Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 75

"Sure thing. But not by blood. They're right careful not to intermarry or anything that would show up on the computers. Even though they've got people in Central Data. Say a Paraden family company wants to open a colony somewhere but they're down the list. Somehow those other applications get lost, or something's found wrong with 'em. Complaints against a Paraden subsidiary get lost real easy, too."

"Are other families involved?" Sa.s.sinak noticed the sudden shifting of eyes. She waited. Finally the leader nodded.

"There have been. Not all the big families. The Chinese stay out of it; they don't need it. But a few smaller ones, mostly in transport. Any that gets in a little ways has to stay in for the whole trip. They don't like whistleblowers, the Parchandri. Things happen." The leader took a deep breath. "You're getting into stuff I can't answer unless I know . . . something more. You say you were a slave, and Fleet got you out so you joined Fleet..."

"That's right."

"Well, did you ever hear, while you were a slave, of a ... a kind of group? People that. . . knew things?"

Sa.s.sinak nodded. "Samizdat," she said very softly.

The leader's tense face relaxed slightly.

"I'll chance it." A broad, strong hand reached out to shake hers in a firm grip. "I'm Cons. That was my wife who speared you with the spotlight." He grinned, a suddenly mischievous grin. "Did I fool you?"

"Fool me?"

"With all this padding. We find it useful to disguise our body outlines. I've been listed in official reports as .

233.

a 'slightly obese middle-aged woman of medium stature.' " He had reached under his outer coverall to remove layers of rag stuffing, suddenly looking many pounds lighter and much more masculine. Off came a wig that Sa.s.sinak realized looked just like those in the costume shop, revealing a balding pate. "They don't worry as much about stray women in the tunnels. Although you, a Fleet commander, may give them a heart attack."

"I hope to," said Sa.s.sinak. She wasn't sure what to make of someone who cheerfully pretended to be the opposite s.e.x. "But I'm a little . . . confused."

Coris chuckled. "Why wouldn't you be? Sit over here and have some of our delicious native cuisine and exquisite wine, and we'll talk about it."

He led her to an empty pile of blankets and gestured. lt She and Aygar sat. She was glad to let her aching legs relax.

"Delicious native cuisine" turned out to be a nearly tasteless cream-colored mush. "Straight from the food proceessors," someone explained. "Much easier to lib-[. erate before they put the flavorings or texture in ... nasty stuff, but nutritious." The wine was water, tapped from a water main and tepid, but drinkable.

"Let's hear your side of it," suggested Coris.

Sa.s.sinak swallowed the last of the mush she'd been ^ given and took a swallow of water to clear her throat. Around her, the ragged band had settled down, relaxed but alert.

"What if they are seaching for us?" she asked. "Shouldn't we ... ?"

He waved his hand, dismissing the problem.

They are looking, of course, but they haven't pa.s.sed any of our sensors. And we do have scouts out. Go on."

Sa.s.sinak gave a concise report on what had happened .from the arrival of Coromell's message. Highly irregular, but she judged it necessary. If she died down here, not that she intended to, someone had to know the $ruth. They listened attentively, not interrupting, until told about entering the pleasure-house.

234.

"You went to Vanlis?" That sounded both surprised and angry.

"I didn't know what it was," said Sa.s.sinak, hoping that didn't sound critical. "It was the nearest door, and she helped us."

She told about that, about the woman's reaction to Fleur's name. She felt the p.r.i.c.kling tension of this group's reaction. But no one said anything so she went on with the story until the group had "caught" them.

"Trouble, trouble, trouble," muttered Coris, now feu-less c.o.c.ky.

"Sorry."

And she was, though she felt much better now that the tasteless food, the water and the short rest had done their work. She glanced at Aygar, who was picking moodily at the bandage on his face. He seemed to be over his fright.

