The January Dancer

by Michael Flynn

  She had donned a dinner jacket of pure white in which to conduct the interviews. On it, she wore beside the insignia of the Particular Service only the Badge of Night. It pleased her that Greystroke was taken aback by the sight of it, and by what it said about her and what she was prepared to do when necessity had won the field.

  Someday, she thought at him, you may earn this badge yourself, and wish you hadn’t.

  Little Hugh O’Carroll proved a well-built young man: self-confident, and with an easy smile. He had been forced upon Greystroke at Eireannsport, but the Pup had kept him on when he could have left him on Jehovah. The Pup was much given to whimsy, and one never knew what would catch his fancy. Bridget ban had supposed that it was only because O’Carroll had become Sheol to the Fudir’s Jehovah—a satellite carried along by its primary. The Pup was not about to let the Terran go until he had been led to Donovan, and that meant keeping O’Carroll, too.

  But Hugh was certainly a potential asset to the team. His skills in the deadly arts were useful, but his tactical sense and his ability to marshal and organize resources could prove invaluable. No one rises to assistant planetary manager without considerable talent in those fields.

  His air of patient competence reminded her of a jaguar lounging on a tree limb. He was not a schemer, to arrange circumstances to his own advantage, but he was ever aware of what those circumstances were, and could spring quickly and unexpectedly when an opportunity appeared among them.

  “What do you think we should do with the Dancer?” she asked him at the conclusion of their interview.

  “Me?” he said. “Frankly, I never believed the old legend. The Fudir was only a way to get back to New Eireann. Now…?” He shrugged. “If the Dancer is just a funny brick, then this whole expedition is a fool’s errand. But if it is what the legends say…I didn’t like the idea of the Cynthians having it. Still less, whoever had the stones to take it from them.”

  “You don’t want the Dancer yourself, then, to regain control of New Eireann?”

  O’Carroll threw his head back and laughed. “No.”

  He said it far too easily, given that he had waged a guerilla for just that purpose. “You’ve kept your office-name,” she pointed out.

  “It was the name the Fudir met me under, and Greystroke, too. Why go back to my base-name?”

  “Because it’s your true name?”

  He looked away a moment. “That, it is not.”

  At first, the Hound had thought to use O’Carroll’s friendship with the Fudir as the handle to control him; but she had seen in certain glances he had sent her way during the interview that there was an older and far more reliable handle for that.

  It would be only a matter of providing the right opportunity for him to seize.

  The Fudir was in many ways the more intriguing of the two. In her private bestiary, she labeled him a “fox.” She suspected from his conversation that he was a clever man. From his silences, she knew he was. Indeed, she thought he might be the cleverest one on the team. Certainly, he thought so, and that could be used against him, should the need arise.

  “So,” she said. “’Twas yourself who started all this.”

  The Fudir sat at ease, with a small tight smile lightening his otherwise morose face. His eyes had fallen on her badge, and she saw in the briefest of flickers that he had recognized it for what it was and that, in some fashion, he approved. “I wouldn’t say I started it,” he said. “Maybe King Stonewall started it millennia since. But the quadrille was already spinning before I heard tell of it. January had consigned it to Jumdar, and the Cynthians had seized it from her before I even reached New Eireann. So I arranged for Greystroke to take me off New Eireann—”

  She interrupted. “That’s not the way he tells it.”

  Again, that taut smile. “He has his perspective and I have mine. Greystroke is good, but I’m glad you’re leading this team and not him.”

  “You think him deficient as a leader?”

  “It’s not that. Men can’t follow a man if they lose track of him too often.”

  Bridget ban could not prevent the laugh.

  “To lead,” the Fudir volunteered, “a man must inspire, and to inspire requires a certain vividness, wouldn’t you say? Now, yourself…Well, vivid is too pale a word. Men would follow you into the coldest parts of Hel.” His smile broadened and his expression lost some of its habitual furtiveness. “You’d warm the place up nicely.”

  “Awa’ wi’ ye,” she said, reverting to her native accents. “Ye’ll turn my head.”

  “And why not turn it? Your profile is a fine one.”

