With the Lightnings (19 page)

"I'll wait, mistress," Vanness said.

"I'll wait too," said the other assistant, a young woman whom Daniel would have described as plain if he'd had any reason to describe her. "It's not as though I need to get home, after all."

"I've got my measurements, Ms. Mundy," the journeyman carpenter said. "I'll be off now, if you don't mind."

"Of course, Reckwith," Adele said formally. "Give my regards to Master Carpenter Bozeman when you see her. I'm delighted with her work and yours."

In an aside that Daniel could barely hear and was only sibilance to the Kostromans, she added, "Contact with sailors who take pride in hard work has instilled a spirit of emulation in the better segment of my staff. I'm as pleased by this result as I'm surprised."

From what Hogg had told Daniel, half the staff was in awe of the Electoral Librarian and the other half was terrified. "The wogs were lucky none of them took Ms. Mundy up on her offer to shoot them," Hogg believed. Daniel didn't disagree.

"I'm glad to hear that," Daniel said. He unknotted the handkerchief.

"Another bug?" Adele asked with a smile. She walked over to the data console now half-hidden behind a wall of older electronics. Most of that equipment didn't seem to be in working order or even complete, but with time and skill it might be possible to retrieve data from the wrecks.

"A beetle, yes," he said. He displayed the lichen-eater that he'd scooped up as he left the tunnel behind Bet. "Hexapod, wingless, longitudinal blue and black stripes. Fused cephalothorax and soft abdomen, but the crucial thing is the six legs."

"I thought bugs on Kostroma had four legs," Adele said as holograms shimmered in the air before her. "Well, I suppose nothing's absolute."

"In biology," Daniel replied, "I'd have said absolutes are pretty nearly universal."

Adele manipulated her console with wands she held like a pair of writing styluses. Daniel knew the technique offered much greater speed and flexibility than the virtual keyboard he used himself, but a minuscule variation in a wand's angle or rotation could introduce huge database errors.

He didn't imagine that was a problem that Adele faced very often.

"I'm sorry," Adele said as she scowled at her display. "I'm not finding anything. As a matter of fact, the information I can access doesn't show any native Kostroman animals with six legs. The information may be in error, but . . ."

She looked up Daniel. "Surely the most likely cause is that the bug is from offplanet. I don't have records for all the possibilities or even most of them, I'm afraid."

"Try Earth," said Daniel. He grinned at the bug whose leg he pinched between thumb and forefinger. With a feeling of rising triumph he added, "It's just possible that I've found evidence of a slowboat landing on Kostroma after all, Adele. That's not as good as a new species, perhaps, but it'd be a nice profit on my afternoon."

He winced to hear himself. Bet was a nice girl; he'd had a very good time in her company. But the Bets of this life weren't as rare as real discovery.

The console purred as it sorted files in its own database. The display was only colored diffraction from the side where Daniel stood.

"I haven't found any hardcopy Kostroman natural histories," Adele said idly as she waited. "The files I've accessed are all work by offplanet observers as well."

Astrogation had revived on Kostroma almost as early as on Cinnabar and Pleasaunce, but Kostromans had remained isolated from other star-traveling worlds for another century and a half. Kostroma hadn't advanced as quickly in some ways without the rivalry of peers, but the culture's very uniqueness was a benefit in itself.

"Kostromans view the universe as a place to get rich," Daniel said. He nodded to the assistants to make it clear that he was offering his opinion to everyone, not treating the locals as furniture. "Which they've been extremely good at."

The waterfall of quivering light stabilized. "There," Adele said with satisfaction. She offered the console's seat to Daniel. "Six-legged and wingless, though not all your other parameters. See what you think."

He flopped the handkerchief loosely over the insect to hold it as he sat. Lichen-eaters don't have to move fast and this one showed no signs of wanting to escape. Daniel viewed the images with growing puzzlement, fingering the virtual keyboard to add and delete parameters.

"It isn't Terran," he said in wonder. "It can't be Terran. The three membranous antennae are like nothing on Earth, quite apart from the other distinctions!"

