A Dark and Hungry God Arises (39 page)

Almost wincing, but clearly, he said, 'I let Morn out of her cabin. So she could rescue Davies from the ejection pod. '

There. The truth at last. Mikka hadn't known about Sib's action. She might not have believed him capable of it. But as soon as he spoke she knew he was telling the truth.

His revelation released the pressure which dammed her voice in her chest. Softly she told her part of the story.

'I nearly ran into her. After Sib let her out. While she was on her way to the engineering console room. I could have stopped her. I mean, I could have tried. At the very least, I could have warned Nick. But I didn't. '

Now Vector was ready. 'She reached the console room while I was still there. I let her at the pod control board.

I'm sure I couldn't have stopped her. I know because I hit her as hard as I could, and it didn't make any difference. On the other hand, I could easily have warned Nick. '

As if to steady himself, he took another sip of coffee.

'In retrospect, I don't feel good about hitting her. But what shames me most is that it took her so long to convince me.

'Ciro' - he looked straight into Pup's earnest gaze - 'I let her at the board as soon as I understood that she would have done exactly the same thing - taken the same chances, risked herself just as much - if I were being given to the Amnion. '

The flush had faded from Pup's face. Mikka couldn't tell what he was thinking. When Vector finished, Pup studied Sib for a moment, then turned toward her. Without noticing what he was doing, he pushed his drink aside with the back of his hand as if he wanted to clear space for honesty and decisions.

'What about me?' he asked. 'Why am I a threat to him?'

Mikka didn't hesitate now. 'Because you're my brother, and you work with Vector. Nick is afraid you might start listening to one of us. '

For a moment Pup didn't respond. His gaze seemed to shift inward, and he frowned, unconsciously mimick-ing her customary scowl. As she watched, a new sorrow for him tugged through her. If he frowned like that long enough, it would become permanent; he would begin to look as bitter and grieved as she did.

Then he lifted his head. With a dignity he'd never possessed before, he said firmly, 'He's right about that, anyway. '

Tears ran down Mikka's cheeks again. She couldn't hide them. After a while she stopped trying.

Vector patted Pup on the back, ruffled his hair affec-tionately. In an avuncular tone, he said to Sib, 'Better drink up. We need to figure out what we're going to do and then go do it before somebody comes looking for us to ask about that rumor you were supposed to start. '

'What can we do?' Sib asked at once. We don't belong here. ' He made a gesture that indicated the whole cruise.

We haven't got any allies - or any resources. As soon as Nick cuts off our credit, we won't even be able to eat.

And we can't ask another ship to take us. He made sure of that. Nobody will touch the people who started those rumors. They'll leave us to the Bill - or Captain Chatelaine. And they won't care about us. They'll just want to know who's being betrayed. '

Inspired by his fears, he'd considered implications which hadn't occurred to Mikka before. With a sting of apprehension, she realized that he was right.

'That means interrogation, ' Sib finished softly. Visceral dread twisted his face. 'I don't want to be interrogated here. '

Her lip curled into a snarl. Drugs. Zone implants. BR

surgery. She also didn't want to be interrogated here.

'Damn, ' she muttered. We shouldn't have done it. We should have kept our mouths shut. ' To Vector and Sib as well, but especially to her brother, she said, 'I'm sorry.

I haven't been thinking very clearly. '

'So we can't afford to sit here' - Vector sounded strangely jocular, as if he were trying to cheer her up -

'and wait for events to unfold. We need a plan. We need to move. '

She glared at him. 'Don't tell me - let me guess. You've got an idea. '

Despite his tone, the engineer's smile was humorless and determined. Well, for a start, ' he offered, 'it might be interesting to figure out what Nick is up to. '

Mikka's old anger was directed primarily at herself.

'And how do you propose to do that?'

Vector shrugged. 'I don't know. I don't fit in here. '

Like Sib, he referred to the cruise. 'On my own, I probably wouldn't last more than a day or two. I don't know what's possible here and what isn't. '

'It has something to do with Soar, ' Sib put in tentatively. 'Captain Chatelaine. Mikka says she's the woman who cut Nick. He wants revenge somehow. '

Mikka nodded. Nick must have lost his mind. He was in too much trouble himself: he couldn't waste his time on revenge when his bare survival - not to mention Captain's Fancy's — was at stake.

