by Jo Clayton
Shadith rubbed her thumb across her chin, frowned at the wall. “Mostly I kept remembering Kikun.”
“That noseeum of his wouldn’t pass a template test or mask him from the kephalos.”
“I know. But if you believe prettyface Prehanet, either there’s someone who can beat a probe, or there’s a ghost who can walk through walls. As it were.”
“Hm. Assume a ghost and let him worry about how it got in. Find the ship it arrived on and trace that. There’s a lot of traffic through here, but we should be able to eliminate some of it once we get the flakes.”
“If we get them.”
“I think it’s likely. Sunflower really wants its gadget back.”
“Wonder what it is.” Shadith wrinkled her nose. “Very tightmouthed, our client. I think that lot stole it themselves and they don’t want word getting out.”
“Probably. Marrat’s is definitely Gray Market. Prehanet just sent this over by messenger.” Rose tossed a flake case on the table. “It’s a list with visuals of all those who went in and out of the building on the night in question. Including your pet, the cleaning lady. Run this through a few times tonight, Shadow; Prettyface-apt name, by the way-he was snickering under his breath when he called to tell me the flake was coming. I suspect he’s run the two lists through the kephalos and come up blank. Be interesting if you can tease out something he missed.” She got to her feet. “We’ve an appointment with OverSec an hour after noon tomorrow. I’m going to find a game. Want to come along?”
“Thanks, but the circles you game in are so rarified I’d lose my breath before I started. I might see if there’s any interesting music about.”
Autumn Rose smiled, an urchin’s grin that abolished her usual dignity. “And I’d be snoring before two notes were played. Enjoy, young Shadow. I won’t play Mama and issue any warnings. From what Digby said, they’d be entirely misplaced.”
Shadith blinked as the door closed. “Well, that was a surprise. Maybe we can cobble a team out of the pair of us.”
She set the flake reader down, rubbing at her eyes. “Enough! Swarda was right. Better to play a little and let the overheated brain have a rest.” Quale. Still hard to think of Swardheld by the name he’d adopted. A dozen years or so in the body didn’t weigh very heavily against the millennia they’d spent together as concatenations of forces within the diadem.
I’ve got my house, he said. I’ve got my crew. I’ve got my ship. I’m happy with all that, Shadow. But there are times when life goes flat and the sun turns black on me and I don’t know whether breathing is worth the effort it takes.
And then he looked around and smiled. He was building chairs now There was one on the bench, lovely in the sunlight, its wood glowing with the rubbing he’d given it, taking in the light and sucking it deep down so it almost seemed to breathe with the air that blew across it.
You found the right world, she told him, with all this wood about.
Your music isn’t enough? he asked her then answered himself No. It isn’t, is it? It’s a grace, but it doesn’t fill the days. You’re right to go with Digby. For a while, anyway. But don’t let your songs and your playing slide. You need both.
“And that’s the truth.” She got to her feet, ran a comb through her curls, then went out to find herself some song and maybe a pinch of trouble to make the long night pass.
The Marratorium was crowded: ship’s crews, servants, and aides of the Meat Market patrons; labor from the factories; off duty guards; buyers and sellers; shimmers; players of all kinds; gamblers; scammers; thieves; smugglers; gun runners; druggies and druggers. Everyone who had occasion to visit a gray market and had a bit of credit to spare was out in the ‘Torium hunting for pleasure. Cousins of every sort; Bawangs stilting along, their heads high over everyone else; Blurdslangs trundling about in their nutrient dishes; Clovel Matriarchs and their cloned attendants, little herds of chattering Jajes; Caan smugglers with their velvety fur and the minimal leather strapping they used for clothes; leathery Pa’ao Teely with eyes like ice and half their merchandise on their bodies, those weapons peace-sealed, a gesture to the peace of mind of the rest of the swirling mix; Ptica-Pterri mostly in molt though several had their mating plumage in full glory; Xenagoa acrobats; gauze-wrapped Nayids, arachnoid Menaviddans dressed mainly in stiff black hair and loops of the shimmering monofilament that was their chief wealth. A small group of Dyslaera moved into view, but she didn’t know them, and they passed her without a glance.
