The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) (15 page)

Gretch returned sometime past midnight, moving slow in the cool night air. She nuzzled my shoulder and snorted warmly against my cheek. “We're still friends, aren't we?” she seemed to ask.

I wiped my cheek and patted her. “Sure we are.”

* * *

There is a stillness which runs deeper than the quiet of wild country, a silence which speaks of times before beginnings and after endings.

It was dark when we entered the deserted streets of Leone.

Shuttles sat cold in the lit spaceport, cloaked in mist upon their pads. Shops and businesses, were closed. Even the all-night diner windows looked darkly out. Street globes hovered to cast yellow haloes in that flat, tomb light just before dawn.

Gretch jumped as a beer can bounced hollowly down the street, a wind-driven bell, tolling.

Ask not… It tolls for thee.

I dismounted at the pond in the center of town while Gretch rested, and picked up a child's doll which lay discarded in grass. Plastiskin arms and legs flexed at my touch. Lifeless blue eyes snapped open.

“Momma!” the voice box bleated.

Gretch lowered her head and hissed.

I stared toward the Chablis Sea, smelled salt and listened to waves shatter on cold gray stones and cliffs. I felt cold and gray myself. I could not summon the courage to ride to those cliffs and see what the waters held.

I slumped down against the trunk of a flowering peach tree rooted in Earth sod. Pink petals dusted homegrown grass and sweetened the pungent smell with a honey aroma.
If you did it, Kor, I'll come looking for you. And somehow I'll find a way to kill you.
It was something like a prayer. You never really knew if anybody was listening. I buried my face in the doll's soft dress.

“Mother!”

At first I thought it was the doll.

“Mother, that man has my Mary Belle,” a child's voice cried shrilly. “Make him give it back!”

I looked up, saw a sallow-complexioned girl leave her mother's side. “It's mine!”

“What?” I remembered the doll. “Oh.” I extended it.

She ran forward, grabbed it from my hand and hurried back to her mother, a plump woman in pink shorts and top.

“I . . . I'm sorry,” I told the mother. “I thought…” I stood up and glanced again toward the ocean. “Where
is
everybody?”

She hooked the child's collar with a finger and backed away as Gretch snuffled. Her thinly plucked eyebrows tightened into a frown. “Don't you know there's a law against bringing wild animals into town, especially unleased?” Her strident voice was overkill.

“She doesn't bite,” I lied. “Look, where are all the people?”

“How should I know? Probably home in bed. That's where I'd be if Sally Anne Beth here hadn't lost her damned doll last night.” She nudged the girl hard with the back of her hand. “Next time it stays lost!”

Sally winced. She rocked the doll and murmured to it, shaking her blonde curls. “It's not easy bringing up a kid all by yourself,” she admonished the doll. “Especially this one here.”

“Mind your manners, Sally,” the woman said too lightly and brushed back frizzy orange hair. Her eyes roved my body. “What's your name, tag?”

“Jules Rammis.”

“Sounds familiar. You running for office or something?”

I smiled. “Uh, no.”

Her grin broadened. “Yeah, you oughta smile more often. You married, Jules?”

Good question. By now, maybe not. “Yes.”

“Ah, the cute ones always are!”

Was it possible, just possible,
I suddenly thought as she took a step closer, that things were not as they appeared? Could these two have been left by Kor as Judas goats?

“I've never seen the town so deserted,” I ventured, moving to Gretch's left side. It's an old Earth tradition, mounting from the left, a real carryover.

Her laugh was as sharp as Gretch's spikes. “Well, it ain't exactly the Xanadu Pleasure Dome of the Eros Belt, and I can't remember too many good Saturday nights on this backwater mud ball. Can you?”

I shrugged.

“So what can you expect at five o'clock on a Sunday morning?” She waved toward the bank clock across the street. “Parades and fanfare? Even the goddamn aliens learned to sleep in on weekends!” She laughed again.

“Sunday morning?” I grinned.

“Where you been living, blue eyes, out in the wilds or something?” The rose tattooed on her sagging cheek was textured with wrinkles. “You want fanfare, tag? Come on over to my place. It ain't far.” She batted heavy black lashes and brushed peach blossoms off my shoulders. I glanced at her daughter. The kid hugged her doll and rocked it with a faraway look in her eyes. “I'll give you fanfare and Saturday nights,” she whispered, “an' stars and stripes if you want them, Peaches.”

