Undertow (8 page)

“Don’t worry,” Closs answered, turning back to his desk, giving Jefferson his shoulder with an air of finality that both relieved and infuriated. “I wouldn’t ask. You figure out what we’re going to do about getting whatever was in Spivak’s hard memory away from Security, would you?”

“I know who to assign,” Jefferson said, thinking of Dayvid Kountché. Who was both ambitious and discreet.

“You mistake me, André.” Jean Kroc leaned against the counter with a mug cupped in his right hand and the still-hot kettle by his left. Half-moons of dirt darkened his fingernails, and he bowed his face over the steam, breathing deeply with closed eyes. “More tea?”

André got up and brought his cup to Kroc. The tea-making involved Kroc dumping the old teabag in the sink, fishing a new one from the box, and adding it to the cup in advance of water—which he reheated to boiling before he poured. It was like watching a medieval alchemist at work.

“You don’t want someone killed?” André asked. Just to be clear, because sometimes people didn’t want to come right out and say it. “Then what did you want me for?”

Kroc returned the pottery cup to him and gestured him back to the padded wicker chair. “I heard you were lucky,” Kroc said, picking up his own mug again. “You proved it today. I also heard you wanted to learn the mojo, sing gris gris. You want to be a conjure man, André Deschênes? Bend the world to your will?”

“You make it sound like magic,” André answered.

Kroc’s eyes were a flat pale color under his gray-laced brows. His spectacles caught the light in level reflections when he turned his face toward the window, but then he’d look back at André directly and André would almost feel his gaze, like a pin scratched over his skin. It was peculiarly intense, focusing; he wondered if there was something in the tea, something his wetware couldn’t have caught because he’d powered down.

There were easier ways to kill him. Though, who knew what a conjure man thought an initiation was supposed to look like?

If that was what this was.

André set his mug on the glass-topped wicker table.

“It’s not magic.” Kroc spoke suddenly, breaking the stretched silence, dismissing the comment with a flip of his hand. “It’s not luck either, though luck helps prove you can be taught. What it is”—he grinned, showing tea-stained teeth, and tapped the side of his nose with a finger—“is a useful manipulation of the observer effect. So you can change the world if you just think at it right.”

Kroc drank his tea; André folded his hands in his lap. Cricket crossed the ’fab silently and settled onto the wicker lounge, drawing her bare feet up under her ass and curling into the corner like a cat.

“That’s why some people are so spectacularly
unlucky,
too, isn’t it?” Kroc asked, glancing sideways to fix his gaze on her.

“Hmm?” She raised her eyes dreamily. André recognized the role. No one ever saw the real Cricket Earl Murphy. Nobody even knew her real name. “Oh, right, Jean. Yes, I’d say you’re right.” She didn’t smile, studying André over her tea.

André smiled. “So you can teach what I want to learn. How do I earn the teaching, M~ Kroc, if you don’t want me for my skills?”

“I didn’t say that.” Kroc moved now, finally, crossing the rugs to sit on the floor beside Cricket’s lounge. He folded his legs and settled straight down. “I’d like to put you on retainer, as it were.”

André had already set his cup down, so he had nothing to divest himself of when he stood. “I don’t take open contracts,” he said. “I know what I’m doing when I’m going in. That’s not negotiable.”

But Kroc didn’t hasten to his feet or hurry to smooth things over. He emptied his hands and laced his fingers together. “M~ Deschênes,” Jean Kroc said, tipping his head back to look André in the face, “did you know that the model of wet-dry scoot you use has a small, but deadly, history of explosion following a hydrogen leak? No? Three instances, I think, on the five worlds where they’re in service. Freak accidents happen.”

André’s fingertips grew cold. “You’re
not
claiming responsibility for those.”

“André—” Cricket said. She bit her lip, though, and gestured to Kroc, who appeared to be waiting politely for her comment. He shrugged and continued.

“Of course not. Nor would I be responsible, you see, if there were a similar freak accident here in Novo Haven. But the point I’m making is that I certainly don’t need your assistance to
kill
people. If I wanted to engage in such a problematic undertaking.”

“So what do you want?” André didn’t sit, but he didn’t step away from the chair either.

“Information.”

“I don’t talk about my clients.”

