“All we need,” said Arekhon, “is to find the other side of the Gap.”
“Easier said than done, maybe,” the pilot said. “But we won’t know until we give it a try.”
“Let’s go, then,” he said. “Maraganha etaze—if you would like to come along as well?”
Llannat gave in to the inevitable. “I’d be honored,” she said.
When they reached the cockpit, Arekhon took his place in the right-hand seat and gave a deep sigh. “At least I can see out. A proper spaceship.”
Karil shook her head. “Eyes won’t replace electronics. There’s so much more I can do with viewscreens.”
“If you say so,” Arekhon said. “Meanwhile, let’s see if we can still move. I don’t trust vessels that have been sitting unused for this long.”
“I don’t either,” Llannat said. At least neither Arekhon nor Karil Estisk were the crew members whose blood had stained—would someday stain—the floor and seats and console, and provide the ink for somebody’s cryptic message. Neither of them fit the pattern of the eiran as she would see it on that future day when the civilized galaxy stood on the edge of war and at the end of the great working. She looked at the thick armored glass of the cockpit windows and thought about the nature of time and memory before adding, “During the transit to Eraasi, we’ll need to put together a good do-it-yourself hardcopy manual on starting from a cold ship.”
“I like that idea,” Karil said. “In fact, I like it a lot. Given all the fancy stuff ’Rekhe’s people added to a perfectly good design, the whole thing’s likely to explode if you don’t do everything right.”
“My people didn’t build the Daughter,” protested Arekhon. “It was the sus-Radal. And what do we want a hardcopy manual for? Do you have any idea how bulky—”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Llannat told him. “And eventually somebody is going to need it. Besides—it’s always good to have a hobby to keep you busy on a long transit.”
“Tell me something,” Zeri said to Len. “If you weren’t playing bodyguard to a runaway bride, what would you be doing right now?”
The two of them were sitting together at a dim corner table in an eating establishment a few blocks outside the Hanilat starport—close enough in to attract a rougher crowd than the downtown places. In their current state, rougher was good; even if they were recognized, the clientele at Red’s Fishhouse wasn’t the sort to report anybody to the city watch. Len had a platter of sliced bread and meat, and Zeri was working her way through a large serving of the local deep-fried seafood—she’d always loved it, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that she could cook for herself in a city apartment.
“I’d be down at the port,” Len said. “Sweating the next cargo, getting the fuel and stores, worrying about port fees and about whether I counted as a sus-Dariv contract holder if most of the sus-Dariv were gone.”
She dipped another strip of fried silverling into the pot of spicy green sauce that had accompanied the meal. “And if the port were closed?”
“Well, then I’d be at close-operations, raising murder about it, pointing at the clock on the wall, and shouting that time is money.”
“Then maybe we should be doing something like that ourselves,” she said. “Since we don’t know if Syr Vai is helping us or not.”
“Maybe,” he said. He put together another bread-and-meat sandwich, and bit into it. A moment’s chewing and swallowing, and he went on, “First you tell me something.”
“Tell you what?”
“Why are you going along with this crazy plan your cousin and Syr Vai dragged me into? Lord Natelth may be a murdering bastard—ask anybody who was on Ildaon when it got space-bombed by the sus-Peledaen fleet—but I haven’t heard anybody say that he treats his lovers badly. And talk like that always gets around.”
They’d ordered a pitcher of summer-ale for sharing between them, because the night was warm. Zeri took the time to refill both her mug and his before she answered.
“I made the marriage-deal with Natelth because it was the only way I could think of to take care of the sus-Dariv. But I don’t think Herin would have offered me a chance to get out of the bargain if he didn’t have another idea in mind. I want to find out what it is.”
“A little while ago you were almost accusing me and Syr Vai of doing away with Cousin Herin,” Len pointed out.
“For all I knew, you could have stolen his ideas—whatever they were—and then killed him. I want to find out where he is and what he was thinking of.” She ate another strip of fish and green sauce, then licked her fingers clean. “So. If you had a female companion, who would she be, and what would she be doing?”
“Supercargo, most likely,” Len said. “And since you don’t have a couple of free years to learn it in, I doubt that I could teach you the job.”
“Then I’ll just have to pretend,” she said. “If you’re coming with me, let’s go.”
Outside on the street again, they caught the public-transit bus that made a circuit of the portside streets. The darklit back of the public accommodation gave them more time to speak.
“Am I overdressed for the port?” she asked.
“You’ll do,” Len said, “and so will I. The folks know me there, and they’ll know that anyone who’s with me is supposed to be with me.”
“So I shouldn’t worry.”
“Not about the clothes,” he said. “But with your accent, nobody’s going to take you for anything less than a fleet-apprentice out on a spree.”
“Then I’ll need to become a fleet-apprentice,” she said. “At least for the purposes of conversation.”
A bit after that, in the line of bars that surrounded portside, Len and Zeri stood on the sidewalk. The humming of the glowlights punctuated the night. The air was thick and close, and Zeri smelled rotting things on the air. Streetwashers ran every day in some parts of Hanilat, but this part wasn’t one of them.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked.
