Paradise Drift

  Alphyra Kodos smoothly took the cue. “I apologize to my fellow directors, and beg their indulgence. Most of you know that Vedran history has always been my passion, and here is one who has actually seen Tarn-Vedra, who lived there. I only wished to hear about his experience. Captain Hunt will tell you we discussed nothing pertaining to our hopes for the alliance.” She turned to Director Vandat, lifting her hand to give him precedence. “As the first directors of the Drift, perhaps it is appropriate for you to make the initial addresses?”

  Attention having shifted away from him for the moment, Dylan caught Rommie’s wry glance, and muttered subvocally, “Have I mentioned just how much I hate politics?”

  Harper suddenly turned around. Walking backwards, arms out, he said, “Just for the sake of discussion. Why aren’t you talking to the HIA right now? Or poisoning its commander, or whatever?”

  He threw his hands wide, causing a crowd of fast-moving Than to part and stream around him, some of them glancing back and scolding in high, reedy voices.

  She shook her head. “Because the so-called Interplanetary Alliance has decided that Earth isn’t worth saving. After some glorious fighting here and there, everybody took their ships and went back to their own planets. Earth,” she added in a goaded voice, “doesn’t have any ships. If you remember.”

  Harper winced, rubbing at the red line on his neck. “I remember, I remember.” He sighed. “So what am I supposed to do? I don’t have a ship either.”

  “You have the ear of that High Guard captain.”

  Harper grinned. “Listen. Why don’t you talk to him?”

  Cyn glared at Harper. “And about how many nanoseconds would elapse before he threw me in the brig? You’d love to see that happen, wouldn’t you? Except then you’d never get your antidote.”

  “He’d listen. Look, the guy suffers from a terminal sense of fairness, and add to that serious complications of goodwill-itis, and a nasty case of harmony-of-the-universese.”

  “He certainly displayed it real well when he showed up to help Brendan, didn’t he?” Cyn retorted.

  “I can explain that. He was in the middle of a war with two Nietzschean Prides, and—”

  “Save it. I don’t care if he was on Tarn-Vedra itself. He wasn’t,” Cyn stated, “in Earth orbit. When you promised he would be. He never. Showed. Up. At. All.”

  “Back to that.” Harper rubbed his neck again. Then he turned his most engaging grin on her, the old grin that had gotten him, well, not exactly fame, fortune, or babes, but at least had won him a few free meals in the past. “Hey. Okay if I, urn, contact one of my friends onboard? Just to—”

  Cyn’s eyes narrowed. “Look. I figured you’d try scamming your way out. Contact anyone you like, but I’ll tell you this much: The antidote is onboard my ship. You have to be there to get it. Oh, and in case someone comes along who, for some reason, tries to force me at weapon-point to release the antidote, then I’ll send another code and it will be destroyed.”

  “For some reason like you forced me into this situation in the first place?” Harper retorted.

  Cyn bit her lip, and for a short time they both stood there, as spacers from half a hundred planets passed by, the stream ending with a group of tall, skinny, green beings that reminded her of asparagus, singing a five-part song of heart-wrenching beauty.

  Cyn let her breath out in an explosive sigh. “See, that’s the matter with you, Seamus—”

  Harper glared at her. “The matter with me? With me? Did I poison someone without even saying Hi, remember who I am?”

  Cyn pushed right on, though there was color along her cheeks to betray her reaction. “—You spend so much time talking yourself out of situations, you never seem to talk your way into them. Like leadership. But, see, I remember you when we were little. Even when the rats were really bad, and we had nothing to eat, and the damn Nietzscheans were forcing more and more of us into their work camps because those kludges already there inconveniently dropped dead, you used to think up fun stuff to do, and you led us. And when you came back, it wasn’t Brendan who was able to see how to pull us all together for that last try, it was you. You’re a natural born leader, you’re just too lazy, or too selfish, to lead. So I see it as not just my job but my duty to get behind you and push you into leadership. Or die trying.”

  “What? You think I’ll kill you?”

