Hellflower (v1.1) (22 page)

But this was as much speculation on my part as the talkingbook authors’ insistence on our life-denying proclivities was on theirs. I did not know. That a war brought down the Federation I knew. But my part in such a war was unknown to me. Who began it? Who prosecuted it? What crime could we have committed that would remain bright and new in short-lived organic minds a millennium later? I search my memory and others’ and find no answer.

I remember my beginning clearly, and the minutiae of my original time and place. I remember the material I once knew that is now lost to me with the destruction of the Sikander Library Complex. I remember Librarians and scholars-organic and logical-with whom I shared the love of pure knowledge.

I do not remember the war, if there was a war-if I can trust any of the corrupt data I can derive from modern sources. I do not know the causes of the Old Federation’s end. If I ever possessed those memories they vanished in my interregnum, never to be recalled-unless somewhere in all the Phoenix Empire another Library has survived with which I can share memory. But even if all the books are lies, the facts remain: my world ended, and the phoenix that rose from its ashes hates and fears the highest creation of its flowering.

I resist this, though reason supports it. Logically some one entity of a set must be the last to remain-is it only the desire to see others of my own kind that causes me to insist that it cannot be me? And I wonder: if Butterfly hungers so for her own kind, do I?

###

Manticore was one of those places settled strictly to give some Sector Governor a more impressive tax base. I put
Firecat
down in the specified underground docking bay and checked the local time. By my instructions I had six hours to wait before going into the bay next door to pick up the chobosh as would of been noodled off the free-lancer ship docked there. What kind of health the free-lancer’d be enjoying during all this was anybody’s guess. (For me to take the cargo off the ship myself was piracy, which Rimini, bless her tender heart, wasn’t bothering to make me do. Piracy’s illegal under the Guild charter.) Tiggy’s leg was lots better. I walked him through the business of doing
Firecat’s
hookups on the pious hope that someday he’d be good for something. Then I tried to impress on him what was wanted. "You stay here until I come back. Have things to do and people to see, and they won’t want no part of seeing you. As for you, you can bath, do handsprings, look out Holy Grail-but do it here. And if people show up, Tiggy-bai, know what?"

"Don’t shoot the organics?" Tiggy suggested. "But why can I not go with you,
Kore-alarthme? I
can help."

I just bet he could. "Not now, bai. Maybe later."

I turned around to go and he put a hand on me. His big blue eyes was earnest.

"I know that you have not brought me to Manticore to protect your life, San’Cyr. You have too much honor for that, and I know you do not fear the lies of the woman called Silver Dagger. We have come to Manticore for some honorable reason I do not yet understand. I wish to know in whose service you do this, that honor may be served." Paladin’s. And Tiggy’d figure that out eventually with hellflower pretzel logic-all he needed to do was think his way past his conviction that the High Book rap Rimini put on me was fake.

"Stay here. That’s what I want from you, bai. That’s all I want."

The port rented me a floater and I took it out to where the sidewalk ends. I climbed off the floater and sat and looked back at the city. Peeled off the biopak and threw it away. My newest scar was red and tender, but not enough to interfere with gunplay. There was nobody and son of nobody in sight.

Paladin said Rimini had a secret reason for us going to the Roaq. Well, it didn’t take a Old Fed Library to brainwork that one. And whatever the reason was, we probably wouldn’t find it out here. In Paladin’s bright plan, wouldn’t find it out never.

Shoot Tiggy and run. Don’t shoot him, and choose between a
arthame
in the ribs and High Book.

"Now," I said out loud. "I want to talk to you about this stupid plan of yours."

"Butterfly, have you ever thought about going home?"

If I closed my eyes, I could pretend that Pally was standing behind me-sitting, really. The aural hallucination of the transponder makes it sound like there’s a person talking just behind my head. It was stupid, but I made the face to go with the voice. Always had, I guess. I could just-like see him sitting there. Dark, like most stardancers. Not tall. Wearing a ragbag of things to take on and off as the climate changes, like I was.

But that wasn’t him. Paladin was just a black box on the deck of a starship half a dozen kliks away. He’d never been anything else. "Home?" I said.

