A Passage of Stars (12 page)

The ruddy man laughed, scornful now. “And fish can fly,” he said. He reached for the com-screen he wore at his belt, coding into it, and stood up to hand it to Lily. “Next you’ll tell us you don’t recognize this man.”

She took the screen. Stopped. Her hands congealed into immobility. It was Heredes. Obviously him, his picture on the screen. Looking, indeed, much the same as she knew him, but younger, with hair somewhat longer, and a single red crescent moon painted below one eye like a talisman. And there, on his chest, the medallion he had given her.

She stared, confused, a little frightened, but not totally surprised. She realized finally that they were all examining her. She uncurled her fingers from the frame, and gave the screen back to the ruddy man.

“You’re not going to deny it?” Spots reddened on his cheeks.

Lily said nothing.

“This is a waste of time,” said the blue-haired man suddenly in accented but perfectly understandable Standard. “These methods never work.”

“You would know,” said the woman, her tone taking once again an edge. Her dark eyes fixed on Lily, unwavering. “I don’t care what methods I have to use to get the truth. That choice is yours. Do you understand?”

“My House has already sent out a tracer on me,” replied Lily. Her voice stayed remarkably level. “They’ll catch up with you eventually.”

The woman sighed, long, deep, and exasperated. She stood. The two men stood. “I see you don’t understand, or else you refuse to,” she said. Her dress, one-shouldered, draped like a single bolt of rich green cloth around her, rustled as she moved. “You don’t exist on your government’s computers any more. You can’t be traced.”

She stepped forward with speed most startling for its abruptness and grasped the chain of Lily’s necklace, flicking it out with a finely tuned twist of the wrist. The medallion settled damningly on the black cloth of Lily’s tunic. “Don’t attempt denial,” said the woman. “We’ll leave you to think about its consequences.”

She left, the two men following her through the door. The blue-haired man, last through the door, paused to look back, his gaze considering and, perhaps, amused. Lily could not help but stare back at him, caught at that moment by a fascination with his exotic attractiveness that caused her to forget briefly their circumstances. He began to smile.

Then someone spoke beyond the door, impatient, and he too was gone.

Lily simply sat, frowning. A time like this was no time to be admiring one’s enemies. Except that she could not imagine where these people had come from, or if they were truly a threat to her. She had felt an oddly undefinable character about them, as if her experience of life and theirs had no point of intersection. And Heredes—Hiro’s bounty hunters seemed, in retrospect, a mere quibble.

Behind her there was movement. She twisted, quickly slipping the medallion back underneath her clothes. A door came into being, seeming to peel back from the wall. Through it an unintelligible voice and a series of tones and Bach appeared, unharnessed, coming through the door. Lily stood up, but the doorway was sealing back into place. Intercom traffic sounded beyond it: “Code red sector eleven Imp, all security assemble—” The door shut. Bach descended to one of the chairs.

Bach! Can you get us out of here?

Negative. Screens present. I regret my inability, but thou certainly understandest that against such devices attuned to my circuits, I cannot resist.

Who are these people? Are they from Central?

Information insufficient on Central. Harness activated by recent technician-originated point of origin. New construct. Therefore, I deduce similar origins for latest interrogators.

Do you mean that they came from the place you originally came from?
She supported herself by gripping the back of a chair.

Affirmative.

The thick woven pattern of the chair’s fabric suddenly reminded her of the curtain in Heredes’s study. “Then Heredes must be …” She trailed off, unable to complete the thought. Bach drifted closer to her, singing softly.
Why did they return you to me?

His first response was more tone than answer.
Unclear. Disturbance on Station. Some debate over my disposal, followed by a call over communications and an unbuckling of harness and swift preparations for departure. That is all I witnessed.

Lily let go of the chair. “But they implied—”

The lights went off. For three breaths, the room remained dark. They came back on with a flash of brilliance, but almost simultaneously, as if the two were connected, Lily felt surge in her stomach, a sharp lurch. She stumbled to one side, tripping over her own feet, grabbed for the chair back, missed; a second lurch yanked her back into the chair. Bach had rolled upside down. Surface lights blinking, he righted himself.

