The Tomorrow Log and Dragon Tide

by Sharon Lee

  "I am dead!" she cried, echoing his thought, and he cried out, "Live!" so that she turned her face to him again, eyes pulled wide in wonder.

  He held her eyes with his; repeated it with every nuance of command possible: "Live, Corbinye!" And, then, because it smacked of magic, said that way: "Please."

  Almost, she smiled. And then the door in the room beyond whisked open and a brisk voice was saying, "Here, here, here! What's this, lights on! You, sir, whatever can you be thinking of! This young lady needs her rest and you—What!" The nurse bent and straightened, holding the mirror out in accusation.

  "Really, sir."

  "She asked to see," said Gem. "She had to see, sometime."

  "And would have seen, in due time," the nurse snapped, touching a stud on her belt. "I'll have to ask you to leave; it's time for Corbinye to have a nap."

  The hand he held had stiffened; from the other room came the sound of the door opening once more.

  "Come along, sir," the nurse said sharply. "You've done enough damage for one day."

  "Anjemalti," Corbinye's voice was a thready whisper. "Anjemalti, do not leave me here."

  "I must." He laid her hand down. "You require aid—assistance in learning. I will come again to see you." He hesitated. "May I have your kiss?"

  It was a trap, of course, enclosing them both. He saw her understand that, through the layers of terror and grief; saw still the indecision.

  "Cousin," he said; and, "please."

  "My kiss," she agreed, weakly. "Come back for me, cousin."

  "Of course." He bent and laid his lips against hers, very lightly; touched her cheek and rose. Sidestepping the nurse, he found Coral Jancy waiting for him in the anteroom, frowning and tapping her foot.

  Her displeasure was so great that she said nothing to him during the long trip to the front door; and never smiled at all.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "The object is called the Bindalche Trident." Saxony Belaconto sat behind the teak-wood desk, hands folded on the satiny surface, aquamarine eyes wary and arrogant.

  Gem, sitting on a wooden chair more aesthetically than physically pleasing, said nothing, though he allowed his face to express polite interest.

  "The Trident," she continued after a moment, "is currently in the possession of Jarge Menlin, where it has been for the past eighteen months. It is against the Vornet's interest that he remain any longer as caretaker."

  Gem shrugged. "It appears you need a sharpshooter, lady; not a thief."

  She frowned; the light from the window showed lines in her face which had not been there two days before.

  "Jarge Menlin is an influential man," she said; "and an occasionally useful one. The Vornet prefers to allow him to live."

  "Lacking only the Bindalche Trident."

  Her frown deepened. "Do not bait me, Master ser Edreth. Did you visit your cousin?"

  "I did."

  "Then you know the stakes."

  He said nothing, and after a moment she continued her tale.

  "The Trident will be in my hands no later than First Dawn, Obret eighteenth."

  Seven days! He did not allow dismay to show in either face or voice.

  "I will need certain information," he said to her, coolly, hearing Edreth behind every word. "I require a description of the object—length, mass, configuration—a sketch, holograph or photo would aid the task considerably. I require details regarding the layout of the house, most especially the room where the Trident is kept. I require a timetable, describing Jarge Menlin's routine, if he has one; and also a detailed description of all alarms, guards and house residents."

  She nodded. "The Vornet can provide these things. But I will mention to you, Master ser Edreth, that there is no certainty that Menlin keeps the Trident in his house."

  Of course not. "A compilation, also, of places he frequents, offices or residences away from his main house." He considered. "Ships, if he owns or part-owns any; warehouse space; mechanic's shed."

  Again, her nod. "These will be provided, as well. Is there more?"

  "Yes," he heard himself say, with vast astonishment. "I will have your agreement that you will release my kin to me at the same moment I put the Trident in your hand. You will cease to remember that either of us exists and you will call upon me for no further service."

  She looked amused. "Of course, you cousin is yours to take, as soon as our agreement is fulfilled. She's of no use to me."

  Gem leaned forward. "And the rest?"

