The Ninth Circle (22 page)

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Authors: R. M. Meluch

BOOK: The Ninth Circle
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With the
Villa Grande
secured—for certain this time—the brothers scavenged the ship for anything useful.
“They have personal fields,” said Galeo.
“Ours are better,” said Leo.
The brothers were wearing PFs from
Bagheera’s
stores. The Xerxes’ defensive equipment was best of the moment.
The smugglers’ personal fields had only held against
Bagheera’
s energy barrier because Leo had dialed the power way down in order to make the smugglers feel invincible and grow careless.
“They have food!” said Orissus.
“Huzzah. Need that.”
The Xerxes hadn’t been stocked for an interstellar journey when Nox jacked it. They needed food stores if they were ever to get away from the Phoenix star system.
“We have booze!” Faunus sang.
“Great,” said Galeo, sounding sour. “I got nothing. Cargo hold is empty. They must have ditched their load before Interpol flagged them down.”
“No,” Nox said. “They
parked
their cargo somewhere.”
“All the same. How are we supposed to find it?”
Space was a vast place in which to hide things. You could hide mountain ranges in that haystack.
“Interpol’s not allowed to search a ship like we can.”
Leo took a data drill to the
Villa Grande
’s computer banks. He reported in short order, “I have their drop coordinates.”
Eager to get out of the smuggler ship, the brothers stacked the food and alcohol stores on lifts and hovered them back to their Xerxes. Nox told Faunus what to do with his password at the air lock.
As the brothers crossed into
Bagheera
’s antechamber, they paused there, amazed.
The chamber stood pristine and gleaming, its walls smooth, the air cool and sweet, the Persian rug’s vivid scarlets, golds, and ambers unsullied. Crystal fixtures sparkled.
Pallas had gotten the Xerxes to run its clean-up routine.
Orissus called to the air, “
Bagheera
! Good kitty!”
“Command not understood,” said the ship.
“That’s all right,
Bags
,” said Orissus. “You’re all right.”
While the others stored the food and cleaned the blood off themselves and their clothes, Pallas piloted
Bagheera
toward the site of the smugglers’ dropped cargo.
They circled wide of the drop site for a watchful while in full stealth mode.
Finally Pallas arrowed the ship in, snagged the smugglers’ container and jumped to FTL.
Safe at speed, they reeled the container into the Xerxes’ cargo bay. They scanned for booby traps and let the container come up to temperature before venturing into the hold to rip it open.
“Drugs,” said Nicanor, disgusted, opening carton after carton.
“Anything medicinal?” Pallas asked.
“No.”
“Space it,” said Nicanor. “We may be murderers and thieves, but I am not peddling crap to make money.”
“I’m not peddling anything at all,” said Nox. “Were they trafficking anything useful? Any weapons in there?”
“No weapons,” said Galeo. “Only the ones they were carrying.”
“Screw.” This was not the haul Nox was hoping for. It was not worth the carnage. He wanted weapons. The small-arms lockers on the Xerxes were empty. What arms the Xerxes used to carry had apparently followed the ambassador and his security guards to the Italian embassy.
“Anything anyone want in here?” Galeo asked, ready to close the container.
“Throw it all out,” said Nicanor.
“What about the ship?” Orissus asked.
“Throw it out,” said Nicanor.
“Keep it,” said Nox. “We can use it.”
“For
what?
” asked Nicanor.
“Bait,” said Nox.
“Just what do you think you’re going to attract with that kind of lure?” said Nicanor.
“Something with better guns.”
 
