by Janet Morris
It had been this of all the information he had collected about Shebat that had shed the most light on this series of miraculous events, so much that he had collapsed into helpless mirth, weeping as he chortled, seeing that the Lords of Cosmic Jest would have their acerbic way. Gods, there were none. But the mind of mirth that pervaded all things was omniscient, desirous of homage and the sacrifices called titter, chortle and smile.
Something sobered him: what he knew from his search of the Kerrion data pool, Parma knew also. What could be said of Kerrion genetics, in a lesser, dilute fashion, could be said of his, also. Was that why he found himself so hesitant to have the girl abducted and slain out of hand? It was the obvious solution, the one which, should he not soon employ it, he would have to replace in Selim Labaya’s expectations with the other, which he wholeheartedly favored. What a dream dancer Shebat Kerrion would make!
Decided, he coded a surveillance-proof line for himself and arranged a meeting with his Labayan contact, warning the man to bring money. “A mil-suit full, for all hangs on the next few days,” he snapped, and cut the circuit before the man could ask questions.
If he himself could not take the girl to her rendezvous with destiny, others must be employed to show her the way.
“Softa! Softa David! Come see!” Shebat hung out her slipside port, waving urgently to the lithe pilot in the gray coveralls of his guild.
“So this is where you have been for three days?” laughed the pilot, while Shebat scrambled forth, tugging on his hand to hurry. “Did you get my call, or have you even foresworn your Kerrion duty to check your messages?”
Only a fleeting shadow crossed the girl’s shining eyes. “You did not get mine, then? No matter. You are here and I am here, and that is all that matters. Will you hurry? I cannot live another moment without showing you the Marada. Inside, now!”
Softa David frowned, hanging back, saying: “It is bad luck to name a ship after a man, let alone a living one whose own luck is far from good.”
“Let go,” but Softa David’s hand only imprisoned hers more surely.
“No, I will not.” They stood there in silence, a pair of giant paper dolls spread across the slip’s gangplank.
Then Spry said: “Change the name of it, Shebat.”
“Why?” she pouted, examining his hand holding hers. She pulled back: once; twice; but the pilot held firm, unmoving. “Parma’s ship has a masculine name.”
“Of a horse, not a man.” Suddenly his demeanor changed, and by the arm he pulled her away from the silvery, oblong port. She resisted, then stumbled toward him.
“What is the matter with you? Softa, are you not happy for me? Is it not a fine ship?”
“The finest. Too complex and too powerful for you. And too overwhelming, not to say tempting. I want you to promise me you will not take it out alone until I, myself, have pronounced you fit to do so. Shebat!”
Her flare of fury faded with his loud calling of her name, but it also attracted attention. From gantry and slipside heads poked out, necks craned, eyes squinted to see what might be the cause of the shouting at slip fifteen, where all knew the Kerrion heir’s new toy was docked. That they saw two locked in obvious disagreement did not please David Spry, who was up to his non-Kerrion neck in the bond’s affairs, and loathed it.
Six weeks in their employ, he thought: it might have been six years.
“Shebat, come away with me, to a more suitable spot, and we will talk. I cannot speak as freely here as I might like.” Did she understand, could she understand any of this which was happening to her? He ached with compassion, a momentary throb of an exposed nerve. Then it was gone, pushed aside by a cold voice that told him, ringingly, that he could afford no qualm. Since the voice was his own, he heeded it.
When he had got her out from the dockside, he hailed a lorry and directed it to take them to a seventh-level bar. From the startled blink of the girl’s eyes as the lorry took its turn in the drop-shaft and gravity waned, he deduced she had never traveled in one before. “So, have you spent all your time in the normal gravity halls of Kerrions?”
“I have been lower than we are going now!” she boasted. “But by escalator; not lorry.”
Spry nodded, and the master pilot’s circles in his ears sparkled like starlight out from buff hair finally grown back after the shearing he had undergone out of respect for his new employer. “You do not notice the gee discrepancy, going down so slowly. But tell me who took you down slumming? And why? Do you have a secret suitor, who must talk to you in hidden alleyways where Kerrion ears cannot hear?”
