The Sardonyx Net Part 9

"Do they all live together?" Rhani asked.

"No. But they get together all the time, to party, or to sing and dance, or to go on caravans. They get into three wagons and travel for months around the countryside."

Rhani said, "So many people -- I don't think I'd like it."

"Not everyone on Pellin likes it," he a.s.sured her. "People go what we call _bersk_. They get very grumpy and have to be alone for a time. I spent two years alone, off and on, in a cabin, gone _bersk_."

They strolled slowly toward the garden. "I gather," Dana said, "that family customs are different on Chabad."

"Rather," said Rhani dryly.

"You don't have children early."

"Nor in such quant.i.ties." She chuckled. "Ah, I lie. Imre and Aliza Kyneth have a brood of children, enough to fill a wagon. But they have been together thirty-five years, they are married, and their daughter, Margarite, the Kyneth heir, is only three years younger than I."

He wondered who these people were. Friends? Relatives? It made him curious about her life. She seemed gentle, decent, no monster. They came to a bare patch of earth, and Rhani knelt to touch the dusty ground. On the top of her head, her hair was more red than brown. She said, "This spot just soaks up water, and nothing ever grows." Standing, she brushed the grit from her fingers.

Dana saw again how much she looked like her brother. Like Zed, she was fair.

Fine blond hairs glinted on the backs of her hands and along her arms. Zed had bought him for her. Did she know? he wondered. Did she know what her brother was? He chanced a personal question. "Don't Yagos marry?"

"No. We never have. My mother, Isobel, is the only Yago to bear more than one child. I never knew my father, not even his name." She smiled. "Does that shock you?"

"Yes," he said.

"It's our custom. We bear late, too: my mother had me when she was fifty- five. Zed's my heir, until I have a child. If something were to happen to us both, the line reverts to cousins: the Diamos family. Lisa Yago had a brother.

It's a parallel line. There are scores of them. _We_ stay solitary: we give our strongest years to Chabad. Isobel was eighty when she died." For a moment she seemed to have forgotten Dana. Then she said, "I know your age. How old am I?"

"Thirty-five?"

"Thirty-six." Sunlight touched her; a cl.u.s.ter of small lines radiated from the outer corners of her eyes toward her hairline. "You guess well. Zed's two years younger." She c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "Do you hear something?"

Dana listened. "It's a bubble," he said, focusing on the sound. He shaded his eyes and found it. "There it is." "That's odd." It winked across the western sky, a traveling point of light.

"Could it be the mail bubble?"

"I suppose. It isn't due till tomorrow."

"It sounds like the one that overflew us yesterday."

Rhani looked surprised. "Can you tell that just from the sound?" The bubble was hurrying closer. As it neared the estate, it slowed almost to landing speed. It crossed the wall. Rhani waved. The bubble seemed to hover. A door slid open. An arm poked out. Something small and dark fell from the arm toward them.

It struck the gra.s.s-carpeted earth.

The bubble shot away at top speed.

"What -- "

Dana reacted on reflex. He seized Rhani around the waist. Yanking her off her feet, he threw her toward a clump of nearby trees. He saw her face, frightened and enraged. "Stay down!" She landed, rolling. He dove after her, and fell on top of her. She squirmed beneath him, fighting to be free. Her hand whipped his cheek. "I'm not -- " he started to say, but his voice was lost as the explosion slapped the earth. He clung to the gra.s.s, keeping Rhani beneath him. His ears blazed with noise. Something hit his head from behind. Rhani cried out. His head whirled, riotous with pain. He tried to warn her not to rise, to stay down, and then felt darkness wrap about him, incombatable as death.

*Chapter Five*

Thirteen days before the Auction, Abanat was _en fete_. Main Landingport was busy and noisy, jammed with gaily dressed tourists fighting their way off the shuttleships. As Zed brought the Yago bubble down to the landing strip, he wished with all his heart that he did not need to talk to Tam Orion. Without that need, he could have landed at Landingport East, which the city maintained for the exclusive use of the Four Families and their guests. But he did not want to speak with Tam on a com-line.

He avoided the tourists by entering the Flight Tower through the pilots'

door. Inside Communications, his way was barred by a hara.s.sed young operator.

"I'm sorry," he said, with weary courtesy, "but only Landingport personnel are authorized to enter the Tower."

Zed smiled at him, liking the youngster's looks. "You're new, aren't you?" Behind him, the other communications operators were chuckling.

"He can use anything he wants in the place," said one. "a.s.shole, that's Zed Yago."

