With the Lightnings

by David Drake

  A shadow flicked in and out of the goggles’ present narrow focus. The water exploded in foam.

  Daniel reflexively switched back to a normal field of view while remaining in the infrared spectrum. A whiptail had been sitting on a bollard not far from him. It had just glided out over the water and snagged the fish with a stroke of its barbed, prehensile tail.

  “Bravo!” Daniel shouted. A perfectly executed attack on a worthy opponent!

  Flapping laboriously with the fish snugged close to its belly, the furry-winged “bird” swept in broad circuit around the harbor. The whiptail’s vans flared like stage curtains as it landed on a freighter’s foremast. Its lower beak stabbed once, severing its victim’s notocord at the base of the skull; then it began to feed on strips daintily pincered from the flanks.

  Daniel supposed it was a common enough sight to anyone on Kostroma who paid attention to what went on around them; but it wasn’t common to him. And indeed, how many people on any planet paid attention to anything at all?

  The freighters served the city; the lighters served the starships in the Floating Harbor. Smaller vessels yet, bumboats, served the crews of those starships.

  Some of them were little more than dinghies. They carried fruit, liquor, and sexual partners to the personnel who had to remain on board. Not infrequently the boats returned to land with drugs and other contraband, but that had been a fact of ports throughout human history.

  At this hour most bumboats clustered either along the harbor shore or were tied to concrete floats among the starships. A few of the craft burred slowly over the water, driven by tiny engines. They were probably acting as water taxis, taking officers out to their ships or bringing to shore ratings finally released on leave when they completed their duties.

  Officers, even Cinnabar naval officers, allowed the bumboats to attend their ships because they couldn’t stop it. A captain who tried to isolate his crew after a voyage through sponge space would lose his personnel to desertion if not his life to mutiny.

  Starship crews had to be highly trained and motivated to do their jobs. They understood the need for groundside maintenance and an anchor watch; but a wise captain, a sane captain, likewise understood the need for relaxation after touchdown. A disciplined, happy crew kept its on-board partying within bounds; but it would party.

  Plasma bloomed in the Floating Harbor, casting into relief the starships tethered on the land side of the Aglaia. Daniel watched the cutter lift on its single plasma jet.

  The little vessel was fitted with High Drive, but it was too small for the masts and crew necessary to enter sponge space. Lt. Mon would carry a message cell above Kostroma’s magnetosphere, then launch it toward Cinnabar.

  Interstellar messages had to be carried, either by ships or by unmanned message cells. A message cell was programmed to a fixed interdimensional course. Because the Matrix through which it proceeded wasn’t fixed, not really, cells were much less trustworthy than a manned vessel.

  Their advantage was their relatively small size. The Aglaia carried ten 30-foot message cells in a volume that would have been barely sufficient for a single pinnace capable of interstellar travel. A fleet would include dispatch vessels, but a single ship which needed to send a message home used a message cell.

  To Daniel’s surprise another cutter rose, this time from the opposite end of the Floating Harbor. It had been launched from the Goetz von Berlichingen, the Alliance dispatch vessel.

  No doubt the Alliance crew was on the same mission as Lt. Mon, to send home a message of great import. The Alliance delegation must have used shore-to-ship radio despite the risk of interception, since no courier had flown out to the starship to deliver the message.

  The message was probably about the deep diplomatic significance of somebody farting at the official dinner. People who spent their lives studying minutiae found crises in events that would be utterly forgotten in weeks if not days. The stars were eternal, and there was always something genuinely new among them for humans to discover.

  Daniel laughed with joy at being alive. The pause had brought his system back close to normal functioning despite the load of alcohol he’d taken on board. He could navigate without the risk of falling over.

  The supper club where he’d met Silena the other night was only a few blocks away. It was possible that she’d be there again; and if not, well, places like that usually had at least one sweet young thing who’d welcome rescue by an officer of the RCN.

  Whistling a gavotte, Lt. Daniel Leary sauntered toward his duty.

