by Sharon Lee
“Bechimo,” she whispered and swallowed against the sudden pounding of her heart.
Her fingers moved without her conscious will, opening a line on the underband.
“Bechimo,” she said, feeling the key trembling between her breasts, desire starting a slow burn in her belly and that—that was the key, she thought. The key that she’d liked on sight, and had no hesitation in hanging around her neck. That even now felt usual and comforting, while burning to be reunited with its ship.
The ship of which she was supposedly master.
Theo swallowed, focused, and mentally danced a pilot’s get-sharp exercise. The longing eased—somewhat—and her pulse slowed.
“Captain, your vessel is ready to receive you.” The voice was smooth and pleasant, in a midrange that could have either been female or male, speaking Terran with what Theo’d heard called a “standard” accent.
“Not now.” Her own voice wavered. She cleared her throat, and repeated more forcefully, “Not now.”
“Does it please the Captain to name a boarding time?”
“Soon,” she said, trying to think. Uncle and Val Con both had suggested a quiet haven for her first boarding of Bechimo. Tokeo might be short of company, but in her opinion, it didn’t come near to meeting the criterion for “haven.”
“Soon,” Bechimo repeated, sounding . . . puzzled.
Theo bit her lip against a stab of pity. How long had she had the Captain’s key in her possession and never made any attempt at contact? How many times had she ignored the ghost ship in her screens? Granted she hadn’t known why the ghost was haunting her, but did Bechimo understand that she’d been flying without coords?
Bechimo was, Theo understood all at once, lonely. Win Ton had hinted that—not presuming to say it right out straight, of course, but trusting her to figure it out. Which she hadn’t, quite, because, until she’d heard that voice, and the catch of disappointment, she hadn’t really understood . . .
Bechimo was a person.
Navcomp rang, bringing her attention back to the matter of the ship she was flying and the necessity of filing her approach with Tokeoport.
The next time she looked at her Number Two screen, a few minutes later, the scans were clear to the Jump point.
* * *
The fees quoted for a hotpad and a fast lift were . . . expensive, but not as expensive as she’d thought they’d be, given the Quick Guide’s other warnings. Theo accepted both without haggling, and pulled down her mail.
Her orders were to go to the Trade Bar and pick up a package from Keep-Safe Twenty-Two Green, using the code provided. She committed the combination to memory while the hull was cooling, and found the Trade Bar on the port map: two squares east of her hotpad. That was good, both in terms of limiting her exposure to Tokeoport, and for hitting the deadline at Ploster. She’d just keep her head down, and move fast, that was all. Nobody was going to be looking for her, or looking at her, necessarily; she’d just be one more pilot on the shabby port displayed in her Number One screen.
It was late afternoon, local. She ought to be away before evening.
Theo pulled on her jacket, grinning as she pushed up the sleeves. She really ought to get a jacket that fit the next time she was on a world that had a proper Guild Hall. Just now, though, she was pleased with the rumpled look Rig’s worn leather gave her.
Somebody wearing a well-cared-for jacket and shiny boots—that was somebody who would interest port thieves. A pilot who ran so close to the edge of her profit margin that she made do with second-hand leathers just wasn’t worth the effort.
She gave the sleeves another push, and the map another hard stare, fixing it in memory. Then she leaned over the board and locked the Toss down as tight as she went, without putting her to sleep. On the way to the hatch, she stopped at the safe and engaged the third lock, sealing it with her thumbprint. It wasn’t senior crew, but it would have to do.
She checked her gun for the second time, making sure it slid smooth in the holster, then triggered the hatch and walked out into the warm breezy day.
- - - - -
“Hey, Mags, lookit this.”
“This” was a flyaway blondie in a jacket two sizes too big for her, working the combo on one of the Green lockers. Nobody hardly ever used the Green lockers, on account of them being out of reason spendy, but the Bar held a block of ’em for outworlders and them who couldn’t afford to lose what they filed. It wasn’t that the Greens were unbreakable; they were just too damn finicky to worry with. That, and the Snoops took an interest, taking a cut of the rent, like they did. Easier pickins, elsewhere, then busting up a Green.
