“Not overtly.” Oschous dropped the screen to the table. “There’s one other ship that didn’t respond to the ping. Courier, maybe, passing through and traveling dark.”
“I don’t like this,” Ravn said. “We’re starting to go straight after each other.”
Oschous swung his seat to look at her. “We’ve turned over glasses ere now. Some on our side; some on theirs. Ekadrina is probably just doing a face-check on Pendragon.”
“I didn’t mean her. I meant Big Jacques. Sure, sometimes, trying to move or to protect an asset brought us into conflict. But Manlius go after Epri, and now Big Jacques go after Ekadrina, and not in pasdarm.”
“It’s the way these things work,” cracked the scarred man. “Gentlemen’s agreements require gentlemen to keep them.”
“Well, Yuts’ga big planet,” Ravn said. “Perhaps not all gone to same district, let alone same township.”
Oschous Dee grunted. “Don’t tempt the Fates, Ravn. They’ll send them there just to spite you. Number One!”
“Aye, master?” The magpie in the supervisor’s chair swung to face him.
“Monitor the channels that Domino Tight and Big Jacques use. Gidula, too. Sift the other channels for sign of Pendragon or Ekadrina. Commandeer the Yutsgar Union’s comsat network, if you must. And look for their personal satellites. Let me know what you catch. I don’t like the way this is developing, and I don’t want to go in blind. Ravn, Gesh, I’ll see you again at lunch. If anything develops before then, I’ll summon you.”
In the gray and gold corridor outside the control room, Ravn slipped her hand through Donovan’s arm. “Coom, my sweet,” she said, leading him off toward the lounge. “Perhaps we will sit and chat and I will let you have your way with me.”
Donovan allowed himself to be led. “Don’t be too wishful of that until you know what ‘my way’ is. Do you expect a big rumble down below?”
“Roomble? Anoother Terran woord? You must mean fight, a passage of arms.” Her teeth showed white against her lips. “Every thing will work oot fine. Once Ooschous pulls Doominoo off task, noo reason he and Pen fight. And Jacques maybe not find Ekadrina befoor she leave. Big woorld, noo?”
But Donovan shook his head. “No, it will all go to shit, and we will be in the middle of it.”
“You are sooch cheerful ooptimist … Boot we keep you out of it. You are too valooable to waste on sooch squabblings.”
“Why do I get the feeling that when you finally do waste me, it will be a really crappy situation.”
She patted his cheek with her free hand. “When oonly the best are needed.”
“You know, it’s not like I’m incapable…”
“Hoosh, my darling. Remember my advice.”
“Oschous knows. There are no flies on him.”
“Noo flies? You have the foony way of speaking. Come, in here.”
The ship’s lounge was broad and circular, decorated in silver and black. On the wall were embedded a shifting array of images: places where Oschous had been, magpies that had been in his service. Game consoles, spool racks, desks, and craft stations stood about the room. Save at the beginning and the end, interstellar journeys consisted primarily of doing nothing. Some of that was taken up in training and exercise, but there was such as thing as overtraining, so everyone in the crew had developed a hobby or interest. Magpie Four Karnatika, for example, was preparing an anthropological study of the Regensthorp Sector; Magpie Six engaged herself in clay sculpture.
Two magpies were present when Ravn and Donovan entered, one reading a screen, the other playing battle chess on a projection stage. Olafsdottr waved her arms about. “Go! Go, scat! Doonoovan would make passionate loov to me, and wishes noo audience.”
The magpies laughed and one said, “I’d want no audience either, was I him.” But they gathered up their things and left the lounge, still laughing.
Donovan frowned. “Why did you tell them that…?”
But Ravn scythed him with an ankle sweep and he fell onto the sofa with Ravn atop him. She wrapped arms and legs around him, and it was like being baled up in wire. He could not move. “What the hell…?”
“Hush, my sweet,” she whispered in his ear in the Gaelactic. “Listen, and listen. Oschous was bound to learn that you are hale. That could not be helped. But Gidula is the key. Whatever you do—and as long as we lie here on this couch, sweet, you may do whatever you wish—do not let Gidula know your sundry selves have come together. Billy Chins’ last message told him that you were a broken man. That is what he expected when he had me fetch you, and that is what you must show him.”
Donovan pulled his head back enough to see genuine fear in the eyes of Ravn Olafsdottr. “Why…?” he whispered. But Ravn kissed him to stop the question; then, nuzzling his neck, she whispered again.
“Do not ask questions for which I cannot yet give you answers. The caution is sufficient unto the day. It is worth your life, and mine.”
“Will not Oschous tell him…?”
“Hush. Oschous is clever. Knowledge is power. He does give it away. Mmm, you are good kisser.”
“When I have to, I can play a role.” Once again, he found his words smothered.
“Tell me,” Ravn whispered between kisses. “Whatever. Become. Of Billy. Chins.”
“He retired.”
Ravn fell still for a moment. “How … sad,” she said.
“He wasn’t too happy about it, either; but I wasn’t ready to retire myself.”
“How fortunate for my present pleasures, then,” Olafsdottr said and resumed her caresses. When a time went by with no further warnings, Donovan disengaged.
“Anything else?”
“Ooh, my sweet. We must not be too obvious that this roll was only a role; that this ‘seduce’ was but a ruse. Play the game to completion, darling. I told you before that we would become good friends someday. What better day than today?”
But if no drug could ever completely dull the whole of Donovan buigh, if no rite of meditation could ever completely entrance him, neither could the rush and flow of enzymes entirely engage his mind. The Silky Voice was seduced; but the Fudir stood aside, faithful to the memory of a woman who hated him, and Inner Child, as always, kept watch, and the Sleuth tried to deduce what it all meant.
Who does she want this conversation kept secret from? he asked the Fudir.
Oschous. Who else has eyed and eared this vessel? The question is what did she want kept secret from him. Not the condition of our mind. He already knows.
Oh, that is obvious. What she conceals from our host is that Gidula mustn’t know. And notice what she said.
Do not ask questions for which I cannot yet give you answers, the Pedant helpfully reminded them.
Cannot yet give the answers; not that she does not yet know them.
To a nonnative speaker, the distinction between “cannot’” and “can not” may …
Shut up, Pedant. How are Donovan and the others doing?
<If it weren’t for the sheer terror of it all, they’d be enjoying this.>
Yes, thought the Fudir. There is more than a peck of trouble here, and it’s not all down on Yuts’ga at all.
Cengjam Gaafe: The Seventh Interrogatory
It cannot be said that a woman of deep golden skin can flush, but Bridget ban has turned brass as Olafsdottr chants her seduction of Donovan buigh. Méarana has watched her mother tighten as the Shadow described each loose caress; and she smiles to watch, a little from alarm, but not entirely so. Graceful Bintsaif shows clear signs of distress and her tickler is half out from her holster. There are ways to stop this taunting torrent.