by Paul Chafe
“So how can you even recognize luck then?”
“In this sense, luck is ultimately unknowable. We can only apply crude statistical measurements. It is unlikely that a person experiences the most fortuitous possible outcome in every circumstance. We can only measure the relative frequency of such outcomes in comparison with another person to arrive at some sense of how lucky they are in fact.”
Tskombe nodded. “So there is a limit to both the magnitude of luck's influence on events and the distance in time forward and backward with which luck can exert that influence.”
“If there is such a mechanism it must always operate forward in time, although we can only recognize its operation backward in time.”
“So what are we saying about Trina? Her life history doesn't seem particularly lucky. At the same time, lots of psi talents develop around adolescence. Perhaps it's just kicking in now.”
“That remains speculation. All we can say about Trina is what we have directly observed. She wins at speed chess and defies statistical probability at guessing cards. This may not even be construed as luck.”
“What else can it be construed as?”
“Luck is only definable in relationship to positive and negative event outcomes. There is no significant outcome, in terms of her life or well-being, associated with either beating me at speed chess or correctly guessing cards.”
“She also survived an attack by a UNF cruiser. By all rights we should all be dead, or prisoners at best.”
“Yes, but there is only a single point on that graph. We cannot compute any post-facto probabilities from it. And you and I also survived that attack.”
“So what next?”
“With your permission I would like to keep her with me. The graph will grow data points.”
Tskombe thought about that. He had thought to deliver Trina to Wunderland's Bureau of Displaced Persons. He had acted on instinct, but now that she was on Tiamat he was going to have to leave her. She was a smart kid, and perhaps also a very lucky one, but the Serpent Swarm was as rough an environment as NYC's gray zones. Curvy had the ability to command resources and could get around on Tiamat. Trina was smart, but her unregistered status had kept her from education after her parents died. Curvy could get that set up, he was sure. It was a good solution.
“Yes,” he said. “That's a good idea.”
His UNF ident was still valid on Tiamat. He set up an account with the Swarm Central Bank and transferred his electronic cash balance from his beltcomp, breathing a sigh of relief that all his financial eggs were no longer in a basket he had to carry himself. The next step was to board a tube-car heading for Tigertown, the high-gee section of the asteroid where most of its kzinti population lived. He needed transport to Kzinhome. Curvy couldn't supply that because the UNF wouldn't supply that, and a UNF ship wouldn't be welcome anyway. He needed a kzinti ship, and he had to find it himself.
He drew no comment at the Tigertown tube station, though he drew looks. There were a few other humans in the crowd, but no other aliens. There were Jotoki and Kdatlyno on Tiamat, former kzinti slaves, but they didn't choose to associate with their former masters. For the humans who now held the whip hand around Alpha Centauri the dynamic was different. There were seventy five thousand kzinti in Tigertown, more or less, most of the kzinti population on the rock. It was a rough area, less finished than the rest of the station, no slidewalks, bare rock walls with fixtures bolted to them. The air was full of the gingery scent of kzinti, and the corridors bustled with activity. Persleds and cargo floats jostling past auctioneers and rabbit vendors with cages of frightened bunnies, stock long ago imported from Earth by humans. Buyers and sellers haggled over the prices in loud snarls. Strakh might have been the medium of exchange on Kzinhome, but on Tiamat the kzinti charged in hard kroner. He followed the main corridors, not quite sure what he was looking for.
What he found was a bar, or whatever it was that kzinti congregated in to eat raw meat and drink alcohol. He went in, saw glassy-surfaced tables and chairs lasered from Tiamat's substance, decorated wall hangings that he hoped weren't made of human skin, swords and weapons displayed on the walls. A few dozen kzinti sat in tight-knit groups, talking in muted snarls or wolfing down large platters of unidentified raw meat. One table held two men and a woman who looked him over coldly, then went back to their business. A large area at the back was roped off and full of sand, and screams and snarls rose over the sound dampers as a pair of kzinti dueled in front of an appreciative crowd. As he drew closer, Tskombe saw that the combatants had bright blue pads fitted that shielded their claws. The crowd was juiced up, fangs exposed and tails whipping back and forth with the action. There would be more duels before the night was over, not all of them in the ring with claws blunted. Past the dueling floor, food and drink service was over-the-counter, more laser-cut stone polished mirror-bright. The proprietor was a big kzin, shaggy-coated and muscular, assisted by a pair of still-spotted adolescents.
