"Tell you what," said Goth. "You fish out those cards you found in the Agandar's kit and I'll play you snap."
"Don't feel like snap," snapped the Leewit. But she pulled the pack from an inner pocket anyway.
She always seemed to have them with her, Pausert noticed. The hand-painted cards had been found in the Agandar's personal kit after the pirate's death, and the Leewit had expropriated them. The cards were probably valuable antiques, given that the pirate lord had been fabulously wealthy and successful. Pausert had occasionally wondered if he should try to keep them safe from the Leewit, but it hadn't seemed worth the fight it would entail. Money was only worth its face value, but a contented Leewit was a jewel past price. And she was mostly pretty happy playing endless games of snap or patience.
But it appeared she'd been broadening her horizons. "Let's play poker," she piped.
Pausert raised an eyebrow. "Where did you learn that game?"
"Vezzarn taught me."
"I should have guessed. Well," said the captain, setting the course for Gentian's Star and clicking on the long-range detectors, "we'll play for spillikins. Every ten you win, I'll buy you a packet of candy at the next spaceport. Every ten I win, you bathe without a fight. And wash behind your ears."
She looked darkly at him. "Twenty."
"Fifteen."
"S'a deal. But I'm not too sure how you play poker, really."
The captain had been around the witches too long to fall for that one. He was a lucky gambler because of klatha, and as soon as he heard that statement he knew he'd need to be.
"Deal me in," said Goth, sliding bonelessly into the chair next to the chart table they used for cards. "I'm not too old for candy."
"But you wash behind your ears, anyway!" protested the Leewit.
"I'm not planning to lose, so what does it matter?"
"Huh!" said the Leewit scornfully. "You're getting to be just like Maleen."
"Deal," said the captain, before this well-used argument could get any more exercise.
A few minutes later Vezzarn came up from the engine room and joined the game. And the captain soon realized that he had fallen among thieves, or at least cardsharps. If the witches or Vezzarn ever needed money, they had a profession lined up already. Pausert was quite relieved when the ship-detector alarm went off.
CHAPTER 27
Here, near the Empire's center, ship traffic was much heavier. There was virtually no way to keep out of detection range of all of them. And it very soon became evident that the ISS was searching hard, and that the Imperial Space Navy now had orders: destroy the Venture on sight.
Twice now their ship had come within detector range of ISN vessels and had not even been given the chance to try deception. She'd been pursued and fired on—despite being within hailing distance.
"Communicator chatter indicates we've been fingered as a plague carrier, Captain," said Vezzarn indignantly. Aft of the Venture, space was lit up again by the blue lightnings of Imperial guns.
"It's more like the other way around," grunted Pausert. "We're the antibiotic and this is the disease trying to keep us away."
Goth stared at the ship detectors. "Guess we'll have to use the Sheewash Drive, Captain. Those Space Navy jobs are gaining on us."
Pausert nodded. "I'd rather not have to, because it gives them a definite fix on where we are, again. But I don't think we have a choice. We're certainly not going to win a battle with that many Imperial cruisers." Seeing the littlest witch glaring, he added diplomatically: "Not even with the Leewit at the nova guns."
That seemed to satisfy the Leewit's touchy sense of honor. So, once again, she and Goth made orange fire dance over the twisted pattern of black wires. Pausert found himself staring so hard at the pattern that his eyes felt as if they'd crossed. It was almost making sense.
The Venture leapt away from the Imperial Space Navy ships. The acceleration was fantastic—except . . .
Looking at his instruments, Pausert knew that it wasn't what the ship could do, or used to do, when the witches of Karres pushed her along with Sheewash Drive. They used to move faster than his instruments could cope with measuring. Now the Venture merely ambled along at about double her normal top speed. Enough to shake pursuit, certainly, but not enough to break through the cordon that the Imperial Space Navy was putting around the heart of the Empire.
"I'm sorry, Captain," said Goth tiredly. "That pushing through jelly feeling is back."
"I wish I could help," said Pausert, apologetically. "I've almost got that klatha pattern."
