By now, the motion sensors would have alerted Olafsdottr to activity in the pantry. But he had stayed out of the ambit of the room’s Eye. He reentered the cold well and thence returned to the ward room.
“Well, that was entertaining,” the Fudir said when they had seated himself again at the play deck. “It seems our Ravn is a bit of a tease.”
“She’d be a fool if she hasn’t kept inventory; and the motion alarm will pique her curiosity. It may puzzle her to find the knives all accounted for and the wintermelon assassinated. I can only hope it drives her mad wondering what else might be missing.”
He awoke the holostage and noticed immediately that the files he had been reading were gone. A few minutes of searching failed to relocate them. Not just closed, but gone.
The Fudir stared purse-lipped at the hidden door, now also closed. “A roundabout means to get me away from the console,” he muttered. “She could have waltzed in, held her teaser to my head, and taken the files any time she pleased.”
Something does not add up.
* * *
At dinner that evening, while Donovan ate a concoction of soybeans and bilberries, Olafsdottr announced that they would enter the Abyalon–Megranome Road in four days. Abyalon’s network of Space Traffic Control lasers was already pushing the ship toward the Visser hoop that was its entrance ramp. In the final sprint, the ship’s onboard Alfven engines would engage, grab hold of the “strings of space,” and vault the ship over the bar into the superluminal tube. That would be a bad time to bother the pilot. Were the ship to miss the hole, it would pass Newton’s-c in flat space and go out in a Ĉerenkov blink.
The ancient god Shree Einstein had decreed that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. But he had also decreed that space had no objective existence. And so, since it was no thing, space as such could move faster than light. At this concession, his rival, Shree Maxwell, had loosed his demons, and created convection currents within the æther of Ricci tensors, shaping the network of Krasnikov tubes known as “Electric Avenue.” So while a ship hurtling down such a tube was still constrained by the speed of light, within the tube local-c might be arbitrarily high.
Nor could Shree Einstein see how his commandments had been flouted. The tube walls formed a Visser Skin, laminas of progressively slower space called the subluminal mud, which decoupled the interior causally from normal space. In a sense, a ship in the tube network was no longer “in” the universe, but “underneath.”
All this had been understood in ages past, in the old Commonwealth of Suns; and being understood, had been well engineered; and being well engineered, understanding no longer mattered. The formulas worked, and machines could be taught to work them. That was all a man need know.
* * *
On his return to the ward room, Donovan noticed that a steel bar had been welded to the outer door and, when turned on a pivot, would prevent the door from opening. Donovan raised an eyebrow to his captor.
“Simple means often best,” she announced. “Have not had good night’s sleep since you awoke.”
“If you don’t like my company, you can drop me off at the transit station in Abyalon’s coopers and I’ll catch the next liner back to Die Bold.”
Olafsdottr smiled. “You be a foony man, Doonoovan. I have said soo many times.” Then she ushered him in and closed the door behind him. Donovan heard the steel bar slide into place. A metric minute later, the door opened again and Olafsdottr stuck her head in. “Peekaboo,” she said. “Joost checking you stay poot.” She grinned, closed the door, and shortly the steel bar slid into place a second time.
The Fudir arranged pillows on the bunk and pulled the sheets up over them. Then he took up a station in the corner beside the hidden door and waited.
One reason why the scarred man excelled at the game of waiting was that most of him could sleep while the rest took turns on guard. Inner Child and the Brute stood sentry while the Silky Voice marshaled and concentrated the requisite enzymes. Genistein and isoflavonoids from the soybeans, anthocyanocides from the bilberries, she sent them off to fortify the night vision of the retinal rods. It would not be fair to say the scarred man could see in the dark, but “you are what you eat,” and it would not be right to call him blind, either.
After some time had gone by and the night was well advanced, the door slid open and Inner Child nudged the Fudir awake. A figure slipped into the room, paused to assess motion, and flowed swiftly toward the bed on which the scarred man ought to have been lying.