Unless he had some reason to believe that causing trouble for Sorus Chatelaine would somehow loosen the stranglehold of his circumstances.

If that were true, Mikka and her companions might be able to benefit from it.

Pup, Vector and Sib were all looking at her. With her hands locked into fists on the tabletop, she ground the knuckles together, trying to force herself to think.

They couldn't approach Soar: that was obvious. The rumor they'd started tainted them; they would end up dead - after the Bill or Chatelaine ripped their brains apart.

But Soar and her captain weren't the only players in Nick's game.

Abruptly she put her palms down flat on the table.

'Not the cruise, ' she announced quietly. 'Not Soar.

Trumpet. '

Her companions studied her, waiting for an explanation.

She leaned forward. 'Everybody on this damn rock, '

she whispered intently, 'heard her talking to Operations.

We know Angus Thermopyle is aboard. Along with a bugger named Milos Taverner, who used to be deputy chief of Com-Mine Station Security. All by itself, that stinks. I'm surprised Operations let them in. Maybe the Bill figures they're less dangerous docked than anywhere else. But that's not the point.

The point is, Nick has been talking to Trumpet ever since Operations cleared her. And Milos Taverner has been bugging for Nick for years. In fact, we wouldn't have been able to frame Thermopyle if Taverner hadn't helped us. Now suddenly the man we framed and the man who helped us frame him arrive here - together, for God's sake! - and Nick is talking to them.

'That's what we need to understand. If there's any window out of this mess, that's it. '

'Fine, ' Vector remarked succinctly. 'How?'

'Well' - Mikka fought down an impulse to clench her fists again, pound them on the table - 'we might start by watching Trumpet. See who goes aboard, who leaves. If nothing else, that'll get us off the cruise, which should make it harder for the Bill to find us. '

The Bill's surveillance was everywhere, of course. But the bugeyes and wires were strictly impersonal: they watched everything in general - and nothing in particular. Without specific instructions to the contrary, the recordings of Mikka and her companions would simply be filed in the Bill's gargantuan surveillance database.

And those instructions might not be issued until Nick's rumor had time to spread; generate repercussions. Then more time would be required to run search-and-compare programs on the database. An hour or more might pass before Captain's Fancy's cast-offs could be located.

'Maybe we'll get a chance to sneak aboard ourselves, '

she went on. 'Maybe we'll even see Nick. In which case'

- she gritted her teeth - 'we'll have new options. '

'Like what?' Sib asked.

Mikka bit down on her anger until her jaws ached. 'Like tying him up and delivering him to the Amnion, just to prove our good faith. Or like making him believe we're going to do it, so he'll think he has to deal with us. '

'We can't!' Pup protested as if he were shocked.

She scowled at him harshly. Why not?'

'You saw him fight Orn. ' Pup's voice cracked; but he was too shaken to stop. The step from distrusting Nick to attacking him was a large one. 'He could beat us all with one hand. '

Sib nodded vehemently. He was no fighter.

'Maybe. ' Mikka shrugged. 'Maybe not. And maybe we'll have help. Somehow I doubt lockup has taught Angus Thermopyle enough forgiveness to make him a friend of Nick's. '

Vector pushed himself to his feet. 'I'm satisfied. Let's do it. ' He moved as if his joints hurt less in Thanatos Minor's g — as if some of the weight he usually carried had been set aside. 'Sitting here makes me nervous. '

'But-' Sib scrubbed at the sweat on his face.

'Sib, ' the engineer asked mildly, 'if you were Sorus Chatelaine, how long would you wait before you sent your whole crew to get their hands on the people who started that rumor?'

Mackern blanched. Then he jumped out of his chair as if he'd been poked with a stun-prod.

'Mikka-' Pup's eyes were full of supplication; but he didn't know how to ask for what he needed.

She stood; taking his arm, she pulled him up. Then she hugged him quickly.

'Ciro, I can't promise we're going to get out of this alive - or in one piece, ' she told him. 'I don't know what's going to happen. But whatever it is, you won't be alone.

You've got friends. '

Despite his trepidation, Sib managed a wan smile. Vector nodded gravely.