  * * *

  Someone was hammering on the street door. Adele heard a man’s voice but no words; only a demanding tone penetrated to her room at the back of the second floor.

  The visitor paused, then resumed rapping with a hard object. This went on almost a minute before Mistress Frick slid open her shuttered window onto the entryway and snarled something querulous. The male voice rumbled. To Adele’s surprise, she next heard triple bolts withdraw and the street door squeal open.

  Money must have changed hands. That, or there’d been a threat sufficient to move a concierge who was threatening enough herself.

  Adele got out of bed and dressed with a perfect economy of motion even though the room’s only light came from the stars beyond the one barred window. She was an organized person who lived by herself and therefore knew exactly where every garment and item of apparel was.

  The house had six rooms in addition to the concierge’s own tiny hole off the entryway. The visitor didn’t have to be for Adele Mundy. Adele had usually been right to assume bad news, though, and someone calling at this hour was certainly bad news.

  She’d put on her work clothes, a suit of sturdy brown fabric that looked dignified and didn’t show dust. Her personal data unit, the only item of value Adele owned, fitted into its special pocket in her trousers. Closed it was only ten inches by four and a half inches thick, an insignificant bulge to anyone looking at her.

  The last thing Adele did was to slip her pistol into the left side pocket of her jacket. The right was her master hand, but she could shoot with either one.

  The footsteps of two persons, neither of them the wheezing, clumping Ms. Frick, came up the stairs and down the creaking hallway. The visitors carried a light. It was deep yellow and strikingly bright where it bled around the warped panel into the complete darkness of Adele’s room.

  The tap on her door was polite but peremptory. She opened it at once.

  Markos stood with a small lamp in his left hand and his right still raised to knock. He wore the cloak and wide-brimmed hat of a merchant in middling circumstances. The aide Adele had seen in the Grand Salon accompanied Markos. Both her hands were concealed beneath her cape, so she didn’t carry the light as one might have expected.

  Markos frowned slightly to see Adele up and dressed. The aide’s expression was perfectly blank. She reminded Adele of a snake, dry and emotionless.

  “I regret the hour, Ms. Mundy,” Markos said in his cultured accent. “I’d appreciate it if you came for a drive with me so that we can discuss matters in greater privacy.”

  “All right,” Adele said. She gestured Markos back with a flick of her fingers, then stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her.

  She didn’t bother to lock it. It would open to a kick on the latchplate, and Ms. Frick had the key anyway. Only a fool tried to affect things that were clearly out of her control.

  * * *

  The apartment building’s street door opened while Daniel was still whistling midway down the block. He waved to Hogg with the filmy garment he’d found in his pocket as he walked home in the predawn hours. He didn’t recall how the bit of silk got there, perhaps because his attention had been focused elsewhere at the time.

  “Good evening, Hogg, and a very good evening it has been,” he called.

  Daniel’s feet got crossed on the threshold; the servant caught him with a skill born of practice. They’d had more to drink at her place. A great deal
more to drink.

  Hogg pulled one of Daniel’s arms over his own shoulders and walked him through the hallway to the courtyard. “I’ve already drawn a tub for you in the bathhouse, sir,” the servant said. “I’d as soon you not sing tonight. The landlord’s not best pleased about the broken railing.”

  “Ho!” Daniel said. Now that he was safely home he felt like a marionette whose strings had been cut. He was running a tab at the supper club—God knew how he’d pay that—but he hadn’t had a florin in cash for a taxi when he slipped out before the lady’s servants stirred.

  Hogg more carried than helped Daniel to the bathhouse. It was lighted by a dim electric bulb. The interior tiles formed a garden scene, attractive even beneath a mask of grime. The tub was of enameled metal with a wooden rim: long and deep, but disconcertingly narrow to Daniel. He was used to more space for his shoulders when he leaned back.

  Daniel tried to help Hogg undress him, but as usual he found that his best choice was holding still except to raise a limb when requested. The oil-fired geyser in the corner was wreathed in steam; he amused himself by blowing patterns in the warm fog.