The new man gulped and stepped aside. "Sorry, Commander."

Zed shrugged. "No harm done. Seen the chief?"

"In his office," someone called.

"Thanks. See you later."

As Zed left the room, he heard the new man saying, "I didn't even know the chief had an office."

The chief pilot's "office" was in the nose-cone-like cubbyhole at the top of the Flight Tower. All landingports, except the smallest, had Flight Towers.

In this one, the little s.p.a.ce was reachable on a private elevator. Zed used his I-disc to bring the elevator to him. In a moment, he was whisked up the spire.

He knocked on the only door. Tam Orion opened it himself. He beamed at Zed and stepped to one side to allow the Net commander into his hole. Zed slid in.

"Mind if I admire your view for awhile?"

Tam gestured at the scene below. It was truly breathtaking: Zed could see in all directions across Abanat; west to the ocean and the twin peaks of ice, east, north, and south to the city streets and the brown, bleak hills beyond.

"Got a bit of a complaint to make," Zed said casually. He glanced at Tam, who nodded. Zed often wondered how many years it had taken Tam to learn to signal when other people spoke to him, and if he had any idea how unnerving strangers found his silence.

"Yesterday, around noon, a two-person bubble overflew the estate. It was too bright to see registration markings. I thought I'd better mention it to you.

I figured it was probably a new pilot who doesn't know how foolhardy it is to fly at noon on this rock."

Tam nodded; tugging at an earlobe, he made a great effort. "Right." He drew a spiral in the air with an index finger. Zed knew from long a.s.sociation that the gesture referred to the Net.

"The trip was fine," he said. "No problems."

But Tam had ceased to notice him. He was leaning forward, watching a large, overladen bubble begin a wobbly descent. Zed wondered what he was telling the pilot. Tam Orion was a one-way telepath: he could send but not receive. It did not interfere with -- indeed, it helped -- his job, but it made him a freak among telepaths and non-telepaths alike. When Zed had first met him, he had been drinking himself to death in a Nexus bar. Zed had learned his story and, knowing himself what it was to be a freak, had decided to rescue him.

The bubble's path smoothed, and became a circle. Tam relaxed.

"Needs some work on that," Zed said. Tam nodded, tapping his fingers in brisk march time. The beat reminded Zed of the promise he'd given Rhani about Dana Ikoro's music.

"Tam," he said, "may I use your com-line link?"

Tam swept a hand toward the com-unit keyboard. Zed edged in front of it and sent instructions up to LandingPort Station to have Dana Ikoro's musictapes placed aboard the next Abanat-bound shuttle. "Thanks," he said. Tam grinned, bouncing lightly on his toes. Zed sidled away from the com-unit and gave the chief back his seat.

In the elevator, he wondered if his sister knew about Tam's talent. He could not remember telling her. All the Hypers knew, of course. The elevator halted at the foot of the spire. He crossed the Port. At the Gate, a crowd of tourists had made a knot around a tired-looking guard.

"But we have to have someone to carry our bags!" said one of them, waving at a pile of luggage.

"Carry them yourselves," the guard said.

The tourists all stared at him. "I thought this planet had people who did that for you," someone said.

"Carry bags? I think that's ridiculous."

"Sorry," said the guard, not sounding sorry at all. "That's the rule.

Slaves are not admitted to any portion of the Abanat Landingport."

"But what are we to do?" said a plaintive woman.

The guard gazed at her, infinitely bored. "You can hire porters." He indicated the line of porters resting against a wall. The tourists moved away, grumbling and talking among themselves. Zed brushed pa.s.sed them. Outside the Landingport, he walked a few blocks, then stepped onto a movalong which would carry him to the Hyper district.

As the slideway traveled south and east, he tried to ignore the tourists.

But it was difficult not to notice them; they were everywhere around him. They jammed the movalongs, chattering about Chabad, about the Auction, about the Four Families, of which they knew very little, and about each other. Some of them were naked; most, coming as they did from worlds with G-type suns, wore the skimpiest clothes they owned. Many of them would end up in the Abanat clinics, where the medics would treat them for sunstroke, sunburn, acute dehydration, and melanomas.

Zed reached the Hyper district with relief. Here there were no tourists; Hypers were notoriously intolerant of being gawked at. Quietly, he threaded his way through winding streets to The Green Dancer. At the door, he paused. The bar buzzed softly with talk. A few faces slanted to look at him, and the rhythm of the talk dipped and steadied. He recognized some of them: they were from the Net. He wondered if they had been talking about him.