  "The rest?" Her amusement grew. "The Vornet claims service from whomever will serve them best, Master ser Edreth. It may happen we will need a thief again."

  He stared at her for a long moment, until some of the laughter left her eyes and the lines settled again in her face.

  "Do not bait me, Saxony Belaconto," he said softly, wondering how he dared it. "You may find the stakes not to your liking."

  Unease now in the handsome eyes. She put her hands flat upon the desktop and stood. He rose at the same instant.

  "You are dismissed," she said, sharply. "The information you have requested will be brought to your home this evening."

  "Thank you," he said gently, recalling Corbinye, lying alone in the dark; and turned and walked away.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She lay for a long time, eyes straining against the blackness, ears stretched for any sound.

  Satisfied at last that the room was empty, she pushed the blanket away, curled round on her side, slid her legs over the edge of the bed and lay for a moment, panting.

  Sternly, she squirmed into a sitting position, got her feet solidly under her and pushed herself upright.

  The first attempt was hopeless—and the second—her knees buckled before they ever straightened, and she bounced on the edge of the bed, teeth drawing blood from her lower lip.

  On the fifth try, she was standing, trembling in every limb, gasping as if she had just completed a Class Ten sequence. She waited until the trembling eased somewhat before sliding her right foot forward and cautiously drawing the left after; and then again; and then a third time, which bought her disaster.

  In her mind, Corbinye flung her arms out to break the fall; in actuality, she slapped face-first into the carpet, and lay swearing into the nap until the sound of the lilting stranger's voice wrapped around the familiar phrases silenced her.

  Grimly, she got to her knees; tried from there to gain her feet and, when she fell again, began to crawl.

  She found the wall by running her head into it, and clawed her way upright, feeling about for the light switch. By luck, she located the knob immediately, and twisted it until it would go no further, flooding the room with light.

  Then, she stood, quaking, braced against the wall, staring at the room and all there was in it, while the tears ran her face and splashed on her breasts.

  Startled, she looked down at herself; raised soft stranger-hands to cup golden breasts fuller than hers had been, even in pregnancy. Cautiously, for by her reckoning the nurse was due soon, and she dared not risk another fall; Corbinye craned to see the rest of this stupid lump of a body, with its milk-toast muscles and lack of reaction.

  Breasts—hopelessly huge—a slim torso flaring to rounded hips; long slender legs; shapely feet. She moved a hand, cross-body; felt of her upper arm—and was agreeably surprised to find muscle there, after all; firm under the velvet skin. Wishing for the lost mirror, she ran her hand across the flat belly; down the tight waist; over the firm backside—and felt a flicker of hope. Not the body of a fighter, no. Certainly not the body she had worked and trained so hard. But one that had known some sort of work; so Corbinye was left a legacy of basic fitness upon which to build.

  Abruptly, she wondered about the woman who had been here before her—what sort of work she had done; why she had died. And then the door to the outer room whisked open and wonder fled.

  Corbinye straightened away from the wall; holding knees and back straight by force of will alone.

  The
nurse flicked the curtain aside, hand continuing across the wall toward the switch before she realized that the room was already lit.

  "What—" she began and then froze, eyes on the empty bed.

  "Good-day to you," Corbinye said politely, and the nurse jumped a foot, hand lifting to her throat.

  "How did you get over here?" she demanded.

  Corbinye stared at her. "How do adult persons normally cross the room?" Carefully, she inclined her head toward the needle the other woman held. "I do not want that."

  The nurse had recovered her countenance, if not her courage. "It's time for your nap."

  "I am not in the least tired," Corbinye lied; "and I require no drugs to induce sleep. What I do require is clothing; and a full-length mirror; and a pitcher of water." She paused. "And some cheese."

  The nurse eyed her in fascination. "You're hungry?"

  "You have my requirements," Corbinye said coldly. "See to them."

  The nurse glanced away, slid forward half-a-step, thumbing the trip on the needle.

  "If you try to put that into me," Corbinye said conversationally, "I will break your arm."

