A Passage of Stars (16 page)

“How’d you get into this section?” asked the one with the unlowered gun.

“My dear boy.” Kyosti’s gaze was withering. “Surely you don’t think the previous tenants were without their little pleasures?”

The gun wavered.

“He’s got a point, Gar,” said one of the smilers. “They must of got caught back here. And there’s a room just off to the right here.”

“Ah!” Kyosti moved forward, ignoring the raised gun, and clapped the speaker on the shoulder. “Such enterprise should not go unrewarded. Will you take the young lady aside?”

“How much?” said the lad.

“She’ll arrange the transaction,” Kyosti said generously. “It depends on your—ah—needs.”

Lily grabbed the young fellow’s wrist and tugged him behind her. “Come on,” she said.

“Be a good girl, darling,” said Kyosti to her stiff back.

“Hoo, ain’t she eager,” said one of the guards.

Gar’s gun lowered slightly. Lily and the lad disappeared past a door. Kyosti began regaling the four left with an obscene story. Gar’s gun lowered completely. Just as Kyosti finished, Lily reappeared alone.

“Sure,” said the tattoo. “That were fast.”

“Where is he?” demanded Gar.

“Putting his clothes on.” Lily’s voice had a clipped tone that might have been mistaken for breathlessness. “You want to be next.” She headed for Gar.

Kyosti, quick to read the signs, took an unobtrusive step back into the midst of the guards. Even to a man of his experience, Lily betrayed not the slightest signal of the kick that took Gar in the groin. As Gar doubled over, Kyosti laid the meat of his cane with a crack along the back of the tattoo’s neck. Lily was past him; she thrust an open palm out; the two soldiers focused on it, beginning to lift their weapons, and she whipped a crescent kick into the face of one, spun off it into a second to the other’s ribs. They both staggered back. She dropped one with a punch.

But the tattoo had not gone down and was in fact struggling, gun still in one hand. Gar began to unbend. Lily was grabbed from behind by the fifth guard.

Heredes arrived. He dealt with Gar and the tattoo summarily, and he and Kyosti moved to find the last guard crumbling at Lily’s feet, victim of a firmly planted elbow. Bach was coding into the lock panel; it blinked green and opened.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” said Heredes as the door shut behind them. He handed over her tunic, which she quickly drew on and buckled. “But it seemed most expedient.”

Kyosti laughed.

Lily felt a wave of anger rise in her, at his levity, but she quickly dissipated it by rebuckling her belt and ignoring him. “You were right,” she said pointedly to Heredes, “about that lesson.”

The lock opened.

“Walk quickly,” said Heredes as they with one step cleared the lock, Bach above them. “Berth Bossuet twelve eighteen.”

“Bossuet.” Kyosti chuckled, coughed, and chuckled again, but at a sharp glance from Heredes he subsided.

They split up, walking through several business sections, shops, a scattering of people who seemed, despite the insurrection and the occasional pair of Jehanist soldiers, to be going about their regular pursuits. Bach sank to Lily’s waist level, where he was less conspicuous. A troop of white-uniformed soldiers rushed past, in the opposite direction.

At the next lock, two soldiers were questioning people. Bach sank to the floor and, as they came up to the crowd, rolled gently in among the mass of feet. Someone was arguing with the guards. Lily recognized him suddenly as Kyosti. He had found a hood somewhere to cover that hair. As she slid past into the lock, Bach a soft gleam at her feet, Kyosti shouted. The soldiers looked up and Kyosti slid in past the closing lock door.

The lock opened into a docking sector. Lasalle. Dupin. Another lock. Madeline sector. Lafourcade. Another, and at last, Bossuet.

The alarm sounded, a deep hooting. Another detachment of soldiers pounded past. People shrank to the sides of the corridor. Traffic slowed and stopped. Behind, shouts rang out at the lock. Lily strolled, quick, but not alone—a few other individuals had business more pressing than a general alert. She saw berth 1218, Heredes standing before it talking with a dark woman in mercenary’s garb. Someone came up behind her, too close.

“A little haste, perhaps,” Kyosti murmured in her ear.

Lily hurried forward just fast enough to put distance between them; as she arrived at the berth, the mercenary smiled at her with obvious sympathy. The berth lock was open; Lily went in without breaking stride, aware of the noise of confusion and shouting closing in behind them.

