Starfishers - Starfishers Triology Book 2

by Glen Cook

  Was there a relationship between Seiners and Freehaulers? Both certainly refused to stop giving grief to Confederation's policy makers.

  Chouteau called out, "Doctor DuMaurier, come in here. Let's get on with this."

  Kindervoort darted behind Moyshe and seized his shoulders. BenRabi did not resist. There was nothing he could do.

  A doctor pushed into the room. He poked, pinched, and sprayed Moyshe's neck with an aerosol anesthetic. He removed an unsettlingly ancient lase-scalpel from his medical bag. Then, quoting every doctor who had ever lived since the days when Incas trepanned one another with sharp stones, he said, "This will only take a minute. You won't feel a thing."

  "That's what they told me when they put it in," benRabi grumbled. He could not go down without registering some kind of protest.

  "We'll just pull the ambergris nodes," Kindervoort said. "Ed, what do you think? Is it proper to sell them back to Navy come next auction?"

  Chouteau nodded amiably. "I think so. I like it."

  Moyshe wished they would stop. It made him want to scream, "You're being unprofessional!"

  They were not professionals. The harvestships apparently had no real intelligence-oriented security people.

  There was justice in Kindervoort's suggestion. BenRabi and Mouse, and all the other agents aboard, irrespective of their allegiances, were after the same thing. Access to one of the herds of great nightbeasts that produced the critical element in the node being removed from benRabi's neck.

  The Seiners called it ambergris. The name had evolved from that of a "morbid secretion" of Old Earth whales once used by perfumers. The word could mean anything anyone wanted now. The leviathans of the deep no longer had a claim. They had been extinct for centuries.

  Star's amber, space gold, and sky diamond were other popular names. By any name ambergris was the standard of wealth of the age.

  In the vernacular its name was short and pithy. It was the solid waste of a starfish. Crap.

  This crap fertilized a civilization. Confederation could not have existed without it. Without it there would have been no fast star-to-star communication. Speed and reliability of communications ultimately define the growth limit of any empire.

  BenRabi did not comprehend the physics of instel. He knew what the man in the street knew. A tachyon spark could be generated in the arc between an ambergris cathode and a Bilao crystal anode. The spark could be made to carry an FTL message. Neither ambergris nor Bilao crystal could be synthesized.

  The crystal occurred naturally deep in the mantles of several roughly earth-sized worlds orbiting super-cool stars. Sierra was the only such world within Confederation. Mining the crystal, at depths exceeding thirty kilometers, was overwhelmingly expensive.

  Bilao crystal was cheaper than ambergris. The Seiners had a monopoly. They were free market capitalists of the first water. Every node went to the highest bidder.

  The demand for ambergris perpetually exceeded supply. Despite gargantuan capital demands, optimists often assembled the hard and software of an installation merely in hopes that an ambergris node would become available.

  The combined Seiner harvestfleets, in their best year ever, had gleaned fewer than forty thousand nodes. Most of those had gone to replace nodes already burning out.

  The Seiners sold their product at auction, on worlds declared temporarily neutral and threatened by all the firepower the fleets could muster. The bidders always went along with Seiner rules. The Starfishers might refuse to do business with someone who pushed.

  Ambergris alone explained the flood-tide of operatives heading toward Carson's after Danion had begun advertising for groundside technicians. The agents had swept in like vultures, hoping to feed on the corpse of a betrayed Payne's Fleet.

  That's what we are, benRabi thought. Me and Mouse, we're vultures... No. Not really. We're more like raptors. Falcons flung from Beckhart's wrist. Our prey is information. We're to bring down any morsel that might betray a starfish herd.

  Moyshe tried to believe that Confederation should control the harvesting and distribution of ambergris. He tried hard.

  Sometimes he had to tell himself some tall ones to get by. Otherwise he asked himself too many questions. He started worrying irrelevancies like Right and Wrong.

  His soul, slithering past morality shyly, merely mumbled I want. There was a pain in it that he could not understand. It nagged him worse than did his ulcer.