"You're like a thread sewing together things we hoped they'd never connect," Jemi said softly. Coris's wife was a thin blonde. She looked older than either Sa.s.sinak or Coris, but it might be only worry. "Eklarik's shop . . . Varis's place . . . Fleur . . . Samizdat . . , they aren't stupid, you know. They'll put it together fast enough when they have time to think. I hope Vans has warned Fleur. Otherwise ..."

She didn't need to finish that. Sa.s.sinak shivered. She could feel their initial interest fading now into a haze of fear and hostility. She had endangered their precarious existence. It was all so stupid. She had suspected trouble, hadn't she? She had known better than to go haring off into the unknown to meet some Admiral whose staff insisted he was off hunting. And because she'd been a fool, she and Aygar would die, and these people, who had already suffered enough, would die. And her ship? A vision of the Zaid-Dayan as it hung in orbit, clean and powerful, filled her eyes with tears for a moment. NO.

She was not going to die down here, not going to let the Paradens and Parchandris of the universe get away with their vicious schemes. She was supposed to be a Fleet commander, by Kipling's corns, and it was about .

235.

time she started acting like it. The old familiar routines seemed to waken her mind as she referred to them, tike tights coming on in a dark ship, compartment by compartment. Status report: resources: personnel: equipment: enemy situation . . .

She was not aware of her spine straightening until she saw the effect in their faces. They were staring at her as if she had suddenly appeared in her white battle armor instead of the stained civilian coverall. Their response heightened her excitement.

"Well, then," she said, the confidence in her voice ringing through the chamber. "We'd better sew up their shrouds first."

Chapter Fifteen.

Dupaynil stared at the bulkhead across from his bunk, and thought that luck was highly overrated. Human s.p.a.ce aboard the Grand Luck meant this tiny stateroom, adjoining plumbing that made the Claw's spartan head look and feel like a spa, and one small bare chamber he could use for eating, exercise, and what recreation his own mind provided. Most people thought the Seti had no sense of humor; he disagreed. The Commissioner's comments about the humbleness with which he would travel argued for a keen sense of irony, at the least.

He had had a brief and unhelpful interview with the Amba.s.sador. The Fleet attache lurking in the background of that interview had looked unbearably smug. The Amba.s.sador saw no reason why he should undertake to have Fleet messages transmitted to FedCentral when Dupaynil was headed there himself. He saw no reason why redundancy might be advisable. Was Dupaynil suggesting that the Seti, allies within the Federation, might interfere with Dupaynil's own delivery of those messages? That would be a grave accusation, one which he would not advise Dupaynil to put in writing. And of course Dupaynil could not have a final 236.

237.

interview with Panis. Quite against the Amba.s.sador's advice, that precipitous young man had already departed, destination unknown.

It occurred to Dupaynil that this Amba.s.sador, of all the human diplomats, surely had to be in the pay of the conspirators. He could not be that stupid. Looking again, at the florid Bice and blurred eyes, he was not sure. He glanced at the Fleet attache and intercepted a knowing look to the Amba.s.sador's private secretary. So. The Seti probably supplied the drugs, which his own staff fed him, to keep him so safely docile.

And I thought my troubles were over, Dupaynil thought, making his final very correct bow and withdrawing to pack his kit for the long trip. Not surprisingly, the Fleet attache insisted that anything Dupaynil asked for was unavailable.

And now he had the leisure to reflect on the Amba.s.sador's possible slow poisoning while the Seti ship bore him to an unknown destination; he did not believe for a moment they were really headed for FedCentral. He forced himself to get up and move into the little exercise s.p.a.ce. Whatever was coming, he might as well be fit for it. He stripped off the dress uniform that courtesy demanded and went through the exercises recommended for all Fleet officers. Designed, as he recalled, by a Fleet marine sergeant-major who had retired and become a consultant for adventure films. There were only so many ways you could twist, bend, and stretch. He had worked up a sweat when the intercom burped at him.

"Du-paay-nil. Prepare for inspection by Safety Officer."

