He’d been watching her every night for a week now. So far she’d left the Warehouse at the same time, taken exactly the same route until she reached her home area; sometimes she bought supplies for the fresher or the kitchen, sometimes she stopped to talk to people along the street; mostly, though, she just went into her room and stayed there.
Whenever she left the Warehouse, she had a guard. There were four of them, rotating the assignment between them. Baliagerr, Arkel, Rodzin the Shrink, and Vlees. Grinder’s men, all of them. Could be she’s hired her some protection after the miss at Marrat’s. Could be Grinder’s putting his mark on her. Maybe both. Grah! 1 hope not. That would mess things up so bad.… It was maybe a good thing Xman wasn’t here; he got impatient sometimes and rushed the job. Like he rushed it at the Market…
Feeling disloyal, Worm stopped thinking that way.
He heard a scrape on the stairs, and looked up. “Atcha, Bug. What’s doing?”
Bug negotiated the last stair before he looked up, his exo humming and clicking, his face intent as he watched where he planted his feet. “Hoy, Worm. Nothing on tonight?”
“What they say. Too much rain. You use a hand there?”
“Yoh, if you’ll just hold the door back till I’m through.” He palmed the lock, then moved aside to let Worm pull the heavy plug door out of its hole. “You a lock man, do you know about kephs?”
“This’n that. Hadn’t had formal schooling at it, but I ’prenticed to someone who knew ’m better’n most. How come?”
“You ever play Tac games?”
“Some. When I could get away to a Pit. My Fa, he put my brothers and me to working soon’s we could walk almost.”
“Gets boring, playing the keph all the time. If I don’t dumb him down, he whacks me. If I do, what’s the good of that? It’s not like I was really beating him. Whyn’t you come on down, we have a game or two? Daddo says things are going to be quiet a while now, so you got time.”
“Bug, don’t know if Grinder’d like that, me being new and an outsider and all.”
“No big deal, man. We’d be using the dedicated terminals he got me, and keph keeps the record of what you do in that room so Daddo can see it’s all right.” He managed a shrug, expression wiped from his face. “If you don’t wanna, though…”
“Hey, I just don’t wanna look up and see Krink and his crew coming round to stomp me.” He pulled a clown face, then looked fearfully over his shoulder.
Bug giggled. “Come on. Daddo got me a new ’un. It was in that box that you’n Keyket fiddled last night. So you and me, we can start off same level. Huh?”
“Why not.”
Worm slouched in the chair as he watched the boy loading the game into the machine; he was nervous about the keph picking up on some of the dainties he had scattered about his person, but only a little because he could always explain them as being part of his tools he’d brought along in case a job turned up after all. He had no intention of trying to plant anything in here. That would be just plain stupid.
He was tired from working nights for Grinder and days on his own business, snatching at sleep when he could find an hour or two free, sleep that often wouldn’t come because of the heat and the nearly intolerable humidity. Maybe with the rains it’d be better, but the season was too new for him to judge. This room was cool, the air clean with the comforting, familiar metallic smells that reminded him of his ship. For a moment he wanted desperately for the snatch to be done, wanted to be off this stinking, miserable mud heap and back in the clean clarity of the insplit. He winced away from the thdught of his Kinu Kanti and the filth she’d be collecting in that canyon where he left her.
The terminal pinged and he sat up, gathering himself so he could get through the game without turning Bug off him. The boy had access to his father’s plans and some of his thoughts and he’d be a good source if he-were handled right.
4
“Lylunda.”
Down on the floor of the Warehouse, Worm glanced up from the game of hezur-hairi he was playing with three of Krink’s men.
Grinder was leaning on the landing rail outside his office.
Worm saw Lylunda’s shoulders tighten. She palmed the latch, locking the plug door, then she turned slowly, a smile pasted onto her face. “Yes, Grinder?”
“Labaki needs to see you about the Nameday feast. Come to dinner tonight, you can talk to her afterward.”
“All right. I have to go home first, get cleaned up, and clear away some stuff that needs doing. Dinner around eight?”
He scowled at her, but it’d been his choice to make this public, and her response had been clever enough to maintain the distance between them. “Eight,” he said and went back inside.
As Worm gathered in the hairu, he thought, I was right. He going to put the move on her any day now and she knows it. Doesn’t like it much either. Any bets she isn’t thinking of blowing off this whole business and hitting for the ’split? Which reminds me. Something I shouldda done a while ago. Got to get outta here.
He shook the hairu, cast them into the
Cursing the horde of sticky, crawling insects and the corrosive sap of the vines that oozed out at the lightest touch, ate at his wholesuit and etched the clear plastic of the goggles, Worm wriggled through the fecund growth on the island and managed to crawl beneath the camoucloth without touching it.
The darkness meant he had to use the helmet light to find his way to the ship, which brought more hordes of fliers crashing into him. The wholesuit was sealed and he couldn’t smell the stench he knew had to be out there, but the thought of it was enough to start his stoniach churning.
He forced himself not to hurry, but it seemed forever before he found the markings on the maintenance hatch. He took the rod of memory plas from his pouch, twisted it, and waited until it finished extending to its full length and extruding rungs like thorns from the sides.
The hatchlock was simple, but once he had it solved, he didn’t try opening the slide until he’d sprayed the area to clear it of spores and other contaminants and temp-bonded the sticktight to the hull. He spread a sheet of waldoplas over the clean spot, sealed it in place, then pushed the door back. Working through the plas, he broke the temp-bond, stripped the shrinkwrap off the sticktight, reached inside, and pressed the flat patch against the wall until he felt the brief heat as it glued itself in place and took on the coloring of its surroundings. It wouldn’t activate its beacon until the ship had dropped into the insplit; until then it was just a bump on the wall and as near undetectable as anything he’d worked with-and it would go back to being a lump the moment the ship surfaced into real-space.
Getting out was faster than getting in.
An hour later the flikit was back in the shed, he’d shucked the wholesuit and run at through the sterilizer, and was in the fresher of the safehouse, playing the hand-held needle spray over his body, washing away even the memory of all that creeping, crawling life.
Bug glanced slyly at Worm, who was froWning over the situation his players were in and trying to decide how to extract them. “What you getting Daddo for his Nameday feast?”
Worm blinked. “Huh? I’m supposed to get him something?”