A Thousand Words For Stranger (10th Anniversary Edition) (20 page)

Morgan’s smile was unpleasant. “I wouldn’t thank him too soon, Sira. I can smell trouble, believe me. And the deal stank of it. The Clansman had a holo of you, told me your name was Sira. He played on how you were alone, without memory or protection—he sounded sincere.

“Yet Barac couldn’t or wouldn’t stay himself to help you. Oh, no. He had to have
me
find you. To take you from Auord and deliver you to Camos.” His lips twisted, changing the smile into something frankly stubborn. “I’ve done a lot of things in my time, Sira, some of them less than legal. But I don’t transport slaves.”

“I find that hard to believe,” I retorted. “Since instead of taking me to this Barac, you decided to sell me on Ret 7.”

Morgan leaned back on the couch, then rolled his head so he could look at me. “That wasn’t my decision.”

I swallowed hard, reduced to staring at him. Whatever expression was on my face made him swing his legs around abruptly and sit up. Before he could speak, I said: “Roraqk,” thinking I finally understood.

“God, no!” Morgan lunged to his feet, swayed a moment, then sank back down. His voice and expression were appalled. “Sira, I wouldn’t give air to that creature!”

I gripped the fabric of the couch behind me for support. I badly wanted to believe Morgan wasn’t in league with the reptile, but could I trust the source of that desire? “I hear piracy pays well,” I heard my voice say. “Profit is what a trader lives for, isn’t it? Mind telling me why I’m so valuable a commodity?”

Morgan gritted his teeth, making a muscle jump along his jaw. We locked eyes for a long moment. “I found myself in a situation, years ago,” he said finally, his voice rough at the edges. “As a result, I had to choose whether to lose the
Fox
or to supply someone with information from time to time. Lately I’ve wondered if I made the wrong decision.”

“Roraqk,” I said again, deliberately throwing that name between us.

His lips twitched. “On the contrary. I’ve been helping an Enforcer named Bowman gather information on the Clan. She’s the one so interested in this Barac—and now you. You’d have to ask her why.”

I gasped, feeling the blood draining from my face, shivering as if cold. Morgan kept still, watching me, a brooding cast to his eyes as if he’d expected my reaction. I stared into his steady blue gaze, my mind exploding.

Avoid the Enforcers, stay hidden, stay safe;
the compulsions I’d naively thought gone for good burst through me, tumbling on themselves, engulfing Morgan’s face with images of fear:
avoid, stay, hide, run.
I screamed without sound,
Don’t take him. He’s all I have.
I fought for control on some level part of me almost recognized.

And won.

Something snapped. Dizzy, I sat down on the copilot’scouch. Like probing with a tongue for a sore tooth, I probed my thoughts for any sign of the intruder’s will. None. I was more bruised than triumphant.
If all I have is Morgan,
I admitted to myself,
then all I have is a self-confessed spy who for reasons of his own has put himself between me and at least two different pursuers.

“It all comes down to you, Morgan, doesn’t it,” I said, trying not to sound resentful. “All I know is what you’ve told me. I don’t know any Bowman or Barac. I don’t know anything about the Clan or a world called Camos.” I paused, then realized I had no choice but to go on. “I want to believe you mean to help me. I don’t want to think about being on this ship, going who knows where, with someone I can’t trust. A little proof would be nice.”

Morgan’s face had regained its mask of careful neutrality. He spread his hands. “I can’t prove anything I’ve said.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Think what you choose, Sira.”

I absorbed that in silence. Still, our presence here, on the
Fox
instead of on Ret 7, had to be proof of a sort. “And you can’t explain what’s happening between us, why I can feel what you feel.”

He shook his head very slowly. “Perhaps the Clan knows, but they tend to keep their secrets.”

“Are you Human?” I asked with sudden deep suspicion.

Morgan laughed, a hollow sound, then sank back on his couch as if suddenly exhausted. “Yes, chit,” the words half muffled by the arm he threw over his face. “I’m pure stock, too. I can recite twenty generations of ancestors, right back to First Ship. Before then, things do become muddled. But, yes, I’m Human.”

“You’re more,” I said finally, when it seemed he was finished.

“Or less.”

