Galactic Center - Furious Gulf Part 13

165.

"There are plenty of Bishops, a batch on most planets. Aces and Treys on others, Blues and Golds on more. I'm--""Most planets?" Killeen asked incredulously. "You mean we share our name?""Genes, too." Andro didn't look up. He tapped the ends of his fingers on his display-hand. Toby could see the image change in response, yielding more doc.u.ments."You mean we got relatives on other places?" Jocelyn demanded."That was the strategy of the Hunker Down." Andro sniffed with disdain. "Don't you people teach history any more?"The Bishops all looked at each other, startled. Toby said wonderingly, "We thought we were the only Bishops. Our line went back to the Chandeliers, some said.""Oh, you do. But a whole Family line, we couldn't risk getting it wiped out. So we had to spread it around. Say, you got any p.a.w.ns with you?"Killeen blinked. "Naysay. They were obliterated by mechs."

"See, there's the risk. Too bad, though--I'm half-p.a.w.n myself."

"You ?" Toby could not conceal his amazement. "A short little--"

"We kept to the original specs, kid," Andro's mouth twisted with sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt. "We respect tradition, in case you hadn't noticed.You ground-pounder types always pump yourselves up, never fails."

"Those who didn't, the mechs got," Killeen said soberly."Yeasay," Cermo put in. "We needed power, sensos, carryin' ma.s.s, techstuff. Adds weight."Andro squinted at Cermo. "As is obvious. Nothing to be ashamed of, I a.s.sure you. Most Families go that way when mech compet.i.tion gets bad.

Hard for them to shed the ma.s.s once they get here, though. And they get nasty on their perpetual diets.""There are other Families here?" Killeen asked, his skewed mouth giving away his puzzlement."We got them all--even the original templates, somewhere.""The first. Bishops?" Jocelyn asked, awed. "From the Chandeliers?"

"Ummm? Oh, of course--somewhere. And somewhen." Andro stopped tapping his fingers, read his palm, and slapped his hands together with a sharp crack. When he took them apart, the screen was gone and his right hand looked just like the other one, lined and dirty. "That's it. There's some kind of hold-for-arrival message for you. Somebody expected you might show up somewhen.""From who?" Killeen demanded."I don't know. I'm an inspector, not a library."

"Where can we find this message?"

"Have to see the Regency."

"Let's go, then."He eyed them shrewdly. "You're sure you don't have a license?"

Killeen's eyes narrowed. "Little one, we have just come through--"

166."I know what you've come through--if you're who you say you are.Fresh meat, just in from the colonies.""Colonies?" Jocelyn was aghast. "We were the last fragments, holdingout on Snowglade until--""I know," Andro said, "but it's a story I've heard before. Last off yourplanet. Point is, you're the best ones. You got here."Jocelyn said, "All the other Families, the mechs got.""Just what I said. We can use people who know how to scramble fortheir supper. Or so goes the official yam-weaving. Me, I wonder if we gottoo many already, never mind--""Why all this about a license?" Toby asked mildly.

"Kid, you'd be shocked how many traders try to dress up all country*.

and dumb, come through here, think they can just slide by the tax man."F.

Andro eyed him. "They pump .themselves with bioemergents, so they look.i: big for a day or two. Then they have to pee it all away. Ummm, you're the smallest here...""I'm no phony," Toby said, offended."Um. Suppose not. You don't look clever enough to fake it, either."Toby bristled. "Hey, now--""I'll pa.s.s you, then." Andro wrinkled his nose, seeming to reach a['.

decision, nodding to himself. "You can go through. But n.o.body else fromyour s.h.i.+p until you've seen the Regency--that's the role.""Why?" Killeen's jaw muscles bunched, visibly containing his irrita tion. "My crew wants out. All of them. We've been cooped up for yearsin--""Think the Regency wants a mob of club-footed innocents dumpedinto their city?" Andro waved a hand at the gray walls around them.[!'"'.

"This is a city?" Toby asked, thinking there must be a language' '/.

roblem. Cities in the old days had been elegant, airy, places of sweetusic and luminescence.i Andro chuckled. "No, kid, this is a reception cell. I'll show you thei!

city."

4.

A Day in Court It didn't look like much of a city. The Land of Dwarves, Toby had christened it before they had walked two blocks.Even in a crowd he could see far into the distance, over the heads of everybody. Stubby people, hurrying everywhere. Yakking, yelling, laughing, and all in a noisy rush. In the hazy distance was more of the same.

