The stranger reached for her neck with his left hand.

  With a swift clean motion, she grabbed the open hand and twisted the wrist back. But the running body picked her off her feet, and both of them fell to the polished opal floor of the patio.

  The man's right hand held a knife.

  With a single plunge, the stranger pushed the blade into her chest, aiming for the heart. He was working with an odd precision, or perhaps by feel. He was trying to accomplish something very specific, and when she struggled, he would strike her face with the back of his free hand.

  The blade dove deeper.

  A small, satisfied moan leaked out of him, as if success was near, and then Pamir drove his boot into the smiling mouth.

  The stranger was human, and furious.

  He climbed to his feet, fending off the next three blows, and then he reached back and pulled out a small railgun that he halfway aimed, letting loose a dozen flecks of supersonic iron.

  Pamir dropped, hit in the shoulder and arm.

  The injured woman lay between them, bleeding and pained. The hilt of the knife stood up out of her chest, a portion of the hyperfiber blade reflecting the brilliant red of the blood.

  With his good arm, Pamir grabbed the hilt and tugged.

  There was a soft clatter as a Darmion crystal spilled out of her body along with the blade. This was what the thief wanted. He saw the glittering shape and couldn't resist the urge to grab at the prize. A small fortune was within reach, but then his own knife was driven clear through his forearm, and he screamed in pain and rage.

  Pamir cut him twice again.

  The little railgun rose up and fired once, twice, and then twice more.

  Pamir's body was dying, but he still had the focus and strength to lift the man —a bullish fellow with short limbs and an infinite supply of blood, it seemed. Pamir kept slashing and pushing, and somewhere the railgun was dropped and left behind, and now the man struck him with a fist and his elbows and then tried to use his knee.

  Pamir grabbed the knee as it rose, borrowing its momentum as well as the last of his own strength to shove the thief against a railing of simple oak, and with a last grunt, flung him over the edge.

  Only Pamir was standing there now.

  Really, it was a beautiful view. With his chest ripped open and a thousand emergency genes telling his body to rest, he gazed out into the open expanse of Fall Away. Thirty kilometers across and lit by a multitude of solar-bright lights, it was a glory of engineering, and perhaps, a masterpiece of art. The countless avenues that fed into Fall Away often brought water and other liquids, and the captains' engineers had devised a system of airborne rivers —diamond tubes that carried the fluids down in a tangle of spirals and rings, little lakes gathering in pools held aloft by invisible means. And always, there were flyers moving in the air—organic and not, alive and not—and there was the deep musical buzz of a million joyous voices, and there were forests of epiphytes clinging to the wall, and there was a wet wind that hadn't ceased in sixty thousand years, and Pamir forgot why he was standing here. What was this place? Turning around, he discovered a beautiful woman with a gruesome wound in her chest telling him to sit, please. Sit. Sir, she said, please, please, you need to rest.

  VIII

  The Faith of the Many Joinings.

  Where it arose first was a subject of some contention. Several widely scattered solar systems were viable candidates, but no single expert held the definitive evidence. Nor could one prophet or pervert take credit for this quasi-religious belief. But what some of the J'Jal believed was that every sentient soul had the same value. Bodies were facades, and metabolisms were mere details, and social systems varied in the same way that individual lives varied, according to choice and whim and a deniable sense of right. What mattered were the souls within all of these odd packages. What a wise soul wished to do was to befriend entities from different histories, and when possible, fall in love with them, linking their spirits together through the ancient pleasures of the flesh.

  There was no single prophet, and the Faith had no birthplace. Which was a problem for the true believers. How could such an intricate, odd faith arise simultaneously in such widely scattered places? But what was a flaw might be a blessing, too. Plainly, divine gears were turning the universe, and this unity was just further evidence of how right and perfect their beliefs had to be. Unless the Faith was the natural outgrowth of the J'Jal's own nature: A social species is thrown across the sky, and every home belongs to more powerful species, and the entire game of becoming lovers to the greater ones is as inevitable and unremarkable as standing on their own two bare feet.

