DarkShip Thieves (12 page)

"She is no such thing," Kit said. "And while as a non citizen she doesn't have any local relatives who can charge you blood-geld, I can, since she came here under my protection. And my family will charge you for me, and they will make sure you pay for all my potential lost wages. Do you know how much a Cat makes, in the prime of his working years? And how many years I have left?"

"You can't . . ." The official said, glaring at him. "If you are a threat to Eden, I can have you killed. I do not have to pay blood geld."

"No. But what if you can't prove either my guest or myself were threats to Eden? My family will demand proof." He spoke almost kindly. "My father and my mother and . . . did I mention my oldest sister is Katherine Denovo? No?"

I had no idea why, but, at the name, the Official visibly blenched. He backed and told the fifty, "Don't shoot," then looked at Kit. "But what can we do with the two of you, short of putting you indefinitely in containment? What if you are carrying a bug and cause all of Eden—"

"Call a doctor. My doctor. I'll even pay for it. Doctor Bartolomeu Dias," he said. "Fourth enclosure. Tell him it's for me, he'll come as quickly as he can. I'll cover the fee. He'll do a scan and he can tell you whether I or my guest are a danger to Eden."

The official didn't say anything for a while. I suspect it was because he was still hoping he could find a reason to have Kit shot. It had to gall him that Kit had stood there, flaunting all his orders and countering his authority with logic. And Kit hadn't exactly been subtle about driving his point home. But whatever the threat of the unknown Katherine might be, it clearly held terror for the official. He frowned, glared up at Kit, then at me, then frowned again. At last, and in the tone of a man making a threat, he said, "Very well." He gestured at the armed boys. "You may go out, but wait in the next room, ready to shoot anyone who leaves without my express permission." As they filed out, he glared at Kit. "Right. Don't think you can get out until you've been thoroughly examined. I shall call Doctor Bartolomeu Dias. You will not leave without his say so."

And then he stalked out after the hushers. And closed the door behind himself, leaving me alone with Kit, who stooped to pick up his undertunic and slipped it on. He looked up at me, and the corner of his lip quirked upward. "Not that I mind the show, Patrician, but . . . perhaps the tunic would be better on you?"

I blushed. I had been afraid to put the tunic on while the guns were pointed at me. With boys that nervous any gesture, any movement can be viewed as a threat, and I did not want to get accidentally burned. I put the tunic on.

"This doctor . . ." I said.

"He's okay. He decanted me."

"So, Christopher, you bring us Earthworms now?" Doctor Bartolomeu Dias said. He was an old man, smaller than anyone else I'd ever seen and so wrinkled that it looked as though someone had taken double the skin needed for the man and let the extra hang out in folds and strange excesses. He looked like nothing so much as the old gnomes of legend, tiny and wrinkled and wearing what looked like ancient clothes—dark brown pants and tailored brown jacket.

He had shot Kit the barest of glances upon coming in, then given me a slower, appreciative look and a smile. Kit greeted him with the most natural smile I'd yet seen from him, and the answer that, "She came into the Cathouse. What else was I to do?"

Doc Bartolomeu—which was what everyone seemed to call him—gave me another, more attentive look, where something like a smile melted into a worried frown. "I wouldn't have done anything different, Kit," he said, his voice echoing with amusement but also reassurance, as if he meant it but also found the situation interesting.

I did not know what was so amusing, other than the fact that I was a woman and that Kit Klaavil clearly—judging by his various looks at me—appreciated women, and that he traveled alone.

"Lie down," Doctor Bartolomeu said, gesturing towards the desk.

Kit Klaavil did.

"So the idea," Doctor Bartolomeu said. "Is that Earth put some sort of bug on you." He cocked a curious eyebrow. "They say you went to Earth. Did you go to Earth?"

Kit shook his head. "No. She was fleeing through the powertrees. In a lifepod. It hit the Cathouse. I took her in."

"Through the powertrees in a lifepod," Doctor Bartolomeu said. He looked over at me. "And you come from Earth?" He rooted in the capacious black bag he carried, as he spoke.

