A Passage of Stars (36 page)

“I’m coming on visual,” said Lily suddenly, and punched in the codes. An instant later the screen blossomed into life. “Aliasing!”

“Oh, Lily!” The delicate face was drawn into the thinness of exhaustion and fear. “Do you really have a pilot? We’re desperate. We came into system on a run almost a month ago and Milhaviru went on a binge and almost killed us going out, so Captain Bolyai threw her off, but we couldn’t risk looking for a pilot through official channels so Jenny and I came down on the shuttle—days and days ago but we still haven’t found—” She broke off. Even in her rush of words, her voice never lifted above a whisper. “Do you really have a pilot?”

“Yes. Are you at Kippers?”

“It’s a terrible place.” Her eyes glanced to either side as if she feared observation. “But Jenny said they’d never search here. But I’m afraid. There’s riots all over down here—it’s all tattoo districts.” Her voice faltered and gave out.

“Why did Jenny bring you down? Aren’t you safer up on the ship?”

Frail lips trembled. “We thought—I thought—maybe one of my old friends—but I called, just one, and now”—emotions filled and fled her face in a dizzying shift of expression—“now I’m afraid they’re looking for us. We have to get out fast.”

“Where is Jenny?”

“Out looking. How can we reach you? I don’t know how to tell you to get here. She’ll call you.”

Lily soothed her, gave her a code, and signed off. At his desk Pero had finally decided on what to keep and what to dispose of.

“Maud,” he called. His sister appeared with two duffel bags. “We have to wipe off every surface that might take prints, and incinerate any leftover items.” She set down the bags and went into the washing cubicle.

“Robbie,” said Lily. “I’ve got us a ship. Now how do we get to Kippers?”

“That’s settled.” She watched as he copied the diskette into Bach’s memory, followed him after to the washroom where he collected several damp, soapy cloths from his sister and, handing one to Lily, returned to wipe his desk. “Three streets from here there’s a Security vehicle with four troopers whose allegiance is to Jehane.”

“Can we really trust them not to turn us over to Central?”

His dark eyes lifted and a brief smile marked his face. “I have an instinct for Jehanists. They will deliver you to your ship.”

“I wonder why I trust you so much,” she replied. He merely looked at her, but he did not answer. “They’ll catch you eventually. Someday the government is going to kill you.”

“Of course,” said Pero, and he went back to his washing.

They ate, finished their cursory cleaning, waited until a sudden signal brought Lily to the terminal. Gray dissolved into the face of Jenny Seria.

“Lily-hae!” Grimness underlay that assured nonchalance. “Are you coming aboard?”

“If you’ll take us.”

“How many?”

“Three and the ’bot.”

“One’s a pilot?”

“Yes, he is.”

A grin cracked Jenny’s face. “So what’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. Of course, he’s Ridani.”

“A damned tattoo!”

“Jenny. He’ll do the job.”

The grin, banished by surprise, returned. “Beggars can’t choose. He’s on. What about you, Lily-hae?”

“I’m a fugitive now—but it’s a long story.”

“Come aboard, by all means. Fugitives are welcome on the
Easy Virtue
. But get here fast.”

“Just tell me where you are.”

They said good-bye to Pero in the apartment. Maud wept a little; Pinto shook his hand; Bach wished him well in his own voice.

“How will you live?” Lily asked him.

“I will live on the goodwill of the people,” said Pero. “I will live on the work of those who have already sacrificed themselves or their loved ones. I will live on the promise of Jehane.”

He led them to the Security vehicle. They climbed into the back of the truck, and the doors cut them off from him.

A young trooper, nervous but exhilarated, talked incessantly about the growing, but still-secret, support for Jehane within the Security forces, especially after the execution and subsequent rioting. He regaled them at some length with examples of conversion. Finally, he lapsed into silence. They passed through several checkpoints: the truck stopped; voices conversed; the truck went on. At one point the truck came to an abrupt halt. A hail of shooting sounded around them. A sudden blow shuddered the entire vehicle. Lily flung herself half-across Pinto to prevent him from falling. The trooper fingered his gun and directed it at the back doors. From the cab, a voice called back.

“Coming into Kippers. It’s wild as pitch out here.” The truck lurched forward—shouts were exchanged. Some barrier seemed to be passed and they drove on smoothly. Lily pushed away from Pinto and went forward to call into the cab.

