An Ancient Peace (12 page)

“Yes.” Torin dried her palms against her thighs. “We were wrong.”

“My kada says your kind can't stop fighting. My kada says you fight like nunnurs in spring.”

The rest of the team was listening in. She could feel their attention. “And what are my kind?”

“Like you. Big with boots.” Zi pointed at the Krai's bare feet. “And like them. Littler with no big boots. Or hair.”

“And what's a nunnur?”

Zi cocked zir head, the markings on zir brow folding into a double-u. “You don't know?”

“I've never been to Abalae before.”

“Oh. Nunnurs are little.” Zi dropped zir tail and brought zir cupped hands close together. “And soft. With short puffy tails and big, big feet.”

“That doesn't sound so bad.”

Zi leaned closer. “I petted one once. Zi tried to bite me. They have lots of pointy teeth. Your boots are very shiny.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you have toes?”

All members of the Confederation spoke Federate. Most also spoke another, species-determinate language. Trun was a deep bass line, languidly rhythmic even when being growled at a protesting child scooped up by arms and tail and returned very quickly back to the other end of the car.

“Cute kid.” Craig pressed his shoulder against Torin's. “Don't think I like zir kada, though.”

“I'm more than my boots,” Alamber grumbled.

“This is not what I expected.”

The station at Commerce Three, Section Eighteen was a larger copy of the oceanfront station. Grubbier, smellier—both Krai had their nostril ridges nearly shut and Alamber's hair had begun to flip back and forth in small, jerky arcs—but essentially the same. A crowd of several species surged past them to get onto the car, the barriers that had once kept the arriving and departing apart having been snapped off, leaving nothing but jagged ridges on the floor.

“They're not all going to fit,” Werst grumbled, glaring a Trun out of his way.

“Not our problem,” Torin told him. It wasn't an evacuation, people fighting their way onto the last ship out of a burning port. They'd be fine. “If you want to worry about something, worry about how far we are from the tether and how we're dependent on the links to get back.”

“Thanks a fukking lot, Gunny.”

She grinned. “No problem.” But now he'd be keeping an eye out
for a vehicle they could commandeer if things went down the shitter. Not that things should. And there was that word again.

The early evening air outside the station was warm and humid under a low, gray cloud cover.

“Fukking hell.” Werst snapped his nose ridges shut as Ressk began to sneeze.

Breathing through her mouth, Torin grabbed one of Alamber's ribbons, dragged him back out of the station, and led the way down the stained stairs. “We'll get used to it.”

He had a hand clamped over his mouth and nose. “I don't want to get used to it, Boss.”

Three roads that began at the half circle below the station divided Section Eighteen into thirds. The roads had originally been broad avenues but had been divided in turn by stalls and carts, a jumbled mass of wood and plastic and metal that may have started out mobile, but over time had become permanent. It reminded Torin of the ships that made up the structure of the salvage station Craig used to call home and, from his expression, she'd bet he was thinking the same.

The prevailing smell—although by no means the only smell—was hot oil and frying meat. The stalls and carts selling food were surrounded by harried looking people—mostly Trun but some Katrien and Niln—pushing forward, yelling out their orders, and making it clear they had no time to waste. Given the scrum, Torin was impressed the Truns' tails didn't knot with their neighbors. Most wore the minimal harness of Commerce workers and the steady stream of snacking Trun heading for the train suggested they'd arrived at a shift change.

The three- and four-story buildings lining the roads were made of stone and wood—both probably harvested to create the section's plateau. On the other side of the station, great rocky ridges rose to the sky fringed with trees that caused the Krai's eyes to widen.

“If we have time and there's a nature sector close enough . . .” Werst's voice was as close to awe as Torin had ever heard it. “. . . I wouldn't mind a closer look at those trees.”

“With luck, we'll get some down time when we're done.”

“Yeah, but, Gunny . . .” Ressk paused to sneeze. “. . . we're here now.”

“Here and now, we're working.”

It was late enough the lights had begun to come on, breaking the chaos into even smaller pieces. This looked more like the sort of place an illegal artifact might be sold, although Torin still had a problem getting around the distance from the tether. It was the closest Commerce Sector to the tether, however, so she would have to be satisfied with that.

“Room first,” she decided. “Then food. Then we find out who blew into town with the biscuit warmer.” Which continued to sound ridiculous.

Ressk sneezed twice. “Who'd look for a high-end preConfederation piece in this?”

“The best pieces are found at the worst stores. Because,” Alamber continued before anyone could ask, “most of them are acquired illegally, so it's not like they're going to be sold at high-end, squeaky clean places, are they?”

“How do you know?” Werst asked.

“Hello? Big Bill? Vrijheid Station? Illicit gains?” Alamber's hair spread out and settled as he sighed. “You people are so sheltered.”

There were three Trun waiting for them at the edge of the plaza. Not Wardens. Wardens maintained the law between the worlds—until they couldn't; then they called in Torin and her team. These were quite obviously the local equivalent. Someone at the station had called ahead and this was what the bargain basement Commerce Sector could field at short notice.

When they moved to block the way, Ressk murmured, “They're called facilitators. The baton on their belt is a stun gun.”

“Visitors.” The shortest of the three stepped forward. Torin stopped about three meters away, heard the others spread out behind her. “Welcome to Section Eighteen, Commerce Three.” The voice was unexpectedly deep for zir size. Torin touched the place where the cylinders of ash should be. The facilitator reminded her of Captain Rose. “What,” zi continued, tail tip lashing, “brings you here?”

