DarkShip Thieves (4 page)

As I walked on, ahead of him, I smelled the vague, rancid smell of long-distance ships. Not as bad as in the Circum harvesters, but worse than in Father's cruiser. Not too bad, though. Not nearly as bad as that lifepod, with my sweaty self in a far too small space.

The floor under my feet felt carpeted. Plush carpets. Living quarters? He walked me round and round. Ramp. We were taking our way up somewhere. Didn't he have stairs or anti-grav wells? Of course he must. Somewhere. But only an idiot would take a prisoner up stairs or anti-grav wells and give the prisoner the advantage of high ground. Instead, we were following a spiral corridor along the outside of the ship, climbing up and up. Till he said, from behind me. "Left, sharp. Don't try anything funny."

I didn't feel even vaguely humorous. I remembered that move downstairs. He was faster than I. I'd never met anyone faster than I. And I didn't want to die. I'd got lucky he had grabbed me with his free hand, instead of blasting me with his burner.

"Is that gun a burner?" I asked.

"No," he said. "It's just a flashlight. What do you think?"

I swallowed. "I rarely think about—" I said.

"Noted," he said. "Only an idiot would take a ship like that thing back there through the powertrees. I've half a mind to space you and save you the trouble of committing suicide going back in that."

"Going back—" I said blankly.

"When I'm done collecting and not a minute sooner," he said.

We were following another corridor, and it opened onto a large, circular space. I had to blink to realize it was a bedroom. It wasn't just the darkness, but it seemed so odd to find an utterly human bedroom—bed, chair, closet doors on the wall, a sensi cabinet, a gem storage unit, in this creature's lair.

He grabbed me. For the space of exhaling, I saw images of women captured by space monsters of . . . But he threw me down on the chair. The hard, straight backed chair. Then he moved again with unreal speed. Tying me to the chair.

There are very few things I truly can't stand to have done to me. Being tied up is one of them. As he tied me with something elastic and fabric-like at middle, legs and chest, I panicked and tried to struggle. But he was fast, and I hadn't a chance.

When he finished tying me, he pocketed his gun and grinned at me in the dark. "I'll let you go once I'm done harvesting," he said. "I really can't afford to be on autopilot anymore. We could blow at any second." He got a strip of fabric from his closet. "Just an extra precaution."

"No," I said. "Do not blindfold me."

"Why?" he said. "Because it will make it harder for you to get free? Good."

And then he seemed to speed up again. Before I could do anything, I was blindfolded. And tied. To a chair.

Right. He was going to die. He was going to die a slow and excruciatingly painful death.

My captor didn't know how to tie up women. I wasn't sure what that meant precisely, but right then I was grateful for his ineptitude.

His first mistake was in tying my hands in front of me. I suspect he thought he was perfectly safe, because he had tied my hands together and then tied me to the chair with my hands bound, so that two strips of what felt like fabric ran over my secured together arms, one at chest height and one at waist level. Another strip of fabric tied my ankles together.

The second mistake, of course was that
chest height
thing. Either the man hadn't been around many females, or he simply didn't think. Then again, didn't they say the Mules had no females? All male, all sterile with human females. Yes. That had to be it. He had no idea of the . . . ah . . . springiness of the female breast.

I'd held my breath as he tied that bind across my chest, so it was already loose. Deep breathing and cautious wiggling made it fall past the fullest part of my breast to hang loosely around my waist. This left me free to shrug, and pull, and shrug again, till I freed my hands from the tie, now looser, around my waist. And this allowed me to bring my hands up to my mouth and gnaw through the fabric—scarf? Belt? Whatever it was, it felt like fine silk against my teeth and lips—that held them.

Silk tears easily, once it's started to tear, and once I had the first hole in, I pulled my hands apart, till at last it tore across, with a ripping sound. The fabric fell loose, and I massaged my wrists, then removed my blindfold and untied the two binds at my waist and chest, and bent to untie the one at my ankles.