Stubby buildings, gray and brown and black. Stubby trees, even. On Snowglade they would have been bushes."What is this place?" Cermo sent on comm.From Andro's lack of reaction Toby gathered that he could not intercept their Family line. Killeen sent a quick signal that it was all right to talk this way, so Toby said, "And who are these runts?"Jocelyn sent a puzzled note. "They're sure not the high-minded types I expected.""Yeasay," Killeen said. "When we found humans here, I expected them to be from the Chandeliers. Or the Great Epoch, even. The heroic ones, people who could build in the sky, fought well against mechs, explored True Center."Cermo said, "I thought the Great Epoch was when we got to True Center.""n.o.body knows, really," Killeen said. "Certainly no Aspect we carry remembers. It was 'way back, must have been done by humans with powers we can't even guess. I sure want to meet them."Toby caught a curious plaintive note in his father's voice, but the others gave no sign of registering it. They all marched along, giving no outward sign of this conversation, gleeful at putting one over on the dwarves. Then he felt s.h.i.+bo's Personality rise in him, welcome though uncalled.

They are rats in bow ties. But useful.

168."Huh?" Toby felt the strong thread of her, ivory slivers shooting through his sensorium, masking the gray city.An ancient term I learned from Zeno. The ancients wore constrictions about their throats to signify att.i.tudes. A "bow tie" stood for a certain rakish tilt. Andro's arrogance belies his true station.

He is swaggering before the country know-nothings he takes us to be.Toby relayed this to the others and they murmured in startled agreement.

Killeen nodded. "That fits. He's trying to impress us in some way.

This place"--a sweeping arm--"pretty fine, sure, but it's a shack compared with what the Chandelier folk could do."

"Could be," Jocelyn begrudged. "But where are the Chandelier Families?

How come we've got to deal with Andro?"

Toby wished Quath was here to help. Part of him wanted to click his heels, happy that his father had done it, found the age-old goal of Family Bishop. The other part wondered what was really going on. Certainly this wasn't the grand homecoming they'd all expected. He could read the barely suppressed disappointment in everyone's eyes.

He wanted to say something to Killeen, to reach across the chasm that had slowly yawned wider through these years of flight, of the Cap'ncy. But flaming eyes made it hard to have a heart-to-heart.

Andro chattered on about the sights. He seemed to think they were hot stuff, prodigious monuments. Brown munic.i.p.al buildings with heavy, ornate columns framing the tiny doors. Factories with no windows and no identifiable purpose. Squat black apartment buildings with puny balconies that seemed like stuck-on afterthoughts.

i Toby sent to Cermo, I'll allow as how this is richer tha,n, the Citadel, ure. But the Low Arcology ruins, they impressed me more.

Cermo replied, "I dunno. Have the feelin' we're missin' something here. I mean, I still don't figure how this place can even be here."

At last they reached a pyramid-shaped ma.s.s of gray, s.h.i.+ny stone that looked a little more important. Their destination.

Andro led them into the rock-ribbed entranceway with a deep bow that was probably sarcastic. Toby gave him a curt nod, stepped into the foyer beyond, followed Andro across the marble floor--and smacked his forehead on the doorway. He suppressed a grunt. Andro's mouth barely twitched in a smirk that was probably lost on everyone else. Rubbing his forehead, Toby followed the rest into a room with rows of hard benches.

A lone figure dominated a battered wooden desk at the far end. The desk was discolored, chipped, its legs cracked. Toby supposed it was a "relic of office," such as the ancient chairs used by elders back in Citadel Bishop.

"Fresh batch, Andro?" the squat, leathery woman at the desk asked.

She wore a black robe and looked as if she had weathered a hard night.

169."The last ones you brought me are still debating the fine points of import-export law in jail."

"How was I to know they could get those sniff-dream tablets through our filters?" Andro said plaintively, spreading his hands. "That's the engineers'

fault."

"A wise craftsman doesn't blame his tools," the woman said, lazily sliding her eyes over the Bishops. The sight did not seem to excite much interest; she yawned.

"These beeries are a simple case," Andro said, stepping forward in a deferential manner. He pressed his right palm against a small jet-black area on the woman's worn wooden desk. A breeeeet! seemed to signify data transmission from his personal files. "They're a little hazy about where they're from, but they don't seem bright enough to be hiding any contra."

"Ummm, you're probably right there," the woman said, looking them up and down. Out of the corner of his eye Toby saw Cermo open his mouth angrily, then close it again after a stern glance from Killeen.

After the learning-food, Andro had given them all language slip-chips to insert in their spinal ports--complaining all the while about how antique their spinal insert collars were. Toby's chip was working well already, even though Andro had scornfully referred to the slip-chip wafers as "dumb-downs," apparently meaning that they translated the speech of Andro's people into sentences simple-minded enough for Bishops to understand.