Of course they'd chosen this time. Dupaynil smiled sweetly into the shiny lens of the surveillance video, and finished with a double-tuck-roll that took him back into the minute sanitation cabinet. No shower, of course. A blast of hot air, then fine grit, then hot air again. Had he been covered with scales, like a proper Hz ... Seti, they'd have been polished. As a human, he felt sticky and gritty and altogether unclean. He would come off this ship smelling like a derelict from the gutter of an unimproved frontier world ... no doubt their intent.

238.

He had his uniform almost fastened when the hatch to his compartment swung back, and a large Seti snout intruded. They timed it so well. No matter when he took exercise or was using the sanitary faculties, they announced an inspection. No matter how quickly he tried to dress, they always arrived before he was finished. He found it curious that they didn't interrupt meals or sleep, but he appreciated even that minimal courtesy.

"Aaahh . . . Commaanderrr ..." The Safety Officer had a slightly off-center gap between front teeth. Dupaynil could now recognize it as an individual. "Iss necesssary that airrr tesst be con-duc-ted."

They did this every few inspections, supposedly to be sure that his pressure suit would work. It meant a miserable struggle into the thing, and a hot sweaty interval while they sucked the air out of his quarters and the suit ballooned around him. Dupaynil reached into the narrow recess and pulled out the suit. Not his choice of suits but, the Fleet attache had a.s.sured him with a smile, the only one in his size at the emba.s.sy. At least it had held up, so far, with only one minor leak, easily patched.

He pushed and wriggled his way into it, aware of the Seti's amus.e.m.e.nt. Seti faced the uncertainties of s.p.a.ce travel without pressure suits. While they had such suits for those who might need to work on the outer surface of a ship, they did not stock suits for the whole crew. It made sense. Most of the time when a Fleet vessel lost hull integrity, the crew never made it into their suits anyway. And of course a Seti would have been disgraced for insisting on a way of cheating chance. Still, Dupaynil was glad to have a suit, even though the Seti considered it another example of human inferiority.

He dogged the helmet down snugly and checked the seals of the seam that ran from throat to crotch. The suit had an internal com unit which allowed him to speak, or more often listen, to the Seti. This time, he heard the Safety Officer's instructions with amazement.

"Come to the bridge?"

Humans were never invited to the bridge of Seti .

239.

ships. No human had ever seen the navigational devices by which the gamblers of the universe convinced themselves they were being obedient to chance while keeping shipping schedules.

"At once."

Dupaynil followed, sweating and grunting. He had not had to put on his suit for this. Seti kept breathable, if smelly, atmosphere in their ships. No doubt they intended to make him look even more ridiculous. He had heard, repeatedly, what the Seti thought of human upright posture. It occurred to him that they might have insisted on his suit simply to spare themselves the indignity of a human's smell When he reached the bridge, it bore no resemblance whatever to that of a Fleet ship of the same ma.s.s. It was a triangular chamber-room for the tails, he realized-with cushioned walls and thickly carpeted floor, not at all shiplike. Two Seti, one with the glittering neck-ring and tail ornament that he had been told signified ship's captain, were crouched over a small, circular, polished table, tossing many-sided dice, while one standing in the remaining corner recited what seemed to be a list of unrelated numbers. He felt cramped between the table and the hatch that had admitted him and then slammed behind him. The Seti ignored Dupaynil and he ignored that, finally trying to figure out what kind of game they were playing.

The dice landed with one face fiat up, horizontal. Three dice at a time, usually, but occasionally only two. He didn't recognize the markings From where he stood, he could see three or four faces of each die and he amused himself trying to figure out what the squiggles meant. Green here, with a kind of tail going down. All three dice had this on the top face for a moment. Purple blotch, red square-in-square, a yellow blotch, two blue dots. The dice rose and fell, bouncing slightly, then coming to stillness. Green squiggles again, and on the other faces purple, blue dots, more red squares-in-squares.

The Seti calling out numbers paused through two throws. Dupaynil's attention slid from the dice to the 240.

Seti, wondering what the purple blotch on the napkinlike cloth around his neck meant. When he looked back at the board, the green squiggles were on top again.

