Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (32 page)

"Help yourself, it's
wiidwayk
."

"No, thanks." To
Tatian, the herbal brew tasted like sugared turpentine, though the
indigenes seemed to drink it by the gallon.

"Suit yourself,"
Warreven said. Ȝe
unstoppered the jug and drank, then set it aside, saying, "I'm
sorry I'm late. I had--kind of a busy night and slept in."

Tatian wrinkled his
nose as the smell of the
wiidwayk
drifted toward him. It seemed as though it had been months since he'd
had a "busy night" of his own, since he'd broken with Prane Am,
who still hadn't gotten back to him about the interface box. "No
problem. I'm glad you're here, though. We need to get these
papers signed." He was pleased with the speed with which the terms
had fallen into place, once he'd confirmed his interest.

"I know." Warreven
wrapped his hands around the jug, looked at it for a long moment. "The
ghost ranas--on the way back from seeing Temelathe last
night, a band of them broke in the window of my rover. Fisk--the man
driving--got a nasty cut from the glass, and I ended up spending the
night in a Harborside bar. And then I had to go to the
mosstaas
with him--no luck there, of course, but at least the complaint was
filed."

"Jesus," Tatian
said. "Are you all right?"

Warreven smiled again.
"Fine--tired, but fine. And Fisk is all right, too. There was a
medic there, an off-worlder, who took care of him."

"Glad to hear it,"
Tatian said. A player, he added mentally, automatically, but that
doesn't make him any less competent.

"There is something
you should know," Warreven said. "Before we sign, I mean. The
Most Important Man wants me to, well, I suppose revise is the word,
our contract, and he's prepared to make it as hard as possible for
you to go on doing business here if I, if you, don't."

Tatian looked down at
his desktop, at the screens scattered beneath the opaque surface. The
profit projections lay on top, Mats' shipping report beside it--they
had export permits and starcrates for the most valuable goods, and
Mats was reporting that the indigenous Export Control Office was
asking only a few hundred concord dollars in extra "fees" to
process the remaining permits--and he shook his head slowly. "So
far, we haven't had any trouble. And we always pay our way. What's
the problem?"

"Reiss," Warreven
said. "Or, more precisely, this case of ours, Destany and 'Aukai."

Tatian snorted. After
all the effort he'd gone to--after the chances he was taking,
standing up to the IDCA, risking NAPD's hard-won position on
Hara--to be told that Warreven was backing out was too much.
Warreven tilted 3er head
to one side.

"I don't intend to
change my position," 3e
said. Ȝe laughed then,
sounding genuinely amused. "I don't like being threatened, and
anyway, it's not like I had any desire to run for
seraaliste
next year. I still want Reiss's statement, and as far as I'm
concerned it's still part of the price. But I thought I owed you
the warning."

"Why?"

Warreven blinked. "I
prefer to do business when people understand all the risks. Besides,
I like you."

"Thanks. But I meant,
why stand up to Temelathe, especially now? Why does this case matter
so much?" Tatian shrugged. "Look, I don't want to be rude, but
there are a couple of cases like this every year. Can't you wait
for the next one, if you want to make a point?"

Warreven looked away.
The thick braid of 3er
hair fell forward over 3er
shoulder, and 3e worried
at its end, twisting it between long fingers. The gesture seemed
strangely familiar, and then Tatian remembered the woman he had been
involved with on Joshua, long-limbed, long-haired Kaysa, who had done
just that whenever she was nervous about something. It was no wonder
he found Warreven attractive; 3e
shared some of her tricks of movement and gesture.

"The truth?" 3e
said, and let 3er braid
fall back into place. "A lot of reasons, I suppose. I'm tired of
waiting--after all, there's never going to be a good time, by
definition, right? And it's not right. All Destany wants is to be
with zher lover, that shouldn't be this difficult."

Tatian blinked,
startled to hear the off-world pronoun, however badly pronounced, and
Warreven sighed again.

"And on top of that,
I don't like 'Aukai. I've never liked 'Aukai. So I don't
want to give up on her case. And Tendlathe isn't Speaker yet, no
matter what he thinks he is. So, I'm telling you now, Reiss's
statement stays part of the bargain. If you don't want to take the
risk--if you can't afford to stay in the game--" Ȝe
spread 3er hands. "That's
your choice, of course."