“Fifty-seven seventy-eight,” she directed.

An interminable fifteen minutes passed. But at last the truck slowed and stopped and the engine cut off with a last cough.

“Cursed whore-mother tattoos,” snapped the driver. “They’re just asking to be shot.”

The trooper undid the doors, swung them open. Lily scrambled out—to see Jenny in full mercenary’s rig coming out of the shuttle’s hatch. Lily ran forward. Jenny lowered her gun.

“Lily!” Her eyes cast back to the truck. Dents puckered the red stripe along one door that identified it as a Security vehicle. “I thought you were a fugitive.”

“They’re Jehanists.”

“So they say. Let’s board and get clear. Where’s your pilot—” Her face froze in astonishment. “Damn my eyes. It’s Isaiah’s tame monkey. Grown up.”

Pinto halted. “Go fly your own tupping ship—”

Lily grabbed his arm and squeezed, hard. “Jenny, this is Pinto.”

“I know you,” said Pinto suddenly, still staring at Jenny. “You were—the Mughal banquet—the blond—”

“A friend of yours is on that shuttle.” Jenny’s voice sliced through his indecision. “So move it up.”

Recognition flooded Pinto’s face. “Aliasing,” he said in a breath. “She disappeared.” He pulled away from Lily and jogged toward the shuttle. Bach followed him.

Lily turned back toward the truck.

“Lily.” Jenny’s voice cut hard and urgent through the air. “Move it up, woman.”

“There’s just one thing, Jenny. I have to find Kyosti. He works in Roanoak.”

“What—old blue-hair?”

“I’m sorry. If you have to leave me, do it. But I can’t go without him.”

Jenny sighed, and her mouth turned down. “All right, Ransome. I’ll give you two hours. But these pretty soldiers stay with me until you get back.”

“But—”

Jenny cut off the driver’s protest with one motion of her gun. “You’ll stay with me. Round up your boys and give me your guns. How do you expect to find him?”

Lily, divesting the four troopers of their guns, turned to the driver. “Where’s Roanoak E Depot from here?”

“Less than half a kilometer. Straight down Mash Avenue.”

“Then I can find him. Two hours, Jenny. I’ll return this then,” she added to the driver, slipping a hand-size stunner into her boot. She set out in the preferred direction at a lope.

Most of the loading berths sat empty. A Security truck roared by and she dodged just in time under the confines of a raised platform. And, looking up, realized it was a rail shoot that connected with the cargo tracks. She followed it. Branched to the right where it met the main tracks and jogged down them. A warehouse loomed on her left. The tracks rose, arcing up into a bridge. She crouched at the rise. Off to the left she saw a gate, crowded with troops inside and a fluid mass of people outside. Surely that must be Mash Avenue. She dropped off the height of rail and ran along the side of the decrepit warehouse toward the gate. Broken concrete, cracked and jagged, polluted with shoots of green erupting up through it, caught at her feet, but she neither lost her balance nor broke her stride.

Old warehouses, long deserted by their shattered windows and half-slung doors, covered her approach to within twenty-five yards of the gate. The crowd sounded a steady undercurrent to the louder noise of an altercation at the gate. A woman’s voice screamed words at the phalanx of troopers stationed behind the broad entry gates. A low vehicle pushed forward, nosing the metal mesh until a single shot shattered through the sound of the engine, and the vehicle backed up abruptly. People yelled and shouted and dashed out of its retreating path.

But there was an exit gate, a smaller, one-way set of bars and barriers. About six troopers watched it, but their attention was mostly focused on the entrance. An incredible shouting broke out away down the avenue.

Honking and shouts accompanied the slow advance of a Security vehicle. The crowd threw itself on it, battering at the metal sides, shattering windows. Troopers opened the gates, charging through to aid the vehicle. Any number of civilians pressed into the port. Lily strolled across the median strip, up to the exit gate.

“Excuse me,” she said to the trooper who stood blocking the first section of the gate. “But I need to get out.”

The trooper stared at her, started at the sudden commands from the entry gate, where civilians were pouring around the Security vehicle and through the gate. Lily was out through the gate before she got any reply.

She had to shove through the crowd, but no one hindered her because she was moving in the opposite direction. At last she cleared the worst congestion and found the avenue. The traffic was definitely against her, but all on foot. At the gate she had seen untattooed people. Now, as she walked down the broad avenue as quickly as she could without running, she saw fewer and fewer unmarked faces.