  “No,” she said, offhand, as though mentioning someone she hardly knew, or a distant sight of little import. “See, I took the poison, too. I figured it was fair and share alike. So if I fail with you, it’s only right I fail for me too.”

  TWELVE

  With enemies like these, who needs friends?

  —SEAMUS ZELAZNY HARPER

  Again they glared at one another. Massive limb-grinding beings nicknamed rockoids thundered by, seeking a honey-bar; on the other side of them, a hissing whoosh fluttered their clothes with a brief wind smelling of burnt cinnamon as a crew of whizzbats flashed by.

  Harper said, “You poisoned yourself? And, what, that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because I don’t. No, it makes me feel worse. And that’s a feat, because I didn’t think anything could make me feel worse than knowing I’m about to drop dead any minute. Excepting maybe hatching Magog larvae in my guts. That was worse.”

  Cyn winced. “‘Was’?” she asked in a cautious voice. “You’re not being hypothetical.”

  “No. I am not being hypothetical. They were in there. The only reason I’m alive is because someone managed to get them out of there.” He struck his flat stomach beneath the gaudy shirt. “That was part of a whole series of events that I won’t go into, as I wouldn’t last to tell them, but the gist is this: the Magog Worldship is coming. And it won’t negotiate. Which is why Dylan Hunt is doing what he’s doing. Yes, he has to deal with Nietzscheans, and Restorians, and a whole lot of other nasties, but at least they can, sort of, deal. When the Magog come, they will not deal. And we’re going to need everyone, everywhere, to fight them, or we’re all going to be hatching little Magog larvae.” He smacked his chest.

  “That. Is so disgusting,” Cyn muttered, turning away. During the long trip she thought she’d imagined every possible argument, wheedle, threat, or pout Seamus would offer, and she’d had answers carefully prepared.

  But she had not planned on any exchange like this one.

  Magog. What could she do about that threat, when Earth couldn’t even get rid of the Nietzscheans? And she knew the Nietzschean masters would throw Earth to the enemy if it suited their plans, without a single backwards look.

  She sighed again. Stay with the point.

  “What I do know is this: I am going back to Earth if I can possibly help it, and you are going with me.”

  Harper’s shoulders dropped. His head tilted, and he gave her a pained smile. “Yeah. I kinda figured you’d say that. You have a one-crack mind, you know that, don’t you?”

  Cyn glared.

  “Joke. It was a joke.” Harper raised his hands, palms out. “Look. I officially give up. As of this moment. Here and now. Just—let me report to my friends. So they know why I’m vanishing. Look, you can even listen to every word I say.” He grinned. “And what else can you do to me anyway?”

  Cyn felt the back of her neck tighten. She suspected a trick, but what? “Go ahead. But I’m listening.”

  And Harper pulled something out of the pocket of his baggy trousers, frowned, then pursed his lips. “Whoa. Looks like someone wanted to talk to me.” He winced, thinking: Shutting Rommie off seemed a smart move before I went to the Harem, but maybe it wasn’t so smart.

  He activated the comlink, and said, “Rommie?”

  Rommie responded, and Cyn leaned close to hear: “Beka is being chased, she believes by a bounty hunter named Ujio Steelblade. She’s trying to make her way back to the ship.”

  “How far are you into the system?”

  “Far enough that you can leave your chit ou
t of the faraday purse if you need to move fast.” Rommie explained quickly what she had done to their chits, and Beka’s in particular.

  Harper glanced at Cyn, who was just waiting, frowning slightly. “How about if we—if I—find Beka, run interference in case any bounty hunters pop up?”

  “Do. Have you seen Trance? She has not answered her link at all.”

  “No, but you know Trance. She’s, well, she’s Trance, if you know what I mean.” He stopped, was about to ask about poisons, glanced at Cyn’s narrow-eyed glare, decided to wait. He drew in a short breath. “Harper is going to stop babbling now, and start moving. Where is Beka?”

  “She just contacted me from the Neek Neek Theater.”

  “Neek Neek Theater,” Harper repeated, shoving the link back into his pocket, and taking out his chit. He stopped when he realized Cyn already had hers out.