The proprietor looked up, saw him and leapt easily over the counter. He met Tskombe halfway across the floor and spoke. “This is not a place for humans.” He spoke English with a Swarm Belter accent, thick enough that it took Tskombe a moment to figure out what he'd said.
“I seek a pilot…” Tskombe snarled the words in the Hero's Tongue.
“Seek elsewhere.” The big kzin's ears had fanned up in surprise when Tskombe spoke his native language, but that wasn't enough to change his mind. He put a softly padded paw on Tskombe's shoulder. Four faint needlepricks warned of the not-quite retracted claws.
Tskombe nodded at the humans, now studiously ignoring him. “They aren't elsewhere.”
“Different. Old customers. You will leave now for your own safety.” The grip on Tskombe's shoulder tightened and the kzin pushed, gently but firmly, toward the door. There was no point in arguing, or fighting. He left quietly.
Back in the corridor he drew more looks, most of them carefully neutral. Now what? He didn't imagine he would get a warmer welcome elsewhere in Tigertown, but trying to reach a kzinti pilot by working his way through the human underworld would be both more difficult, in that there would be more middlemen to try to work through, and more dangerous, in that the one hand of the UN might find out what the other hand was up to and arrest him. No, he needed to make contact as directly as possible with a kzin, the only problem being that no kzin was likely to talk to him about anything remotely illegal just in case he was setting them up. Come to think of it, no human would either. He was used to his UNF rank and position opening doors for him, but that was because he wasn't used to moving in the underworld.
Time to get used to a new world. Humans could be accepted in Tigertown, the group he'd seen inside clearly were. So now what?
So now wait, get a feel for the area. He found a smoother spot in the rough-hewn rock wall and settled down to watch the crowd go by. Tigertown lacked the extensive vid surveillance of the rest of the asteroid, so no security team would swoop down to get him moving again. It was just a matter of time. He watched the traffic in and out of the bar. The noise swelling out into the corridor grew over time, the general background noise occasionally overridden by some loudly declaimed poetry in the Hero's Tongue. A couple of times screams and snarls told him the dueling floor was in use. Once a small group of kzinti carried out a limp and bloodied body and vanished with it down the corridor. Tskombe couldn't tell if it was alive or dead. The ARM left the kzinti to police Tigertown themselves, and it seemed they didn't do much of it.
Time dragged and eventually he got up and moved on. He tried to start conversations with various vendors, but none were interested in more than the formalities required to sell their wares. He walked further, learning the lay of the land. The crowds never seemed to thin out. Officially Tiamat ran on Wunderland's twenty-eight-hour day, but a large percentage of the population worked shifts, either for the various military organizations there or the asteroid's nonstop high-technology industries. In turn they drove a demand for
continuously available services. Combined with the constant artificial lighting, that made night and day largely abstract concepts. He was going through a corridor past a series of small manufacturers and custom tronshops when a challenge duel broke out in front of him. A ring of spectators formed around the combatants. Tskombe couldn't see past the wall of carnivores. Discretion is the better part of valor. Traffic in the corridor was blocked, so he went to one side, put his back against the wall, and waited. Five minutes later the fight was over and traffic resumed as quickly as it had stopped. The victor in the fight was nowhere to be seen. The loser was lying in the middle of the corridor, being ignored by everyone, stepped on by those whose path he happened to be in.
