The January Dancer

by Michael Flynn

  Greystroke did not so much as blink. Off to the Hadramoo! the passing bicyclist had cried as Fudir had led him up New Street Hill. He glanced again at the screen O’Carroll was reading. No, the man did not expect renewal. Off to the Hadramoo? Were they mad? Or planning a career move…? He tried to imagine the two men as pirates. Fudir, he thought, could pull it off, but not Hugh. Piracy required a certain degree of thoughtlessness. “Yes,” he ventured, “Fudir said something about that.”

  “He told you, did he?”

  “Only in passing. He said that once he’s done giving his testimony, he plans to go to the Hadramoo and…” By artfully slowing his cadence, he left a hesitation at the end for O’Carroll to fill.

  “And get that fool statue back from the rievers.” O’Carroll laughed and shook his head.

  Greystroke concealed his satisfaction. His perplexity was another matter. “You didn’t reach New Eireann until after the Cynthians had gone. How could they have taken his…”

  “Oh, it wasn’t his. He went there to get his hands on it, but the pirates beat him to it. He was going to smuggle me back on-planet, and I would get him into Cargo House. That was our quid pro quo. He’s a romantic; a believer in fables.”

  Greystroke recalled what he had overheard when he met with the Committee of Seven on Jehovah.

  Perhaps the Fudir was right about the Twisting Stone…

  He understood now. The Fudir had been planning to steal this statue—the Twisting Stone?—to sell to some wealthy art collector on Jehovah who had commissioned the theft. Such petty criminality was hardly worth a Pup’s effort but, technically, inter-system crime fell within the Kennel’s jurisdiction, and who knew? Shake a tree, and low-hanging fruit might drop in your lap. Greystroke had been born on Krinth, where Fate ruled all, and the random concatenations of the universe always worked to an end. As a youth, he had thrown the yarrow stalks, rolled the urim and the thummin, cast the horoscope, spattered the rorshacks, and always the runes had yielded a meaning—or could have a meaning read into them—but what it came down to in the end was that if you didn’t shake the tree, you’d never get the fruit.

  “A believer in fables…?” he prompted.

  “Oh, the statue is a prehuman one, and has a tale associated with it.”

  “They all do. It must be very valuable.”

  “Sure, and it was. January—he was the tramp captain we shipped with. He found it way out in the back of beyond, if you can believe him—oh, maybe a dozen fortnights ago. But he had to trade it to Jumdar in exchange for ship repairs and a percentage of the eventual price. The barbarians took it from her.”

  “Are the Kinlé Hadramoo art lovers, then?” Greystroke asked.

  O’Carroll flipped his hands. “They do love splendor; but from what I’ve been told, this Dancer is not very splendid. January said it looked like a sandstone brick, when it wasn’t twisting itself into a pretzel.” O’Carroll laughed. “There was a replica of the Ourobouros Circuit in the vault—a much prettier prize, if you ask me, though a man might get dizzy looking at it—but the rievers didn’t take it.”

  “Well, a replica isn’t valuable like an original. The ICC must have adopted the Circuit as a corporate symbol. I’ve seen copies of it in several of their facilities.”

  “Considering what they paid House of Chan, they had to do something with it. Isn’t Lady Cargo a collector of prehuman artifacts?”

  “I’ve heard that she has a private museum on Dalhousie Estates.” And Greystroke suddenly flashed on the Molnar, garish in his jewels and mascara, repeating the ICC factor’s boasts. They “would settle things in Cynthia, now that they had the Twister.” So the barbarians had not grabbed the statue in passing. They had gone to New Eireann intending to snatch it. The Molnar had thought it a weapons system, and must have been greatly disappointed to find only a statue, and an unlovely one, at that.

  Yet, why should the ICC factor have made such a boast? Greystroke could not imagine that the unruly clans of the Cynthia Cluster would submit to ICC dictates simply because Sèan Company held an impressive art collection.

  The mystery deepened that evening, when the intelligence alerted him to a whispered argument between the Fudir and O’Carroll. It had begun in the library and resumed when the Fudir had followed the younger man to his room. There, he had turned on the player, setting a round of Drak choral singing to high volume. The intelligence dutifully subtracted the music, and though it was unable to reconstruct most of the argument, the fragments it did recover were enough to reveal the gist of it. The Fudir was angry that O’Carroll had mentioned the Twister to Greystroke, and O’Carroll seemed amused at the anger.

