled.
“Oh, it will. That rug is gonna be good for business.” She turned to him with a smile. “Thank you. Now, let’s step along to my office and I’ll hand over the deposit and the first month’s rent.”
“I wonder if you might assist me,” he murmured, as they walked through halls and rooms much less busy than yesterday. Audrey threw him a quick blue glance.
“Well, I can try,” she said, with appropriate caution. “What’s up?”
“There is a child of my house who requires tutoring. He reads, but poorly. I would have his skill increase.”
Both of Audrey’s eyebrows were up. “If he reads at all, he’s better off than most of the streeters.”
“True. However, he bears the burden of being deaf, and thus it is doubly important that he learn to read and write well.” He tipped his head, considering. “It would also be good if he were able to learn basic mathematics.”
She snorted, half a laugh. “What d’ya think this is, a nursery school? Who’s the kid?”
“His name is Jonni. He is employed as my gardener.”
She stopped, there in the middle of the hall, and turned to stare at him. Perforce, Pat Rin also stopped, wondering.
“Kid about—what?—thirteen? fourteen?—with a kinda pointy face and a head full of black hair that just makes you itch to take a comb and a pair of scissors to it?”
A fair description. Pat Rin inclined his head. “It sounds the very child.”
Perhaps she heard him, perhaps not. Certainly, she continued on as if she had not—“And deaf. Blizzard, it’s gotta be the same kid!”
“I am to understand,” Pat Rin ventured when several moments had passed and she said nothing more, “that Jonni is known to you?”
“Known—” She looked at him, her face set in grim lines. “Look, that kid used to live here—we taught him what he knows about reading, and he used to be pretty good at his numbers, too. Not that he cared about the reading or the sums—but he did care about growing things, and so he learned what he needed for that. Then—it’s been maybe two years ago, now—an’—well, you don’t need the details. Short of it is a customer walked in here one night higher’n a spaceship on somethin’ that wasn’t doin’ him no good, and when the smoke cleared, he was dead, which he deserved—and so was two of mine, which they didn’t.” She sighed. “An’ o’course one was Jonni’s mom. Kid come strollin’ in from somewhere, took one look and screamed—first time I ever heard him make a sound—turned ’round and ran out the front door. A couple of the boys went out after him, but they lost him in the dark. And, you know, we thought he’d come back, after he got himself in hand.” She sighed. “Hasn’t yet.”
A bitter tale, indeed, and if the boy could not bear to return to the place of his mother’s murder, who was Pat Rin yos’Phelium to call him a coward? Yet, he must have his letters and his sums, if he were to profitably make his way into adulthood. He looked up at Audrey.
“I will speak with him,” he said, and saw her brows lift slightly, possibly in amusement. “If he will not come here for lessons, perhaps lessons may come to him.” He tipped his head. “If, of course, you are agreeable to providing tutoring for this child, in return for a reasonable fee.”
She waved her hand, a shapeless, meaningless gesture. “Oh, sure—got a pregnant girl right now who reads like a house afire. She’d be glad of the work and the cash. Don�
�t know how she is with her numbers, but there’s Villy to do it, if she ain’t able. Patient as glass, Villy, and real good with the kids.”
“Then it is decided in principle,” Pat Rin said, with a feeling of entirely ridiculous relief. “That is good. I will speak with Jonni this evening and see if I might persuade him here tomorrow. If not, I will send word and you may dispatch his tutor.”
“Suits,” she said, and suddenly grinned her wide, infectious grin. “There you go again, pitching changes into the wind! Let’s make that settlement before you decide it’s too cold and install central heatin’ on the streets!”
***
IT WAS MID-MORNING when he and Cheever McFarland returned to the store to find a bent and tattered person at the front window, her hands and nose flattened against the glass.
So rapt was she that Cheever McFarland needed to clear his throat three times before she stirred and looked up, blinking, but unafraid.
“I’m Ajay Naylor, Boss. Gwince said you wanted to talk to me.”
Cheever shook his head. “I ain’t the boss,” he said, and pointed. “He’s the boss.”