Partway there, it paused in watchful silence and the Fudir noted a club of some sort in its hand. Then, apparently satisfied, it backed away and strode to the holostage, where it seated itself at the play deck. The scarred man slipped up behind it in the dark and placed one hand over its mouth and with the other plucked the club from its hand.
“Rigardo-ji Edelwasser, I presume,” he whispered into its ear.
Donovan felt the man stiffen, try to turn. “Nu, nu, nu,” he said with the Silky Voice. “Gentle, my good sir. Be not afraid. You are Rigardo-ji, the Rightful Owner of this vessel? Nod your head.” The head bobbed once in his grip. “I will release you, but you must make no move nor cry. I have destroyed all the Eyes in this room, citing my modesty, and she has assented by not replacing them. But we will speak in whispers, in case she has salted this room with Ears. She is accustomed to my self-conversations, but speak too loudly and she might wonder if I speak with too many voices. Do you understand?”
Again, a single, spastic nod of the head.
“Good, good. We are in the same boat, you and we. There is no need to struggle.”
When Donovan unloosed his hold, Rigardo-ji turned to face him. “Are you a madman? I’ve been watching, and I think you are mad. That’s why she locks you in here.”
“Wouldn’t that make you mad? Why have you been lurking in the wainscoting all this time?”
“Am I a fool? A poor, honest smuggler, me, just trying to make a living. I’d been drinking and, when I heard her bang through the lock, I hid in one of my…”
“One of your hidey-holes. Go on.”
He shrugged. “And I passed out. Came to after we were under way. Guess she never realized I was still aboard. I figured out what she was, toot sweet, and I ain’t no match for a Confederal Shadow. I didn’t dare try to take her on myself. ’Sides…” The smuggler flipped his hands. “She was going the right direction, so there wasn’t no rush. I come out now and then just to check the headings. I figured if I just waited, something would come up.”
“And something did.”
“Yeah. You.”
“But you’re not sure about me, or you would have approached me sooner.”
“It was pretty clear you were her prisoner. That made you her enemy, but it didn’t make you my friend. For all I knew, you were Confederal bound too, and you’d gang up on me if I showed myself. I overheard some of what you two was saying, but I don’t speak birdsong, and I wasn’t always where I could eavesdrop.”
Donovan considered the man before him. He could see, even in the dim-lit darkness, the tightness of his mouth and eyes. “Why come out tonight?”
“I thought … it was time we made contact.”
Liar, the Sleuth said. He checked the bunk to make sure we were sleeping—and had a club in case we weren’t. But Donovan only said, “You didn’t wake me. You went to the console.”
“I’ve been dead reckoning. I needed to check our position, and it’s safer to do that here than in the control room. I been out a coupla times, but sometimes I have to cross a hallway and that sets off her damn motion sensors. How does she bear? The ship, I mean.”
“Four days out from the Megranome Road.”
“Oh.” The smuggler’s concern was palpable. “That ain’t good. We need to take the Biemtí to the Cynthia Cluster.”
“To deliver a geegaw to the Molnar.”
Donovan felt hesitation in the smuggler�
��s posture.
“You read through my work orders,” Rigardo-ji said. “I thought I snatched them in time. Look, that’s top secret—need-to-know—and the penalty clauses Foreganger lays down…”
The Brute tightened his grip on the smuggler. “Keep the voice down, I toldja.” Then Donovan said, “I promise not to tell the People. I scanned your current invoices, to see if you had anything aboard I could use as a weapon. Short of breaking a vase over her head, I didn’t find anything.”
“There may be something we can use,” the smuggler allowed. “I can read between the lines when I gotta. With two of us, we got a chance. I’ll go get it out. Then you distract the ’Fed, and I pot her. No offense, good buddy, but you’ve had three chances already to kill her and passed up each one.”
Donovan thought about it and reluctantly agreed that the roles had to split that way. If Rigardo-ji suddenly appeared from nowhere, Olafsdottr would recognize it precisely as a distraction and the element of surprise would be irretrievably lost.