  BenRabi dreaded madness. He was afraid of a lot of things lately. He could not figure it out.

  "There. One down." The doctor dropped Movshc's node into a gleaming stainless steel tray. Plunk! Exclamation point to the end of a phase of the mission. He began suturing Moyshe's wound.

  "How bad will that hurt when the anesthetic wears off?"

  "Not much. Your neck should be a bit stiff, and tender to the touch. See me if it gives you any trouble." The doctor turned to Mouse. Mouse squirmed a little before he submitted. His conscience, benRabi supposed. He had to make a showing.

  Doctors were another of Mouse's crochets. He had no use for them, as he often told anyone who would listen.

  BenRabi suspected that was why Beckhart never had Mouse altered during his mission preps.

  "We don't like spies," the Ship's Commander blurted. The way he said it made it sound both spontaneous and irrelevant, a non sequitur despite what was happening.

  We, Moyshe thought. These people always say we.

  The worm within him bit. He shifted uncomfortably. Somehow, Chouteau had taunted his need. Weird.

  He tried to recapture it, to discover what it was that he wanted, but, like a wet fish, it wriggled through his fingers.

  Nearly a minute later, Chouteau pursued his remark. "But Danion needs your expertise to survive. And we love her enough to give you another chance." He became less distant.

  "Listen up. We're going to keep you alive. But you're going to work till you drop: Till you forget why it was that you were sent here. And when we're done with you, we're going to ship you home just as ignorant as you were when you signed on.

  "Men, don't give us any more trouble. Be satisfied being ignorant. We need you bad, but won't let you push. Danion's big. A couple men more or less wouldn't make much difference. Doctor, aren't you finished yet?"

  "Just have to sew him up, sir. One minute."

  "Commander McClennon, Commander Storm, go back to your cabins. Try not to aggravate me for a while."

  BenRabi rose, touched the small bandage behind his ear. The numbness had begun to fade. He could feel a mild burning. It made him think of bigger cuts on his body and soul.

  The doctor finished with Mouse. "There you go, Commander. Try not to strain it too much. I suggest you let your lady friends do the work for a few days." He spoke with a gentle sarcasm that may have masked envy.

  "Word's getting around about you, Mouse," benRabi said.

  Mouse did not respond. He was in no mood for banter.

  They beat an unescorted retreat, seeking their cabins like wounded animals seeking the security of their dens. In the passage outside benRabi's cabin, Mouse asked, "What do we do now, Moyshe?"

  BenRabi shrugged. "I don't know. I was hoping you'd think of something. Go for the ride, I guess. They've stalemated us."

  "Just for now." Mouse stood a little taller. "We've got a year. They can't keep their guard up forever, can they?"

  "They probably can." But a little false encouragement felt good. "Still, you never know. Something might turn up."

  "Look at that."

  The Sangaree lady was watching them from her doorway. She smiled, waved.

  "Gloating," benRabi said.

  "Think she knows what happened? Think she helped do us in?"

  BenRabi shrugged, looked at the woman. Their gazes seemed to ring like meeting swords. Her smile broadened. "Yes. I'm sure she did."

  Eight: 3047 AD

  The Olden Days, The Broken Wings

  Hoping Marya would make no sense of the data before him,
Niven told her, "I'm checking to see where people go when they leave The Broken Wings. If a statistically significant number emigrate to certain worlds, we can begin to infer both their fantasies under dome conditions and what it is that attracts them to a particular type world. If it's environmental, then we've discovered a way to ease the negatives of dome life." He hoped he sounded tutorial. He cranked it up a notch to be sure. "Ubichi specializes in negative environment, high-yield exploitation operations. Employee turnover has become a major problem because of the expense of training and transportation for some of our field operations. It's in the corporate interest to reduce those costs by keeping our employees happy and comfortable."

  Pretty glib, he thought. He congratulated himself. "What're you doing here?"

  "Looking for you. We had a date."