Goth shook her head. "You can't force klatha, Captain. It'll come when you're ready. I've got an idea that may work. They obviously know what the Venture looks like. But I could do a light-shift on her external appearance. Make her look like . . . say a Sirian passenger liner."
"Could work," said the Leewit. "They wouldn't fire on a passenger liner. Not a Sirian one, anyway."
"And we could get you to talk to them in Sirian, missy," said Vezzarn, "before you switch to Universum."
"Let's try it," said Pausert, decisively.
Hantis looked a little uncertain. "It's going to put a lot of strain on you, Goth," she pointed out.
The slim brown-haired witch shrugged. "I think I can do it, and you're supposed to be there before another fifteen ship's-days pass, Hantis. We've got to do something."
So they moved slowly forward, towards the globe of ships that the ISN seemed to have clustered around the spaceways to the inner worlds of the Empire.
"I don't see that the Nanites have very much left to take over," grumbled Pausert, as they came within detector range of yet another flotilla of Imperial Space Navy ships.
"You're quite wrong," said Hantis, coolly. "All they've done is to infiltrate the ISS and probably taken over one or two admirals. That gives them leverage but not control—and certainly not ownership. If they had full control over the Empire, they wouldn't bother to try to stop us at all. In a queer, backhanded sort of way, Captain, this is hugely encouraging."
Pausert decided she was probably right. However, if so . . .
"It also means," he said, "that we have to fight shy of actual shooting combat, even if we might win."
Hantis looked thoughtfully at Captain Pausert, as if looking right into him. The Nartheby Sprite was supposed to be a truth-hearer.
At length, she said, "Yes, Captain, I know you don't want to kill innocents. But the stakes here are very high."
"We'll try to avoid it," said Pausert, tersely. That issue had been worrying him for a while now.
A few minutes later he had other things to worry about.
The Leewit was giving the commodore of the Imperial Space ships some lip. In Sirian, fortunately, which they recognized but didn't understand. Then she switched to Universum. "Syrian registered passenger liner, Pride of Vorvian. What ship?"
"Ah. Pride of Vorvian. This is the ISN Huntinglea. Slow your acceleration. Please give us more details on your registry and port of origin."
"There are two ships peeling off into flanking position," hissed Goth.
"We're out of Shebreith's World, of course, registered on Lepper," said the Leewit, imitating perfectly the typical arrogance of Sirians. "That's in the Regency of Sirius, if your knowledge of astrography is up to the usual Imperial standards. Why do you wish to know?"
The ISN commodore ignored the implied insult. Wisely, Pausert thought. The Regency of Sirius was powerful enough—and certainly belligerent enough—to give pause even to the Empire.
"Ah. Administrative details," he said, his voice smooth as swanhawk grease. "I'm afraid we still need some more information, Pride of Vorvian. This will only take a few minutes. Please continue to slow your thrust."
"He's lying," said Hantis abruptly, looking at the officer on the screen.
Captain Pausert grit his teeth. "We're going to need the Sheewash Drive, then. We'll have to turn and run again. We can't possibly break through."
He took the microphone from the Lee
wit, who hurried to join Goth at the tangle of wires. "We've just discovered we have an outbreak of severe gaspartis on board. We are going to have to return to our last port."
"Wait, Pride of Vorvian. We have medics on board . . ." The Imperial smoothness disappeared. "Halt or be fired on! Pirate vessel Venture. Halt or be fired on!"
But the Venture was already heading away, back where she'd come from, before the two flanking cruisers could come within range.
* * *
"They must have our engine's signature keyed into their detectors, Captain," said Vezzarn. "I don't know how they managed that, though. These engines were installed on Uldune, and the Daal certainly didn't pass along the information to them. But I can't see any other explanation."
Pausert sighed. "If that's the case, short of hauling the Venture's engines out and putting new engines in—which we just don't have the time for—the Imperial Navy will spot us no matter what we do with the light-shift."
"I guess it'll have to be the Egger Route, then," said Goth, her face even more expressionless than usual.