  Bridget ban continued to smile, but no longer laughed. “Don’t be too clever. The blarney will nae get ye snuggled wi’ me…”

  “Why, thanks for the offer, but there are women a-plenty in every port of the League, and their price isn’t near as high as the one you’d extract.”

  Bridget ban, who had been about to put him off as a first step to reel him in, was slightly nettled by this preemptive refusal. “So, ye’ll follow me, but nae too closely? Is that it?”

  “Cu, you listen to what people say. That’s a rare gift, and it more than compensates for the nose.”

  Her hand had started involuntarily toward that member before her training stayed it. Instead, she drummed her nails on the desktop. “You think a great deal of yourself.”

  “And everyone else thinks little; so, it averages out.”

  “Yes, and that works to your advantage, doesn’t it?”

  The Terran smiled mockingly and spread his hands palm up. “In my work, it pays to be underestimated.”

  Bridget ban leaned forward over the desk. “That is not a mistake I will make. Tell me. What do you propose we do with the Dancer, once we’ve obtained it?”

  The Fudir chuckled and wagged a finger. “That’s another thing I like about you. You don’t use that awful word.”

  “What word…?”

  “‘If.’ Let me turn the question ulta-pulta. I suppose your plan is to give it to the Ardry. Tell me why.”

  “You saw New Eireann. And you must know of the Valencian Interregnum or the awful line of Tyrants on Gladiola. There was a terrible rieving two years back on Tin Cup, not by pirates, but by the People’s Navy in a dispute over an uninhabited system that lay between them. If the Ardry had the Twisting Stone, he could put an end to that.”

  “Could he?” the Fudir asked. He sat back and crossed his arms. “How?”

  “How? By using the power of the stone.”

  “You disappoint me, Cu. You are so entranced by the idea of the Dancer that the details escape you. But that’s where the Devil lives. The scepter may confer the power of obedience, but how far? The Reek Guides on New Eireann never succumbed to Jumdar’s charms because, living the Simple Life, they never heard her broadcasts. Text doesn’t carry the…the manna; only the voice. And how far does that cover? A single system, at best, if you narrowcast to the farther stations and allow for the light-lag. But broadcast ‘frog’ to the nearest star and years would pass before they’d jump. So, in practice, the Ardry could bend the Grand Seanaid to his will and tighten his grip on the capital. But a good Ardry can do that now—if he has stones of another sort.”

  Bridget ban scowled, aware that the same thoughts had been niggling at her hindbrain. Grimpen had always told her that she leaped to conclusions, though it wasn’t the leaping so much as the distance leaped. “He could travel the Avenue and carry the scepter with him,” she said, but she already saw why that would not work.

  The Fudir nodded. “Right. The Ardry would carry a sphere of obedience wherever he went; but whenever he left—”

  “—Matters would eventually revert.”

  “Aye. As happened to January’s crew and to the Eireannaughta. And how could Ardry Tully have stopped the Cynthians from rieving New Eireann? By the time he heard of it, it would already be over. No, Cu, there’s but one way to use the scepter to the League’s advantage.”

 
Bridget ban cupped her chin in her hand. “And what may that be?”

  “Entrust the Dancer to me, and I’ll have Terra in rebellion with the garrison on our side. Four years later, the Century Suns will join us; and in ten years, Dao Chetty herself will fall.”

  “But you said…Ah.”

  “Aye, Cu. Those suns lie close to Terra, and our broadcasts will crawl through Newtonian space and reach their ears. A slower, but less bloody conquest than sending out an obedient fleet.”

  “Surely. Ye’d not dare leave Terra, lest they all come tae their senses. The legend on Die Bold was that after the Earth was cleansed, it was resettled with people from the Century Suns, the Groom’s Britches, Dao Chetty herself. Maybe it was once your folk’s world, but others have lived there for an old long time, and they’d nae take kindly to all of the ‘Sons and Daughters of Terra’ coming back.”

  “Everyone’s a son or daughter of Terra,” the Fudir said. “It’s just that some of us haven’t forgotten.”

  “Then what difference does it make who lives there? You maun be wary o’ dreams, Fudir. They’re like rainbows.”

  “Pretty.”

