A Passage of Stars

  “You bin on Remote?”

  “Just Remote Station. About ten years ago.”

  “And this couldna be ya Remote?”

  Lily smiled slightly. “Not unless they have much more energy and the best pilot in Reft space. Far the best. No.” She paused, considering. “Paisley, do you still have that knife?”

  Paisley seemed, suddenly, to become a statue. Her head froze in the act of turning, the angles of her face shadowless in the diffuse light, her hands still. Then, as if she were stop action thrown into forward, she completed the movement without any obvious self-consciousness and directed a wide-eyed smile at Lily. “What knife?” she said.

  “The one,” Lily replied, looking straight at her, “that you grabbed off the man I knocked out.”

  “Sure,” said Paisley without hesitation. She reached down the front of her tunic and brought up the knife. “It be ya sharp,” she finished, offering it hilt first to Lily.

  Lily tossed it in the air a couple of times, held it lightly, testing the balance. “It’ll do,” she said. Paisley, watching her handle the knife, came to a decision.

  “I got ya gun, too,” she said, standing up. This time she produced the weapon the first alien had used to shoot at Bach.

  “Hoy,” breathed Lily, stepping forward to take it from the girl. She held it gingerly. It was a dull grey with unlit controls and a standard structural design. “That must be the trigger,” she muttered. “Paisley.” The girl started, took a step back. “Didn’t they search you?”

  Paisley shrugged. “I fussed. Lit in good. Maybe ya spooks didna see me grab it up. They just threw us in here, nip and tuck. Min Bach, he were bright as ya kinnas wheel. They left you ya belt screen. Maybe they didna notice.”

  “Maybe.” Lily held the gun out. “Here.” Paisley stayed put. “Take it.”

  “You want me to—” The girl broke off, reached slowly forward, and took the weapon from Lily. “Sure,” she said under her breath.

  “Don’t try to make it work,” Lily warned. “But if we’re running, you can use it to bluff them. But carefully, Paisley. If your bluff doesn’t work, they’ll use their guns on you, shoot you. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Sure,” said Paisley a little unsteadily. She thrust the weapon between her belt and her tunic. “What will you use?”

  Lily tossed the knife up again, caught it. “I’m best in close. We’ll have to trust to that.”

  Bach sang a few chords.

  “If we get the chance,” Lily added. She sat down, slipping her knife next to her com-screen on her belt. “So let’s conserve our strength. Bach, watch the door. Warn us if anyone approaches.

  Paisley settled down beside Lily “What we going to do?” she asked.

  Lily sighed and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Remember, Paisley. They’re better armed, better prepared, and on their own ground. We have one chance. It’s got to be fast and hard, or we won’t incapacitate them. Then we go for Heredes and go for the lock, and out.”

  “But what do we do? I mean, how? And when?”

  “What my sensei always told me to do,” she answered. “Set patterns never work. You have to make it up as you go along.”

  “Hoy,” said Paisley, and smiled.

  Bach had sung most of the way through Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen—“My Sighs, My Tears”—when he cut off midphrase. Paisley, curled up half-asleep, started awake, hands slapping to the floor as she steadied herself. Lily was already standing. She whistled two notes. Bach replied with four.

  “Paisley, up. Two.”

  Paisley pushed herself up, one hand on the weapon at her belt. “Coming in?” Her voice was barely audible.

  “Can’t tell.” Lily shifted her position to the other side of the door, paused, and with a move of her head signaled to Paisley to move to the end of the cell opposite the door. “They can see where we are,” she added in an undertone. “If they come in, you—”

  A low bell. The seam opened. Paisley dropped to the floor in a tumbling faint as the first alien stepped through. Seeing the girl fall, he walked three paces past Lily and Bach before realizing they were there. The second alien halted in the arch of the open seam; he held a snub-nosed gun just like Paisley’s in his right hand.

  Lily jumped—dislodged the gun with her first kick, with the second slammed him back against the door frame. Landed with a hammer strike to his temple. His head, flung back by the unexpected force, struck the metal ridge of the seam with a hard thud, and he crumpled to the floor.