Shebat’s smothered laughter and downcast eyes said something that was underlined by the flush creeping up her neck. He saw it pass the almost invisible line where a clear mil-suit ended, giving up further protection to the skin treatment that was called a mil-hood. Such a child she was, and the more winning for that. Her girlish embarrassment made him feel a rough creature, cold and cynical. Still, all must be who they were; the universe had no time for posturings. David’s time had not been his own since he was old enough to choose his trade. Since then, space and Chance had determined all. He was vaguely aware that wherever he happened to be crises bared their bleeding breasts, as if he were Fate’s own witness. It had been with him as long as his membership in the pilot’s guild. Still, sometimes he felt regret.
So, it was with regret that he said to Shebat as soon as they were seated in a coin-operated privacy booth of seventh-level seamy style:
“Have you considered Parma’s motives in elevating you so abruptly and granting your every whim, no matter how expensive or unseemly to Kerrion mores? No? Listen well, little apprentice, or you may not live to become the pilot of your dreams. Ashera Kerrion will be well-diverted with you, keeping her out of Parma’s hair. Eventually something will happen to you, which Parma will, with all fitting horror, blame on her and her son, Chaeron. With both of them stripped of their citizenship, nothing stands in Parma’s way. He will make Marada Kerrion heir as he dares not do yet, lest he fall afoul of Ashera. He will unite in truth and deed Labayan and Kerrion space: manipulating both, he will control the civilized stars. Your life becomes infinitesimally small change in a game with stakes that high.”
The high-chinned stare of the girl, followed by the glitter of unshed tears, rapid Winking, full flush, and lastly a murmured: “How do you suggest I protect myself?” made Softa David sigh a deep and heartfelt sigh of relief.
“I had thought to be endlessly convincing you,” he admitted, and reaching over, patted Shebat’s clenched hands.
“I trust you, Softa David. Since Marada is gone, I must trust someone.”
Rapidly, Spry began to explain his plan; the last thing he wanted to think about was what Shebat had just said.
“I have friends in low places, whose aid and loyalty come regularly to the auction block. Below the tenth level anything can be bought: a quarter-citizenship; a half; a full share. A new identity; a different computer access code; a place to hide for awhile until the search dies down or time and maturity complete your disguise: all could be bought with the worth of that cruiser, once it is berthed in a non-Kerrion ship.”
“I will not give the Marada up!” Shebat’s voice was adamant. But, as David Spry had hoped, in her face confusion reigned. “Why should I? Parma has been wonderfully good to me . . .” she trailed off, biting her lip, her gaze full of trepidation. And when he kept silent, only regarding her pityingly, she whispered, “Why?” once again.
“Why? So you will not meet the early death that will befall you if you remain a Kerrion decoy. Did you have bodyguards in Lorelie?”
“Yes,” barely audible.
“Do you have them now?”
“I. . . do not know. But there were some men assigned to me, when first I got here, though I have not seen them these last few days. I have been in the Marada. Parma would not leave such a matter unattended. All the Kerrion halls have eyes and ears.” She recollected then what Parma had said to her would be the co
st of descending into the deep, suppurating underworld of the lower levels. “Doubtless, my whereabouts are even now known to him. And because of that, and you bullying me into this jaunt without telling me the destination you had in mind, I will not have the ship any longer. Parma said that if I came down here again, I would forfeit it, and my pilot’s training, and all else that matters.” A nervous hand raked through black curls, pulling hair back from her furrowed forehead. “Oh, why did I not think of that? Softa, what will I do? He will never forgive me!”
David Spry leaned back in his chair, ruminatively tapping the order keys of the automated waiter. “What would you like? Wine, beer? Or would cocoa suit?”