Surely that couldn't be right, and surely they didn't just want an observer for the captain's nightly gambling spree. He watched the dice closely. In another two throws, he was sure of it. They were loaded, as surely as any set of dice that ever cheated some poor innocent in a dockside bar. Time after time the green squiggles came up on top. So why throw them? His mind wandered. Probably this wasn't the bridge at all. Some bored Seti officers had just wanted to bait their captive human. Then a fourth die joined the group in the air and down came three green squiggles and one purple blotch.

Three Seti heads swung his way, toothy jaws slightly open. He shivered, in his suit. If that was bad luck, and they thought he had brought it ...

"Ahhh! Humann!" The captain's voice, through his comunit, had only the usual Seti accent. "It wa.s.s explained to me that you were ssent here by very sspecial luck. Ssso your luck continuess. As the luck fallss, you sshall be told, though it makess danger to usss."

Dupaynil could not bow. The suit gave him no room for it.

"Ill.u.s.trious bringer of luck," he began, for that was part of the captain's t.i.tle. "If chance favors your wish to share precious knowledge, my luck is great indeed."

"Indeed!" The captain reared back on ma.s.sive hind legs, and snapped its jaws. A sign of amus.e.m.e.nt, Dupaynil remembered from handbooks. Sometimes species-specific. "Well, o lucky one, we ssshall sssee how you call your chance when you know all. We ssshall arrive even sssooner than you thought. And we shall arrive in forccce."

The Seti could not mean that the way a human would, Dupaynil thought. Surely not . . .

"Do you gra.s.ssp the flying ring of truth from tossssed baubles?" the Seti asked. Dupaynil tried to remember what that meant, but the Seti captain went on. "You ssshall sssee the ruin of your unlucky admiral, he who .

241.

tossed your life against the wissdom of our Sek, in the person of the Commissioner of Commerce, and you shall see the ruin of your Fleet. . . and of the Federation itself, and all the verminous races who prize certainty over Holy Luck. Sssee it from the flagship, as you would say, of our fleet, invincible unless chance changes. And then, o human, we ssshall enjoy your flesh, flavored with the smoke of defeat." The captain's ma.s.sive snout b.u.mped the screen of Dupaynil's helmet.

From the frying pan of Sa.s.sinak's displeasure, to the fire of the conspirators on Claw, he had come to the Seti furnace. If this was luck, he would take absolute determinism from now on. It couldn't be worse. He hoped the Seti could not detect the trickles of sweat down his back. He could smell his own fear, a depressing stench. He tried for a tone of unconcern.

"How can you be certain of this destination by throwing dice?" Not real thought, but the first words that came into his mouth, idle curiosity.

"Ahhh ..." The captain's tail slapped the floor gently, and its tail ornament jingled. "Not plea.s.s or argumentss, but ssense. As chance favors, I sshall answer."

His explanation of the proceedings made the land of oblique sense Dupaynil expected from aliens. Chance was holy, and only those who dared fate deserved respect, but the amount of risk inherent in each endeavor determined the degree of additional risk which the Seti felt compelled to add by throwing dice or using random number generators. "The Glorious Chaos," as they named that indeterminate state in which ships traveled or seemed to travel fester than light, had sufficient uncertainty to require no a.s.sistance. So they tossed loaded dice, as a token of respect, and to allow the G.o.ds of chance to interfere if they were determined.

"War, as well," the captain continued, "has its own uncertainties, so that within the field of battle, a worthy commander may be guided by its own great wisdom and intuition. Occasionally one will resort to the dice or the throwing sticks, a gesture of courage all respect, but the more parts to the battle, the less likely. But you ..." A toothy grin did not rea.s.sure Dupaynil at all. "You 242.

were another matter and judged sufficiently certain of unsuccess without our chance to place you in the toss. As your luck held, in the unmatched dice, so now I offer to chaos this chance for you to thwart us. 1 told you our plan, and you may ask what you will. You will not return to your quarters."