  ’Tis but a fable, the Oriel manager had said.

  We can’t take that chance. If it’s true, and the Cynthians learn—

  —a matter for the Hounds—

  And No! the Fudir had cried, incautiously overriding the intricate motet with which he had tried to blanket the words. Olafsson’s no Pup. He’s a Confederate agent! If this fell into Confederate hands, it would doom the League.

  Greystroke considered that comment—and the Fudir’s loyalties—for some time before retiring.

  The next day, Greystroke hosted a meal for his two passengers, during which he laid some of his cards on the table. The meat was a filet of Nolan’s Beast, a form of bison peculiar to Dangchao Waypoint, a dependency of Die Bold, and simulated by the intelligence from the protein vats. But the savor of any meat lies in the sauce, and that Greystroke had prepared himself from a roux of elderberry and mango from his own reserve. He served a black wine with the meal—Midnight Rose—and offered with it a toast: “On to the Hadramoo!”

  The Fudir did not lift his glass. Instead, he gave O’Carroll a venomous glance. “Hadramoo’s not the healthiest place for travel,” he grumbled.

  “Perhaps not, but certainly a place from which to recover stolen goods.”

  The Fudir indicated O’Carroll. “He told you about January’s Dancer.”

  “Some. The ship’s library filled in a bit more. King Stonewall’s Scepter. Do you really think it confers the power of obedience?”

  “He does,” said O’Carroll, hooking a thumb at the Terran.

  “But if it is true,” Greystroke said, fixing the Fudir with his glance, “it’s too dangerous to remain in the hands of the barbarians. Sooner or later, one of them may read a book.”

  “Small risk of that,” said the Fudir, “but even more dangerous for you to have it.”

  “Meaning the Confederacy. Have you forgotten your duty?”

  The Fudir drew himself up stiff in his chair. “Dao Chetty oppresses my homeworld. I don’t want your reach to cross the Rift. Does that sound foolish and sentimental to you, Olafsson? Well, I’m foolish and sentimental.”

  “He is,” agreed O’Carroll, but the Fudir stifled him with a glare.

  “It does sound foolish,” Greystroke admitted, “to say such things to my face.”

  “I might have led you to Donovan,” the Terran continued. “He dropped his coat years ago, but I might have led you to the man who could have led you to…But no matter. Whatever business you had with him, I will not permit you to go after the Dancer.”

  Greystroke had relaxed into his seat at this tirade; now he permitted himself a smile. “You will not permit me? Do you think your permission would mean much to Those of Name?”

  “Well,” said O’Carroll mildly, “he’d have my help.”

  Greystroke blinked at him, then allowed himself a hearty laugh. “All right,” he said when he had wiped the amusement from his eyes. He was satisfied now about the two men. “Let me ease your mind.” And he reached into his pocket and brought forth his badge. The opal glowed a bright yellow.

  The Fudir gave it only a glance. “I know a tinsmith in Bitterroot Alley who can cobble a better badge than that one.”

  “May I?” said O’Carroll. Greystroke allowed him to handle the badge and the opal faded to a smoky gray.

  “By the Fates,
” Greystroke said, “the criminal mind is a slow one! Didn’t you wonder how I could masque myself as a Pup so quickly?”

  “My mind was paralyzed,” the Fudir confessed, “at the terror of the Names.” Hugh choked on a swallow of wine and coughed it out. He handed the badge back to Greystroke. “I believe him,” he told the Fudir. “I think he really is a Pup.”

  The Fudir pursed his lips. “You were very convincing,” he told Greystroke, “as a Confederate agent…Alright, so you’re a Pup. What should we call you? Not Olafsson, I hope.”

  “My office-name is Greystroke.”

  “So. And what happened to the real Olafsson?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not really; but what about the Other Olafsson? They travel in pairs, I’ve heard.”

  “I’ve been watchful. There’s been…little sign of him.”

  “Probably won’t be more than that until it’s too much.”