“Ship. Tether. Boat. Train.” Werst growled the list just loudly enough to be heard, softly enough to be ignored.

Torin smiled, keeping her teeth mostly covered. “We came to shop.”

The facilitator blinked. “Shop?”

“We were told about your commerce sectors, thought we'd check one out. Is there a problem?”

“No . . .” Zi visibly shook off zir confusion. Her response had clearly been unexpected, but zi was just as clearly determined to stay on script. “No,” zi repeated, leaning forward slightly, ears flattening. “And we don't want problems.”

Zi had a little power over zir lower-ranked companions, a little more over shoplifters, drunks, and vandals and none at all over her. Torin swept an assessing gaze over the three of them, frowned slightly at a sloppy twist in the tallest facilitator's harness that had tri-colored hair stuck up in tufts around it, finally met the shortest's gaze, and, after a moment said, “Good.”

“Good?” Zi sounded unsure.

“We don't want problems either.” Torin pitched her voice to support a corporal under her command.

Zi nodded, posture relaxing. “Good,” zi repeated. “Have a pleasant evening, Visitors.”

Torin returned the nod, zi barked an order—which caused one of zir companion's ears to lift—and the three of them strutted away. Given the way their legs bent, she gave the strut the benefit of the doubt.

“You need to promise me you'll only use your powers for good,” Craig said softly at her right side.

“Police forces are hierarchical.” Torin watched zi reach over to tug at the twisted strap, chewing out the other facilitator in a low rhythmic burr. “If the military teaches you one thing, it's how to spot your place in the hierarchy.”

Craig made a noise that might've been disbelief, might've been derision. “
That's
the one thing?”

“We don't give them live rounds until we're sure they'll only shoot what we tell them to shoot,” Torin answered absently. The crowds streaming past on their way to the train, anxious to get home at the end of shift, had been ignoring them. Unfortunately, that had changed the moment they'd been stopped by the facilitators, and now she'd bet that a high fraction of the noise surrounding them concerned
them. She could feel the weight of multiple gazes. “This is a stupid place to sell a biscuit warmer.”

They rented a large room above the bar closest to the station. The room was clean, reasonably priced, and the only one in the establishment designed for the taller members of the Confederation. Unfortunately, the room and contents had been constructed entirely of molded plastic.

“That's one fuk of a lot of potential hyper-intelligent, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes,” Torin muttered from the threshold. It was one thing to refuse to allow the little plastic bastards to dictate any more of her life and another thing entirely to walk into the belly of the beast.

“Your call, Gunny.” Werst stood a little too close behind her, but she couldn't tell if that was due to her shit or his own. He'd been on Big Yellow and in the prison. Out of her personal triumvirate, he'd only missed having a conversation about context with Major Svenson's arm.

“We're out of here.”

They rented a second, more expensive room a half block away, the visible plastic unobtrusive enough to ignore. The room had clearly been designed for Rakva—so had the other, Torin realized, forcing herself to look past the memory of the plastic—but they could all work around that.

“Why not get the information we need and sleep on the train on the way back to the tether?” Werst demanded.

“Because then it'll look like we were here to get information,” Alamber sighed from the larger of the two nests. “No tourist would come this far and not stay the night. You guys really suck at directing attention. And if
I'm
using suck in a derogatory way . . .” A rude gesture completed the observation.

“Don't you mean redirect?” Craig asked, opaquing the windows.

“Yeah, no. In order to redirect, you have to direct, and I was serious about the
really
sucking.”

By the time they emerged back onto the street, it was full dark. Under low, yellow-white lights, the buying and selling went on. Waiting for her vision to acclimatize, Torin paused on the bottom of the three broad steps leading into the inn.

“Commerce,” Alamber said, sounding satisfied, “never closes.”

“You learn that from Big Bill, too?” Binti asked.

“Well, yeah . . .” They were behind her, but Torin could hear the shrug in the di'Taykan's voice. “. . . but I also read it in one of the brochures I picked up on the tether. Commerce never closes! It's a thing.”

The crowds had cleared from around the carts, leaving only a few people hunched over mugs or bowls or meat on sticks. The scent of grain toasted with peppers suggested that at least one of the carts sold Rakva
arliy
and she could hear Katrien in the distance, but the only race Torin could see were Trun.

“My kada says there wasn't no reason for there to be a war. My kada says your kind can't stop fighting. My kada says you fight like nunnurs in spring.”

Your kind.

Torin shifted her shoulders, a year later still checking for the weight of her KC.

“Torin.” Beside her, Craig's voice held a familiar mix of impatience and affection. When she turned toward him, he smiled. “They're not the enemy.”

“I know.” Everyone she could see moved like a civilian, only marginally aware of their surroundings. If they'd seen anything of the war, it had been on vid screens. The Trun throwing zir cup into the recycler had watched news clips of battles happening far away and had never been told those battles were happening far away in order to prevent battles from happening up close and personal. The pair of Trun arguing as they ate had never dropped dirtside through heavy fire, looking faintly bored while metal shrieked and the VTA bucked and pitched because every eye was on zir. The Trun buzzing by on . . . actually Torin had no idea what the fuk zi was riding. A metal rectangle about twenty centimeters by ten, maybe six centimeters thick with a meter-high control stick extending from one narrow end, provided barely enough space for the Trun to stand sideways. It moved quickly, about three centimeters off the ground, and it didn't look like it had wheels. Tail extended for balance, one hand on the stick, the other holding a bag of vegetables, zi sped nonchalantly around carts and people and disappeared into the night.