  Pamir held to that ordinary opinion.

  He glanced at his own bare feet for a moment, sighed and then examined his arm and shoulder and chest. The wounds had healed to where nothing was visible. Un-scarred flesh had spread over the holes, while the organs inside him were quickly pulling themselves back into perfect condition. He was fit enough to sit up, but he didn't. Instead, he lay on the soft chaise set on the open-air patio, listening to the llano vibra. He was alone, the diamond wall to the bedroom turned black. For a moment, he thought about things that were obvious, and then he played with the subtle possibilities that sprang up from what was obvious.

  The thief—a registered felon with a long history of this exact kind of work—had fallen for several kilometers before a routine security patrol noticed him, plucking him out of the sky before he could spoil anybody else's day.

  The unlucky man was under arrest and would probably serve a century or two for his latest crime.

  "This stinks," Pamir muttered.

  "Sir?" said the apartment. "Is there a problem? Might I help?"

  Pamir considered, and said, "No."

  He sat up and said, "Clothes," and his technician's uniform pulled itself around him. Its fabric had healed, if not quite so thoroughly as his own body. He examined what could be a fleck of dried blood, and after a moment, he said, "Boots?"

  "Under your seat, sir."

  Pamir was giving his feet to his boots when she walked out through the bedroom door.

  "I have to thank you," Sorrel remarked. She was tall and elegant in a shopworn way, wearing a long gray robe and no shoes. In the face, she looked pretty but sorrowful, and up close, that sadness was a deep thing reaching well past today. "For everything you did, thank you."

  A marathon of tears had left her eyes red and puffy.

  He stared, and she stared back. For a moment, it was as if she saw nothing. Then Sorrel seemed to grow aware of his interest, and with a shiver, she told him, "Stay as long as you wish. My home will feed you and if you want, you can take anything that interests you. As a memento "

  "Where's the crystal?" he interrupted.

  She touched herself between her breasts. The Darmion was back home, resting beside her enduring heart. According to half a dozen species, the crystal gave its possessor a keen love of life and endless joy—a bit of mystic noise refuted by the depressed woman who was wearing it.

  "I don't want your little rock," he muttered.

  She didn't seem relieved or amused. With a nod, she said, "Thank you," one last time, planning to end this here.

  "You need a better security net," Pamir remarked.

  "Perhaps so," she admitted, without much interest.

  "What's your name?"

  She said, "Sorrel," and then the rest of it. Human names were long and complex and unwieldy. But she said it all, and then she looked at him in a new fashion. "What do I call you?"

  He used his most recent identity.

  "Are you any good with security systems?" Sorrel inquired.

  "Better than most."

  She nodded.

  "You want me to upgrade yours?"

  That amused her somehow. A little smile broke across the milky face, and for a moment, the bright pink tip of her tongue pointed at him. Then she shook her head, saying, "No, not for me," as if he should have realized as much. "I have a good friend a dear old friend who has some rather heavy fears "

  "Can he pay?"

  "I will pay. Tell him it's my gift."

  "So who's this worried fellow?"

  She said, "Gallium," in an alien language.

  Genuinely surprised, Pamir asked, "What the hell is a harum-scarum doing, admitting he's scared?"

  Sorrel nodded appreciatively.

  "He admits nothing," she added. Then again, she smiled a warmer expression, this time. Fetching and sweet, even wonderful, and for Pamir, that expression seemed to last long after he walked out of the apartment and on to his next job.

  XI

  The harum-scarum was nearly three meters tall, massive and thickly armored, loud and yet oddly serene at the same time, passionate about his endless bravery and completely transparent when he told his lies. His home was close to Fall Away, tucked high inside one of the minor avenues. He was standing behind his final door—a slab of hyperfiber-braced diamond —and with a distinctly human gesture, he waved off the uninvited visitor. "I do not need any favors," he claimed, speaking through his breathing mouth. "I am as secure as anyone and twelve times more competent than you when it comes to defending myself." Then with a blatant rudeness, he allowed his eating mouth to deliver a long wet belch.