  Lily spun. The other alien turned back, weapon raised. Too far away for a quick kick. She lunged. Its hand shifted on the gun. And suddenly the alien was falling forward, fumbling in the air. Lily barely avoided its flailing arms, using its momentum to shove away and to one side. It fell flat-faced on the floor, gun knocked to one side. At its feet lay Paisley.

  She had tackled it.

  Lily grabbed both guns, thrust one into Paisley’s hands as the girl extricated herself. Bach floated forward, coming to rest above the alien. It began to push itself up. An appendage snaked out of the robot.

  “Paisley, back,” hissed Lily. The girl wriggled away.

  The alien reached for its waist. The appendage touched its neck. Bach flashed, an instant of brilliance, and the alien went limp.

  “You didna kill him?” whispered Paisley, eyes riveted to Bach.

  Negative. Rendered unconscious. Bach sang.

  “He didn’t,” said Lily. “Let’s grab the other one. We’ll need him to open doors.”

  Paisley got to her feet. “It be all ya real, ain’t it?” she said. Her mouth tightened into a straight line. “Bless me, Mother of all,” she muttered under her breath, making a furtive series of signs with one hand.

  “Paisley.” Lily was at the door, lifting the alien. “By the Void, he’s light.” Bach drifted out into the corridor. “Can you support him?”

  Paisley came forward. She looked at that moment even thinner than the alien. “A’course.” She adjusted herself to take the creature’s weight. The body hung all over her. “I done ya dock work, ain’t I?”

  Lily stationed herself at the alien’s head, knife out. It had not yet stirred. As they moved out of the seam, the door to the cell shut soundlessly behind them, concealing the other body. The corridor curved away, as grey as the cell, touched here and there by the tracery of a door seam.

  Bach led them. Right at the first branching. Voices at the next, disappearing into some sealed-off area. Left, straight, right again. Bach halted before a seam.

  “Here?” Lily stepped forward.

  Bach sang.

  “No!”

  “What be wrong?” Paisley’s voice had taken on an even huskier tone. Under the tattoos, her face seemed pale. The alien shifted on her shoulder, a tentative movement.

  “Bach says no one is in there. It can’t be.” Lily slapped the alien. Its eyes blinked open. Paisley caught in her breath. First the eyelid opened, then, beneath it, another skin, thin as membrane, flicked up. Lily lifted the knife; the point rested at the inner corner of the alien’s eye, blade along the high curve of nostril. She whistled to Bach.

  Bach spoke. The alien shuddered and replied. Bach replied. Lily held the knife.

  “Move him,” she said to Paisley. The girl dragged it, Lily still with the knife pressed against its face, to the small panel outside the door. The alien fingered it. The seam opened to reveal an empty room.

  The intercom came alive. Bells, a whistle, and a long command. Voices raised behind them, echoing.

  “Bach, put him out.”

  Bach, touching him from behind, sang a warning. Lily and Paisley jumped back. Brightness. The alien fell.

  “Paisley, grab one arm.” Lily stooped and began pulling. She whistled.

  Paisley grabbed. “Leave him. It’d be faster.”

  “And how do we get out of the ship? Can you pull faster? Stop. Lift him.”

  They got him rigged between them, set off at a trot. Bach floated
behind.

  “Right here,” said Paisley. They turned. A door opened behind them. Someone shouted. Light, a loud, shrill noise, and a scream, cut off. “Where be Bach?”

  “Catching up. Left here?”

  Paisley’s breaths came ragged. “Right. Big room. Then ya lock. I saw what sequence it touched, back there. I kin open ya lock.”

  “Can’t chance it.”

  All grey. The corridor opened into a large room. Equipment hung along the walls. Outworld equipment. A low bell rang nearby. The door into the room slid shut behind them.

  “Min Bach!” cried Paisley, dropping her hold on the alien and whirling back. She flung herself at the door.

  Lily staggered, pitched sideways by the sudden shift of weight. The alien slipped out of her grasp onto the floor.

  “Paisley!”

  The girl had found the com-panel. She fingered it, gasping back sobs. “But I saw him! It were this pattern. It were!” The door remained shut.

  “Paisley!”

  Paisley turned. “But we can’t leave him. Him and you be ya only friends I got.”

  “Help me,” ordered Lily. “Where’s the lock?”

  “Through there.” Paisley pointed at a dim recess, lifted a hand to wipe at her cheeks. She sniffed.

