Duty Bound (7 page)

She bowed carefully amid a sea-noise of
crinkling. "Thank you for your notice," she said formally, while
her free hand chuckled out the sign for "Why me?"

His reply in finger-talk, also with the
underlying ripple of a chuckle, was simply "Breath's duty." He
pulled away, a rough-trimmed wire conduit clutched carefully
through the transparent Momson Cloak, and floated toward the open
overhead panel. Shadia likewise turned back to her task in
progress.

The ship's tiny forward viewports were
automatically sealed by Jump run-up; they were blind unless they
could get power back to those motors or use the auxiliary scope to
see straight away from the ship.

And now the star-field scope was stable
enough to run: Despite Clonak's protestations, he'd managed to
perform wizard's work on the back-up electrical system and the
device was ready to operate. It was not what one might hope to be
using to determine one's position after an interrupted Jump-run,
but she'd used less in training.

As she bent to the scope she sighed a
breath--and then another. Breath's Duty, indeed. Every child on
Liad was made by stern Delm or fond grandfather to memorize the
passage, which had come virtually unchanged through countless
revisions of the Code. Unbidden, portions came to her now, recalled
in the awkward rhythms of childish singsong.

"Breath's duty is to breathe for the clan as
the clan allows, Breath's duty is to breathe the body whole,
Breath's duty is to plan for the clan's increase, Breath's duty is
to keep the Balance told, Breath's duty is to..."

Carefully, she adjusted the star-field
scope. To be useful, she needed to recognize any of the several
dozen common Guides--her usual choice was the brilliant blue-white
Quarter main giganova--or find a star within disc-view. Disc-view,
of course, was optimum. With the auxiliary scope even a basic scan
could take a day.

"Breath's duty is to keep the Balance told,"
she muttered, and noted the gyroscope's base setting. There were a
lot of degrees of space to cover, and time moved on.

* * *

IT WAS
L'IL ORBIT
and not
Ride The Luck
that docked
at Delgado's smallest general-flight orbiting docks; and Professor
Jen Sar Kiladi it was who made a series of transfers to and from
accounts long held in reserve. The shuttle trip to the larger
commercial center, as well as the various library connections and
downloads, were made by a student invented some years before by the
professor; and the tools purchased at the local pawn establishment
were paid for, in cash, by a man with a brash Aus-Terran accent and
super-thin gloves.

"I'm here to fix your nerligig," the little
man told the morning guy behind the bar.

"Ist broke?" the bartender wondered. The
device sat in its place, motionless--but it was always motionless
at this time of the day, local ordinance requiring the Solemn Six
Hours of Dawn to match that of the spiritual city Querna on the
planet below.

"Repair order!" said the man, vaguely Aus,
waving a flimsy in the air and lugging his kit with him. "I'm good,
I'm expensive, and I'm on my night differential."

He looked like one of those semi-retired
types: just the kind of guy who'd know how to keep an antique
nerligig running.

The bartender shrugged, waved the man and
his tools toward the ailing equipment, and poured a legal drink
into one glass and its twin into another then gave them both to the
customer at the end of the bar.

"Hey, asked for one drink--right?"

"Solemn Six, bud! Can't sell youse that much
in one glass this time of the day..."

The repairman shook his head, set up his
tools, adroitly removed the wachmalog and the bornduggle from the
nerligig, and waited patiently for the boss.

The boss was a heavyset Terran, and he
traveled today with three guards. He came in looking tired and his
guards swept by, checking out the patrons, glancing at the
bartender, reconnoitering the restrooms...

It was the boss who saw the nerligig guy,
professionally polishing one of the inner gimbag joints.

"What's going on here?" he demanded.

The guy glanced at him out of serious dark
eyes. "Time to do scheduled maintenance."

The boss grimaced, but gave the correct
reply.

"I don't need nothing fancy today."

"Dollar's greener when you do," said the
man, polishing away.

"At's awful old."

The repairman looked up, eyes steady--

"I only come out at night, you know."