But
you lose the harvest surplus
. Tatian looked down at his
screens again, at the numbers spread across the multiple files.
Masani had already given er opinion;
the final choice was, as always, up to him.
The
numbers are too good, the profit's too high to lose, he thought. If
it's a real problem,

e
can transfer me next year, that ought to satisfy Temelathe--and I
can't say I'd be that sorry to get off this crazy planet
.
. . . He stopped then, remembering Masani's words:
'I
spent eight local years explaining myself
,' e
had said, but it was more than that, more that no one, not the IDCA
and Col- Com, not the indigenes, had been able to see er
as erself. That was the other factor in
the equation, the joker in the pack. The system, trade, the whole
bizarre two-gendered Haran worldview, was simply wrong; Warreven was
right, the IDCA spent too much time trying to manage trade, and not
enough time facing the implications of the system they were trying to
control. If they really wanted to deal with HIVs, they could spend
more of their time and effort looking for whatever it was that gave
Harans their immunity. "I don't see any reason to change my
plans," he said. "Reiss has said he wants to testify. As
long as that holds true, I'll back him."

"Thanks,"
Warreven said softly, and then straightened, pushing the disks across
the desktop. "Shall we get on with it, then?"

Tatian nodded, and ran
his hand over the shadowscreen to bring the proper window to the
surface. At the same time, the blockwriter whined to life, and he
slipped the first disk into the reader's slot. There were no changes
to the contracts--they had been straightforward enough; it had only
been Reiss's testimony that made things complicated--but Warreven
read through the last drafts a final time, head bowed over 3er
screen. Then 3e nodded,
and scrawled 3er name
across the touchscreen, then added the codes that confirmed both 3er
identity and 3er authority
as
seraaliste
.
The blockwriter whined again, copying the file and then sealing the
disk, and Tatian allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was good to
have them signed--good not to have to keep making and unmaking his
decisions, good to be committed to this one. He said aloud, "I
understand some of your offering is already in port?"

Warreven nodded, tipped
3er head to one side, the
corners of 3er mouth
turning up in 3er familiar
almost smile. "I suppose you'd like to look at samples."

"I would."

"I thought you
might," Warreven said. "I spoke to our captain, he'll be
expecting us."

They took the company
rover over to Harborside, left it parked on Dock Row in an empty lot
beside one of the bars. It was open, and Warreven spoke briefly to
the manager, a thin, worried-looking woman, before coming back to
join Tatian. "She says it should be safe there, even with a company
mark."

Warreven sounded less
than certain, and Tatian sighed, thinking of his budget if he had to
get the rover repaired. Still, his predecessor had bought the rover
on-planet; it wouldn't be impossible to replace, he thought, and
turned to look across the roofs of the Embankment to the docks below.
The clouds had burned off, and the afternoon was unusually clear. Sea
and sky were blue, flecked here and there with white, and the pale
wood and stone of the Gran'quai itself seemed to glow in the harsh
sun- light. The market in the foreground was almost empty, only the
food sellers and a few vendors with carts snugged up to the power
points on the southern perimeter; the rest of the stalls were empty,
just painted white lines marking their divisions. The rana band was
still there, though, still dancing on its makeshift stage-- only two
drummers now, and a woman who held a flute--as was the audience.
That was larger than Tatian had remembered, maybe fifty or sixty
people, most of them wearing the bright ribbons that Warreven had
said meant they were members of the band. There were dockworkers on
the edge of the group, conspicuous in their faded, practical clothes,
and more were watching from the Gran'quai itself.

"I don't see the
mosstaas
," he
said aloud, and Warreven glanced back at him. A few strands of hair
had worked free of 3er
braid and clung damply to 3er
forehead.

"Over there," 3e
said, and pointed. "By the Customs House."

Tatian looked again and
saw three people--all men, by the look of them--standing in the
arched doorway. They didn't seem to be doing anything, but people
were giving them a wide berth, and then, there was the empty Market.
"Trouble?" he asked, and Warreven shrugged.

"I don't think so.
Come on."

