Third Watch (21 page)

“Yaazi?”
Mother’s thought gently intruded.
“I didn’t intend to eavesdrop but—Khiindi is Grimalkin?”

“He’s who?”
Father’s thought voice joined Mother’s.

“I didn’t tell!”
Ariin protested.
“I didn’t!”

“Of course not, dear,”
Mother said.
“Your sister was so anxious about her pet—that treacherous trickster who makes me wish we Linyaari were not such a peaceful people—that she was broadcasting.”

“Ignition,” Uncle Joh’s voice said. “Hope you’re strapped in folks, ’cause we are going bye-bye now.” The family was seated together in an area that was one of the new improved features Becker had grafted into the
Condor
during his quarantine. Aft of the bridge and one level down by robolift, where previously only the Linyaaris’ ’ponics garden had been, there was now a semispacious lounge with the garden as its focal point. A viewport larger than the one on the bridge spanned the entire port side of the hull. The starboard side contained a huge com screen. The seats were far more luxurious than those on the bridge, and reclined fully for sleep if crew members wished to doze outside their own cabins. This was an excellent addition, since the bridge had been designed for one, or at the most two people, and no amount of modification had provided Becker with a better floor plan that would allow him to pilot his ship and have his friends around him at the same time. The lounge offered all of the amenities of the bridge to crew members not actually required to run the ship. It lacked only the long-distance and broad-spanning sensory array that were the
Condor
’s remote eyes and ears. Otherwise, everyone could converse and share observations far more comfortably than ever before.

As the ship lifted skyward, Khorii turned from the port to turn a guilty face to her parents. “I was trying to think how to tell you about Khiindi,” she said aloud. “I actually thought Ariin would first, but she has been kind enough to leave it to me, since he’s my cat, even though she considered Grimalkin her enemy, as you do.”

“He’s not our enemy, Khorii, not exactly,” Father said. “He is one of those beings of whom Joh says if he is your friend, then you have no need of enemies. By this he means that with mostly benign or at least not deliberately harmful intentions, Grimalkin can cause the people around him a lot of trouble.”

“I think being Khiindi has been good for him, Father,” Khorii said. “He has been very helpful to us lately, and has tried to make up for the trouble he caused.”

Ariin snorted. “Don’t get too carried away, sister.”

“He has been the one who helped us pursue Ariin’s idea that the Friends’ dwellings were related to the latter stages of the plague. Even when she wasn’t very nice—that is to say, even when he knew she was hostile to him, he persevered in trying to help us, and when we were in trouble, he and Pircifir saved us and risked their lives for us and the Ancestors. Pircifir was actually killed doing it, and Grimalkin is still very sad about that. And no, it wasn’t his fault either.”

“It was he who acquired the coordinates of the new home of the Friends,” Elviiz said over the intercom. He was on the bridge with the captain and Maak, supplying the data from his own memory. “It will be instructive to see what, if any, impact the plague and its aftermath have had on that world and those beings.”

“Instructive indeed,” Mother agreed.

They stopped at the Moon of Opportunity so that Uncle Hafiz could personally welcome Mother, Father, and their friends back into the mainstream population, and stuff them with fragrant bouquets of delicious flowers and succulent mosses and ferns. Against Captain Becker’s custom and wishes, Hafiz also insisted that they file a flight plan. Uncle Joh’s exact sentiments, grumbled into his brushy mustache, were along the lines of “not needing a fraggin’ leash.”

What was really bothering the captain, Khorii thought, was that he did not like to navigate as other people did. His adoptive father, Theophilus Becker, had taught little Jonah the ins and outs of wormholes, “pleated space,” and other anomalies of physics. Using these features, so frightening to most spacefarers, was second nature to Becker, and allowed him to take all sorts of shortcuts unavailable to those too wary or unaware of them. Confiding his real flight plan would be highly inconvenient, would slow him down, and might give away some of his secrets.

“Space is more perilous than ever before, my intrepid friend,” Hafiz told Becker. “Communication since the advent of the plague is sporadic and unreliable. The Federation’s collapse has removed all continuity and assurance of order and security. One truly no longer has any idea whom to bribe. In short, a lamentable state altogether. You and your crew are more precious to me than all of my wealth and treasure. Only by knowing your precise whereabouts can I send assistance should you require it.”