  “An’ only fools chase them. But there are some few things about the Twisting Stone legend that puzzle me.” She rose and walked to the sideboard, where she poured a fruit nectar for herself and her guest. In the burnished metal that framed the sideboard, she could see the Fudir’s eyes caress her and knew that he had lied about his desires. About how much else he had lied, she was not certain. A blow struck into the very heart of the Confederacy? The plan might work—if she could trust him. “The version I heard as a wee bairn told of a great struggle for its possession between Stonewall and his rivals; and in the end, Stonewall was imprisoned by the victors in a crypt deep within the earth and guarded by monstrous horses. But if the scepter compels obedience, how could anyone have struggled with him? And if its power is limited by the crawl of light, why would anyone have bothered?” She handed him the nectar.

  He took a long swallow. “Pears!” he exclaimed. “I’ve always loved the nectar of pears. Cu, that a legend contains a core of truth does not mean that all its embellishments are true. On Terra, we have many legends of ancient rulers who sleep beneath mountains. Holger Danske, Barbarossa. Arthur sleeps on the Blessed Isle. Philip Habib slumbers in a cave within the cliffs of Normandy. Our Dark Age ancestors applied some of those same themes to the prehumans. As for the struggle for the scepter, don’t expect logical coherence from myth. Heroes behave as their stereotype demands.” He handed the cup back to her and contrived to touch hands as he did. “Alla thankee, missy,” he said. “Nectar good-good.”

  “We ought to talk o’ this further,” said Bridget ban, “but the team’s tae meet in a few minutes and, after, ye’ll fare on the Gray One’s ship.” She favored him with an appraising look. “I’d rather ye fare wi’ me, for I’d fain know ye better, but…”

  “…but Pup hold leash tight-tight,” the Fudir said, miming a grip around his throat with both hands. “No let go poor Terry, now he got ’um. Too bad. You-me samjaw.”

  “No, you’re wrong. You-me don’t ‘understand’ each other. I don’t know, for one thing, why you tint your hair gray.”

  The Fudir passed a hand along the side of his head, brushing the wild curls flat. “O Missy! Old man, he harmless. Get close-close sliders, clean ’um pockets good.”

  The Hound shook her head. “And yer lying the now. Ye never pulled a con so low as that. It’s the high line for you or none at all. Someday, ye’d maun tell me the sooth ahint that little show on Eireannsport Hard. ’Twas too well choreographed, I think. Ye cozened the Memsahb. Ye cozened Hugh. Ye cozened January. Maybe ye even cozened Greystroke. But don’t think you can cozen me.”

  The Fudir placed his left hand on his heart and raised his right. “Of all the things I might dream of trying with you, I would never include lying!”

  Bridget ban wondered at his inflection. She could take “lying” two ways. The great gengineers of ancient legend—had they ever crossed a fox with an eel? For the Fudir was as slippery as the one and as clever as the other. “Tell me,” she said. “When this is o’er, will ye really lead Greystroke to Donovan as ye promised?”

  Eyes wide, the Fudir said, “Greystroke-me, samjaw. Follow me into Corner, him. And what I owe Donovan or his Confederacy? I spit on they. Ptooey!” He mimed spitting. “We Terrans have become wanderers,” he said, reverting to Standard, “living everywhere; at home nowhere. Our holy cities—Mumbai, Beijing, and others—are home to people to whom they mean nothing. We were tossed into the sea of stars and—as the stone said in the proverb when tossed into the ocean—‘After all, this too is a home.’”

  At Hugh’s request, they first reviewed everything they knew, from the old legend to the present circumstances, while he took extensive notes in a pocket-base she had lent him. The Fudir told the story he had heard from January about the discovery in Spider Alley and the transfer to Jumdar at New Eireann. Greystroke told of the Molnar’s first transit of Sapphire Point, and Hugh and the Fudir filled in the details of the resulting raid and the plundering of the ICC vault. Bridget ban related the Molnar’s Last Stand and what he had said of the ambush at Peacock Junction. Finally, she described the uncharted roads in Peacock space.

  “So we chase this phantom fleet of yours down an uncharted hole,” said Greystroke.

  “They’ve got the Dancer,” she pointed out. “What other choice do we have?”

