The Sorceress of Karres (19 page)

She'd ghosted around in no-shape often enough following the captain with that Sunnat and kept an eye on him. So figuring out who the director of the Threbus Institute was and how their system worked was relatively easy. She helped herself to a staff evaluation form and a recommendation form as a model and soon had a neatly printed instruction awaiting signature in his in-tray. Doing light-shifts on entire documents was difficult, required a lot of concentration. But a name and percentage, those were easy.

Pausert was finding this term at school far more pleasant than any other had ever been. For a start, Rapport and his cronies had backed off. Yes, Pausert was sure they were just waiting for a time and place of their choosing. But before this it had been anytime, anyplace. This state of affairs was a distinct improvement. And for a second thing, his luck seemed to have changed since the lattice ship arrived. First off, Vala had joined the class. She hadn't done anything hugely obvious. Just smiled at him. But it had resulted in a subtle shift of the power-politics in the class. She was a pretty girl . . . and the other guys had noticed. He walked a bit taller just thinking about that. He wondered if he should tell them that they often did homework together. But she hadn't, so he didn't. She was smarter than she let on. Smarter than he was, and he was smarter at math than the rest of the boys.

Second, mother had got a pay increase! The first in all the years she been there. It wasn't a lot, but it was something extra. And Pausert had the feeling it wasn't just the money. It was the gesture. "They didn't even tell me about it. I had to go and query my payslip. But the increase is there on my file with the director's signature on it! I thought he was such an old skinflint."

Pausert still thought so. But it did make the world seem just a little less crushing.

She should have actually have used logic and worked it out properly earlier, thought Goth, angry with herself now, as she dodged back out onto the street, away from the alarms. It was obvious that the Imperial embassy would have complex alarm systems. No-shape was not going to be enough.

She went back in daylight, two days later during her half-term holiday, light-shifted into a grumpy Nikkeldepain housewife but carefully not carrying weaponry or anything to worry their security systems. The visa section of the embassy had, inevitably, long queues. And, of course, a bathroom. Goth was horrified to find that it also had a hidden monitoring camera. Probably spy rays too. Had they no sense of privacy? she thought crossly, before admitting to herself that, realistically, she'd been about to use that privacy to fool them. So she had to evolve another plan.

Goth visited the embassy again in the ambassador's air car. It developed sudden severe vision problems just outside the embassy gate. A problem that could relate to a light-shift of the air, if anyone understood that. The driver set it down in haste. He got out of his door—and Goth, having studied door mechanisms carefully a little earlier, 'ported a piece of it into her pocket. The driver's door would not close.

That was enough to cause the ambassador's security detail to hustle him out of the car quickly and into the embassy. So quickly that they didn't even worry about closing the door behind them. That wasn't quite what Goth had planned, but she slipped in through the open door and sat down, and 'ported the piece of the driver's door mechanism back into place. The driver, left with a door that suddenly worked perfectly on his eighth try, scratched his head, wiped the windscreen, and then walked around the car, closed the ambassador's door, walked back, got in, and drove to the motor-gate, and in through the compound to the garages. He got out, carefully locked the ambassadorial vehicle, put the lockbar in his pocket, walked to the security card reader, and went up into the embassy.

Goth waited a few moments, and then ported the lockbar and his security card back to her. She returned them to him a few minutes later as she made her way to the ISS office. It was an excellent place to see how the security worked around here and how to organize a suitable proof of Threbus's death from the very people who had caused the problems in the first place. Besides, she got to watch how several neat spy-devices worked. She'd heard about some of them from Hulik, but it was interesting to see them firsthand. That might be useful too, one day.

Next step, now that she knew how to avoid detection, was to find out when and where the diplomatic bag came in. The bag itself was a ratty old green thing with the Imperial crest almost worn off. Goth picked it up and dropped it again. Shook herself, nearly losing no-shape. It had been around, that bag. Been in places a lot more alarming than Nikkeldepain. Something involving klatha force was going on, and she wasn't quite sure what it was yet.