Auntie Karina beamed and passed the marigolds. But as Khorii nibbled a blossom, she looked up to see Karina fling herself back against the low divan on which she and Hafiz were seated. The lady’s ample flesh heaved her bosom up and down like a bellows, sending her lavender draperies fluttering like bright sails. Karina’s eyes showed only whites.

Hafiz looked down at her with polite inquiry but no concern. He was used to such displays. “Yes, my beloved, you are having a vision?”

“A vision!” Karina’s voice echoed. “I see danger, extreme danger. Bloodstained and poorly groomed people stand between you and your goal. And yet, there is danger to them as well. Oh, if only it were clearer.” She raised her head, coughed, picked up the end of one of her draperies, and tried to fan herself with it. “It’s a good thing my farsighted pharaoh insisted on a flight plan. I feel that more will be revealed to me at a later time. I’ll have to get back to you on this.”

Hafiz regarded his wife with a fond expression, then snapped his fingers so that an employee came running to lower the flaps of the pavilion beneath which they sheltered. It never made sense to Khorii that they actually needed to shelter on MOO since the enormous compound was enclosed in its own bubble, and its weather and ecology were both artificial and manipulatable. But Hafiz evidently thought it necessary, and no one was willing to contradict him. He leaned across the table, his crimson-sashed belly tipping it so that the food slid toward him. “I have one small commission I would like you to undertake for me while on your journey,” he said. “I own some property on Dinero Grande.”

“That figures,” Becker said, nodding. The name of the planet meant Big Money after all. Uncle Hafiz and House Harakamian owned some of the biggest money and other measurable wealth in the galaxy.

“It represents a considerable investment. I am concerned about its security, given the nature of the plague’s unfortunate aftermath.”

“Uncle Hafiz,” Mother said gently, “we have some ideas now concerning how to stop that. We need to focus on that. We can protect…”

Hafiz held up one hand and pressed the other to his heart. “Dear child, you wound me! Can you with your Linyaari gift not discern the purity of my intention?”

Mother actually blushed. “I apologize, Uncle. Please continue.”

“I sent my adopted son and heir, Rafik, to investigate the state of this property. I have had no communication, direct or indirect, since he left LaBoue on the new House flagship. I fear for his safety and that of his crew. My concern is primarily for them, though, of course, if your investigation reassured me as to the integrity of my property, that news also would be most welcome.”

K
horii’s family spent much of the journey telling stories and sharing thoughts in so much detail that Ariin began to feel almost as if she had been there, too. Though at first she treated Uncle Joh as a necessary but intrusive interloper, by the time she had spent a watch on the bridge with him and listened to his own versions of her family’s adventures, she had adopted him, too. It helped, Khorii thought, that Uncle Joh occasionally made reference to how disappointed her parents had been not to have other children after Khorii’s birth. Elviiz was a wonderful addition to their family, but they realized that he had another parent in Maak and was only theirs on loan, so to speak.

Two days out from MOO, the
Mana
answered the hail the
Condor
had been transmitting.

“We’re waiting for you,” Captain Bates told them. “We just left Rushima, where we dropped off Moonmay.”

“Is there anything left of the planet?” Khorii asked.

“Many of the creatures were carried into space eating the pirates’ shuttle. Even specters who resemble people who hated each other in life seem to band together in this form. The real ghosts have helped herd the newcomers to the dumps and quarries, where they can do the least danger. Moonmay’s granddad says he can see where the creatures might be helpful if you needed to dig a well or a mine as long as you could get them to excrete the ore you need and go away afterward.”

“I would be gratified if they would go away now,” Elviiz said.

“Poor boy, of course you would,” Captain Bates said. “Don’t worry, Elviiz, we organics will protect you.”

Sesseli said, “Moonmay and I thought up a name for the ornery critters.” Moonmay’s colorful expressions had already imprinted Sesseli’s vocabulary. “They are inogres.”

“Inogres?”

“Like the shapeshifting ogres in the old-time fairy books for kids, you know, the kind Puss in Boots killed? Ogres ate folks and animals. So something that eats houses and spaceships and inorganic stuff is an inogre. Get it?”

