by T. F. Grant
Her kronac advocate took her through a maze of tunnels that smelled of fresh earth until they arrived at a heavy iron door. Tooize took a key from one of the leather pouches around his belt and opened it. He held it open as Sara and Kina walked through.
The sound of the door slamming behind Sara made her jump and spin round, worried she’d been locked inside and all this was some great ruse, but no, Tooize joined them and brought them further into the room.
It resembled a medical lab with a central operating table and a circular set of lights hanging from the ceiling. The walls were light gray, clean, and featureless apart from a few small cabinets at kronac head-height.
Tooize reached up and pulled a lever on the round light fixture.
It took a moment, but eventually they glowed to almost a neon blue, giving the room a strange atmosphere that reminded her of the old hologram cinemas.
“Algae lights,” Kina said. “Cool, huh? The kronacs breed it here.”
“Yeah, cool, I think, but what…”
Tooize had walked to the end of the twenty-five-foot room and stopped at a large brushed-chrome cabinet. It reached easily two feet higher than Tooize and double that wide.
The kronac wheeled it to the head of the operating table and gestured for her to lie on her back. Sara looked to Kina. “What? I’ve got to get on that… an operating table. Just what’s happening here?”
Kina gripped Sara’s arm. “It’s okay. You’ll be fine. It won’t hurt at all.”
“You’ve seen this before?”
“Yeah, a couple of times. Trust me, it’ll be over before you know it. No pain whatsoever.”
Sara could tell Kina was being sincere. Even Tooize’s body language, or what she could make of it, seemed nonthreatening and relaxed. His two right arms were still outstretched, indicating the table.
“Okay,” Sara said. “But I don’t like this.”
Sara hopped on to the table and lay down. Kina stood to her right and gripped her hand as Tooize strapped Sara down. Looking down, Kina smiled. “It’s going to be awesome the first time. When everything and everyone makes sense, you’ll be amazed.”
“Uh-huh… can we get it over with. I’ve never been comfortable with medical procedures.”
Kina nodded to Tooize. “She’s ready, big guy.” Looking back at Sara, she said, “Just one thing, keep your eyes on me.”
There was no time for her to ask why. Tooize pulled the algae light lower, bathing her in cold blue neon. Noises like something thrashing inside a water tank made her twist her head.
Tooize opened the cabinet doors.
“Look at me,” Kina said, squeezing Sara’s hand. “Just keep looking at me.”
“Why? What’s happening? I don’t like this. I want it to stop, please.”
The whistling that came from Tooize sounded weird, like Sivither’s incantations. Something wet hit the operation table a few inches behind her head. The sounds of suction made her fidget beneath the straps. Her muscles tensed as Tooize’s voice grew louder.
“It’ll be over soon, girl. It won’t hurt. Just keep staring at my eyes.”
But Sara couldn’t. The wet, sucking sounds sent a terrible stab of fear through her. She arched her back and bent her neck, tucking her head back so she could see. And she truly wished she had listened to Kina.
A silent scream escaped her lips. Her back hit the table as a large, mottled gray squid-like creature crawled over her head, its writhing tentacles weighing her body down. Some kind of slime made it slick across her face.
Small feelers pressed against her skin.
She couldn’t see anything as the creature covered her entire head.
A tentacle worked its way up her neck.
Something jabbed her, and a warm sensation spread throughout her muscles. Her heart rate dropped, and her breathing became slow and deep. All the while the panic continued to build somewhere deep inside her brain as that damned tentacle retracted from her neck and felt around the back of her head.
She felt it more than heard it: a drilling into her skull.
The vibrations sent a low rumble throughout her as the tentacle bored into the back of her head.
It slithered inside as the darkness eventually took her.
TWENTY
Tai tasted blood in the back of his throat, draining from his broken nose. He hawked up and spat a globule of bloody phlegm onto the deck. Bending at the waist, he let gravity drain the blood through his nose not down into his belly. Great, now he was going to have to pay a freaking bresac healer to fix him up or walk around with two black eyes for a twelve-cycle and a bent nose for the rest of his flaming life.