"Well, Kostroma has been in contact with many hundreds of planets other than Earth," Adele said. Daniel heard in her voice the same cautiously neutral tones which he'd used when asking about the cataloguing system. "Earth was a likely possibility, but . . ."

Daniel laughed as he rose from the console. "Ah, contact, but not contact before the Founding itself!" he said. "A slowboat colony from Earth was just possible, but not a slowboat bringing bugs and lichen from a non-Earth planet. This site's really old, Adele. Much older than the Founding. I think from the weathering on the fused rock . . ."

He grimaced. He wished he'd taken a camera on the jaunt, but he'd had no idea of the degree to which his attention would be on the scenery. The scenery besides Bet, that was. Well, the island hadn't gone anywhere in—

"Thousands of years old. Maybe tens of thousands of years."

Adele didn't speak for a moment. The Kostroman assistants looked at one another with the frowns of people who know they've missed the point of what they just heard.

"Star-travelling aliens with human physiology," Adele said.

"Or human star travel, probably through sponge space," Daniel said. "Probably before recorded history."

"Before the records to which we have access," the librarian corrected with a self-mocking smile.

She reverted to her normal working expression, a tautness like that of a cat waiting for the moment she'll leap on her prey. "Locating the source of the bugs would be my first step, but I don't have extensive natural history files except for the Cinnabar sphere and Earth. Those two came loaded in the database."

Daniel gave three quick nods as a placeholder while he settled plans in his mind. "The
Aglaia
does," he said. "A broad sweep for the whole region. Not deep, but we don't need to identify the species. When we find a world where the biota run in these directions—"

He spun the handkerchief like a magician's wand, holding the corners. He'd have to lay in a supply of lichen for the little creature. There was no way of telling how long they lived.

"—then we can search for details!"

Adele sat at the console. "I can access . . ." she said. She paused with her wands lifted.

Daniel grinned. "No, the
Aglaia
has blocks you won't be able to get through even with your little toy here," he said, patting the frame of the console. "She's an RCN warship, after all. I'll go aboard right now and see what I can find, though."

"Yes," Adele said in an odd voice. She stood, laying her wands neatly in the tray built on the top of the console. "I should have remembered that information on the
Aglaia
would be protected. As would that of the Alliance vessels in harbor also, I suppose."

"Well, I don't think any Alliance captain would let me come aboard to search his database," Daniel said, amused at the absurdity of the notion. "But I'll bet we can get what we need from the
Aglaia
."

He started for the door. "I'll let you know," he threw over his shoulder.

"Yes, I'll be interested," Adele replied in the same washed-out voice she'd used a moment before.

Daniel whistled as he strode down the dimly lit corridor. Adele was probably embarrassed not to have been able to get the information herself. It would upset an artist of her quality to be reminded that there were files even she couldn't access.

Daniel's taxi driver pulled to the curb half a block from the waterfront and stopped. "Here," he said. "You get out."

The driver had kept his left leg stiffly across a pad on the jitney's front panel ever since Daniel hailed him outside the palace. Those words were the first he'd spoken since he set a price for the run. Daniel could've walked, but the implications of the beetle excited him and there were still fragments of the 100-florin piece in his purse.

"Say!" Daniel said. "Take me to the quay like we agreed. What's the matter with you?"

"Fagh!" snarled the driver. He spoke Universal with a guttural slurring that was more likely his own than a regional accent. He hauled hard on his steering wheel and began to turn in the street.

"Hey!" said Daniel. He grabbed the driver's shoulder and rose from the bench seat. "By God you'll let me off or you'll be on the pavement yourself!"

The driver struggled momentarily, then turned his head away as Daniel slid to the boarding step without losing his grip. Daniel hopped down to the street. He reached for his purse, half inclined to short the driver for his bizarre behavior. Still, the fellow had brought him most of the—

To Daniel's amazement the driver jerked the hand throttle as soon as he was free of Daniel's hold. The jitney jumped ahead with a puff of foul smoke from its little diesel engine. The driver didn't look over his shoulder as his vehicle rattled back the way he'd come.