“Hoy,” said Lily. She kept her hold on the chair’s back. The lights went off again, stayed off longer, long enough for Bach to sing through
Brich an, o schönes Morgenlicht
—“Break through, oh lovely light of morn.” They relit in slow stages, accompanied by a rhythmic pounding and a deep extended growl, like an engine heard through a tube.

A doorway peeled open. Lily threw herself into a half-crouch behind the chair. A man strolled in, gun held easily in one hand. Not just any man, but a tattoo. Purple and yellow and orange swirled in a joyous riot over his skin. He wore ordinary brown overalls. His arms were bare. Stopping, he saw her. His gun still pointed steadily, but not at her.

“Here you be,” he said. He had an open, cheerful face.

“Who are you?” Lily asked, staying down.

“
I
be called Calico.” He seemed to find this diverting, and smiled. “But I be here to release you.”

Bach floated up behind her, attracting the man’s astute eye. “I don’t understand,” Lily countered. “Why are you releasing me?”

His smile broadened. “But it be ya simple,” he said. “Jehane hae come. I mun take you to him.” Now Lily stood up. “Who is Jehane?” she demanded. A voice stuttered to life at his wrist. He lifted it to a colorful ear, listened, lowered it again. “Be you comin’?” he asked.

She glanced once at Bach. The robot winked at her with a single azure light. “I think I be,” she said, half-resigned, and she followed Calico out of the room.

H
E LED HER PAST
the double doors. The blank hallway beyond receded into a shallow curve, the arc of the station. The featureless walls’ subdued color, draining Calico’s tattoos to shades of gray. On his bare feet, a glow from the floor revealed curlicues chasing themselves in orange and yellow around his toes.

“Where are we going?” she asked after they had gone about a kilometer.

“To safety.” He flashed her a quick, bright smile.

“Where are we?”

He shook his head. A bit further, the curving expanse revealed a single doorway outlined on the wall. He went to it, laying a hand on the com-panel next to it, and it slid open soundlessly.

Inside, a worker’s office and a living space combined into two small rooms: one with tools, the other a tiny cubicle just large enough for bed and terminal. The door shut behind them. Calico clipped off the gun and hid it under a plastic bucket. Waving Lily into the second room, he grandly offered her a seat on the bed.

“I be ya janitor here,” he said as she disposed herself, Bach hovering above her. “So you be sure wondering why I be here instead o’ with ya rest o’ my people.”

His mischievous look prompted her to smile. “I had wondered why you had the run of the place, after what I’ve seen of Security’s treatment of Ridanis.” Still bitter, she told him of Paisley.

He did not look surprised but he did grow somber. “Well enough it be for them,” he commented when she had finished, “but a sore hard time I do see for ya lassie.”

“And there’s nothing I can do,” she said, and grimaced, afraid that her anger was already turning into resignation.

“Perhaps. Perhaps.” Around the eyes, through the wild design, she could now discern deep lines, aging hidden from the world by color. She glanced down at his hands; they showed wrinkles, lines under lines. “But ya new time be comin’, min—” Here he paused.

“Ransome,” Lily supplied. “Lily Ransome.”

“Ah.” He slid sideways past her and sat down before the terminal. “I did see them bring ya prisoner in, though I didna know it be you, min Ransome. Ya place here, do you see”—he waved his hand to encompass the hall and rooms she had just come from—“it be private to ya govinment, for ya special folk, as they feel true be ya dangerous.”

Lily could not help but laugh. “Dangerous? What do they do with them?”

He turned in his seat to frown at her. “It be not for laughing, missy. Many bad things. Along ya hall, all along, be folk who never hae seen their homes for years and more, that were brought here ya long ago.”

“But their families—” She broke off. She had been told twice that she no longer existed in government banks.

He turned back to the terminal. “And what better choice than ya old tattoo to clean and mend ya place. Poor enough, and with kin enough to keep, to hold ya mouth tight closed. But ya short time back, ya new folk come in, openlike, and they be made much welcome. They be looking for some thing or maybe some folk. Strange they be—dressed sore funny. One, by Dancer, e’en had blue hair.” Calico swiveled in his chair and focused a pair of jewel blue eyes on Lily.