Dupaynil fought down a vision of himself as Seti snack-food. If he could ask questions, he would ask many questions.

"Is this venture a chance occurrence, or has some change in Federation policy prompted it?"

The captain uttered a wordless roar, then went into a long disjointed tirade about the Federation allies. Heavy-worlder humans, as victims of forced genetic manipulation, roused some sympathy in the Seti. Besides, a few heavyworlders had shown die proper att.i.tude by daring feats of chance: entering a Hall of Dispute through the Door of Honor, for instance. Some humans were gamblers: entrepreneurs, willing to risk whole fortunes on the chance of a mining claim, or colonial venture. That the Seti could respect. The Paradens, for instance, deserved to lay eggs. (Dupaynil could imagine what the elegant Paraden ladies would think of that.) But the ma.s.s of humans craved security. Born slaves, they deserved the outward condition of it.

As for the allied aliens . . . The captain spat something that Dupaynil was glad he could not smell. Cowardly Wefts, the shifters who would not dare the limits of any shape . . . Bronthin, with their insistence on mathematical limits to chaos and chance, their preference for statistical a.n.a.lyses. Ryxi, who were unworthy to be egglayers since they not only s.e.xed their un-hatched chicks, but performed surgical procedures through the sh.e.l.l. The Seti had the decency, the captain snarled, to let their eggs hatch as they would and take the consequences. The Ssli, who insisted on giving up their mobile larval form to become sessile, bound to one location throughout life: a refusal to dare change.

Dupaynil opened his mouth to say that Ssli anch.o.r.ed to warships in s.p.a.ce could hardly be considered "bound to one location," remembered that not everyone knew .

243.

about the Ssli in Fleet ships and instead asked, "And the Thek?"

This time the captain's tail hit the floor so hard its ornament shattered.

"Thek!" it roared. "Disgusting lumps of geometrical regularity. Undifferentiated. Choiceless, chanceless, obscene ..." The ranting went on in a Seti dialect Dupaynil could not begin to follow. Finally it ran down and gave Dupaynil a sour glance. "It is my good fortune that you will flavor my stew, miserable one, for you irritate me extremely. Leave at once."

He had no chance to leave under his own power. At some point, the captain must have called for Seti guards because they grabbed the arms of his suit and towed him along strange corridors much faster than he could have gone by himself.

When they finally stopped and released his arms, he was crammed in a smallish chamber with an a.s.sortment of aliens. The Bronthin took up the most cubage, its chunky horselike body and heavy head impossible to compress. A couple of Lethi were stuck together like the large yellow burrs which they greatly resembled. A Ryxi huddled in one corner, fluffing and flattening its feathers, and in a translucent tank, two Ssli larvae flutter-kicked from end to end. On one wall, a viewscreen displayed sickening swirls of violent color: the best an exterior monitor could do in FTL s.p.a.ce. Beside it, a fairly obvious dial gave the pressure of various atmospheric components. Breathable, but not pleasant.

So the Seti had collected an array of alien observers to gloat over, had they? Dupaynil wondered who the human would have been, if he and Panis had not shown up. Certainly not the Fleet attache. Probably the Amba.s.sador. Had they all been told what was going on? He cracked the seal of his helmet cautiously and sniffed. A tang of sulfur, a bit too humid and warm and clearly no shower in sight. With an internal sigh, he took off his helmet and attempted a greeting to his new companions.

No one answered. The Ryxi offered a gaping beak, which Dupaynil remembered from a training manual 244.

meant something like "Forget it, I don't want to talk to you unless you've got the money." He had never learned Bronthin (no human ever had) and the tubby blue mathematicians preferred equations to any other form of discourse anyway. Lethi had no audible communications mode: they talked to each other in chemical packages and could not interface with a biolink until they formed a clump of at least eight. That left the Ssli larvae, who, without a biolink., also had no way of communicating. In feet, no one was sure how intelligent the larvae actually were. They were in the Fleet Academy to learn navigational theory but Dupaynil had never heard of one communicating with an instructor.