  "Funny," said Pamir. "A woman wishes to buy my services, and you are Gallium, her dear old friend. Is that correct?"

  "What is the woman's name?"

  "Why? Didn't you hear me the first time?"

  "Sorrel, you claimed." He pretended to concentrate, and then with a little too much certainty said, "I do not know this ape-woman."

  "Is that so?" Pamir shook his head. "She knows you."

  "She is mistaken."

  "So then how did you know she was human? Since I hadn't quite mentioned that yet."

  The question won a blustery look from the big black eyes. "What are you implying to me, little ape-man?"

  Pamir laughed at him. "Why? Can't you figure it out for yourself?"

  "Are you insulting me?"

  "Sure."

  That won a deep silence.

  With a fist only a little larger than one of the alien's knuckles, Pamir wrapped on the diamond door. "I'm insulting you and your ancestors. There. By the ship's codes and your own painful customs, you are now free to step out here, in the open, and beat me until I am dead for a full week."

  The giant shook with fury, and nothing happened. One mouth expanded, gulping down deep long breaths, while the other mouth puckered into a tiny dimple —a harum-scarum on the brink of a pure vengeful rage. But Gallium forced himself to do nothing, and when the anger finally began to diminish, he gave an inaudible signal, causing the outer two doors to drop and seal tight.

  Pamir looked left and then right. The narrow avenue was well-lit and empty, and by every appearance, it was safe.

  Yet the creature had been terrified.

  One more time, he paged his way through Sorrel's journal. Among those husbands were two harum-scarums. No useful name had been mentioned in the journal, but it was obvious which of them was Gallium. Lying about his fear was in character for the species. But how could a confirmed practitioner of this singular faith deny that he had even met the woman?

  Pamir needed to find the other husbands.

  A hundred different routes lay before him. But as harum-scarums liked to say, "The shortest line stretches between points that touch."

  Gallium's security system was ordinary, and it was porous, and with thousands of years of experience in these matters, it took Pamir less than a day to subvert codes and walk through the front doors.

  "Who is with me?" a voice cried out from the farthest room.

  In J'Jal, curiously.

  Then, "Who's there?" in human.

  And finally, as an afterthought, the alien screamed, "You are in my realm, and unwelcome." In his own tongue, he promised, "I will forgive you, if you run away at this moment."

  "Sorrel won't let me run," Pamir replied.

  The last room was a minor fortress buttressed with slabs of high-grade hyperfiber and bristling with weapons, legal and otherwise. A pair of rail-guns followed Pamir's head, ready to batter his mind if not quite kill it. Tightness built in his throat, but he managed to keep the fear out of his voice. "Is this where you live now? In a little room at the bottom of an ugly home?"

  "You like to insult," the harum-scarum observed.

  "It passes my time," he replied.

  From behind the hyperfiber, Gallium said, "I see an illegal weapon."

  "Good. Since I'm carrying one."

  "If you try to harm me, I will kill you. And I will destroy your mind, and you will be no more."

  "Understood," Pamir said.

  Then he sat—a gesture of submission on almost every world. He sat on the quasi-crystal tiling on the floor of the bright hallway, glancing at the portraits on the nearby walls. Harum-scarums from past ages stood in defiant poses. Ancestors, presumably. Honorable men and women who could look at their cowering descendant with nothing but a fierce contempt.

  After a few moments, Pamir said, "I'm pulling my weapon into plain view."

  "Throw it beside my door."

  The plasma gun earned a respectful silence. It slid across the floor and clattered to a stop, and then a mechanical arm unfolded, slapping a hyperfiber bowl over it, and then covering the bowl an explosive charge set to obliterate the first hand that tried to free the gun within.

  The hyperfiber door lifted.

  Gallium halfway filled the room beyond. He was standing in the middle of a closet jammed with supplies, staring at Pamir, the armored plates of his body flexing, exposing their sharp edges.