Once the booty was outta the box, though . . .
The blondie had a good combo, and pretty quick the packet was in her hand—thin, shiny blue box, like for jewelry or stones. Might be whoever left it was smart and it was full of something more interesting still. It was possible, and it was even possible that him and Kazee would find out before this day was over, if it came about that the project seemed worth their bother.
That was going to take some determinin’. The jacket, for starters . . .
“Trophy, you make it?” he asked Kazee.
“Ain’t hers, is it?” She took a draw on her brew, looking thoughtful. “Could be there’s a boyfriend.”
There was that. Still, they could handle boyfriend trouble, if it found ’em. And how much could he care, sending her out to pick up a Green all by onesie?
“We paid up with the Snoop, ain’t we?”
Kazee nodded, her eyes on the blondie, who’d stowed the packet inside her too-big jacket and turned, walking firm and fast. She glanced at the pair of ’em as she passed—snippy black eyes in a face all angles and frowns—then she was headin’ for the door. More’n one head turned to follow her, not all of ’em, in Mags’ opinion, sizing up the jacket.
“Not a pro,” Mags said, finishing off his ’toot and getting his feet under him.
The blondie was almost to the door when one of them who was maybe more interested in what was inside the jacket swung half into her path, smiling all soft and friendly.
The blondie ducked outta her way, skittishlike, and kept on going.
Kazee thumped her mug down.
“Let’s go,” she said, but Mags was already up and movin’.
- - - - -
The breeze had turned from warm to cool. Theo looked up, like Father had taught her when she was only a littlie, looking for weather signs.
Clouds were massing behind the Tower, big and structured—storm cells, she thought—and gleaming silver-white. On Delgado, they’d keep on building into the twilight, and glow pink and orange before they rained down over the nighttime farm grid. On Eylot, you might get a thunderstorm or even a wind twist out of clouds like these, depending on terrain.
Here on Tokeo, who knew what the clouds would bring? As far as she could tell, they were still building; she’d be lifted and out before they were ripe.
And, really, she acknowledged, she was more worried about the man who’d followed her out of the Trade Bar, and who was still with her.
Theo sighed, and considered her options.
She was walking briskly, like a pilot with an errand, but she wasn’t running. Running people attracted attention. Worse, running people were seen by some hunters on port as prey. She could, she guessed, stop and confront this follower, like she had her last, but it would take time, and there was that deadline at Ploster breathing down her neck.
Tokeoport was a bleak place—’crete streets and ’crete walls with tiny, slit-windowed shops carved into them. There were people on the square, and some who walked like pilots, though there was a shortage of leather on display.
She frowned. Not much space leather at all on the street, which she’d also noticed at the Trade Bar. It was like the pilots on-port weren’t just keeping their heads down, they were trying to be invisible.
Her corner was coming up.
Theo checked her shadow. He was s
till with her, but not closing. It could just be that he wanted to see where she was going. If that was so, he’d either try to close as soon as she made the corner and it became obvious that her goal was the hotyard, or he’d swing off and look for somebody else to follow.
She turned the corner.
Less than an arm’s length away, a woman came out of the shadow. Theo spun, too late in close quarters, the woman grabbed her by the jacket and whirled, using their combined weights, and pushed.
Theo slammed into the wall, momentarily breathless, her head smacking so hard against the ’crete that the woman’s face smeared into senseless color.
“Got ’er!” her attacker yelled.
Her face came into sharp, sudden focus—that and the fist cocked back for the strike.
Theo twisted, enough to throw the woman out of balance, and the strike off true, but not enough to break her grip.
She used her elbows against the wall and pushed forward, but she was at a disadvantage in weight, and the woman threw her back.