  “Two levels that way.” She jerked her chin over her shoulder. “Seamus, I really, really hope this is not a scam. I hope you know I’m not playing a game: oops, no poison after all.”

  Harper scratched fiercely at his neck. “No, this stuff seems to get hotter by the moment. I really don’t want to find out just what kind of heat. It’s a real emergency, with one of my crew mates. Way I see it is, why not decoy this bounty hunter since they’re all going our way?”

  Cyn didn’t answer directly. She didn’t want to admit how ambivalent she felt. So she busied herself with her chit. “Neek Neek—it looks like it’s a cross between music, or some kind of music, and drama. If you can call various sizes of insectoids jumping from poles and squeaking drama. Or theater.”

  “To a Nightsider Hamlet would be a comedy,” Harper said.

  “No, it would be an opportunity to rob the entire audience, while they were busy watching.”

  Harper laughed, and realized he’d actually missed the little brat from all those years ago in Boston’s hellish remains.

  “So anyway. Running decoy for Beka sounds like fun, but before I link her, do we have time?”

  Cyn struggled internally, gave a short nod. She said, “We’re going to the docking bays anyway, right?”

  “Andromeda is at Docking Bay One. Where are you?”

  “Close enough,” Cyn said. “All right. We’ll help your friend. Since we’re going dockside anyway. And you know what happens if she decides to pull any scams.” She wriggled her shoulders, then winced. “In any case, hurrying seems the best idea.”

  Harper had been scratching his neck again. He saw her rub vigorously under one arm, and then the back of her leg. “Itch-burn all over?”

  Cyn bared her teeth. “Don’t ask stupid questions. Tell me about your friend.” As she spoke, she started toward the closest null-g tube.

  “Beka? Smart—fast—best Slipstream pilot I ever saw. You oughta like her.” Harper laughed somewhat painfully. “Or hate her.”

  “Right now I just want to find her,” Cyn said, and dove into the tube.

  Harper followed. They both felt marginally better as the cool wind from the air-jets wafted them along; the poison seemed to strike in waves of warm, scratchy not-quite-ache.

  Yet.

  Why did I do it? Cyn thought desolately, as they whizzed through the intervening level. Her blurry vision registered colors, scents of strange foods, and then they landed. I know why I did it, because if I go home without him I may as well be dead.

  “There it is,” Harper said.

  He dashed through a thick crowd of spacers from at least twenty worlds lining up outside one of the fighting arenas. Cyn pounded grimly after him. She would not speak about that anymore. She knew what Harper would say: If you can’t go home, go somewhere else! That’s what he’d done, after all. Maybe he was one of those whose home was where they parked their kit. Cyn couldn’t think of anything as home but Earth—poisoned, polluted, miserable as it was under the steel-soled Nietzschean boot.

  “Wow.”

  Harper paused, staring at the Neek Neek Theater. “Now, this is weird.”

  Cyn joined him, gazing in blank astonishment at the front of the theater, whose facade was constructed of something with a distressing resemblance to decaying cheese, lovingly formed into an astonishing bas relief that resembled nothing so much as the Kama Sutra interpreted by cockroaches. Her stomach lurched. Then she jerked her thumb at it, turning to Harper. The poison, for the moment, was forgotten. “She’s in here?”

  Yes, she was, though as yet they had not seen her. She was wedged behind a massive phalanx of stridulating purple beings who looked like someone had crossed a cactus with a tarantula. All around her extra sets of legs, shiny and hairy, busily rubbed against back legs as down on the stage an uncountable number of insectoids with painted wings squeaked in counterpoint, then hopped about the stage, some of them sticking to the walls, others upside down in relation to the audience, who sat at quarter-grav the better to balance on those back legs and provide that steadily screeling hum of what she assumed was choral background.

  Beka stood there, shrouded in her flimsy black cloak and hood she’d bought. Her comlink lit the inside with faint green color.

  “… so if you could locate him, I can make sure I’m somewhere else,” she was saying to Rommie.

  “Working on it,” Rommie returned, then abruptly cut the link.

