The transformer trilogy, p.50
The Transformer Trilogy, page 50
“... told Corlean that she could take it and shove ...”
“... and after that, let me tell you, we ...”
“... not any new ones out tonight. Same stuff ...”
“... haven’t seen them once this trip, and now out in force.”
“When did you ever see two, and in uniform?”
“Carrying Tracker-Lenosz, too.”
“Never mind, they’re probably looking for a purse-snatcher.”
Kham let his eyes wander, as if aimlessly looking over the crowd. For a second, he saw nothing significant, but then he registered the image. Two men, rather thin, wearing one-piece gray coveralls, walking now away from the restaurant, accompanied by two sleek, gray animals who loped along beside them without visible connection, but who also moved as if they were part of the two men. Their passage seemed aimless, but the agent part of Cesar Kham noted the subtle movements of their heads, men and animals, which indicated a careful scanning pattern, even though he could not see their faces from this angle. Shipsecurity agents, patrolling, of course. But looking for what? They had passed, certainly, within hailing distance of himself and Arunda, and yet passed on. He breathed deeply, and turned again to his meal, as if he had seen nothing. The murmur of voices around them continued, against a background susurrus from which it was impossible to extract anything.
“... saw them carry a body-bag out of ...”
“... go upstairs and harass the swells in ...”
“... wouldn’t mess with ...”
“... and when we got to Havaerque, we ran slap out ...”
“... Nedro is nothing but a hoage....”
“... onliest way I know to ...”
“... and she was so fat that if you told her to haul-arse, she’d have to make two trips....”
“... routine patrol, likely. On the Banastre Tarleton they patrolled steerage almost hourly. And we were glad to have it, I can tell you, all those crazy religious colonists ...”
“... on the Pedro Francisco, they’d turn Lenosz loose in a heartbeat.”
Kham looked up at Arunda. “Shipsecurity. Seems to be a routine patrol. Somewhat out of ordinary, but within tolerance. Why worry? Had they been coming for us, they’d have had us now.”
“All the same, it gave me a fright. When did they start using Lenosz?”
“I wasn’t aware they were being used. It’s news to me. Still, we’ve been out of touch. Heliarcos, then Oerlikon, Heliarcos, and back here. Who knows?”
Arunda ruffled her fingers through her hair, shaking her head slowly. “There is much we don’t seem to know, ourselves. I have to vote for us staying close together.”
Kham leaned forward, massaged his eyebrows. “Yes, of course. Tonight. But here’s the way we arrange it: you get yourself shifted to one level up, a double. Then I’ll follow.”
“Why not come with me?”
“I’ve got to find out how much of an alarm is out. Some fine work. I can’t do it with a partner. We have to know some of this—how bad it is. Then we can decide what we need to do.”
“Very well. How long will it take?”
“About a day, should be. Stay put.”
“How will you know where to find me?”
“Re-register openly. I’ll call.”
Arunda nodded. “Tonight.”
“Oh, yes. Tonight, for a fact.”
“And what about the girl? Are you going to press on with that, too?”
“For the moment, the girl will have to wait.” Kham picked up the bill, studied it for a moment, critically, and then signed it, citing a particular alphanumeric code group. Then he said to Arunda, who had already gotten up to leave, “Do what you can to try to trace the girl. We’ll take that up again directly.”
16
“For the hard choices that define you there are no preset priorities, no magic answer; you place value and choose. But the proof lies in the obverse—when we start explaining away things by saying ‘it just happened,’ or some such similar nonsense, we admit that we did not choose anything, save to drift away into oblivion on a current of vagrant passions and miscellaneous lusts. No one can deny the beauty and ecstasy, but those moments were also balanced by equivalent amounts of terror, heart-break, self-doubts of truly industrial strength. And in the end, surrounded by ruins, we ask why, and blame a cruel god.”