That last one felt elastic and beaded. Having untied it completely, I brought it up near my face to see it in the dim light. It was red fabric embroidered in every possible color of the rainbow. It was either a belt or a headband, and in either case it meant the cat-critter had atrocious taste. However . . . I tested the tensile strength of the thing and it would make an ideal garotte. I tied it around my slip, to hold the halves together, as I got up to investigate my surroundings.

I really didn't want to waste more time than I needed to, but I had learned through going off on half-setting more than once that it paid to reconnoiter and to know what I was up against. Particularly—I thought as I stretched—since I had no idea at all if the creature was human. Or quasi human. Or . . . a Mule. It was said, and it fell in the realm of legend more than anything else, that when the Mules escaped Earth in the spaceship they'd secretly built, they'd taken with them the most grossly bioengineered of their servants.

Perhaps it was true, though enough had stayed behind to be chased down all over the Earth—hanged and burned and—for those that fell to exceptionally creative mobs—crucified publically all over the globe. The vids of the time were supposed not to be accessible unless there was need to know, but I'd defeated the security in my education computer and seen them all. And hadn't been able to forget them since. And there had been people left behind to be killed who could only vaguely be called human, such their bio-modifications. So if the Mules had taken their more bioed servants with them, exactly what were we talking about?

If I didn't know what this . . . person/male/creature, was, then I'd worry about things that might not be within his capabilities. So far, I knew he was human-shaped, save for eyes. His hair could be some odd fashion. Humans had been dying hair presumably since they'd had hair, and I'd seen weirder affectations in the stranger parts of Syracuse Seacity. But those eyes seemed real, and he could see very well in the dark, which probably meant they weren't contact lenses or some other purely cosmetic artifice. I also knew he could move fast. Faster than I in my speed-demon mode. Oh, and I knew he liked the sight of naked female. Which was just as well. But if I was going up against him, and if I was going to convince him to take me to Earth, I needed more.

I walked slowly around the room, in the half light. It was roughly hexagonal and sparsely furnished with bed, sensi cabinet, bedside cabinet, the chair onto which I'd been tied, and a closet. Near the closet, I found a slide that looked like the old light-adjustment slides, not in use in modern houses on Earth for two centuries, but still present in historical buildings. I slid it upward slowly, and light came flooding into the room, revealing it just as I described, save for the colors. The colors made me question the sanity, or at least the balance of the creature who had chosen them.

Walls the deep red of arterial blood fought for notice with a bedspread the purple of a bruise. No piece of furniture was safe. The sensi cabinet, which, on Earth, came only in black and white, here rejoiced in a deep, dark, shining gold. The bedside cabinet, following the rule of no two things sharing a color, was bright, almost fluorescent green.

I was tempted to turn the light down again, but I didn't. Instead, I walked up to that closet on the wall and opened the door. The clothes inside . . . Well, they would make an aesthete weep. Or perhaps curl in fetal position in a dark corner, whimpering in horror. There was purple and gold, silver and bright sky blue, sick green and piss yellow—sometimes all in one garment.

Repressing a desire to vomit, I looked closer. Tunic and pants and pants and tunic. Fairly uniform clothing, except for the colors. Either wherever this person came from was far more regimented than Earth, or he was the type of male who favored simplicity over fashion. Although if that was the case, someone should clue him in on colors.

One suit stood apart from the others, having more elaborate tailoring. Instead of a tunic, it had a jacket, and the pants were tailored, rather than elastic to mold on the body. Dark red, with white piping at sleeves and pant legs, it had the feel of a uniform. Adding to this, the chest showed an insignia. I looked more closely at it and it was like nothing I'd ever seen. The insignia was shield-shaped, about the size of my palm. On it, embroidered, was a dark red apple, with a serpent coiled around it. Either the serpent had human dentition, or a human had taken a bite out of the apple before the serpent got there. Above the figure, the single word, Eden. Beneath the figure, in ancient French—which Father had forced me to learn—the words "Je Reviens" which meant "I return."

None of it made any sense. I knew Eden was the place humanity had started in one of the creation myths. But Father—and most other rulers of Earth—were not in the least religious. I'd learned all of it as myth and history, but I had a very foggy idea of what it meant. I knew it involved a serpent and an apple and the feeling started to grow on me that the whole thing was a joke I just couldn't get.

