“So I’ll stop talking to strangers,” Cenuij said. He tested one leg, flexing it. He sat forward suddenly. “Where are my shoes?” he demanded.
Sharrow dug under her seat, threw them over to him. He slipped them on and fastened them.
“Have you heard from Breyguhn recently?” she asked.
He stopped tightening a heel strap and glanced at her. “No. The good Brothers have what one might call a playful attitude to mail. I expect I’ll get another letter in a month or so.”
“I saw her four days ago.”
Cenuij looked wary. “Mm-hmm,” he said, sitting back. “And how… how is she?”
Sharrow looked away. “Not too good. I mean, surviving physically, but…”
“She didn’t give you… a letter or anything for me?” Cenuij asked.
“No.” Sharrow shook her head. “Look,” she said. “If we find the Universal Principles we can get her out. I only need the message in it; we can give the Brothers the book itself.”
Cenuij looked troubled, then sat back, sneering. “You say,” he said. His cloak lay on the seat beside him; he put it over his shoulders and fastened it, laughing. “Some piece of utterly unattributable Dascen family folklore has it that your grandpa somehow left a message in a book nobody’s set eyes on for a millennium and which there is no indication he even started to look for, and you believe it?” He shook his head.
“Dammit, Cenuij, it’s the best we’ve got to go on.”
“And what if this rumour is-by some miracle-only half wrong and you do need the book itself?” Cenuij asked.
“We’ll do all we can,” Sharrow said, sighing. “I promised.”
“You promised,” Cenuij sat still for awhile. He flexed both legs. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll think about it.” He put one hand to the door of the vehicle.
Sharrow put her hand over his. He looked into her eyes but she wouldn’t take her hand away. “Cenuij,” she said. “Please, come now. They’ll take you if you try to stay. I’m telling the truth, I swear.”
He looked at her hand. She took it away. He opened the door and climbed down out of the All-Terrain. He stood holding the door for a moment, checking that his legs were going to hold him when he tried to walk.
“Sharrow,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m only just starting to think that maybe you really are telling the truth about what happened to the Lazy Gun and Lip City.” He gave a sort of half-laugh. “But that’s taken eight years; let’s not rush things, shall we?”
She leant forward, imploring. “Cenuij; we need you; please… in the name of…” Her voice died away.
“Yes, Sharrow,” he smiled. “In the name of what?” She just stared at him. He shook his head. “There’s not really anything you respect or care about enough to use as an oath, is there?” He smiled. “Except perhaps yourself, and that wouldn’t sound right, would it?” He took a step backwards, letting go of the door. “Like I said, I’ll think about it.” He pulled his cloak closed. “Where can I contact you?”
She closed her eyes with a look of despair. “The Log-Jam, with Miz,” she said.
“Ah, of course.” He turned to go, facing the giant open-cast mine on the dark hillside. Then he stopped and turned back, the rain blowing about him. He nodded behind him at the mine. “See that, Sharrow? The open-cast? Mining an ancient spoil heap; sifting the already discarded, looking for treasure in what was rubbish… maybe not even for the first time, either. We live in the dust of our forebears; insects crawling in their dung. Splendid, isn’t it?”
He turned and walked away along the bank of an old tailings pond. He’d gone another few paces when he turned once more and called out, “By the way; you were very convincing about one thing… until you took the radiation scar off.”
He laughed and strode off towards the half-consumed spoil heap.
4 Log-Jam
Like a lot of Golterian oddities, the Log-Jam was basically a tax dodge.
Jonolrey, Golter’s second largest continent, lay across Phirar from Caltasp. The same root word in a long-lost language that had provided the name for the ocean of Phirar had also given the region of Piphram its name. Once Piphram had been a powerful state, the greatest trading nation on the planet, practically running the world’s entire merchant marine. But that had been long ago; now it was just another entangledly autonomous patchwork Free Area, no less prosperous or gaudy than any other part of the world.
The administrative capital of Piphram, which by sheer coincidence happened actually to lie within the area its contract covered, was the Log-Jam.
Sunlit land slid under the small jet, flowing green and brown beneath its forward-weed wings as it throttled back and adjusted its position in the centre of the conical glide-path.
Sharrow watched Dloan at the plane’s controls; he sat in the pilot’s seat of the hired aircraft, studying its instrument screens. He’d flown the plane manually for take-off and ascent from Regioner, and had wanted to land it too, but the Log-Jam had had too many bad experiences with people trying to land on Carrier Field, and insisted on autolandings. Dloan was going to make sure it went all right.
Zefla, in a seat across from Sharrow, was fiddling with the small cabin’s screen controls; channel-hopping to produce a confused succession of images and background sound bursts.
Sharrow looked out of the window at the cloud-dappled land moving smoothly underneath.
“-alked to Doctor Fretis Braäst, moderator of the Huhsz college at Yadayeypon Ecclesiastical School.”
“Well, yes,” Zefla said, turning up the sound. Sharrow glanced up at the screen to see a well-groomed male presenter talking to camera; behind him, on the studio wall, was a gigantic, slightly grainy hologram of her own face. “You’re a star, kid,” Zefla said, smiling dazzlingly. Dloan turned round to watch.
Sharrow scowled at the screen. “Is that the best photo they could get? Must be ten years old; look at my hair. Ugh.”
The blow-up of Sharrow’s face was replaced by a live holo of a trim-looking elderly man with white hair and a white beard. He had twinkly eyes and an understanding smile. He was dressed in a light-grey academic gown with discreet but numerous qualification ribbons decorating one side of the collar.
“Doctor Braäst,” said the presenter. “This is a terrible thing, isn’t it? Here we are, about to start the second decamillenium, and your faith wants to hunt down and kill-preferably put to death ceremonially, in fact-a woman who has never been convicted of anything and whose only crime appears to be having been born, and being born female.”
Doctor Braäst smiled briefly. “Well, Keldon, I think you’ll find that the Lady Sharrow does have a string of convictions for a variety of crimes in Malishu, Miykenns, dating-”
“Doctor Braäst,” the presenter gave a pained smile and glanced down at a screenboard balanced on his knee. “Those were minor public order offences; I don’t think you can use fifteen-year-old fines for brawling and insulting a police officer as an excuse for-”
“I beg your pardon, Keldon,” the white-haired man smiled. “I was just trying to keep things totally accurate.”
“Well, fine, but to return to-”
“And I’d remind you that the whole issue of the use of such Passports is not a Huhsz tenet; this is a civil process with a pedigree over two millennia old; what we are told-and what we have to accept-is that this is a civilised response to the problem of assassination and the potential for disruption it implies.”