  “I’ve been making some inquiries about Cinnabar citizens living here in Kostroma City, sir,” Hogg said as he hung Daniel’s trousers with the jacket, shirt, and boots in the alcove. Undergarments were piled in a corner.

  “Ah?” said Daniel. Hogg would have been scouting for people who might want to smuggle high-value items back to Cinnabar. The Aglaia as a naval vessel wasn’t subject to search by the civil customs authorities. The RCN conducted its own checks, but naval personnel felt a kinship with their fellows on inbound vessels and could usually be squared by a modest bribe.

  Daniel braced his hands on the rim of the tub and started to climb in.

  “Sir!” Hogg said. He drew Daniel back, then inserted the hose of the geyser into the bathwater and opened the valve. Live steam bubbled into the water, heating the bath with a roar.

  Steam pressure dropped to an asthmatic gurgle. “Now, sir,” Hogg said as he replaced the hose and shut off the burner.

  His body slid under the surface. The water was blood temperature. It soothed Daniel and almost put him to sleep. Thought dissolved like sand castles in the tide.

  “There’s a Cinnabar citizen on the Elector’s staff,” the servant continued as if absently. Hogg was rarely direct when he had anything serious to say. “The librarian, a woman just come here from Bryce. I wouldn’t mention it to you, but it seems she’s a Mundy of Chatsworth.”

  Daniel’s faculties clanged back into full function despite the curtains of comfort and alcohol. Nothing that had happened during the past twelve hours affected him any longer.

  “Just about the last of them, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hogg said. He offered a sponge that Daniel ignored. “She was off-planet when it happened or she’d have been stood against a post like most of her kin after your father broke the conspiracy.”

  “Yes, that’s probably the case,” Daniel said. He took the sponge and began scrubbing himself with firm, powerful strokes.

  “Now maybe this Mundy lady is the sort who forgives and forgets …” Hogg said.

  “She’s not,” said Daniel. “I’ve met her.”

  “Ah?” said Hogg in surprise. “Well, if she’s not, the going rate for an assassination here is two hundred florins. It might run a little more for a Cinnabar naval officer, but I wouldn’t bet on that. The gangs don’t take much notice of international relations.”

  “Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention, Hogg,” Daniel said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “I have some friends who’d help if you wanted to, ah …” Hogg said diffidently. He was embarrassed to make the suggestion and very rightly concerned about how his master would react to it. “I’d talk to them myself, I mean. You wouldn’t have to—”

  “Thank you, Hogg,” Daniel said. His tone, while perfectly polite, ended the discussion. “I’ll deal with the matter myself in the morning.”

  Later in the morning. Sleep would be the best use for the next few hours.

  * * *

  Markos’s nameless aide drove the jitney from the open front seat; the Alliance agent sat with Adele in the enclosed rear. The coachlamps cast a little light into the compartment through oval opera windows; Markos’s eyes gleamed.

  “The Alliance gave you sanctuary when your own nation would have killed you like a dog, mistress,” he said. “Fate has offered you an opportunity to repay that kindness.”

  The jitney’s wheels were high and thin. The elastomer tires dulled but could not eliminate the pavement’s vibration.

  “I’m not political,” Adele said. “I’m a librarian. And my service to the Academic Collections on Bryce was at least equivalent to the food and shelter I was given there by a private citizen.”

  She deliberately turned and looked out the window. They were driving through a district where wealthy merchants lived. The houses were three stories high, shoulder to shoulder along the street frontage. Roof gardens draped fronds over cornices that were more lushly carved than the real foliage.

  An armed guard stood watch in front of a house undergoing repairs. The facade was bullet-marked and the windows of both lower stories were boarded up. Presumably it had been the residence of a supporter of the old regime.

  The guard’s lantern threw into shadowed relief the dedication on the keystone: I PETER CRIBELLI HAVE BUILT THIS FOR MYSELF AND MY DESCENDANTS.

  Scaffolding already in place indicated that workmen planned to chisel out the dedication in the morning. Perhaps they would replace it with another brave hope for the future.