I closed the closet doors and looked over the rest of the room. The bed was neatly made. So whatever the bio-engineered freak was, he was neat. Good for him. Next, the bedside cabinet, which had a series of drawers. I walked around the bed to get there, and then I saw it . . .

It was one of those holos which is only visible from a certain angle, and it must proceed from a chip mounted on the top of the cabinet itself. It showed a family group. A very odd family group. There was an older male—probably Father—with normal issue human body and features. On his arm, and leaning slightly against him, was a female with the same eyes as my feline friend, only in dark blue. Both parents were dark haired and solidly built. Left from the male, stood a young woman who could have graced the halls of a Roman palace. Except her eyes, dark blue, were also cat-like. A normal Earth-like male with blond hair had his arm over her shoulders. Right from the female, presumably the mother, stood another young lady, this one looking much like her dad and perfectly Earth-normal. Behind her and to the side, his face visible, but his body only partly so, stood a dark haired gentleman with golden cat eyes. Right of this couple stood my acquaintance, in all his calico haired splendor. And from his arm hung a perfectly normal Earth-female, blond and petite, one of those self-contained perfectly groomed women who always made me feel like breaking something. Preferably something attached to them.

Um . . . So, the critter didn't reproduce by fission. And he had a family somewhere. Were any of them here?

Points against—he had said that he was alone and had the ship on autopilot. No, correction. He'd said he had the ship on autopilot. Didn't mean he was alone, only that little miss blonde couldn't pilot. And—points for someone else being aboard—that light slide went all the way up normal lighting, which cat-eyes didn't seem to enjoy or need.

Fine, I'd go on with caution. If there were two of them on board, it would make things harder. Not impossible, mind, not by a long shot, but harder.

Cautiously, I left the room and met with a choice of going to the right, which angled down into the ramp I'd taken coming in. Or to the left, which led around in a lazy, level circle. I went left. These were definitely the living quarters. Not particularly impressive, but far bigger than in the harvesters from Circum and denoting a long-distance ship. There was a small room, with an exercise machine so complex that I couldn't imagine how to use it, followed by a slightly larger fresher with the usual appliances and a cleaner with the options for water or vibro. Down the hall from that was a kitchen with a large automated cooker, a small table—affixed solidly to the floor—and two chairs, ditto. The cabinet revealed two plates, two cups and two sets of cutlery. So, perhaps blondie was around after all.

Further down the hall, a vibro closet for clothes, filled to almost capacity with dirty suits that no one had bothered to put in the small, efficient-looking vibro unit. The clothes smelled musty and contributed in no small measure to the smell of the ship. So . . . either the unit was broken—I lacked the time or interest to try it—or there was at least one very bad housekeeper aboard. A poke with my toe—as close as I wanted to get—seemed to indicate all the clothes were of the type and size of the clothing upstairs, and, truth be told, there seemed to be clothing only for one in the bedroom. So, maybe kitten was alone.

I went down the other way, till I came to the set of stairs I'd guessed existed somewhere. The stairs led to another floor, most of whose doors were marked with timeless radiation hazard sign. I knew that signs often lied, but I didn't feel foolhardy enough to try just yet. And besides, this seemed to be a small, intimate spaceship, so to whom would the signs lie?

While the level upstairs had been carpeted in bright red, plushy stuff, this level was all dimatough, polished and cold.

I came upon another staircase—with a ramp to the other side, which was odd. Was spaceship set for disabled access? Who was disabled? Blondie? And why? If bio-improvement were allowed and not forbidden as on Earth, why have disabilities?—and took it down, as silently as I could. It wasn't difficult to be silent, as steps were made of dimatough, solid as stone and immovable, and I was barefoot.

This level was carpeted again, and as I moved slowly clockwise, I could tell it was inhabited. It had that feel. I passed a broad, empty room full of monitors and what looked like blank gemboards. And then I came to the door of another broad room.

My calico haired friend was there, sitting, with his back to me—such his confidence—fully absorbed in something taking place on the screen in front of him.