Damn Bookworm and his frigging forehead.
Bookworm clambered to his feet and started talking to Haggard and Sweet-Sap. Bastard didn’t even apologize. Tai should have just shot him, not wrestled him for the flaming gun. Nice-looking weapon, that. Lot of firepower in a small package. Tai wondered if Bookworm would deal for it. He grinned, despite the pain throbbing from his busted nose.
Aleatra and the Markesians retreated across the dock with DeLaney and Murlowe in tow. A wise move since Bookworm had just tried to blow them away. The last few stasis pods were being carted off the deck under the protection of Hela. She hadn’t even blinked when Bookworm went berserk. Just kept right on doing her job.
Tai glanced at the Damnfine, and his grin broadened. A nice new ship to keep him busy while the Mary-May was repaired. Nothing in the whole of Hollow Space would make him give up the Mary-May, but now she became his flagship. “Moving up in the world, old son,” he muttered to himself.
It was moving toward the night period, and the dock cleared of people. Scaroze had wandered away to talk to Jaxa again. No doubt the dance of a haggle and a deal was playing out. Tai watched Jaxa turn as if to leave and then return to speak again to the impassive Scaroze. That’s my kronac; make the bugger sweat every last credit.
A small hand touched Tai’s arm. “Please,” Margo said.
“What now?” Tai grunted.
“Please let me help.” She reached up toward his face.
He jerked back and hissed at the explosion of pain from his damaged nose.
“Please be still,” Margo said, as she placed her hands on either side of his face. “Please.”
Her eyes captured his attention. He was unable to move. Didn’t even want to move. Her small hands moved inward from his cheeks and touched his nose. He flinched, expecting pain, but there was none. Warmth ebbed into the damaged tissue, into the bruises forming around his eyes, into the broken cartilage of his nose. A soft, gentle warmth, easing his pain.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, drowning in the blue of Margo’s eyes, while the warmth of her touch healed his injury.
“There,” she said, letting her hands drop away from Tai’s face, lowering her gaze from his.
He started as if waking from a dream. “What did you do?” he demanded. “What did you do to me?”
“Healed you,” she said simply.
Tai reached up and touched his face; the puffiness around his eyes had gone. His nose was straight once more. No pain anymore. He turned his head to one side, away from Margo, closed off one nostril and blew out a clot of blood that splattered on the deck, and then did the other nostril. He could breathe again.
Margo wrinkled her face in disgust. “You’re welcome.”
“What? Oh, yeah, thank you, really.” Tai wiped the remains of the blood onto the sleeve of his spacesuit. “So you’re a healer?”
“I am Hentian,” she said simply.
“What does that actually mean?”
“We are always twins. The Crown designed us to be useful and trained our powers to serve the Republic.”
“Designed you?”
“Genetic modification to bring out the incipient powers of the human mind.” Margo’s eyes held an ancient pain. “We were created in a test tube.”
Tai couldn’t help the twist of revulsion that flickered ac
ross his face.
Margo dropped her gaze to the deck. “I must go.” She hurried away with her head bowed. Tai wanted to call out to her, wanted to call her back, but he could not find the words to say.
Lofreal whistled, “She is a healer.”
Tai dragged his gaze from Margo’s retreating back. “Yeah,” he said, took a deep breath, and returned to the game. “Money to be made off her.” Though he didn’t say it with any great conviction.
***
Bookworm could not believe what this walking shrubbery was saying to him. “You want to confiscate my books?” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Margo healing Tai. Why the hell did she bother? The reprobate deserved a little pain.
“Paper is ours. Books are ours. We will pay you for them.” Sweet-Sap rustled and excreted a seal. “This is your seal. We will deal now.”
Bookworm took the seal. “What if I don’t want to sell to you? What if I can get a better price elsewhere?”
Haggard laughed. “Black market paper? Black market books? How long can you breathe in space without a spacesuit?”