Nikkeldepain was far enough out of the way to only get two Imperial deliveries a week, and to have a very bored clerk go through them and assign them. It was interesting to see, subradio or no, that requests for information were still passed through to the Nikkeldepain Central Records Office in writing. Identity was the subject of two of those. The clerk sent them back to the ISS office. And the ISS sent a junior duty officer to Goth's favorite building—The Central Records Office. Goth followed, grateful that the ISS woman had decided to walk.

Goth relieved the ISS of some stationery. She could have inserted the letter into the diplomatic bag, but it seemed a much harder way of doing it than merely becoming an ISS officer. She'd seen Hulik in full uniform. Even practiced it.

She waited a week, and then timed her visit for just after the officer had been to check on the identity of someone who claimed to come from Nikkeldepain. A few minutes later, Goth went in instead. In appearance she was the duty officer. She even wore the same perfume, figuring that she'd mastered no-scent enough for something that simple and blatant. She carried an official request to match the DNA record and dental record of a corpse, which had been carrying the documents that identified him as one Captain Threbus, of the Republic of Nikkeldepain.

The clerk greeted her perfunctorily. "Back again?"

Goth nodded. "Yeah. This one got to me via the ambassador's office instead of via the sorting clerk."

"What is it? Another smuggler or pirate claiming citizenship?"

Goth handed over the request. "Body that was found in a military area. A couple of soldiers stumbled on the remains during an exercise. It was an old corpse, but we got DNA off the bones. The documents found with it say it's one of your citizens. A Captain Threbus. Do you mind checking for me?"

The clerk nodded. "Sure. I'll have it for you next week."

"The ambassador asked if you could expedite it." Goth was very proud of that word. "He was going to call someone."

The clerk sighed. "Let me ask my supervisor."

So he did. And a little while later the clerk brought the news that the DNA match was perfect with the record.

It should be. That was where it had come from.

Goth thanked them politely and left.

The next task was considerably harder. The starting point consisted of finding out just how Pausert's mother was pursuing the matter of Threbus's will. And that was nearly impossible. Over the months Goth had come to know Pausert's mother Lina relatively well—as well as any young teenager gets to know the mother of one of her friends. But Lina was very good at separating the private from the social. She didn't talk about it, and was very skilled at not saying anything but getting others to talk. Goth had to watch her tongue. And still was no further along with finding out details. Eventually, she resorted to pretending her parents needed to consult a lawyer, and, as foreigners, didn't know who to start with.

Lina gave her a long list of whom to avoid, including her current expensive and ineffectual practitioner.

Goth went off to investigate him.

It didn't take long to discover that he had a lot in common with Franco. For a start, he had a secret wall safe. And for a second, he was a slimeball. Goth 'ported all the documents out of the secret safe and spent a good many hours working out what he was up to. Some of it was beyond her. But some plainly involved trust-funds and money. None of it appeared to concern Threbus, which at least removed that complication.

In the Chaladoor the two blips had become four, and then six. Captain Pausert was doing his best with evasive maneuvers, but the numbers were stacking up against them. In the meanwhile, Captain Pausert was learning more about the value of history. He wasn't sure that he wanted to right now, but Mebeckey was telling him anyway.

Decades had passed while Worm Weather spread out of the Chaladoor, possibly from some place in the Galactic East. But, for an historian like Mebeckey, whose studies had spanned eons, history was dates and records—and how they fitted together. From what was known of the Great Eastern Wars when whole planets had died in the gargantuan battles between the men spreading out of old Yarthe, the date of the coming of Worm Weather, of the Nuri globes and the voice of Monster Moander who crouched on the surface of tunneled Manaret were the stuff of those records. So was the Chaladoor of yesteryear, and so was the danger before the coming of Manaret, that great dimension-crossing ship of conquest filled with the Lyrd-Hyrier lords.

It had always been a dangerous piece of space. Few reports existed of why this was so, but those few reports did record the presence of the Phantom ships. Mebeckey hadn't had any access to reports of what they looked like. But he could tell the captain this: the last report of the Phantom Ships had actually been recorded just before the first reported encounter with Worm Weather.