  “I’ll be careful.” Greystroke finished his goblet of black wine and set it down. “I have a proposal to make.”

  The Fudir, who had not touched his meal for some minutes, picked up his fork. “And what proposal is that?”

  “I go with you to the Hadramoo, and you help me take the Twisting Stone from the Cynthians.”

  Hugh choked again on his wine. “Three of us,” he said when he had recovered, “against an entire barbarian horde?”

  Greystroke considered the matter. “We could use one or two others,” he admitted.

  The Fudir grinned around a mouthful of food. “No, the Pup’s right, Hugh. We’d never take it by main force. We’ll have to go by stealth and trickery. And who better than a thief, a guerilla, and the man that no one sees?”

  At Jehovah, Greystroke left his ship in parking orbit and he and his two deputies took the bumboat planetside. There, he sent them to secure lodging at the Hostel while he reported to the Port Captain.

  Because they were on the Pup’s ducat, Hugh took a three-room suite at the Hostel, and he and the Fudir spent an hour preparing lists of supplies they would need for the Hadramoo venture. Hugh laid out a work structure breakdown and schedule with budgets and resources. He calculated the demand rate of three people for water, food, air, and other necessities, multiplied by the likely lead times for resupply at various ports of call, and applied a safety factor. He even included reasonable stocks of weaponry and ammunition. They planned to talk their way in and talk their way out, but it was just possible they might have to fight their way one direction or the other. He was in his milieu, and the Fudir was impressed.

  “I was being groomed for a planetary manager position,” Hugh reminded him, “long before I took up the guerilla’s trade.”

  When they were satisfied with the plan, the Fudir told Hugh to head over to Greengrow Street. “That’s where the wholesalers and outfitters have their entrepots. Do you know how to find it? Get a positioning wristband. No, don’t depend on the ’rickshaw drivers. They’ll take you three ways around the barn. Don’t worry about the cost. The Kennel has deep pockets. But don’t buy anything until I get there. These Jehovan dukndars will cheat you blind and short you on your change just for the practice. You may be an assassin, but you’re too honest a man to deal with the likes of them.”

  Hugh saved the list and slid the stylus into its sheath. “And what will you be doing the while?”

  “I’ve business in the Corner to attend to, for the Pup.”

  “He trusts you not to run off on him?”

  “We’ve an understanding. Apparently, ships have been disappearing in the Rift. Greystroke’s boss thought the ’Feds were impounding them for some reason. Then they learned from a courier that the ’Feds have been losing ships, too, and wanted this Donovan to investigate.”

  “That’s all?”

  “The courier may have been a ruse. Greystroke wants to find out if they really have been losing ships or they just want the League to think they have. He needs Donovan to decrypt the data bubble and he needs me to find Donovan.”

  “It all sounds…complicated.”

  “Agents don’t walk around announcing themselves. It’s what Greystroke plans to do with him afterward that might make Donovan uneasy about surfacing. He dropped out of the Game years ago.”

  “Now you’re going to pull him back in. A friend of yours?”

  The Fudir made a face. “We’ve shared a room. Listen, you have two ears too many, and too much in between them for your own good. Sometimes it’s better not to know things. Wait for me in the lobby. I have to dress proper for this venture.”

  Hugh had purchased a wristband from the Hostel’s notions shop and had just shaken hands with the positioning network when the Fudir stepped out of the lift tube. He had changed into a dhoti of pale blue checks and stripes and had smeared across his forehead a broad band of charcoal and, above it, a tripunda of bhasma. The desk clerk called out, “Hey, you! Boy! What you do up in residence? You fella no mess voyagers! Prenday?” The Fudir turned a cold eye on the man, but Hugh intervened, saying, “It’s all right. He’s with me.”

  Whether that raised the clerk’s estimate of the Fudir or lowered it of Hugh was a fine point. After they had exited the Hostel, the Fudir said, “You big man, first chop. Make poor chumar-man pukka.” Hugh turned a puzzled eye on him, and the Terran switched to Gaelactic. “I don’t need your endorsement to be a man.”

  “Should I apologize, then?”

  The Fudir’s jaw clenched. “No,” he said. “But it grates. Let’s go. Chel-chel.”