“That’s all right,” Jean Kroc said. “I don’t care about your clients. But I care about the Colonial Rim Company—are they hiring out their wet work now?—and I know you have ways of finding things out.”

Cricket leaned forward, her lower lip still pinched between her teeth. She was staring at André, willing him toward some decision, some course of action, but she didn’t speak.

André looked from her water-brown eyes to Kroc’s flat blue-gray ones. He sat down in the wicker chair, and let it creak under his weight. He could refuse to answer—as good as an admission that he’d worked for Rim, and a violation of confidentiality in itself—but there was a threat in what Kroc was saying.
He can’t know about Spivak. If he knew about Spivak, I’d be dead.

Wouldn’t he?

God-botherers were licensed and controlled for good reason. Unchecked coincidence could break
planets
apart—and had nearly done so on Patience.

He had other sources of information. But—

“I can’t make these promises.”

“I will never ask you to do what you find…unethical,” Jean said. “A handshake contract. You can walk away any time.”

André picked up the tea again, blew across it, drank. Something to steady his hands. An elaborate game of cat and mouse? He swallowed the fluid: sweet, warm, full-bodied.

How badly did he want this?

Cricket was looking at him, a little smile curving the corners of her mouth. She was not the sort of woman who would lay down an ultimatum. She was not the sort of woman who said, “Either you change or I go.” She was the sort of woman who watched until she didn’t like what she saw anymore, and
then
she went. No games, not with somebody like her. No manipulation.

“Teach me,” André said.

Kroc smiled. “I hope you don’t have anywhere to be for the next few hours.”

Gourami in se captivity could not see the swift failure of the equatorial twilight. But se felt it in the shift of the air, the humidity, the coolness from the ventilation ducts—and knew the wait would now not be long. It must not be long; se was drying, laid long on the floor, lungs heaving with the effort of respiring when the skin was too parched to exchange gases.

Se closed se eyes to concentrate on the work of staying alive, thinking,
they will be coming
. As night fell, clouds would coalesce over the mining platforms, in air saturated by steam from the seawater used to cool the drills. They would spread, water first precipitating from the atmosphere into visible vapor and then precipitating in truth, falling in fat warm blobs to the accompaniment of crackling thunder. It was good, a good omen; Gourami did not think that the humen’s wet eyes—sonar, especially—would work well with ripples of sound-interference everywhere.

The rescuers came at sunset. Gourami did not hear them, did not know they had arrived until there was a hiss and sizzle in the darkness, the reek of scorching insulation. Se nictitated when the light spilled through the opening crack, but it still took moments to adapt. Se blinked, dazzled, and pressed hand-pads to eyes until pupils could contract.

After a moment, the pressure of light eased and se could no longer see hand bones. Se pushed up to stand, licking eyes over nictitating membranes. In the doorway stood a hand of people, all four of them naked of identifying patches, wearing only belts of canvas strapping from which to hang their tools. They carried no slates, no locators; nothing that might be used to identify them. Gourami could not tell if they were coolies or savages, even, to use the humen terms. But the light behind wasn’t bright enough to silhouette, and when the smallest person turned sideways Gourami could see skin dyed an even, artificial green to hide the mottles.

The smallest person made the scrape and click of Gourami’s own-name, with a question-trill. The smallest person was Caetei.

—Here,
Gourami answered, staggering forward. Se did not add the croak-trill-scrape of the smallest person’s own-name. The aliens might recognize se real name if they listened through their devices.

Caetei wrapped handfingers around Gourami’s wrist and pulled se forward. Se had been dry too long; se felt dizzy, cracked, and se mucous was pasty. But the grasp gave se strength, and se answered Caetei’s unspoken command. Triggered by the touch, endorphins helped. Gourami was docile, and Caetei’s desire was that se follow.

Se would follow until se flippers wore to nubs.

There were humen here and there in the corridors, on the deck, each one trussed and glaring. Gourami waddled past, moving only because Caetei pulled se and se must do what touch commanded. The unmottled green backs were curiously anonymous. Unless their owners spoke, Gourami could not identify them—though the long one might be Tetra, egg-mate of one of Gourami’s exoparents, related by blood rather than by water.