The woman glanced down at her desk top, which flickered and was not worn wood any more but a glossy display. Toby saw number-thickets and long lists, all from Andro's file on them. He couldn't read the language, but it looked like a lot of information, all neatly sorted out. Yet Andro had never seemed to be taking anything down, or even paying much attention to them.

Killeen stepped forward, "If you are in authority I must ask that you tell us how to find some relatives of ours, Bishops, and a man--"

"I am a judge," the woman said with a flinty, casual air. "And you will remain silent until I ask a question."

"But we've come--"

"Don't listen real well, do you?" She twisted her hand a funny, helical way. An electrical jolt streamed through the air, sending Toby's internal sensorium reeling. It was a stomach-churning, startling effect.

Killeen tottered, looked green for a moment, then pulled himself together. "I ... see."

The judge gave him a wolfish grin, all knife-edge and strung-wire fine. "I have taken the trouble to chip-process your speaking patterns, so can state in firm voice familiar to you the consequences of your actions. I am a.s.suming that you will spend an annum, maybe two, in the workhouse for your violation of our tax codes. If you wish to improve on that figure--"

"Violation?" Killeen bristled. "We sailed into this place in search--"

I 70."Appearing out of the Far Black like that, you set off alarms. The Regency had to muster defenses. You might have been mech, after all."

"We fly an ancient human s.h.i.+p!"

"Deception runs rife in the Far Black. And you sent no forward-hailer to let us know. Defense costs money, rebble-dep, time, trouble. A debt that must be paid in the work-house." The judge shrugged. "Simple social justice."

Killeen stiffened. Bishops were not merely scavengers; they had always traded with the other Families, to good advantage. There had even been a time, the infamous Accommodation, when Families bargained with mechs. Killeen said shrewdly, "Maybe we're carrying something of interest to you."

The judge tossed her hair with feigned disinterest. "What could you possibly have?"

"Fresh samples of s.p.a.ce plants from a molecular cloud."

Killeen waved forward Cermo, who added, "We're regrowing them.

Good eating."

"Ummm. Regional delicacies? Marginal at best." The judge looked off into s.p.a.ce.

Killeen said quickly, "We carry tech we've picked up from our home-world."

"Ummm." No reaction.

"And from another. Some strange artifacts. Ancient, maybe."

"More planet-level goods?" The judge looked bored. "We get rafts and rafts of it when immigrants pour in."

"Well..." Killeen glanced at Toby. "We're carrying an alien."

The judge brightened. "What phylum?"

"Myriapodia."Her mouth turned dow,,n with surprise, then snapped back into a anny flat line. "You're sure?

Not a good recovery, Toby thought wryly. And how could anybody mistake Quath for something else? Killeen said offhandedly, "She captured me on the last planet we visited. I got to know her pretty well."

"She? I didn't know they had s.e.xes." The judge blinked, plainly dumbfounded.

"Several, as far as I can tell." Now it was Killeen's turn to fake disinterest. "They're complicated. Good memories, too. She's told us a lot about the Myriapodia's heritage."

"Excellent, excellent. There is certainly a market for that information."

The judge thumbed her desk, glanced at a fresh display in the top, nodded.

"I could probably negotiate a suspension of your work-house duties if the proper authorities could have some time with this alien. I a.s.sume you're holding it under strict arrest?"

Killeen looked shocked and Toby knew it was real. "She's a friend."

"Sure, fine, no offense. You realize this will take some delicate negotia171.

tions? Experts will have to journey here from 'way out in the esty. Given the cross-s.h.i.+fts, we'll have to--""Good. See to it." Killeen was his commanding self again. "We've got other business here and we'll pursue it."The judge glanced at her desk again and seemed to receive a message.

"The alien, that is an important issue. We would prefer to have it under our control until--""Naysay!" Killeen said angrily. "She'll be with us."The judge hesitated, then her eyes narrowed. "How do we know you've really got this Myriapod?""We'll bring her ash.o.r.e," Killeen said simply.

"What? Here? But that could be dangerous."

"Not to us."She looked alarmed. "Those things killed people without pity." Toby recalled Quath's casual references to how she and her kind had thought of humans as Noughts, beings who didn't matter a jot on the Myriapodia's scale of things. And her forerunners had hunted primate-type species.

Maybe people here were slow to forget--or knew something he didn't."I'll guarantee your safety," Killeen said airily, plainly enjoying himself now. "And I won't even charge you extra."Toby could tell that Cermo was having trouble containing his laughter.