Move on or get involved? Decision time. The smart thing would be to move on, no need to wade into a situation he had no understanding of. He started to walk, then thought again. He needed to start somewhere. The injured kzin would at least have to talk to him, and he might be able to provide a lead. And I can't just leave him there. He went over to the kzin, helped him to his feet. One leg dragged badly and his arm seemed to be broken. Tskombe took him to a side tunnel, found a quiet spot sitting on a box behind some stacked cargo flats swaddled in quickwrap. The kzin was groggy and gasping for breath, bleeding from a torn ear and with one eye swollen shut.
He shook his head, his one good eye focusing on Tskombe for the first time.
His nostrils flared and his good ear twitched. “The Fanged God has forsaken me in my shame. Now I am helped by an herbivore.” He tried to stand and collapsed again. “I think my leg is broken.”
“And your arm.” Tskombe ran his hands over the bone, wincing in sympathy as he felt the bone grate. The kzin's lips twitched over his fangs, but he remained silent. “What's your name?”
“I have no name. I am nothing.”
“Why is that?”
The kzin looked anguished. “Must I explain my disgrace?”
“No, just making conversation. We need to get you some medical attention.”
The nameless kzin waved a dismissive paw. “I have no kroner. You are best to leave me, human.”
“I have kroner.”
“I can't walk.”
“So I'll carry you.”
The kzin just looked at him, eyes wide in disbelief. He was at least twice Tskombe's mass. His good ear rippled once and his tail twitched. Tskombe smiled. At least he still had his sense of humor.
The cargo flats belonged to a tronshop, and there was a floater parked there too. Leaving goods and equipment habitually unattended in a human community would be an invitation to have them stolen. In Tigertown the corridors were lined with all kinds of valuables. The twin drives of honor and shame were enough to keep them safe from kzinti, the claws of their owners served to protect them from thieving kz'eerkti. Few humans were brave enough to risk stealing from a kzin.
Tskombe looked around carefully as he loaded the kzin onto the floater. Nobody seemed to be objecting. He had passed a place with an autodoc a few cross-corridors back, and he pushed his new charge in that direction.
The establishment had a sign that simply read “Healer,” in Kzinscript, Dutch, German, English, Interspeak and a sixth language that he didn't recognize. Healer looked dubiously at both Tskombe and the kzin, but the transaction cleared when Tskombe thumbed for it, and Healer unceremoniously loaded the kzin into his autodoc.
“Do you know him?” Healer closed the lid and began scanning the readouts.
“No. There was a fight, and he lost. Everyone else was ignoring him.”
“They ignored his shame; it is the most merciful thing. He is honorless, and now czrav, an outcast.”
“He needed help.”
“His honor is not raised by accepting charity from an herbivore.” Healer punched some buttons. There was a muted snarl from inside the autodoc that fell to a sigh. Healer had started the anesthetic.
Tskombe showed his teeth. “I'm an omnivore.”
“Your honor is not raised by helping a czrav either, omnivore.”
“I'm not worried about that.”
“Hrrr.” Healer turned a paw over. “Few kz'eerkti are, I have found.” He punched some more buttons, and servos began whining as microsurgical arms started their work. Tskombe strained to see what was happening on the screen, saw enough to know that he didn't want to look further.
“How long will he be in there?”
“The bones must be set and then regrown, and he has internal injuries. Two days at least, perhaps three. Will he be paying?”
Tskombe hesitated, but the injured kzin had told him he had no money. I knew what I was getting into. “I'll be paying.”
“Five thousand kroner.” Healer tapped keys on his console to enter the transaction.
Tskombe thumbed his beltcomp to authorize the payment. “I'm looking for a ship, and a pilot. Do you know where I could find one?”
“Most passengers depart from the down-axis hub.”
“I need a small ship that I can hire for myself, and a kzinti pilot.”
“I don't know of any.” Healer paused, considering. “I perhaps know someone who might.”
“I'll leave you my contact information.” Tskombe keyed his beltcomp to dump his details alongside the kroner transaction. “Please let me know.”
“Hrrr.” Healer was concentrating on his control panels. Tskombe watched him for a minute, then left. It seemed like a good time to go.