The Leewit scowled, bit her thumb. "Guess so. But—" She jerked a nod at the captain, the grik-dog and the Nartheby Sprite. "Can they do it? Old Vezzarn can't, that's for sure."
Hantis shook her head. "Alas, no. It is not a klatha power that Sprites can harness."
"Well, I suppose it doesn't matter then, that I can't do it either," said Pausert. "As the point is to get Hantis and Pul through to the Empress before the Winter Carnival, we'll have to try some other form of disguise. Maybe we can sneak past on the Sheewash Drive."
"No good," said the old spacer, who was still very uncomfortable about the Sheewash Drive he'd tried so hard to steal—until he found out what it actually was. "At the speed the little Wisdoms can manage now, Captain, they're still going to detect us."
"True," agreed the captain, glumly. "And now that we've tried the light-shift, I don't think that's going to fool them anywhere."
This is not as much fun as the circus, Big Real Thing, tinkled a vatchy voice.
"Get that stinkin' little thing out of here!" said the Leewit, wrinkling her nose. You could hear the girl's tiredness and hunger in her peevish tones. Doing the Sheewash Drive had taken it out of the littlest witch. Besides, Pausert didn't doubt, she was missing the circus and the people there badly. She'd been rather spoiled by them.
The little vatch simply danced around the room, levitating things.
Captain Pausert raised his eyes to heaven. He could chase it with hooks of klatha force . . . and tickle it. Lately he'd found that the best answer was to humor it. Much the same way as he did with the Leewit, actually.
Where have you been for so long, little-bit?
Got sick. The dream-candy from the one the dog-thing bit was sour. Got to go, now. I'll find you again. G'bye.
It disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Dream-candy . . . from the Nanite-infected pirate? The universe as the vatches saw it was rather different from the universe as perceived by humans. Distance and time were fairly meaningless concepts to them. So what did they find in here that was "candy" to them?
Pausert was sure that many of the words that the vatch put into his mind were not strict translations but merely the nearest human equivalent. Well, there'd be time enough to puzzle over what was candy to a vatch, once they'd solved their present problems. The captain turned his mind back to that. "So just what is the Egger Route?"
"The way I came here, stupid," said the Leewit crossly. "Do you forget everything?"
Of course Pausert remembered the droning sound—in space, where there was nothing to transmit sound—and the abrupt and inexplicable arrival of the Leewit, and the way they'd had to wrap her in blankets because of the shaking.
He also remembered that she'd been . . . well, not breathing.
"Kind of hard to explain," said Goth. "I asked Threbus that question once, and he said that I'd have to get to understand n-dimensional math first. It's . . . well, there is a place outside this place, and times and distances aren't the same there. There's billions of Egger-spaces, and they relate to the person going into them. Even if the Leewit and I went home to Karres by the Egger Route, we wouldn't be in the same Egger Space."
"You can take someone else through your Egger Space. Or even send them through it. But that takes big power," scowled the Leewit. "Toll and Maleen could do it. Maleen could make us swim. Her Egger Space was wet. Don't know about Goth."
"Uh-huh," said Goth. "I do it pretty good, Maleen says. I can push quite a lot with me too. Or I could last time I tried. It's not something you try too often, although all Karres witches have to learn how."
Inwardly, Pausert sighed. The trouble with the Karres witches was that just as soon as you thought you had a handle on it all, they introduced new things. "If I've got this straight, the Egger Route goes through Egger Space, and Egger Space is different depending on who goes on the Egger Route. So what exactly is in this 'Egger Space'? Is it totally non-physical? What is there?"
The Leewit shrugged. "Everything."
"Anything," said Goth. "All the things you never want to meet. The details kind of blur up, Captain. It's like a defense that your mind has got against it."
"It's safe enough," said the Leewit. "Just horrid. So long as you don't meet any stinkin' vatches."
Involuntarily, Pausert looked around the room. No vatch in sight. "Why? We seem to have one we can't shake off."