  The nurse licked her lips; apparently thought better of her act of valor and stepped carefully backward, keeping her eyes on Corbinye. Reaching behind, she clawed the curtain out of her way and ducked into the other room.

  After a moment, Corbinye heard the door open, and then shut.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gem stood in the wreckage of his workroom, straddling the voltmeter, one hip braced against the tool bench, fingers tapping the tiny buttons on the wrist telltale.

  There had been fourteen. He had two alive in his pocket, and the mangled corpse Corbinye had brought him. Eleven were yet unaccounted for.

  At his feet—a rustle, a shift of small debris—and two spiders struggled into the open; gained his boots, and then his trouser-leg; began the long climb to safety.

  There was a stir from the far ceiling-corner. Then, slowly riding the payline down to the floor, came a spider, slightly larger than the first two; chip eyes glowing dark purple. Gem grinned. Number Eleven, genius among his kind, was working his way home.

  From behind him, a sudden scrabbling, and he glanced at the table top to see Numbers Six and Twelve marching purposefully forward as Number Four—Eleven's twin brother—emerged from the protection of a smashed lamp and scurried to join them.

  Gem waited while his companions gained his person by their various routes; touched the telltale again, and waited.

  No more tiny robots came to answer that summons. Gem sighed deeply, and shook his head. Eight remaining. And only by the grace of sheerest luck were Numbers Four and Eleven among them.

  He devoted three minutes to cursing the Vornet and Saxony Belaconto in terms Edreth would have deplored and Corbinye applauded. Then, spiders sitting on his shoulder and clutching his hair, he rolled up his sleeves and began to put order back into his place.

  Well into the night, order restored, with Number Fifteen half-assembled on the worktable, there came the chime of the outside annunciator.

  Gem looked up from his work, blinking.

  The chime sounded again, and he sighed, pushed away from the table and made his way to the door, surefooted in the dark.

  The street was empty when he opened the door. On the threshold was a package wrapped in thick buff paper and tied with a silver cord.

  Gem bent to pick the thing up—and checked as a spider launched itself, trailing a silken parachute, and landed on the silver cord, eyes glittering amethyst.

  Quickly, Number Eleven circumnavigated the package and returned to the cord, as the telltale on the man's wrist beeped three times.

  "All safe," murmured Gem and extended his hand to the robot, which climbed aboard and scurried up his arm, shoulderward. "Thank you," Gem added, picking up the package and shutting the door.

  * * *

  Jarge Menlin had been a courier, carrying messages, currency and other necessities for various Vornet chieftains and even a few "respectable" businesses. Sometimes, his contracts took him off-planet—there was a list of the pilots and ships he most often employed on these trips—and sometimes an off-planet customer would specify Jarge for a certain job. He was known for being discreet, competent and—unusual for one in his line of work—painstakingly honest with his customer.

  The picture, Gem thought, scanning quickly through the dossier provided by the Vornet, was of a man successful at his trade, and perhaps even rising toward a sort of chieftainhood of his own. Forty was old for a courier, yet Jarge Menlin had achieved that age and showed no sign of faltering in the disfavor of the powerful.

  Eighteen months ago, Jarge Menlin vanished.

  It was thought at first, of course, that he was merely traveling on behalf of some client or another. But time passed, and people began remarking that Jarge had never been gone so long before. The Vornet used other couriers, some of whom fell by the wayside, to be replaced by still others.

  A year gone, Jarge Menlin returned, bought a house in the fashionable part of UpTown, bought a warehouse at the port and leased a hotpad in the portion of the Yards reserved for deep-space vessels. He refused all commissions for courier work (And how, wondered Gem, had he made that stick?), renewed his acquaintances among Henron's freelance drug-lords and several months later astonished them all by offering hesernym in bulk from a seemingly unending supply.

  There followed here a detailed layout of Menlin's house, with alarm-schemes and several time-studies, and a brief notation about a bodyguard. Gem put those aside for later study and picked up the next page.

  The Bindalche, he quickly learned, were a loose affiliation of barbarians occupying three worlds in the Spangiln System. The queen-world was Bindal, and it was here—and only here—that the tremillan flowers from which hesernym is extracted grew.

