O, I know the time’s a comin when the bear will see in color and the rivers will run gushing; if my mom won’t sell a ticket then—
I’ll steal one!
One rhyme led to another. The Admiral loitered. “Do you know any navy ditties?” He had a weakness for the songs of the barracks of space.
The smile—through broken teeth—was enchanting, and out popped a rowdy lyric about a deckhand who was always poking his fingers into the wrong places, from machinery to women’s private parts, and getting zapped in the chorus. The crowds flowed by. Some stopped for a moment to listen before they moved on.
Hahukum slipped the balladeer a money stick that was programmed not to buy medicine or drugs or alcohol and went on his way, somewhat appalled. How could a man live out his life famless, like a monkey, like a wastrel Rithian? How? And wretched teeth! A few inamins out of a watch in a chair with a mouth-assembler would fix that! No accounting for people! You might build a Galaxy safe from the raids of ravening space hordes or fill the stars from a cornucopia of luxuries for body and mind—yet there were always the woebegone to traipse off to perdition with the sincerest grumble in their song.
His mood was such that he could not be long depressed, even by depressing memories or nagging worries—or a lack of superstudents. He was tempted to deactivate his fam and just bask in the animal aura of the Olibanum as a primitive.. .but tripping out on one’s naive wonder, guideless, in a con artist’s paradise was a recipe for waking up in an embarrassing fix. Too bad. He had to be content to drift along happily—with his comprehension intact.
After being caught in a throng, he let himself be swept up a slanting belt lift, curious to find what galactic marvel lurked above the ecstatic hawking that could pull in such a crowd. They were all younger than he and obviously knew something he didn’t. What was a grumpmug? It couldn’t be more exotic than the elephant in bloomers he had once ridden here as a student.
The mob propelled him up into a high-ceilinged depot with moving lights and streamers—approaches crowded with boys and their dates, some heading to festivities uplevel and some lined up at stalls to rent tiny enclosed cars. Konn rented a car (decorated like a beast-from-hell-with-fenders) and spent the next round careening about a vegetation-choked plain laid inside a rambling emporium. Above them the ceiling was a transparent dance floor so that the herd of less adventurous revelers could share vicariously in the rollicking mayhem below—which consisted of nothing more than bumping and banging grumpmugs and chasing the odd teenage couple hither and thither in circles. But it was fun.
The hermaphroditic grumpmugs of Vincetori turned out to be cantankerous plains beasties jealously willing to defend their foraging range. They were built of cartilaginous sponge and bone that went well with their ornery dispositions and butting habits. They moved on a set of running stumps that could send them in any direction, with a slithering speed, allowing them to contact their rival with a respectable thunk.
The vast majority of planets with an aboriginal oxygen atmosphere had been found to support life no more complicated than unicells; galactically the grumpmug rated as a very advanced species. But not so advanced that the amazing transformation of sky into dance floor was even noticed! In brainpower grumpmugs were a quarter of a billion years away from intelligence. Still, Konn felt that challenging them was more fun than butting heads with the fam-enhanced students of the Lyceum... thunk! Well, sometimes! A dodging grumpmug had side-slithered to butt his car over onto its back. Staring at the world from a strange angle, he ruefully began to suspect that considerable gengi-neering had toughened up these grumpmugs for their carnival life.
Limping, the Admiral spent the rest of his small monies entertaining safer teenage girls on the level above—in a different kind of wit-banging.
It was late when he set out again, having given his leg enough time to recover. He noticed that he was in the neighborhood of his old haunt, the Teaser’s Bistro. The Olibanum was quieter and he strolled up to the Deep Shaft, enjoying the walk around its impressive promenade. He’d never met the latest owner of the Bistro though Rigone had already become notorious among the students. In his youthful heyday the Teaser’s had been a shady hangout; under Rigone its reputation was high-tech risque, not a strict respecter of the probe laws. He did not have to rely on his fam to lay guiding cues onto his visual cortex to find it—the route was still engraved in his wetware—two blocks beyond the Deep Shaft was a little alley and there, hidden away to the right, up an inconspicuous stairway, was the Bistro, as it had always been. Only the bizarre railings, crawling with carved snakes, were new.
He had intended to pass by. A reflex more than half a century old took him up the stairs.
Hahukum suspected that his entrance would make a stir. On a planet with a trillion inhabitants there were many places he could go without being recognized, but the student ghetto wasn’t one of them. The tavern was half full in a lazy third-watch sort of way, mostly youths at the long row of tables that marched down the central hall. A lanky rouster saw him first and turned to nudge his companion, a gesture noticed by the bartender who shifted his eyes to touch Konn, then swiftly faded into a back room. The identification became a subdued chain reaction. There were disadvantages to holding Rank as high as Second. If some of the clientèle were his Lyceum students he wouldn’t have known—they were dressed outrageously to avoid fam scan.
The proprietor appeared even before Hahukum was able to settle himself. Rigone was a hefty man, curlicue tattoos on his face, certainly a Scav, charming in an irresistible way that one would be a fool to trust “Admiral! You’ve returned.”
“After fifty years,” said Konn dryly, appraising this man who hadn’t even been bom the last time he had sat at the battered old bar.
“You’re still on our roster.” Rigone grinned, not letting him be seated. “The drink is on me,” he said, leading the way. Whatever the owner of the Teaser’s thought might be the agenda of his powerful visitor, he seemed to want to conduct the negotiation away from his customers’ eyes. Konn was ushered out back and up the stairs and into private quarters which were doubly guarded. A vault-strong door closed behind them with the hiss of an air seal, followed by a crackling as they were allowed to pass through a forcecurtain strong enough, when active, to block a running man.
The apartment’s only visible room was luxurious. There were shelves of antique ivory book-modules from late Imperial times, unreadable without the ancient hardware. The tapestry was probably Sewinnese; the bric-a-brac from the period of the Sack. A wall of electronic tools seemed to be exquisitely crafted for show but were certainly of the finest functionality. He smelled a faint perfume that bushwhacked his metropolitan imagination—wildflowers in a mountain meadow? When had he last set foot in a pristine mountain valley?
Rigone spoke in a voice not meant to be overheard beyond an arm’s length. “Sorry, I’m not alone... entertaining one of the ladies...” Then: “Mer!”
The delicately perfumed girl-woman who emerged from the slumber room seemed to hold a position of trust. She wasn’t expecting company and deferred to Rigone for an explanation, a slightly displeased expression on her face. She wore her hair in a cage and her eyes were outlined in metal with turquoise inlay; her informal jumpers were slashed boldly down the side, her feet bare. She was no student.
“Mer... we have a guest... Admiral Second Rank Hahukum Konn.” Konn heard the voice of a cocky man flying through clouds on manual at night between the peaks of a rugged range, perhaps with mountain wildflowers below, looking for a safe landing site. It was a voice that would never admit to distress.