“If you’re going to play at being a fleet-apprentice in front of the port officials, you’re going to need the livery. And that’s not something you can buy at a costume shop.”
“I suppose not,” she said. “Let me get this bit straight. We’re going to wander from one drinking establishment to the next, and I’m going to go inside each establishment and look around for somebody my size in apprentice livery. When I find one, I’ll persuade that person to accompany me outside, where you will relieve them of their finery. Right?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“I thought so.” She looked at the bright lights in the windows of the drinking places along the portside strip. “Tell me again why you can’t be the one doing this part.”
“Because nobody impressionable is going to follow me,” Len said reasonably. “So if you want that livery—”
“I want it. Don’t go away.”
She left him and walked into the bar. The lights were red inside, and the burly individual by the door—the bouncer? she wondered—asked her for five ahlei to be allowed farther in.
“You freelance?” he asked.
It took her a couple of seconds to work out what he was asking. She thought for a couple of seconds longer, and said, “Yes.”
“Ten percent to Syr Risa, and don’t forget,” the bouncer said, his bald head gleaming with sweat or oil in the flashing lights from inside.
“I won’t,” she said. And then she was in, and the lights were flashing around a long stage, a runway, behind the bar, where a young lady dressed mostly in long hair was doing amazingly athletic things, while the bartenders in front scurried about with glasses in their hands.
She stood for a while with her back to the rear wall, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the low light level, before looking around for a suit of fleet-apprentice livery. None presented itself immediately to view. The bar formed the opening of a horseshoe shape extending from the back wall. She walked to the far end, waited, then circled the room, keeping h
er eyes open for an apprentice.
She didn’t find me. Near the end of her transit an older fellow, white hairs showing amid the dark of his close-cropped beard, grasped her by the arm and said, “I’m looking for a good time.”
“How wonderful for you,” Zeri said before she remembered herself and said, “I’m hired already.”
“No need to be snarky about it,” the man said, but he let her go. Then she was all the way around, and wondering if she should move on to the next place already. The music here was very loud, and everyone present was elaborately trying not to see the other people around them.
“This is impossible,” she said to herself, and went out past the sweating man by the door, into what was suddenly a cool evening. She didn’t see Len anywhere, but she supposed he was somewhere out of sight, lurking. She hoped he was lurking, anyway. Things might get—difficult—if he wasn’t.
To her right, one door closer to the port, was another establishment similar to the one she’d left. She entered through the heavy outer door, then passed through an inner door of hanging beads, and found another man at a high table, looking down at her. A sign beside him said, FIVE AHLEI COVER CHARGE, LADIES FREE.
“Hello,” he said, as she tried to push through his turnstile. “You freelance?”
“I’m a lady,” she said. “Your sign says ‘Free.’”
“That’s with an escort, love,” the gent said. He was perfumed, and wore a very nice waistcoat. “You freelance?”
Again she flipped a mental coin. “No.”
“Who you working for?”
“Syr Risa,” she said.
“You’re a bit out of your range,” he said, “But that’s all right. Five ahlei, and it’s in you go. I hope Syr Risa remembers, if he ever needs a favor.”
“Or if you do,” Zeri said, and pushed across her five ahlei.
Isayana’s summons came sooner than Kief expected, and he was glad that he’d had the foresight to put both his prime Circle and the Hanilat Institute Circle into a state of readiness the day before. A quick head count when he reached her laboratory building showed him all of his own Mages waiting in the upstairs hall except one, and she arrived flushed and breathless a few minutes later—“I had to hand over all my case files to my backup, just in case, and there’s a new rule in the office that every single one of them has to be signed for in triplicate … .” Giesye was a good Second, strong and reliable in the Circle, but there was no denying the fact that outside the silence of a working she babbled like water running over stones.
“It’s all right,” Kief said. “Let’s go downstairs.”
He led the way down to the lower reaches of the building, and the chambers where Natelth’s sister did her work. One of Isayana’s many custom-tooled aiketen met them at the foot of the stairs.
“If I may escort you to the robing-room?” it asked.
“Please do,” he said. The sus-Peledaen aiketen came closer to true sapience than most of their kind, and he was willing to give them the benefit of courtesy on that account. If a device of Isayana’s manufacturing should choose to hold a grudge on account of bad treatment—which was something Kief did not consider wholly impossible—he had no intention of being the object of its ill will.
Once in the robing-room, he put on his working garments as rapidly as possible, then said to the others, “I’m going to talk with our patron. Join me when you’re ready; the aiketh will show you the way.”
The setup in the main workroom had changed since his last visit, at least partly in accordance with his specifications. Nothing remained of the laboratory tables, or the specialized equipment, or the shelves laden with supplies. Only the gel-vat with the finished replicant body—not faceless, Kief thought, not any longer—waited in the center of a large circle chalked on the floor. All the overhead worklights were turned off except for the one directly above the vat.
Isayana sus-Khalgath was waiting for him next to the gel-vat, along with a thin, nervous-looking man whom Kief didn’t recognize. She introduced the man as the specialist physician who had been working with her on the replication process.
