by Timothy Zahn
Cavanagh sent him a brittle smile. "If that's supposed to frighten me, Mr. Lee, it doesn't. I'm well equipped to deal with Commonwealth authority."
"Are you?" Lee countered. "Perhaps. But perhaps not. You've had a very cozy ride on the NorCoord government, Lord Cavanagh, one that has lasted far longer than it should have. But all rides eventually come to an end... and while NorCoord is a very useful friend, you'll find we can also be a highly dangerous enemy. I suggest you think long and hard about that before you decide to take us on."
"I'll keep that in mind," Cavanagh promised.
Garcia rejoined them. "Got it from three different angles, sir," he told Bronski. "Want me to record anything else?"
"No, that'll do for now," Bronski said. "We can always come back later. I trust you're not planning to go anywhere, Cavanagh?"
"Just back to bed," Cavanagh said. "That all right with you?"
"Help yourself," Bronski said. "Get all the sleep you want. We'll have lots more questions for you in the morning."
"I'll look forward to them."
"So will I. Good night, Lord Cavanagh. Sleep well."
With one last sardonic smile Bronski passed around the privacy glass and left, his men following behind him. There was another puff of air, and Kolchin came back around the divider. "All clear," he reported. "Privacy seal's back in place."
"Thank you," Cavanagh said, plodding back across the social room and dropping tiredly onto the couch beside the threading. This whole thing was rapidly being blown way out of proportion. "I don't suppose they've gone very far, though."
"Probably not," Kolchin agreed. "Bronski was saying something about covering the entrances as they left. What's all this about, anyway?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," Cavanagh shook his head. He felt old and tired and was starting to wish he'd never seen Fibbit or her threadings. "The way they're acting, you'd think we were sitting on the CIRCE schematics. Let's back up: does anyone have any idea where Fibbit went?"
"I am here," a trembling Duulian voice came from directly beneath him.
Cavanagh jerked, startled, and looked down. From beneath the narrow couch a thin Duulian arm had appeared, the claws scrabbling around for a grip on the thick carpet. "Fibbit!" Cavanagh said, jumping up and crouching down to look. She was there, all right, folded and wedged into an impossibly compact space. "You startled me."
"Greatest apologies, Cavanagh," Fibbit said, her voice still trembling. "I did not plan to rudely listen in on the private conversation."
"It wasn't exactly private," Cavanagh told her, watching in fascination as she unfolded in stages and pulled herself out from under the couch. He'd never even heard of Sanduuli having the ability to do that. "I'm just glad you had the sense to stay quiet while they were here."
"There was no choice," Fibbit sighed, standing upright and stretching her long limbs. "I was in cold-sleep. Not easy to break. What do they want of me, Cavanagh?"
"I wish I knew," Cavanagh said, reaching over and picking up the threading frame. "But at a guess, I'd say it has to do with this human. So he's the one you saw going into the Information Agency?"
"Yes," Fibbit said, and even through her nervousness Cavanagh could hear the pride in her voice. "Do you like it?"
Cavanagh held it up to the light. It was the first close look he'd had at the portrait; and as with Fibbit's other threading, it was extraordinarily good. The face was that of an older man, probably in his mid-seventies, white-haired but alert, with a keen intelligence in his eyes. He was wearing a tan-and-brown arc-striped jacket, with an intricately knotted scarf keeping the wind off his neck.
And he looked familiar. Somehow, he looked familiar.
"I like it very much," Cavanagh said, tilting the threading slightly. Fibbit had incorporated the same technique here that she'd used in her Information Agency threading, the technique that had allowed her to create that mood shift between cheerful sunrise and a melancholy sunset. Here, as with that one, the face still looked the same as Cavanagh shifted the frame back and forth; but at the same time, there was something significantly different about it. He turned it back, then back again-
And suddenly he had it. "His emotions are changing," he said, tilting the threading again. "He's going from basically calm to-" He tilted the frame, a shiver running up his back. "From calm to terrified. Genuinely terrified."
"Yes," Fibbit said. "He walked twice past me. The first time seven days ago, the second two days later."
Cavanagh gazed at the threading, trying to work through the conversion calculation. But it was more than his brain was up to at five in the morning. "Kolchin, I'm too foggy. Can you get it?"
"Yes, sir," Kolchin said. "The first time was just before the news would have broken publicly here about the Conqueror attack at Dorcas. The second would have been right after it."
"Explains the mood change, anyway," Hill put in.
Cavanagh tilted the threading again and for a long minute stared at the frightened version of the face. "No," he said slowly. "No, there's more to it. There's fear here, all right, but it's much more complex than just that. There's an element of-I don't know. Guilt or shame or a sense of unfulfilled accountability. Something like that. Fibbit, are you sure you don't know who this human is?"
"I do not know him," Fibbit insisted.
"I think Lee does, though," Kolchin said. "Or at least he's got an idea."
Cavanagh shook his head. "Lee's welcome to him," he said, setting the threading firmly back down on the couch. "We have more pressing business, and we've spent too much time here already. Hill, give Teva a call and tell him to get the ship ready to fly; Kolchin, go scout us out a route that'll get us past whoever Bronski's left behind. We're leaving."