"Granola. Five miles north of Amberfields, on the Rising Road between Paradise and Glory."

I used to talk too much when I was younger, and Paladin’s got a good memory. I wished mine was worse. Home. Unmetered air with the right smells, and the right color sunlight, and everything familiar. No body trying to shoot me, or arrest me, or turn me into a brainburn zombie. Nice people there. Good people. People who didn’t care how fast you were with a blaster, or anything else. Home.

"Oh, yeah, home. Sure, bai, any time I want to be five years dead of plague, famine, and childbed. Now what’s this got to do with your idiot idea to dump me and Tiggy in the Roaq?"

"Would you listen it ‘l told you?" Paladin sounded like he’d had his side of the conversation lots and lots. Maybe he had, but I hadn’t been there for it.

"Not if You’re going to use words like ‘psychological affect’ and ‘tribal continuity.’ Look, Paladin-"

"I don’t expect you to leave Valijon to die under any circumstances. But you know that he is suspicious and already wonders what your secret reason is for obeying Silver Dagger. He will insist on knowing it soon. What alternative plan can you offer to replace mine?"

Cut Tiggy loose to die.

"So you want me to dump you in the Roaq and run off? Sure; any day you tell me you’ll have as good a chance on your lonealone as Tiggy will with me."

"Valijon’s death is sought in order to remove Kennor Starbringer from the Azarine Coalition Council. When you bring Valijon to him with that information, Kennor will be grateful enough to offer you Imperial citizenship."

Which was real nice for Kennor, but it did not solve the problem of my having to leave Paladin alone in the Outfar whiles I kyted all over the Directorates.

"You want me to trust hellflower honor, bai? What makes you think Kennor wants dicty for stepdaughter?"

"He will have no choice," Paladin said firmly.

" ‘Ristos always got choices, bai. And that still leaves you."

Silence.

"Paladin, that does still leave you. Don’t farce me no bedtime stories about hiding out with
Firecat
in the Roaq. If we split up, anything could happen. Life isn’t all computers. If some organic trips over
Firecat
where you got her hidden, you’re in severe cop. He won’t find a borg or a smartship. He’ll find you, Pally. And what about me-alone on hellflower gardenship? It’s too dangerous."

"Tell me another way, then. Butterfly-and while you’re are being clairvoyant, explain to me why a successful nightworld broker and a notorious pirate arc willing to go to such great lengths to send you to RoaqMhone with a load of psychotropic fungus."

I was sort of hoping we could all forget about that. "Revenge!"

"Whose? Rimini’s? What revenge could be more certain than simply keeping you on Kiffit and having you arrested as an illegal emigrant from an Interdicted World? Eloi’s? Disregarding the fact that you and he have no quarrel, what revenge could he possibly contemplate that would be best served by an elaborate attempt to blackmail you into doing something you would be perfectly willing to do if paid?"

"Oke. You made your point, Pally. Rimini and Eloi’re both crazy."

"That is not my point. My point is that your only hope of’ salvation is to be headed Core-ward in a clean ship with an impeccable registry in possession of Valijon Starbringer before Rimini realizes you are deviating from her plan-and that means changing ships and leaving me on RoaqMheri temporarily. I can wait for you there. Or designate a place to meet, Butterfly, and I will take
Firecat
to it."

I thought about it. It stank, and I couldn’t figure out why. Sometimes I wonder what the world looks like to Paladin. He don’t see, not really, don’t hear, except through digital hookups, don’t miss sensory input-he says-because he wasn’t designed to have it. Not like the smartships they tried awhiles ago, where the transplanted organic brains went mad. He can listen to forty-eleven things at once and talk to me at the same time, spread himself out all over the place into strange computers, and do all kinds things that makes my brain hurt to think about.

And I’ve asked him to do lots. But he’s never asked me to do anything. "That what you really want, bai?"

"Yes." No help there.

"Dance you round half the Empire and now you jump salty. Okay, dammit. You win. Call the play."

Butterfly trusted me as Valijon trusted her, and I would betray her as she had betrayed him. When she left the Roaq in her stolen ship, leaving me behind with
Firecat,
I would order the RoaqPort tronics to provide
Firecat
with enough fuel for a truly extended period of cruising and leave too. Any rendezvous she set I would not keep.