By the way Goth looked around, she was also trying to rell if there were any vatches in the area. "Because vatches make what you find there real . . . here. When you come back. Threbus says they think that's where the Megair cannibals originally came from. From beyond the divide. From some Karres witch's trip through Egger Space. That's why, unless there is a real emergency we don't send any witches into Egger Space, except in a trance. That way they're protected. You still see stuff, but it's more like a nightmare than reality. If you send yourself through . . . well, it's just impossible to tell that it isn't real."
"So it's a sort of extradimensional dreamworld?" persisted the captain. He felt that if he could understand this, then he could do it. He just knew he could.
"I suppose so. It's a place. A little bit of everything in our universe is there too, and you've just got to sort of push and twist and align everything. That's what the vibration is about. You kind of bounce around until your body is back in the same dimensions as the rest of our universe. And then you come back. It's pretty bruising. But that's not the worst part of the Egger Route."
"Yeah," said the Leewit, shuddering a little. "It's bad enough when you go through someone else's Egger Space. Mostly that's just hard to remember."
"We've got another problem, Captain," interrupted Vezzarn, who had been gazing at the detector screens while all this had been going on. "I reckon those Imperials have done some calculations on our possible course, and got on the subradio. There are seven ships incoming. Looks like they're spreading out for an englobement."
They all rushed to the screens. Looking at them, Pausert thought there could be little doubt that Vezzarn was correct.
"Going to have to try and run again, then." Captain Pausert dropped himself into the control chair. "Goth, the Leewit—you two go and eat and get some rest. We may need to use the Sheewash Drive again."
Soon, Pausert started worrying that even the Sheewash Drive wouldn't get them out of the fix they were in. The fancy ship detectors they'd had fitted on Uldune were registering a second layer of ships—an outer englobement pattern. The captain handed control over to Vezzarn while he wrestled with the computations. After a few minutes, he clicked the trajectory calculation screen off and bit his knuckle.
"What is wrong, Captain?" asked Hantis, coming in with a tray of food.
Captain Pausert looked at the elfin alien woman that the Nanites were so desperate to kill. "They've deployed a lot of ships. They've obviously been tracking us and coordinating their efforts by subradio. The formation out ther
e is big and elaborate. At the best speed we can manage with the Sheewash Drive at the moment . . . we're going to have to come under fire from at least one Imperial Space Navy ship. And I'm not at all sure we're heavily enough armored to survive that."
"I see," said Hantis. "How much time have we got?"
"The longest I can gain for us is half an hour."
"We'll have to try the Egger Route, after all. I'll get Goth and the Leewit." The Nartheby Sprite hesitated a moment; then, said softly: "I'm afraid it may mean abandoning the Venture, Captain."
Pausert patted the console awkwardly. The Venture was old, but she was his ship. He hated the idea of losing her. "It's the ship or our lives, Hantis."
But when she came into the control room, Goth had other ideas. "Me and the Leewit can work together. We'll just have to take a chance on not being in a trance, the two of us. We should be able to bring the Venture into Egger Space with us. The only trouble is that we'll have to go somewhere we've been or to someone we know. Otherwise—well, you can come out anywhere."
Vezzarn looked nervously at the screens. "I reckon, Your little Wisdom. Anywhere would be better than right here."
Pausert still had a mission to complete. "Can you take us anywhere closer to the Imperial Capital? Or at least on the other side of this cordon?"
The two little witches looked at each other. "Well. There's always Porlumma. You know, the world where we met you."
Pausert nodded. "That would probably be close enough. But it's on the opposite side of the Capital."
Goth shrugged. "Distance doesn't really matter much in Egger Space, Captain."
Pausert looked at the screens. The Imperial warships were closing steadily. "Okay, Porlumma it is. Anything I can do?"
"We'll need a clear piece of floor space. And some chalk, if you've got it. It helps to draw the klatha pattern for this one. And then I guess we'd better all strap in and pad ourselves. There'll be no one to wrap us up on the far side."
"Is the ship going to shake the way you did?"
The Leewit nodded. "Threbus and Toll did it with a house once. You can move pretty well anything over the Egger Route. But when they got there . . . the house was a real shambles. Didn't have a roof left at all." She seemed to find this very funny.
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