He crossed the social room back toward his bedroom. "What of me?" Fibbit asked, coming up tentatively behind him.
"That's up to you," Cavanagh told her, half closing the bedroom door behind him and pulling off his robe. "We have an errand on Dorcas, but afterward we'll be happy to take you back to Ulu. Otherwise, you can wait here for Bronski or the Mrachanis to send you home directly. It's your choice."
The Sanduul shook her head violently. "I do not trust Bronski," she said emphatically. "And I am now afraid of the Mrachanis. Yet I will put you in danger with all of them if I accompany you."
"Don't worry about it," Cavanagh assured her, passing up the clothing he'd worn yesterday in favor of a simple mechanic's jumpsuit they'd brought up from the car's storage case when they'd checked in. Not exactly the sort of thing a former NorCoord Parlimin usually wore, but it was comfortable and went on quickly, and for the moment that was more important than fashion. "Bronski can make veiled threats until the moose go over the mountain, but the simple fact is that he hasn't got a legal leg to kick with. And he knows it."
"But-"
"Sir?" Kolchin said, stepping to the half-open doorway. In the dim light his expression looked grim. "We've got trouble. I took a look out the door, and there seems to be an argument going on down the hall by the elevators. Bronski's people and a pair of Bhurtala."
Cavanagh whistled soundlessly between his lips. "Bhurtala?"
Kolchin nodded. "The argument seems to be getting louder, too. We ought to try and get out of here before the shooting starts."
"Indeed," Cavanagh agreed, sitting down on the bed and starting to pull on his half boots. Confrontations between humans and Bhurtala had a bad tendency to end in violence. Especially when the human side of the confrontation had people like Bronski aboard. "Any thoughts on how best to get off the floor?"
"Well, we're not going by elevator, that's for sure," Kolchin said. "We could try for the stairs, but I think we'd do better to take the emergency drop chutes. Probably set off an alarm, but it'll be a lot faster. There's also a better chance Bronski won't have people watching the other end, like he might have at the stairways."
"Sounds good," Cavanagh said, feeling his stomach tighten. Drop chutes, like most emergency equipment, were somethi
ng one never expected to actually use. He'd never used one, or even known anyone who had, and he wasn't really anxious to start now. "Where are the chutes?"
"The nearest is about three meters down the hall. Should be easy to make, even if Bronski and the Bhurtala stop arguing long enough to notice us."
A spidery hand touched Cavanagh's arm. "Is this bad, Cavanagh?" Fibbit asked hesitantly. "What are Bhurtala?"
"Big, strong creatures with a rather violent dislike for humans," Cavanagh told her. "Don't worry, though, we'll be all right."
"They dislike humans?" Fibbit repeated, her face a mirror of astonishment.
"Intensely," Cavanagh said. "Comes of our trying once too often to remake their culture to suit the more self-righteous and meddlesome of our leaders."
"It's not just humans," Kolchin added. "They don't like anyone else much, either. I don't know what the Mrachanis are thinking, letting them wander loose around Mig-Ka City like this."
"Fortunately, that's not our problem," Cavanagh said, getting to his feet. "Let's go."
Hill had cracked open the door and was waiting there with his gun at the ready as the others came up. Through the narrow gap, Cavanagh could hear the indistinct sound of voices coming from the end of the hall. "They still at it?" he asked.
"Yes, and they're getting louder," Hill said. "Sounds like the Bhurtala have gotten it into their thick heads that humans shouldn't be leaving the hotel at this hour. Bronski's arguing the point with them."
"Any sign of hotel security?"
"Not yet."
"Probably staying out of it on purpose," Kolchin said. "All right, I'll go out first and secure the chute area. Lord Cavanagh, you and Fibbit will follow at my signal. Hill will backstop from the doorway; if the thing breaks, I'll lay down cover fire. Everyone got it? Okay, Hill, give me some door."
Hill let the door open all the way, dropping down to one knee in the opening, his gun gripped ready in his left hand as he peered out toward the sounds of argument coming from their right. Sliding past him, Kolchin slipped silently out to the left. Cavanagh eased forward and craned his neck for a look.
They were there, all right, barely fifteen meters away: Bronski and his three men arrayed in a line opposite a pair of squat, meter-wide Bhurtala who had planted themselves squarely in front of the elevator bank. Three of the humans-all but Lee-had small flechette guns pointed at their challengers, a move that struck Cavanagh as more provocative than it was prudent. Bhurtala skin had elephantine thickness and density, and standard-load flechettes didn't do a lot of good against it.
From behind him came a soft double snap of fingers. "Okay," Hill said, dropping the muzzle of his gun into ready position. "Go."
Clenching his teeth, Cavanagh sidled out into the hall, Fibbit almost walking on his heels as she huddled close behind him. Kolchin was waiting by the shallow alcove that marked the chute doorway entrance, his eyes focused past them at the elevators. Cavanagh got one step-two-
"Hey!" someone shouted from behind him. "There's the Sanduul-"
And abruptly, the hall lit up like the inside of a firecracker as a thunderclap of sound slammed into Cavanagh, picking him up and throwing him toward the floor.