“It sounds like an excellent name to me, though I am unfamiliar with the story.”

“Oh, you’d like it, Khorii. See, there was this miller, which Moonmay explained to me is someone who lives in a mill and has a big wheel that he uses to grind other folks’ grain. All he had was a cat and a boy and when he died, he didn’t have any money because he was really kind and let people wait until they had enough credits to pay him for grinding their grain, only they never did. So the son thought he’d have to eat the cat to get by, then probably starve. But then something amazing happened. Even though the mill cat had never shown any sign of being a talking cat before, all of a sudden, as Moonmay said, he became downright chatty. Probably because he didn’t want to get eaten.”

“A cat who suddenly turned into a talking one, imagine that,” Ariin said.

“Yes, well, like Moonmay said, most cats would prove their worthiness to their people by going out and catching mice and birds, thinking the people could eat the same things the cat ate. But Puss, which was the cat’s name even though he seems to have been a boy cat, was smarter than that. He told the boy to get him some fancy boots and a fancy hat and some fancy gloves and a nice leather bag to put his kill in, and he’d make his fortune.”

“That was not very clever of the cat,” Elviiz said. “If the boy was so poor that he was going to have to eat his cat, how could he afford garments of that quality? Though small, boots that would fit a cat’s hind legs would have to be custom-made, and that would be incredibly expensive, as would a hat small enough to fit his head and cut to accommodate his ears. This cat was taking a great risk making such demands.”

“I’m sure he didn’t demand it, Elviiz,” Sesseli said. “He probably asked really nice and purred and rubbed up against the boy, who actually liked cats and didn’t want to eat Puss anyway. Moonmay says that probably among the people that owed the miller money there was a leather worker and a milliner, and the boy collected his daddy’s debt from them to do what the cat told him. Because, like she said, if your cat started talking to you about ideas he had to make a future for you both, wouldn’t you listen to him?”

“Not if you were smart,” Ariin muttered.

Uncle Joh came into the lounge then. He had been sleeping while Maak and Elviiz took the bridge. “I always figured the kid stole the stuff he gave the cat, but Elviiz is right—boots that would fit a cat would have to be custom-made. Maybe the kid was good with leather himself and salvaged some to make them for the cat.”

“You know this story, Joh?” Father asked.

“Oh, sure. I’ll bet Acorna knows it, too, don’t you, princess?”

Mother nodded, and said, “Yes, but until I visited Makahomia, it did not impress me. RK is an extraordinary cat, but even he had never shown any signs of wishing to speak or wear human apparel. However, had I read the story after our adventures with the temple cats, I would have assumed that Puss was a telepath. Now I am not certain that possibility is the only viable one.”

Wearing an adorably cute frown, Sesseli said, “Do you all want to hear my story or not?”

“Sure, honey,” Uncle Joh told her kindly. “Go on.”

“Once the cat had his boots and other things, he hunted, but instead of catching mice and rats and songbirds, he caught stuff people liked—rabbits and quail and the like,” Moonmay said. “Then, when he had a bag full of goodies, he went to the king and told him it was from his master, and pretended the miller’s boy was a marquis, which was someone high up in the government back then.” She made a puzzled face. “You’d think if the king was the head of the government and the boy was supposed to be the marquis, the king would know he’d never heard of him before, wouldn’t he?” She shook her head. “Anyhow, when he’d given the king enough presents so that there was some name recognition associated with the boy as the phony marquis, and the king knew who Puss was, though he doesn’t seem to have minded that he was a talking cat or thought it was a special thing in any way, the cat arranged for the boy to fake a drowning that got the king to supply him with fancy clothing and introduced him to his daughter.”

“I do not see how this relates to ogres or inogres either,” Elviiz said.

“Keep your shirt on,” Sesseli said, channeling Moonmay once more. “The boy and the princess fell in love, and that was nice, but the king wanted to see where the boy lived before he’d marry off his daughter to the strange marquis, which shows he was smarter than most politicians, Moonmay said. Puss wasn’t bothered about it at all. See, the ogre had eaten the king of a neighboring country and took over the kingdom himself. So Puss went through the ogre’s land and told all the peasants to tell anyone who asked that it was his master the marquis who ran their farms, and not the ogre.”