The boss looked at the bartender, sighed,
and watched his guards stand importantly around the bar for a
moment.

"You cost me some help today," he said
finally, turning back to the nerligig guy.

The man shrugged.

"Good help is hard to find. Better you know
before there's a life in it."

The boss sighed again, and waved the repair
guy toward his office.

"C'mon back."

The office was sparely appointed; a working
place and not a showplace. Daav took a supple leather chair for
himself, nodding at its agreeability.

The boss sat in his own chair, rubbed his
face with his left hand and gestured at his visitor with his
right.

"What's your pleasure?"

Daav opened his hands slightly with a
half-shrug.

"Information. About that message..." The
message that shouted the name of Val Con yos'Phelium to all with
ears to hear, near-space and far. The message that had shaken him
out of his professorial Balancing and brought him into the office
of a Juntavas, seeking news.

The boss pinched the bridge of his nose and
nodded.

"Yeah, I figure every quiet hand in the
universe will want to know about that. I think it's the first time
the damned 'danger tree' was really used..."

Daav sat quietly, watching the man's tired
face. No effort to hide how he felt--Daav's greeting, as old as it
was, was one recognized by Juntavas on many worlds. The short form
was: Help this person, he has a right to it. The person in question
might be a retired sector boss, an assassin on the way to or from a
run--or the whole charade could simply be a test of loyalty.

"What do you need to know?" asked the boss.
"What's the aim?"

"Everything you know. I am, let us say, a
specialist in people. I can hide them and I can find them. As may
be required. I'll need the background as deep as it goes."

The boss man gave a snort.

"I bet you can hide 'em. Standing in my own
front room with a whole bag of equipment like you own the place and
my guards probably can't tell me the color of your hair or what
kind of shoes you wear. Damn smooth...." He shook his head in
admiration, sighed, and went on, looking straight at Daav.

"Where we are is that there's been--a change
of administration. Some of this is official and some's not..."

Daav looked on with polite interest, no
change on his face.

The boss nodded. "Right. He was asking for
it if anyone was, but anyhow, politics aside, we have a Chairman
Pro Tem right now, seeing how the Chairman was knifed in his own
office by a Clutch turtle."

Daav leaned forward a bit, cocking his head
to one side in respectful query.

"Me too! Not what somebody'd expect. A bomb
maybe, poison, even just a quiet step-down 'cause somebody had the
best of him after all--but no. A pair of Clutch turtles waltzed
into his office, had an argument with him, and took him out."

The man's gaze had strayed to his desktop;
he looked up, frowning.

"The official thing is--straight from Chair
Pro Tem!--that there was a busted deal, resulting from a
misunderstanding, and that the former Chairman had made the mistake
of threatening a T'carais with a shell-buster."

"With the result that, in defense of his or
her superior, a minion used a knife," Daav murmured into the short
silence.

The boss looked impressed, but Daav
continued. "Perhaps better for all concerned: Most turtles would
merely have bitten his head off, or crushed his spine..."

The boss blanched, but waved a hand and went
on.

"Yeah, well, could have been. Unofficial
news is that this turtle crew had come to visit twice; got
themselves locked into the Chairman's office and cut their way out
through the blast wall with a knife after busting about a thousand
gems, and then he had the nerve to try a fast one. Apparently these
turtles are the knife clan or something--famous. And by the time
the blood's cleaned up, the Chairman Pro Tem finds out the fuss is
all about two people."

"That would be the individuals mentioned in
the whisper for all worlds..." Daav suggested.

The boss smiled wanly.

"Yes, that's them. The turtles--this is
official!--claim them to be 'a brother and sister of the Spear
maker's Den' who must be returned unharmed or self-declared free
and safe."

Daav looked into the ceiling, momentarily
lost in thought. When he looked back, the boss was reaching into a
desk drawer for a candy.

"What, may I ask, is the or?"

The boss looked grim.

"The or is that if they don't turn up safe
the Juntavas will be wiped out, starting at the top. This is a
promise."

Daav leaned forward, raised his hand to his
chin and rubbed it thoughtfully.