“You’ll only get one shot,” Donovan said.
“I’ll only need one. But it’s got to take her by surprise. I woulda tried something already, but I got no illusions. A microsecond’s warning, and I wouldn’t even get the one shot.”
Donovan did not know how good a shot the smuggler might be. Many an eye and hand, steady on the range, grew uncertain when a living person was in the target hairs. Rigardo-ji sat rigid, Donovan’s arms upon him, eyes wide, stinking of sweat. Slowly, as if disengaging, the scarred man released him, stepped back.
“It will have to be soon,” he said. “Before we enter the Roads.” And before you lose your nerve. He did not voice that thought.
“Tomorrow,” the man said. “After dinner. There’s a T-intersection where…”
“I know it.” It was where the false alarm had been tripped the other day.
“There’s a storage space behind the cross hall. Sometimes, they bring containers up the long hallway, and I open the panel and they dolly them straight in. It’s empty right now. I can make my way into it. You come past, turn up the long hall like you do. Your backs are to the panel. You get her to stand still. I slide the panel open and…” He made a gun of his fingers. “Pop. Pop. I got her.”
Donovan said nothing, and after a moment the smuggler looked at his fingers and self-consciously wiggled them, as if throwing the imaginary gun away. “That’s the important thing,” he said. “You gotta distract her while I open the panel or else she’ll hear it. I mean these are cargo doors; they ain’t exactly stealthed.”
“In the back,” Donovan said.
“Safer that way, don’t you think? I don’t wanna give her the chance. Confederal Shadows, they’re ruthless. I’ve read the stories.”
“Do you have something nonlethal, something to disable her instead? I know some people on Dangchao who wouldn’t mind getting her as a sort of house present when I visit.”
“Who do you know that would keep a Confederation agent as a house pet?”
“People who ask Questions.”
Rigardo-ji shrank from him and made Ganesha’s sign to ward off bad luck. “I shoulda known you was no ordinary prisoner. Yeah. Yeah, sure. There’s something in my stock. It’ll knock her out, but not kill her, if that’s what you want.”
Inner Child heard the scraping of a steel bar. “
The smuggler vanished like smoke. The panel beside the holostage clicked shut. Donovan threw himself into one of the chairs and sat twisted on the cushions.
Olafsdottr opened the ward room’s door and entered just behind her teaser. Her left hand slapped the lights on and Donovan pretended to be flustered by the sudden light. He raised his head, as if he had been dozing in the chair, and shielded his eyes with his arm.
The Shadow looked about the room, grinned, and said, “Good night, Doonoovan-buoy. You have a very crowded head, boot noo moor whisper. Sleep tight.”
* * *
The next day ran slow. Donovan read a book from the ship’s virtual library, but afterward he could not have explained what it was about. He participated in a simulation of the battle of Mushinro, taking the part of the doomed Valencian general Kick. It was widely assumed that Kick had the battle won and it was only his hesitation at a crucial juncture that had permitted the victory by the Ramage-led coalition. But Donovan’s attention was not on the simulation and his own hesitation at a different juncture lost the battle yet again. Only when the dinner hour at last approached, did the scarred man realize the root of his unease.
He did not trust the smuggler, Rigardo-ji.
It was a small thing, but the devil, it was said, lurked ever in the details. There had been a hint of thuggishness beneath the fear, and there had been that moment when, simulating a gun with his fingers, Edelwasser had said, “Pop. Pop.”
Two shots.
A second shot just to make sure? Or a second shot to tie up the other loose end?
* * *
Last meals, it is said, are consumed with greater gusto than any other. Dinner conversation ranged from the various modes of mayhem he and Ravn had mastered to the craft with which Aloysh-pandit arranged colored oils on the surface of still pools. Were it not for the fact that Ravn was dragging him into a civil war of which he wanted no part and in which he would likely find his doom, he would have found her an agreeable companion.