His manner, his oddness, made me suddenly shy. It was like when I was very little and Father and all the other Good Men gathered for a meeting, and he called me in to . . . show me off, I suppose. They looked so different from my nannies and my play friends and the world of the nursery that I was speechless. Or nearly so.

I heard my voice come out, in that stilted polite little girl tone, "I come from Syracuse Seacity. My name is Athena Hera Sinistra."

His head snapped up, for just a moment. It was the thing of an instant, and it might have meant nothing. But I noted it, even as he pulled an instrument from his bag. "I used to know someone," He said. "Alexander Milton Sinistra. I don't suppose he'd still be alive?"

As he spoke he stood over Kit holding something that looked like an oversized dimatough magnifying glass with a clear interior. He held the handle in a way that suggested he was pressing buttons, while he looked through it.

And of course he wasn't alive. At least Alexander Milton Sinistra was my ancestor who had become the first Good Man of Syracuse Seacity after the turmoils and then others, up to my grandfather. But that had been . . . My grandfather had died more than sixty years ago. "It can't be the same person," I said. "The first lived three hundred years ago. And the last about sixty or eighty or so. And even if you're that old," I said, as it occurred to me. "You can't have gone back to Earth at that time, and anyway, no he's not alive.

"Uh. Oh?" Doctor Bartolomeu said.

"The first Good Man of my line. My ancestor. And then about every other one up to my grandfather."

He looked away from the non-magnifying glass and at me. "Your ancestor. No. It couldn't have been the same person. Coincidence." He looked back at Kit. "I don't see any bugs, Christopher," he said. "But your stomach has been troubling you again, hasn't it?"

Kit shrugged, sitting up.

"I could—"

"No," Kit said. "No tampering with my mind. You know that."

Doctor Bartolomeu sighed. "Very well. Have it your own way. You tend to." He looked over at me. "I suppose I should have a look at the young lady. If you would lay down."

I obeyed him, laying along the old desk, while Kit stood aside. I didn't look in his direction, as I had the odd impression that he was watching me.

Doctor Bartolomeu looked through the loop at the end of the handle at me. Seen from this end, I could see as if a white-light pulse in the center of it. I supposed it told him something. "Very healthy," he said. "And no spy bugs." He frowned at me, as if trying to solve a puzzle. "What possessed you to take a lifepod through the powertrees? I suppose it wasn't truly outfitted for maneuvering."

Klaavil snorted and, upon Doctor Bartolomeu looking at him, said, "Like a barge with a pole. I'd have had to use all my skill to make it through in that. She must have a hell of a lot of luck."

"Indeed," the doctor said. "But why?"

The why had bothered me all three months, and I couldn't say that I was any closer to knowing for sure than I'd been when it all started. There had been Father . . . Had it been Father in Circum?

Half the times I thought about it, I was sure it must have been. The other half . . . the other half I was just as sure it couldn't have been. A hologram. A hologram with very well programed voice. And I'd fallen for it, and they'd jumped me. "There was a mutiny aboard my father's space cruiser," I said. I frowned. "I think my father was killed. I escaped, and they pursued, in lifepods. I had to go where they wouldn't dare follow." I didn't mention my excursion into Circum, and Kit's coming to get me. I thought that if Kit hadn't mentioned it, there must be a reason. Besides, if all these people were so worried at the idea of my having come along with him, how would they feel about his having had actual contact with the dreaded Earthworms.

As though he'd read my mind, Doctor Bartolomeu looked up at me, "We're a small world," he said. "The remnant of a persecuted people, the vast majority of which died centuries ago. Don't think ill of us for our defenses. The Hushers are volunteers. For years our young men have volunteered to keep us safe."

I understood all that. Or I tried to. But with all that, it still seemed to me like too much caution to be this scared of me. Oh, many people had been this scared of me in the past. but these people had no reason to. Kit Klaavil hadn't even let me try anything against the boys with guns. They had no reason at all to be scared of me.

Doctor Bartolomeu motioned for me to get up, as he slipped his non-lens back into his case. "I'll tell them you're clear and to admit you, but Christopher . . . What do intend to do with her?"

Kit Klaavil stared back at him, and for a moment looked completely blank. "You know," he said. "I have no idea."