His altruistic instincts had cost him five thousand kroner, and he had nothing to show for it. He walked further, found nothing promising. The underworld was not his world, the kzinti underworld even less so, and it occurred to him that Trina might be better at navigating it than he would. He pushed the thought away. The underworld was all about making contacts, and he didn't want Trina doing what she'd have to do to make those contacts. Eventually he gave up and took a tube car back to the UN section, tired and frustrated. Trina was back when he arrived, swimming and splashing with Curvy in the pool in a modest one-piece swimsuit. Curvy was lifting and tossing her, as Trina laughed and tried to balance on the dolphin's back, looking in the moment like a little girl without a care in the world. Tskombe smiled, his mood lifting. He had risked a lot to bring her to Alpha Centauri. To see her recapture a moment of her stolen childhood made it worth it.
“Quacy!” She swam over gracefully, sleek as a seal. Curvy leapt, splashed and came up beside her, clicking and whistling. “Did you get us a ship?”
“Not yet.” He laughed as she climbed out of the pool. “And it isn't a ship for us, it's a ship for me.”
“You're not leaving me here, are you?” She didn't quite manage to make the question light and offhanded.
“Trina…” The words caught in his throat. “Trina, I have to. You can't come to Kzinhome, it's too dangerous.”
She didn't say anything, just looked away. He stumbled on. “We'll get you an ident, you don't need a birthright here. We'll set you up with the Bureau of Displaced Persons, they're set up to look after you. You need to go to school, get your education, get a career.” She stayed silent, and he could tell she was fighting back tears. All she knows is I'm abandoning her, like everyone else in her life. “Don't worry, I'll come back for you.” He said it because there was nothing else he could say.
She gave up and cried then, and he put his arm around her shoulder, the water from her hair soaking through his shirt. She put his head against his chest and he held her, somewhat awkwardly. He was unused to children, not quite sure what was appropriate with one who was almost a woman. The sobs shook her small body, echoing across the pool. Curvy had dived, sensing perhaps that this was a moment to leave the two alone. The overhead lights reflected off the pool's waves to make dappled patterns on the wall and he watched them. Tskombe had made his decision to get her out of the brothel on the spur of the moment, motivated by the confluence of opportunity and conscience. He had planned to deliver her to Wunderland and leave her to a better life while he continued on to Kzinhome, but w
hat Trina needed most wasn't a well-meaning institution, she needed her parents. Failing that she needed a stable adult figure in her life. Tskombe hadn't planned on that role, but it was the one he found himself in.
So he would come back for her, if he could. At the same time Curvy's well computed odds against his success made the commitment seem hollow. It was unlikely that he'd be coming back at all.
“Do you promise?” She looked up at him with big, uncertain eyes.
“Yes, I promise.” He felt a lump in his throat as he said it, and he held her close.
The next night he was back in Tigertown. He knew his way around the corridors better now and drew fewer looks. He went to the same kzinti bar as before, saw the same three humans there, and was ejected just as quickly, by a proprietor who was markedly less tolerant than he'd been the first time. He went by Healer's, but Healer was too busy to see him. He sat down at a tube station to think. Perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way. It could take him a year to develop the connections he needed. The kzinti had their own thriving sub-economy in Tigertown, and it had to interface with the larger human economy in the Centaraus system. Maybe the smarter thing to do is just go through a transshipment company, someone who routes supplies to the rock miners. They'd have existing arrangements with ships, some of which would be flown by kzinti.
He stood up. That's a much better idea. Wandering around Tigertown with half a plan and no clue was getting him nowhere fast. He should have realized that sooner. He grabbed the next available tube car and punched for home. He spent the transit time looking up shippers on Tiamat's network through his beltcomp. There were lots. He'd start in the morning.
He knew there was something wrong as soon as the tube car's door hissed open. It wasn't the UN quarters station, and there were three men in ARM uniform waiting for him.
“Colonel Quacy Tskombe?”
“Yes.” There was no pointing denying it, they were obviously looking for him, and they'd rerouted his tube car when the computer registered his thumbprint for the fare.