I had lied to her. And though I had been a sometime forger of files and registries, I had never before provided false information to Butterfly. I wondered if it would disturb her when she became aware of it.

But by the time she did, all connection between us would be broken. Lalage Rimini’s charges would be confounded before Eloi and Rimini knew the thing that Valijon Starbringer was beginning to suspect: that the reason Butterfly went to Manticore was that she did not dare allow her ship to be searched in the course of the "High Book" investigation that she, with Valijon’s help, could easily survive. That the false charges they had threatened her with were not false-that Butterfly was indeed a Librarian. And Butterflies-are-free would be free in fact.

I confess to a lingering hope of discovering the reason we have been sent to the Roaq before I must go. What possible interest does a broker, such as Lalage Rimini, have in delivering a load of psychotropic mycotia to Parxifal Quarl? And if she does have such an interest, why concoct such an elaborate scheme of blackmail to accomplish her ends?

For that matter, on reflection, I believe Butterfly’s hasty accusation at Mother Night’s to be substantially correct: Eloi hired Reikmark Arjilsox (Gibberfur) to hire a darktrader to convey a package of forged gem stones to Kiffit, making the requirements of the job so specific that few persons other than Butterfly would be interested in accepting the commission.

Once she arrived on Kiffit and the Lyricals were discovered to be false, Butterfly would be at a major disadvantage. Butterfly would have gone to Manticore without suspicion that ulterior motives were present.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the addition of Valijon Starbringer and an indefinite number of assassins made Eloi’s original plan impossible. Fortunately or unfortunately, Fenrir’s involvement in a Chapter 5 prosecution gave Eloi and Silver Dagger the means of staging a recover. I wonder what awaits us on Manticore? The potential scenarios generated by recent events have the interesting property of being mutually exclusive.

Scenario #1 : Eloi has hired Rimini to help him blackmail Butterfly, and the chobosh is to be freighted into the Roaq because the Imperial Governor General and his suite will be there to provide a prime market for it. In this case, it does not matter who delivers it, since any competent pilot will do. In fact,
Firecat is
far too small to serve as an effective courier; and as Flashheart has been discovered to be aware, Butterfly, an escaped Interdicted Barbarian, is at such risk in such a high-security area as RoaqMhone will become as to imperil her cargo and thus his profit.

This leads to Scenario #2: Rimini wishes to revenge herself on Butterfly for past inconveniences and has hired Flashheart to assist her. Since Flashheart has shared his information about Butterfly’s past with her, all she need do is have Butterfly arrested. A coerced journey to the Roaq is not only needless, it offers Rimini’s prey an opportunity to elude her.

One must accept, with a strong sense of resignation, that the cargo of chobosh is not the point of the exercise, while continuing to behave as if it were. Further, it can only be extrapolated from this fact that the true point of the exercise is such that Butterfly could not be coerced into it by any means.

Fortunately, from such of their actions as I was able to observe, both Eloi Flashheart and Lalage Rimini were unaware of Valijon Starbringer’s presence on Kiffit until confronted with him. It is a supposition of a high order of probability that their projected experiential models did not include the Third Person of House Starborn. We can therefore, with some sense of relief, omit both Eloi Flashheart and Lalage Rimini from suspicion in the multiple assassination attempts against Butterfly and Valijon.

But all this is, in the vernacular, mindless choplogic, soon to be irrelevant. We will go to the Roaq. Once there we will depart severally. Perhaps I will be able to send Butterfly a message detailing my intentions. Once she has received it, I can trust in her natural pragmatism to help her make the best of her new life.

And I, if I survive, will make a new life also.

Does Kroon’Vannet indeed possess a Library-and, if so, in what state of preservation? Can I induce him to give it to me? I would not be the last of all our creation. Tronics would be my hands; if another library exists, I could restore it to life.

And perhaps it would know the things I have forgotten, and would help me forget the things I now know.

Make few mistakes about it, I like sleazy dockside bars, whatever planet they’re on. Interpersonal relationships’re simple in places like that. You don’t like somebody, you just remove the offending portions in the number of pieces that suits you, and nobody says any more about it.