I repeated Doctor Bartolomeu's question as we left the room, walking past fifty young men who no longer held guns pointed at us—and one or two of whom looked like they'd very much like to have the courage to talk to me. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about it before.

Or at least, I'd thought about it in terms of
eventually, when I know how to pilot this ship, I'll take it to Earth.
I hadn't thought—or not exactly—of what to do with Kit Klaavil as part of this grand plan. It had been relegated to the
something will occur to me
future.

The truth was that it had started as a fantasy of hitting Kit on the head, or perhaps garrotting him, and then flying the ship to Earth. What became of him after that was truly unimportant. Oh, he'd probably saved my life when he came back for me in Circum, but he couldn't possibly have known he was saving me from anything. He must have come back because he realized that I held important information about them. He realized otherwise I could endanger all of his colony. Considering their paranoid behavior, his realizing his error and going to get me in circum was actually fairly rational not to say expected.

And since he'd captured me, and held my life at his whim, I felt perfectly justified in doing the same to him. Except we were now in his world and not aboard his ship. And that meant . . .

He gave me a sideways glance. "I have no idea," he said, as he walked fast and purposefully down a corridor and turned, as if very sure where he was going. Because his legs were much longer than mine, this meant I must run to keep up with him, something I was quite sure he knew. "I mean, I suppose you could train for something here on Eden, right? You said you are good with machinery. There's always a need for someone good with machinery."

"But I want to go to Earth," I said.

He gave me a puzzled frown. "Don't be ridiculous," he said.

"I don't see what's ridiculous about wishing to go back," I said. "I have responsibilities. I have a position . . ."

He sighed. "So do I," he said. "You see." He bit his lip. "It's a bit of a bind. I couldn't let you be killed. I simply couldn't. You think through these things and you think . . ." He shrugged. "But I couldn't let you be killed, and then I had to bring you here. There was nothing else I could do. And once I brought you here . . ." He shrugged again. "You can't go back. If you go back, they will find where we are."

"But I don't even know."

"No. But they could get it. From what you say. And I can't let that happen. There are a million and a half people in Eden, not counting the colonies. I can't risk it all for you."

"But I didn't volunteer to immigrate." Certainly not to a colony filled with Mules and their bio-engineered servants. Even if familiarity with Kit had caused me to stop flinching from his odd eyes, I was sure I would meet with further horrors in Eden. And it wasn't right. It simply wasn't.

"I know," he said. "And I owe you. A debt of honor, for taking away your choice in this matter," he sounded solemn. "But you must understand that I didn't have a choice, either."

I didn't understand any such thing, but neither could I discuss it right then, as we'd entered a busy, people-filled corridor, and I had to run as fast as I could to keep up with Kit. He had stepped up his pace, and I couldn't afford to lose sight of him. Let alone that the people around us were quite odd—attire ranging from uniforms like Kit's to little transparent . . . underwear, to a woman who appeared to be wearing an uncut roll of carpet around her middle. At the same time, Kit sped up, dodging among people, moving faster, faster. I noted that the people in matching uniforms to his gave him a non-look, allowing their gazes to slide across him.

"You don't have many friends," I said, before I could think.

He gave me a quick glance. "I told you I don't play well with others," he said, as he stepped around a group of people wearing what looked like pearlescent rain coats.

Clearly. I caught up with him as he rounded a group of people in blue and red uniforms matching his, just as he stopped short and I realized he had come face to face with a black dimatough desk and a man sitting behind it.

The man looked about Kit's age, bland and blond and bored. "Christopher Bartolomeu Klaavil," Kit said, coming up short in front of the desk. "The Cathouse. I brought back six ripe pods and . . ."

He got a pursed-lip expression. "Six pods? A thousand hydras minus the rental price."

"A thousand?" Kit said, sounding dismayed.

The conversation became a bargaining session, with the blond man insisting they currently had a surplus of pods and Kit countering that he could not possibly pay that much—around three hundred hydras, give or take, though it seemed to fluctuate through the discussion—for rental of the Cathouse and listing everything that was wrong with it.

They settled on twelve hundred for the pods and two hundred and fifty for rental of the Cathouse, with Kit insisting it be given a once-over before he took it out again.