“They’re the ones who talked to me. I didn’t know what they wanted, except—” Except Heredes. “Do you know,” she continued, pressing on past that particular point, “they don’t come from here, from the Reft, I mean.”

His gaze did not waver, but neither did it turn to incredulity. “I suspicioned much like,” he said, and looked pointedly at Bach. “That one be sore strange, likewise.”

“He’s old,” said Lily. “A long time ago, like our ancestors, he came from over ya way.”

“Ah. You know ya story.”

“A little bit of it. But those people, the ones who questioned me, they must have come over the way recently—just days or months ago. From—” She opened her hands. “I don’t know where from.”

“Jehane knows,” said Calico.

The terminal beeped; he turned back to face it as information printed out on the screen. Lily stood up and looked down over his shoulder.

Nevermore Station. Condition: under attack. Status: indeterminate.

Usher Hub: Insurrection in progress; support from at least three cleared merchant vessels. Security forces in need of reinforcement.

Pendulum Hub: Clean, clear, no signs of incursion. Station citizens restless but still under control.

Raven Hub: Unauthorized docking: serious displacement of station axis
—
red red red
—
stabilization.

Core: Axis realignment stable. No threat to life systems.

Imp Hub: All communication cut off. Security personnel missing or dead.

“Ah,” said Calico, smiling again. “That be ya Ridani sector.”

“But this is a classified channel!” She leaned forward to stare at the screen. “What’s going on?”

“Jehane hae come.”

“He come, he come,” murmured Lily, trying to recall Paisley’s song. “To lead us far, to home, to home.” She glanced down to see Calico’s face, startled now, gazing up at her. “Is that right?”

“Ya lassie hae trusted you, or been in kinnas to you,” he said.

“We were locked in a cell together.”

“Indeed,” said Calico. He punched more codes into the computer.

Lily stood silent, watching the old man’s face: a kindly one, but much hemmed about by secrets and by knowledge endured from necessity, not choice. Then he smiled as a new message came up on the screen, a smile that, like an open lock, received all before it with impartial certitude of its function.

“We mun go,” he said. “Ya way be clear. This sector be much deserted in any case, as it be sore off-limits but to ya highest level folk. So it were but little task to seal it off.”

“But I still don’t understand what’s happening. Who’s rebelling?”

“Jehane hae come,” he repeated, still patient. “You hae been given ya story by ya lassie.”

“But Jehane—” She raised a hand hopelessly and glanced up at Bach. She found it impossible to offend this old man by telling him that Jehane was merely a legend. After all the prejudice she had seen, she could not help but feel that someone, however shadowy, should champion their cause. “So people here have been waiting? Was it planned, this revolt?”

“Sure,” he said. “All were held ready for when he chose ya time to arrive. And he hae asked special, to see ya prisoner that ya far folk hae had brought in. That be you, min Ransome. And ya time be now.”

Lily followed him into the office, waited while he slipped out to check the corridor. She lifted the plastic bucket. The gun lay there. She picked it up and without further thought unloosened a trouser leg enough to slip it inside, where it hung against the cloth tucked back into her boot. Calico reappeared, beckoning.

Just around the next curve of the hall, Calico fingered a door panel and led her into a spacious office populated by desks and counters. They stood alone in the gloom. A lit terminal scrolled unreadable data past, oblivious to the vacant chair before it.

“Where is everyone?” she whispered.

“It be night cycle,” he said, his normal voice resonating in the empty room. “But we did clear out all o’ ya sector, except them as
he
were to see.”

Through more offices, ending in a small room with a raised dais and four chairs—Lily stopped. The fourth wall, the one the chairs faced, was transparent. Beyond, in a chamber exactly like the one she had been interrogated in on Remote, sat three of the foreigners she had just spoken with: ruddy-skinned, blue-hair, and the hard-faced woman.

“Don’t be scared,” said Calico. “They canna see you.”

“But I was—I could see—”

“Only if ya certain button be pushed. They see no but ya black wall—you might recollect that?”

“I do,” said Lily, going up to the wall. “But if they’re prisoners there, aren’t I just as much a prisoner here?”

“Do but sit quiet. You shall learn enough, and be safe more than you been back in ya other place. True enough?”