I backed into Gretch, patted her neck to soothe her, and then glanced at the child.

“The kid's got her own room. Chantilly.”

“What?” I asked.

“My name. Chantilly.” She winked, then glanced at Gretch. “You really like that reptile, don't you, Peaches?”

“Look, lady, I don't have any greens left. Uh, no credcount either.”

She chewed her lip and studied me, crafty eyes narrowed.

“No credcount?” There was lipstick on her teeth. “You wouldn't be squatshitting me, would you?”

I've got to see Hallarin!
“No, lady. If I had some creds I'd give them to you to take care of your kid.” I mounted Gretch and turned her toward the stables. Sure! I was the one to preach about taking care of kids. I looked back.

“Ma,” I heard the girl say, “is he one of those perverts you're always telling me about?”

“Yeah, Sally, he don't like sex either. Not with women, anyway.”

I stabled Gretch, dropped off the medical specimens at the Institute, and dumped the animal plague problem into their capable laps. I asked some friends in Biology if they could take care of the sick sanctuary animals. It would give them a chance to do research, too. A few agreed. We do the best we can.

I walked to Chief Hallarin's house. Perhaps Kor wasn't as powerful as he'd like us to believe, but he wasn't to be trifled with, either. He still held three…dammit, maybe four humans.

Where was Jack?

I couldn't call Annie. Suppose Jack hadn't returned? I'd scare the hell out of her, and she was pregnant.

I quickened my pace.

When I reached Hallarin's I was reluctant to ring the bell. It wasn't just that I disliked the man, or that returning without Christine might still leave the McGrath case open. It was Hallarin's talent for making the absolute truth, told in simple honesty, seem like a story you fabricated for personal gain, until he had you believing yourself that it was all pure fiction, and frantically searching your mind to find good reasons for these absurd fables. His art was in his facial expressions, or lack thereof.

This was the man I had to convince that Loranths existed, that at least one of them held humans as slave hunters, and that this alien just might force all of Leone to march blindly into the sea with his tel power.

Sure!

I didn't like his house either. It was just as squat, intimidating and suspicious looking, with its small curtained windows and intrusion-warning devices, as the crote whose lair it was.

The woman who answered the bell was gray in hair, eyes, and skin. She had the pinched look of someone recuperating from a debilitating illness. Marriage to the Big H?

“Good morning,” I said to her stare. “I'm sorry to bother you so early, but is Hall - uh, Police Chief Robert Hallarin at home? It's very important.”

A marble statue might've shown more response. “Yes, it is,” she finally said.

I lifted brows.

“It's very early,” she said coolly.

I sighed inwardly. He'd found his mate, all right.

“I know. But this is very urgent.” I waited, shifted feet, gave her my best lopsided grin, calculated to crumble the resolve of any woman under eighty. She must've been older than she looked. “Could you please tell him Jules Rammis is here?”

Light kindled behind those hard eyes. “Come in.” She nodded toward a door. “He's in his study.”

I thanked her and knocked on the polished door.

“Come on in,” Hallarin grated.

I entered the room. A smell of musty fabrics. Old furniture. The heavy drapes were drawn. My footsteps were silent on plush carpet. Somewhere a clock ticked softly, as though not to disturb the silence.

And Guns.

Mounted in glass wall cases. Rifles on racks. Holos of antique projectile weapons. Sharp-shooting awards. A flatprint of Hallarin, more hair, less paunch, still looking grim though, standing with one foot on a dead snuffler. I came up short before the mounted head of a silver desert slaotee. And those are marbles that were his eyes. Next to the slaotee the head of a fanged brawn, hunter and hunted. Just as musty now as the room.

On the mantle was an old family portrait: The Big H staring stonily at the camera. Misses H, fuller-figured, smiling. Two young boys and a girl. I picked up an anniversary card.

Happy Fortieth, Mom and Dad. Your loving daughter, Martha.

None from the boys?

“Make yourself right at home.”

I turned quickly and replaced the card.

Hallarin wiped his mouth with a napkin and scowled, though by now it was more his natural expression. Or maybe he didn't like the breakfast he'd been eating.

I walked up to him. “Hallarin, did Jack contact you?”