She let a surge of strollers carry her into the casino, eased free of them and drifted past glitter-chitter games with dancing colors programmed to lure and half-hypnotize the watcher into playing, past games so ancient they might have been born rules and all with the universe itself, past dealers and shills, lingering a moment to listen to a flowerlike creature singing an eerie croon, moving on when the song was done. Autumn Rose was there somewhere, but she didn’t see her. Probably in a private room away from this chaos, settled down with serious players.
This was the outer room where riff rubbed against raff, where the games were glitz and small change, the service by ‘droid and ‘bot, the music, such as it was, riffing off a dendron in the vast kephalos that ran the whole Marratorium. Where mezzanines were cantilevered from the walls and tables floated free with seatbelts and catchment basins for those who couldn’t hold their drinks. Where hired men whispered suggestions to anybeing remotely mammalian, and hired women fluttered their lashes and suggested much the same without words, and hired others did what others did.
Shadith watched the avid faces of the assortment of life-forms crowded about the games, curiously alike despite the variety of species. It was one way of walking the edge, but losing money didn’t thrill her much and winning would mean even less. No meaning to it, nothing to engage her beyond a moment’s zazz.
The continual ripple and tremble of lights, the saturated color, and the tension in the gamblers started her head aching and she moved on, following wisps of music that drifted in whenever someone pushed through the silver membrane that slashed the whole length of one wall from ground level to the ceiling ten stories up. The casino’s chief extravagance was the throwaway space. On their collection of enclosed asteroids such expansiveness was a luxury most structures didn’t have.
Shadith shook her head at a man and pushed a woman’s hand away, then followed the bits of music through the membrane.
The room on the other side was nearly as immense, a ballroom of sorts with tables in floating bubbles that drifted dreamily in and out of shadow, spiraling to a ceiling lost in smoke and mist, drifting down again. There were dance platforms that floated among the tables, flat ovals in their own environments that clicked home in sockets in the wall when the tiket-time was exhausted. All round the base floor, there were dressing rooms with costumes for rent if that was to your taste, costumes for every species and culture that came through the Marratorium.
The band on the main floor was an eclectic mix of acoustic instruments, a two-necked guitar from Komugit, a sha-horn from Soncheren, an eight-string banjjer from Hikkerie, two fiddles from Somewhere Else, and an assortment of drums assembled from half a dozen worlds. The music they played was filled with an energy that invaded her body and set her feet to fidgeting.
A man’s hand on her arm, a man’s voice in her ear, “Dance, ‘Spinnerie?”
Shadith started to pull away, then thought watth’hell, I want to MOVE! With caution’s last dregs, she said, “What’s your price?”
He chuckled. She felt it more as warm breath tickling her ear than as sound. “A gelder an hour, fifty the night, a la carte for the rest. First dance is free, just for the pleasure of it.”
Her words breathless and fast, she said, “Convince me, hired man. Dance, and we’ll see how you read me and go on from there.”
He was a small man, a trifle shorter than her with a sharp face, pointed ears, and laughter in his black eyes as he swept her into the swirl of dancers.
At first his
dancing was competent, even exciting, but there was an impersonal quality to it that muted her enjoyment, her extra senses reading his detachment, cooling her down to match his chill. Then-change. His pale face flushed as he opened himself more deeply into the music and the moving, reading her body as if his nerves were joined to hers. By the time the set was done and the danc, ing stopped, she knew she wanted this to go on.
She leaned against him, watched while the band fiddled with some minor retuning. “Tell me what I want.”
“Music. Dancing. Talk. Danger. Sex.”
“Then let’s go find them.”
3. Morning after
Head throbbing in sync with the caller chimes, Shadith groaned and groped until she found the shutoff and the wake-up call went silent. She lay a moment, her face buried in the pillow, flickers of memory running through her head. Did I really strip to the skin in that cheechirrie dump and dance with a pack of rats I ‘ticed from the conduits? Oh, Spla Ha!