"This is," he said after a moment, "a very,
very serious problem. No one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle
lying. certainly no one has ever heard of a Clutch turtle or clan
breaking a promise. Even I might not be able to hide well enough if
the Clutch knew me for an enemy."

The boss snorted again, apparently
swallowing his candy whole.

"Right. And so what I have going on,
starting about the time you walk out the front door here, is a
block-by-block search of every Juntavas holding on Delgado, looking
for two of the damnedest trouble-makers you've ever heard of."

Daav, very interested, waved his hand,
asking for more information.

"Yeah, OK. One is a First-In Scout
Commander! Good, right? Get in the face of somebody who can talk
Clutch to the Clutch and just happens to have saved one from a
dragon. You know, a nobody, a pushover. Then the other one is a
Merc-turned-bodyguard, lived through Klamath and got on--and
off!--Cloud."

Daav let out a low whistle. "Do you know how
many people lived through Klamath?"

The boss shrugged, tapped his desk. "That's
probably in my notes. I got more notes than you can stuff in a
garbage can already about this." He broke, searched his desktop,
pulled up a flimsy image-flat, and flipped it, casually and quite
accurately, to the man in the chair.

Daav listened with half-an-ear as the boss
went on--the while eyes measured the photos of his son and his
son's companion.

"Getting off Klamath earns you a lifetime
'I'm tough' badge or something. But--this is where we come
in--these two started a firefight, in broad daylight, I
guess!--between the local Juntavas and the city police in Econsey,
back there on Lufkit, just to cover their getaway after they robbed
the boyfriend of the local boss' daughter. Then, they managed to
get off-planet while the place was under total lock-down, with
everybody from the chief of planetary police down to the nightclub
bouncer looking for them, and make a leisurely departure from Prime
Station in a Clutch spaceship."

Daav continued to look interested, slowly
shaking his head as he listened, still taking in the no-nonsense,
rather ordinary appearance of both of the missing. A master
mercenary who had survived Klamath might be just the person to
balance a Scout Commander, he thought.

"Story gets muddled about
here," the boss was continuing, "but somehow the local capo managed
to grab them. Then he gets the news he can't
do
anything to them. So he sets them
off in a spaceship that's been in some kind of a fight and can't go
nowhere. Word comes down to make sure these two are really in one
piece and to hold 'em, pending the Chairman Pro Tem's personal
visit. He goes back..."

Daav didn't have to fake the laugh.

"What could he have been thinking?" he
asked. "To leave a--what was it, First-In Scout Commander?--in a
spaceship and expect it not to go away?"

The boss was nodding now and gestured with
the piece of candy in his left hand.

"You got it. Exactly how it was. They were
gone, the ship was gone and ain't nobody heard nothing about any of
'em since. So now I got to check Delgado and..."

Daav raised a palm.

"Please," he said gently. "You mustn't be
overly concerned. You'll want to do standard checks on passenger
lists and such; but the people you are hunting are not likely to
hide out on Delgado. Even if they've been here do you think a
hardened merc and a First-In Scout are going to set themselves up
as shopkeepers or bean-farmers?"

Before the boss could answer Daav stood,
demanding a suppleness from his body he did not feel.

"I'll need the name of the new Chairman,
copies of whatever transmissions you may have, details of the
former location of the missing ship--dupes of your images, as
well--and I'll be on my way. Also, I have some things for you..."
He waved toward the back wall of the office and the bar beyond.

"First, the taller of your security guards
stole several of your bartender's tips, and was helping herself to
the packaged snacks. That can't be good for your business."

The boss snorted. "Just color them gone.
Hey, you're good at what you do--but that don't mean they shouldn't
have seen you!"

Daav nodded agreeably. "Also, you'll want to
get an explosives expert in here. There's a small package I
disconnected and took out of the nerligig--it looks like it might
have been connected about six or seven dozen years ago. It may no
longer be dangerous, or it may be unstable. In any case, as I am
sure you understand, I hesitate to take it with me."