The hold clearly showed signs of age. An old ship, a trifle neglected, perhaps, but Heredes had said it was a bit of a dog-tag. Kyosti collided with her and she felt a hand press against her neck and hair, as familiar as a lover’s. Against her back, his body was warm. Behind him, singing, floated Bach, followed by Heredes and the mercenary. The lock shut.

“Hawk!” Heredes’s tone was as scandalized as a maiden aunt’s.

Lily turned just as Kyosti removed his hand. He lifted the hand to his face in a gesture so alien, as if the contact between them could tell him something about her, that for an instant, like an hallucination, she wondered if he was human.

“We’ll be going out fast,” said the mercenary in a low voice, coming past them. “Especially if you caused that alarm. I’ll show you to your—” She paused, taking in three where she had expected two, and she grinned at Lily, as if to say, Look what a mess these idiots have made. “
Your
cabin,” she continued, directing a dark-eyed and knowing glance at Kyosti and Heredes. “You can share with me,” she finished with a companionable nod to Lily. “By the way, my name is Jenny. Jenny Seria.” Her grin broke out again, gently cynical. “And, from Captain Bolyai, as well as myself, a warm welcome to the
Easy Virtue
, queen of the highroad.”

“This boat isn’t really called that,” said Kyosti.

“But of course it is.” Jenny winked at Lily. “But frankly it’s more a comment on our cargo than our crew.” She led them into the ship, which was, judging by the spasm of conversation and command over the intercom, undocking even as they walked. “In here.” She coded open a door into a tiny double-bunked cabin. Heredes shoved Kyosti inside. “How about the ’bot?” asked Jenny.

“He goes with me.”

“My cabin is just down here.” Jenny had a long-limbed stride that forced Lily to double-time. “I’ve never seen a ’bot like that before,” the mercenary added. “Or a man with blue hair.” She paused for the barest moment, as if testing the tension between them, then ventured, “Is the other one your brother?”

“My brother!” Lily, looking up, met Jenny’s eye, a frankly speculative gaze, and smiled, “No.” For some reason she thought of Kyosti’s hand on her neck, and of Heredes’s sharp reaction. “More like my father,” she said slowly, much struck.

“That explains it,” said Jenny. “Even my father got testy when I started bringing boyfriends home.”

“Boyfriends!” exclaimed Lily, but Jenny had halted in front of a cabin door and now coded into the panel. Lily shrugged. “My name’s Lily. Lily Hae Ransome.”

Jenny gave her a little salute in acknowledgment as the door opened. “Come in,” she said, “but watch out for small animals.”

The high warning chime of final undocking rang out over the intercom.

“Get a seat, quick,” said Jenny as Lily collided with a waist-high, golden-haired impediment. It yelped. The ship lurched, sending Lily tumbling past the impediment to land with a jar on the lower bunk. Another lurch slammed her against the bank’s side wall, but the third found her prepared, with a stiff grip on the edge of the bunk’s pad. She rocked violently. A few rolling movements, like a restless beast at last settling down, shuddered through the ship. Lily let go of the bunk’s edge.

Bach, upside down, winked eye to eye with a small boy of about five years whose light hair proclaimed him to be the impediment. The boy began to make distorted faces at himself in the gleam of Bach’s surface.

“Gregori!” This admonition produced in the cabin as much effect as the quivering of a draft might in a closed room. The boy darted a glance in its direction and resumed his contortions. But Lily, more startled, found a young woman beside her on the bunk who was certainly younger than herself and who was drawn up into one corner like a frightened, but defensive, creature caught out in the wild.

“Excuse me,” said Lily, rising. “I hope I didn’t knock into you.”

“Keep down,” said Jenny quickly from the floor. “We’re due another roll.” The ship rolled, seating Lily with firm neatness. The young woman on the bunk smiled. “Milhaviru has some predictable habits,” added Jenny. “You may have guessed she didn’t graduate top of her class at pilot’s academy.”

“But, Jenny.” The other woman’s voice was so soft it seemed barely to penetrate the air. “You said yourself we would be undocking without permission, so you can’t fault Milhaviru for the roughness.”

Jenny grinned. She pushed herself up with practiced ease and scooped the boy up into her arms. He wriggled in delight and grinned; seeing the likeness in that smile and in the strong set of his jaw, Lily knew whose child he was. “Always fair, that’s my Lia,” said Jenny. “But Lily, this is my son, Gregori, and next to you is Aliasing, my partner. I hope I read things right back there—that you’d a wish to be away from the two men, for now. Sometimes I let my instincts run before I have a chance to think.”