She moved her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed up till she was sitting with her head in her hands. Her mouth felt like the tail of an old jack’s ragship. She straightened her back, sucked in a long breath. Mistake. The stink of sex and smoke and stale drink and who knew what else churned her stomach into instant rebellion.
She lunged up and reached the fresher just in time.
When she joined Autumn Rose in the lobby of the ottotel, she was neat and clean and ready for business. Rose smiled at the dark blotches under bloodshot eyes, but said nothing, just moved out with a brisk beat of her boot heels on the pavement. Shadith closed her eyes a moment, then grimly followed after her.
***
Marrat’s OverSec was an ancient Blurdslang; his three rheumy eyes were set so deep in warty folds of tissue that an occasional gleam was the only evidence he was awake and alert. His nutrient dish was larger than most and closed in, his tentacles rested on the cover in contemplative loops. Around him, shut into cubicles of soundproofed glass, much younger Blurdslangs worked over sensor boards or watched plates, the hair-fine fingerlets at the end of their handling tentacles busy at notation and half a dozen other tasks; the Blurdslang mind was more than capable of doing several things at once.
The Elder’s age and status made him unwilling to attempt the usual approximation of interlingue most Blurdslang spoke. Instead he held a voice cube in one of his manipulators, the fingerlets wriggling like a nest of worms over the surface sensors, producing words in a sweetly musical voice that seemed to amuse him; when the cube spoke, his horny lips flexed and shifted in the silent dance of Blurdslang laughter. “You will make your copies here, and we will review them before they leave our hands. It is only because of Digby’s reputation for magisterial silence that we have bowed to Sunflower’s pressure and allowed this. We ask that you destroy the flakes once you have no more use for them.” He paused and waved a tentacle tip at Autumn Rose.
“It will be done.”
“Good. The room is prepared, access to the hours in question has been arranged, there is a supply of blank flakes in a recorder. Any questions?”
“The reviewing of the flakes can be accomplished in the room assigned?”
“Ah. That was not envisaged, but certainly can be arranged while the two of you are viewing the originals.”
“Then we need to get started.”
4. Eureka?
“I think this is the one.” Shadith tapped a sensor and an image bloomed on the forescreen-a Caan smuggler and a slight androgenous figure whose species was as problematic as its sex.
They’d moved to the ship Digby’d provided and were working in a shielded cabin, having run the flakes from the day’s work through a WatchDog to strip away any little surprises OverSec might have coded into them. It was a tedious job, checking names and putative worlds of origin of the seven hundred ninety-one entities who had left Marrat’s Market within or shortly after the theft window, ten hours in all. A surprising number in so short a time, but this was a busy place.
“Why.?”
“One. Because the little one is a fair match in size and build to the cleaner.” She brought up the image of the cleaner from the flake Prehanet had provided. “As you see. Two. I don’t recognize the species. What with one thing and another I’ve come across quite a good percentage of the star-hopping kinds, Cousin and nonCousin, at least those in reasonable reach of the Market. To get into that building you need a specialized ghost; Kikun’s the only one I know who’d come close to that description. Certainly none of those others. Three. The registry of the Caan’s ship. Mavet-Shi. That’s one of Sabato’s Mask Companies. You know the Caan and what they think of arms dealers. Just how happy would he be,” she waggled a finger at the screen, “running on Sabato’s lead? The gadget would be hard to sell without specs and provenance, but high-grade ananiles would go anywhere for top prices. What odds our Caan’s looking to buy himself loose?”
“Hm. I’ve heard of Sabato. How did you discover his connection with Mavet-Shi? I doubt even Digby knows that.”
“Ran across him on Avosing. Selling armaments for the Ajin’s rebellion. I had a very odd and informative acquaintance who told me more than I wanted to know about a lot of things.”
“I see.”
Shadith wrinkled her nose. “Of course, the thief could be hunkered down somewhere in the Market, waiting for the noise to fade, and all this logic is angel counting.”