  "Not till... Holy Christ! Look at the time. Hey beautiful lady, I'm sorry. I got on the track of something. I worked right through lunch. Give me a minute, will you? I'll finish up, call my secretary, and we can get moving." He grinned. "I have to check in. Education didn't wear the Old Earth off of him. You wouldn't believe the hell he gave me last night!"

  He no longer felt the smile. She was turning him to gelatin again.

  Mouse did not answer his buzz. Niven would have been surprised had he done so. The call was simply a ploy to get the data out of Marya's sight, and to seize time to create a plausible structure of lies atop those he had just told.

  He needed no story. Marya asked no questions except, "What do you want to do?"

  He almost replied with the hard truth.

  "I've had it with work, but we about covered everything last night. Angel City isn't swing-town." Gallantly, he added, "I'm content just being with you. You pick."

  She laughed. "And they say there's no romance left on Old Earth. How about we just go for a walk? I feel like a good long one."

  "Uh... " His hands started shaking.

  He had gotten out young, but the lessons of an Old Earth's childhood died hard. People who did not learn them young also died hard. Not to walk the streets without a gang of friends was one of the strictest lessons of the motherworld.

  This was not Old Earth. Death did not make the streets its home here. But the sticktights did lurk there, and they might up the ante in the game at any minute.

  "How come you're grinning?"

  "That's no grin, lady. That's what they call a rictus. Of fear. I'm Old Earther. You know how hard it would be for me to walk down a street without at least fifty guys to back me up?"

  "I forgot. But there's nothing to worry about here, Gun."

  "You know it. I know it here in my head. But down here in my guts there's a caveman who says we're both liars."

  "If it's really that hard... "

  "No, don't get upset. I didn't say I wouldn't try. I've got to get used to it. Hell, I force myself to get out as much as I can. I just wanted to warn you so you won't think it's your fault if I get a little jumpy and quiet."

  "You'll settle down. You'll see. This is just about the dullest, least dangerous city in The Arm."

  A few hours later, shortly after The Broken Wings' early night had fallen, Niven snarled, "What did you say back at the hospital? Something about the safest streets in the galaxy?"

  The darkness of the alley pressed in. His frightened eyes probed the shadows for movement. The lase-bolt had missed his cheek by a centimeter. He still felt the heat of it. "Even my toenails are shaking, lady."

  Marya fingered her hair. A bolt had crisped it while they were running. Niven's nostrils twitched as they caught the sharp burnt hair odor.

  Marya's face was pallid in the glow of a distant streetlight. She was shaking too. And apparently too angry to respond.

  "You got a jealous boyfriend?"

  She shook her head, gasped, "This isn't Old Earth. People don't do things like this out here."

  Niven dropped to all fours and crawled to the alley mouth.

  Heavy work was not his province, but he had had the basic programs given all field agents. He could make a show if he had to.

  He had to do something now. The alley was a cul-de-sac. And the rifleman might be teamed. A deathtrap could be closing.

  A bolt scarred brick above his head. He rolled away, growling, "Starscope. Damn!" But he had spotted the triggerman. The bolt had come from atop a warehouse across the street.

  "Can't be much of a shot," Niven mumbled. "That isn't fifty meters."

  If he could survive the sprint across the street...

  There was a startled exclamation from the gunman's position, then a choked wail of fear and pain. A body plunged off the warehouse roof and thumped into the street.

  Niven was across in an instant, shoving himself into the warehouse wall while he studied the corpse.

  The weak light revealed the limper from the Marcos lobby. His windpipe had been crushed.

  Every man's signature is unique. And an assassin leaves a grim sort of signature on his victims. Niven knew this one. He peered upward.

  Why would Mouse be shadowing him?

  Not that he objected. Not right now.

  Marya arrived. She averted her eyes. "You must have a guardian angel."

  "One of us does." He stared at her. Something clicked. It was nothing he could define, just a tweak of uneasiness because she had not asked him why anyone would want to kill him. A civilian would have asked that right away.