She peered along the line of his finger, and there came over her face an expression Pat Rin was beginning to know well—raw astonishment mixed with disbelief.
He inclined his head. “Indeed, I am the boss. Thank you, for taking the time to come to me. Will you step inside, so that we may talk in comfort?”
Disbelief increased by a factor of six. She turned back to Cheever.
“This is for real? He’s the boss? The one took Moran and the publicity committee out, like Gwince was tellin’ me?”
“This is for real,” Cheever assured her. “He’s the boss. I’m one of his ’hands.”
She shook her head. “Damn.” Her gaze drifted back to the window. “Pretty things you got there. Boss.”
“Thank you. Would you like to examine them more closely? As a rug-maker, yourself, you will perhaps be interested.”
She grinned at that, showing toothless gums. “I’m interested, OK. Though you can’t hardly put my rugs in the same room with them.”
“Ah, but I intend to,” Pat Rin said, moving to unlock the door. “If the two of us are able to reach an agreement.”
***
GWINCE OPENED the door with a grin and a nod.
“Evening, Boss. Mr. McFarland. Natesa sends that the work progresses, Boss. Cook asks when you want to eat supper.”
“We shall dine in an hour,” Pat Rin answered. “Please ask Jonni to attend me in my office in three hours.”
“Yessir, will do.”
“Thank you, Gwince.” He moved down the hall, and paused to look up at Cheever, who grinned.
“Got it. See you in an hour.” He strode off, whistling. Pat Rin continued, more slowly.
The business with Ajay Naylor had been concluded to mutual satisfaction; she was not adverse to providing him rugs on commission, though she was less sanguine, even, than Audrey regarding the possibility of shipping off-planet. The road was the thing, as he understood it. As recently as Ajay’s young womanhood, the Port Road had been neutral territory, and free passage guaranteed. That was not to say safe passage, even then, but caravans had regularly formed to bear items for sale or trade to the Port and most, if not all, won through.
On the subject of what had changed, Ajay was unclear. There had been a rumored falling out among several of the bosses of the larger territories, which resulted in the road being closed, and abandoned to bandits. Another rumor had the Port itself closing, the ships withdrawing entirely. But that rumor, Ajay had allowed, with a certain dryness, had likely been air-dreams—as he doubtless knew better than she.
Ajay departed, and there had come Al, the keeper of the hardware store, and their near neighbor. He had chatted for awhile, admired the carpets without displaying the least desire to understand them, and finally brought the conversation around to Pat Rin’s proposed Insurance rate structure.
Upon being informed that Insurance payments were for the meanwhile suspended, Al looked less pleased than one might have supposed, and pulled his long chin thoughtfully.
“Gotta have a scheme for makin’ money,” he said. “No offense meant, Boss.”
“Nor any taken,” Pat Rin assured him. “My scheme for making money is entirely straightforward—I intend to sell carpets. For cash.”
“Yeah, OK,” the man said. “Though you might wanna get in some low-end stuff—I’m not sayin’ cheap, just affordable to somebody—well, sleet, to somebody like me. These ’uns are pretty, but they’re pricey. But that’s just the store. You’re the boss—need to get cash somehow.”
“For what should I receive funding?” Pat Rin had demanded, rather heatedly. “Does the boss mend the holes in the street? Does he fund clinics? Libraries? Schools?”
“Well, no. Not lately. Audrey, she grabbed what she could of Vindal’s clinic and library before Moran torched ’em. You get nicked, or break a leg or an arm—like that—go to Audrey’s house; they’ll take care of you. Can’t do much if you’re sick with something high-end, but they’re pretty good with the usual. Same way, you wanna learn how to read—go to Audrey’s. Somebody there’ll teach you.”
“It appears to me,” Pat Rin commented, “that if there is Insurance—or street tax—to be paid, that it ought to be paid to Ms. Audrey, who is doing more for the residents of this territory than any boss.”