—H.C., Atropine
ASOFT, ALMOST-INAUDIBLE chime of exquisite high pitch sounded, having no perceptible source. Nazarine had been lying back across the bed, not asleep, nor yet awake, but when she heard the chime she looked across the room immediately, to where Faren had been dozing in a soft chair. Faren left the chair and stood by the bed, touching the commset. “Who calls?”
“Ngellathy here.”
Faren said, to Nazarine, “My contact in Shipsecurity. That one is safe.”
“Let him in.”
Faren released the door, and into the dimmed room stepped a slender man in one of the ubiquitous shipgray uniform coveralls. Slipped into the room might be better. Or even better, flowed. He locked the door behind him and joined the two by the bed. To Nazarine’s sharpened senses, it seemed something brief passed between Faren and the man, who seemed a curious blend of irreconcilable opposites: tense, yet also internally totally relaxed.
Faren glanced at him once more, and then to Nazarine. “Here we have Dorje Ngellathy, a Securityman who most of the time is a hopeless attitude case, but who, in a tight spot, is the only one I can depend on.” And to Ngellathy she added, “This is Nazarine Alea, lately of Oerlikon, our unscheduled stop.”
Ngellathy nodded, impatiently, curtly. Satisfied at last that the preliminaries were done with, he sat in the chair Faren had just vacated. He said, “Here is how things stand now. The body has been picked up. Faren, you were right in your suspicion of the pattern of trauma. Medical is going over it before ejection to see if they can derive a pattern. Some of these hand-assassins follow discrete schools. As for the killer, we used Alea’s description of the probable, and presently he reappeared at the room. We had a viscoder installed. Had a woman with him, matches your description. They came aboard at Oerlikon, but are not, apparently, using Oerlikonian names. He lists as Czermak Pentrel’k, she as Morelat Eikarinst.”
Nazarine said, “You haven’t done anything!”
“No. We are holding, partly on your request, partly because we want to find out exactly what we are dealing with. Sec/Chief doesn’t care for that pattern of injuries and wants to know.”
“How?”
“We have an intermediate stop on Teragon. It’s not in the route, and you can’t buy a ticket for it, but Kalmia always drops in for a while.”
Nazarine looked across the space between them. Ngellathy was difficult to see, to realize, to describe. Shadowy, subtle, even sneaky, there was strangeness writ hard all over him, but even so, she could see no particular evil in him. At the least, he was no more disreputable than Faren. She said, “What’s Teragon?”
“Once was a small planet on a small system. That was long ago. Turned out it’s near the center of our planetary communications system, so there they built a city. And more city. The whole planet is now city. They even figured out a way to make their own food. You can read about it. But there, we can tie in and get the proper patches to link up and dig deep before we move. And never fear—Pentrel’k isn’t getting off this ship alive.”
Faren asked, “Dorje, you don’t know where they come from?”
“No. They claim to be from that planet we stopped at, but we have eliminated that right away. No, we’ve got him where we want him, and he’ll stay there.”
Nazarine said, in a low voice, almost a mutter, “I need him alive.”
Ngellathy turned now directly toward her, and said, “I hear, but I can’t understand why.”
“He has been hunting me, and I need to find out where he comes from. Not where he was born.”
He laughed, softly. “Why not ask him?”
Nazarine folded her arms under her breasts. “Perhaps. But consider: the woman with him—would she not be from the same place?”
“High probability.”
“Are you watching her?”
“Certainly.”
Nazarine looked away from Ngellathy, lest he read what was in her face. He saw the motion, and added, “Shipmatter now, of course. I know you understand how that must be. No vendettas, revanches, loitering with intent to suborn mayhem, and so forth. I’m no stickler for forms for their own sake—there are more people involved in this than just you, now.”
“No, nothing like that. I was thinking that it might be possible for your people to separate them, and we would ... have a short chat with her. All under supervision, naturally.”
Again, that small, assured chuckle. “Naturally.”
“What do you think?”
He looked off into the shadows of the darker parts of the room. Then back, abruptly fixing her with a strong gaze. “It could be arranged. And what afterward? Confinement?”