'And, ' she finished, 'I'll kill anybody who tries to separate us. '

Pup returned her hug long enough to murmur, 'All right. I'll be all right. ' Then he stepped back.

Mikka Vasaczk didn't hesitate. She had no time to spare for doubt - and in her heart she believed she wasn't brave enough for it. She'd depended on Nick Succorso longer than Vector, or Sib, or Ciro; needed him more.

With her companions behind her, she left the bar-and-sleep, heading for Reception and Trumpet.

Finally his instincts or his datacore told him that the time had come.

He could hardly speak. Blisters covered his tongue; his throat was full of ash. Spasms of nausea pulled at his diaphragm, forcing hot bile into his eso-phagus, but his zone implants stifled that reflex. The pressure they exerted to control him seemed to cramp his chest. Minute by minute, the pain threatened to become more than his caged mind could bear.

That hurt echoed the condition of his whole body. For an hour now, he'd fought with every gram of his strength and will to break his datacore's hold; find some instance of incompleteness or vulnerability which might allow him to slip free of his zone implants long enough to kill Milos. That was all he wanted: a chance to crush Milos to pulp and splinters; a chance against the abyss. But he couldn't crack the prison which had been constructed inside his skull.

With his mouth full of ash and fatality, he recognized that before long he was going to go mad. Then he would be irremediably lost - a lunatic screaming and gibbering inside his own cranium, helpless to make himself heard, helpless to have any effect at all on anything his body did or his mouth said.

He would be back in the abyss -

back in his crib

with his scrawny wrists and ankles tied to the slats while his mother

while howls he couldn't utter clamored against the unyielding bone of his head

while his mother filled him with pain —

Yet he went on fighting. He had no alternative. As soon as he stopped, as soon as he surrendered, he would be swallowed back into the absolute dark from which he'd spent his life trying to escape at the cost of so much fear and blood and loneliness.

Then, a short time ago, he'd received an unexpected touch of mercy. Automatically solicitous for his physical well-being, his computer had taken notice of the damage burning like a slow torch in his mouth. When his distress exceeded acceptable parameters, a gentle electronic emission began to inhibit the pain receptors in his brain. The harm was still real, of course. Nevertheless he was able to continue functioning.

Thickly, as fumble-mouthed as a halfwit, he told Milos,

'Try it now. '

Machine mercy didn't relieve his despair.

Milos shrugged. Exhaling another stream of smoke into the clotted haze left behind by Ease-n-Sleaze's inadequate scrubbers, he rose to his feet. Completely absorbed in himself, as if he were alone with his supply of nic and his ashtray, he moved to the data terminal.

With a tap on the keys, he opened a channel to Trumpet and instructed her communications board to relay any messages she'd received.

After a moment he murmured, 'Looks like it's here. '

'You're the one who knows the code, ' Angus croaked as if he weren't perilously close to failure. 'Is it time to go?'

Milos muttered to himself as he deciphered the message. At last he announced, 'I guess. ' He sounded sad and obscurely bitter, as if something he needed had come to an end.

Angus pushed himself out of his chair. His legs would have trembled under him if his zone implants hadn't steadied them; another kind of tremble, which his datacore ignored, rose from his groin to his lungs and the muscles around his heart. Movement, any movement,

-was better than remaining still while insanity hunted him down.

He didn't wait for Milos. Striding slowly to conceal his desperation, he moved toward the door, out into the hall. As long as he kept his mouth closed, nothing betrayed his pain except the ashen pallor of his face.

Milos followed him unwillingly. With his second behind his shoulder, Angus took the lift down to the level of the bar and walked out of Ease-n-Sleaze.

The blare and swirl of the cruise hit him like a blast of relief. No wires nearby; bugeyes too far away to pick out individual voices. Most of the people who loitered or shoved along the street were enmeshed in their own needs, their own corruption; they took no notice of him.

And the air smelled sweet to him, suggestive and familiar: it reeked of synthetic and natural ruin, but nic was only a small component of its complex assault. Here despair appeared in guises he understood.

For a minute or two he moved along with no particular aim, simply breathing the air, absorbing the glare of color and the muted unstable thunder of boots on the cement floor; tasting the atmosphere for threats. Then he took hold of Milos' arm and pulled his second close enough to hear a whisper.