  “Come on.” Lily dragged the alien by his arms. “Grab his feet, something.”

  Paisley ran after, and they hauled the limp body into the recess.

  “There,” said Paisley through her tears, and she flung the alien down at the end of the niche, by the lock door. The com-panel blinked orange. Muted bells sounded over the intercom. A shrill whine rose from the room behind them. Paisley turned toward it.

  “Paisley, help me get him awake.” Lily slapped the alien. “Do that.”

  Paisley slapped it full on the cheek, a second time, with, perhaps, a shade too much enthusiasm. A word escaped it. Its eyes flickered. A voice came over the intercom. The shrill whine behind them increased in pitch, and it was that perhaps more than Paisley’s final, hardest slap that brought the alien bolt upright, eyes open. Lily stuck the knife along its face and pointed at the panel.

  “You know what I want.” She eased the point of the knife a little closer to its eye. Its eyelids flickered again, as if it were about to pass out, but it stood, very slowly, and lifted a hand to the panel. It touched the panel once, again, again. A sign, a sudden command over the intercom, five high bells. The lock opened.

  “But it be still—” Paisley’s words cut off as the second seal, five steps on, eased open. Beyond, they saw the familiar bands and symbols of a station docking sector.

  “By the Void,” said Lily. “I could swear that logo is Remote Station ident.” The alien shifted. Lily slugged him abruptly in the stomach. As he doubled over, she cupped his neck in one hand, and with the hilt of the knife hit it directly at the base of the neck. The alien went limp in her hands. She laid him over the doorway.

  “Now get past me, to the other door,” she said to Paisley. “Stand in the doorway.”

  “We ain’t leaving min Bach!”

  “No, we ain’t. Go. Don’t move from that doorway.” Lily ran back into the big room.

  The whine had reached an excruciating pitch. Lily could no longer hear the intercom above it. But the seal opposite was beginning to glow. Approaching it, she had to stop. Heat rose off it, spread toward her. She backed away, lifted one hand to shield her face, the other to cover one of her ears. A flurry of sound came from the intercom. The whine pierced through the chamber. Lily backed into the recess. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Paisley poised in the lock opening; beyond the girl, a figure in purple halted, curious, in the station corridor.

  With a shriek like a ghost caught in a drill, the door into the room ruptured outward, and Bach sailed through. Behind him, pale, scrawny figures merged and parted but did not move forward. Lily jumped backward over the unconscious alien.

  “Throw your gun down,” she said, backing up next to Paisley and tossing her own down. The knife she thrust back into her belt. Paisley let the weapon in her hand fall onto the floor of the lock, but her eyes focused on the interior of the alien ship, her mouth open. The recess lighted. Bach appeared, his surface glowing. Heat shimmered off him.

  “Step back,” said Lily, pushing the girl with one hand, and Paisley moved backward into the station. Bach came into the lock. Behind him, Lily could see tall shapes approaching. A sharp whistle, and she and the robot were both out of the doorway. The lock slid to. Bach sang a quick, dissonant chord. His metal casing glowed a strange copperish tone in the harsh glow of station lighting. Lily turned.

  They had attracted a crowd. Paisley stood stock-still, her tattoos showing up florid against the unmarked faces gawking at her. Someone asked a question. The station corridor curved away, berths and, where the curve bent out of view, a portside shop district.

  Lily forced herself to single out a face, an individual: there, a silver-toned sta, male by his cresting mane.

  “Excuse me, esstavi. Is this Dairy?” She scarcely recognized her own voice. Her gaze shifted once right, once left. The crowd seemed thinnest to the right, where it would lead on to more berths. Safest, perhaps, to go left, toward the shops.

  “Dairy?” The sta’s accented reply, half-sibilant, half-unvoiced growl, caught her back.

  “Dairy system. What system is this?”

  The sta, unable to blink, turned a head to glance pointedly at a companion, a brown-skinned woman in a pale robe.

  Behind, a beep sounded from the berth console. Paisley yelped. The orange “occupied” light snapped to yellow.

  “Left,” Lily said, almost conversationally. She whistled three notes. “Run.” And she broke left.