  "You must very much need this work," he observed.

  "Except I'm not doing my work," Pamir replied. "Frankly, I've sort of lost interest in the project."

  Confused, the harum-scarum stood taller. "Then why have you gone to such enormous trouble?"

  "What you need," Pamir mentioned, "is a small, well-charged plasma gun. That makes a superior weapon."

  "They are illegal and hard to come by," argued Gallium.

  "Your rail-guns are criminal, too." Just like with the front doors, there was a final door made of diamond reinforced with a meshwork of hyperfiber. "But I bet you appreciate what the shaped plasma can do to a living mind."

  Silence.

  "Funny," Pamir continued. "Not that long ago, I found a corpse that ran into that exact kind of tool."

  The alien's back couldn't straighten anymore, and the armor plates were flexing as much as possible. With a quiet voice —an almost begging voice —Gallium asked the human, "Who was the corpse?"

  "Sele'ium."

  Again, silence.

  "Who else has died that way?" Pamir asked. It was a guess, but not much of one. When no answer was offered, he added, "You've never been this frightened. In your long, ample life, you have never imagined that fear could eat at you this way. Am I right?"

  Now the back began to collapse.

  A miserable little voice said, "It just worsens."

  "Why?"

  The harum-scarum dipped his head for a moment.

  "Why does the fear get worse and worse?"

  "Seven of us now."

  "Seven?"

  "Lost." A human despair rode with that single word. "Eight, if you are telling the truth about the J'Jal."

  "What eight?" Pamir asked.

  Gallium refused to say,

  "I know who you are," he continued. "Eight of Sorrel's husbands, and you. Is that right?"

  "Her past husbands," the alien corrected.

  "What about current lovers — ?"

  "There are none."

  "No?"

  "She is celibate," the giant said with a deep longing. Then he dropped his gaze, adding, "When we started to die, she gave us up. Physically, and legally as well."

  Gallium missed his human wife. It showed in his stance and voice and how the great hand trembled, reaching up to touch the cool pane of diamond while he added, "She is trying to save us. But she doesn't know how—"

  A sudden ball of coherent plasma struck the pane just then. No larger than a human heart, it dissolved the diamond and the hand, and the grieving face, and everything that lay beyond those dark lonely eyes.

  X

  Pamir saw nothing but the flash, and then came a concussive blast that threw him off his feet. For an instant, he lay motionless. A cloud of atomized carbon and flesh filled the cramped hallway. He listened and heard nothing. At least for the next few moments, he was completely deaf. Keeping low, he rolled until a wall blocked his way. Then he started to breathe, scalding his lungs, and he held his breath, remaining absolutely still, waiting for a second blast to shove past.

  Nothing happened.

  With his mouth to the floor, Pamir managed a hot but breathable sip of air. The cloud was thinning. His hearing was returning, accompanied by a tireless high-pitched hum. A figure swam into view, tall and menacing—a harum-scarum, presumably one of the dead man's honored ancestors. He remembered that the hallway was littered with the portraits. Pamir saw a second figure, and then a third. He was trying to recall how many images there had been because he could see a fourth figure now, and that seemed like one too many

  The plasma gun fired again. But it hadn't had time enough to build a killing charge, and the fantastic energies were wasted in a light show and a burst of blistering wind.

  Again the air filled with dirt and gore.

  Pamir leaped up and retreated.

  Gallium was a nearly headless corpse, enormous even when mangled and stretched out on his back. The little room was made tinier with him on the floor. When their owner died, the rail-guns had dropped into their diagnostic mode, and waking them would take minutes, or days. The diamond door was shredded and useless. When the cloud fell away again, in another few moments, Pamir would be exposed and probably killed.

  Like Gallium, he first used the J'Jal language.

  "Hello," he called out.

  The outer door was open and still intact, but its simple trigger was useless to him. It was sensitive only to pressure from a familiar hand. Staring out into the hallway, he shouted, "Hello," once again.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319