The Chaladoor had actually, briefly, gotten safer to cross with the onset of Worm Weather—with the arrival of the great ship that was Manaret.

"Looks like one set of problems chased the other out," said Pausert. "Now that Manaret is gone and the Nuris have all faded away . . . the old menace is back."

"So it would seem," said Mebeckey.

"You don't know something useful, do you? Like how ships got away from them in the past?"

The archaeologist shook his head. "Other than very rarely, no. But the Phantoms certainly didn't occur in the whole of the Chaladoor region. Most reports of survivors—there were quite a lot, really—came from the Galactic South—the area around Uldune."

That was useful, Captain Pausert supposed, but only to give him some idea where to run to. And, of course, if your destination wasn't Uldune. "If we can't run, we'll have to fight."

"How do we fight them?" asked the Leewit, sparkling. "Shoot their front end off, shoot their rear end off, and ram 'em in the middle?" She quoted her favorite phrase of the captain's vocabulary.

Pausert nodded, and tousled her hair. "Exactly what I would do if they were solid enough to do it to. But they're not, so
you
will have to do some clever shooting. It's a question of timing!"

The Leewit nodded thoughtfully. "Got to guess what they're doing. Those missiles of theirs are nasty."

"They may have other unpleasant surprises too. Remember, they took on the Daal's battlewagons and won. I'm not really sure what keeps them off us."

The Leewit looked thoughtful. "Could be Little-bit. She makes us a bit different, eh? She says there is definitely something vatchlike about those ships. I think she means the way they have no mass, but can still do things like launch torpedoes and move between stars. If she can feel something there, maybe they can feel her here, looking after us."

Pausert thought it was odd to think of the little vatch as a "she," but since the Leewit seemed determined about the matter, he saw no reason not to accommodate her.

"Is she still around?" he asked. "I thought she'd gone elsewhere again. And she hasn't pestered me for more pieces of vatch-stuff."

"Doesn't need to. She's growing, and she's got to stop eating."

"Kind of the opposite of us."

"S'pose so," said the Leewit, who was going through "constantly hungry" at the moment, and putting on inches in height, too. "Anyway, what are you going to do? We can outrun those torpedoes, but if we turn toward them or get boxed in, we'd be in trouble."

"Yes. I was hoping to use . . ." He looked at Mebeckey. "Our booster drive to get us out. Maneuver us into a position where we can fire on them and then run. But the firing is the trick. We'll need to anticipate. To fire the nova guns just as they launch."

"Pity neither of us do premote," said the Leewit.

"You just fire on my command," said the captain. "Both you and Vezzarn. Mebeckey, you get yourself strapped in. In your cabin. You're supercargo at this stage. Get."

Vezzarn plainly also got the hint. He really did not like witchy stuff. "Going to ready the guns, Captain."

"Do that. The Leewit and I need to talk."

He scarpered. Mebeckey blundered away too. "Don't see how we can do it, Captain," said the Leewit. "I can't operate the guns and do the Sheewash drive with you."

"That's why I am going to have to do the Sheewash on my own. You are much better with the nova guns than old Vezzarn is."

The Leewit looked doubtful. "But can you, Captain?"

"I guess I'll have to. A few more of these ships and they can achieve an englobement. Then we're toast. And I reckon we're going to have them pop up on the screens any time now."

The Leewit looked serious and worried. "They kept up with us when we used the Sheewash drive, Captain. And without Goth, we can't keep it going for too long." She bit her lip. "The Egger Route, Captain. If things get really bad, will you use it?"

Pausert blinked. The Leewit suggesting her pet hate? "Not without you. I am responsible for you, you know."

The Leewit scowled. "Got it imprinted in us kids, with the Toll pattern. Get badly hurt and I prob'ly can't stop it happening. But you're different, see. And I worry about you, too. Because I'm
also
responsible. Goth told me so." It was plain just then that she felt that responsibility very heavily. But she was Karres. They took responsibility when there was the need.