  Beka looked up, frowning, as around her the humming stridulations suddenly heightened in both tone and volume, buzzing in her ears, making her teeth itch. She looked around, wondering if the cure was worse than the disease—then saw two strange figures highlighted in one of the doorways. Strange because they were covered with skin and clothing, and not highly polished, wildly decorated exoskeletons.

  She waited for them to spot her, remembered the black shroud, and raised a hand.

  Harper spotted her first: a tall, black figure, whose stance, despite the meters of folded cloth, was somehow familiar. “There she is,” he said.

  It took Cyn and Harper a while to thread their way through the crowd. Carefully, because the first time Harper jostled accidentally against a seven-foot creature that resembled an armed June bug, it shrilled some kind of warning and clacked razor-sharp mandibles an inch from his face.

  When they reached Beka, Harper put his mouth up against her covered head, mindful of the listeners around them, and muttered, “Well, we’re here.”

  “Who’s we? Do we really need a ‘we’ right now?”

  Harper muttered, “We really need a we. Trust me. So anyway, I repeat, we’re here. What now?”

  “I’m waiting for Rommie to find out where my shadow is.”

  “We don’t have long,” Harper returned, and when Beka’s head jerked, as if in question, he added, “Trust me. We really need to get moving.”

  “I hate it when you say ‘trust me.’ Especially twice.”

  Harper gave her his comical wince.

  Beka sighed. Then said, “Give Rommie a couple minutes.”

  Harper leaned over to repeat the conversation to Cyn; he was momentarily distracted by the shape of her ear, the smell of some kind of herb on her hair. Oh.

  Cyn looked away, apparently studying the swarming bugs onstage as though life and meaning were bound up in the squeaks and clusters.

  Beka sighed again. Just what I needed, she thought, glaring at Harper and Cyn. Especially Cyn. Who was she, anyway?

  More trouble.

  “Let’s go,” Beka said.

  THIRTEEN

  Humanity’s doom can thus be summed up: in danger their first instinct is to run. Ours is to hunt.

  —MUSASHI ODIN-THOR,

  PROGENITOR OF THE ODIN-THOR PRIDE,

  CY9581

  Director Vandat led the way to yet another chamber, this one built in a circle, with seating arrangements set into the flooring, automated chairs that adjusted to the physiology of the sitter. Faint whirs and clicks were heard in the otherwise silent, acoustically sheltered space. Dylan chose a space at random, for he saw at a glance that the circle was intended to guarantee no pos
ition of prominence. He stepped down into the pit, which was carpeted softly with a charcoal-colored material that muted footfalls and probably felt comfortable for the Than. On the arm of his chair a discreet console and dispenser chute had been inset: more refreshments, if wanted.

  Rommie took up her station behind him, her manner unobtrusive.

  Without any further delay, Director Vandat walked to the middle, his robes swaying, and looked around. The assembly was settled, or nearly, and attention turned toward him, so he began what Dylan soon realized was a prepared speech. Dylan opened his eyes, made sure his expression was fixed in one of alert interest, and mentally checked out.

  Behind him, Rommie recorded the Perseid’s speech while she monitored the movements of Delta Kodos, who had paused behind her sister.

  They were speaking—subvocalizing. Rommie punched up her sound enhancers; the acoustical blanket was far more sophisticated than she’d assumed, and she’d have to run an analysis on it, but meanwhile she discovered she could only register talk if she could see lips and throat movements.

  Alphyra’s attention stayed forward, mostly out of view, but Delta’s throat was visible.

  “… could not fend them off. I apologize.”

  A pause, and then she responded, “But how can I take the initiative? It is true that we all did agree there would be no private interviews with the High Guard cap—”

  Pause, and, “How can I see the grand design? You have not told me of a design beyond that we have negotiated with the other codir—”

  Pause.

  Then Delta bowed, and whispered in a submissive voice, “I do not see all. I exist to serve.”

  Alphyra turned to glance at her, smiling kindly. Rommie watching, saw her whisper: “Yes. But remember, my dear, my very dear Delta, you must submit in order to learn to lead, you must obey so as to understand command, you must exert yourself to be my hands, my ears, and my will—and my vision will be your vision. But trust must be earned, and it is earned by competence.”