Daniel watched the taxi leave in wonderment. If this were an alley he'd have suspected the driver was in collusion with bandits, but the taxi had left him on a boulevard in a middle-class district. Well, maybe the fellow's dinner had given him the runs.

Main street or not, Kostroma City was dark. Daniel pulled down his goggles to brighten the night.

Looking past the head of the street to the horizon, the Floating Harbor was its usual dazzling brilliance. Daniel noticed again the big Alliance transport which had landed while he was at the fishing lodge. It was in the first rank like the
Aglaia
, but the two vessels were at opposite ends of the harbor.

That was perfectly proper, of course: Kostroma was neutral, dealing with Alliance traders as readily as it did with those from Cinnabar and her dependencies. It made Daniel think about the implications of Kostroma joining the war on Cinnabar's side as Candace and his friends wanted, though.

If Walter III declared war on the Alliance, a freighter like that one would be fair game. The officer who led the
Aglaia
's boarding party—even an officer who accompanied the boarding party despite not being technically on the roster of the communications vessel—would be in line for a great deal of prize money. . . .

As the jitney driver had said, fagh! That was a fantasy and a foolish one besides. Cinnabar was probably better off having Kostroma as a friendly neutral than as an active combatant. But it
would
be nice not to have to worry about his debts for the first time since he stormed out of Corder Leary's townhouse.

A foolish fantasy, but Daniel began whistling—

And stopped abruptly as he realized how very odd the waterfront was tonight. The surface freighters that would normally be loading and unloading in the harbor were silent, showing only a few lights for the watch. The bumboats and water taxis weren't running, but Daniel was close enough to the seawall now to see that there was an unusual number of people on the quay.

The harbor was never well-lit, but tonight the handful of pole-mounted floodlights were out. Daniel knew there was nothing unusual about power failures in Kostroma City; anyone looking inshore from the
Aglaia
would know that too. Nothing to cause concern. . . .

Daniel stepped close to the front wall of a building on Water Street. The two lower floors held a ship chandler's shop, closed as normal at this hour. The windows on the third floor where the owner and his family lived were heavily shuttered as well; no light shone through the cracks.

A jitney passed with six people aboard, two of them hanging on the sides. They were armed. The jitney drove down the ramp onto a quay and parked with the vehicles already there. The gunmen got out, cursing the darkness until someone snarled a sharp order at them.

There were about a hundred figures, mostly young men, gathered on the quay and boarding the boats tied up there. Most carried submachine guns, but Daniel saw a leavening of shoulder-stocked impellers. The gunmen wore two-tone armbands as a uniform, but the light on the quay wasn't good enough to tell what the colors were.

Daniel himself would have been in plain sight if there'd been better illumination, but in the starlight his gray uniform blended well with the weathered stone building. He raised his eyes to the Floating Harbor and increased his goggles' magnification.

The
Aglaia
looked as she had when he was last aboard her a few days earlier. The guards in the main hatchway were relaxed, but they kept their weapons slung or resting on their laps. The petty officer in charge spit into the sea; because of the magnification he looked close enough to touch.

Daniel didn't have a radio. There were underwater telephone cables from shore to the Floating Harbor, but he wasn't sure any of the locals would let him use their phone. He could go walk back to the palace, or he could—

Vapor spewed from all the
Aglaia
's open hatches. Daniel thought the ship had blown up, but the thumps that reached the shore several seconds later were muted. As the mist cleared, he could see that the
Aglaia
's lights were still on and her hull was unharmed. Gas bombs . . .

Three of the guards were down. The petty officer had been a few meters from the hatch. He had time to unsling his submachine gun and start for the pontoon, but the puff of gas caught him. He ran two steps more and collapsed.

The fellow must have been a rigger: even unconscious, he managed to land on the narrow catwalk. Only his weapon splashed into the water to sink the thousand feet or more to the bottom.

The boats full of armed Kostromans roared from the quay, several of them wallowing from the overloads they carried. Some idiot in the lead boat fired a full magazine from his submachine gun. Daniel couldn't imagine what he thought he was shooting at.