  He looked for the assassin's weapon, did not see it. "I'm going to try to get onto that roof."

  "Why? Shouldn't we get out of here?"

  Another click. Civilians started screaming for the police. Outworlds civilians, anyway.

  "Yeah, I guess. If he had anybody with him we would have heard from them by now." But where to go? he wondered. Not the hotel. Not with the number officially on. Not with the war rules proclaimed. And not to a safehouse. He did not yet know what Mouse had arranged. And he could not make the fallbacks to find out with Marya tagging along.

  The death threat had alerted the professional in him. Had raised barriers that would wall off the whole universe till he had sorted the friends from enemies and noncombatants.

  "We could go to my place," Marya suggested.

  Memories of countless spy and detective dramas battled for Niven's attention. Was it all a setup? Three misses at fifty meters seemed unlikely for even a clumsy assassin. But he did not want to believe that Marya was involved. She was such a magnetic, animal woman...

  Believe it or not, only a cretin would have ignored the possibility completely. Survival had become the stake on the board.

  He dared not let her know he was suspicious. "All right." He looked around fearfully, having no trouble projecting shakiness and confusion. "But I've got to do a couple of things first."

  Their eyes met. And he knew. He did not want it to be, but it was true. She was the enemy. Right now she was trying to find an excuse to stay close to him that would not arouse his suspicions.

  She was not a good actress. Under stress she could not control the body language signals that betrayed her thoughts.

  He felt betrayed and hurt, though he had known her just one day.

  He had always needed to be wanted. Not for whom or what he was, but just as a human being.

  Human. Was she even human? There was no sure way of telling without complicated tests. Geneticists were certain that humanity and the Sangaree shared a prehistoric ancestry.

  She might even be the new Sangaree Resident. The last one had been a woman.

  "Where do you stay?" he asked.

  She chose not to push. She explained how he could get to her apartment.

  "You don't have to do this," he told her, then cursed silently. By saying that, he had tacitly admitted being the sniper's target. But sometimes it was necessary to take chances. He could at least feed her belief in his lack of suspicion. "It might be dangerous."

  "That's all right. I've never been involved in anything like this." Feigned excitement illuminated her face. "What have
I gotten myself into, Gun?"

  It was smoke screen time. "Sweetheart, I don't know. I really don't. This is the second time I've been jumped, but nobody bothered to tell me why last time either. They tried it right in the Marcos before. The day we got here. And we don't even know anybody here. But people have been following me all the time, and... If you're an Old Earther, you sense things like that."

  "Maybe it's not you. Maybe it's your friend."

  "John? I never thought of that. I guess it's possible. I don't really know anything about him. The Corporation sent him. Anyway, whatever's going on, I mean to find out."

  He had yielded just enough distorted truth, he hoped, to leave her with doubts. A lot depended on whether or not the opposition had been able to evade Mouse's bug-scans.

  "Will you be all right, Marya? Should I walk you home?"

  "I'll manage."

  "Probably be safer without me, anyway. See you in a while." He glanced at the dead man, then the streets. Not a soul was stirring.

  It was odd how people sensed a gathering storm, then stayed inside where they would witness nothing and run no risks. Though this was a warehouse district, there should have been some traffic. Hell. Where were the security patrols? Where were the police cruisers?

  He had seen the same thing happen on Old Earth, where the gangs went to their guns at the slightest provocation. Citizens and enforcers always kept a low profile till the stink of gunsmoke left the air.

  Mouse was not at the first fallback, nor had he left a message. Niven did find a hastily scribbled message at the second. It told him that Marya was the new Sangaree Resident. And, as if in afterthought, Mouse went on to say that he was on the run from a dozen men who had gotten onto him after the incident at the warehouse.

  Niven scratched a reply, explaining where he would be. The drop was large, so he left the notes he had taken at the Med Center.

  Those had to be salvaged no matter what. Maybe by Chief Navy Recruiter for The Broken Wings. He was the Bureau Angel City station chief.