“Don’t be a bitch, blondie. Just give me the goods.”
Theo braced herself, raised a knee and slammed it as hard as she could between the woman’s legs.
That made her lose focus long enough for Theo to follow through on the move, twisting out of the loosened grasp, and spinning—
Into the fist of the guy who’d been following her.
- - - - -
The key reported danger. The key reported an attack.
The key reported the Captain incapacitated and in the hands of pirates.
Very nearly, Bechimo translated into atmosphere, guns primed and targeting those who dared to damage the Captain.
The long habit of discretion, of waiting, held firm. Bechimo experienced . . . panic. The Captain lay helpless in the power of brigands, exactly as had the Less Pilot! In the case of the Less Pilot, there had been those devices about that Bechimo might influence to his rescue and eventual liberty.
The Captain, alone and unsupported . . . Bechimo overrode panic.
The key. The key reported itself with the Captain. The key reported that this situation might soon change.
The key.
- - - - -
“Somebody keeps the bitchy in drink chits an’ smoke,” a woman’s voice said. “Look at this, Mags.”
Coins clinked. There was a sense of a body too close, of hands inside her jacket. Theo kept as still as she could, muscles limp, eyes closed; she could feel the hard ’crete alley under her back. That was good, she thought; she wouldn’t be tangled up in her own arms and legs when it came time to move.
“After something else, weren’t we?” a man’s voice asked. Up, Theo realized. He—Mags—was standing, probably watching out for interruptions from other thieves, since there wasn’t much in the way of security to care about.
“No reason not to shop while I’m in here,” the woman said. “Let’s see what else she’s got.”
The left side of her jacket was yanked open, hard, and it was all that Theo could do to stay limp and seeming like she was still out. Uncle’s pickup was in the big left pocket; her license and shipkey sealed into the most secret pocket behind the next least-secret pocket where two cantra bits rode, her hostage against bad fortune.
More yanking, like the seal on the big pocket was giving the woman some problem, then a “hah!” and an absence of weight and presence.
“Here, Mags. You crack it.”
As clearly as if she had her eyes wide open, Theo saw the woman on her knees on the alley floor, one hand still negligently holding the lapel of the jacket, her attention directed up, to her partner, offering him the blue box with her free hand.
He bent to take it.
Theo rolled, striking with full force in a move she had only practiced in shadow-dance. The wrist broke with an audible snap; the woman screamed. Theo kept rolling, kicked, and was on her feet, lunging in the same heartbeat. The man swung; she ducked, and came up in a move from menfri’at. The man went down like a bag of sugar. Theo scooped up the blue box, looked at the woman huddled, excruciatingly still, on the alley floor; turned and ran for the end of the street and the gate to the hotyard.
- - - - -
“Mags?” Kazee’s voice wasn’t exactly calm and neither was the shake that came with it. “Mags!”
He got his eyes open, figuring that was the only way to quiet her down, and give his head a rest.
“Little blondie was just that fast, wasn’t she?” he said, pulling himself into a sit and waiting for the street to steady. Damn. Blondie must’ve hit ’im with an augment.
“We get anything outta that,” he asked Kazee, “ ’cept a headache and an arm broke?”
“Yeah . . .” She held out her good hand, showing him the shine of good Terran bits across her palm. “My share’s going right in the doc box.”
“I’ll stand a brew for ya,” Mags told her. He frowned down at the coins, seeing a different shine, and a shape not . . . exactly . . . coinlike.
“Hold on,” he said, “what’s that? Blondie drop a pretty in with her spendin’ money?”
“Where? No, I see—like a pin or somethin’ . . .” She held her hand steady while he got it loose and held it up between finger and thumb.
“Got something carved on it,” he said, taking a rough weight in his palm. “Worth a walk down to the faganhouse for this, maybe.”
“There’s no need for you to trouble yourselves,” a woman’s soft, accented voice spoke from the left and rear. The sound of a safety being released was sharp against the quiet air.