“I was thinking you could simply turn her loose. She’ll tell her partner what I asked, and what I said....” She let it hang.
“Maybe not so good. We don’t want him too highly motivated to excellence.”
“Could you just put her off, say, at the planet we’ll stop over at? Teragon?”
“Hmf. Now there’s a rich one. You’re full of them. They have cross-world comms there, and doubtless she’d report back to their bosses. Might stir up forty kinds of hellation. We don’t know yet who they work for. Some of the more obvious things we have already eliminated, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have connections, in fact, that they are not obvious argues for excellent connections. We don’t want to arrive at the first scheduled port of call and have Kalmia impounded.”
“I see.” Nazarine stood up. “Take me to her. No recordings, nobody but me. And arrest me if she’s harmed.”
Faren now interjected, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
Faren now stood up and said, to Ngellathy, “Take her.”
He shook his head, but stood anyway, still shaking his head. “Come on. We’ll cook something up on the way. I will probably have her confined afterward.”
Nazarine added emphatically, “I don’t want them dead or harmed. They’re worth nothing to me dead.”
“Let’s go,” said Ngellathy, and the three of them stepped out of Nazarine’s room, into the balcony-passage high over the middle-level concourse. It was night cycle now out in the immense inside space, and the overheads that illuminated it and lent the appearance of daylight were now out and the space was dark. But far below, there were piercingly bright lights under the trees and awnings, and across the concourse, watchlights by another wall of rooms and suites glimmered like distant city lights. Nazarine walked with energy and anticipation, but looking out over that space, and understanding that she was riding, a passive passenger inside an enormous artifact, she caught herself holding a fugitive memory from Phaedrus, of the open, empty spaces and starry nights of Zolotane.
Down on the floor of the concourse, it was now the ship’s analogue of night, and nighttime gaiety was well advanced: well-behaved crowds sat to their tipple in taverns, while in other places, the throb and wail of music wafted out into the illuminated squares and plazas, and in the dim interiors they sensed rather than saw directly the pulse and motion of dancers. Outside, small groups and solitary individuals strolled, leered, followed one another, or gathered in small groups to watch troupes of acrobats, or musicians, or wonderworking prestidigitators who plucked flowers from ears, removed gold rings from pockets, or perhaps colored handkerchiefs would be made to appear from the most unlikely, and slightly vulgar places.
As they walked through the plazas, Nazarine covertly watched Faren and Dorje Ngellathy out of the corner of her eyes. They both seemed perfectly in their element, not so much as participants in the merry-making, but more, perhaps, as lifeguards on a beach, who might take a short stroll from time to time. She also saw that they seemed to lose concern, and concentrate more on each other, at least in short, fleeting fragments of time. For a time they held hands lightly, almost absentmindedly, and by some change in inner state Nazarine saw an expression of innocent girlishness flicker into life on Faren’s face. Dorje, who was more visible in the plain light of the concourse streetlights, now became something less mysterious and more human. The face was basically that of some hardened mercenary, or veteran of obscure border actions: high, prominent cheekbones, a hawk nose, a wide slash mouth whose upper lip was fuller than the lower, and epicanthic folds at the corners of long, drooping eyelids. He wore his hair cropped off unfashionably short. In build, he was slender, but wide at the shoulders, as tall as Nazarine herself. He moved easily, loosely, but wary. And he, too, changed in short little instants, managing in those times to shed the hardness and seem something from another time, another place. A young hunter; a successful candidate from the tribe’s Rite of Passage, one who had undertaken the long quest and who had seen the Holy Man.
They stopped briefly at one of the communications-points, and Ngellathy spoke for a time. When he had finished, he said, “She’s taken a couple of rooms down here on the floor, in a small pension above a jeweler’s shop. Now she is alone. It’s not far from here.”
Nazarine asked, “How will we do it?”
“We’ll go in and talk with her a bit, and then you can go in.”