Glenn got up and walked out onto the meadow before dawn.
Patrick had gone somewhere. He returned carrying what looked like two giant green acorns, big as cantaloupes.
He passed one to Glenn. “I heard the guys talking about these back at camp. They’re okay to eat. They taste like strange bananas.”
“I don’t like bananas,” said Glenn.
She felt the inside of her giant soft green acorn sloshing.
“And you’re going to hate these,” said Patrick. “But they’re nutritious.”
He took hold of the stem of his acorn and pulled the top off. It tore away easily. He lifted his soft shell in a toast. “Cheers.”
Glenn opened hers.
Stringy liquid lay in the shell like something coagulating. Banana stench wrinkled her nose.
She held her breath and bolted it down. Swallowed through strings and membranes and liquid that was in turns thick and thin. When she came up for air, she tried to keep a stoic expression. Her eyes watered. She wanted to push her mouth out of her face.
Patrick passed the last piece of beef jerky to her as a chaser. They’d been conserving it for as long as they could.
A curious fox came over, sniffing. The nose worked over the acorns, then sniffed Glenn’s lips. The fox hummed.
Patrick translated, “Funny.”
She should know that one by now. But Glenn couldn’t pick out the right note for “funny” any more than a fox could say “boo.”
Glenn looked loathingly at her acorn shell. “Funny, as in this is bad meat?”
“No. Just funny.”
The foxes breakfasted on insectoids, unwary birds, and small creatures that lived in the grass.
One fox, the one called Banshee, caught a scent in the ground and launched into a sudden frenzied digging. Dirt flew like sawdust behind a spinning blade. Whatever it was got snapped up before Glenn could see it. Banshee smacked his mouth open and shut, savoring the aftertaste, and other foxes sniffed the hole for crumbs.
Patrick had figured out why the mammoths shied away from the foxes. “Foxes like to play,” he told Glenn. “Mammoths don’t. I bet feathers are fun.”
“And mammoths don’t think so,” Glenn guessed.
“I bet not.”
Glenn could just picture Brat and Tanner frolicking through curtains of waving mammoth plumage, dodging enormous feet and tusks.
Patrick found a hard spongy green fruit, and tried to teach the foxes the game of fetch.
Foxes only did half of a fetch. They raced each other to apprehend the flying fruit, and the winner destroyed it.
The day turned hot. The fox pack trekked through the forest to a place where the stream broadened and the water fanned out in wide sheets as it dropped over a smooth shale slope.
Foxes jumped, slid, and torpedoed down the waterfall.
Glenn sat on the bank, watching the foxes play. The female sitting next to her stood up and clawed at her own belly. Glenn thought maybe her navel itched. But the tight swirl of fur in her belly wasn’t a navel. It turned out to be an opening. The she-fox widened it, reached in with a paw, and pulled out a fuzzy loaf.
A pouch. She had a marsupial pouch. The female passed the fuzzy loaf to her mate.
Glenn couldn’t tell if the little loaf was a baby or a box lunch, because
he
tucked it into a pouch of his own while
she
went ottering down the shale slide.
“Patrick! Patrick!” Glenn pointed between the male and female foxes. “What did they just do?”
“Passed the baby,” said Patrick. He sat down beside her.
“Males have pouches?”
Patrick nodded. “He’s got working nipples in there. About a week after conception, the infants—Sandy says there’re two of them—they crawl out of Mama’s love canal, and these two little peanuts climb up into her pouch and latch onto a nipple.” He made a peanut sized space between his thumb and forefinger. “Usually only one of them survives. Mama can hand off to Papa when, well, she wants to go swimming.”
“But what makes
him
lactate?”
“Sandy thinks it’s the smell of the baby. You can tell a male who’s carrying by who’s sniffing his navel.”
“I’ve seen that,” said Glenn. Then, “Wait. They only passed one baby.” Patrick had just told her they conceived in twos. “Did they lose one?”
“They always lose one,” said Patrick. “Pretty early on, when the babies are knee high to a dachshund, one infant bullies the other to death in the pouch.”
Oh
. “How awful and sad,” she said, then added, “That’s probably a human take on it.”
“The parents
care
,” Patrick said, equivocal. “A little anyway. They dig a grave for the loser. These guys can haul dirt like a badger on sprox. It’s a deep grave. The parents curl up the dead infant and place it gently, but there aren’t any grave gifts, no blanket, none of that. In the recordings I’ve seen, they look sad. They hold their ears down, their tails down, their muzzles down. But just as soon as the grave is covered and the rocks are piled on, they get over it.”
“Rocks?” said Glenn. “So the parents do mark the grave?”
“Sandy doesn’t think the stones are grave markers. They’re more to keep any carrion eaters out. The parents don’t show resentment toward the survivor.”
“Patrick? Can you call her Dr. Minyas? Unless you’re talking about a beach, that name makes my teeth itch.” Glenn pulled her splinter gun from behind her back and passed it to Patrick. “Hold the baby,” she said and took a turn sliding down the waterfall.
 
Nox heard a barefoot pacing through the ship’s night. Not his. It was Pallas this time, haunted by the smuggler ship, which was still docked to the Xerxes, dragging along like a rotting dead limb.
Nox left his sleep compartment and gave Pallas the handheld game. Pallas tried to refuse. “I didn’t throw up on your boots,” Pallas said.
Nox pushed the device at him. “Either sleep or play the
coiens
game.”
The Xerxes sounded a warning, waking everyone. The soft voice of
Bagheera
advised of a plot on their stern.
Their shadow was Interpol ship 2186, closing in, its red flashers going full brightness.
Nox called, “Wake up, my brothers. We go to the fight. Bay! Oh, Bay!”
14
 
G
LENN WOKE UP when the leaves walked over her.
The leaves traveled with their shiny green sides up, their ciliate side down. Hundreds of stubby roots acted as caterpillar legs as the leaves moved in herds, foliage on a quest for a tree—or for sun or shade or water. No matter, Glenn and Patrick were sleeping on their highway.
Glenn sat up. The leaves scurried away.
Patrick foraged for breakfast. He stripped red berries off a thorny bush and offered them to Glenn. “These are okay to eat.”

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