Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (16 page)

"She works for you,"
the shorter man said flatly, not bothering to hide his disbelief.

People were watching
them, Tatian realized suddenly, watching from a distance, kept at bay
by the
mosstaas
'
truncheons and the certainty of a holstered pistol, but watching
nonetheless. He allowed his eyes to slide sideways, scanning the
faces, but couldn't read the expressions. Some would be disgusted,
certainly, seeing this as trade, one more sexual transaction; maybe a
few would be radicals, glad to see the
mosstaas
humiliated, but most of them were silent, wary, and he didn't know
what they thought. And it didn't matter, not at the moment, so long
as no one else interfered: Reiss had started this, it was up to him
to get them both, all, out of it. "That's right," he said. "Works for
our botanist, Derebought Stane."
And
I must remember to tell Derry that, when we get home
. "Is
there a problem?" He gave the words bite, let his hand, still
holding the money, sink a little, and the taller militiaman reached
hastily for it.

"Not at all, mir, I
apologize for the inconvenience. I'm sure there's been some
mistake--but she'd better be more careful next time."

"I'll see to it,"
Tatian said, grim-voiced, and the
mosstaas
turned away. He looked at the fem, then at Reiss. Reiss gave him his
best smile.

"Thanks,
baas
--"

Tatian shook his head.
"Later. I have an appointment at the port. Bring your
friend--charmed to meet you, serram--and you can take her home on
your way back to the office. We'll discuss it when you get back."

Straight: (Hara) one
of the nine sexual preferences generally recognized by Concord
culture; denotes a person who prefers to be intimate with persons of
one of the two "opposite" genders.

5

Mhyre Tatian

The fem was very quiet on the
ride to the starport, perched uncomfortably in the space meant for
cargo, but Tatian was very aware of %er presence, %e meant trouble,
%er very presence meant trouble, both with the Old Dame, if--when--
%e heard about it, and quite possibly with the local authorities. If
Reiss had just looked the other way.... It was hard to think that
with the fem %erself sitting behind him--the
mosstaas
were notorious for the efficiency of their confessional
techniques--and he sighed and looked sideways out the jigg's
scratched windscreen.

They had passed the
city limits--unofficial, marked only by the way the buildings
stopped--and the land had gone from the low scrub of the coastline
to the long hills of the high plains. He had seen the transition a
hundred times before, but he caught his breath yet again as the jigg
topped the first big rise, and he could look out across the
green-and-gold land. It was mostly flaxen and flowergrass, the flaxen
distinguishable by the larger seedheads that bowed the heavy stalks
into graceful arcs, but here and there he could see the bright blue
patches that were daybeans in flower, or the low, dark green clumps
of blue pomme bushes. This close to Bonemarche, the land was flagged
for the local gatherers, the bright pennants, each one marked with
the name and symbol of a Stiller
mesnie
,
flickering in the steady breeze. Hara's crops could not, generally
speaking, be cultivated successfully--they seemed interdependent in
ways the indigenes had never had the population nor the need to
determine--but the
mesnie
s
were careful of their land and jealous of their privileges. There
were well-worn paths through the best acreage, and as the jigg topped
the next rise, Tatian could see a gathering party clustered around a
wood-bodied draisine, sorting blue pomme for the markets. Redbirds,
Hara's largest land animal, circled overhead, and he was not
surprised to see that netting had been spread over some of the
best-looking bushes. The Traditionalists argued against the practice,
saying that netted bushes had a poorer crop the following year, but
most
mesnie
s did
it anyway, rotating from stand to stand. Bluepomme was too much of a
staple crop, salable to other indigenesas well as off-world, not to
take the chance.

"Did you get what you
needed?" Reiss asked at last, raising his voice to carry over the
whine of the jigg's motor and the rush of the transports in the
fast lane.

"Partly."

"Starli's good
people."

"I still need parts,"
Tatian said. "Anyone you'd recommend at the port?"