Nazarine nodded assent, and they continued. Their walk now took them into a part of the concourse arranged to appear as if it were some small shopping quarter of a fashionable resort: small buildings of light-colored stone or soapstone tiles alternated with discreet little shops of stucco and stained wood. In between were carefully arranged plots that seemed like vacant lots until one noted the careful, almost over-tidy landscaping, the fussy attention to details.
They arrived at the shop, which had an upper floor devoted to apartments, as seemed common in this district. It was situated on an alley, with more of the same sort of structures behind it, most connected to the street level by a series of rambling staircases of old-fashioned and quaint construction.
The second floor of the jeweler’s shop was reached by one of these stairs, and they went up the narrow way in a line, Nazarine last. At the landing at the top, Dorje and Faren knocked on the door. After a time, it was opened cautiously, and a brief conversation ensued, after which the door opened farther and they went in. The door closed. Nazarine held her place on the stairs, waiting, occasionally glancing around. A few people passed by out on the main thoroughfare, but none seemed to look up or notice her; they were preoccupied with their own concerns. And while she waited, she slowly let herself move into a greater awareness, listening, sensing everything she could. As she did so, the illusion of a city on a surface faded, and the concourse seemed shadowy, insubstantial. She could hear a very soft but persistent ultrabass vibration, which was of course the ship. Sounds also had an echoing ring to them, unnatural in a true open space. The smells were too clean, too mechanical, technological. Somewhere, someone should have been frying onions. There was no woodsmoke, no sweat, no pungent scent of some domesticated animal.
Above, on the landing, the door opened, and Faren came out, followed by Dorje, who motioned to her. She mounted the remaining stairs and turned at the top, while Dorje said, in passing, “Remember. No action.”
She nodded, and went through the door Dorje held open for her. Inside was a small room, rather like a parlor, connected with others on the far side. There was a simple sofa, facing wooden chairs. On the sofa sat a woman who stood when Nazarine came in. The woman was well-proportioned with no fat, but she was clearly past her prime, retaining as her most striking feature a long cascade of rich, dark brown hair. Her features were regular and clear, unremarkable save for a mouth that was slightly too large for the face, which gave her a slightly childish look. But one other thing distinguished the woman’s features as Nazarine saw them: the woman was holding herself under rigid control, and was clearly terrified.
Nazarine did not know how to begin. The woman was so tense, almost anything could happen. She decided to keep it simple, and retain the advantage of fear that she held. She reached for Rael, and found that selfness waiting. As that came into her awareness, her perception of the woman shifted slightly, subtly: she seemed less vulnerable, and more contemptible, rather like a child caught doing something dangerous about which it has been repeatedly warned. She said, softly, “You recognize me.” Statement, not question.
The woman hesitated, then said, “Yes, I know you from ID Mindset.”
“My name is now Nazarine Alea. You also know what I am and who else I have been.”
“Yes.”
“Please sit down. I arranged this, not to attack you, but to try to understand some things. As you know, a Securityman waits outside on the stoop; had it been my method to use violence, I would not have asked him to announce me, or to wait.”
She sat gingerly, watching Nazarine all the time. Nazarine sat on one of the wooden chairs. After a few uneasy moments, the woman said, “You seem to have thought of everything.”
Nazarine said, “Neither you nor your partner have any meaning for me dead.”
The woman said, “I fear you, but what I fear worse than that is knowing the probable consequences of your remaining alive, and finding your way back. We seem to have lost initiative in the latter case, and so await the former with the usual dread. What else?”
Nazarine observed tautly, “When I was Phaedrus, you sent commandos against unarmed children to get me. Your agents killed what little family I had. I lived with a plain woman who could see forever and was one with the earth; she was one in that house who died. And in my present embodiment, your partner killed my lover. True, I understand he was selfish and had his faults, but such as he was, he was mine. Someone sent a man to seduce me and then kill me when I was Damistofia Azart. Who are you to inflict such terror, and in whose name?”
Palude said, “I will tell you nothing.”