“I doubt it. A world he could get lost on. Marrat’s is too limited and too controlled.” Autumn Rose examined the two images. “Make one last check. Set search parameters for height, weight, and body profile. Scrap the rest. Seems to me I remember a few that might be almost as good a match.”
The ship’s kephalos found two. One was a rather ambiguous figure in the crew of a Clove’ Matriarch, the second a Cousin arriving in a small, battered merchanter, who claimed Spotchalls as world-of-origin and proclaimed himself a jewel trader.
“Hm. Given that Prehanet’s security is as effective as he thinks, given that your reasoning holds about the cleaner, given that size is the determining factor, your first choice is by far the most likely. Matriarchs are so deep into control that clone must have about as much free will as an industrial ‘bot. The other… we can drone his specs to Digby with the report. He just might be smarter than he looks. Hm.” Rose rubbed at the faint creases at the edge of her eye. “There’s something familiar about your pet. Something I’ve seen recently… in passing, I think, not interesting enough to command attention… doesn’t matter, if I’ve seen it, Digby will have it. Let’s get out of here before the local paranoia takes hold and makes life strange.”
7
Blood is silent in darkness, but screams for justice when it sees the sun.
Chapter 3
1. Runaway once, runaway twice
Thann huddled in the corner where a section of house wall still stood while the sniper in the hills sprayed pellets along the street; xe could feel Isaho getting farther and farther away, picture her scurrying like a mayomayo pup along the ruined streets. At least she was still alive.
Silence.
Thann crept from xe’s corner and started on. Xe’d been careless before, too focused on Isaho and frightened for her to remember line-of-sight; the pellet burn across xe’s shoulder was painful reminder that kept xe from forgetting pain. Bent over, black braid falling past xe’s ears to tickle xe’s chin, xe quickened xe’s pace to an awkward trot, scuttling from shadow to shadow along the battered street.
Shots ahead. A squeal and a blast of pain and fear from Isaho.
Mouth working soundlessly in xe’s distress, Thann straightened and raced toward xe’s daughter.
Xe saw her finally, a small figure with a dangling arm, trotting by an open space as pellets rattled round her. Xe held xe’s breath until Isaho was swallowed by a wall’s shadow, then plunged across the gap and pinned her to the bricks with xe’s body.
Isaho started struggling, whimpering, “nanny, Anyameami, Linojin,.I have to go to
Linojin. Mam and Baba and Keleen, they’re waiting for me.”
By the time Thann quieted her, the sniper had stopped shooting and the big guns were silent. It was near sundown, the shadows were long and thick, the wind rising, whipping grit and debris against them, against the walls, scouring clown the streets between the hulks still standing.
“Thanny, I’ve got to go to Linojin. Nobody listens. I’ve got to go.”
Thann patted her. +When you’re healed, Shashi. I promise you, we’ll go together.+ Wincing at the pain in xe’s shoulder, xe slipped xe’s arms under xe’s daughter and grunted back onto xe’s feet. Xe lumbered across the open space, then began working xe’s way back to the shelter they were sharing with Cousin Mikil.
Her shoulders rounded, her face weary, nothing in her eyes but fatigue, Mikil watched while Thann bandaged the pellet wound on Isaho’s arm. She turned her head at a weak whistle from the other room, but she didn’t move.
Thann cupped xe’s hand across Isaho’s brow, sighed.
“Fever?”
Thann got to xe’s feet. +A little,+ xe signed. +The wound is clean now, and she’s strong; I doubt there’ll be trouble.+
“What about you?”
+It’s just a burn, barely broke the skin.+
Mikil rubbed at her eyes, then reached out, touched Thames ann. “I don’t…”
Thann lifted a hand, stopped her. +I know,+ xe signed. +As soon as my baby’s well, we’ll find another place.+
Mikil started to speak, then shifted to signing after another glance over her shoulder. +It’s Ankalan who’s fussing. He says you’re not his clan, so why should he have to give you room and feed you. When he hears about this… he told me if that femlit runs off once more and makes fusses for us, she goes. And our anya…+ She quivered her hand in a “what-can-I-do” gesture. +Seeing you reminds xe too painfully of what xe has lost.+