Reiss shrugged, not
taking his hands from the steering bar. "You're better connected
there than I am. I usually end up buying from Guinard's."

Guinard's boasted of
being the only tech supply house on Hara with multiple licenses; it
was correspondingly expensive. Tatian sighed again. That meant he had
the choice of paying Guinard's prices or talking to Prane Am, and
neither was particularly appealing. For a moment, he wondered if
there was any point in talking to Eshe Isabon or Shraga Arsidy, but
dismissed the thought almost as soon as it had formed. All
off-worlders guarded their sources of supply jealously; even his
closest friends would be reluctant to reveal their company's
secrets to an outsider. Am, at least, was her own agent.

The starport itself lay
on the flat land of the first great plateau: barren land, by Haran
standard, good for nothing but the ubiquitous drift-grass. The
indigenes mixed its fibers into their bricks, strengthening the
coarse clay. Stiller was rich in drift-grass, if nothing else. They
had easily been able to spare the land for the port, and in any case,
Tatian thought, they had been well paid. He could see the towers of
the docking cradles over the roofs of the support buildings, top
lights blazing red and white even in the daytime. He counted the reds
as the jigg turned onto the approach lane: seven shuttles loading,
which meant at least seven bulk carriers in orbit overhead. It was
definitely getting close to Midsummer, and the first big deliveries
from the
mesnie
s;
he only hoped he hadn't left his repair too long.

Reiss pulled the jigg
to a stop in the shade of the Central Administration building. "Do
you want me to wait?" he asked.

Tatian shook his head.
"No. Take your friend home, and then tell Derry what's happened.
Tell her to put some sort of plausible excuse on record, just in case
someone decides to check up on us."

"But you already paid
the
mosstaas
,"
the fem said, sounding startled, and then looked as though %e wished
%e hadn't spoken.

"I'm more concerned
about IDCA," Tatian said, still looking at Reiss. The younger man
nodded, his expression for once somewhat chastened. "I want it
taken care of, Reiss."

"I will,
baas
,"
the younger man said. At his gesture, the fem scrambled forward into
the passenger seat, and he touched the throttle again. The jigg
pulled decorously away from the curb, and Tatian stepped into the
sudden cool of the Administration building.

Prane Am worked for the
Port Authority itself, in the larger of the two repair facilities.
Rather than use the maze of tunnels that connected the buildings,
Tatian cut across the almost empty staging lot, blinking again at the
heat and the gathering clouds. In a few weeks, this lot and the dozen
loading bays it serviced would be filled to capacity, and draisines
and shays would be backed up on the access roads, waiting their turn
to unload. At the moment, though, only about half the bays were open;
shays were drawn up to the platforms where off-worlders and indigenes
directed the machines that moved the cargo. He surveyed them with a
professional eye--Kerendach had been doing a steady out-of-season
business for a while now, so their presence was to be expected, but
what DTS was doing with a cargo that size this time of year was
beyond him, and he made a mental note to check up on them once he got
back to the office.

He was sweating freely
by the time he reached Repair One, and he thought he heard a distant
rumble of thunder: the afternoon storms were arriving as usual. He
ducked through the narrow doorway, pushing hard against the stiff
seal, and stopped just inside to get his bearings. For once, all the
internal partitions had been folded back, opening up the full central
volume. In that space, a shuttle hung, suspended from a metal cradle,
dwarfing even the biggest cargo movers, its one extended wing almost
touching the wall above his head. The exoskeletons that crawled
across its surfaces and along the cradles looked almost human-sized
by comparison. There were three of them in use, clustered around the
shuttle's steering jets. He stared up at them, shading his eyes
against the cold glare of the working lights, and wondered which was
Am. Before he could find an internal systems port, however, a speaker
crackled on the wall behind him.

"Tatian? Is that
you?"

"Hello, Am." He
waited, not quite sure of his welcome. She had sounded cheerful
enough, but the speaker distorted emotion.

"Hang on a minute,
I'm due break. I'll be right down."