Then he looked behind them. Somehow, without their noticing it, a dozen people had quietly come into the big room and were standing at the back. They didn't look threatening but they didn't smile either. They wore small, rectangular backpacks and looked authoritative. This was serious stuff."Very well," the judge said. "Please bring the alien here."

"Not so fast," Killeen countered. "I want some information."

"I can a.s.sure you that you'll be properly briefed once--"

"Noza.""I suppose we could compromise somewhat--""And your Andro here, he said something about a message waiting for us.""In due time--""Same time as you question Quath. No later."She pursed her lips, paused, and then nodded to the people at the back of the room. "I would appreciate it if you would send a few of your people along with mine here. They can work out the transfer of the alien to our control.""Hey, you won't own Quath," Toby put in.The judge looked at Toby as if seeing him for the first time, and not much liking the result. "We will establish proprietary owners.h.i.+p of the information we gain from--""You just take it for granted that Quath will talk to you at all," Toby said rapidly, looking at his father. "Plenty times, she won't say a peep."

172.

"I believe that is a technical matter for the teams which will be sent to interrogate and--""Just a second here," Killeen said. "Toby's right. You got to handle Quath just so, or you won't get a used fart out of her."The judge blinked. "A used... ? I shall a.s.sume that was hyperbole, a figure of speech."Cermo chuckled and Toby remembered how Quath had built her complex warren, sticking it together with her own feces. "Not entirely,"

Toby said, and smiled mysteriously.The judge regarded Toby skeptically. "Then perhaps we can enlist.

your aid. Someone who could help us talk with the Myriapod?"The other Bishops were looking at Toby. He said, "I suppose so. What you do with whatever Quath decides to tell you, that's your business. But we're not handing her over to you. She stays with us."The judge paused, studying the surface of her desk, then glancing at the others in the back of the room. Mildly, but with a clear threat, she said, "I don't think you are in a position to dictate terms."Killeen turned and gazed steadily at the people behind them. The other Bishops also did an about-face, standing with knees and elbows slightly bent, hands ready to move. A long, silent moment stretched.Toby saw his father's point. These people had tech probably beyond theirs, but they were still human. A lot of communication was not talk, but presence, and the Bishops towered over these other men and women.

Jocelyn and Toby, the shortest, still were half again the height of these arrogant dwarves.Killeen let this fact work on the room, and then said, "I expect you to abide by the letter and intent of our agreement."

The judge paused, sensing the situation. Then she smiled for the first me. "It is pleasant to encounter a visitor who un,derstands the nuances of egotiation." She held out a hand. "Monisque, I m called by my friends.

My enemies prefer shorter words. Let's get our terms worked out in detail.

Then maybe we can all have a drink."Some human rituals were eternal. Toby had no doubt that the drinks would contain a liberal lacing of alcohol.

5.

Trans-History Quath clambered along beside them, clanging and sc.r.a.ping through An-dro's reception area. She had been forced to squeeze through the loading docks and equipment bays of the port, because the personnel areas were hopelessly small. Toby could have sworn that Quath had added some more legs into the bargain, but the k.n.o.bby steel shanks moved so fast, her pneumatic joints wheezing, that it was hard to tell.The buildings here glowed like warm b.u.t.ter. Probably part of these people's security precautions, Toby guessed, but he couldn't imagine how.

Unless somehow the buildings held energies that could flick out, lick away offending Bishops..."How's that by you, Quath'jutt'kkal'thon?" Killeen asked.Her angular head swiveled toward Killeen--a politeness she had learned that humans appreciated, though it was completely unnecessary, since her voice came to them through comm. Still, she said nothing."C'mon, Quath, don't worry," Toby said, making his voice carry a lightness he did not feel, and hoping the alien couldn't tell that. "You'll be fine. We'll be right there."Toby was puffing just trying to keep up with her. "How come, eyeball-plucker?"Killeen said, "To these people you matter. They want you pretty bad.""They seem pretty worried about the Myriapodia," Killeen said.To Toby his father seemed edgy and intense, eyes darting to the sides as they pa.s.sed out of the receiving dock and into the city. They picked up more of the "Honor Guard," as the judge had called it--teams of men and 174.women with long-bore weapons slipping down side streets, quick-eyed and edgy, clearing the way. The streets ahead were deserted bare stone, closed shops, echoing the Bishops' ringing boot heels. Killeen signaled to Cermo and a dozen others, who formed their own perimeter line. The people of this monotonous city didn't seem like a threat; they all knew the "Honor Guards" were there to keep the Bishops in line.

Quath followed precepts Toby could never figure out. Sometimes she would reel out endless detail about Myriapodia history. Other times, she would clam up tight, not even acknowledge questions.