Jo Leiakanawa rose out of a clump of people. He walked to her. She nodded at him. "Zed-ka."

"Jo." He jerked his thumb toward an empty table. "Sit with me." She followed him and sat. "Are you surprised to see me?"

"I am," she said, imperturbably. "I thought you were going home." Her smooth, heavy face showed no surprise.

Amber MacLean, the bartender and part-owner of the bar, strolled over.

"Whaddya want?"

"Dry wine," Zed said. He did not bother to reach for his credit disc: by custom, the first drink of the day in The Dancer was free. The sunlit room was restful. Over the bar hung a badly painted portrait of a Verdian dancing; the dance was supposed to be a ritual in their religion. It was called, Zed remembered, the _K'm'ta_. Amber brought his drink and he ordered one for Jo.

Amber brought it, took his credit disc, and sauntered back behind the bar.

Zed said, "I came to ask for your help, Jo."

Jo sipped her wine; her great hand dwarfed the gla.s.s. "How may I help you, Zed-ka?"

"You may not be able to. The situation is rather delicate. I don't know if you are acquainted with Sherrix Esbah."

"I've heard the name."

"She seems to have dropped out of sight, or at least, out of reach of Family Yago." He explained briefly. "My sister, I think, fears that Sherrix has been arrested by the Hype cops. I think it more likely that she decided to take an indefinite vacation. She may even have left Chabad. I'd like to know."

Jo folded her hands around her gla.s.s. "I can inquire," she said. "When I need to, how may I reach you?"

Zed smiled. He had expected her to say yes, but still ... "Write a letter. We'll be in Abanat, at the house on Founders' Green, in about eight days."

Jo nodded. "Clear, Zed-ka."

Amber came to the table. "You want to eat," she said. It was not a question.

Zed nodded. "Put it on my credit disc." Amber went behind the bar. A meal in The Green Dancer consisted of broiled fish and seaweed, nothing else. She brought the navigator triple portions.

The bar grew more crowded toward noon. The rhythm of conversation grew more complex. Two Verdians came in, arms around each other. Zed wondered idly what s.e.x they were. Some porters arrived from Port, half-drunk and looking for a fight; Amber drove them out vituperatively before one could start.

Just after noon Zed returned to the Landingport. Automatically, he checked the displays; the shuttleship traffic was moving normally. Suddenly, he caught sight of his own name on the pilots' message board. "_ZED YAGO_," said the blinking lights, "_CONTACT COMMUNICATIONS, INFO URGENT SOONEST_."

He went quickly to Communications. The back of his neck felt chilled. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the babble. "You have a message for me?"

The new operator handed him a piece of paper. It said, "_ESTATE BOMBED, R. Y.

UNHURT, ONE SLAVE HURT, A.P. CALLED_." The signature at the foot of the paper was that of Tam Orion.

Zed swallowed. His fingers closed hard on the paper. When he looked up, he realized that the operators were staring at him. The new one, who hadn't known him, was backing away, and Zed wondered what his face looked like. He took a deep breath and brought himself around. "I'm taking the bubble out," he said.

"Clear the flight." The operator jumped. Zed whirled and pushed to the door, not even waiting for them to answer. As he ran toward his bubble, someone moved to intercept him, calling his name. Ignoring it, he palmed the door open, swung into his seat, and punched the craft to life. Someone hammered on the bubble's skin. Realizing that it might be a further message from the estate, he opened the door. A woman stood there, wearing the uniform of a shuttleship crew member. She held out a box.

"Commander, you asked for this," she said. "We brought it."

Zed took it and tossed it on the seat beside him. "Thanks," he said. The door slammed shut; the woman barely had time to yank back her hand. She skipped out of the way as Zed sent the bubblecraft hurtling up.

As he brought the bubble in, low over the estate, Zed saw a dark rift cutting through the green, like a wound in the earth. Rage rose in his chest; a hand seemed to squeeze his heart. He forced it back, telling it, _Later, later_, and, with steady hands, dropped the bubble through the hangar's open roof to its place.

Leaping from it, he hurried to the house. Rhani met him at the kitchen door. There were gel bandages on both her arms. He put his hands lightly on her shoulders, afraid to touch her. "I'm all right," she said. She laid her lips against his. "I told Binkie to put it in the message. I'm all right."

Indeed, she looked fine, except for the bandages. He touched them.

"What's this?"

"Grazes," she said cheerfully. "No worse than the times I fell out of trees as a child."

"What happened?"