Bookworm glanced at him, but kept his face blank. So there was a black market for paper, then? It was just a little bit dangerous. He considered the books he had secreted all over the hull of the Venture.
Telo had helped him find places to hide them. They were hidden in ducts and conduits, in empty stores, and, by the end, in the walls of the lesser-used corridors.
He missed Telo. The AI had understood his need for reading material and his inability to discard any book he came across. More human than a human, that was Telo. The gaping hole on the bridge where his matrix had lain like a broken tooth scraped at Bookworm’s mind.
He had no real idea of the number of titles he owned. On every planet he visited, he had haunted the flea markets and the specialist shops, trading guns to get the money to buy as many as he could afford. Some books he stole, sneaking into the libraries of aristocrats to steal indicted copies of books the republic did not want the common people to read. Some books he had even killed for.
And then he hid them all over the Venture. The ship was probably more paper than metal now. He tried not to think how many he’d lost when those bastard Markesians cleaved the ship in two.
“Do you have any more?” Sweet-Sap demanded.
“What?”
“Do you have more paper?”
Bookworm looked him right in his Ent-like eyes and said, “Nah. Just picked these up to read on the trip.” He sniffed, shrugged, and said carefully, “I don’t keep them after I read them. I just sell them on to buy some more. Expensive things, paper books. Worth a lot of cash.”
Haggard smirked. “Worth a hell of a lot more here. How many you got?”
Bookworm lifted his hands. “Fifty to a case or thereabouts, didn’t bother counting them.”
“Two hundred credits a case,” Sweet-Sap said.
“Nah, let’s make it a thousand.”
Haggard laughed. “This is not a negotiation, son.” His hand fell to his holstered pistol.
“Is that so?” Bookworm stretched his neck. “Two hundred for the books. I keep the cases and the guns. They ain’t paper.”
“Agreed,” Sweet-Sap said and excreted a chit. “Four hundred credits for the paper in those cases, but the cases and whatever else is inside them remain in your possession.”
Haggard looked disappointed at losing the guns.
“And,” Sweet-Sap said, “we will pay the same price for any other paper you possess.”
Bookworm shook his head. “That’s not part of the deal. I’ve said I don’t possess any more, and I don’t want to deal on things I don’t own.”
“What does it matter,” Haggard said.
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Bookworm said. “I like books. I may find some on the station I like. But I like to read them before I sell them on.”
“The only books on the station are in the library, and they don’t get checked out to anyone,” Haggard snapped.
“You mentioned a black market.” Bookworm grinned.
“That’ll get you spaced.”
“But I get to read first.”
“You’re crazy.”
“People have said that before.”
“Agreed,” Sweet-Sap interrupted. “The deal is for the paper, the books, in the cases only.” He held out the chit.
“I think you need to annotate that, don’t you?” Bookworm said.
“You’re going to do fine here, son,” Haggard said.
The chit disappeared into Sweet-Sap’s leaves and then reappeared again. “Please read.”
Bookworm checked the chit. “Good enough for me.” He pressed his seal to the paper and saw his likeness imprinted with the green enzyme.
He was still chuckling when Margo came and told him about all that had happened while he was locked up on the Venture. She told of all they had learned about the deal between Aleatra and the Markesians. About the attack on the Venture being a ruse, and the dead humans in their splintered stasis units being just window dressing to sell the con.
He wasn’t smiling after that.
***
Tai wandered over to Bookworm as a couple of Haggard’s men bundled up the books and took them away with Sweet-Sap in close attendance. They left the cases and the guns. Quite a few guns. They looked rather expensive.
Aleatra, DeLaney, and Murlowe strolled across the deck toward Bookworm. The Markesians followed but slowly, as if waiting to see if he would try to kill them again. Tai figured not. Margo had no doubt told the mad bastard about what had happened.
“How much for the guns?” Haggard asked.
“I’ll see what the market can bear,” Bookworm replied. He pushed the machine pistol, a snub-nose model, and what looked like a grenade launcher into one of the cases. He buckled a gun belt with a large-bore revolver in an across-the-belly drawer holster on the left and another snub-nosed revolver in a hip holster on the right. Neither holster was really set up for a fast draw, but the guns looked tasty enough.
