No, you shoved her to the floor to knock her out of the line of fire.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” the Fudir told them. “Rigardo-ji would have kept on shooting. He would have shot us too, I think. I think he was planning to all along.”
<I never did trust him.>
You never trust anyone, Child.
<I can’t see where trusting has gotten us much so far.>
The young man in the chlamys said, I didn’t trust him, either. Something in his carriage, something in his expression.
“What do you say, Pollyanna?” Donovan asked. “You always see the silver lining in every dark cloud.”
The girl in the chiton was sitting on the floor next to the bunk. And you see the dark cloud around every silver lining, she said. This will all work out. Wait and see.
Donovan expected that the smuggler would return that night, using the secret panel through which he had originally entered, so Inner Child and the Brute kept watch through the scarred man’s half-slit eyes and listened through his ears. Some explanation would be forthcoming for the failure to act as promised, but Donovan was no longer sure he was unhappy with that failure. Some instinct had urged the Brute to protect their captor. The Brute was not a keen thinker, but his instincts were sound.
He heard a clatter behind the wall and pressed his ear against the bulkhead to make it out more keenly. It came at intervals, distant at first, toward the rear of the ship; but it seemed to draw closer, come adjacent to him, and then pause. There was no sound for a time and the impression slowly grew within the heart of Donovan buigh that something lurked on the other side of the panel; and that this something sensed his presence.
Suddenly uneasy, Donovan pulled away from the panel as far as the straps would allow. He exhaled as softly as he could, made no move, no sound.
Moments dripped by.
Then there was a clattering by his head and a moment later intermittent impacts receding down the hidden passageway. The scarred man began to breathe normally. The sounds reminded the Silky Voice of a bouncing ball—if the ball were metallic and could hesitate from one bounce to the next.
A little later that evening, Inner Child heard the same sounds returning. He passed the sensations on to the Sleuth to puzzle over and continued to wait for the smuggler to appear.
But no one came to them that night, nor all the next day, nor the night after that.
He wondered if the smuggler had acted on his own after all. Maybe he had ambushed Ravn and taken control of the ship, and was content now to keep Donovan strapped into his bunk for the foreseeable future.
But on the third day, after the ship had entered Megranomic space and had begun the Newtonian crawl toward the Palisades Parkway, it was Ravn Olafsdottr who came to release him from his bonds. “Coome now, sweet,” she said, “you moost be hoongry.” She unlocked one hand, gave him the key, and stepped back.
“It’s a psychological trick,” the Fudir told her as he worked the key into the locks that held the remaining straps together. “That Alabaster accent is a comic’s affectation. Most of us in the League have been conditioned to regard hooters as flighty. That’s not exactly fair to the Alabastrines, but it helps if your adversary underestimates your wit.”
“You very clever, friend. How transparent this unworthy one, that you see through her so!”
“And the Manjrin makes you seem sinister.” Donovan, now loosened from his straps, stood up and rubbed his arms. Olafsdottr held out her hand and, after a moment, Donovan laid the key in it. “You didn’t have to pull them so tight, you know.”
“Yes,” she said gravely. “I did.”
“Anything interesting happen while I was tied up?”
Olafsdottr cocked her head nearly sideways. “Should something have?”
“Never mind.” He stepped past her. “I’m hungry. Let’s do lunch.” He didn’t wait to see if she followed, or if she held her teaser aimed at the small of his back.
The scarred man rustled his own lunch: daal and baked beans and sautéed mushrooms, with scrambled eggs and cold, fatty bacon drawn from the cold well in the pantry. Olafsdottr recoiled from this concoction when he brought it to the refectory.
“Why?” asked the Fudir. “How do you break your fast?”
Olafsdottr toyed with her teaser, remaining out of reach of her prisoner. “What any sensible one eats. A soft-boiled egg enthroned on a cup with its large end sheared off, a small plate of fruits of varied colors—green melon, yellow pineapple, white wintermelon—arranged as to best effect. A cup of pressed coffee thick enough to stand a spoon upright.”
The Fudir regarded her curiously. “I would think espresso would be the last thing you would need. No wonder you always seem so wired. You should try Terran food someday.”
She regarded his lunch with disfavor. “Perhaps. Someday.”
“So, it’s been a quiet couple of days?”
“With you bound in bunk, how could it be other?”
Well, said the Sleuth internally, Rigardo-ji would not have taken her on by himself. He’s lying doggo.
As from a distant room, Inner Child heard the muffled sound that had bounced past the scarred man’s head several times during his detention. A glance at the courier showed that she, too, heard.
“What’s that noise?” the Fudir asked, twisting his head as if to locate it. “Something wrong with the ship? Maybe we ought to lay up for repairs here in Megranome.”
Olafsdottr smiled slowly, held it for a moment, then allowed it to fade as slowly. “Always carping the diem, my sweet. Perhaps you have set something rolling about the ship to convince me to stop for repairs and so give you an opportunity to escape. There would be no such escape, but I will withhold the opportunity and save you the frustration.”
“I did all this while I was tied up?” Donovan said.
“Nu-nu-nu, sweet. Great deeds await you on Henrietta. Tomorrow,” she added with a sniff, “make a different meal. This one stinks.”
But the mal odour lingered all day and the circulators could do nothing to dissipate it. By the next day’s breakfast both Donovan and Olafsdottr had drawn the same conclusion, very nearly at the same time.
“Not your food,” said Olafsdottr. “Stink come elsewhere.”
Donovan wrinkled his nose. “There is something familiar about it.”
“Agreed. But the nose is the most easily deceived of organs. It remembers well, but will not reveal those memories. Does not one of your shards have memory?”
Donovan was not sure how much Olafsdottr knew of his condition, but saw no reason to deny it. “The Pedant. But he remembers facts, not sensations.”
The Confederal sniffed. “Perhaps that which broke loose has caused something to burn out. Yet, it does not have the tang of burning.”
“It has the smell of rot. Perhaps the protein vats have gone bad.”
Olafsdottr viewed him with suspicion. “If you have sabotaged our food supply, it will be a long, hungry time to Henrietta. You very naughty boy, slip between the quanta of my notice.”
“We could check the vats.”
“We? I should let you near the vats?”
“Because, darling, you won’t go check them yourself while leaving me free run of the ship.”
The Confederal stood upright from her post at the doorway. “Could tie you up again, but too much bother. Put away breakfast things and come with me, and we see what new surprise you prepare.”