“Naw, naw, that ain’t fair. See—done right, now—forget Moran; he was a pig—done right, the boss is the one who fixes the problems. Say I got a problem with Tobi and we ain’t been able to work it out. So we come to you and we say, Boss, we got this problem and we can’t fix it—tell us what to do. And you maybe study on the case for awhile and then you tell us what to do. Oughta get something for havin’ to do everybody else’s thinkin’ for ’em. Right? An’ then, see, the boss is the one who keeps the turf together, and makes sure no other bosses annex us. Ought to get something for that, too. An’, if you was thinkin’ about bringing a clinic, or maybe a library out on the street, to kinda ease the load on Ms. Audrey—you oughta get cash for that, too.” He’d paused here, perhaps a little startled at his own eloquence, then did his summing up.
“Tell you what, Boss—this little store ain’t gonna support alla that.”
Nor would it, Pat Rin thought now, climbing the long, chilly stairway to his room. Properly done, as Al described it, a boss on Surebleak was near enough to delm. He sighed, irritated with himself. He had allowed the information that this was a Terran backworld, brutish and barely-governed, to blind him to the fact that persons of honor naturally strove to form into clans, if not precisely kin-groups.
Sighing again, he pushed open the door to his room, saw a shadow move and heard a burble the instant before the brown-and-black cat hurled itself into his legs, tail high and purring fit to deafen him.
Smiling, Pat Rin bent down and stroked the animal. Impossibly, the purrs increased, and the cat threw itself against Pat Rin’s legs in an ecstacy of welcome.
“All very well,” he said with mock sternness. “I suppose you’ve been lying abed all day, neglecting your duties to the cook?”
The cat burbled again, shifting from side to side and it lifted first the left front paw and then the right, kneading air.
Pat Rin laughed softly and straightened. “Flatterer. Now, by your leave, I must prepare for dinner.”
***
DINNER WAS SIMPLER this evening—a jam pastry removed by a casserole which took advantage of the pantry’s abundance of tinned fish. Despite its lowly beginnings, the dish pleased.
The conversation was mostly between his oathsworn, on the arcane lore of security. Pat Rin listened closely, astonished at those things they considered merely prudent, and marveled at the tale of protocols and devices that had been put into place, solely for the purpose of protecting his life.
Pushing his plate aside, he sat quietly sipping tea. There was eventually a lull in the discussion of protectio
ns and defenses, offensives and attacks, and Natesa turned to him, her eyes dark and luminous, her face subtle in shadow and nuance.
“Has Ms. Audrey a place in her school for Jonni?” she asked, with every appearance of interest.
“Curiously, she does, though she doubts he will come to her. He had used to live in Ms. Audrey’s house, until his mother got her death there, whereupon he ran away. We left it that I shall speak with him, and if he will not go to her, she will send a tutor here.”
“That is well, then,” she said, approvingly.
“Well enough,” he agreed, and hesitated on the edge of mentioning his conversation with Al. But—no. That was something he wished to examine thoroughly himself, weighing his melant’i well, before he sought the opinion of a Juntavas Sector Judge.
So. “We have a contract with Ajay Naylor for rugs on commission. She doubts the spaceport, as well, though she tells me the Port Road had been open and neutral in her youth.”
“It had been, until several concurrent tragedies changed the rule,” said Natesa. “First, there was a turf war between two neighboring bosses, which ended, not as might be expected—in one boss annexing the other’s territory—but in the subdivision—in the several subdivisions—of both territories. From there grew chaos, which might have eventually settled, had it not been for the arrival of an epidemic virus. There was a vaccine at the Port—Surebleak belonged to the Health Net in those days, too—and it was to be delivered by Port personnel. But the Port was short-handed, and, rather than sending Port personnel, in an armored car, with appropriate weaponry, they sent several natives, who were employed at the Port, with a list of territories and the number of vaccines to be left with each boss.”
Pat Rin put his mug down. “They were robbed?”
“Ah, no. But that was only because they sold the entire shipment to the boss just next the spaceport, and disappeared.” She moved her shoulders, eloquent as a Liaden. “Perhaps they were clever enough to keep vaccines for themselves. One rather hopes they forgot that detail. It was, by all reports, a horrible disease, and thousands died for lack of the cash to purchase the cure.”