  They parted company at Greaseline Street. The Fudir crossed the street and slipped into the Corner, while Hugh continued toward Greengrow, where he made the rounds of the portside outfitters. He noted the goods available against his list, and jotted down the nominal prices and the sources. At Shem Kobaurick and Son, Armorers, he found a display of crescent-shaped ceramic knives with micron edges, imported all the way from Raven Rock, and he paid three-quarters the asking price for it. It was more than he ought to have paid—as a onetime economics minister, he had some grasp of markups—but he was content. It was not the dukndar’s tale of his crippled daughter that swayed him, but that he wanted the knife and wanted it badly, and the merchant knew this the way he knew his own heartbeat. Kobaurick threw in a scabbard for the knife that fit snugly under the armpit. A hideaway sica would not make one spit of difference if it came to the touch in the Hadramoo, but he felt infinitesimally more confident knowing that he had it.

  The Fudir met him by Undercook’s Emporium, looking somewhat the worse for having passed through the Corner. He explained the cut on the cheek as a difference of opinion regarding the possession of certain shekels entrusted to him by the Seven. The jingle of coins in a purse can be heard at greater distances and by keener ears than physics and biology presume, and while the Memsahb had sent Bikram and Sandeep to escort the money, the scuffle had been a near-run thing. “But that dacoit-chief,” the Fudir said, “he got his feet all tangled up in a bhang-man’s broom handle.” He laughed. “Oh, that was a pinwheel! The boys and I stripped him naked and split his purse three ways to teach him how fleeting are the wages of theft. And I shoved—Let’s say I left him the broom handle so he’d watch his step more carefully in the future.” He clapped O’Carroll on the shoulder. “Chop and chel, boy! Let’s fetch those supplies. I love it when me spend other man his money—and the Kennel, he have deep pockets.”

  Afterward, Hugh and the Fudir repaired to the Bar to wait for the Pup. Praisegod, cleaning glasses and trying in a desultory manner to proselytize an Alabastrine woman standing at the rail, saw them enter and his eyebrows rose incrementally. “So,” he said when the Fudir had ordered two long ales, “the sinful universe wouldn’t have you?”

  “I’ve been sent back here to do my penance,” the Fudir admitted. “But don’t worry. I’ll be going to hell shortly.”

  “A journey so long in progress deserves at last to find its end,” Praisegod allowed. “How did you find New Eireann?”

&nbs
p; “Same as always. One week down the Grand Trunk Road, just past Gessler’s Sun.” But then, on second thought, he dropped the banter and told the Bartender how things stood on that unhappy planet.

  The Bartender grew solemn at the news. “May God turn His merciful face toward them.”

  “Better his face,” said the Fudir, “than what he’s been showing them lately.”

  “I’ll hear no blasphemy, friend. I’ll beg alms in my Brotherhouse and urge other houses and the Sisterhood to do the same. Thus shall the glory of God shine forth from our hearts and become a beacon to others.”

  The Fudir turned away, but Hugh laid a plastic slip on the bar. “Here’s my personal chit. Throw it in the pot with the rest. They need building materials and tools, not food. Craftsmen, they have, but willing hands will not be turned away. Clothing, too. Don’t send money. Without goods to chase, the money inflates.”

  The Bartender did not look at the amount before the chit disappeared. “God bless you.”

  Hugh took the two ale-pots from the Fudir’s hands and carried them to a table near the back wall, where there was a sort of niche. He did not look back to see if the Terran added a contribution of his own.

  “It was the least you could have done,” the Fudir said when he joined him a moment later. “After all you’ve done to ’em, you may as well do something for ’em.”

  By now, Hugh had gotten used to the man’s provocations, and he tried not to let the barb affect him. Yet the sharpest barbs are those that have a point; and he drank from his ale in silence for a few minutes. When he spoke, it was deliberately to another subject. “Did you finish your errand for Greystroke?”

  The Terran nodded. “Aye.”

  “Will you be taking the Pup to Donovan before we leave for the Hadramoo?”

  The Fudir made a face. “Finding the Dancer is more important.”

  “I’m rather inclined to think you’re right,” said Greystroke, who was sitting at the table’s third side.