  Previous attempts to deal with the Bindalche had resulted in ambassadorial massacre; attempts to duplicate the hesernym affect artificially simply failed. For the fifty years since its discovery, hesernym had remained the emperor of drugs—virtually unobtainable; staggeringly expensive when available at all.

  Until Jarge Menlin, thought Gem, flipping through several sheets for a description of the Bindalche Trident.

  There was better—clipped to the last page was a flat-photo. Gem frowned. The Bindalche Trident was roughly six feet long; seemingly hewn from wood, set all around with pebbles and shells and, and—he groped along the table top, found the loupe and screwed it into place.

  Circuitry. Bits and blasted fragments of circuit-wires were set into the irregular surface, whorling artistically around the shells, nuts, transistors, capacitors and jewels. Gem took the glass out of his eye and flipped the pages back.

  The Bindalche Trident, according to the Vornet's information, was an artifact of power. It had not been observed functioning in any manner; it did not seem to generate or gather energy. However, all Bindalche revered Trident and Trident-Bearer, for reasons the Vornet had either been unable to discover or was disinclined to share. Most important, from the point of view of the reporter, was the fact that, as an act of reverence, the Bearer was tithed in hesernym.

  In as much hesernym, it appeared, as he wanted.

  Gem laid the last sheet down, tamped the edges and tied the pages together with the silver cord. Absently, he picked up the whisker-tool and bent over the emerging Number Fifteen, face blank in concentration.

  Two hours later, with Second Dawn lighting every corner of the kitchen, Gem fixed himself a cup of tea and watched the new spider cavort and spin and finally climb dizzily up a sleeve and into a shirt pocket.

  Gem sipped his tea, considering the information he had—and the information he did not have. Saxony Belaconto wanted the Bindalche Trident, thus it followed that she had provided the most complete information at her disposal. And, where it dealt with Jarge Menlin and his effects, this was substantial.

  Where he sensed a lack was within the body of information regardi
ng the Trident itself. It had the feel of an object powerful in its own right. Many of the so-called "magical" items cataloged in Shilban's library had the same feeling of presence; of the most powerful, the aura most often described was that almost of sentience.

  Gem shivered and drank his tea slowly, while intuition spun its web of what-if, and thief's necessity uneasily sorted the data, over and over. And, in the end, found it insufficient.

  Grimly, knowing it had to be done, for the debt he owed Corbinye, if not for his own life and body; Gem left his house to travel cross town and Up; and up one level more, to OldTown and Shilban's Library.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The intercom buzzed and Saxony Belaconto looked up with a frown.

  "Well?" she demanded.

  "I'm sorry to disturb you, Ms. Belaconto," her secretary said hurriedly, "but I have Dr. Walney on the line. He says it's urgent."

  The director of the Blue House. Her frown deepened. "Put him through."

  "Yes, ma'am," her secretary murmured; and Fel Walney's deep voice rumbled nervously through the speaker.

  "Ms. Belaconto?"

  "Dr. Walney," she returned calmly. "What can I do for you today?"

  "Morning, ma'am! Morning! Terribly sorry to bother you and all that—know how busy you must be. Thing is, my records indicate that you are the person responsible for Corbinye Faztherot." His voice trailed off on an unmistakable query-note.

  "That's right." She hesitated. "Has something happened to her?"

  "Oh, nonono—nothing like that, ma'am! It's just that she seems to be doing—aah—much better than anticipated, and—aah—is putting a little strain on the staff. Regulations, you understand, ma'am, and, after all, we do have a planned procedure—and, well, it just seems best to us that you come and—aah—perhaps bring her home. We'll be happy to detach a nurse, of course—"

  "Dr. Walney."

  Silence, then a creak, which may have been him shifting in his chair. "Ma'am?"

  "I have a contract with your Center, sir. It specifically includes domiciliary care and physical therapy for my—ward—until she is fit to re-enter the world. Am I to understand that Ms. Faztherot is, at this early day, fit to re-enter the world?"