  Paisley dove, rolled under a number of moving feet, and emerged on the far side of the crowd. Bach rose straight to the ceiling, trailing above behind Lily. Lily elbowed ruthlessly past the meat of the gathered crowd, took one quick survey to apprise herself of Paisley’s position alongside her, and sprinted.

  A swelling of sound came from behind them, a rush of voices and a yell. Faint, faint, and far above her, Bach was singing. People dodged out of her way, cursing, laughing, startled. Paisley bumped into a gold-skinned sta, shoved past. The commotion spread before and behind. Shops appeared now on the right-hand side of the station corridor; Lily, trying to keep as near the edge as possible, tripped over an out-flung chair at a café, rolled, and came to her feet. Paisley, ahead, paused to let her catch up. At the tables, diners pointed up at Bach’s advance over their heads. Lily glanced back. A milling crowd, confusion—and pale, thin forms pushing purposefully through.

  “Go,” she shouted at Paisley. But Paisley did not move. The girl’s eyes had fixed on something inside one of the shops. Lily, coming up beside her, took hold of a tattooed arm and began to pull—and froze.

  Three of them emerged from the shop door, guns in hand.

  “Now what’s this?” said the woman. She had startlingly light hair, almost white, set off by her black-and-gray Security uniform. Three gold bars, sergeant’s rank, tipped her sleeves. “Quite a fuss on com, I must say.” She aimed her weapon at Lily. “Let the tattoo go. You own her?”

  “No.” Lily released Paisley and stepped forward. “And I don’t—”

  “She your servant?” The woman’s voice held steady and cold.

  “No,” said Lily stiffly. “She happens to be—”

  The woman made a motion with her free hand to one of her companions. “Take it down to Block 7. File it in.”

  “Hold on.” Lily stepped back and put an arm around Paisley, who stood as if transfixed, staring in horror at the black-and-gray uniforms. “You can’t just take her.”

  One of the men came up next to Paisley. “Just be happy you ain’t going where she is,” he said, not unkindly. “Cute, ain’t she?” He took one of Paisley’s arms and twisted it up behind the girl’s back. “Let her go, kid.”

  “No!”

  “Let her go,” said
the sergeant.

  The noise of the crowd rose abruptly, a sudden swell, then ceased. Five gaunt aliens filtered in around Lily; two of them kept their eyes fixed above, on Bach. All were empty-handed. One fastened its gaze on the sergeant. It spoke, a rush of unknown words.

  “Say it in Standard,” said the woman, lifting her gun slightly, “or don’t say it at all.”

  A hurried consultation. Another stepped forward, “I so claim,” it said in a heavy, unfamiliar accent, “these my prisoner.” It pointed to Lily, Paisley, and the robot.

  “Yeah,” said the woman. “You can sure tell them that down at precinct office. I suppose you have all your papers in order.” The aliens began a discussion between themselves. “Now take that tattoo down,” she continued, taking advantage of this disagreement. The second man came up beside Lily, who still held on to the silent Paisley. “Listen, kid.” The sergeant moved forward to stand just in front of Lily. “We can bring you nice, or we can bring you mean, but we’re bringing you. Do you understand?”

  Paisley lifted her free hand to touch Lily’s where it held her, and disengaged it. “Ain’t no use, min Ransome,” she said. “But thank you, all the same.” She pulled away from Lily. “You’ve got no charges—”

  “Shut it, kid.” The woman motioned with her gun. “First, you give us your knife.” Lily, after one quick glance around, handed it over to one of the men. “Now, we’re going down to the office. Your friends here,” and she favored the aliens with a contemptuous gaze, “can come if they want.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Lily. She turned away; the officer next to her caught her shoulder in a firm grasp.

  “You own that ’bot?” asked the sergeant, looking up.

  “Yes.”

  “Huh. Better tell it to come along, then.” Black and gray shifted through the thickening crowd, more Security arriving. The aliens backed off. “Get that tattoo out of here,” she finished, grimacing, “and let’s go.” They moved forward in a loose wedge.

  “I demand to know what the charges are.” Lily stood, refusing to move, but two more had joined the man next to her and they almost bodily lifted her, pushing her along. Paisley, unprotesting as a sleepwalker, disappeared into the crowd. “I demand—” Lily’s voice, raising higher, was cut off by the sergeant.