Lily smiled back at her, finding her friendly and open manner balm to her confusion. Events had fallen with such chaos around her that she welcomed a moment to breathe. “Your training must have been good,” she replied. “Because your instincts were right.”

“You’ve had some training yourself,” Jenny said, sizing Lily up. “We’ll leave you alone as we can, in such space, but if you ever want a scrap, we’ve got a rec room on board that can be cleared out for a bit of sparring.”

“You’re on.” Lily studied the other woman. Jenny was much taller than Lily, big-boned but lean, with that tight, high-shouldered look that comes with physical authority. By contrast Aliasing looked insubstantial.

“Want to play with the ’bot,” said the boy emphatically. His mother let him down, glancing first at Lily.

“Of course.” Lily sat cross-legged on the platform. “Did we really undock without authorization? Isn’t that dangerous?”

Jenny shrugged. “No more than getting impounded by the Jehanists. Better to cut and run. They’re spreading like fire out here on the fringe.”

“But where did they come from? I grew up on Unruli, and I’d never heard of any rebellion until a few days ago.”

“That’s not surprising. Those of us on the road have come across it—oh these past several years, growing—but nothing like it’s growing now. Jehane, whoever she may be—if she or he really exists, that is—seems to have decided that the time, or her resources, are right.”

“Oh, he exists,” said Lily. “I met him.”

“Did you?” Jenny pulled a hard plastine chair down from one wall and sat. Gregori, at her feet, was happily engaged in trading whistled phrases with Bach.

“What was he like?” breathed Aliasing. A curling tangle of black hair hung almost to her waist.

“He terrified me,” said Lily.

Jenny chuckled. “You should see your face right now. But in any case, folk planetside really only hear what comes over the network, and you can be sure the government doesn’t let any Jehanish news get down there. Too risky, by half.”

“You mean they censor the news?”

“Where have you been, Lily Hae Ransome? Why do you think this old boat has the experience of cutting loose and running? Most of the cargoes she runs don’t have permits. The captain doesn’t even have a permit, for that matter. Most of our crew have some tattooed mark in their past that prevents them from getting work on authorized ships. Why else do you think we ship on a half-mended tub with a mediocre pilot whose vectors are slipshod and a captain who drinks too much ambergloss? Too many government regulations, that’s why.”

“I didn’t really get a look at the ship,” said Lily diplomatically.

“You will. Don’t look too close. Not that I have much sympathy for the Jehanists either, especially their giving so much power to the tattoos—it’ll only create a bloodbath. But I can’t say I don’t understand why so many are joining him. Central’s been giving all the privileges to themselves, and not to the rest of us. I saw that well enough.” The glance she exchanged with Aliasing was full of private meaning.

“I suppose I must confess,” said Lily, uncomfortable, “that I’m the child of a Sar-house. So it’s no wonder that I never noticed anything wrong.”

Jenny regarded her with a level gaze: her eyes were dark, a suggestion of the void, pulled oblique at the corners. “I daresay we can learn to tolerate you, despite all that.” She winked.

Aliasing laughed, and Lily realized that she was, for the time, at home here.

The next few days fell into a routine. Aliasing procured a second set of clothing for Lily. During the long hours of cruising to, or waiting for, windows, she sparred with Jenny and Heredes, sometimes even with Kyosti, accumulating a few bruises, met the disreputable crew of the
Easy Virtue
, and saw how life went on in a dog-tagging merchanter that smuggled for its living—she and Heredes and Kyosti being, evidently, their current cargo. Heredes refused to tell her the cost of their passage, although he did offer to man a bridge station on the odd shift; the captain, grateful for help, put him on communications.

Heredes, indeed, was taking on the attributes of her guardian. Whatever Lily’s feelings about Kyosti, which could easily swing from annoyance to attraction to curiosity about his intriguing strangeness with the space of a few moments, she would at least have liked to get him to herself to question him about his and Heredes’s past. Heredes, in response to those questions, deflected them so easily that she wondered where he had learned such methods of equivocation. To her outright demands he counseled patience. And when she asked if Joshua Li Heredes was his real name, he merely said, “As real as any name can be, defining so much with so little.” Kyosti persisted in calling him Gwyn and in laughing at allusions whose source or meaning Lily could not guess at.