“Yes. So can I. Your father chose well. You’re certainly safe here. If the Kliu come after you, the Lung kills them.”
“You know about my father?”
“When I was on Hutsarte looking for you, I tangled with someone called Grinder Jiraba. He figured out what must have happened.”
“I see. I see something else, too. No ethical problems telling the Kliu where to find me. I’m safe, you’re away clean, not even any bad dreams.”
“Maybe no ethical problems, but an interesting practical one. We don’t get paid if we just give them your location. They want actual possession or a firm location for the array.”
Lylunda turned away, eased herself onto the sand, and sat staring out at the sea, her hands flattened against the sides of the drum so their shaking wouldn’t betray the surge of hope that was like fire racing through her body. She heard Shadith drop beside her, but she didn’t turn to face the woman, this too-clever hunter who’d sniffed out her hiding place.
When she had control of her voice, she said, “I’m not going to tell you.”
“Unless…”
“You are quick. Ba da, considering that you found me, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll sell Prangarris and the Taalav for a way off this world. That’s the only coin that will buy me; there’s nothing else you’ve got that I want.”
“I know a healer; I think she can keep you alive. I’d best go have a talk with her. Travel times being what they are, could be around several months before I’m back, so hold tight, hm? And hold onto this.” A beeper landed in her lap. A warm hand closed on her shoulder in a quick squeeze, then she heard the sounds of running feet thudding on the sand.
Lylunda kept staring at the sea, trying to calm the turmoil inside her and at the same time wondering how she was going to survive the next few months.
15. Worm Trails
1
The pulse from the beacon cut off as the Spy emerged from the ’split.
When Worm reached the Limit’and surfaced, he listened to the Shriek of the transfer station, swore when he heard the University ID. “Why here? I don’t understand. Harmon wouldn’t come near this place.”
Instead of continuing on to the tie-down, he slipped sideways and took the Kanti into a polar orbit about one of the outer planets.
His respite was gone, run down the drain. He sat for some time scowling at the corn screen. “I should have called Fa. It was the right thing to do. I wasted a month’s travel time because I lost my nerve.” He rubbed at his eyes. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she’s figured out something else. Maybe…” He sighed and punched in his father’s call sign, then waited for the connect.
When the screen lit, it was a girl’s face he saw instead of his father’s. Trish. “Where’s Fa, Coz?”
“Having a flush-out. Kliu called, said about Mort hanging on a thread. He took it bad. You got good news? Don’t know how he’d take more bad.”
“No good, no bad, just got more traveling to do. Need Fa’s sources.”
“You know he don’t let no one tap the source node. You gonna have to wait till he can
“Maybe so, maybe no, but I damnsure can’t move without I’ve got some place to go to.”
“Ta, then. Talk to you when.”
Worm went limp as the stiffening he’d summoned drained out of him. It was all to do again,, nerving himself to face his father’s anger and maybe give him another seizure when he had to confess what happened. He got wearily to his feet and went to scrub the galley once again. At least when you cleaned something, you could see what you’d accomplished.
“… just a couple a days ’fore I was at go on the snatch, some local piv’r hauls her in to cop shop and she don’t come out, what comes out is some femme fixed up in her clothes. I get on corn to the Kliu and complain they interfering with the op, that I hear they trying it on with the locals to pick the smuggler up and ship her over to Pillory so they can get out of contract they got with us. I din’t ask if they got her, I just said they were messing me up. And-what ol’ Kliu he says makes me some sure they han’t got her. Grinder’s kid, he said it was her Fa who got her, he’s some mucko in the cop shop. The kid thinks mucko got biters up his ezel when Kliu ticket come by him and he whiffed her off somewhere he don’t have to look for her in. Anyway, I see this femme who’s Digby’s agent fijjing around trying to finger the smuggler, so I put the ear on her and I pick up she’s got her hands on ship lists and she figures the mucko passed his daughter off to Harmon, you know him, scurf who sold Snake that stale cpe, so he could dump her in some Never Find. So I figure I get to Harmon first, shoot him to ears with babble, go where he dropped her. Isn’t likely she’ll have the same kind of protection she bought on Hutsarte. So I need to know where Harmon’s going and how long it’s gonna taker to get there.”
When the spate of words was finished, words he hoped didn’t sound too much like whiner’s excuses-Fa hated whining-Worm sat stiffly upright, hands curled tight about the arms of the chair, waiting for the blast he knew was coming.
It didn’t come. His father’s mouth shaped itself into an unconvincing smile and when he spoke, it was in a tone of mild disappointment. No thundering scarification, no skin-peeling scarcasm. “Sasa, I had hoped for better news. You done good, Worm. You done right. Give me a minute, I’ll call up what you want and pulse it through. A father’s Blessings on you, boy.”
The screen blanked and a moment later, the keph tinged to let him know the data blip had arrived.
Worm stirred. He felt sick.
His father was frightened. He’d never seen his father frightened of anything.
“I’m the last of his sons maybe and he’s licking up to me so I won’t go off and leave him. Cousins aren’t the same. He shouldn’t do that, makes me feel… he shouldn’t do that.”
The ship was still well-enough supplied for a couple more months of ’splitting, but the comp on Harmon had him heading for a warzone in the Sakuta System, so Worm had another bite at Kliu credit and topped off at the University Transfer Station. Still uncertain about his father, replaying the call, worrying over every word, watching his father’s every expression, trying to convince himself it wasn’t fear he was seeing but only the result of the purge Fa had just been through, he headed for the Limit and the two-week journey to the Mouse Cluster.
The beacon started pulsing again four hours after his journey had begun and the pulse stayed with him, the locator showing it behind and off to one side.
So that was why University. Someone there had told the Spy where to find Harmon and she was going for him.
3
Worm set the keph to fiddling the exit point until he was above the ecliptic and, he hoped, away from any patrols. He surfaced to realspace and sent Kanti slipping toward the asteroid belt where he could bide unseen and do a manual reactivation of the beacon to trace the Spy and slip up on her when she whipped her net over Harmon.
He watched her come sneaking along and cheered silently as she settled in the shadow of a rock only a few shiplengths from his hidey hole-though he was startled to see two ships, not one, Lylunda’s little darter tucked up against the flank of a bigger one. Just as well the Spy was into umbilicals, meant he could track her some more if this didn’t work out. He wriggled in his seat. On the good side, taking Lylunda’s ship along should mean she was expecting to run across the smuggler sometime soon; on the bad side, this could get real tight real fast. Watch how she works, he thought. Gotta know what I’m going against.
He settled in to brood over what the Spy was planning and to wait for events to unfold.
When he saw the Spy’s sled come slipping through the shield round the ships, Worm left the chair and hurried to get himself dressed to follow her.