On the other hand, years before, she had been tasked to kill him if he failed his mission. A close relationship, an intimate relationship; but not a cuddly one. Olafsdottr had a most pleasant smile. But she would smile while she cut him down.
They left the refectory together and walked down the short hallway in their usual parade: Donovan to the fore, Olafsdottr behind with her teaser to the ready. She no longer held it shoved into his back, but neither had she relaxed to the point of shoving it into her holster. “But I suggest you are wrong, sweet,” she said, continuing their conversation as if they had been amiable companions on a stroll. “The Roomie tradition of opera was much too bombastic. Their drama was too melo. The Nipny tradition was more spare, more elegant, more minimal.”
The scarred man allowed the Pedant to hold up the other end of the conversation. “You misunderstand the criteria. Grand opera and Nō have not the same objectives. One may as well assail the lemon for lacking the sweet of sugar cane. Each may excel—but toward different ends. It is only the values we place on the ends themselves that make one means seem less than the other.”
“Ah, but sweet, are not the weights we place upon our goals what matter most in the end?”
They had reached the T-intersection and had turned down the long stem of it. Donovan paused and said, “For me, the overthrow of the Names pales against one hour with my daughter in her home.” When he closed his eyes, he saw Méarana’s face before him, puzzled and hurt. He turned and faced his captor. “Make me one promise, Ravn.”
Olafsdottr stopped a pace short of him and tilted her head, birdlike, to the side. “And what is that, my sweet?”
“Promise me that if I go with you, you will go to Dangchao afterward and tell Francine Thompson and her daughter Lucia why it was I never came.”
“I am to walk into the enemy’s lair on such a lark? You ask much of me, Donovan buigh.”
Indeed, he was. He could see down the length of the corridor the blank wall where the secret panel must be. The expression “fish in a barrel” came to mind. Rigardo-ji would have a clear shot down the entire length of the corridor, all the way to the cargo lock at the end. No one in the corridor could escape, unless they made it to the ward room, or into the closet where he had first been kept.
And that included him. A steady eye might pick off the Confederal without also hitting her prisoner, but Donovan knew in that moment of clarity that the smuggler meant to kill them both.
“Let’s go,” Donovan said, turning to resume their trek.
<
br /> Perversely, it was now Olafsdottr who held him back. “What is the hurry, Doonoovan? You ask me to venture into the heart of the Oold Planets to accost a Hound? From sooch a joorney even I may not return.”
“Fair is fair, then. Isn’t that what you’re asking of me?”
“Ah, but I am not asking. Your condition is not a conditional.”
Donovan could not take his eyes off the wall at the far end. He waited for the panel to open and death to emerge. “We can discuss this in my room,” he said.
And still, like an ancient hero, ankle tied to a stake in the ground, Olafsdottr remained in the line of fire. “Ooh. Soo anxious! Do you have a trap led for me in your room? What cleverness have you been oop to?”
But then she noticed that his attention was fixed not upon her, but upon the far wall. She spun and aimed her teaser down the hallway. “What is it, sweet? What wickedness have you wrought?”
In turning away, she had turned her back on Donovan buigh. The Brute took charge of the scarred man’s body and leapt for her. She buckled under his sudden weight and went to her belly and the breath woofed out of her. A moment, she lay still; and then she twitched and Donovan felt a burning tingle in his side.
* * *
And came to lying on the cramped bunk in the ward room. Olafsdottr sat, chin cupped in one hand, in one of the two soft chairs that gave the room its center. “Clever move, O best one. How you lulled me these past days! And had I lost my grip either on my teaser or my wits, success might have been yours. That would have been no good thing, either for me or for you.”
She leaned forward and patted Donovan’s cheek, and when he struggled to grab her arm he learned that he was strapped into the bunk. “You stay here some few day, I think. Review error of ways. Soon we enter Abyalon-Megranome Road. You no jog elbow.”
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