The girl did not rise to his bait, but chewed her lip, staring blankly somewhere beside his head. “How do you know so much about Kerrion affairs?” she asked distantly, as if from deep meditation.
David Spry suppressed a shiver, saying glibly: “I shipped with Marada, when we were both apprentices,” which was true. Then, to redirect her to a less dangerous area than that of his own origins, motives, or objectives, he played her more line: “As to what you should do, since you stand to lose the ship in any case: let me steal it.”
“What?”
“Give me the access keys, and I will take it out of Kerrion space, where you can reclaim it when I have smuggled you through. I can have it mislogged, as if you took the cruiser out prematurely, lost control, and both you and the ship will be officially stricken from the consulate census. It is that simple.”
“That is simple? But where would I go? I would have no citizenship, nothing.”
The drinks slid out of their hopper. He pushed the wine glass toward Shebat. He made a crude noise that said what worth citizenship had in his eyes, then apologized for being crass. Sipping, he leaned forward conspiratorially, saying: “There is more to time and space than the Consortium. There is more than one group of independent—shall we be delicate? Yes? Then: entrepreneurs, let us call them, who would welcome with open arms such a cruiser, armed and shielded by the impeccable wrights in Kerrion employ. A good enough living can be made outside the Consortium, if one is not squeamish, which you cannot afford to be.”
“I would be a criminal.”
“Live criminal, dead citizen.”
“It cannot be. Marada would never have allowed Parma to assume my guardianship if—”
He interrupted her, reaching across the narrow table to lay a hand on her wrist. “Shebat, I will gladly return you to Parma’s arms, if you so decide. I have done the duty conscience demanded of me, that I would owe any guildfellow. More than apprising you of my estimation of your peril, I cannot do.” And he retrieved his hand and with it raised his drink: “To you, to your exquisite innocence. May you prevail in life, no matter how unlikely it presently seems.” And he held out his glass until hers clinked against it. He saw the hunched shoulders, the protective sinking of her head. He had succeeded in terrifying her. He had not even had to lie.
“Marada once said to me,” she confided bitterly, having gulped the whole wineglass as if it were filled with water, “that it is axiomatic that no Kerrion is ever as he seems.” Then she giggled giddily, and tore at the hair flopped again over her eyes. “But I did not think he was including himself in that condemnation.”
Spry’s discomfort was not out of character; he let it show. “I know you care a great deal for him. But he is many things, none of which sleep easily in the same bed: he is a Kerrion; he is second to you in line of primogeniture; and he is a pilot. Our guildsmen are not unjustly famed for relegating sex to a gratuity, love to casual dalliance, and loyalty to their brothers of the sponge.” He smiled a twisted smile. “He is too much a Kerrion to stymie his father’s purpose by annulling his marriage. What have you to hope for there, but a few surreptitious nights stolen from a woman who will hardly miss them, as one of the endless chain of port girls all pilots keep?”
Almost, he left off there. He had to study the bottom of his glass. Insensate cruelty was hardly his specialty.
He heard a series of sad sounds, an almost inaudible mew, a tremulous gulp, a rustle that must be the girl wiping away tears. “By the Jesters, don’t cry over the bastard, Shebat. He hardly deserves it.” And he found himself rounding the table to her and putting his arms protectively around her, so that she could do just that. Why me, Lords? he queried silently, but the many-headed anthropomorphization of Chance made him no reply.
“What shall I do?” she sniffed at last, her face pressed to his dampened shirt.
“Dry your tears, first off. Pilots do not cry over lost lovers; lovers cry over lost pilots. If you are recovered, we will work out the details of this, and then I’ll stake you to a dream dancer. You look as if you could use one.” So delicately was the barbed fly cast upon the waters, the pilot-cum-fisherman could not help but smile. And when the soft little fish with wide eyes and parted lips took the bait, asking on a held breath what a dream dancer might be, he could do nothing but let his humor burst forth into a chuckle, as he promised her that soon enough she would see for herself.