That one cross-wired a final door lock, and the little party came out in starlight on a battered-looking barge that was quite at odds with the gleaming modern interior. There were more persons here, two hands of them, and while Gourami leaned on Caetei, the rangy person passed the tool se had used to cross-wire the door into se toefingers and used its waterproofed handle to pound on the deck.

From other hatchways, persons scrambled, some of them hopping on all fours in their haste. Some were pear-shaped, their pouches full of seawater and nutrition for egglings still too small and presentient to swim free. Three hands, five—Gourami, dizzy, could not count them as Caetei dragged se toward the railing. Some of the persons dragged bound humen, lowered dinghies over the sides of the barge. They all moved with great haste, efficiently, in teams.

Se could not clamber over; se feet would not lift high enough to hook the bottom railing. But Caetei insisted, leaning in to make eye contact, and from that demand Gourami drew the strength to climb.

Still, if it had not been for Caetei’s hands curled under Gourami’s armpits, lifting, se would have ended slumped, halfway over the rail. Caetei wrapped bony fingers around Gourami’s ankles. Se crouched and heaved, lifting with the powerful muscles of thigh and haunch. Gourami slithered overboard, bruising pelvis and knees on the rail. And then se was falling, uncontrolled, tumbling, and then the warm water smacked se hard along the left side, bruising webs between reaching toefingers, stinging the outflung arm. A pop as a handfinger dislocated, pain that coiled se arm like jelly-colony sting. Se shocked alert, wet now, warm in the shallow water of the bay. Se gasped, wetting throat and sinuses, skin prickling as toxins and foreign matter adhered to drying mucous washed away. The burn-wound seared, dazzled, numbed.

Se was wet again.

Se breathed deep, oxygenating, feeling mottles flush and go violet. The itching tightness eased. Mucous flowed freely, rehydrated, and Gourami croaked in relieved pleasure as Caetei and the disguised others began to splash into the bay. —
Hurry,
Caetei thrummed into the water.
—We must be away when the barge sinks.

Se words caressed Gourami’s flanks. —
Sinks?

—Hippolytae mined it with a boring charge. It will sink; we must be clear. Can you swim?

Gourami’s damaged handfinger delivered a nauseous spike of pain when se tried to paddle, and so se tucked arms to chest and kicked experimentally. Se glided forward, water sluicing along a streamlined form. The course was unpredictable, with only one hand to steer with, but speed was not impaired.

—I can swim,
Gourami answered.
—Caetei—

—Then swim,
the other interrupted.
—Talk when we’re away from the bomb.

—But what about the humen on the barge?
Se’d seen some lowered into the rubber boats. But had they all gotten off? Would the boats withstand a nearby explosion? They drowned in water, humen. Faster, much faster, than Gourami would drown in either water or dry air. They could not skin-breathe; they had not even rudimentary gills.

Se made a small sound of protest. Caetei did not answer, though se must have felt the noise. Gourami kicked, feeling green bodies stirring the water alongside, and held peace.

For now.

Later, there would be words. Words with a human Gourami thought se could trust. Because if the humen slew their own and gave no respect to the passing, then that was ill. But if they hurt or killed persons, and persons hurt or killed humen—

—then that was war.

Red light slicked Jean Kroc’s windows before those inside felt the shock or heard the explosion. André was moving before he had time to hope it was ridiculous, cold tea scattering from the mug he kicked over, his foot just missing the remains of supper on his plate. He clotheslined Cricket as she lurched to her feet. She folded around his arm and he twisted, pressing her into his chest. He fell underneath her, rolled to cover her with his body, tucking her face against his throat. She shoved his chest with both hands. “Oaf!”

André pressed her down.

Kroc rose from his chair. Wiry, a little bowlegged, most of his weight rested on the outside edges of his feet. “It’s not close enough,” he said; the floor lurched up and thumped André in the knees and elbows on the fourth syllable. Cricket grunted against his chest. He lifted his chest and hips; she wriggled free, palm on his shoulder, elbow pressing his upper arm, and eeled away.

The atmospheric shock wave hit a moment later, the poly groaning as André’s ears popped, the sound a thud like a crushed drum. Cricket had one knee down, one palm flat. She squeaked like something stepped-on and clapped her hands to the sides of her head. André knelt, staring at Kroc. “It could have been a nuke.”