He got up and took a cigar from the box on a table, then bit off the end. “Jack who?”

“Your police sergeant! Did he contact you?”

“Sergeant Cole's on vacation. Said he was going fishing.” He sat down, lit the cigar and didn't offer me a chair.

Fishing? Or bait himself, already snapped up.
“Has Annie heard from him?” I asked.

“Where'd you see Cole?”

“I was hoping you'd seen him. He was heading to Leone on Gretch. But Gretch came back to the sanctuary without him. It was too soon. You'd better send out search and rescue. Jack could be out there, hurt, somewhere between the sanctuary and here. There are packs of hunting brauns roaming at night.”

“What kind of story are you fabricating this time, Rammis? I told you, he's on vacation.”

“Would it kill you to send out search and rescue? Just in case I might be telling the truth.”

“Yeah. It would. Since the tag said he was taking vacation time.”

“He lied to you, Hallarin. He went to the Saynes' dig site to look for me.”

“And you figure I'm going to take the word of a jungle juicer over my police sergeant.”

I rubbed my forehead. Was my good buddy vacationing in the Loranth's den? I'd try a different tactic. “I found Christine.” I sat down. “I mean, I know where she is.”

His heavy jowls hollowed as he sucked the cigar to life. He flicked me a glance over it.

“Thad Denning and a tag named Stan are with her,” I said.

Hallarin sat back and watched me with those blue-chip eyes. I had a strong feeling he'd rather play his favorite power game than actually get at the truth.

“You know those safety plaques hanging in your office?” I said.

Blue smoke hazed freckles on his bare forehead as he waited.

“Well, you're going to have to work real hard to earn this year's addition.”

“How's that, Rammis?”

He's a great listener, Hallarin. His attention never wavered for the half hour or so that I talked. Unfortunately, the events I related, from the time I'd left his office after the barroom brawl with Jack, sounded ridiculous even to me. But I persevered. The truth was going to set me free, free of the McGrath indictment.

“So that's all of it,” I finally told him and sat back myself. “That's what we're up against. Now do you think you could find it in your heart to send search and rescue for one of your own?”

Hallarin glanced at his watch.

I stood up. “I couldn't bring Christine and the others back with me, they're Kor's zombies now. But you know where to find them, and the Institute's got experts on alien communication.” I bit my lower lip. “I'll give the Institute a report on the Loranth, and then I'll try to contact a balanced member of the race myself and see what grievances they have against Terrans, and maybe the other Leone people. And then I'm going home. That means Earth.”

“That's kind of you, but not necessary.”

I shrugged. “Then good luck.” I headed for the door. It was daylight now, and I wanted to retrace my steps and search for Jack one more time, on the off chance that I'd missed him. But somehow, I knew I'd never make it to the door. I never do with Hallarin.

“Sit down,” he said.

“We had a deal,” I told him. “I
more
than fulfilled my part of it. Now I've got a ship to catch,” I lied.

He pressed the holo remote and the stage lit up with Sunday's Cape News. “Sit down, it's time for the morning news. Don't you want to know what's going on in the world?”

“I just told you what's going on in this world.”

He threw me a look. “Now it's time for the real news. Sit down.”

I thought of Sye Kor as I returned to the chair and wondered how Hallarin would use tel power if he possessed it. I figured a few more minutes wouldn't make much of a difference in my search for Jack. I had little hope of finding him anyway.

The newscaster announced Leone meetings, the current rate of inflation according to Inter-sell, another rocket launch carrying active Institute experiments aloft for high altitude magnetospheric studies. A small holo of the rocket lifted and disappeared. The rumbling died away. The odor of burnt fuel from the image settings was sucked back into the olfactory unit.

I'd forgotten how realistic holos could be. The film switched to a fire at the Cavanough's house on Scott Street. I felt warmth on my knees. There had never been much local news in Cape Leone besides the Institute's projects. That'll change soon.

“And now the Inspirational Slice of Life segment of our program,” a host with blue hair announced.

I stared at my hands and stopped listening. My bruised feet were throbbing in the boots again. I'd have to apply more salve. Some on the burn on my thigh, too. And those rake marks from Trump's -“

“…Thad Denning!” the host said, “who found Ms. Saynes lost in the Tyrian Desert, far from her campsite.”