The pause that followed his cryptic suggestion was too long. I walked over to his side and gazed down at him. He was breathing deeply and evenly. His eyes were closed, his exhausted face guarded even in sleep. I touched his arm with my fingertips.

It was rapidly becoming a familiar shock, this extension of my senses to include the movements of Morgan’s blood, the rhythm of his breath. At least Morgan was much less alarming while asleep. I resisted the urge to immediately draw away. What was Morgan? I tried not to listen to the small voice within that asked: What was I?

I sensed my body learning to isolate the incoming information in some strange new way, making it easier by the second to keep my own breathing steady, to ignore the rhythms of his. Part of me accepted this ability as quite normal. Part of me was nauseated by the duplication of sensation.

“I’m becoming part of you, whatever you are, Jason Morgan, whether I want to or not,” I said, very softly.

A resonance of memory coursed into my empty thoughts and softly coalesced into form—memory, no, much less than that—sensation. This link between us was only beginning, the first of other unknown changes.

For the first time, I worried about its effect on Morgan. Was there some danger in it to him? Or to me?

Morgan tossed uneasily in his sleep, perhaps reacting somehow to my disturbing turn of thought. I moved away. As I went to the other couch and slowly settled myself, I continued to watch him.

Ignoring for the moment the likelihood that Morgan had some scheme afoot to make a profit from my continued presence on his ship, I had to think about the future. The Enforcer, Bowman, wasn’t likely to be pleased with Morgan; neither was this Clansman, Barac. And in the back of my mind, I hadn’t shaken the feeling that Roraqk was still after me. Three sets of enemies for Morgan, courtesy of his newest crew member—who might even be an enemy herself, I added reluctantly, troubled by the strange link growing between us and where it might lead.

Yet whether I could trust Morgan or not didn’t really matter. Somehow, he was important to me in a way that now had nothing at all to do with fantasy or compulsion.

On Plexis, I decided, I would leave the
Fox
and Morgan.

A shame Morgan hadn’t warned me that freedom could be so unpleasant. I looked around at the panels and lights, already homesick.

Chapter 11

“WELCOME to Plexis Supermarket, Sira.”

I stepped out of the air lock behind Morgan, trying not to trip over the cables snaked across in front. I had no trouble remembering what a supermarket was, but the reality was daunting, especially here. After all, this was
the
one—the first of its kind.

I’d read a vistape about Plexis. The story was popular, especially on fringe worlds where instant successes were as hoped for as they were rare. Decades ago, an enterprising industrialist named Raj Plexis had risked everything to build a refinery to process ores within asteroid belts. Her plan had been appealing in scale. Plexis designed a mobile station that would literally engulf a metal-rich asteroid, processing its ore on route to the nearest market. With a talent for fund-raising that would have shamed a loan shark, Plexis targeted wealthy backers interested in doing without the then-current system of orbital refineries and the independent fleets of ore carriers that supplied them.

Unfortunately, Plexis couldn’t have anticipated the arrival of new technology to selectively harvest asteroid fragments and dust. Suddenly, anyone with a ship could scoop a profit out of the void. Mining claims quickly carved up every fringe asteroid belt with detectable metals.There was literally no room left for Plexis’ giant refinery to operate.

Her backers abandoned the project with comic haste, leaving Plexis with a space-worthy and useless refinery of immense proportions, partially completed, and a reputation well on its way to becoming the joke of the known galaxy. For most, the combination of financial ruin and ridicule would have been enough for one lifetime. Plexis had other plans.

Within a year, her refinery appeared in shipping lanes, sporting the glittering sign that would become commonplace along the entire outer system fringe: “Plexis Supermarket. If You Want It, It’s Here!” Plexis had stuffed the refinery’s cavernous interior with shops carrying luxury goods normally confined to long-settled inner systems. The outer hull had been studded with a maze of ship connections, a parking lot for traders and spacers, buyers and sellers. Plexis Supermarket was exactly what customers had been waiting for—a gigantic peddler’s wagon. Within ten years, every sector of the Trade Pact had its own supermarket cruising its sparsely settled fringe. And Plexis herself was an extremely wealthy legend.

Here I was, setting foot in the most famous shopping concourse in explored space.

“Are you planning to gawk all day, or can we get going?” Morgan adjusted my helmet as he spoke.