“If all goes well, syn-Velgeth will be assisting us with the final stages of the vivification.”
Kief nodded to the man politely, then glanced into the gel-vat at the body lying there: Lean and muscular, with a pronounced Antipodean cast to the facial features, it resembled nobody Kief knew.
“Do you have a name for him yet?” he asked.
“No. But Natelth’s people are working on it.”
“You gave them the image?”
She nodded. “It isn’t a perfect match, of course. The process gives us an ideal body, and life … life isn’t ideal. Scars, starvation, self-indulgence, they could all have left marks on him that we don’t know about.”
“A positive ID from the image and the genetic data should supply your brother with that information,” Kief said. He regarded the body thoughtfully. “If you had all the necessary information in advance, how close a match could you get with this process?”
“Theoretically?” said Isayana. “An exact one. Though the process at that level would be as much art as science.”
“Do you plan to tell your brother about the possibility of getting a true double?”
“No. Natelth doesn’t know about the replication process; he thinks all that I derived from the blood was an image.”
“I see.”
He wondered who she would tell, if not the sus-Peledaen. Not another of the star-lords, surely; she was angry at her brother, not the whole family. But there was definitely somebody out there who distrusted Lord Natelth enough to back his sister in research as potentially world-changing as his own efforts with the Circles.
He already knew that—if it worked—she wasn’t going to tell Natelth about filling the replicant, either.
The second bar that Zeri entered was as dim and noisy as the first, and the air was thick with smoke and sweat and the pheromones of lust. She looked around for fleet-livery, and thought for a second that she was in luck when she spotted sus-Oadlan buff and scarlet at the far end of the crowded bar. Then she got a better glimpse of the wearer—broad-shouldered, male, and taller than herself by more than a head—and her hopes faded. She scanned the room a second time, with no better result, and resigned herself to trying yet another establishment.
She was fading back through the crush toward the doorway when a recently familiar voice at her elbow said, “You’re either a great deal bolder than I took you for, or a great deal stupider. Possibly both. And the mutual friend who’s waiting for us outside listens to you a great deal more than he ought to, regardless.”
Zeri turned, and saw a woman in a tight black bodysuit, a faux-fashionable half-mask, and a great deal of blue glitter, especially in her hair. “It occurs to me,” Zeri said, “that this isn’t a good place for me to call you by name.”
“You’re right; it isn’t,” said Iulan Vai.
“I have to admit that I like the outfit. But aren’t you missing an accessory?” Zeri had always been under the impression that a Mage’s staff never got very far from the hand of the Mage who owned it—if a staff was in fact owned, in the normal sense, which was something she’d never been clear on.
“No,” Vai said. “I’m not. Now let’s get you out of here before somebody on your bridegroom’s payroll spots your face and makes a comm call.”
“Do you really think anyone here—”
“I think at least three people here, and I’ve recognized one of them already. We need to continue this conversation out on the street.” Vai grasped Zeri’s elbow and urged her toward the front entrance. “At the moment, we’re doing this the easy way. But things are moving fast, and the hard way might turn up real soon now.”
Zeri and Vai made it through the crowd and out into the neon and incandescent night, where a hawker with a tray of pamphlets and text wafers was calling, “One hundred best pickup lines! Only one ahle! Get ’em here!”
; “Now,” said Zeri. “What did you do with Len?”
“He’s lurking in the alley, holding my work clothes and my jacket and waiting for us to show up.”
Zeri didn’t think she liked Vai’s faint undertone of amusement. “Show up and do what?”
“Go to his ship,” Vai said. “Then leave the planet.”
“The port’s closed. Len said that closing it would be the first thing Lord Natelth did, and he was right.”
“Nevertheless,” said Vai. “We’re going to his ship.” They’d reached the mouth of the alley; she raised her voice slightly and said, “Len, come out and come on. The two of you have wasted quite enough time. We’re off.”
“Off for where?” Len said, pushing himself from the wall where he’d been leaning.
“To the sus-Dariv yards, and hope that the resources there are stretched thin.”
“And will they be?” he asked.
“Walk slowly,” Vai advised him. “We have every right to be here and we’re about our lawful business. As for your question—nothing is ever certain, but we should have luck tonight.”
She lifted her right hand slightly, and Zeri wasn’t surprised to see that it held a Mage’s staff. Zeri was somewhat more surprised to see that the staff was glowing a faint but vivid green—a phenomenon she had heard of, but had never expected to encounter.
Several minutes more of deliberately casual strolling took them from the entertainment strip to the starport proper, a complex of large buildings with high glass windows set about with the seals of all the fleet-families of Eraasi. They walked through the main archway, past the desk where the toteboard read CANCELED beside every lift, past the lounge where the duty-status pilots waited, out through the inner fence, and onto the field itself.
Once clear of the fence they picked up a slidewalk toward the sus-Dariv docks. Harsh yellow security lights reflected off the high clouds overhead, making the stars fade and go pale. Nobody had stopped them so far, and Zeri was actually starting to relax a little when Vai spoke up again.
A Working of Stars Page 19