- - - - -
It was quite clement this afternoon, Daav thought. He’d been told that it was local spring, and had independently observed that the wan sunlight was growing slightly more robust. Indeed, here in the center of the garden, in the Tree’s very court, it was nearly warm, though not so nearly that he was tempted to unseal his jacket.
He did take his hands out of his pockets and place them, palm-flat, against the rough bark, where they were instantly warmed.
“I thank you,” he murmured. “As does the gardener, who asked me particularly to extend her regards. She had not considered that you might influence the immediate environment to the benefit of the small plants. For myself, I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, but I feel it necessary to ask that you have a care not to plunge our near neighbor into an ice age.”
There was a faint rustle among the lower branches as a few leaves floated groundward—the Tree’s equivalent of a chuckle.
“It heartens me to learn that I am yet amusing.” Daav closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the warm bark.
His relationship with Korval’s Tree had not always been easy, though certainly they had shared an understanding. He might have thought that he would find its mode of discourse . . . difficult, or even mad, having been so long unaccustomed, but he had fallen into the way of it again quite easily. What Jen Sar Kiladi might have made of such whimsy . . .
But, there; that route promised no profit for anyone.
Daav took a deep breath, catching the scent of cinnamon rising from the pleasantly warm bark. Kiladi . . . There was an oddity, this continued melancholy; the sharp sense of losing a man who had never lived—no, he corrected himself, drowsily. Certainly, Kiladi had lived—there was the considerable body of his work, his legions of students, graduated and themselves working the fields he had shown to them, not to mention the astonishing and occasionally alarming fact of Theo.
So say instead, he instructed himself, that Kiladi had lacked a regular birth, and a childhood, and that now he was spared the slow decline into old age. He had been a busy man, and influential. He had loved and been loved—and was sorely missed by his creator.
If Daav yos’Phelium achieved so much, he might put aside the ties of clan and kin lightly, when the time was upon him.
A rattle in the leaves above broke his drowse. He opened his eyes and stepped back, hand rising in time to catch a seed pod.
“My t
hanks,” he murmured, suddenly craving nothing so much as the treat promised him. He opened it immediately, noting that his assistance was scarcely required; it seemed the pod was so eager to be eaten that it fell open of itself.
Mint and cinnamon danced on his tongue—and something else that might have been an echo of Kamele’s most favored coffee.
He devoured the gift with unseemly haste, ravenous—and sated, the instant that the last piece was eaten.
Sighing, he looked up into the high branches.
“My thanks,” he said again, and meant it from the heart. Whatever the pod’s purpose—from the expression of a comrade’s sympathy, to a subtle poisoning—he was glad to have received it, and felt the better for having eaten it.
Unexpectedly, there came another rattling, this from the very highest branches, followed by the apparently forceful ejection of two pods, which hit the ground precisely before his boots.
“This is bounty, indeed,” he murmured, bending to retrieve the gifts.
Immediately he touched the first, he knew that it was intended for him—those of Jela’s Line were born with that sense. So—his, but for . . . some time in the future. The understanding that came to him was that the pod was not . . . quite ripe.
The second . . . very nearly he dropped it. Very nearly, he threw it back into the high boughs. It was only the recollection that the Tree’s gifts of seed pods had always been truly meant, if not always beneficent, that stayed his hand.
The second pod . . . was for Aelliana.
And also . . . not . . . quite ripe.
“Just so.” He bowed his head and opened his jacket, stowing the pods into a small, sealed pocket where they would be secure, but easy to access, when and if the time of their ripeness arrived.
SIXTEEN
Tokeoport
Arin’s Toss sat ready on her go-pad. That was the good news.
A woman with gun drawn stood, legs braced, squarely in front of the hatch, which couldn’t, Theo thought, taking momentary cover behind a parked jitney, be anything but bad news.