  “Yes,” Markos said, his tone full of heavy menace. “Ms. Boileau. We’ll come back to her in a moment. What’s of interest to the Alliance now is that you already have a data console capable of accessing any material in the national system. That’s correct, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Adele lied. She turned to face Markos. “Tell me what you want and then let me go.”

  “Your skill is not in question, Mistress Mundy,” the spy said. The teeth of his slum upbringing chewed into his cultured accent for a moment. “You can get any information you please with that unit. My determination and my power over you and your friends shouldn’t be in question either!”

  “Tell me what you want,” Adele repeated.

  “Take this,” Markos said, handing her a plug-in software module. “Your terminal’s linked to Kostroma’s satellite communications net. This will permit someone of your ability to decrypt any information passing through that net, even if it uses Cinnabar security forms.”

  She took the module; it was no larger than the last joint of her little finger. “What do you want?”

  “Information,” Markos said. There was a smile again in his voice. He was convinced that he’d won the battle of wills. “Whatever information I ask for, you’ll find and deliver to me. Then we don’t have to worry about a learned old woman coming to grief in her twilight years.”

  He laughed.

  “Why is the Fifth Bureau enlisting foreign librarians for donkey work, Markos?” Adele asked in measured tones. “There must be a score of Alliance agents in Kostroma City. The ship you came on has equipment at least equal to mine and personnel trained to use it. Why are you putting yourself in the hands of an amateur?”

  Every department of the Alliance bureaucracy had its own intelligence section. It was more than a guess, though, that a man who’d been provided with his own dispatch vessel was a member of the organization which reported directly to Guarantor Porra.

  Markos’s face tightened over his cheekbones. “My reasons are just that, mistress,” he said. “Mine. But don’t denigrate your own abilities. We could comb the Alliance without finding anyone better suited to our needs.”

  Adele put the module in her belt purse and leaned against the back cushion with a sigh. “Take me home, Markos,” she said.

  How had Peter Cribelli and his family envisaged the fu
ture? Adele’s parents talked of a day when the people ruled—guided, of course, by the wisest and most far-seeing members of the state.

  “I thought you’d see reason,” Markos said with a chuckle. He tapped twice on the panel which shut them off from the aide. The jitney swung, jolting and rocking as the right wheel bumped into and out of a joint in the paving blocks.

  Adele sat with her eyes closed. Markos thought she’d agreed with him.

  And perhaps she had. It was hard to convince herself that it made any difference what she did. Life was chaos, and individual decisions mattered not at all.

  * * *

  The bumboat carrying Daniel to the Floating Harbor was a family affair involving nine people and three or possibly four generations, depending on which of the women was the mother of the infant. The motor burned crude naphtha and sputtered except for the moments a swell lifted the propellor out of the water; then it screamed like an enraged wildcat.

  An air-cushion vehicle drove off one of the concrete floats, hit the waves, and howled shoreward at a high rate of speed. The cloud of its drifting spray enveloped Daniel’s boat. The family shrieked curses at their wealthy fellows. One of the ACV crewmen thumbed her nose in response, but the neatly uniformed merchant officers being ferried to shore in comfort paid no attention.

  The ACV was a proper water taxi. The boat in whose bow Daniel sat was loaded with fruit and bottles till the gunwales were within a hand’s breadth of the water. The younger members of the family, two girls and a handsome boy wearing earrings and a silver-bordered tunic, probably sold more than merchandise to the starship personnel.

  Riding as extra cargo on a bumboat was a lot cheaper than a real taxi, though Daniel had to remind himself of his reasoning whenever the motor coughed for what could be the last time. He would have money again, as soon as he’d seen the duty officer.

  It was hard to appreciate the vastness of the Floating Harbor while approaching it at virtually the surface of the water. When the boat nosed down the back side of a swell, nothing was visible but the next rise of the water. Even at the peak of a wave where scud blew off the curl, one saw only the wet gray masses of the floats and the lighter, even greater, masses of the dozen or so nearest starships.