Pouches on the belt no doubt held extra ammo.
Opening his spacesuit, Bookworm tossed another revolver into the other case that held what looked like a dismantled sniper rifle and some sort of shotgun with a revolver-like middle.
“I’ll offer top prices,” Haggard said. “For that rifle and that auto-shotgun.”
Bookworm shrugged. “I’ll tell you the best offer I’ve received, and you can top it if you want.”
“That’s what I meant,” Haggard said.
“That’s nice.” Bookworm turned to Tai. “Where’s Sara?”
“Your illustrious leader has business with the kronacs,” Tai said.
“Not my leader,” Bookworm growled. “Nobody died and left her in charge.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Yeoman Dylan Meredith James,” Aleatra said.
There was a blankness behind Bookworm’s eyes as he turned his gaze toward Aleatra that made Tai—and Haggard—rest his hand on his holstered pistol.
“Are you?” Bookworm asked.
“I’m sorry.” Aleatra frowned. He did not seem to notice the look in Bookworm’s eyes.
“Are you happy to hear that?”
“Yes. I’m glad that you have chosen to remain with the Crown.”
“Ah,” Bookworm smiled a smile that didn’t reach his cold eyes. “The Crown. A lot of people died to keep you in charge of the Crown, didn’t they?”
“I did what I did for the survival of the human race,” Aleatra said, closing his hand into a fist.
“There was your predecessor, President Tolas, such an unfortunate flyer accident.”
“The inquiry said—”
“There was the leader of the miners’ union of Gladian Five, died in custody.”
“That was suicide.”
“Hard to visualize how a man can shoot himself in the back of the head. There were the people who rioted for food on—”
“Be silent,” Aleatra
roared.
“And there were the crew and passengers of the Venture.” Bookworm turned his cold blank gaze onto the Markesians. “Did you know the kind of man you were dealing with? Or don’t bugs like you care?”
Aleatra lifted his arm. His sleeve fell back, revealing the blunt jeweled barrel of the blaster. “You are an enemy of the state,” he declared.
Bookworm stretched his neck from side to side. Tai heard his vertebrae clicking. “What state, you motherless son of a motherless whore? There ain’t nobody here but us plebs.”
Aleatra’s face turned crimson with rage. He triggered the blaster.
Nothing happened.
Bookworm smiled. “Welcome to frecking Hollow Space, where fancy shit don’t work no more.” He stepped in and crashed his forehead against Aleatra’s nose. His glasses fell to the floor. Tai winced in sympathy. But Bookworm wasn’t done. Three solid uppercuts into Aleatra’s stomach followed by a knee thrust up into his groin left the Crowner wheezing in a heap on his knees.
“I resign,” Bookworm added as a final note as he bent to retrieve his glasses.
Haggard jumped forward, but Bookworm backed away with his hands up. “I’m done now.”
The Markesians did nothing. They did not step in to protect Aleatra. They simply tilted their head to one side, looking at the Crown leader with their compound eyes. As if they were judging him.
DeLaney screamed, “He’s the president,” and pushed in front of the moaning Aleatra. “I’m your captain. You will stand trial for what you have done.”
“He’s a piece of trash who killed his way to the top of a stinking pile of corpses,” Bookworm said. “And you’re not even captain of your own bladder.” He turned to Tai. “That felt rather good.”
“Yeah,” Tai agreed. “I could see that. You knew the blaster wouldn’t work.”
“I had one of them wrist-blasters in my cabin. Tried it. Didn’t work. Damn things are just lumps of metal, glass, and plastic now.”
Bookworm sighed and watched DeLaney help Aleatra stagger away.
He knew all about that bastard after all those years dealing with the Crown. All those years hiding what he really thought, and all those years reading underground newsletters and fax sheets. Never anything he could do about it. All he could do was hide in his books and play the fool.