These people were headed away from the direction she was going in. Some at a run. A volley of shots, faint and snapping, echoed out along the avenue until the swelling noise of human agitation covered them. A cluster of youths smashed a shop window with rocks. One at their fringe grabbed at Lily. She brushed him aside, went on. Glanced back once, but they had scattered into the shop, looting.

The press of crowd increased against her, pulling her one way, pushing her another, but she fought forward, shoulders hunched, as if against the winds of Unruli. Came out into the plaza fronting Roanoak E Depot. And saw what the crowds were fleeing.

Tumult. Turmoil. Perhaps it had once been a riot. The debris of the protest—clubs, torn clothing, bodies—lay still beneath the agitation swirling over it. Someone hit her, full collision, and she was knocked off her feet. Rolled, came up crouched, but no one had stopped. Another body brushed roughly past. Screams, shouts, uproar. The crack of command. Five precise shots.

A gap opened, and she could see the depot. Emerging out of it, in an exact line, the stark white uniforms of the Immortals. They advanced step by commanded step. The crowd roiled away from them, recoiled back. Shots peppered into the swarm. Those who reached the line of the Immortals were dispatched with ease by a flash of slim, metal clubs that seemed choreographed in its ruthless efficiency. The crowd broke under their advance despite the amazing disparity in numbers.

Lily swore under her breath, retreating with the crowd until she could separate off and, pushing along the edge of the plaza, duck into a side street. It would be hard enough to retrace her way to the clinic—and with this …

Distant commands: “Break line and pursue in order.” Lily ran, took a side street, and another, and came out on the edge of a tiny, withering park, hardly larger than her apartment. She paused to catch her breath and her bearings.

A sudden rush of running and yelling, followed by a flurry of shots. She threw herself behind a bench. A group of Ridanis ran past. One staggered, blood seeping at her abdomen, and fell. Six of the others stopped, grabbed her, pulled. But four Immortals, practically sprinting in step, surrounded them and with a supreme economy of effort beat them until there was no motion left. And turned to face the bench. Lily stood up.

Two men. Two women. They studied Lily with eyes of inexorable dispassion. Lily had a vivid vision of Jenny in such a uniform. She grinned. Hopped the bench casually, raised one hand and with the other tipped the gun out of her boot and onto the ground. Then she sat on the high back of the bench, feet on the seat itself, and folded her arms in front of her.

“Even though you aren’t a tattoo,” said the woman with the bars of highest rank, “why shouldn’t we shoot you?”

“Because,” replied Lily, “I’m going to meet my lover.”

Two of them laughed.

“Say it’s true,” said the officer. “Why should we let you meet this lover, tattooed or not?”

Lily stood up and jumped lightly to the ground. “Because I challenge any one of you, no weapons, to single combat. If I win, you’ll let me go.”

Two laughed.

“If you lose?” asked the officer.

“Your choice,”

“All right.” The officer nodded at one of the men. “Make it quick.”

He divested himself of weapons, put them in the keeping of his comrades. They backed up to give him room. Lily came forward. More dirt than grass under her feet. She tested it under her boots, getting a feel for her traction.

He lunged. She sidestepped, caught him with a clip to the back of the head before he could pull up and turn, caught the back of one of his knees with a kick. But as his balance broke backward, he fell into it, rolled and pushed up onto his hands, booted feet thrust into her abdomen.

She doubled over, gasping, but kept the force of his roll tumbling backward and flipped him over her. They both spun up to their feet and away. A dull ache spread out along the muscles of her belly. He rubbed his head, and smiled.

Now he began to circle in. He was lithe, strong and straight from his training. He shifted closer, whirled, and attacked. Her dodge cleared all but her shoulder—his fist slammed into that, but she spun with the blow, closing in with an elbow to his face. He slugged her, straight onto a breast. Staggering back, she barely caught his next blow on her forearm, deflecting a kick with a sweep of one leg. His hand, ringed with something metal, skimmed her cheek and tore the skin.

She dropped, but only into her deepest stance, and took his open belly with a clean reverse punch. He fell like a stone into a heap on the ground. She leapt backward, found the bench, and cleared it so the high back stood between her and the Immortals. Pain throbbed through her abdomen, her chest, her leg; stung like the whip of cold wind on her cheek. Liquid swelled and trailed down her face.