Chapter 15: Kamura
"Are you sure you can trust them?" Kamura demanded.
"No, I’m not sure, but we don’t have a choice. Now get out of my way," he said as he pushed past her.
Kamura stepped aside. Everything was slipping away from her control! She’d woken only to have Tessa tell her that Jak had gone to find the mobbies. When he didn’t return a day later, Tessa had armed herself with her knife and gone after him. She’d tried to talk the small, fragile looking woman out of going, but the stubborn Veloran had insisted on looking for the man she called ‘my pilot.’ Kamura had been left alone with instructions to stay put and with nothing to do but wait and worry.
The waiting had been more difficult than the toughest task Kamura’s instructors had ever set her. No matter what these two did, she could not fail her grandmother. Then, a short while ago, Jak had come staggering in out of the early morning darkness, filthy, bleeding, and without the Veloran woman.
"Aren’t these the same mobbies who stormed into your apartment?"
She would never forget the way they’d turned on her, just children but so wild, so alien. Just remembering reawakened all her aches and bruises.
"Probably not the same ones," Jak said, "but they’re the same type." He went to the small kitchen area and drained one of the bottles of water he found there, then rummaged through the cupboards until he found a loaf of bread.
"Only their leader wants out of the game. He’s too old to live as a mobbie anymore. He’ll arrange passage, but he wants to come with us."
"This is turning into a parade of the absurd!" This had been planned as a simple, covert trip into the heart of the alien technology, but it was becoming more and more complicated. "First you, then a courtesan, and now a feral child. Who else will we bring along?"
Jak ignored her, as if she were a petulant child herself. Thinking back on what she’d said, Kamura’s cheeks burned as she realized that was exactly what she’d sounded like. The two of them were trying to help her. If they helped themselves at the same time, she had no cause to object.
Jak didn’t answer her. It was as if he had more important things on his mind, and Kamura realized he was thinking only of the Veloran. After finishing the last bite of bread, Jak stripped off his clothes and began clean off the crusted blood and dirt with a damp cloth. She started to object to his nudity, and then stopped. She knew enough about local ways to know that people here regarded clothing as a convenience or an ornament, but never as mandatory. She was a trained Recorder, she reminded herself. She’d studied the customs of dozens of different cultures as part of her education, and many were different from those with which she’d grown up. She had to adapt.
Still, she swallowed and looked away as she caught sight of Jak’s battered, scarred body. He ought to be ugly, but there was something about the long hard lines of muscle and bone that was oddly beautiful. She noticed his painful struggle to reach the cuts and scrapes. Well, at least she could make herself useful.
"Here, let me help you," she said.
She’d searched through the Veloran woman’s apartment earlier, looking for a weapon or anything that might help her. All she’d found were beautiful clothes cut to fit a woman half her size, and the usual miscellany of anyone living alone. But she did remember seeing a small med-kit. She went into the bathroom and found the kit on the shelf where Tessa kept a surprisingly modest amount of cosmetics. She brought it out, and Jak held still as she smeared antiseptic across the fresh wounds and covered the shallow cuts on his face with plasti-flesh. Finally, she jabbed an ampoule of antibiotic into his arm.
"Thanks," he said with a grimace.
She realized that she’d been none too gentle with the needle.
"You’re welcome. Now, tell me again why we’re taking this mobbie with us. And how Tessa is involved."
"We’re taking him because you want to get to Tekena alive," he answered while trying to scrape off the worst of the muck from his vest. She didn’t know why he bothered. Never much, it was just a rag now, ripped halfway up one side. "And that was the best deal going. The only deal. You’re paying a premium for secrecy, lady. And Tessa is with the mobbies, as security."
"Security?"
"We pay the mobbies," he said, his voice grim, "and take the Alpha with us. Or they’ll kill her. And eat her."
Shocked, Kamura was silent as Jak put on his old gray pants, ignoring the new holes that matched his wounds. The mobbies must have used him like a pincushion. He pulled the semi-clean vest on, pulled on his boots, and he was dressed. He looked shabby to her, but truly he was no better and no worse dressed than the many of the poorer citizens of Namdrik.
"Will Tessa be safe until you get back?"
She knew more about trading law than men’s hearts, but it was obvious even to her that Jak loved Tessa with a fierce and desperate passion.
"Yes," he growled. "She’ll be just fine."
Kamura realized that the words were more for himself than for her. He went to the little statue of Lady Ur that rested in a niche near the couch and flipped the idol over. With quick fingers, Jak slid aside the base to reveal the small stack of credits hidden there.
"Tessa’s emergency stash," he explained. Well, she thought, this certainly qualified as an emergency. "You can transfer funds through the banks to Tessa just before we leave for the barge, but the mobbies want cash."
She watched as he counted quickly. There were ten of the green squares, each about the size of the pilot’s medallion that hung around Jak’s neck. Green, Kamura remembered, meant they were worth a hundred credits apiece.
"Will that be enough?" she asked.
She seldom thought about what things cost. She’d always had access to as many credits as she needed. The stack seemed very small.
"Yeah, if I’m careful." He stuffed the credits into the pockets of his vest.
"Are you going to get your friend now?"
She felt so much at a loss. She’d always been at the top of her class, the best, the brightest, the most able; yet, here she was no more than an awkward piece of baggage to be hauled from Namdrik to Tekena. She didn’t like the feeling.
"No, I’m going to the market. Tessa isn’t a person to the mobbies—she’s food. They won’t want to give her up, so I’m going to offer them a new menu."
"They won’t really eat her, will they?"
They were playing a game, pretending to be dangerous.
"Stop kidding yourself, Kamura. Mobbies aren’t just ragged kids," Jak said as he rummaged through the wardrobe in Tessa’s bedroom until he found a large bag made of black canvas. He slung the straps of the empty bag over his shoulder. "They’re dangerous wild animals. As long as you keep that in mind, you can deal with them. Forget it, and you’re dead."
She was unconvinced, but he had the credits, and he knew what he had to do next. Jak threw on the pale gray farmer’s cloak that he’d worn on the way over here, and he was ready to leave. He slapped the lock plate, and the door slid open.
"Jak, wait!"
He turned with an impatient scowl.
"You will come back, won’t you?"
She ran her fingers through her long, dark hair. It was a tangled mess. She’d taken a good look at herself in the big mirror in Tessa’s bedroom, and she looked nearly as battered and dirty as did Jak. She felt demoralized, much more so than she ought to over a few bruises and some dirt. Kamura took a deep breath.
"I know you don’t like me much, and Tessa likes me even less. But don’t abandon me now, please."
She stopped, surprised at the words coming out of her mouth. What was happening to her? She always knew exactly what she was going to say, and said it exactly the way she’d planed it. But this was as close as she'd ever come to acknowledging that she was anything less than perfect. Jak smiled at her, and then winced as the movement pulled at the cuts on his face.
"I’
ll be back," he told her. "With Tessa. In the meantime, you stay put."
Somehow, that wasn’t quite what she’d wanted to hear, but she realized that it was the best she was going to get.