  “Follow their mind,” suggested Hugh. “If you know which way their thoughts run, then you know where they’re bound. Then you get there before they do. During the Troubles, I once…But you’d not want to hear that, and I don’t see how we might get ahead of them. Not if this uncharted road is a shortcut to the Old Planets.”

  The others turned to his end of the table. “The Old Planets?” asked Bridget ban.

  Hugh gestured to the pocket-base he’d been filling. “The ICC runs through this like the drone of a bagpipe. They took the Dancer from January with little more than a promise. An incautious remark by one of their factors sent the Molnar on his doomed quest. They refurbished the engines on January’s freighter, and now he’s vanished. The Chettinads told you of incautious remarks they overheard. Either your phantom fleet represents a new player entirely, or the ICC recovered their stolen property—and the god Ockham prefers the latter. Who else but the ICC would have known why the Molnar left the Hadramoo, and been in position to intercept his return?”

  “Grimpen!” said Bridget ban.

  The others looked at her blankly, thinking it another of the odd words in her dialect. But Greystroke said, “What has Large-hound to do with this?”

  “After the fight with the Molnar, Grimpen said that he was going to the Old Planets. He’s a methodical sort, not given to sudden flights of fancy. But what nugget of thought did he pluck out of the Molnar’s tale?”

  The Fudir spoke up. “Chop and chel, folks. First first,” he said. “Alla bukkin where hole goes—bhl. Big dhik, miss front end. Alla blink-blink.”

  “A pity,” said Hugh, “that translating implants are so expensive.”

  “They’re no great edge when it comes to Terran,” the Hound said. “The patois is a pidgin of a dozen languages. But you’re right, Fudir. If we cannae go in the front end, we’ll ne’er come out the back. So let’s cover that first. Look here.” She activated a lenticel in the conference table and projected the chart she had recovered from Pulawayo’s files into a cubic that hovered above it. “People,” she said, “if you would come around to this side, please? Thank you. This is the point of view from Peacock at this time of their year. These stars I’ve highlighted in red form the constellation they call The Assayer; and this nebula is the one they call His Tail. D’ye see them?” They all nodded, Hugh and the Fudir with agreement; Greystroke because he had navigated through these skies many times.

  “Here is where the phantom fleet disappeared. Peacock claims they lost track of the fleet
, that it had entered a segment of sky that they did not monitor, or that their equipment failed, or that their STC controllers were distracted by the havoc on the Silk Road.”

  Greystroke looked up. “Well, which was it?”

  “It was hard to keep track o’ the excuses as they flittered by. Now, here are the tracks of a couple of dozen freighters over the past hektoday. As ye see, and correcting for sidereal drift, they all vanish or appear at the same locus.”

  “Not too many points off the entrance ramp for the Silk Road if you take your heading off the Greater Fops,” said Greystroke.

  “Aye, and that works tae our advantage. We can heigh as if for the Rift—Xhosa Broadfield lies off the Palisades—but turn aside before the final approaches and pull for the farther point.”

  Greystroke pulled his lip. “And if you’re wrong, and we try it, we’re all blinked. Your STC records show us where the entrance was and a certain amount of calculation can approximate where it’s gone; but ‘approximate’ isn’t good enough. Sidereal drift is sensitive to initial conditions and the equations have no analytical solution. ‘The Ricci tensors are all agley,’” he added, imitating her dialect.

  “A ramp acts as a gravitational lens,” the Fudir pointed out. “You can pinpoint its location without an ephemeris by checking for parallax shifts and the doubling of background stars behind it.” When they all turned to look at him, he shrugged. “I really do hold a rating as an instrument tech.”

  “Then after we’re in the groove,” Bridget ban added, “we maun track the phantom fleet from their fossil images, to learn where they turn off. Who knows how many side channels this road has?”

  Greystroke knew which ship had the better imaging equipment. The Fates were subtle indeed, for they had led him to take up the hobby years before in preparation for this day. “Then I take the point, and Fudir stays with me,” he said.

  Bridget ban agreed to take Little Hugh O’Carroll with her, and she tried not to smile at the prospect and made sure that Hugh saw that she had tried not to smile.