Ȝe
led the way down a narrow street--no stairs this time, but the pitch
was still steep enough that Tatian wished there had been steps. They
crossed the open Market, the drumming, a steady, even beat that kept
the dancers moving in easy patterns, loud enough to drown
conversation. Tatian felt the looks as they passed, the shifts of
expression that registered an off-world presence, and for the first
time, he was aware of the weight of the ironwood dockers' hooks
that hung at people's belts. More people carried the tall sticks,
ordinary wood rather than the fire-tempered ironwood, wound with
multicolored ribbons:
Not
as deadly as the hooks
, Tatian thought,
but
effective enough in a brawl
. They seemed peaceful enough,
however, mostly caught up in the rhythm of the drums, but he was
still glad when they crossed the wide stone ledge that marked the
edge of the Market and came out onto the wood of the Gran'quai.

The dock was crowded,
the usual mix of sailors and dockers and factors, but not as busy,
most of the dockers standing idle, clustered around their machines or
beside the heaps of cargo. Halfway down the dock, hot air shimmered
over a crane's engine compartment, and a little further half a
dozen men and women wrestled a gangplank into place while the ship's
captain watched from the stern rail, dividing her attention between
the dockers and the ranas in the Market.

"We're down here,"
Warreven said. "Berth seven."

Tatian nodded, squinted
through the sun along the row of ships. In the strong light, the
colors bled together; it was hard to tell where one ship ended and
the next began. He shaded his eyes with one hand, picked out a shore
barge, broader beamed than the rest, riding high and so nearly empty,
and then a snub-nosed coaster, its wheelhouse painted with a crowing
cock. The image was startling, on Hara, and then he remembered that
one of the Captain's symbols was the rooster.

Suddenly, someone
shouted behind them, a high, wordless cry of anger, and Tatian swung
to see a fibreplast-walled cargo shay turning into the open space of
the Market. A second shay followed, pulling to a stop a dozen meters
from the first. Their cargo spaces were filled with dark-helmeted
mosstaas
, maybe
twenty men in each; the sun glinted dully from their fibreplast riot
shields. Tatian caught his breath--there weren't enough of them to
take on that crowd, not easily; people were going to get hurt-- and
then a single man, shoulders badged with the five-feathers badge of a
commander, swung himself down out of the lead shay. He started for
the makeshift stage, striding without haste across the Market, and
the crowd made way for him, sullen, conscious of the other
mosstaas
waiting in the shays behind him.

"God and the
spirits," Warreven said. "He's brave enough."

"Stupid," Tatian
said, and heard his voice tight and frightened. They were trapped on
the Gran'quai; if the
mosstaas
charged the crowd, they would have nowhere to run, except back onto
the quay itself. He heard engines behind him, glanced over his
shoulder, and saw smoke belching from the engine compartment of the
nearest coaster. Clearly, its captain had come to the same
conclusion, and was ready to cut and run. Another engine burped to
life, and then a third.

The
mosstaas
commander had reached the platform and swung himself up easily. The
drummers stopped, their song petering out into a last ragged flurry
of notes. The flute player stepped back a meter, giving him room, but
made no other move.

"You're in
violation of the laws governing political assemblies." The
mosstaas
commander's voice carried clearly: either the platform was miked,
Tatian thought, or he had brought his own loudhailer.

"We're not
political." That was the flute player, her voice as clear as the
commander's. "We're a rana, nothing more."

"I know her,"
Warreven said. "That's Faireigh--she's a chanter, one of the
important ones."

The
mosstaas
commander shook his head. "I don't see a singer. This is no rana,
people, either you go home quietly, or we'll disperse you
ourselves."

There were shouts from
the crowd, quickly quelled, the first instinct for defiance hushed by
more sensible neighbors. Faireigh glared at the
mosstaas
,
hands on hips, a big gesture, nicely calculated. Then, slowly, she
turned back to the microphone. "You hear the man, we're not a
rana--we're violating the assembly laws." There was a shout of
protest at that, and she lifted her hands, quieting the crowd with a
gesture. "I won't say you don't have a point, but we're not
the violent ones here. We don't want to see the innocent hurt, or
even threatened. We're willing to go--but since the man wants a
song, I'll sing us out, this time." She took a deep breath, began
before the
mosstaas
commander could protest, her clear voice cutting easily through the
confused noise.