She put a hand on his arm, stopped him before he opened the door. “Speaking about holding your breath, what about Krink? You trust him?”
“The length of a micron if he’s wearing handcuffs and leg irons. He does work I don’t want to do, myself. Efficiency, Luna. Remember ol’ Efficiency Gidur?”
She chuckled, chanted, “The right tool for the right job.” Sobering, she tapped her fingers on the hard muscies. “Watch out this one doesn’t turn in your hand. He’s ambitious. I could smell it on him.”
“Ba da, he’s already tried it and got kicked in the butt for being an idiot. Better the flaws you know. He’s a little worm, thinks little, and couldn’t plan his way out of a paper bag. He doesn’t know it, though, and that’s one of the things that makes him dangerous.” He opened the door, stood aside to let her pass. “Luna, arguing life with you is one of the things I missed most after you took off.”
As they walked down the stairs together, she murmured, “I never understood why you stayed. You were smart enough to get out.”
He didn’t answer till they reached the main floor. “This is my place. I wouldn’t feel right anywhere else. I’m not like you. You cut your ties so easy. You were gone even before you left.”
“I never had ties, Grinder. Not then. Not now.”
7
Lylunda stood on the balcony outside Grinder’s company parlor. His house was on the high side of the Izar, tall enough to catch breezes over the Wall, breezes not tainted by ship exhaust and slaughterhouses. It was a big place, built in a square about a large central court with a fountain and trees and flower beds. And children everywhere.
“Kak! Grinder. They all yours?”
He grinned. “That’s what their mothers tell me. Actually, no. Couple of the youngest are my grandkids. Would you believe it, Luna? Me, a grandpa.”
She watched him beaming down on the busy scene and felt a coldness start to gather under her ribs. There was something so… proprietorial and… oh… lethal about him. This is my place, he said. My place. My house. My children. My women. If he starts thinking about me like that… “You’d best let me have a look at Lerdo’s documentation. I have to know what I’m talking about when I meet your son.”
6. Worming into Haundi Zurgile
Worm slipped the Kinu Kanti into Hutsartes atmosphere above the major continent of the Wild Half, the hemisphere the Behilarr hadn’t bothered to settle yet. He went warily at first, then relaxed as the readouts told him that what he’d picked up about the place was true, not enough security to keep out a tesh fly.
When he was at a level to go on visual screens, he looked at the tangle of unsavory vegetation sliding beneath him and decided the Behilarr didn’t have to worry about anyone coveting this place. He shifted direction, went circumpolar, and began a metal scan of the coastline that belonged to the settled continent, keeping the visuals on to give him a look at what was being probed. Low and slow ate power, but he was operating on the Kliu’s credit chip, so he’d topped up at the transfer station and was feeling comfortably prodigal at the moment.
He slowed further when he began picking up a signal as a string of islands came into the screen. Metallic smear, size uncertain, shape uncertain-he was nearly on top of it before he could nail which island it was on.
There was a hollow in the vegetation with withered edges, enough to suggest a ship had put down here and the very faint traces he was picking up had to mean it was a smuggler’s ship, equipped to escape most detection.
He chortled as he changed direction again and started back across the ocean. “Lylunda Elang. Gotcha.”
He set the Kinu Kanti down in a small stony canyon in the coast range of a continent in the Wild Half and started cycling through the shutdown/conceal procedures, brooding all the while over the last thing his father had told him. Keep those scivs sweet, Worm. They’ve got your brothers. Two of them now because you din’t bother using that useless lump a gristle atop your neck You shouldda known we couldda fetched Xman out of contract easy enough. I tell you to your face, we gotta get Mort loose, he’s the only one of the lot of you who’s got the guts to run this place. Snake over ’t next Rift, he been shooting eyes this way. So you keep ’em happy till we get that girl and make the trade.
Worm shivered when he thought of his older brother and some of the things that Mort had done to give him the rep that kept Snake and Herbie and the other Riftmen backed off. If Mort hadn’t been his brother and blood was sacred after all, he’d have been just as happy to leave him scrabbling about Pillory scurfing off other gits as murderous as him.
Time to do the sweetening, to let the Kliu know he was on the job and making time. He worked over the message for several minutes, then played it back. Am down on Hutsarte, Behilarr Colony. Have got suggestive though inconclusive evidence the smuggler is here. Will be going undercover for close-up observation. Will keep under advisement the listed possible agents of Excavations Ltd. and report if any such are spotted. Clandestine conditions of investigation require limiting exposure to detection, so contact will be sporadic for the next few weeks.
It seemed adequate, saying as little as possible while giving the impression he was being forthcoming. As good as anything Xman could write. Xman was the talker of the family, the tongue that was quicker even than Mort’s knifes. Worm sighed, missing his brother a lot as he coded and compressed the message, squirted it on its way. “Choke on that, stinking scivs.”
He waited a while longer, watching the readouts to be sure the squirt hadn’t pinned him, then he extracted the ship’s flikit and once again started across the ocean.
2
After he hid the flikit, Worm spent the rest of the night trudging across prickly wasteland. He detested walking, he hated all this ugly nothing full of dust and stinks and malevolent thorns doing their best to rip his flesh; but he wanted to be sure the flikit would be where he put it when he needed it again, so.it-had to be in a place no sane man would bother looking at.
He reached the Landing Field in the gray dawn light, brushed himself off, and caught a jit heading for Haundi Zurgile’s Star Street.
He found what he was looking for at the end of a narrow side alley, a hole-in-the-wall called The Rainy Season. The name didn’t matter, it was the smell he recognized. Xman said it was cheap drink, cheaper brainrot, mixed with the stink of maybes never gonna happen and the lowgrade fever of hate/fear. Sure enough, whenever he smelled it, Worm knew he was in a place he understood and with people he knew even if he’d never seen them before.
He dumped his gearsac on the floor between the stool and the bar, then slid ’onto the stool so the sac lay between his feet.
The barscort was an old, sad Lommertoerkan, his facial folds so deep and packed so tightly together, he looked like someone had shoved his skin through a pleater. “Ya?”
“Any cohanq?”
“Five minims a shot.” The Lommertoerkan’s voice was high and sweet; if Worm closed his eyes, it could have been a woman talking. “See the coin before I pour.”
Worm set a brass gelder on the wood. “Local exchange will do me, gonna be here a while.”
He sipped at the cohanq, expecting the hard bite of barrel squeeze and was surprised to find it sliding down without ripping the lining off his throat. “Good stuff,” he said and could’ve kicked himself when he heard the surprise in the words.
The pleats on the Lommertoerkan’s face spread slightly around what could have been a smile, then he said in his soft, sweet voice, “Trade’s brisk. Should you pick up something good, I can find it a home.”