“People like you?”
“That’s right. Launching a rescue is very expensive, even making a detour takes time and money. And it can be dangerous. Sending false distress signals is a pirate tactic to lure ships to their doom. As I’m sure you know.”
Kiru ignored the last remark. “What can we do?”
“We can rescue ourselves.”
“How?”
“By becoming a very attractive salvage opportunity. We need a fast rescue from the nearest planet, or we have to snare a ship out of falspace with a lucrative rescue proposal.”
“How?”
“Like this,” said Eliot Ness, as he returned to the control screen.
Kiru watched him. There was something different about him. Different but familiar. This was the first chance for a long time that she’d had to study Eliot Ness while his attention was concentrated elsewhere.
She wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed, but they had been on the lifeboat at least three weeks. Or perhaps it was nearer to three months.
There was nothing within the pod to mark the passage of time. (Or nothing that Kiru knew about.) The symsuits slowed all their biological functions, making it even harder to judge how long they had been together.
On board, there was nothing to do except sleep, eat and talk, sleep, talk and eat, sleep. There was something else they could have done, something men and women had done together since the dawn of time, but Eliot Ness always behaved like a perfect gentleman. He never made any advances, but kept his distance and allowed Kiru her own, small space.
She often wondered how he would react if she made the first move. It was only an idle thought, but she had plenty of time for idle thoughts. He wouldn’t refuse her, she knew. He was a man, so how could he? He was old, but not that old. And the longer they were on board, the smaller the relative difference in their ages would become. In another ten years, say, he might be twenty or twenty-five percent older; but Kiru would be fifty percent older.
It was a depressing thought, almost as bad knowing she had less than a hundred hours to live.
Kiru had soon become used to the size of the capsule and learned where everything was. (Or everything Eliot Ness wanted her to know about.) What she didn’t learn was anything about Eliot Ness, who successfully evaded all of Kiru’s questions about his life. Despite this, he always had plenty to tell her. She’d never had much education, but thanks to her personal tutor she was on her way to becoming a galactic graduate.
Eliot Ness seemed to have been everywhere, to know everything. If not, he must have had a datadek grafted onto his brain. Or else he was lying.
Kiru had told him her own life story, which wasn’t worth lying about, although she stopped when she reached Grawl’s attempt to obliterate her brain and steal her body. She didn’t want to remember what had happened after, her few fantastic hours with…
… whoever he was, whatever he’d been called.
“Who are you?” Kiru asked, as Eliot Ness turned away from the screen.
He smiled and shook his head.
“Aren’t you ever going to tell me?” Kiru said.
“No, but I’ll tell you who you are.”
“Who?”
“You are Princess Janesmith.”
“Who?”
“She’s the elder sister of Marysmith, Empress of Algol,” said Eliot Ness. “I met her on Hideaway when I was having some clothes made.”
This was the first time he’d ever referred to being on Hideaway. Kiru had wondered if perhaps he hadn’t been on the pleasure asteroid. He could have been on the ship when it arrived and stayed on board when it departed.
“You went to Hideaway to buy clothes?” said Kiru.
“I was there. I needed some clothes. Princess Janesmith made me some.”
“A princess made you some clothes?”
“Forget the clothes, Kiru.” Eliot Ness paused, smiling briefly. “If I remember, that’s what you’d done when I first met you. The important thing is: from now on, you will be Princess Janesmith of Algol.”
Everyone else had a false identity, now it was her turn.
“Why?” she said. “Give me one good reason.”
“So I can survive,” Eliot Ness told her. “Or you might prefer another reason: so you can survive.”
Kiru nodded, but she was thinking of something else, of someone else. James. Before meeting her, he’d been with an Algolan princess. She was the one who sent him the box of blue worms. She had to be Janesmith, had to be the same person.
“Your younger sister, Empress Marysmith, inherited the Algolan throne,” said Eliot Ness, “and she—”
“My younger sister?” Kiru interrupted. “I mean, Jane-smith’s younger sister?”
“On Algol, it’s the youngest, not the eldest, who inherits everything. The youngest daughter, that is. Sons don’t matter. The Algolans have got everything back to front. The females are in complete control, the males are totally subservient.”
“That’s insane.”
Eliot Ness nodded his agreement.
“They must be absolutely crazy,” Kiru continued. “Imagine a solar system run by women. Gossiping all the time. Comparing their hair, their makeup. Talking about babies. Going shopping. How long could an empire like that last?” She shrugged. “Longer than Earth’s recorded history, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” said Eliot Ness. “Never mind that. As I was saying, Marysmith, Empress of Algol, wants you, Jane-smith, her elder sister, dead.”
“Why? Because she, I mean me, because I keep borrowing her clothes?”
“It’s because you’re next in line to the crown. While you’re alive, you’re a constant threat to your sister. That’s why Empress Marysmith has issued an imperial death warrant. She wants you dead, and so her whole planet wants you dead.”
This, at least, made sense to Kiru. Everyone had always wanted her dead.
“If a whole planet wants this princess dead,” she said, “isn’t it dangerous to pretend to be her?”
“Only if you’re on that planet.”
“It isn’t the one you want to go to?”
“No.”
For some reason, she believed him.
But for some other reason, she still wasn’t very reassured that this was a good idea.
Then she remembered where she’d first heard of the Algolans. They were the ones who had attacked the pirates, wiping out their secret base, causing so many of them to wind up on Clink.
“Don’t the Algolans have a war fleet?” said Kiru.
Eliot Ness looked at her, obviously wondering how she knew, then nodded.
“Wherever Janesmith is, a battle squadron can suddenly blitz in and destroy the entire world she’s on?”
“Well, yes, in theory. But in practice, a royal death warrant is just a formality, nothing but ancient protocol. The real Janesmith is on Hideaway. If I know that, the Algolans know that.”
“I don’t want to be her.”
“You’d prefer the certainty of dying here, very soon, rather than risk the remote possibility of execution by an alien bounty hunter?”
“Do I have any choice?”
“Trust me,” he said, “I’m not a doctor.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Wayne Norton had been right about his lifeboat voyage with Grawl.
It was long.
Long and quiet.
As quiet as could be, in fact.
He soon learned to say nothing, to ask nothing, not wanting to discover what measures Grawl would use to enforce his “no talking” edict.
Norton could understand why spacers called the lifeboats “coffins”: This felt like living death.