A hand caught his arm before he made it all the way down, hauling him upright again and half dragging him another step forward. "Come on!" a voice-Kolchin's?-shouted through the ringing in his ears. "Here's the door-go!"
There was another explosion, this one sounding more distant in his stunned hearing. In the accompanying flash of light he saw that Kolchin was shoving him toward one of the three slender poles of the drop chute, and he got his hands out in front of him just in time to grab it as his stumbling feet hit the small foot platform.
And then the memory-metal safety cage had whipped into position around him and he was dropping nearly free fall through the darkness. Beneath him came the rush of air and the distant wail of emergency sirens; above him, closer but still sounding distant, was what sounded like a shrill whine of fear or exhilaration. Far overhead now came the sound and dim flash of a third explosion-
And a heartbeat later his weight suddenly came back as the platform began its breakneck deceleration. He gripped the pole tightly, not trusting the safety cage enough to lean his weight against it, wondering just how fail-safe these things really were....
With a last-second jolt and a brief metallic squeak the platform surged to a halt. A dark, moaning shape dropped to the floor beside him as the safety cage retracted once again. Straight ahead, outlined by flashing red lights, was a door; prying his hands off the pole, Cavanagh headed that direction, staggering slightly from the vertigo of the ride down and the sonic-shock aftereffects of the multiple explosions up above. The sections of the door split smoothly apart as his shoulder hit it, dumping him unceremoniously outside. Catching his balance, he looked around.
He was in the narrow alleyway that ran between the hotel and the covered entrance ramp of the parking/storage building beside it. At this hour of the morning it was only dimly lit, and as near as he could tell, it was deserted.
"Cavanagh?" a shaking Duulian voice called weakly from the doorway. "Where are you?"
"I'm right here, Fibbit," Cavanagh said, stepping back to take the arm groping blindly through the split doorway. He'd forgotten what poor night vision Sanduuli had; no wonder she'd been wailing so loudly on the way down. He pulled the door open a little more, half helping, half pulling Fibbit through-
With a whoosh and squeak of metal, another figure dropped to the floor back by the drop poles. "Kolchin?" Cavanagh asked.
"Yes, sir," the other acknowledged. "Is Fibbit there?"
"She's right here. Where's Hill?"
His answer was another whoosh of air as Hill's platform arrived. "You all right?" Kolchin asked.
"Fine," Hill said, sounding a little winded. "We'd better get moving-I dropped a misty, but that won't stop them for long."
"Right," Kolchin said as they joined Cavanagh and Fibbit in the alleyway. "I'm going to try to get to our car. You take Lord Cavanagh across the street and find some cover."
"Got it," Hill said, his gun in his hand again. "Come on, sir."
They started down the alleyway at a quick jog. "What happened back there?" Cavanagh asked, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.
"We didn't hurt anyone, if that's what you mean," Hill assured him. "Just blew out some sections of floor and ceiling for visual cover."
They reached the end of the alleyway, and Hill paused to throw a careful look both ways down the deserted cross street. "Looks clear," he said. "That doorway over there-the one with the overhang? We'll try for there."
They made it across the street and into the doorway without attracting any obvious notice. "You think it's safe for me to call the ship?" Cavanagh asked, pulling out his phone.
"Put it on scramble," Hill said, crouching at the edge of the doorway and looking again down the street. "And keep it short."
"Right."
He punched in the number; and Teva himself answered on the first buzz. "Lord Cavanagh," he said, his voice tense. "Where are you, sir?"
"We're on our way," Cavanagh said. "We should be there in ten minutes."
Teva glanced at something past the phone screen. "I'm not sure you've got that long, sir," he said. "We just got a call from someone named Petr Bronski who says he's a Commonwealth assistant diplomatic liaison. He's ordering us to secure from launch prep and prepare to receive him."
"What are the Mrachanis saying?"
"The Mrachanis? Nothing."
Cavanagh frowned. "Nothing?"
"Well, nothing since they gave us lift clearance a couple of minutes ago. That was just before Bronski called."
"And the clearance hasn't been revoked?"
"No, sir."
Cavanagh looked out into the deserted street, chewing his lip. This didn't make any sense at all. If Bronski wanted theCavatina grounded, his first call should have been to the spaceport tower, not to the ship. After
all, he was acting under the auspices of the Mrach government.
Or at least that was what he claimed....
"New orders," he told Teva. "Lift now, while you still have clearance."
Teva's jaw dropped a centimeter. "Now, sir?"
"Now," Cavanagh repeated firmly. "Don't wait for us; and don't be there when Bronski arrives."
"Lord Cavanagh, I have a responsibility to you."
"Your responsibility is to the ship and to the family," Cavanagh said firmly. "And to obey all family orders. Go to Dorcas as scheduled and tell Aric that the vector search came up dry. He'll understand. After that you're to head back home. We'll find our own way back or else contact you there."