Tatian allowed himself
a small sigh of relief and waited while one of the exoskeletons
withdrew itself along a support beam. It clicked into a port at the
top of a main pillar, and a small figure emerged from its center. She
climbed down the long ladder and came to join him, stopping only to
enter a code in the shop computer.

"It's good to see
you again," she said, and jerked her head toward the side door. "Let's
go out."

Tatian followed her
through the smaller door into the alley that ran between Repair One
and the technician's shed next door. It was shaded but still hot,
the air heavy with the oncoming rain. The dirt-drifted paving was
spotted with stains of spilled coffee and
aram
cuds, and the air smelled of ozone and fuel cells and the heady spice
of the drift-grass.

"I haven't seen you
in ages," she said. "How're things?"

Tatian shrugged, but
couldn't repress a smile. He had half-forgotten, in the
unpleasantness of their last quarrel, just how attractive she was.
The close-fitting worksuit outlined the ample curves of hips and
breasts; the tool belt just accentuated her tiny waist. She saw him
looking and smiled back, appreciative and rueful all at once.

"Busy," he said. "Things
have been busy. And I hope I'm not taking you away from
anything."

"Nothing important,"
Am answered, and looked back at the half-open door. "They had a
couple jets jam when they were coming in, and the owner's freaking.
But, hey, it pays the rent."

"Freelance job?"
Tatian asked. Am, like most of the port technicians, rented time on
the company equipment to do outside jobs, jobs that would otherwise
be at the bottom of the company priority lists.

Am made a rocking
gesture with one hand, and Tatian nodded. So-so, sort-of, the motion
said, and that just meant that the job had been placed through the
port's gray market. Someone offered someone extra overtime, or a
favor, or something--he himself had made that bargain often
enough--and the job queue got rearranged.

"Speaking of which,"
Am said, and smiled. "No offense, Tatian, but what brings you out
here?"

Tatian laughed. "I
need to buy parts. I've got a problem with the interface box, and
it looks like it'll be easier just to replace it."

Am nodded again, her
mobile face abruptly remote and serious. It was the look she always
had when she was working, or thinking about work, and it had never
failed to evoke an odd mix of lust and jealousy. It figured she had
taken up with a mem, he thought bitterly. They would at least share
that obsession.

"I can get you a
box," Am said, after a moment. "But--you have Inomatas, right?"

"Yes."

"That I can't do,
at least not if I'm remembering your prejudices right. I can get
you something secondhand, I heard there's a Mark Three Inomata
available right now, or I can get you a new, up-to-the-minute clone.
Take your pick."

"That's not much of
a choice," Tatian said.

Am shrugged. "I know
you hate clones. At least there're no HIVs on Hara."

"There are plenty in
the port," Tatian answered. That was another reason the
pharmaceuticals spent so much time and effort on Hara: Hara was the
only human-settled world that had no native HIV strain, and the
off-world strains seemed to find no toe-hold in the indigenous
population. Unfortunately, whatever it was that protected the
indigenes--and no one had isolated it yet--had absolutely no effect
on the resident off-worlders.

"For a druggist,
you're pretty phobic about used parts," Am said.

"That's not the
issue," Tatian said, and bit off what could easily escalate into a
too-familiar quarrel. Am had a technician's contempt for the softer
sciences. "You said there was a Mark Three, a real Inomata. How
would it work with the system I've got? And how much are they
asking for it?"

"I can get it for
about two-fifty, three hundred cd," Am answered. "But that
doesn't include installation."

"I've got someone
who'll take care of that."

Am nodded. "There
shouldn't be any problem tying it into your present system--you
were running the Three-Eight, right?"

"Right." Trust her
to remember that, if nothing else, Tatian thought.

"You may find it a
little slower, but you'll get used to that."

"How much slower?"
Tatian asked.

"The difference is in
nanoseconds, but sometimes it feels perceptibly different, mainly
when large blocks of data are involved." Am shrugged again. "I
think a lot of it's psychological."