“Do I have to wear this?” I mumbled, trying not to inhale the wet laundry tang of the suit too deeply. Morgan had rigged the hookups to allow me to breathe the station air and hear what went on around me without the comlink. But it was already hot and stuffy.

“We don’t know who could recognize you,” Morgan repeated his earlier argument. He picked up the leash of the grav cart. “I’d rather not take chances on Plexis.”

I tossed my small bag of belongings on top of his cases. “I might have friends here.”

“And maybe enemies.” Morgan frowned at my bag. “You won’t need that. Leave it stowed.”

I compressed my lips. “You said these were mine.”

Morgan eyed me for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s risky carrying anything around below the upper concourse. Your things would be safer inside the ship.”

Morgan worked the little cart past some low hanging wires. I followed, tilting my helmet-covered head so I could see as much as possible. But what I could see of the much-vaunted supermarket looked more like a dingy repair shop.

“This is Plexis?” I blurted out, disappointed.

I caught the corner of his lips twitching in a smile. “Just the backside, Sira,” he said. “Parking’s cheaper. And we’re less conspicuous.”

Then, before I could ask another question, Morgan continued: “What matters is that Plexis should be safe.”

His choice of words silenced me as I was sure Morgan had intended. Safe? Safe from what or who in particular, I wanted to ask, but Morgan seemed preoccupied and I decided to wait in case my questions jarred him from some full-scale plotting.

I strode behind him down the narrow corridor, lifting my feet over bulkheads every so often. Our corridor opened at last into a much larger area. I could hear voices, but I couldn’t see past the shoulders of the group of spacers standing in front of us.

“Damn. A tag point.”

“What’s that?” I asked Morgan, trying to peer around him.

“I forgot about the air tax. We didn’t post a shopper’s bond. If you’re not a customer, you have to pay for the air you breathe. Keep the helmet on; I’ll think of something.”

Morgan went up and stood in line behind two other Humans. The bored-looking official, an Ordnex by his multijointed fingers and lack of nose, was reading out some monologue. I watched as we moved closer. He was using a tool shaped like a hammer to apply a waxy-looking patch to the right side of each being’s face.

It was Morgan’s turn. “DoyouacceptresponsbilityfortheairyoushareonPlexis?”the Ordnex droned rapidly. Morgan nodded and bent his head so the tag could be applied. When it touched his skin, the patch glowed for an instant, then went a pale blue.

Morgan pulled me in front of him, so I was helmet-to-nasal opening with the Ordnex. This unwelcome intimacy blocked the view of beings who had come up behind us in line so I saved my objections for later.

“We have a bad case of ysa-smoke addiction here, sir,” Morgan said in a low-pitched voice, rapping my helmet with his knuckles. “Makes her useless for days. About all I can do is lock her in the suit; if I don’t, she’ll find a dealer and be puffed in minutes.”

Where should I kick him? I noticed Morgan’s hand slipping past my arm to grip that of the Ordnex. A very familiar-looking bag of currency gems sparkled for a moment before disappearing somewhere in the official’s loose robes.

“Igivehertagintoyourkeeping,Captain,” the Ordnex announced “Mysympathies.Isuggestyoutrythepostingboardforanewcrewmember.” Morgan gave a half bow and pushed me ahead.

“Ysa-smoker?” I snarled, when we were out of range.

Morgan chuckled, tucking my tag into his pocket. “Terrible habit, Sira.”

After the tag point, we had to wait our turn to jump on the ramp to the first shopping level. I found it first alarming, and then exhilarating to be surrounded by beings of every size, smell, and shape. Morgan let a couple of openings go past, both near clusters of Humans. Then he spotted an opportunity to his liking, yanking the cart and me after him into the midst of a crowd of Turrned Missionaries.

The Turrned gazed up at us with their great disk-shaped eyes. No wonder they were so good at converting the ungodly—those oversized brown eyes could melt stone. I was busy examining my own soul for flaws, when we reached the end of our trip and the crowd on the ramp surged out into the shopping concourse.

It spread out as far as I could see. The heads of shoppersmade a seething knobby carpet, broken only by the occasional stilt-legged servo festooned with purchases. The thousands of voices blended together into an indecipherable roaring noise that quickly became a background.