It was then, when he was still congratulating himself on the ease with which things had been accomplished, even thinking that Shebat was not nearly so effective under pressure, nor so bright, as her aptitude testing had proclaimed her, that the girl, pulling away from him, said:
“Softa, will you come with me and tell all this to Parma, right now?”
He did not at all like the way she said it. He answered carefully: “I have taken an oath to be master to your apprentice; that entitles you to the truth from me, and my help if you should come to need it. Parma is my employer: that relationship exacts particular loyalties, it is true, but not enough to make me deliver you into his hands.” Carefully, now, all must be true. He could not afford to lie. A number of strictures binding him with divergent duties must be made to parallel each other. “Shebat, you did not ask me how I knew your bodyguards have not lately been in evidence. Ask me.”
“How, then?” asked the girl with doubting eyes.
“I heard two of them talking over drinks about the foolhardiness of Parma’s office to have recalled them. And I heard it because I had taken pains to be in a place I knew they frequented, because when I could not raise you anywhere in Draconis, when I realized that no one, including the consul general’s office and its intelligence pool, knew where you were, then I knew that the exigencies of my oath were about to be called into play.”
“Your oath to whom?” she breathed, face pale. “If no one has known my whereabouts for three days, then it is safe to assume that Parma does not know it now. Therefore, my ship, my pilot’s training, are not in danger. As to whether or not my life is equally safe, only you can say. Why did you not suggest that I steal the ship myself; why did you bring me down here, rather than coming with me into the Marada, where the security would be at least as good as this?” She waved a hand around her. “Tears, though you tell me not to shed them, have a purpose: they wash out fear and pain and confusion and leave a quiet mind, capable of thinking once again.
“What will you do if I refuse your aid, Master Pilot?” she whispered. “Will you then force me? Am I now in this deepest danger you have predicted so uncannily because you are its source?” Her eyes closed, lids briefly squeezed together as if to block out the specter of betrayal. “Will you hustle me off, notwithstanding my objections, to later sell me back to my family at some exorbitant price? Or is it, as you have so carefully explained, a matter of your guild oath, only not the one you took to me, but that you took to the Kerrion house? I would almost rather believe that Parma has finished with me, than that you would foreswear the pilot’s bond.”
“By the hairy nostrils of Chance!” He could not hold back the exclamation, nor the grin drawing lips back from his teeth. “Let me escort you back to your ship, your family, and your ending. It matters no more to me.” And he stabbed at the seal on the little chamber, causing the door to click and his change to be returned, clattering do
wn a little spiral chute into the plate held suspended beneath it. He scooped up the silver. Without a backward glance he stepped out into a crowded public room, not waiting to see if Shebat followed.
A moment later, a hand closed on his arm from behind. He saw her face through the smoky air, but her voice could not penetrate the din into which the privacy booth had ejected them.
Only when they had threaded their way through the press of second-class citizenry out onto the street, which flickered alternately red and green as the sign advertising the tavern pulsed above their heads, did he hear her desperately pleading that he not be angry.
“Let us go see the dream dancers, Softa, oh please. And then we will talk some more. I need time to think. I am seeing traitors everywhere; it is a common Kerrion curse. Please!”
He stared down at her severely, letting the breath whistle slowly through his nostrils, wondering if he had missed his calling, should not have been an intelligencer for a consular house instead of— “Apology accepted. Though I hardly think a dream dancer will help clear your thoughts—” It was then, as he laid a hand on her slim waist and by it propelled her along the narrow sidewalk, that he saw two hulking shadows detaching themselves from the gloom.
“Shebat, get behind me!” But it was too late. The ragged pair were upon him. In the way of his mind during crises, he had time to think that they were too well-fed and muscular for their station, then to recognize them as Kerrion minions, then to hear them: “You take the girl.” “Suits me.” And also Shebat’s harsh gulp of air, her flat: “I am sorry I doubted you, Softa.”
Then he could see an unshaven chin whose bristles glistened greenly, and the slow-time exploded, fast-forward.
